How often do we hear that someone wishes they had asked their older relatives more questions about the family?

Many of your relatives have memories and knowledge of the family that would be highly valued if recorded. Unmarked photographs could be identied and saved with some prompting.

You could help unlock these memories and give someone in your family hours of fun and interest. 

This Christmas consider giving a Gift Membership of the Genealogical Society of Victoria.

With the gift of a GSV Membership someone in your family could benefit from volunteers and research assistants to help them track down family facts. They may like to join any of the Special interest groups and discussion circles - making new friends sharing problems and discoveries. 

Do they need another set of bathroom products or a bottle of wine? Well, maybe, but this Gift may be a gift for the whole family.

Just ring the GSV office on (03) 9662 4455 and speak to Linda or one of our friendly volunteers to arrange this.

See our website for more details about Membership BENEFITS HERE.

Gift sorted!

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How often do we hear someone say that they wished they had asked their father to tell them more about his early life!

Prompt and help the dads in your family to discover and record their stories and those of their fathers by giving him a Membership of the GSV on Fathers Day. For the year ahead he can receive help to discover his family history with access to databases at GSV and more importantly, to friendly knowledgeable volunteers who can help him find his way and suggest other sources. He will receive four issues of the Ancestor magazine, have access to free and discounted talks and can join special interest groups to share their insights. He can also participate in the GSV Writers Group where he will get assistance and guidance to write up his story in a lasting form for the family.

You can find out more and join online Membership or just call the office on 03 9662 4455.

A new exhibition opens at Museum Victoria's Immigration Museum on 25 November - British Migrants: Instant Australians? Leading up to this, as part of the Seniors Festival this month, the GSV in conjunction with the Museum is presenting Ten Pound Poms on Friday 20 Oct. You can find more about that event here: Ten Pound Poms

The Museum's exhibition will draw on stories and material that have been donated by a number of British immigrant families. The background to the  collection of material by one of these British immigrant families was told in Ancestor journal 31:6 June 2013 and an abridged version is re-published below. 

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What to do with things

By Bill Barlow

I have never said ‘no’ to the paperwork, photos and bric-a-brac left homeless upon the death of family members. Objects recently inherited include carved figurines, non-working watches, badges, uniforms, lace, grandfather’s chisels, travel chests, and a six-foot, handmade, reflecting telescope! What should I do with this accumulating stuff?

Documents and photos can be reasonably managed. But objects, especially large ones, present more difficulty. Do they go 'straight to the poolroom', the op shop, the museum or the bin? What can they tell us and how do we record this? Often there is an undue haste to throw out objects after a family death. This urge should be resisted. Our inherited objects can give us insights into our ancestors as well as much pleasure.

Family objects should be catalogued. Documenting an object gives it meaning and may elicit oral history. The Small Museums Cataloguing Manual (Museums Australia Victoria 2009) is a useful guide. They should be listed, described and labelled much as would be done in a small museum. Their provenance and significance needs to be recorded. This should be done before any decision is made about their disposal. The register of family objects can be a simple spreadsheet (MS Excel) with columns for:

• Item control number – a unique, sortable number.
• Title: an identifying phrase. You can use the Australian Pictorial Thesaurus (https://www.vocabularyserver.com/apt/).
• Description: a physical description, shape, dimensions, materials, colours, inscriptions, damage.
• Date: the (possible) creation date.
• Provenance: previous owners and dates.
• Date of accessioning: the date of recording.
• Comments: related items, photographs, disposal history.

Having recorded your family objects, are you going to keep them? If so, where, and for how long? Are they valuable? Are they fragile and need protection or are they dangerous (a gun)? Would your children want them? Are the objects beautiful, useful or interesting? Should you sell them? Are they of wider community significance? Would family members be upset if you disposed of them? Have you got the space? Or the time! This calls for consideration of your collecting policy. Other than useful or beautiful items, my objective is to only keep items to record their family-related history, and then to arrange for their disposal, or donation to other suitable archives.

