Getting the Word Out!

The Unlock the Past Team at Who Do You Think You Are? Live 2014

It has been a very busy time since my last post for me as I went on the 4th Unlock the Past cruise (gave six presentations), flew to London and attended the Who Do You Think You Are? Live! conference, gave a presentation and was also on the Unlock the Past stand and then flew straight home again
(without spending any extra time as I am back in England again in July for the
 5th Unlock the Past cruise which goes around the British Isles) and then gave a presentation at the Queensland Family History Society seminar a few days after coming home!

Yes a bit tiring, but  I had a fantastic time!

As family historians we work hard researching our family history, researching forwards, backwards and sideways along family lines trying to crack/demolish the brick-walls that are thrown up in our paths.

An important way of doing this is broadcasting our interests far and wide. 

Going back a number of years we did this primarily through the Member's Interests area of Family History Society journals (and I would strongly suggest people should continue doing this as I have had responses from entries in journals published 10 years plus ago. Of course it helps that I still have the email address I started with so many years ago, not as my prime one but still there.  Having an email address that travels with you from ISP to ISP is a great boon in genealogical research. it would be a shame to have a cousin find you and then not be able to contact you!

We also put our entries each year into publications like the Genealogical Research Directory published by Keith Johnson and Malcolm Sainty.  I still remember the thrill each year when the book was delivered and then came the evenings looking at each surname hoping to find someone else researching your surnames in your areas. 

Then the RootsWeb email lists were used and are still used today. Remember it is always worth going back to them (now hosted by Ancestry but still free to use) as all the messages are still there and you can search them for places and names of interest. There are 30 000 mail-lists so I'd be very surprised if there was not something of interest! Google will return searches from the mail-lists but I am not sure what proportion of messages would be shown.

Then a number of forums on various websites opened up. Some messages from these are shown in Google searches but most are not. 

Busby cousins:Nigel Robinson and Helen Smith at WDYTYA? Live 

Then came the rise of the Blogs! Where we write about our ancestors, our brick-walls, throw out that cousin bait and wait for the nibble! I have had good success with my bait and my most recent success was meeting up with a cousin on my Busby from Coombe in Oxfordshire England line who knew of me from my blog. Then he did a Google search and found out I was going to Who Do You Think You Are? Live! and decided to come down and meet me (all without telling me!)


It was a lovely surprise to meet up with Nigel Robinson there. Another thing to note here is the round badge on my shirt, not terribly visible here but it says "Ask me about my One Name Study", an initiative of the Guild of One Name Studies, with whom my surname, Quested, that I am researching anywhere, anytime, anyplace is registered.



Members interests for events are still worth doing as ably demonstrated on the 4th Unlock the Past cruise. The registrants were asked to submit their interests online and then a hardcopy was provided on the cruise by putting it up on the wall.

The registrants then checked out the names and left notes on the notice-board to meet up.

A number of successful link-ups were made. One of the more interesting ones and sometimes you really do have to think the ancestors play a hand was between Jenny and Barbara. They realised from the members interests that they were both researching Nicholas Wingfield a gentleman who was executed for piracy! What was a bit spooky is that they were both single travelers who had been matched to share a cabin without knowing each other previously, so yes, I do believe the ancestors sometimes do want to be found!

The partial death certificate for John William Evans died 1909

Then when i returned to Brisbane I presented a talk on "Death Certificates: Fact or Fiction?" at the Queensland Family History Society seminar on Death and Burial. As usual I take advantage of being a speaker by using incidents where applicable from my family research and I also wanted to show an example of the digitised certificates you can download from the Queensland Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages (better than the previous certificate copies available that were transcribed, these are still one copy away from the original form but you have the advantage of seeing annotations and marks) in the different colours and handwriting. This was an interesting certificate as involved a coroner's inquest.

Then came a voice from the audience, "Is that a person in your tree?" My answer was yes and the reply was "because that is my husband's grandfather!"

So I had the pleasure of meeting up with Jennifer and her husband Don, my  second cousin twice removed.

Other places I broadcast my names of interest are Twitter and Facebook. 

What about you? What are you doing to get the word out? Have you come across other places or ways to act as cousin bait?