My Family History Through the Alphabet Collection...

Over the past six months or so I’ve been taking part in the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge which I was also co-ordinating on the Genealogy & History News blog. And while it was a lot more work involved than I had anticipated, I did really enjoy it. I was great to be able to write about things relating to my family history (people, heirlooms, websites, countries etc), and use the alphabet letters as a prompt for doing so. And even though I did finish a little late (though there wasn’t really a formal time limit), I did finally make it from A right through to Z. So this post is simply “My Family History Through the Alphabet Collection”. A is for … A2A (Access to Archives) B is for … [Family] Bible C is for … Convicts D is for … Dropbox E is for … Emigrant Ancestors F is for … Finland and Football G is for … Gumeracha H is for … Happy Dance I is for … you guessed it … the INTERNET J is for … [Heirloom] Jewellery K is for … Old Words L is for … Letters M is for … Memories, Memoirs and a Headstone N is for … Never-Ending New Stuff and New Jersey O is for … Online Parish Clerks (OPC’s) P is for … Charlotte PHILLIPS Q is for … Quest R is for … Reference Books and Rainbows S is for … Searching T is for … Teddy Bears U is for … Undecided V is for … Vintage Style W is for … lots of Ws X is for … Signatures Y is for … Yesteryear Z is for … The End? Not a Chance...

Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge: A is for … A2A (Access to Archives)...

You might think hang on, what is she doing. Is she starting the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge again??  In short no, but let me explain. As I never actually did the letter A thanks to a lack of inspiration which lasted until about the letter J or so, and I really would like to complete the whole alphabet, I am doing it now. And I figured it was better to do it at the end, rather than right in the middle. So for my A post … A is for … A2A (Access to Archives) Some of you may have heard of the A2A website, others may not have. But for me it is one of the most amazing sites around. As part of the UK’s National Archives, the A2A database contains indexed listings of items and documents that archives throughout England hold. These records date from the eighth century to the present day. While it contains an impressive 10.3 million records relating to 9.45 million items held in 418 record offices and other repositories, the estimate is that this is still only about 30% of all records that the archive repositories hold. Even with only 10 million records (who am I kidding, 10 million records indexed is 10 million more than I would have known about had it not been for this site) this site is awesome. On the opening search screen, you can type in a keyword such as a name or a place, and see what comes up. However if you click on Advanced Search you can narrow it down to include “all these words”, choose a date range, choose a place, select a repository, or select a region. I nearly always just do...

Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge: Z is for … The End? Not a Chance...

Welcome to my Z post in the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge. Yes the end of the Alphabet Challenge has come (although I will be posting my ‘A’ post after this, as I never got around to doing it at the time, but we can overlook that fact – and better 25 weeks late than never, eh?). Anyway for this Z post I’ve decided that Z is for  … The End? Not a Chance So what on earth do I actually mean by that? Well I found phrase could relate so well to both my blogging, and to my family history, so here’s a little explanation. To my blog Firstly I have thoroughly enjoyed participating in the Alphabet Challenge. A few letters I did find challenging, and I was totally surprised at how many I changed my mind on what to write about. Anyway having the alphabet letters as a prompt was very useful, and I may well just use the concept of it (without using the official format), to come up with more ideas for blog posts – mind you I’m really not struggling for ideas, rather time. But anyway.  So in many respects I don’t see the Alphabet Challenge series as coming to an end for me – just an official part of it. To my family history Now to relate this to my family history. Will I ever get to the end? Nope, not a chance. While my dad started our family history 30+ years ago, and I really only picked it up to continue and do my own maybe 5-6 years ago (see I’m still a newbie :P) … I know that you often get lost on fascinating tangents  along the way, and all of...

Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge: Y is for … Yesteryear...