[caption id="attachment_1358" align="aligncenter" width="417"]
Items being sorted as part of Ward-Barlow collection as they became known. (Photo. W. Barlow)[/caption]

With the death of my mother-in-law we inherited battered tin trunks, books on nursing, travel diaries, letters, luggage labels, ship menus, and other things from her family’s emigration to Australia under the Bring out a Briton scheme. This material seemed likely to be of interest for Museum Victoria’s immigration collection. Having catalogued and photographed the items, I wrote offering them to the Museum. The Museum was interested and upon delivery I was amused to see them instantly become items of cultural value, lifted carefully with gloves, wrapped in plastic, and put in a freezer to kill bugs. Later I became a volunteer at the Museum helping to catalogue ‘this important collection of 1960s material relating to the Bring Out a Briton campaign’

[caption id="attachment_1357" align="aligncenter" width="411"]
Delivery of items to the Museum. Marita Dyson, Asst. Collections Manager, Dr Moya McFadzean, Senior Curator Migration, MV and the donor, Jen Barlow (Ward), February 2012 (Photo: W. Barlow)[/caption]

You might not realise the cultural value of those things your family has kept, so as well as collecting stories about your family you should give attention to the things they have treasured and passed down.

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This abridged article was previously published in Fifty-Plus News, September 2013.

Watching Jimmy Barnes' personal story of his dire early days as a child migrant in Elizabeth, South Australia, (Working Class Boy) reminded me that many family histories in Australia commence with relatively recent arrivals - in the middle of last century after WW2 - rather than with early pioneers of the 18th and 19th centuries. The Bonegilla Migrant Camp in NE Victoria was where over 300,000 migrants started their Australian lives.

Next month the annual Back to Bonegilla Migrant Camp Gathering is on again :

Friday 2 November and Saturday 3 November 2018 from 10.00 AM to 4.00 PM each day. Entry is free. Daily activities include:

• Tours;
• Film screenings; 
• Author and genealogy talks;
• Dinner; 
• Displays and exhibitions; and,
• Food and music.

You can find out more about this and make bookings to events BOOKINGS HERE

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The Bonegilla Migrant Camp story

'At the end of WW2 the Australian Government introduced a program of migration to assist millions of displaced people in Europe and, at the same time, combat a shortage of labour in Australian industry. As housing was not immediately available for the growing population, the Australian Government provided migrants with temporary accommodation like that at Bonegilla [in Victoria] until they found jobs and their own places to live.'

The Bonegilla Migrant Camp was established at a former army camp near Wodonga, Victoria. It was the first home in Australia for more than 300,000 migrants from more than 50 countries from 1947 to 1971. They had diverse arrival and settlement experiences.

Bonegilla August 1949 (Photo. Nandor Jenes / SLV Pictures H2002.16)

 

'Many migrants recall arriving lonely and confused, unsure of where they were going and what they would be doing. Others saw Bonegilla as a place of hope, symbolic of a new start. In December 2007, Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre - Block 19 was recognised as a place with powerful connections for many people in Australia and a symbol of post-war migration which transformed Australia's economy, society and culture under the National Heritage List.Today, Block 19 is a public memory place. The site and its associated oral, written and pictorial records in the Bonegilla Collection at the Albury Library/Museum bring to light post-war immigration policies and procedures that changed the composition and size of the Australian population.' [Bonegilla Migrant Experience website, access. 6 Oct 2018.]

How do I say it?

"Depending on your cultural connection with Bonegilla, there are a number of ways to pronounce it. To many locals, it’s strictly ‘Bone - Gilla’ but to immigrants arriving from Europe after World War II, the word was often read as ‘Bonny-Gilla’ or ‘Bon-Eg-Illa’." Passport  for Bonegilla, Bonegilla Migrant Experience website.

