Genealogy 2014 - 2015: Successes and Goals

Mary Peacock (nee Hugill)

After today, someone else is taking over my '31st-of-the-month' time-slot. My previous posts were about sources and strategies for family history worldwide. Today I want to reflect upon the highlights of 2014 and my goals for 2015.

In 2014, unforeseen events (ranging from a back injury to moving house) meant that there were many disruptions to my usual genealogical activities. A health scare reminded me that spending quality time with family and friends is more important than being an educator, a genealogy professional or a blogger!

Genealogical highlights of 2014:   (links open in a new window)

1. Collaboration via CuriousFox.  I have been swapping information with a distant relative who contacted me via CuriousFox. She sent me certificates and other information for our PEACOCK and HUGILL ancestors from Yorkshire, and confirmed that my Mary PEACOCK (nee HUGILL) died 17 Feb 1900 at Stockton-on-Tees, Durham, England.


2. New data via National Probate Calendar.  I found many relevant entries in the National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations, England and Wales 1858-1966). For some, I've already ordered copies of the wills. Others are on my wish list, but in the meantime they gave me locations, death dates, occupations and relationship details that helped with research in other sources.


3. New data via FindMyPast.  Many record sets released on FindMyPast during 2014 revealed new information for my family history. For example:
   
   • 'British in India' collection has 5 pension fund documents for Mary PORTER (a widow in England) with names and exact birth dates (between 1811 and 1821) for her five children.
   
   
   • Yorkshire collection has records such as parish registers and Bishop's Transcripts for my many family lines in that county.
   
   
   • Trade Union records refer to my John William CORDUEX in registers of two different railway unions.
   
   
   • New South Wales will books 1800-1952 in which I have already found 13 records for my family (including some people who lived outside NSW). I expect to find more when I do a systematic search for all names in my family tree.


4. Newspaper notices.  In the York Herald, Yorkshire Gazette and Sheffield Daily Telegraph (digitised and available via FindMyPast and the British Newspaper Archive) I found obituaries and other items for some of my families including HUDSON of Barton-le-Willows and BATTY of Bolton-upon-Dearne.


5. HUDSON family at Crows Nest.  I added another generation to the family tree after finding clues in Queensland funeral records and cemetery burial registers.

My genealogy goals for 2015:

• Change my priorities.  Spend more time on my own research and less time on answering emails from people who expect everything to be free!


• Share my knowledge more efficiently.  (1) Write more mini-guides.  (2) Use my Twitter page more often (because it is a quick way to share genealogy tips and links).


• Organise my records.  Before scanning or taking digital photos of all my family history material, I need to write down a 'style guide' for naming and filing the images. I will use a modification of the system described by Nancy Loe (a.k.a. 'Sassy Jane') in Cataloging Digital Family Photographs and Records and Organizing Genealogy Research Using Archival Principles. My paper filing system has always been source-based, so Louis Kessler's idea of a source-based incremental fix will suit me perfectly.


• Use DNA for genealogy.  I need to become more familiar with various tools for analysing DNA results, and to persuade more of my distant cousins to do the FamilyTreeDNA Family Finder test for autosomal DNA and the X-chromosome.


• Plan my genealogy cruise presentations.  Prepare my talks well in advance of Unlock the Past's 'Barrier Reef' cruise in March 2016. (You can get AUD$40 discount by quoting the code UTPC-WEB06 when you book any Unlock the Past cruise.)


• Research the HUGILL family.  My top priority is to find parents' names for Mary HUGILL (born c.1813, Hull, Yorkshire) and confirm that George HUGILL (born Hull, later of Stockton-on-Tees) was her brother. (Perhaps the wills and probate documents that I've ordered will help.)


• Write about my ancestors.  Many of those posts (which I will put in Jottings, Journeys and Genealogy) will be quite brief initially, but I'll update them as my research progresses. Hopefully people who read them will contact me and help fill the gaps in my knowledge.

Someone else is now taking over my '31st-of-the-month' time-slot, but watch for additions to my own blogs, which include UK / Australia Genealogy;  Genealogy Leftovers;  Queensland Genealogy;  and Jottings, Journeys and Genealogy.
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You might also like:

• Use FreeBMD postems to find new relatives


• CuriousFox: a gazetteer and message system


• Widen the Search: a Genealogy Success Story


• Finding Genealogy Data in an Unexpected Country


• A Genealogy Indexing Addict in Australia

(This post first appeared on http://worldwidegenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/12/genealogy-2014-2015-successes-and-goals.html.)

