Ive done a lot of hubbys and mine and boy do you find some interesting stuff.

My husband has been commandeering my laptop every night to do his genealogy cos his desktop won't download the latest Explorer software. Boohoo. He loves Family Search and finds all the new stuff they now have is great.

Deniliquin Genealogy will be holding a Genie Muster again in October 2014.
Genealogy is a great way to waste a lot of time. You just start wondering and searching and then go off on another tangent and...........
I love getting on Trove to look at old newspaper snippets. They had a way with words back then.

I use ancestry.com and have been tracing family and uncovering the family secrets ... And scandals ... for about 3 years.

It started with a printed tree that I saw as a child and that fascinating piece of paper that covered the kitchen table, disappeared several years back when my aunt, as custodian, who being the oldest member of the family branch, died.  I realised my brothers and I  had no idea about where the family came from because for some reason my parents and aunt never spoke about  it , and we grew up thinking all sorts of things to explain not knowing why . It was thanks to contact from a previously unknown 3rd cousin who contacted me and helped raise the curtain on the family scandals and mysteries thanks to a published diary on the life of my GG grandfather who was one of the first settlers in Port Macquarie. In the diary was the family tree listing the generations back to  Scottish nobility around 1500,  so the hard work was done and I was able to extend the tree now back a fair way thanks to recorded history. I also found out the missing Family Tree was the Gray Family Tree  and had been  provided to the eldest surviving family member of each branch of the family and it is now being updated and will be passed to all family members when completed. 

If there are any fellow researchers out there linked to the Gray family, The early  settler in Port Macquarie was a retired militray officer, Lt Col Charles George Lewis Gray for anyone who is researching the early history of that part of NSW .. The diary was a fascinating insight into the life of the landed gentry in early colonial NSW,  The name of the book is That Gallant Gentleman.

i also use various other family research sites and internet searches to check details and the tree is linked to a program on my computer which syncs the online tree with my computer so when I feel i can no longer justify the cost of Ancestry i will still have the tree on my computer. Sadly my research on the other side of my family has proven to be much more difficult as it is Irish and searching for records is very frustrating there and i have only extended that family back about 4 generations!

And, the most frustrating thing I have found is photos  that have no information on them ..... All the answers there but can't match up the questions!!!

i guess at least my grandchildren and their children will know more about their family than my generation,   And that makes it all worthwhile.  Would love to hear of anyone else who has had a similar lucky break in their research!

cheers,  Libby

-- Edited by chaslib on Tuesday 24th of September 2013 06:38:44 AM

I also love my genealogy! The other party is a little ho-hum about it but then again, if we were all the same it would be a boring world!

It is absolutely wonderful that I can do a lot of my research online and then when I am near a major city, I can then do the primary resource research if necessary. I have also started a couple of online courses through U3a which will tie in with my family histroy research.

Have a great day

Louise

I have my tree on ancestry as well Chaslib (Libby), and have been manually keeping data on it and my home programme. What do you use to sync it? Would love something less tedious.

My own path to researching came through a distant cousin of my mother, who (back in the 1970's) was spending his retirement doing the research the old fashioned way by actually physically going through the old documents in the Mitchell Library in Sydney. As I was the only one really interested, his wife gave me some of his work when he died. Like your's it was a very large sheet of paper, hand drawn. My interest was drawn to one family where 4 children died in the same year.

That was enough, and I was off !

Like you Turtle Trekker (Louise), I appreciate how much is online, but still need those primary documents. I sometimes wonder how much further my cousin would have gone if computers were around when he was working on the tree. However, what he did teach me was the value of seeing the original documents for myself. In recent years the Trove project has enabled very easy access to original newspapers online, and I'm with you Pam about how easy it is to get lost reading and go off at a tangent, wasting hours.

Has anyone tried the Ancestry app for iPads? I downloaded it but find it a bit of a dog, so I usually get onto Ancestry through Safari. Anyone having success with it?

"Worldwide" subscription is usually $450 Australian but there is a special for $300
"UK" gives you Aussie and UK records for $179.40


www.ancestry.com.au/14daysfree


It works out better if you share a sub with a few people and go for the worldwide one where you get access to everything (in my humble opinion)

Yes, it can get expensive if you let it get control of you. I had the basic UK access and then found lots of USA links to my fathers family which was Heffernan with roots in Ballylynan in Laios, Ireland.  I kept that for a year when I decided It was too hard and too many people left Ireland in the days of the potato famine headed for USA with the same name, so reverted to UK membership when all leads came up empty

a word of warning and I am sure anyone researching will agree, there are lots of errors in trees on Ancestry because people just accept without checking details and documentation.  The cost of BDM certificates can chew into your bank account ,  so please be careful, especially the so called Researchers who may just provide answers that you or any novice can find. I was taken early in my researching and it cost me a few hundred dollars, but i learnt a lesson and will not fall into that trap again.

perhaps if this is a genealogy sub forum, would it not help to let us know which names you are interested in ... Mine are

Gray - Scotland to Australia

Heffernan - Laois Ireland to Australia

Dodd - Chester UK To Australia

McEwan - Bangor Ireland to Australia

 

you just never know where family may be lurking ....

cheets

Yes, I like finding out about the families and how they lived. I have been fortunate that a lot of the work was done as in a book was written on my family - there was a reunion some years ago now - but of course it needs updating now with other members since then. On my husbands side - a relative in England has written the family history for a lot of the family - it actually took him 25 years - so probably not a lot of hope for me to set out and do it but I would like to add to the generations from where he left off. I think in some cases on both sides a little deeper digging could reveal things!!! Anyway all good fun. Happy camping

Rip and Rosie wrote:

---

We went to the Deniliquin Geni Muster last year.... excellent !!
We enjoyed Deniliquin so much we stayed an extra week!

