The Genealogical Society of Victoria helps people to trace their forebears. In doing so, people can find out who their ancestors were, details of their lives and why they decided to come to Australia. By learning more about our ancestors, we learn more about ourselves.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………

THE CHRISTMAS DECORATION

- The decoration is typical of an English Christmas door wreath. Through a metaphorical door one can glimpse into the past.

- The tartan ribbon represents Scotland.

- The shamrock represents Ireland.

Immigrants (especially convicts) from these three countries made up most of Australia’s earliest arrivals.

- The Family Bible and lace represent the small treasures immigrants brought with them to Australia.

- The scroll is of an old British Census Record and instantly recognisable to genealogists.

- The gum leaves and nuts represent the new country, Australia.

- The gold nuggets represent the Victorian Gold Rush of the 1850s.

Created by R Thompson, GSV Member, 2017

This week we have further advice from Ted Bainbridge about finding cemetery records using FindaGrave.com. In Part 1 of this article, Ted deals with searching for a person's grave - in Part 2, to follow, he explains how to find a cemetery. This site provides free searches but following up suggested records may require paid access to Ancestry.com. Remember access to Ancestry.com is free for GSV members at the GSV's Research Centre. [Ed.].

***

Getting acquainted with the revised version of FindaGrave.com

Ted Bainbridge PhD

FindaGrave - https://www.findagrave.com/ - is a web site that collects individuals’ cemetery and other information, whether a grave marker is present or not. The site’s database includes over 165 million people’s memorials, and adds about 1 ½ million per month. It contains information from almost half a million cemeteries around the world. This free site can be searched in several ways, and its information is easy to download onto a home computer. The site is menu-driven and intuitively easy to use. Registration, which is optional and free, gives the visitor access to features that are not otherwise available. Everybody should explore the tutorials.

Think of the home page as being organized into four areas:

• the main menu, near the top of the page and filling its entire width
• the search panel for individuals’ graves, which dominates the background photograph
• the link to findagrave tutorials, a blue oval button near the bottom right of the page
• other less-frequently used items, occupying the rest of the screen below the background image

Hunting A Person

By far, the most common use of findagrave is hunting individuals. The simplest search is done as follows. Enter a first name in the box provided near the center of the background photo. (This is optional, but if you don’t do it you will get an enormous hit list for all but the most unusual surnames.) I recommend leaving the box for middle name blank, because grave markers usually don’t show middle names. Put a surname in the appropriate box. (This is required.) There is no option for “similar spelling” or “similar sound”, so do separate searches for each variant spelling of the first name and surname.) Click the search button. A hit list appears, showing records that match your request and headed with the count of how many records are on the list. Search the hit list for the person you want, then click that person’s name. You will see that person’s information page. (If a picture of the grave stone exists, look at it in detail. Sometimes this will show that the typed information on the page contains an error.) To save the information on that page, you can command a “print” from your computer’s operating system. Alternatively, you can scroll to the top of the page, click “save to”, click “copy to clipboard”, open the program you will use to save the information, paste the clipboard’s content into that program, and save within that program. To save the source citation scroll to the bottom of the person’s page, click “source citation”, copy the text of the cite, paste that text wherever you want it to be, and save that destination’s content within the appropriate program. The person’s page might include links to findagrave pages for relatives. Click those links to see their information.

Typing only the first and last name probably will produce a hit list that is too long to read. If that happens, search for that name again but narrow the search by using the pull-down menus next to the “year born” and “year died” boxes below the name boxes you used. In addition to or instead of those restrictions, you can use the location box next to those date boxes. As you type a place into that box, an auto-fill list appears. When you see the appropriate place, select it from the list. (Typing the name and clicking the “search” button instead won’t give good results.) If you use all three restrictions and the new search doesn’t find the person you want, remove one of those restrictions and search again. If that search fails, replace that restriction and remove another one. If you fail again, repeat. If all those searches fail, use only one restriction at a time and do all three restricted searches. Repeat this process until you are successful. (But remember that not everyone is in findagrave, so all your searches might fail. In that case, try again later, remembering that findagrave adds about 1 ½ million records per month.)

