Twile: A Different Way to Show Off Your Family Tree...

Let me introduce you to Twile. This is something I’ve been playing with recently, but it has actually been around for a year or two now, so some of you may already know how fun it is. First up let me just say that Twile is a website that allows you to display your family and milestones as a timeline … and, not only that, it is totally FREE. As it offers timelines, don’t expect a traditional tree-type chart from them. The timelines are created by using data that you either you enter, or a gedcom file you upload. To add to this, you can also add photos, milestones, and historical events which everyone in your family can view and contribute to. At RootsTech 2016 Twile won both the People’s Choice Award as well as the Innovator Showdown, so it’s certainly grabbed people’s attention. And the claims that it “makes genealogy more engaging” is true. Apart from a graphical timeline of your own tree, they can create a statistics infographic based on your family. Now this is truly cool, and here’s mine …   To get this simply upload your gedcom (or link to an online tree) – if you hadn’t already got one there for your timeline, wait a few mins … and wallah, it’s there in your inbox!! Go ahead and try it for yourself http://ww.twile.com/numbers, and if you have Irish ancestry, there’s a special green infographic for you here https://twile.com/numbers/irish. So if you’re looking for a novel way to show off your tree, or a way to get your family interested in family history, why not try Twile? It could just be the thing you’ve been looking...

My Top 15 Blog Posts for 2015...

I’d like to thank Judy G. Russell (aka The Legal Genealogist) for giving me the idea for this post. She recently wrote one titled “2015 Top Posts: Family” in which she lists her “top 10 family-related posts of the year, not by reader ranking… but by the ranking of the heart…”. While I do totally love this idea, I was also intigued to know what my “top looked at” posts for 2015 were. So to find out, I headed to Google Analytics, and now have the results … So my top 15 looked at blog posts for 2015 are: 15. EVACUATE! This is a post I wrote after having to evacuate my home at the beginning of 2015 due to a bushfire. And when faced with having to packup things in a hurry, it made me realise what really is important. 14. Discovering Links: 25 Free Links for English Genealogy and History It was June 2014 when I started my “Discovering Links” series of posts. These are a collection of links that I have found, or have found useful, and wanted to share – and I decided to group them together in themes, this one being English ones. 13. Discovering Links: Convicts, Australian Royalty Who doesn’t like convicts and convict records? This post gives readers links to 23 convict related sites. 12. 13 Tips for First Time Geneacruisers This is an old post from 2013, and I was must say I was surprised (but pleased) to see it in the list. Hopefully that means that there are more people who are (or are thinking of) taking a genealogy cruise. 11. My Favourite Cornish Genealogy Websites (and They’re Free) This was a pre-curser to my Discovering Links posts, and this...

More Free Websites for South Australia Genealogy and History...

Back in 2011 I compiled my 33 Free Websites for South Australia Genealogy post, and despite having written it almost 4 years ago, it is still one of the most looked at posts on my blog. Since then a lot of new South Australian records and sites have gone online, so I felt it was time for an update. Many people think that genealogy costs a lot of money, let me tell you that all of the links below are free. Personally I find that it’s often a matter of knowing where to look beyond the big-name websites, and hopefully this will help with that. Although I haven’t titled this “Discovering Links”, I’m putting in that series of posts since it contains a whole bunch of links. These are I have discovered, or found useful, and want to share with others. You can see my previous Discovering Links posts here. It’s not intended to be an exhaustive collection of links, but simply ones that many will find useful, and it may include some that you may not have known about. === SOUTH AUSTRALIA === GENERAL HISTORY South Australian Historical Archaeology Database The Historical Archaeology of Adelaide Project is based in the Department of Archaeology, Flinders University. It is a long term project to record and document archaeological data from three key site types throughout South Australia: cemeteries, standing structures (buildings), and monuments/memorials. The project data has been compiled by second and third year undergraduate archaeology students as part of their work in the topic. These databases are available as a public resource for heritage research. History As it Happens History is not only about things that happened long ago. It is happening here and now and we are all part...

Discovering Links: Victorian Sites...