Use FreeBMD postems to find new relatives

FreeBMD is an ongoing project to transcribe civil registration indexes of births, marriages and deaths for England and Wales, and to provide free Internet access to those transcribed indexes. FreeBMD is an immensely useful site, and I like it even more since it produced the unexpected bonus of contact with new relatives via 'postems'.

An excellent feature of FreeBMD (but one that is overlooked by many genealogists) is the ability to add a short message (250 characters maximum) called a postem to any entry in the FreeBMD database.

The postem can tell people how to contact you - or (in keeping with our 'collaboration' theme) if you buy a certificate that turns out to be for the wrong person, you can help other researchers by putting details from the certificate in a postem.

Here is a step-by-step example of how I used a postem.

I searched FreeBMD for the birth registration of Bertha OAKLEY, who (according to census records) was apparently born in 1895 in County Durham. This is the search screen.

The search result looked like this.

I clicked the 'Info' icon and added a postem with my contact details.

When someone adds a postem, an envelope icon appears beside the entry, as shown below. You click the icon to read the postem.

To my delight, a distant relative contacted me as a result of my postem! She had information about Bertha OAKLEY's grandfather, Benjamin PEACOCK, who was a brother of my great-grandmother, Mary HUDSON nee PEACOCK.

This was just one of several similar successes that I've had with FreeBMD. I now always add a postem for each index entry that is (or could be) for my family.

I also use the 'search postems' feature to quickly check whether anyone else has added one that may be relevant to me. Here is an example of a search...

...and the search result, showing two postems that fit the criteria.

If you have used FreeBMD to find births, marriages and deaths for your family, I urge you to:

1. Go back and add postems to all of those entries.
2. Include an email address that will be valid long-term, such as a free Gmail address from Google.
3. Check the text carefully before you click 'create', because postems cannot be changed or deleted.
4. Before you start, read the Postems Help page.

Have you benefited from using postems on FreeBMD, or used them in different ways?
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You might also like:

• CuriousFox: a gazetteer and message system


• Widen the Search: a Genealogy Success Story


• Finding Genealogy Data in an Unexpected Country


• Genealogy 2014 - 2015: Successes and Goals


• A Genealogy Indexing Addict in Australia

CuriousFox: a gazetteer and message system

Logo on www.curiousfox.com

CuriousFox is a gazetteer and message system that connects genealogists and local historians. Collaboration between these two groups is immensely beneficial.

In CuriousFox, every town and village in the United Kingdom and Ireland has its own page. There is also a USA version, which I have not personally used.

Things I like about CuriousFox include:

• Exact map locations and historic maps.
• Free to join, add entries, and search by village or surname.
• With surname searches, finding relevant entries is easier because you can work at town / village level.
• You can search for 'nearby' entries.
• It is easy to edit or delete your entries.
• Google searches will find your entries (so 'new relatives' can contact you).
• No spam (your email address is not visible).
• Privacy (the system sends messages between members, and you decide whether to give a particular member your address).
• Advantages of being a paying member (about five pounds per year) include:
  • Contact and be contacted by all other members (free or paying).
  • Receive email alerts when people add entries for towns of interest to you.
  • Publicise your Web page or blog.

Entry screen for my ASHTON message

HINTS:

• Give some thought to the wording of your entries. They should be concise, with surnames (and only surnames) in capital letters. Specify dates, and use appropriate punctuation.


• For large towns with many entries and multiple pages, delete your entry every year and immediately resubmit it (updated if necessary) so that it reappears near the top of the list for that town. I did this recently, and within 24 hours a local historian contacted me and offered to send transcriptions of land records for that surname/town!

I hope you will try Curious Fox and share your success stories in a comment here. You might also like:

• Finding Genealogy Data in an Unexpected Country


• Use FreeBMD postems to find new relatives


• Widen the Search: a Genealogy Success Story


• Genealogy 2014 - 2015: Successes and Goals


• A Genealogy Indexing Addict in Australia

Widen the Search: a Genealogy Success Story

Source: South-East Queensland cemeteries photo collection

Many genealogy 'brick walls' can be overcome by

• researching the subject's siblings or other relatives;
• searching outside the geographical area where the subject lived.

A friend of mine is interested in descendants of Walter and Elsie CHATTERTON, who lived in England. A family tree on Ancestry suggests that they had a son, Reginald Walter CHATTERTON, who went to Australia. My friend was not able to contact the owner of that tree. This is how I helped her to find out more about the family.

• FreeBMD:
  
  • Marriage: Reginald W. CHATTERTON and Doris A. MUNNINGS, Dec qtr 1940
  • Birth: David M. CHATTERTON, mother MANNINGS, Mar qtr 1943
  • Birth: Colin M. CHATTERTON, mother MUNNINGS, Sep qtr 1945
  • Birth: Johannes CHATTERTON, mother NUNNINGS, Dec qtr 1946
  • Birth: Maria CHATTERTON, mother MUNNINGS, Jun qtr 1948
  
  I found three of those entries easily, but variation in the spelling of the mother's surname meant that I only found the other two after seeing the names in the shipping record mentioned below.