Next to the “search” button you can see “more search options”. Clicking that makes the following available:

“Famous” separates a famous person from others who have the same name. (Asking for Marilyn Monroe creates a hit list of 29 people. Going to the top of the list, clicking “refine search”, pulling down “more search options”, clicking “famous”, and then clicking “search” shows only the movie star we all know.

“Sponsored” shows only pages that have no advertisements because somebody paid to remove them.

“Nickname” must be checked if you ask for somebody by nickname instead of given name.

“Maiden name” must be checked if you ask for somebody by maiden name instead of married name.

“Partial last name search” lets you search by putting only the first letters of a first or last name in the appropriate boxes. (Requesting “wana” shows Wana, Wanamaker, Wanabaker, and other surnames that begin with those four letters; but it doesn’t list Wannamaker.

“No grave photo” gives only people who have no grave photo on their information page.

“Grave photo” gives only people who have a grave photo on their information page.

“Flowers” gives only people who have virtual flowers attached to their page. (Asking for Clarence Bainbridge without this option clicked gets five names, but clicking this option reduces the list to two.)

***

(next) Part 2 - Finding a cemetery.

The following tale comes from GSV member Maurice Duke who reminds us not to throw away information that seems to be irrelevant to your research.

***

In 1983, not long after I had begun researching my family tree, I received a letter from a lady from Kurri Kurri, NSW, inquiring about a possible connection between her family and mine.



She said that her great grandfather had migrated to Australia from England in 1886, and mentioned his parents’ names.  Later, this was to prove definitive: her great grandfather in fact had the same surname as mine, but because of my ignorance at that time, I had no knowledge of the person to whom she was referring.



I therefore rang the number she had provided and informed her that I couldn’t help her. At that point, the matter ended and I didn’t think any more about her enquiry.



Early in 2017 I decided to do work on my family name with particular emphasis on my great grandfather who had come to Australia in 1856 from Ulverston, Lancashire (now Cumbria). With the aid of Bishops Transcripts and the Latter Day Saints, I was able to trace great grandfather's antecedents to his great great grandfather who died in Dalton In Furness in 1790 after parenting seven children.



His eldest daughter turned out to be a strange lass who had two male children but no spouse; and who gave her children her surname. This of course makes me wonder what my real surname should have been. One of her sons was my great great great grandfather.

Out of curiosity, I decided to explore the descendants of her other son, my great great great granduncle. With access to Bishops' Transcripts and LDS data, I found that the families were concentrated around Dalton in Furness, not around Ulverston on which I had previously concentrated. The two towns are in close proximity so, even with the travel limitations of the time, interchange between residents was probably not unusual. Together with the Census returns and the other sources, I was able to trace the family throughout the nineteenth century and as result, my database increased by about 250 names.



Then the miracle occurred.



Over time, I had carefully stored every piece of family history that relatives had provided me over the past 40+ years and I decided to do a massive clean-up of papers in my possession.



In the course of the clean-up, I came upon the 1983 letter - the letter I had filed and forgotten.



Names that meant nothing to me in 1983, particularly the names of the letter writer’s great grandparents, were now made familiar as a result of my recent research.



I rang the number on the original letter and the lady, now 34 years older, answered. She was amazed to hear from me but very pleased that she could make a connection with a very distant relative.

Maurie Duke

by Meg Bate

[This is an update of the article published in Ancestor 33:1 (March 2016) after the launch of the new web search service by Birth Deaths and Marriages Victoria. The author may be contacted at gsvlib2@gsv.org.au.]