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The GSV hosts a group which helps its members with an interest in non-British research: International Settlers Group. On 17 November their presentation is 'Andiamo - a Celebration of my Italian Family History' presented by Angelo Indovina. You can find out more about this group on the GSV website https://sandbox.gsv.org.au/international-settlers-group

Even though lots of things don't happen in January after our hectic Christmases, life actually keeps on going!  Just like the DNA DISCUSSION CIRCLE  which will have a meeting in January on Wednesday 9 th. at 10.30 am - 12 pm, as shown in our latest Ancestor journal in 'Around the Circles' (but unfortunately missed out in the 'What's On in January' section. Our apologies. 

You can find out more about this interesting discussion circle on our website HERE.

THE GSV CENTRE WILL BE CLOSED FOR THE CHRISTMAS -NEW YEAR PERIOD ON SATURDAY 22 DECEMBER TO TUESDAY 1 JANUARY INCLUSIVE.

Later in January the Early English (the Discussion Circle, that is)  will meet on Wed 23 and London Research on Thurs 24. 

The following week on THURSDAY 31, Stephen Hawke will talk on New Poor Laws - post 1834.

Plan your January and see the website to book and find out what other Classes and focussed research assistance is available (Scotland and Ireland).

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Sadly wars produce a wealth of records of the  lives  lost and entangled in these conflicts. 2018 marks the end of the WWI Centenary. This war gave Australia and New Zealand the story of Gallipoli, but Australian and New Zealand volunteers were already in Serbia, treating wounded Serbians, before the ANZACs landed.

Because of the Gallipoli Campaign, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria invaded Serbia to secure a land supply corridor to Turkey. The Serbian Army was forced on a deadly retreat over the wintry mountains of Albania to the Adriatic coast, an event sometimes called the Albanian golgotha. Australians and New Zealanders accompanied the Serbian Army on this long march. When the fighting shifted to the Salonika or ‘Macedonian’ Front, many served there with the British Army, the Royal Flying Corps, two AIF units and six Royal Australian Navy destroyers in the Adriatic and Aegean Seas. Some died in action, others from disease.

Several hundred doctors, nurses and orderlies treated the wounded and sick in an Australian-led volunteer hospital and in British and New Zealand Army hospitals. The author Miles Franklin was a medical orderly supporting the Serbian Army; her memoir is quoted extensively in a new  book. Fifteen hundred Australians and New Zealanders served on this little known yet crucial battlefront.

There will be a commemorative presentation about the service of these Australians in WW1 and a launch of a book about them - in Melbourne on 8 September and at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra 15 September.

REMEMBRANCE EVENT NEXT SATURDAY IN MELBOURNE

On Saturday 8 September The Australian Serbian Cultural Foundation is presenting an evening of remembrance and commemoration of the Australians and Serbs who served together in The Great War. Doors open 6.30 pm (for 7 pm start) at Holy Trinity Serbian Orthodox Church Hall, corner Nicholson St & Glenlyon Rd, Brunswick East.

This event is open to the wider Australian and Serbian community. Entry is free.

Special guests from Australia and Serbia will present remarkable accounts and experiences of these Australian and Serbian men and women, who served in that war:

• 'Albanian Golgotha, 100 years later' - presented by Marko Nikolic and Nenad Mitrovic, who are part of a team which in 2015 retraced the epic withdrawal of the Serbian King, Government, Army and civilian refugees in 1915/16 across the Montenegrin and Albanian mountains,
• Richard Cook, the grandson of an Australian Nursing Sister who served in Serbia in 1915,
• Margaret Brown, the grandniece of an Australian soldier who fought in Serbia and on the Salonika Front in 1915-16, and
• Bojan Pajic, the grandson of a Serbian soldier of WWI, who will present his newly-published book Forgotten Volunteers – Australians and New Zealanders with Serbs in World War One.

The GSV has been assisting Bojan Pajic to trace and contact descendants and relatives of Australians and New Zealanders who served in Serbia or alongside the Serbian Army on the Salonika Front and nearby seas in World War One. Over 100 have been identified and contacted.

Finally, after several years of research and writing, this story has now been told in a book recently published by Australian Scholarly Publishing. The book will be launched by Emeritus Professor David Horner AM at the Australian War Memorial on the 15 September 2018.

