Cobram Genealogical Group News

Mining Ancestors in Australia

2011-10-23T20:58:00.000-07:00

Notes from a talk given by Shauna Hicks at Yarrawonga Family History Group on October 2011.

If you have mining ancestors in your family you can add a lot of context to the history surrounding your family and even follow their movements as they moved around in search of gold or other metals that have been mined in Australia.

A rough guide to the times where gold was being mined in Australia's history is as follows:

South Australia - 1840's
Victorian and New South Wales - 1850's
Queensland - 1860's
Western Australia - 1890's
Many travelled over to New Zealand and back following the gold there.

You can find a great timeline of Australian Mining at this educational website Chronology of Australian Mining

The Australian Mining History Association has a wealth of information particularly a bibliography of each state with links to websites that hold information on that States Mining history.

It is a good idea to look at the Government Departments for each State that looks after Mining to see if they have historical records and information.

For example - Dept of Planning and Community Development in Victoria has links to historical information at Gold mining - history and mining plots in Victoria

To get a brief overview of an area it is often useful to use wikipedia to get an idea of the area your ancestors may have mined.

When searching in Western Australia a helpful index to begin with is called the Mining Lease Holders Index covering 1892 - 1909. It has been taken from a Mines Department Nominal Index to Mining Tenements (CONS 4603/6 – Record Series 1028) and provides the name of the lease holder, lease number, goldfield and date of lease holding.This index is on Microform and you may be able to access it through a local family history group or State Library.

In Victoria at the Genealogical Society of Victoria if you are a member you can log in to the Members Only section and search the index of Names. Here you will find Hospital Admissions on the Victorian Goldfields. Many miners were admitted to hospital for various injuries and illnesses. This index may be invaluable in giving you the birthplace and age of the individual their occupation and other information about their admission. This index has also been put on to a CD and your local family history group may have it available.

Other places to research your mining family members and the places they lived are through State Libraries, Regional Specialist Libraries such as the Bendigo Regional Archives Centre, Universities and Trade Unions.

QLD State Archives - QLD Mineral Leases 1871-1940

QLD Index of Mining Company Records - Companies Index 1863-1959

NSW Registers to Gold Leases 1874-1928 - Registers of auriferous (gold) leases, 1874-1928

Gold Diggers from South Australia 1852-53 - a searchable database

New Zealand Gold Miners Database 1861-72 - Goldrush Online

The Noel Butlin Archives Centre has many records about Gold Mining as well as Union and Business Records.

The Trade Union Archives will also give you information about Union Members, Strikes and other details.

Looking for family that may have been involved in a Mining Accident and you are looking in Victoria you should certainly look at Dave Evans Mining Index. This is only a sample of a more detailed index that can be found on CD. You may like to see if your local family history group or library has it available.

The QLD State Library has Mining Accidents 1882-1900

Cora Webb has links to information about the Mining Occupation that will give you some background information to this occupation.

If you are looking for more information on the types of health issues that miners may have had such as phthisis and claims they may have made against the companies they worked for you should start with your State Government Archives.

If you are looking for photographs of your ancestors or of the area they mined around. Use your State Library, State Archives, University Archives and Picture Australia to search. You may also like to look at the Images from the Past on the Royal Historical Society of Victoria.

Finding detailed information about your Mining Ancestors may be hit and miss but there are a lot of resources that can enrich the family history of your mining ancestors giving your stories more detail and depth.

Newspapers Online

2011-10-19T23:58:00.000-07:00

Notes made from a talk given by Shauna Hicks at Yarrawonga Family History Group on October 9th, 2011

There are many Australasian papers online these days but itis still important to keep checking indexes of Newspapers. OCR technology usedto digitise and read the print on many of the poorer quality newspapers isstill not perfect and if you are doing a search of the newspaper you miss thearticle or person you are searching for. Some resources with guides:

AFFHO’s Index of Indexes - http://www.affho.org/indexes/search.php

Judy Webster’s Guides - http://www.judywebster.gil.com.au/

National Library of Australia Newspaper Indexes - http://www.nla.gov.au/research-guides/newspaper-indexes

Cora Num – Websites for Genealogists - http://www.coraweb.com.au/newspaper.htm

Some Australian Papers you will find in indexes online are:

The Argus Index 1870-79 http://www.nla.gov.au/argus/

Ryerson Index which currently has death notices, probatenotices and obituaries for 192 newspapers across Australia. These are mostlycurrent dates. - http://www.ryersonindex.org/

TROVE is the National Library of Australia’s onlinecatalogue. It is a good idea to register and log in to TROVE when you are doinga search as it will allow you to search in “my library”, which enables you tosee where the nearest library to you has that particular resource and whetheryou can do an inter-library loan. This will also allow you when searching andlooking at newspaper articles to create tags on articles and correct mistakesin the text version of the articles. - http://trove.nla.gov.au

