Family History

I’ve been researching my family history wanting to understand more about why my family is based in Tasmania and why I’ve got such a strong attachment to the place.  I’ve got a lot of research from family historians who have come before me and I’d like to acknowledge the great resource that they can provide. Mary Radford and Linda McColl both have contributed much to my research as they put their research into written form and made it available to others. John Keech has also listed his family tree on genanet and that has been a source of starting information for me. I will caveat this by saying that I have double checked most of the information provided as it is easy for some things that have been inferred to be incorrect. For example, there is some incorrect information online about my ancestors that really is a case of people assuming that because you have found a birth record or a marriage record with some of the information correct that the search stops there.  If there is some information incorrect, yes it could be an error, or perhaps you actually have the wrong record. There were a lot of people about with the same name in the 1800s! It’s lucky these days that it is often so easy to check information through LINC Names Index from the Tasmanian Library and view the original document and you can use additional evidence to ensure that it is your ancestor, like their ages, the witnesses on marriage certificates even the locations of events to ensure that they line up with what you know about the families history.

The Penguin History Society has been helping me out with details of the life of a few of my relatives who were more prominent in the community. Local history organisations are a great source of more in depth information of early community leaders, business people and events. They also have tips and tricks on how to find out more information including local contacts in the community who might also be researching the same people as you are.

It’s common when you are researching family history to view each person’s life separately and collect the facts of their life birth, marriage, children, death. Family histories are often written up this way and are totally boring for other people to read, and nearly incomprehensible even for people who care to investigate them. I’ve found that I’ve needed to develop a new way to look at the details of not just one person’s life but a family of people’s lives so that I can understand what changes are going on within the family. There is also a need to see that person’s life in the context of the culture and events of the day. What have I discovered by lining up multiple people’s facts? I’ve discovered why my family changed their surname twice (because while Henry went the the gold mines for thirteen years in his youth his family switch surnames when his mother took up with a new man, when he returns is when his brothers start switching back to the original surname). I wouldn’t have discovered this without lining up the dates of when my ancestor Charles, Henry’s brother, named each of his children with when Henry returned from the goldfields.

I’ve collected the basics on each of the key individuals, my task was to group their key events together by year so that I can see the story of their collective lives unfolding. By looking at brothers and sisters of my ancestor and what happened to them I have a better understanding of the influences on my ancestors life.  You can also uncover rich descriptions of the time and events by looking more broadly. My family often lived and worked together during that period and spent a lot of time interacting with each other. The decisions they made on where to live and settle down were made because of the relationships that they had with their extended family.

LINC Names Index

TROVE

TROVE is a collaboration between the National Library of Australia and library and research groups around Australia that provides digital copies of newspapers, maps, magazines, books, pictures, photographs, music and interviews. The best feature of the website/database is its content search functionality.

This has revolutionised family history research since pre digital times. When you had microfiche and really only the date to work on finding information about your ancestors in newspapers was a challenging task. Now you can search the text for references to a person’s name or an event and get back results on where they have appeared in the newspaper articles.

Some useful ways that ancestors can appear:

• Obituaries of themselves and close family members
• Letters they have written to the paper
• Advertisements that they have made for their businesses
• Court appearances as witnesses, jury members or participants

These accounts are often rich and detailed and give you a lot of insight into their character and life; more than a BDM registration can.

Some tips I’ve found searching in TROVE:

• Use quotes to search on specific phrases “First Name Last Name”, this cuts back on the results returned that are not relevant but may miss instances where your person of interest is referenced by the surname only.
• Make use of the advanced search features to exclude phrases that are not what you’re looking for
• Limit the results to the location that you know your relative was in (ie. State) or add a specific location in as a search term, ie. Last Name Ballarat
• Limit the results to the timeframe that you are interested in, ie. when that ancestor was alive or was an adult
• Select out less interesting articles by not returning advertising results

When you get back an interesting result, such as a court case in which your ancestor is mentioned, redo the search with new search terms, such as the name of the court proceedings, location and narrow date range omitting your ancestors name. This will return more copies of the information that was reported around that same event which can give a wider insight into what happened. Some reporters added more or less information to their reports for different newspapers. You can also see how widely the event was published – did your ancestor make National or State news or was it only a local issue?

Of course these newspaper articles are fantastic for a historical fiction writer as you can pick up turns of phrase, descriptions and public views held at the time to enrich and ensure you’re writing authentically for the period.