This index covers Victorian births from 1853 to 1916, marriages from 1853 to 1942, deaths from 1853 to 1988, plus Church baptisms, marriages and burials in Victoria from 1836 to 1853. A separate index is available for Events at sea (marine) index with 6,200+ entries relating to births, marriages and deaths 1853-1920 that occurred on board international and coastal ships bound for port in Victoria

A remnant of a Victorian burial at Cemetery Reef Gull Cemetery, Chewton, Vic. (Photo: W Barlow, 2017)

 

A few hints on searching.

1. When entering a family name and /or given name you can use the wildcard * to broaden your search.
   
   1. This can even be used to replace the first letter in a surname as *erryman to pick names Berryman or Merryman or Perryman
   2. Can be used as W* to pick up Wm or William or Will
   3. Can be used in the middle as Berr*man to pick up Berriman or Berryman
2. In 'Events' select the event you require. It is possible to have two or all three boxes ticked.
3. It is not necessary to fill in all the search boxes. If you are having trouble trying to locate the birth or death of a person you can just search using parents given names, leaving family name blank.
4. Often given names and places are abbreviated, so if you search for a 'William' with no success then try 'Wm' as it may be abbreviated. Of course place names can have the strangest abbreviations so be careful here. Of course don’t forger to use the wildcard *
5. Don’t use the browser back button; click on 'Refine search' for your next search or “Back” button.

For additional help the guide to use this index is available at https://www.bdm.vic.gov.au/research-and-family-history/search-your-family-history

This covers getting started, search tips, how to download images and troubleshooting tips.

What else.

1. Interestingly I have found birth entries for the years 1917 to 1945. It’s not complete for these years, as in 1921 there were 240 entries, 1922 – 188 entries, 1925 – 158 entries, 1930 – 167 entries, 1943 – 16 entries. I randomly checked a couple of these names for deaths and most of these people were there as well. For example, Birth Entry: Eric John BARTLETT, born 1924, no. 23970, father William, mother Rebecca Harper.
   
   Death Entry: Eric John BARTLETT death 1967 no. 306, father William Edwin, mother Rebecca (Harper). Age 77 yrs. 
2. The death index entry can sometimes provide more information compared with the Digger index.                                                                                                    - For deaths between 1943 - 1964 plus a few in later years, the place of birth and place of death are mentioned and they are not abbreviated, so this is extra information. An entry from the new website for death registration number: 1964/1548; Family name: HALL ; Given names: Ellen Maude ; Sex: Female; Father's name: BENNETT Samuel; Mother's name: Hannah (Spittlehouse); Place of birth: Ballarat; Place of death: Parkville ; Age: 91.                                                        Compared with the entry from the Digger index 1921 - 1985. Hall, Ellen Maude; Father: Bennett Samuel; Mother: Hannah Spittlehouse. Death place: PARK; Age: 91; Yr: 1964; Reg no. 1548.                                                                - A spouse’s name appears in many death records, mostly between 1853 and 1888. 
3. Sorting results by the headers only works for the current page. 
4. To see more detail click on the subject’s entry. 
5. The Events at sea (Marine) index includes the name of the ship and in some cases the exact death date.  For example: Edward BAGSHAW Ship name: Golden Era. Place of birth: UNKNOWN. Place of death: At Sea On Board  "Golden Era", Age: 22. Date of death: 03/05/1854. Marine births, deaths and marriages Victoria 1853-1920 (CD). 
6. The online death index has dropped off the additional age information such as “M” Months, “D” Days information from records for example:
   
   The Digger index records the death as follows:
   
   TEMPLETON, Louisa. Father: Richard. Mother: Mary Ann KENNAN. Age at Death: 14M (Months). Place of birth: MELBOURNE. Reference: 1853 no. 1758,
   
   while the online index has: 
   
   TEMPLETON, Louisa.  Father's name: Richard. Mother's name: Mary Ann (Kennan). Place of birth: MELBOURNE Age 14. 
7. In the Digger index the many marriages in the Pioneer, Federation and Edwardian indexes can include the birthplace information. E.g.
   