New Zealand Papers and Periodicals can be found online atPapers Past. They currently have papers covering dates from 1839 – 1945 - http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast

British Newspapers

London, Edinburgh and Belfast Gazettes can be searched ifyou register -

http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/indexes

The National Library of Australia offers access toapproximately 94 subscription databases through their eResources - http://www.nla.gov.au/app/eresourcesAnyone in Australia can register and receive a National library card. There aremany British newspapers available through this service including The LondonTimes, Burnley Collection, Illustrated London Times, 19^th CenturyBritish Collection, 19^th Century UK Periodicals is found through theGale NewsVault. Note: When looking at very old newspapers and searching fornames containing s or ss don’t forget to substitute it with an f or ff. EgHarrison would be found as Harrifon.

The Scotsman Digital Archives 1817-1950. You will need topay for this one. http://archive.scotsman.com/

Irish Newspapers

Irish Newspaper Archives have newspapers from 1700 topresent http://irishnewsarchive.com/This can also be accessed through the eResources on the NLA site.

Online Newspapers Worldwide has links to all kinds ofcurrent or mostly recent newspapers worldwide. You could use these sites tolook at the real estate in the areas your ancestors came from or even possiblyput an advertisement in search of your family names. http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/Remember you can use the Google Translate tool if you are trying to readforeign papers. http://translate.google.com.au/?hl=en

National Family History Week 2011

2011-07-24T18:36:00.000-07:00

National Family History Week runs from 29 July through until 8 August. It is a way to promote and encourage people to trace their family history.

To promote this in our local area we will have our rooms open on Saturday 30th July from 11am to 1pm and on Sunday 7th August between 1pm and 3pm.

We will have displays of local history and free access to our resources with members to assist you with your research.

On Saturday 30th July there will be a demonstration of the Family Tree Maker Program.

If you are not sure where to find us, we are in the Old School House in Punt Road, Cobram.

Hope to see you there!

February 2011 Meeting

2011-03-03T23:05:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately I was unable to attend the February meeting but I will give you a run down on what is going on and events that are coming up in the next few months.

At the end of last year we were looking at purchasing a scanning device that we could connect to a pc and view microfilm and microfiche. We have a quote for one and are hoping to purchase one in the coming months. The scanner comes from Docs on Disc .

Over the coming months we are having a number of talks on and hopefully everyone possible will attend. The first is a double bill by Shauna Hicks our long distance member who is kindly coming up for several days. She will be talking at Yarrawonga Family History Group on Monday 7th March at 6.30 pm on

"Google your family tree - Tips and Tricks" . You will find Yarrawonga's rooms behind the showgrounds off Dunlop St.

On Wednesday 9th March Cobram Genealogical Group are hosting Shauna to give a talk on "Archives" you may not know - but should know." This will commence from 7.30 pm at our rooms in the Old School House in Punt Rd, Cobram.

You can find more about Shauna on her website at this link.

Another speaker coming up not to miss is Susie Zada from Geelong Family History Group. she will be speaking at Yarrawonga Family History Group on Saturday 2nd April on the program Bookcollectorz which is a book cataloging system that catalogs your books into an easy to use database.

Stay tuned for follow up information on these talks in the next month!!

November/December Happenings

2010-12-23T15:43:00.000-08:00

At our November meeting we had guest speakers that night Danny and Michael Walsh from Lost n found Genealogy at Wangaratta, Victoria.

They are providing a service for Family History Groups and individuals and have somehigh end computer equipment including scanners at a3+ commercial quality laser scanners as well as high quality printers. They also offer many other services including photo repair services, large chart printing, scanning and digitising data or recording and producing audio visual family trees. They will have access to the top 5 Family Tree programs in order to manage clients data.

They are prepared to travel to Family History Groups or individuals and give quotes on their work.

For further information contact them danny@lostnfoundgenealogy.com.au or michael@lostnfoundgenealogy.com.au

Other member suggestions for the night were:

UK certificates were available through FreeReg

Carr Villa Cemetery, Launceston, Tasmania was now online.

A member of our group had been researching a local airman Wallace Stillard who was killed in a plane crash in the 1940's at Wee Jasper. An account of the accident was in the Canberra Times and can be read here and in The Argus here. There is also mention of this gentleman in the Airways Museum . Wallace was born in 1918 at Cobram, Victoria and the family had a farm in Barooga, NSW.

December's Meeting was our Christmas break-up dinner at the Barooga Sports Club. It was rather an eventful night with the weather blowing up and an almighty thunderstorm and downpour of rain which caused water to come flooding down the walls of the room we were have our meeting in and a was a bit of a distraction for our guest speaker to talk over.

