Lilian's Tree

Woken, again by the laughter of kookaburras, I looked out the window to see that the river was shrouded in a soft mist, making sunrise softer. After such a beautiful start to the day, we settled into the downstairs lounge for Helen Smith's talk about FindMyPast and how to access their record sets. Again this is a site I subscribe to and Helen explained some very useful things, that I didn't know about. Then Michelle Patient gave a wonderful talk on DNA, condensing a two day talk into about 21/2 hours and she gave us a link to a handout. While my head was spinning, with the complexity of how DNA works, Michelle's talk did make it easier to understand and I'm going to take a closer look at my results. Michelle recommended Blaine T Bettinger's book, The Family Tree Guide to DNA Testing and Genetic Genealogy, (on my to read pile). I got my copy from SAG but you can get it from Amazon in both book and Kindle forms. The book has three sections, G

The Guild held its Surname Retreat at Juniors on Hawkesbury, Lower Portland, NSW, this past weekend and it was great. I'm relatively new to the guild and wasn't sure that this was for me. Wrong! Everyone was welcoming and I learnt heaps. Have a look at their website www.one-name.org Friday in Sydney was windy, I'm talking about 100km+ winds in some areas, plane flights cancelled or delayed and the airport closed for a time, so it was windy. I don't like driving in wind, especially to somewhere new but of I set. Now Lower Portland is near Windsor, approximately 90mins from my place. Lower Portland is approximately 30mins from Windsor, not a short drive. I was fine until I got to the turn off and from there was frightened. A narrow, windy road, strong winds and then the road turned to gravel, not a good mix but I made it.                                                                     Our view. Friday's talk was from Paul Featherstone, in England and he to

Today it was all about Scottish, Irish and a bit of English records, wonderfully presented by Chris Paton. Chris is a professional genealogists, author, international speaker and a good bloke. Born in Northern Ireland, he now lives in Scotland. Chris, busy writing. Chris and I.                                                     Chris, in presenter mode. Chris presented four fantastic talks, starting with A beginner's guide to British and Irish genealogy. Now I don't class myself as a beginner but it is always great to revisit things and have them refreshed in your memory. You might also learn something new, I know I did. Chris gave an overview of important dates and while I had read about them, hearing them explained, made it gel. Discover Scottish Church records was next and I feel that I'm finally getting an understanding of what happened in Scotland and why there mightn't be any records. His next two talks were about Irish records, one dealing with

Today was day one of the Unlock The Past, sponsored genealogy feast. Part of the audience. Today was German research, with Dirk Weissleder presenting four informative talks. I have German ancestors and the information Dirk gave, will help me go further with my research. Giving us the German words for the different records will be very useful. Dirk is the President of the Federation of Family Associations. He is also a genealogy consultant and national chairman of the Deutsche Arbeisgemeinschaft genealogischer Verbande  www.dagv.org   This society is the umbrella organisation for genealogy and heraldry for Germany. Kerry Farmer gave a great talk on DNA. I have heard Kerry give similar talks but today it started to sink in. While I don't know how many connections I will find, I'm am going to try another company and compare my results and maybe make a connection. Rosemary Kopittke gave a presentation about My Heritage. I haven't look at this site but it soun

My second last subject for my diploma is how to organise a one-name study. These two websites have been given to us to help in our assignments and they are fun to 'play' with. I had heard of freebdm but never used it. You enter the surname, the type of entry you are looking for, birth, marriage or death OR you can do all entries and get the lot. You also pick the time frame you want and then click search. You can do just how many or full which gives you the details. I have learnt so much from just entering a surname and looking for all records. https://www.freebmd.org.uk/ The FreeBMD Database was last updated on Fri 4 Aug 2017 and currently contains 262,812,210 distinct records (336,300,128 total records). World Names, is like the freedbm, except that you get a world wide distribution of the surname you are looking for, not just England. I was able to see the distribution of the two surnames, I'm starting on my one-name study. Both results were interesting, in th

Hanging the washing, this morning I got to thinking, Who invented both the clothes peg and the coat hanger and when? A search of Wikipedia gave me the answers. Clothes pegs or clothes pins, the kind used for hanging washing, were patented by  Jeremie Victor Opdebec in the early 19th  century.  This design was fashioned in one piece and didn't use a spring. The design that we use, today was invented by David M Smith of Springfield, Vermont in 1853. This was done with a small spring, wedged between interlocking wooden (or now plastic) prongs. In 1887, Solon E Moore improved the design, with what he called a 'coiled fulcrum', what is used in todays pegs. A wooden peg made from a single piece of wood. Sometimes called a Dolly peg. A wooden peg with the coiled fulcrum. Some of the plastic pegs, available today. So thank you to  Mr Opdebed,  Mr Smith and Mr Moore for the humble peg. Now the coat hanger; several people are credited with this objects beginn

Judy G. Russell   from The Legal Genealogists posted an interesting blog  about going back to your childhood home, see the link below and it got me thinking about two of my childhood homes. One I know is demolished and villas are built on it the other, well I 'explored'. http://www.legalgenealogist.com/2017/08/05/the-house-of-childhood/ I spent the first nine and a bit years growing up in Earle Street, Arncliffe. I remember it as a good place to live, in the small street there were at least 10 kids, of varying ages, not counting the teenagers. I felt safe, was able to go and play and my mum would know where I was. I think life was simpler then. I'm not going to say safer, just that as kids we simply didn't know about the 'bad'  stuff. I remember that the two teenage boys, across the road, would race their billycarts down the street, turning at the bottom, just before the main road. The street runs between two very busy roads and they were busy back then t