   Marriage: 1891 no. 2482. Hardie, Arch (birth place: HTon) M McKeand Sarah (birth place: Heywood). Compared with online index which has Marriage Event registration number: Family name: HARDIE, Given names: Arch Spouse's family name: MCKEAND, Spouse's given names: Sarah.

I am finding new things all the time about this index and I believe that we can expect some further upgrades to this system in the future. Be aware that the GSV has the CDs of the Early church records and Marine births, deaths and marriages Victoria 1853-1920 and these discs include digital copies of the original certificates. So take advantage of your membership and either come into the GSV or email for a quick lookup.

***

This article was first published in Ancestor Journal.

Bate, Meg. 'Exploring the new births deaths marriages Victoria historical indexes'. Ancestor 33(1) 2016, pp. 20-21

This week Ted Bainbridge provides a helpful outline of the changes coming to the Find-A-Grave website, one of the family of Ancestry resources. You can preview the proposed new site, while access to the old is presently being maintained.

Find-a Grave will change

Findagrave.com has announced that the web site soon will change. Some changes are cosmetic, while others are functional. A map feature has been added.

The home page, formerly just a list of over thirty choices, will become a photograph with a few menu selections across the top. That page will be dominated by the search panel, which will function largely as it has in the past and with the same options for every search box except those related to location.

The current search panel specifies location via pull-down lists for country, state, and county. The new search panel offers a single box for location, in which you are supposed to type the name of a place. As you begin to type a city, county, state, or country that box auto-fills with suggested place names which you can select with a mouse click. Use the American English equivalent of a country name; Germany works but Deutschland doesn’t.

The new home page’s menu bar goes across the top of the screen. Clicking CEMETERIES takes you to a page that lets you hunt cemeteries in either of two ways. Near the top left of the page is a search box where you can type a cemetery name. This auto-fill box works as above. When you select a name, you see a hit list of cemeteries with that name. Each entry on the hit list displays some facts about that cemetery, and a link to its information page. That page contains a search box that you can use to hunt for a person’s name.

Instead of using that cemetery-name search box, you can use the cemetery-place search box to its right. Clicking a place name produces a map of cemeteries near that place. You can zoom the map in or out, and can pan it in any direction. (If the map doesn’t display any marker pins, zoom in.) After a name is in that search box, clicking Search leads to a hit list of cemeteries near that place. Use this hit list the same way you use the other cemetery search box.

To see and experiment with all the planned changes, go to https://www.findagrave.com/ and then click preview now near the top center of the screen.

Ted Bainbridge, PhD

***

By Clive Luckman

It is fun, and very satisfying to compile your family tree, showing names, dates and relationships. I think it is more fun to put some flesh on those bones.

One of the interesting things that can be done is to discover your ancestors’ occupations. In the pre-industrial revolution times (say before the very early 1800s) the vast majority of the population lived in the country. That changed during the century and today something like 5% of the population lives in the country, at least in Australia, Europe and north America. Those very significant demographic changes together with the industrial revolution meant lots of the occupations, some very specialised, died out.

One of the by products of the industrial revolution was a rebellion of sorts. The “Machine Breakers” (as the name implies) damaged new machinery by way of a protest and in fear of losing their income. Some of the Machine Breakers were convicted and transported to Australia.

So occupations such as button makers became extinct as machines began to make buttons. One occupation that persists today, though in relatively tiny numbers, is the shoe maker. The general name for a shoemaker, even up to the early 1900s in Melbourne, was a Cordwainer (the word probably derived from a leather worker in Cordova, Spain). An important occupation. The function of making (rather than repairing) shoes had occupational sub-divisions: a Clicker cut the leather taking care to have minimum waste and selecting the best parts for the stretch and so on; a bracer attached the upper to the sole using waxed thread.

As an aside, until roughly the 1850s the same last was used for left and right hand shoes – in other words the shape of the left and right hand shoes was the same. A horrifying thing today.