Garry Jones from Cobram Community Enterprises spoke to our group on their program to assist communities in accessing funding through a fund raising program via the Bendigo Bank. There is assistance for particular projects and over $200 000 has been given in support to projects in the community. There are funds of up to $2000 available on a quarterly basis.

To be part of the program it is important to get the support of as many people in the community as possible. This requires them to simply pledge their Bendigo Bank account to assist this funding. The banks have these forms available or you can get more information from their website.

Other Information of Interest
Sale, Victoria Cemetery online
St Thomas Cemetery Upper Mangrove Creek - Hawkesbury Region NSW

Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Stay tuned for more information on our group when we are back in action in February.
I might write something for my own blog in January so check that our early next year http://closeup1-myfamilyresearch.blogspot.com/

September Happenings

2010-10-11T02:20:00.000-07:00

I have been a bit slack keeping the news up to date, but with a busy couple of months at work and a very cold wet and miserable few months over winter I was unable to get to a few meetings. So I will try and catch up on some of the news this month.

At our September meeting there were a few new purchases mentioned.
The group now have:

WA Inquests 1876-1903 An Index of Inquests as published in the WA Police Gazettes

The National Burial Index for England and Wales 3rd Ed

Patients in Melbourne Hospital 1856-1905

Other Local information:

Our Rate books have been sent off to be scanned. So it will be a great resource for the group and the local area to have those available.

News of Interest:
The GSV have a really good seminar on Two hundred Years of Death and Dying in Victoria on 30^thOctober. Book at GSV - http://www.familyhistorybookshop.org.au/categories/GSV-Events/

Scotland’s People website has been revamped so have a look at what is now available at http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/

VicGUM newsletter had a review on the beta version of FTM 2011 by John Donaldson that if you are an FTM user like I am and would like to know what some of the new features of which there are 100 that will be available it is worth a read. A copy of this will be at our rooms. To become a member of VicGUM visit their website at http://www.vicgum.asn.au/

Links to Useful Sites:I have had heaps of emails with interesting and useful sites over the last few months so I will list a few that I think are good.

London Lives - a great site with old documents relating to the London area for 1690-1800

Gazettes Online UK - Visit the London, Edinburgh and Belfast Gazettes for insolvency data, public notices or honours and awards (for government, business or individuals).

Friends of Cheltenham Cemetery - The Friends of Cheltenham and Regional Cemeteries Inc. covers two historic burial grounds in Melbourne's south-east - Cheltenham Pioneer Cemetery (Old Cheltenham Cemetery) (1864) and Cheltenham Memorial Park (New Cheltenham Cemetery) (1933).

Eltham Cemetery - Searchable interment registers

Berwick Cemetery Trust - Cemetery Register and Compartment Maps.

Headstone Photographs in Victorian Cemeteries - You are able to request photos of headstones for photos listed on a number of Victorian Cemeteries.

RootsIreland - One of the largest databases of Irish records. Have just added records for Laois and Offaly.

County Cork Historical Records - Searchable records available in Cork, Ireland.

HAT History of Australian Theatre - a database with archives of people involved with theatre in Australia.

Australian Newspapers - You have to keep going back here because they are adding more papers all the time. The Western Argus for WA newspapers is the lates.

Meeting on 13th October will post more information after then. ☺

May Meeting

2010-06-03T03:10:00.000-07:00

It was a cold old night for our AGM and that kept a few people away. Most of the positions remain unchanged except our Treasurer will be Jan Hickey, Rick needing a break from the job after all those years doing a wonderful job. We are keeping our fees the same again this year.

When all that business was over we got on to our normal meeting. Some points of interest that came up, were that we now have funding to have the Rate Books for Cobram digitized. This will be done through PROV and we will have a copy of this to keep in our rooms for access. The years they cover are 1953 to 1986. More news will be announced when these become available.

Currently doing research on a local Tocumwal Family with connections to Cobram.

Robert Samuel Hutson son of Samuel John Ives Hutson and Ann Teitz. I am collating more information on this family if anyone is interested.

April Happenings!

2010-04-28T01:08:00.000-07:00

Our monthly meeting was held on April 14th at our rooms at the Old School House. We had a very imformative evening.

Our newest member K. Dyer had in his possession an old diary that had belonged to his great great grandfather Joseph Bird Burgess who kept diaries every year of his working life as a piano tuner. Sadly, it seems only the 1872 edition survived. Mr Dyer kindly read some excerpts from the diary relating to his ancestors visits to the Cobram district. He has consented to us publishing some of the entries on this blog. So stay tuned in the coming months for more on this.

