15 April 1912 – The Day the “Titanic” Sank...

It was a disaster like no other at that time. The world’s biggest (and self-proclaimed ‘unsinkable’) ship set off from Southampton on 10 April 1912, bound for New York. It was her maiden voyage, and the crowd seeing it off was huge. Little did they know that just 5 days later all onboard would be fighting for their life, with the vast majority not making it. 2.20am, 15 April 1912, just a mere 2 hours and 40 minutes after hitting an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean, the unthinkable happened to the unsinkable. The Titanic sank. total capacity: 3547 passengers and crew total onboard: 2206 passengers and crew total survived: 703 passengers and crew  That was 105 years ago, and it still has an impact. The movie below is from British Pathè’s collection, and is just one of the 85,000 old movies they have made freely available. Showing actual footage of the ship, the rescue ships, together with interviews of some survivors, it is chilling. There’s no doubt that the Titanic has become the stuff of legend. I remember asking my grandma about it though she wasn’t born at the time, but her older sisters were, and they remembered it, being aged 11 and 12. So I decided to see what the local South Australian newspapers wrote about it. The following was the first report of it in South Australia’s “The Advertiser”, was was dated 18 April 1912. Not too bad considering that communication back then wasn’t as instant as we have today. It didn’t make front page like it did in the US or England, but it did make a big article on page 9. The article blow is just a small portion of it. And as you would expect, every...

Trewartha’s Candy Store, Dover, New Jersey...

My regular readers will know that my 4x great grandma Charlotte Phillips and her husband Samuel Trewartha are two of my fav ancestors, and I’ve written about them from time to time. Born in the 1820s, they grew up in Cornwall, England and in the English 1861 census Samuel Trewartha’s occupation was given as Copper Miner, while Charlotte’s was Confectioner. This is followed by an entry in the 1866 Directory for Redruth (England) where Samuel is listed as a Sugar Boiler, so obviously they were making candy to supplement his income from mining. It was in 1867 that they made the lifechanging decision to move from England to the United States, ending up in Rockaway and Dover, Morris County, New Jersey, and they opened a candy store there … which from what I can tell was a wonderful store, with an incredible reputation and ran for at least several generations, with her son John and his wife Minnie running it in her later year, and I believe some granddaughters did after that, with Black Rock Candy being their signature treat. While I know a fair bit about Charlotte’s life from records, one thing I didn’t have is any photos of Samuel,  Charlotte, the candy store. That is, at least until cousin bait worked, and some distant relatives saw my previous posts, and have sent me some photos, and have kindly allowed me to share them with you here. So I must say a HUGE, HUGE thank you to Glenn Rush who sent me the photos below, and has allowed me to share them with you. And also to Eric Bullfinch who has sent me a map showing the exact location of the store in Sussex Street, Dover.   So...

Christmas Time at the Candy Store...

For my Christmas-related post this year, I decided to go trawling through New Jersey’s old newspapers. In particular The Iron Age. This is a small town newspaper for the area of Dover, in Morris County. Lucky for me these have been digitised and put online (for free), so I have spent a couple of days browsing through them looking for adverts of my 4x great grandma’s candy shop. And what fun I have had!!! Over a period of 25 years (1872-1897), I have found 16 adverts! I won’t put them ALL here, but rather I’ll just choose a few to share with you. But first let me tell you a little about my 4x great grandma. Charlotte Phillips was born in Redruth, Cornwall, England in 1822, and married Samuel Trewartha in 1847. He had tough life as a miner, while according to census records Charlotte was a ‘confectioner’, no doubt to supplement the family income. In 1867 the family made the life changing move to New Jersey, USA where they set up a candy store in Dover, Morris County, New Jersey. She ran this for years with husband Samuel, though after his death in 1885, her youngest son Richard helped out. While I’ve never seen any photographs of the shop, I am picturing from the adverts that it was a popular place. For one thing it was there for YEARS! And Samuel (also known as “Candy Sam”) was famous not only for his Black Rock Candy, but also his cough drops. Enjoy the vintage adverts from 4x great grandma Charlotte’s shop. And for more on Charlotte herself, you can read an earlier article I wrote about her here. ** As the advert from 1889 is rather hard to read, it...