A few months ago I started a new theme of posts, ones that I have termed “Discovering Links”. These are posts that lists links that I’ve discovered. It’s not meant to be an exhaustive list, but it is simply ones, generally the not-so-commonly-known ones that I’ve come across in my research, from magazines, or from seeing mentioned on social media. No matter where I discovered them, I noted them, have been to them, and have found them interesting – so thought I’d share them with you. For this post I have a few relating to Victoria  in Australia. === VICTORIAN LINKS === Picture Victoria Similar to what PictureAustralia was, PictureVictoria is a portal site for libraries in Victoria to upload photos to, so they can be all searched from a single site. While the Trove photograph collection is good, if you have Victorian interests, you may wish to check this out as well just in case they have something different. Geelong and District Family History Group I don’t expect to generally list genealogy groups and societies, but this one is worth mentioning. The volunteers at the Geelong and District Family History Group are to be commended for their indexing efforts. So far their database has over 1.5 million entries. So for anyone with connections to this region of Victoria, their site is a must. Victorian Government Gazettes 1836-1997 The State Library of Victoria have digitised the Victorian (and very early New South Wales) Government Gazettes, and have made over 160 years of them available online. Free. You can view images of individual gazette pages by browsing through, or you can search the index. Eurekapedia As the name suggests, this is pretty much the site to go to for anything and everything...

Discovering Links: A Bunch of “General” Sites...

What do vintage adverts, old maps, stock photos, military acronyms and rescued heirlooms have in common? They have made it on to my second “Discovering Links” post. It is these “General” links that I’ve decided to share with you. Why “General” you may ask? Well, simply because they are either about a topic as opposed to a place, or they don’t fit into any ‘one’ specific country category … so they get filed into general (well in my world they do anyway). I hope you find the following links of interest.  === GENERAL LINKS === Military Acronyms #1 and Military Acronyms #2 When I was doing some research for my Anzac Day post and reading through a bunch of military records, I needed some help with the military acronyms. Afterall they pretty much write in acronym, so to make sens of anything you need to decode what they’re on about. Anyway I found the above two sites of use, so noted them, and though I’d share them with you. Letters From the Past This is one seriously fascinating site. If you love history and have a spare day (or even just an afternoon), log on to Letters from the Past and have a read of the fascinating letters that people from history has written. The earliest letter in this collection is dated 1660, with the last being the late 1800s. Each letter has been scanned, as well as transcribed. There are details of holidays, of court cases, family details, and anything else you can think of that would be written in letters. There’s over 160 of them listed so far, with more being added regularly. Like I said, you’ll find it fascinating reading. Vintage Ad Browser Do you love...

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...

Facebook and Genealogy: 100 Links for Australian Researchers...

There is no doubt that Facebook is THE popular to keep you connected to family and friends. But do you realise just how important it can be for your genealogy? Facebook and genealogy … really? Absolutely! You can find genealogy related groups online to ask your how-to questions, you can keep up with what your local societies are doing, you can help track down your digger ancestors, ask for help identifying those old photos you’ve inherited, find out the latest publications from companies, find a researcher and so much more. Facebook is there to be used, so why not use it to your advantage. I’ve compiled 100 links to mostly Australian Facebook sites (a few are non-country orientated, but still very useful so have decided to throw them in too). And to make life easier for you, have divided them into categories. Let me state right now that this list is not comprehensive. I am aware that there are more groups, museums, historical tourist places, as so on that I have not listed. It is however a reasonable list for those of you who’ve never thought of using Facebook as a genealogical tool. So go to your Facebook page, type key words in the search box up the top … you might to just type in “genealogy” and see what comes up, or you might like to type in a surname (if doing so, remember to narrow it by looking for groups or pages) not just individuals, you might want to type in a place to see if there is anything on the area you’re interested in. Happy researching on Facebook 😉 ——————————————————————————————————— RESEARCH HELP Australian Genealogy http://www.facebook.com/groups/talltrees/ South Australian Genealogy http://www.facebook.com/groups/146931945380414/ FamilySearch Australia Genealogy Research http://www.facebook.com/AustraliaGenealogy?ref=ts&fref=ts ———————————————————————————————————  RESEARCH...

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...