Just a bit of background information on J B Burgess:
Joseph Bird Burgess (b. 19.6.1830 Watworth, Kent, England, and died 20.3.1907 Geelong, Victoria, Australia). His wife Margaret nee Foster (b. 23.3.1833, Gillingham, Kent England, and died at Hay, NSW 10/1/1895). They married on 1/8/1852 at Bredhurst, England, and sailed to Port Phillip on the 895 ton S.S.Wandsworth. He was 23 years old, and his wife 19 y.o. They left England on 7/9/1852, arriving Port Phillip 1/1/1853.

"JBB" was a pianoforte tuner and Professor of Music. He was a very religious man, who enjoyed singing, tuning pianos, writing and selling music, hated the hot weather day and night! And continually worried about his financial position...

JB's 1872 diary contains information of all his trips tuning pianos in the Southern Riverina, and northern Victoria during that year.

A Web 2 Demonstration Was given by this blog writer. Notes from the talk are following................

WHAT ARE RSS FEEDS?

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds can make reading web pages an bding kept up to date on information gathering activities more efficient.

RSS feeds enable you to collect new content from your favourite websites in one place. An RSS feed will automatically alert you to new content by sending a summary of the new content to your pc for your use. Each feed includes a headline, some descriptive content, and a URL that links back to the original content or website for more information.

RSS is also used for distributing other types of digital content including audio, video or pictures. Podcasting refers to the automatic ‘feeding’ of audio content (usually in MP3 format) to your desktop for you to listen to on your computer or MP3 player.

HOW DO I USE RSS FEEDS?

You will need a feed-reader like what you read for email programs. There is a choice of readers to suit all needs. Some are programs you download and install on your computer; others are web-based services such as Bloglines and Google Reader which are both free applications.

The other option is to use one of the latest web browsers: Internet Explorer 7 or 8, Firefox 3, Opera and Safari have built-in RSS readers.

The reader will enable you to organise the RSS feeds in your personal collection, for example in folders (much like an email program).

HOW DO I ADD RSS FEEDS TO MY READER?

RSS feeds are identified by this icon:

To subscribe to an RSS feed, go to the RSS webpage, select ‘Subscribe’ for the feed you are interested in. This will load the RSS page for you.

To use the feed reader in your browser:

For Firefox browsers

Click < Subscribe Now>

In the popup window, choose a folder in your Bookmarks for the RSS feeds

Click

For Internet Explorer 7 or 8 browsers

At the top of the page, click on

In the popup window, choose a folder in your Bookmarks for the RSS feeds

Click on .

BLOGS – a blog or web log is a type of website that acts as an online journal or diary. This can be added to regularly and can contain images, text, audio and video. It has the ability to allow readers to leave comments.

http://closeup1-myfamilyresearch.blogspot.com//

http://cobramgg.blogspot.com//

To set up your own account if you create yourself a google account, then go to http://www.blogger.com/ you can create your own blog.

NINGS – A Ning is an online platform for people to create their own social networks. It is like facebook. It is designed to appeal to people who want to create their own social networks around specific interests with their own visual design, choice of features and member data. http://www.ning.com//

Genealogy ones - http://looking4kin.ning.com// and http://www.genealogywise.com/

LISTSERVS – an automatic mailing list that you can subscribe to. Rootsweb is the most commonly used Listserv for genealogy at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/roots-l/

NEWSGROUPS - http://groups.google.com.au/group/soc.genealogy.australia+nz

In Google groups it is possible to do a search for genealogy groups

FORUMS – is an online discussion group, where forums can be created on specific subjects.

http://genforum.genealogy.com/

http://www.myheritage.com/genealogy-forums

Other happenings for the evening included a discussion of Family History Week which is the 31st July to the 7th August. Shepparton Family History Group are having a speaker on Convicts on July 31st. More information will be posted on this as soon as it is available or check the GMAGS website http://home.vicnet.net.au/~gmags/

March Happenings!!

2010-04-04T00:38:00.000-07:00

At our March meeting we were lucky to have our newest member Shauna Hicks come and give a talk to the group on "Demolishing Brick Walls". Shauna has a wealth of knowledge on Genealogy and all things historical. She was able to give us a number of new avenues available on the web in searching for records that we may not have earlier had access to. Some of our group member were overwhelmed by the use of nings, blogs, rss feeds and all the other social networking tools available. Hopefully, in this blog members can break down the barriers and learn how to access some of these tools.

Shauna has just published an interesting book on preserving your family archives, titled "Your Family History Archives". This has some very useful information on protecting your archives and family history for future generations. I highly recommend everyone has a read of it.

Shauna Hicks
Partner Groups
Unlock the Past
WorldVital Records Australasia

Some other recommended site for helpful information that were mentioned during the talk that people should have a look at are
Judy Webster's Site

TROVE - National Library of Australia

World Connect - Rootsweb

Shauna mentioned the use of nings in research. Ones that she mentioned which I have now become a member of are:

Genealogy Wise

Looking 4 Kin