Lilian's Tree

A wet, grey Saturday and what better way to spend it that with 15 other like minded, people, attending  Blogging Your Interest with Thang Ngo .  Hosted at Writing  NSW, at Callan Park. Thang took us through how we can set-up a blog. Finding our niche. Looking a different blogging platforms and writing styles. Finding your voice and writing tips. Questions were encouraged and the discussions were useful and informative. Now you might wonder why someone with nearly nine years as a blogger and 600+ posts would attend? Well, why not?  I'm  a firm beleiver that you can always learn something new and that by attending classes, workshops and lectures is the way to go. I did! I have learn't how to look at Google Trends, something I had heard about but not used.  Also getting rid of those annoying words, like, like, very, almost, just, to mention a few. So I'm going to try out some different, interesting words, add a Facebook widget to my blog and reflect on how I can im

I've been playing around on Ancestry and looking at different hints, on side branches to find connections etc.  Well today I was looking for Jessie James, no not the outlaw but my great aunt. Jessie was born Jessie  Elizabeth Grant on 18 Febuary 1868 at Ballarat, Victoria. In 1891, in Sydney she married Charles Frederick James and they had three children, Beatrice, 1893, Victoria May, 1896 and Frederick, 1898. It is the near marriage of Victoria May, that I found. It would appear that on 13 June 1916, John Laver, son of William Robert Laver(s)(dec) and Alice Miller(dec)  and May Victoria James, were to be married. They were both listed as living at 44 Bucknell Street, Newtown. He was said to be 25 and May, 21. What Happened???? The image I have shows CANCELLED written right across both pages, with nothing else written, either on the certificate or in the margins. Just the details, required for the paperwork. Discovering this has sent me off, searching both the New South

Today is #GenealogySelfieDay and this is my second photo. Like Shelley Crawford said, ' If only I could participate in genealogy selfie day without actually posting a selfie.'  I fully agree with this statement!  The idea was to take a selfie and then write a blog. Here I am. I have been 'doing' my family tree for 34 years, last month and about two or three years into it, I met children of a half-sister. She was from dad's first marriage.  It transpired that she had given several children up for adoption. The children I met wanted me to look for them and while I could have done so, I felt it better if they searched for the siblings.  I heard nothing more. Fast Forward, to Wednesday 29 January 2019.  I have only just done my Ancestry DNA and ther are still matches coming through.   I also made a decision to skip over those, without trees and concentrate on the ones, with trees, first.  On Wednesday morning I hit 200 matches, a second cousin, with NO tree. 

I don't know about you but sometimes I really wish my ancestors would give the FULL spelling of the child's name. Nicknames, abbrevations and names written in Latin are just some of the things that I have found. These two little books have been very useful. The first one Dictionary of First Names,   gives me the meaning, sometimes where it is from, if it is the feminine form of a name, (helpful when trying to work out parents) and famous people, with that name. It is so well used that it is now falling apart/ First Name Variants  was one of my first purchases, back over 30 years ago and I still use it. You look for the name, first, say Olivia and get the code, oli. Using that code, oli, you look it up and there are the variations, i.e. Livie, Nola, Noll.  Yes, if you anly have the variation, you look that up and get the code and find the name.  Some of the varations are so obscure that I don't think I would have found the name, if not for this book. Like the va