Genealogy is a great excuse to travel, lots to do and see, and lots to find.

---

 I went last year also and was hoping to go this year but my MH won't be ready and I have used all my annual leave.  So I am planning to head up again for a few days and continue the searching. Did find the house my Grandmother lived in before coming to Melbourne.

Nelly wrote:

---

Yes, I like finding out about the families and how they lived. I have been fortunate that a lot of the work was done as in a book was written on my family - there was a reunion some years ago now - but of course it needs updating now with other members since then. On my husbands side - a relative in England has written the family history for a lot of the family - it actually took him 25 years - so probably not a lot of hope for me to set out and do it but I would like to add to the generations from where he left off. I think in some cases on both sides a little deeper digging could reveal things!!! Anyway all good fun. Happy camping

---

 Never accept anyone else's work! It takes just a small mistake to take the rest of the line down the wrong track.... and we all make mistakes. 

In addition, no one ever has the same family tree as anyone else. For example, if you take identical female twins, their maternal and paternal lines may be exactly the same, but as they marry different individuals, their children will only share 50% of the tree, as the other half will be their paternal lines.

So, if  cousin has "done" the tree, 1) it all has to be checked and proven, and 2) you need to trace your own lines.

As you say, "revealing things" can be very exciting!

... but beware, it's addictive.

Speaking of mistakes...oh so true.

My father and his maternal Aunt Myrtle passed on to me a story about HER grandfather...who was in reality her Uncle. I was totally new to this and ASSUMED she knew WHO HER grandfather was. Well turned out she didn't...

And there was no " don't talk about it " convict on that line at all. So all those years she and my Dad thought her father was an only child...HE was the Uncle and his brother Charles,who had sold 100 acres which included half of Manly beach, was the Dad and there were

around 9 children...guess they didn't exchange Christmas cards or emails !!! ....My Dad had died before I found this out. I had the story of the old Sergeant who lived at Coaster's Retreat, his marriage but could never find a birth of a child. hehehe I was devastated,

I was given all these papers and I could see it all laid out clearly...never did any FH for about 4 years after.

They were pioneers at South Creek NSW and plenty of Andrews in St Mary Magdalene Churchyard at St Marys NSW

One of the family scandals i unearthed was why my mother and her sister never  spoke about their father and as children my brothers and I grew up not knowing that we actually had a very large family of aunts, uncles and cousins but they also knew nothing of us!

As it turned out my grandmother was deserted by my grandfather and was left to raise alone her 2 daughters .. My mother and my aunt, both under 10 Years of age.

The new lady in my grandfathers life was my grandmothers half sister through my great grandfathers 2nd  marriage (unlike my grandfather, at least he waited for the first wife to pass away!). The more I dug into the matter the more it started to sound like Some Victorian era version of  of Days of our Lives! I am yet to find any divorce documents or a marriage registration to confirm a 2nd marriage and my grandmother retained her married name until her death!

Through Ancestry, I was able to get in contact with the descendants of the 2nd marriage and it appears the children of the 2nd marriage never spoke spoke about it either!  

Sadly, whatever the actual story was, has gone to the grave with all the cast members and it has been left to all the descendants to draw their own conclusions!

My preferred explanation is my grandfather wanted sons, not daughters, so he just hopped the fence and within a couple of years the 2 daughters were replaced by 2 sons!

Another mystery that i cant understand is how someone can arrive in Australia as an assistant immigrant in 1863 on board the Light Brigade out of UK noted on his papers as a Sawyer, and census papers previously as a farm worker and sawyer as were other family members. Then within a couple of years of settling in Australia he turns up in Toowoomba as part of the upper crust of society  as a Solicitor?  This person was actually my grandfathers father! Strangely, at first I thought I had misread the  immigration and  and census papers and it actually said Lawyer, but someone told me that the letters L and S in that period in time are often mistaken and Sawyer was correct.  I thought  for a while that it was Lawyer as that was the occupation in Australia, but when i realised I had it wrong, I could not understand how a farm worker could turn into a lawyer/solicitor in such a short period of time ....  Condensed Law Course 101 circa 1870!?

So, that's my Shame and Scandal in the Family .... Anyone got something interesting ... And scandalous would be good also ... To share???

 

Libby

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

,

,.l

 

Its really hard not to judge some of the stuff we find on family trees, but it's a challenge.

Sociology changes over time, and we can't "walk in their shoes" with any real comparison to today.

For example, there was no contraception and so any sexually active woman was likely to get pregnant without protection, but the ramifications for the women were catastrophic especially if the man did not "stand by her". There was no mandatory child support, or social services, no pensions and very little work for women with children. Many illegitimate children were raised as a younger sibling keeping the pregnancy of an older sister hidden.

Without education women were trapped, and even with education they were likely to be underpaid even if they could find reasonable work.

Divorce was expensive and one party needed to prove fault on the part of the other one. Being unhappy or unsuited together was no grounds. Remarriage without divorce was bigamy and a criminal offence. Co-habitation or defacto relationships tarnished a woman's "good name".

Is it any wonder that women resorted to prostitution to support themselves and their children.

So, should we now condemn them?

I love the challenge of working through the history and social conditions of the era in order to attempt to reach some understanding of what they were experiencing. Love it.