One of the sources of occupations in England and the US is the census. In both cases the occupation is recorded. The relatively recent English 1921 census include these occupations: Baubler, Lurer, Bear Breaker and Maiden Maker – I hesitate to search for the definitions of these.

Australian sources include birth, death and marriage certificates which include the occupations. But these details began on 1 July 1853 and before that we rely on Church records of Baptisms, Marriages and Funerals which lack a note of the occupations.

As with any research one needs to be critical of the evidence. One of my wife’s US ancestors was described as being engaged in “Mercantile and railroading” in a book written about the family in 1903. Sounds rather grand to me. In another document he claimed to have been be an engineer with the Brunswick and Albany Railroad. But the most credible evidence is that he was a ticket collector on the trains of that Railroad.

***

This article (June 2007) by Clive Luckman of GSV was previously published in Fifty-Plus News .

At the Genealogical Society of Victoria we have expert volunteers to help members find where details of occupations can be found, and help solve the many problems encountered by family historians. See sandbox.gsv.org.au for more information, or email gsv@gsv.org.au, or phone (03) 9662 4455 for information about the Society.

There is a great opportunity to get the background to the Old Poor Laws pre 1834 and how they may have impacted your ancestors.

See the details of the talk on our website here https://sandbox.gsv.org.au/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=1014

Presenter: Stephen Hawke.

Before Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in 1536-9, the monasteries took care of the poor in England and Wales. With the monasteries gone, this responsibilty was shifted to each parish. An entire system of laws and documents grew up around caring for the poor. For the researcher, these documents can be invaluable in tracing migration of families, both poor and not poor, in England and Wales. Poor law documents can also reveal family relationships as well as giving insight into living conditions of ancestors. Poor law records are also known as parish chest records. This is because a chest kept in the church or the priest's house was used to store parish records.

Vires acquirit eundo

With another act of aggression lashing out against civility in our city yesterday, I thought of the city's motto - we gather strength as we go- and I believe we do, as we become a large, truly cosmopolitan city. I would not have known our city's motto except that the day before I looked in on the current exhibition at the City Gallery in the Melbourne Town Hall - 'Emblazon': Melbourne's coat of arms' (7 September - 30 January 2019).

Coats of arms and heraldry are a somewhat old-fashioned part of our genealogical wanderings. But this small exhibition telling the story of Melbourne's coat of arms is worth a visit. The City Gallery is easy to find and too easy to walk past - located on the main Town hall frontage sharing its entrance with HALF-TIX ... see CITY GALLERY WEBSITE.

'Emblazon' Exhibition. City Gallery window at Melbourne Town Hall, 8 Nov 2018

 

Sevres vase 1880. City of Melbourne Art and Heritage Collection (photo: W. Barlow, 2018)

 

The exhibition includes many examples of the 'arms' from street signs, street bollards, documents, a cast iron roundel from the old Eastern Markets, a Sèvres vase (1880) and three quirky takes on that vase commissioned by MCC in 2018. Our official 'arms' includes a fleece, a cow, a whale and a ship as 1840s symbols of the city. One of the 2018 vases, Yhonnie Scarce's memorial urn, contains 'symbols of lives lost since the British arrived'.

Our family histories are embedded in the social history of our cities and places. City of Melbourne can be congratulated for its City Gallery, and these quarterly exhibitions, which have been showcasing our shared heritage.

You should visit.

Gallery with 2018 vases by Brennan (L) and Wedd (R). (Photo: W. Barlow, 2018)

 

Bill Barlow

***

'Emblazon: Melbourne's Coat of Arms', exhibition catalogue, 2018.

Exhibition Curator: Alisa Bunbury / MCC Art and Heritage Collection team.

Sevres vase, Sevres Porcelain Factory, 1880

'Urn with Nature Pot', vase, Angela Brennan, 2018

'She gathers Strength As She Goes', vase, Gerry Wedd, 2018

'For the Fallen', vase, Yhonnie Scarce, 2018. 

