How time flies when you are having fun!!

Wow, its September 24th already. I cannot believe that I have not had time to do a post since the last one. Have been working and then off to Melbourne to the Victorian Archive Centre to search for Wills in the Public Record Office. I found the most wonderful letter from my great great great grandmother Martha Buck, written shortly after her husband Adam died in 1895. It seems that they had a family meeting to see what should be done. It was agreed by all that she remain in the house and that her sons would work the land. How odd to think of them discussing things such as these back then but really they were no different to what we are now. They valued their possessions however little they were, be it a piece of clothing or a pocketwatch. These things seem so trivial to us but they meant the world to them. We live in a time where money and how much of it you have, seems to rule our lives, yet our ancestors led a much harder lifestyle but on the whole were far more contented than we are today.

Following that I headed to the State Library where I was looking at newspaper articles. Once again I found something special, an obituary from a great great great uncle which described how the family moved to Laang and cleared the land so that they could make a living for themselves.

Just for one day I wish I could travel back in time and ask all those pesky questions of my ancestors that I cannot find answers to, I wish.......

Local Resources

Have had a wonderful time last Thursday looking for my ancestors. We started off by meeting up at the Panmure Cemetery where the rain went away for a short while and the sun popped up to enable us to take some photos for our book. Then onto the Terang Family History Group's wonderful research library. So many things to look through and so much information to work my way through now that I am back home. One resource that I have not seen anywhere else before was a series of folders with funeral programmes in them. A truly wonderful resource. It was sad though to see that so many familiar faces have passed on. The beauty of these programmes is that most these days have a photo of the deceased printed on them. Burial and school records also got a close scrutiny. This was followed up by a quick trip home to spend the night with the folks before heading to a dynamic Professional Development session on Dyslexia and the ways in which we can assist students in classrooms to make their learning easier and less stressful. I learned so much about what can be done to help, most worthwhile.

On the way home I managed a short stop at the Hexham Cemetery and then onto the Caramut Cemetery where I almost got blown away. Luckily the rain held off although it was hard to hold the camera steady. I am sure the sheep at Caramut thought I was completely mad, they enjoyed watching me battle the elements though....

Wills

Have been checking out some old wills online via the Public Record Office of Victoria website. Pre 1925 wills are all online and can be viewed straight away. Well done to the PRO for making them accessible as you can glean a lot of detail from a will. One of my wills was for an ancestor William Reed Board who's only possession was a gold pocket watch that he willed to a grandchild. Another was for a prominent ancestor named John Clark who was the original treasurer for the Comm-na-feinne society (the highland society) in Geelong. He wrote many articles for the Geelong Advertiser and was an inspector with the Leigh Shire for many years and at the same time was the post master for Teesdale. There is a portrait of John that still hangs on the wall of the current shire (but I cannot recall exactly what is called at the moment.) So family researchers please don't forget Shire Offices as a good resource for family photos and information about those who served as councillors or employees. From this photo I have been able to identify John in a couple of other photos that I already had but didn't know it.

Happy Fathers Day

First let me begin by saying Happy Fathers Day to everyone out there celebrating this important day.....Been busy once again working out family connections in Ireland. The 1901 and 1911 Irish census are available online for free (yipee!). Whilst they are truly wonderful as they record each families details, one per page so you cannot mix them up, it is a truly sad thing that the census' prior to 1901 mostly have been destroyed. If only I could have had the 1851, 1861 and 1871 census when my great great great great great grandparents were alive and living in Cargans, Tandragee, Armagh then we could have sorted out who belonged with whom a lot earlier. As it is some of my Redpath relations were still alive in 1901 and this has helped to sort out a few families. But the elusive Bennett relations of that time and place continue to elude me. The earlier census' were destroyed, some due to fire, others due to pulping during war time. Small fragments of the 1841 and 1851 census do survive as when applying for the pension these census' were used to verify details. Unfortunately none of my lot took this course and thus their details are lost. Hopefully I will find somewhere in the near future a source that will give me the answers that I seek.....

Drop Box

One of the new apps that I have loaded onto my Ipad is Dropbox. I am still working out how to use this interesting app and testing the limits of what I can do with it. I have found that I can store photos in there, both that I have found online and also ones that I have taken myself. These stored photos on the Ipad are then available on my home computers Dropbox where they can be taken out of the box and filed or printed as appropriate. They can stay in the box all the time if I want them to. However with 2gb free storage I wouldn't leave them there too long. I can see Dropbox being very useful for when I go to places to do family history research, will save a lot of handwriting.....

The only sad bit is that the bits that are waiting in the box for me to use will have to wait until next month when my internet usage rolls over. Thanks kids!!!!!