This week the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge brings us up to the letter Y, and for this I have decided that Y is for … Yesteryear For this I have decided think way back and come up with some memories I have of  ‘yesteryear’. Ok, I’m not that old, but still much of what I have come up with are things that are not around today, so I’m counting them as yesteryear. As I spent a reasonable portion of my childhood visiting my grandparents (on my mum’s side) on their farm and orchard at Cudlee Creek, which is a tiny (blink-and-you-miss-it) town in the Adelaide Hills, most of my ‘yesteryear’ memories relate to my grandparents or things at their place. ——————————————————————————————- So without further ado … here’s my yesteryear memories: – when my grandma was home, she ALWAYS wore her apron. You know the regular ones that tied around the waist, but she had lots with the bib top too. – my grandparents lived on a farm so there was morning tea and afternoon tea everyday. This usually included Sao biscuits with tomato and cheese, and often Rock Buns (does anyone else remember those)? – Saturday was always roast day, with Sunday being leftover cold meat day – the old telephone table, and phone with the twirly dial on the front – the wood stove and the kettle that heats on the stove – my grandparents loved their tea, and I think later in life took to coffee, but they always drank it from a cup and saucer – never a mug – my grandma did  lots of preserves, to be honest I don’t even remember what, I just remember lots and lots of glass jars filing her...

Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge: X is for … Signatures...

After thinking about what to do for the letter X for weeks, I still hadn’t come up with anything. So the fact that this post has even happened is a tribute to Wendy who commented on the Gould Genealogy Facebook page for the Family History Through the Alphabet, the letter X, and gave me the idea for this post. X is for … Signatures Actually technically this post is about the lack of signature, as in those that were illiterate and used X for a signature (ie. X is the mark of _________ ) was the actual wording that was used on certificates.After getting the idea, it made me re-look at all the certificates I have to see how many signed, and how many put ‘X’ as their mark. Interestingly most of the certificates I have show that they were literate, or at least enough to sign their own signature. However amongst them, there are a some that do have X as their mark and I must say I was surprised at who. So here’s just a few of the examples of signatures using the letter X from my collection: So there’s a few of my X for signatures. Do you have many X signatures in your collection of...

Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge: W is for … lots of Ws...

My topic for the letter W in the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge has changed so many times, you should see my notebook with all my ideas, and crossing outs (LOL). I expect some of those ideas you’ll see in future posts eventually. Anyway I have settled on the W being for “lots of Ws”. I can hear your going huh, what does that even mean? Well, to me it means two things, firstly Who, What, When, Where and Why, and also World Wide Web. W is for … lots of Ws Who, What, When, Where and Why … these are the basic questions that every family historian aims to get answers to for every person on their family tree. Questions such as Who is that person in the photo with your great grandmother? What ship did your great great grandparents emigrate to Australia on? What data was that child born? Where did they live after their arrival? and Why did they leave England? These are just some of the 1000s of questions that arise thoughout the search for your family. And as does happen, when you get an answer to one, it usually creates more questions again. Now for many reasons you’ll never get answers to some of them, but for those of us who are completely obsessed I mean ‘dedicated souls of genealogy’ we don’t EVER stop looking, because YOU JUST NEVER KNOW … And if you’re like me … always have a pad and pen on your beside table, as sometimes a flash of inspiration of where to search or why comes at the strangest of times. Now on to the World Wide Web. Seriously does anyone research without the internet these days? OK, maybe a very few,...

Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge: V is for … Vintage Style...

We’re now up to the letter V in the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge, and for me this was always going to be about “Vintage Style”. V is for VINTAGE STYLE I love a whole lot about the style and stuff from the Victorian and Edwardian eras. The lace up boots, the corsets, the choker necklaces, pocket watches, hats and more … love it, so it’s no wonder that I’m completely fascinated by a copy of the Lassetter’s catalogue that my dad has. What is Lassetter’s catalogue you ask?Good question. Lassetter’s catalogue was issued regularly, and the copy he has is dated 1913. This catalogue (actually it’s more like a 1100 page massive book) is a simply chock full of EVERYTHING, and I do mean E -V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G is listed in this catalogue. Clothes, shoes, soaps, hair pins, jewellery, travel luggage, gold clubs, cigarettes, suits, farm machinery, canes, inks and writing paper, bird cages, candles, dinnerware … you name it, it’s there, all with sketches and prices. It really is the coolest book! The images shown here are taken from this book.                     And just to prove that I really do love vintage style (with a bit of a modern twist) here’s a pikki of me with Mr Lonetester on our wedding day. Note the lace up boots, corset (not that you can really see it here), the snazzy top hat, long tails jacket, and choker necklace  😉 … yep, I’ve always had a bit of a thing for vintage style....

Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge: U is for … Undecided...

Week 21 in the Family History Through the Alphabet Challegne, and even after weeks of thinking about the letter U, I still have not come up with anything specific that I wanted to write a whole blog post on … so hence U is for UNDECIDED I did however come throw around a whole bunch of ideas in my head such as: Un-be-lieve-able … I did actually start a post on this one, but then changed my mind. It is true – what you find while you are research can be simply mind blowing, it can leave you gobsmacked, and is simply UN-BE-LIEVE-ABLE! Stories of bravery and heroism, stories of tragedy and heartbeak, stories of true courage, stories that simply make you go WOW in amazement! Even stories that make you cringe. It is these stories that really makes your family, YOUR family. And guaranteed along the way you’ll find something that you never even imagined was possible, something that is better that fiction!! Umbrella … For some reason umbrella kept popping into my head. And while it would be cool to have an heirloom umbrella (particularly the parasol kind – love them) sadly I don’t have any, so I had to omit umbrella from my list. Unidentified Photos … I know we can ALL relate to this one. We have been fortunate enough to have been given old family photos (or copies of them). Yet we don’t know who they are!!! How dare they not name (and date) everyone on them for us!! I mean how inconsiderate of our ancestors to not think of us 😉 … alas, we must be happy to have the photos – names or no names. Unregistered Births, Deaths and Marriages … I’m sure I have...

Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge: T is for … Teddy Bears...

T is one of the few letters that I knew right from the beginning what I wanted to right about – annnnd have stuck to it. So for T in the Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge, I would like to say that T is for TEDDY BEARS I don’t there’s too many of us that weren’t given a teddy bear, or something similar as a baby. But how many of you still have your treasured teddy? I know some would, but in asking that question an awful lot of hands would have gone down. I wanting to share two very special teddy bears with you today – these are heirloom teddy bears. This first one, was given to my mum when she was born, so is over 60 years old, and yes dear old teddy has lot a little fur, and has a little hole in one paw, but he has survived this far without surgery and is doing remarkably well considering he has had three generations of children playing with him.               —————————————————————————————————————- Now this second one is mine … he’s just Teddy, he’s never had another name. And while he’s not as old as mum’s teddy (he is over 30), I’m sure that he has had a much a harder life, as he had me as his owner. While I did love my toys, I wasn’t always the kindest to them … like when I tried to …. (actually that’ll be another story). Anyway needless to say I really did go through a phase of giving all of my teddy bears earrings and makeup, yet surprisingly there is little evidence of it these days. Today my treasured teddy resides with...

Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge: S is for … Searching...

As has happened many times throughout this Family History Through the Alphabet Challenge already, I changed my mind of what to write about for this letter. I was going to write about the Star of New Zealand ship, but have decided to save that one for another day. So now … S is for SEARCHING Putting it simply genealogists are searchers. We are detectives, we hunt down all the clues and piece them together one by one, which ultimately makes our family history, and to help us do this we use the internet, naturally. But with the many, many millions of genealogy websites, big and small, together with all the message boards, forums, blogs out there just how do you find what you’re looking for? The answer is to learn the art of searching … that’s how. Because HOW you search can radically change the results you get, and help narrow your focus. So lets start with the obvious one …  GOOGLE ——————————————————– Here’s an example you can try with me, lets say we’re looking for some cemetery records: 1. Type the word cemetery records australia in Google’s search box, and it comes up with 21,200,000 results – now I don’t know on ANYONE that actually wants to go through that many webpages, so obviously you’ll need to narrow down your search some more. (Note the number of search results can vary depending on which version of Google you use, and I’m using Google.com.au) 2. The second step is to narrow it down further. As I’m looking primarily in South Australia, I’ll change the word Australia to “South Australia”, and see what comes up: cemetery records “south australia” gives 310,000 results. 3. Quite often you’d then look through at least the...