Copies of the book can be obtained from the publisher by emailing them at e: enquiry@scholarly.info or you can arrange for a copy to be brought to the event next Saturday by emailing the author at bjpiris@gmail.com

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This Serbian research is a reminder that, whereas the GSV helps Victorians, their stories and the GSV's resources are truly international. And this is not limited to the British Isles. The GSV has a specific group for its members - the International Settlers Group - focused on non-British research. Go HERE to see when they meet and how they can help you.

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It's pretty cold in Melbourne so it's good to be reminded of colder places in Victoria, but it's also great to hear of genealogical activities in those places. In this post Robyn Ansell, a member of GSV, the Maryborough Midlands and Creswick historical societies and the Chinese Australian Family Historians of Victoria (CAFHOV) lets us know of new online records being created to help researchers.

Robyn 's great grandfather William Henry Ah Whay came to Maryborough as a teenager from China around 1860. He lived there for 60 years, marrying a young girl from the Creswick Black Lead Chinese camp and fathering eleven children.

Whay family fruiterer and refreshment rooms, High St, Maryborough, c.1918-1922 (Courtesy R. Ansell)

 

Teachers, students and residents of Maryborough, Victoria, past and present will later this year be able to read the Maryborough newspaper online for eleven years of the gold-rush period 1857 to 1867. It will be made available through the National Library of Australia on the Trove website. The State Library of Victoria, which holds the microfilms from 1857 onwards, will send the microfilms to Canberra for digitisation.

Ballarat, Bendigo, Castlemaine and Beechworth, other significant Victorian goldfields towns, have newspapers for the goldrush period on Trove. To provide comparable Trove coverage for Maryborough will make a rich goldfields history resource available worldwide online to researchers and family historians. The World War I period 1914 to 1918 is already available on Trove. Users can easily browse the newspaper and download selected pages or individual articles.

The Maryborough-Midlands Historical Society holds many decades of the Maryborough and Dunolly Advertiser in hard copy, however the paper is fragile. It is expected that digitisation will reduce the need for people to handle the hard copies for 1857 to 1867.

The Local History Grants program which will pay for the digitisation is funded annually by the Public Records Office of Victoria. The successful application was made by the Chinese Australian Family Historians of Victoria, CAFHOV, which was established in 2001. Many Australians are descended from Chinese who came to Australia in the last 150 years but may not know about this element of their heritage. They have been discovering it through genealogical research and DNA testing. The Facebook page and website for CAFHOV may be of assistance to them. https://www.facebook.com/cafhov  and  https://www.cafhov.com

Other links : 

The Maryborough Midlands Historical Society

You can find them on Facebook  'Worsley Cottage' and read about them at Culture Victoria website https://victoriancollections.net.au/organisations/maryborough-midlands-historical-society-worsley-cottage-museum

Maryborough Family History Group Inc. http://www.new.maryboroughfamilyhistory.org/

Worsley Cottage, Maryborough Midlands Historical Society

 

Since 2000 a team of GSV volunteers has been compiling a searchable database of the names and details of patients who were in the Melbourne Hospital (now The Royal Melbourne Hospital) from 1855 to 1909.

These patient 'case histories' were recorded in Ward Books, which have been held in the archives of the hospital. There are estimated to be over 2,000 Ward Books held in the archives but, sadly, many more have disappeared.

The Ward Books are leather-bound books measuring 32 cm by 15 cm, with the name of the doctor for that ward, the ward number and the gender of the patients embossed in gold on the cover. Each book contains about 100 numbered pages, interleaved with pages of pink blotting paper. By arrangement with the Royal Melbourne hospital, the GSV team has so far indexed 824 Ward Books from the period 1855–1909 and extracted the faded, water-stained and often badly written details of 87,298 patients. These books have then been transferred to Public Record Office Victoria (PROV). Not all the books from this period have been indexed yet, but the GSV intends to continue indexing the remainder of those 2,000 books.