IPad Dictaphone

Now that I am learning how to drive my Ipad properly, I thought I could make use of the Dictaphone feature to save heaps of time typing. Good in theory but in reality unless you have a deep male voice, forget it. No matter how hard I tried, it wouldn't listen. Sadly when I asked my children to say exactly the same thing I did, the thing listened dutifully and reproduced their conversations faithfully. However when we read it the obituary of Robert Bennett, it chose to ignore most of the words. According to my wonderful IPad instead of being industrious and hardworking, he was in Russia and far herding!! The only thing that I said that it managed to get right was the spelling of one of my sons names. Mind you it did try for some of the more harder words, had no trouble with unimpeachable....even managed Panmure cemetery without incident but poor old Terang well we had tow rang, toe ring, too wrang just to name a few. Ipad Dictaphone for entertainment
Yes but for transcribing records, maybe not!!

Remember when....

Doing more research about my family history has brought many happy memories flooding back about the happy times spent with cousins and grandparents on holidays etc. Waking up to real Milo made with real warm milk not the business with the kettle and the instant milo, with an open fire going in the kitchen whilst curling up in one of the large chairs in the corner of that same kitchen, wow I had forgotten about that. Melon jam, yes Nana always had the melon jam. Have not had some for years now, must get a jam melon and see if I can replicate it. Playing cricket in the lane where I grew up, start with a few cousins and by the end of the night every kid and quite a few dad's in the lane playing too on a warm summer evening, yes had forgotten about that too. One night we even ventured into the paddock where the old Trufood concrete cricket pitch was (and still is) and played a massive game there that night. No cricket bats for us, we all played tennis so it was cricket with a tennis racquet. Probably not quite as polished as Maria Sharapova slamming that ball into the hole on the golf course with her tennis racquet (did you see that this morning on the telly) whilst poor Djokovic landed in the drink, but you could actually run an eight if you whacked it hard enough.

On the war front

Once again doing research for our family history book. Its amazing what is available out in the wide world. I have just today read the war record for George Bennett. A farmer who decided to join the war effort in 1916 at age 34. And yet the photo we have of George in uniform, well you would swear he was only in his 20's. George saw conflict in France before being so badly wounded in the foot that he was sent home with a permanent injury. George never had a wife or family but he always seemed to have plenty of others around him. He used to go every year to Melbourne to take part in the Anzac Day parade. In 1935 whilst he was in Melbourne he became very ill and died. He now lies at peace in an unmarked grave in the Terang Cemetery.
Thanks George for doing your bit to make our lives that little bit easier. Thanks to all the brave soldiers out there for doing your best to make our lives safer.

Old times in the papers

Have been rereading some of the notes that I made whilst researching my Bennett family links. The newspaper reports make such great reading. The little things that newspapers used to report on made everyone seem connected, pretty much like Facebook and Twitter do now. Funny thing is will we be reading our families' history from Facebook in 100 years time? I rather think not. Rarely do you see an obituary in a newspaper these days unless the deceased was a prominent figure in the community. So many of my great great great uncles, aunts etc lived very interesting lives but by todays standards their lives were ordinary. To me there is no such thing as an ordinary life and rereading my families obits and news cuttings for the book we are researching gives me a window into the lives of the past generations. To have a newspaper report that says ones relative supported the church or played cards or worked for the Blind is a treasure. To have a newspaper report about every single wedding present a bride and groom received with details down even to who made the wedding cake is extraordinary. And yet the newspaper constantly reported such facts and events.

Off on a Bennett hunt

Now that I have set up my blog, its time to get down and do some digging for ancestors. My Bennett ancestors came from Tandragee, Ireland. Robert Bennett died there in 1849, he was a son of William Bennett and Ann Rennie. So far four brothers have been identified. It is amazing how one can build up a tree quickly online but there is so much misinformation out there that it can be easy to get off the beaten track. My find of the day has been a couple of lovely photos of Tandragee in 1865, thanks Paula for sharing.

On a Roll

Yes its me again. Really rolling along now, have added a Cluster Map to show where the hits to my blog come from and also a nice slide show. Wonder what I will do next. It is easy and most of these gadgets have step by step instructions on them. Have a go, you will be surprised at just how easy it can be....

Fine tuning

Did you know that you can fine tune a lot of the areas on a blog so that you can have it they way you want it? I have been playing around with a few templates and think that I really like this one.

Hello world...

Hello world, yes its little old me being very brave and learning all about blogging. After a very interesting PD online with Anne Mirtschin last Wednesday night, I am diving in and having a go.....