June at Cobram Genealogical Group

Cobram's Local Court House

We recently had Susie Zada from come and speak to us about Land Records and breaking down brick walls.  She gave us an insight through examples into the different types of titles land was registered under and the difficulty in visiting the old land title archives at Laverton.  She suggested visiting the Lands website where you can purchase and download some records at Victoria Land Titles.  Susie has written a blog with a step by step guide of how to find records at the archives at Laverton.  So I recommend you read this article before a visit Susie Zada's Blog on Land . There are also some records relating to land at PROV that might be helpful.  Do a series search using the following VPRS series:

• 16705 Index to applications for certificates of title - old to new
• 405 Register of applications for certificate of title
• 460 Applications for certificate of titles.

I was also able to use VPRS 16171 as a good start in getting local parish maps for towns and outlying areas and was able to download pdf maps of Cobram.  I am going to get these printed at Officeworks on to poster size and laminated for our rooms.

Another good resource to have access to when finding land is published by PROV is "A Guide to finding records on Crown Land at Public Record Office Victoria."

After a short break Susie gave us a run down on how she is making use of Pinterest to save her favourites and have the ability to create boards of interest, share these with other people and follow people's pins she is interested in at htttps://www.pinterest.com/susiezada/ and she added some useful links for us through her board on Brickwall Genealogy.

She has motivated me to be more active in using my pinterest page https://www.pinterest.com/closeup1/ 

We had our first Sunday afternoon meeting today 21st June and it was fairly successful with a good roll up of members.  We were a bit more relaxed and had more time to discuss some of the resources available and the things we have been up to.

We looked at some of the resources that the GSV have to offer in their Members Only section especially the GIN database and listened to one of the free podcasts available.  We also looked at the latest newspapers that have become available just recently Trove latest Newspapers Forum.  We also looked at how to access parish and some historical land maps in NSW. This is accessible through the NSW Land and Property Historic Land Records Viewer and by selecting the print icon on the bottom of the page and selecting whole image and A3 you can then print to a pdf and save the document in a large format that can be viewed more easily or printed out on large paper.

Our next meeting is on the 19th July and we hope to run some more podcasts and investigate some good resources for research.

What's Been happening at Cobram Genie Group!

It has been a while since I have written on this blog and feeling like I have to turn over a new leaf and try and add stuff more regularly.

So just a brief run down on what has been happening the last twelve months and what's in store for the future.

Our year has been fairly quiet with speakers in 2014 – Mark Grealy from Archival Access Victoria who spoke about records at PROV and Meg Bate from the GSV who talked on using Social Media in Genealogy in some Sunday sessions we ran

We purchased a few resources in the last year,updating some of our Police and Government gazette collection in Australia. We have made use of our new screen to project on to  with our presentations and our new white board for notices.

Some of our members attended the Deniliquin Genie muster run by the Deniliquin Genealogy Society, where we shared a stall with Yarrawonga Family History Group. It was a lot quieter than the previous one we had attended but there was still some interesting speakers and lots to look at. Some other of our members joined the Cobram Cemetery Trust earlier in the year for a cemetery walk and learnt some history about some of the occupants and their contribution to the local township.

At our recent AGM this year there have only been a few changes in our executive and committee, Nicole Close has remained President, Jan Parker continues as Vice-President while Barbara Coleman is Secretary and Raynor Thomas is Minute-Secretary.  Barbara has also kindly taken over the job as Treasurer as well. Nicole will continue to be Research Officer while Shirley Frappell has volunteered to assist with research. 

Over the last few years our membership has aged and dropped.  We have the competition of “everything being on the web”.   It is also harder for people to come out on a night especially in winter to our meetings. A motion was put forward to change our meetings to occur on a Sunday afternoon.  This was amended to having the meetings on the third Sunday afternoon during the cooler months April to September, while meetings when Daylight Saving time is in place will be on the usual second Wednesday of the month. This means for the months of October, November, December (Christmas breakup), February and March. Sunday meetings will run from 1.30pm in the afternoon when our rooms will also be open to visitors. We also have a Facebook page up and running so keep an eye out for interesting information and links that may pop up.

This year we are having and Susie Zada speaking on a Sunday 7th June on "Victorian Land Titles and Documents - from old to new" at our rooms in Punt Rd, Cobram for a 10.30 registration and a cost of $10.  Refreshments will be served and BYO lunch.  All members and other locals and genealogy enthusiasts are welcome.

In August we will have Family History researcher Joy Roy speaking on "The Lost Irish".  More information to follow.