The results of this work have now been published by the GSV in a database searchable by name, as Patients in Melbourne Hospital 1855–1909 (GSV, 2016). This edition includes books indexed in the earlier edition.

Every indexed name is hyperlinked to a set of details extracted from that patient’s medical record in the Ward Book. These details contain the patient’s name, age, and admission date together with some or all of the following: the patient’s biography; birth place; the ship on which the person travelled to Australia and its arrival date; whether married, widowed or single; occupation; religion; residence and the result of treatment. The patient’s disease or complaint has been omitted by agreement with The Royal Melbourne Hospital but this can be ascertained by personally viewing the Ward Book at PROV, or by using a Search Agent—See PROV Guide 15 at https://prov.vic.gov.au/private-search-agents. Each set of details includes the full reference to the relevant Ward Book’s location at PROV.

The patient discharge date is given with often interesting descriptors, which, apart from 'Cured' or sadly, 'Died', may include 'Went out on a Pass and did not return' or 'Absconded' or 'Bolted'. Some returned late from a Pass but were 'Refused Admission" and left to their own devices - judged too well to get back in!

This extensive searchable database is available in the GSV Collection at the GSV Research and Education Centre.

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Today's post contributed by Ted Bainbridge draws our attention to the Catholic Heritage Archive available at Findmypast. Ted has been a researcher, teacher, speaker and writer on genealogy since 1969. He has taught many beginner and advanced genealogy classes. His genealogical and historical articles are published frequently by several US national, state, and county organizations. Ted is the past president of the Longmont Genealogical Society, in Colorado, US. and he is currently on the staff of the Longmont Family History Center.[Ed.]

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The  Catholic  Heritage Archive

Ted  Bainbridge  PhD

Findmypast.com is enlarging its Catholic Heritage Archive [CHA] which intends to become 'the most comprehensive online collection of Roman Catholic records for the USA, Britain and Ireland, containing one hundred million records.' The site’s front page claims, 'Most of these records have never before been accessible by the public - either offline or online.'

Go to https://www.findmypast.com.au/page/catholic-records and sign in or subscribe.  [Access to Findmypast is free to members of the Genealogical Society of Victoria (GSV) within the GSV Research Centre. Alternately free access is also available at LDS Church Family History Centres or your local library.]

The CHA contains or will contain millions of Irish records*, plus sacramental registers of England, Scotland, and the United States.  Records of the archdioceses of New York, Philadelphia (beginning in 1757), and Baltimore contain thirty million records. English records include those of Birmingham and Westminster, both beginning in 1657.  Records include baptisms, marriages, deaths and burials, censuses, and more.

You can search the entire collection by specifying various name, date, and place parameters. Alternatively, you can access English or Irish or Scottish baptism, marriage, or burial registers; as well as American baptism or marriage registers, or parish registers. Each data set can be searched for several parameters that you can specify or omit as you think best.

Invaluable guidance is available by selecting Learn More, Understanding the Records, Searching Irish Catholic Parish Registers, Common Latin Terminology, and Finding British and Irish Places of Birth.

There are many links to other helpful internet locations at the bottom of the CHA front page. 

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*  The GSV also recommends going to the free https://www.irishgenealogy.ie/en/for locating any Irish ancestors for birth, death and Marriage records. [Ed.]

Perhaps you live in the country, and can’t physically access the GSV.  If so, a new FREE online course to be run by the State Library Victoria from October 16 for four weeks might be of interest to you.

“Branching out is a new online course that introduces the basic principles of family history research, and looks at the key resources available for researching Victorian family history.

During this four-week course, the State Library’s Family history team will equip you with the tools you need to discover more about your own family tree. Recommended for beginners.” You can register for this at this link:

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/branching-out-registration-37797922604?aff=octnews

Then, once you get into your 'tree', you can get ONGOING help from the knowledgable volunteers and staff at GSV. Join up for less than a coffee a week and get support in all kinds of ways as you branch out.