Recently the GSV Writers shared their writing about topics such as 'a skeleton in the family'. A number of interesting stories emerged, of forgers and even a murderer. How do we deal with those in our family who have become entangled with the law?

Old portable police lockup, Chewton, Victoria, 1860s. (Photo. W. Barlow 2017)

 

Dr Alana Piper, Research Fellow of the University of Technology Sydney researches criminal justice history and is conducting a survey on the public’s engagement with crime history. The purpose of this online survey is to find out about public interest in and understandings of criminal justice history. The online survey is run through SurveyMonkey and takes 5-10 minutes to complete. The survey is completely anonymous.

The survey can be found via the following link - https://criminalcharacters.com/survey/

In this project Alana is using digital techniques to map the lives and criminal careers of Australian offenders across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her research interests draw together the social and cultural history of crime with criminology, legal history and the digital humanities. Her PhD thesis examined female involvement in Australian criminal subcultures across the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Castlemaine prison, Victoria, built 1857-61 on the Pentonville Model (Photo. W. Barlow 2017)

 

Dr Piper outlines the project:

A World-First Survey on Crime History and the Public

'One of the things I love about my job as a criminal justice historian is talking to people about my research. It does not matter who they are – or even if history in general is not a particular passion for them – most people are interested in hearing the stories I’ve uncovered about nineteenth and twentieth-century crimes and criminals.

Some people like to chat about the celebrity criminals whose lives have been immortalised in fiction and film, like bushranger Ned Kelly or Sydney crime queen Tilly Devine. Others like hearing about the quirkier or more unexpected tales I have come across, such as the fact that book theft was made a special offence in Victoria in 1891 after a spate of book stealing from public libraries. Or that until relatively recently fortune-telling was a criminal offence across Australia, with police intermittently cracking down on fortune-tellers throughout the twentieth century, in particular during the World Wars when people were desperate for reassurance about their loved ones.

These are not one-way conversations either. Family historians have often encountered at least one ancestor who had an entanglement with the law. It is fascinating to hear how sometimes those actions or events ended up changing the course of the lives of the entire family. Other people have developed an interest in local cold cases, such as the unsolved murders of three adult siblings that occurred in Gatton, Queensland in 1898, but still generate frequent speculation today.

The sense that I am left with from these encounters is that crime history is a subject in which the public is highly engaged. Anecdotally I know that other crime historians – both in Australia and overseas – have similar experiences. However, to date there has been no empirical research into public attitudes and interest towards crime history.

I am trying to change that by running an anonymous online survey about community perceptions of crime history. The survey only takes 5-10 minutes to complete, but will generate data that provides insights into the sources of information that inform public understandings of crime history, and how public attitudes about crime history vary across different national contexts.

Any participation in or promotion of the survey is much appreciated. It can be found via the following link - https://criminalcharacters.com/survey/- along with more details about my research project.'

Alana Piper, University of Technology Sydney. 

You can follow Alana on Twitter on @alana_piper

GSV is privileged to have Elizabeth Rushen presenting 'Bounty and government emigrants 1836-1840 including Mr Marshall's migrants'.

Liz Rushen has written a number of books in this area and you can see more about them at her website HERE.

Her talk is on this coming Thursday 18 October 12.00pm - 1.00 pm. Bookings are essential but you can still get a place if you are quick.  Bookings can be made in person at GSV, via the website HERE.  Or you can book by email to gsv@gsv.org.au or by phone 9662 4455.

GSV Members $5.00, RHSV/CAV/FHC $15.00 and Non-members $20.00.

There were many emigration schemes and agents operating in the early to mid-nineteenth century and this talk by historian and author Elizabeth Rushen will give a broad overview of emigration in the 1820s and 1830s. Various emigration schemes were available until the formation of the Colonial Land and Emigration Commission in 1840 and John Marshall was the most active entrepreneur under the bounty scheme of assisted migration to Australia.

This is an area of our history with which many of us have links and this is a great opportunity to get a knowledgeable overview.

***