New Series: Discovering Links … Scottish and the US to Start With...

I’m not that keen on study. Never was. And probably never will be. At least not in the long-course-structure-type-learning-thing anyway. But I am continually learning, and expanding my genealogy knowledge because through all of my genealogy-related reading (such as genie magazines, blogs, as well the numerous social media sites), and even just chatting with customers in our store at Gould Genealogy I come across some fascinating websites and interesting info. While not all are relevant for my own research, I still find it interesting. But unfortunately they don’t ALL stay stuck in my head as they should (not enough UHU or blu-tac obviously), so I write them down. I find writing them down is good, but to be useful I need to have access to my list of interesting links, as I don’t carry my little book everywhere with me. And yes it is a physical notebook, old school style I know, but it works for me. So rather than simply creating a file which I can dump into my Dropbox folder, which I can then access from anywhere, anytime, I thought I’d create a series of posts, so others can discover these cool sites too. So here begins my series of “Discovering Links”. This new series is something that I’ve been thinking about for a while now, and no doubt it’ll continue to evolve as I go along.  So bear with me as it does, and I hope you find some of the links useful, and discover some new ones along the way. I have tended to group them by country, state or topic in my book, so to make it easier for readers (an me to re-find my links) I’ll group them similar to that. And while...

Origins … Where Are You From?...

What are your origins? Where are you from? These are questions that are common amongst us genie-folk. And when asked, you know that they aren’t looking for the town where you grew up (well, not usually anyway), but rather where do your roots lie. My origins are mostly English, with a little Irish, a touch of European, and one branch from Finland … all of this heritage is what makes me, ME!! At our shop at work  (Gould Genealogy & History) we have had a big family tree chart of our family up on display. However since our move to a smaller shop in January this year it has remained rolled up, awaiting inspiration on just where we can actually fit it. Well this week, I moved some things around, and up went our family tree chart again. YAY! I must say that after not having seen the chart since January, it was very cool to see it again. And one thing that really struck me was the little map up the top which shows the “places of origin of our ancestors”, and noted just visually useful it is. So standing on a chair, I whipped out my trusty little Flip-Pal scanner (where  would I be without it?), and scanned the map so I could put it here, to show you just how cool adding family names to a map can make your family history. This chart (and map) were created by my dad quite a number of years ago, and while it doesn’t cover every line of my family (by a long way), it is still a great chart. In fact it mostly only follows a few lines on dad’s side of the family, so I’m thinking in all...

Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge: N is for … Never-Ending New Stuff and New Jersey...

As has happened numerous times throughout the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge, I’ve changed my mind of what to write about after already starting this post. So for this N post I’d like to say that N is for NEVER-ENDING NEW STUFF We all know that the internet is an absolute wealth of information with new websites and new records being added online daily. Seriously the rate of growth is overwhelming. So how do we keep up with what new online that interests us? And by that I’m meaning anything genealogy or genealogy-related, but you knew that didn’t you … just checking!! Well there are several ways, so let me share those with you … Firstly you can keep up to date with what’s new on the big websites (arranged alphabetically: WEBSITES Ancestry.com.au – To check our the latest additions to the Ancestry website look for the Search button on their top bar, the scroll down to Card Catalogue.  That will bring u a listing of collections on the Ancestry.com.au website sorted by popularity. You can change this to sort by Newest, and on the lefthand sidebar you can choose to click off the “filter to show only records from Australia”and it will then give you all the latest records on any Ancestry site. Note: this also applies to Ancestry.co.uk and Ancestry.com. Cyndi’s List – Cyndi’s List is a directory of websites, not records, but I feel it is important to keep up with what websites are new too … so to view her newly added sites, she has a button titles “Browse New Links” and from there you can check the links added each day for the past month of so. FamilySearch – To view what’s new...