• A Google search for the surname led me to a reference on http://comunidad.dateas.com. I copied the text into Google Translate, which said, 'According to immigration records, Reginald Walter Chatterton nationality was English, his birthplace being more specifically Hull. Farmer by profession, arrived in Argentina on the boat Highland Chieftain having embarked in London.'
  
  Argentina?! That was unexpected.

• Passenger Lists leaving the UK 1890-1960:   The image of the original passenger list gives these details (and more):
  
  Name: Reginald CHATTERTON
  Date of departure: 29 January 1949
  Port of departure: London
  Passenger destination: Buenos Aires, Argentina
  Age: 33
  Occupation: Farm Worker
  Ship: Highland Chieftain
  The following people with the same last name travelled on this voyage: Colin M., David M., Doris A., Johannes and Maria CHATTERTON.

• Queensland Registrar-General's online death indexes:
  1978/C2007, Reginald Walter CHATTERTON; father: Walter Frederick CHATTERTON; mother: Elsie Gertrude NEWTON

'1978' is the registration year. I could have found the exact death date by repeatedly changing the search's date range to narrow it down to a month and then a specific day; but I found the date by other means.

• Queensland Burials record set in Australia and New Zealand Life Events (BDMs):
  Reginald W. CHATTERTON, 10 Jun 1978 age 62 (Gheerulla cemetery register)

• South-East Queensland cemeteries photo collection:
  A 'homemade' grave marker for Reginald Walter CHATTERTON in Gheerulla cemetery says 'Reginald Walter Chatterton. We love you'.

• Web page for Gheerulla cemetery:
  An entry for 'Doris Amy & Reginald Walter Chatterton' leads to a photo of a different headstone, which says 'Doris Amy Chatterton nee Munnings 19.12.1919 - 23.10.2007. Reginald Walter Chatterton 24.1.1916 - 10.6.1978. Rest in peace.'

• Australian Commonwealth electoral rolls 1903-1980 on Ancestry (some are missing):
  I found multiple entries for the CHATTERTON family. The 1980 Commonwealth roll for the electorate of Bowman lists Colin Michael CHATTERTON, Doris Amy CHATTERTON and Susan CHATTERTON at Edith St, Wellington Point. (So we now have the second given name, not just an initial, for Colin; and Susan is an extra name to research.)

The next step would be to get death certificates for Reginald and Doris CHATTERTON. In Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, death certificates are very informative. Family historians in the UK will be pleasantly surprised by the list of details shown on our certificates.

Other suggestions:

• Search indexes to Supreme Court wills and intestacies, and the most recent Commonwealth electoral rolls and State electoral rolls, as explained on Queensland Genealogy and Archives Research Tips.


• If there is no will/intestacy file with a copy of the death certificate, look for other Archives files that may include the certificate (see 'Free Certificates in Archives Files').


• If all else fails, buy the certificate from the Queensland Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages.


• Sources listed above, and others including the Ryerson Index to recent newspaper notices, may help to locate living descendants.

I am passionate about using original records in Archives, but as this case study shows, the Internet can certainly speed up the research process.
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You might also like:

• Use FreeBMD postems to find new relatives


• CuriousFox: a gazetteer and message system


• Finding Genealogy Data in an Unexpected Country


• A Genealogy Indexing Addict in Australia

Finding Genealogy Data in an Unexpected Country

Image by David Castillo Dominici, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In my first post I promised to show you how information about a particular family or individual can be found (perhaps unexpectedly) in another country. Here are a few of the many interesting examples that I have seen.

• Magdalene NIELSON died in America, but the State Archives in Queensland, Australia, have her probate file. It describes her as 'formerly of Bundaberg, Queensland, Australia, but late of the City of New York, USA; wife of Peter NIELSON (formerly of Bundaberg but at present of Copenhagen, Denmark)'. The file includes Magdalene's death certificate from America (giving her age, marital status, occupation, birthplace, how long in the USA, how long in New York City, names and birthplaces of her father and mother, her place and cause of death, and class of dwelling); and a transit permit for her body to go to Germany, stating the exact burial place there.


• Ellis READ owned land at Burketown, Queensland, Australia. When it was sold after his death, a grant of probate was required so that a certificate of title could be issued. The Supreme Court file at Queensland State Archives shows that he lived in Mexico from 1882 to 1890; and between 1887 and 1890 he made business trips to England and lived there for a few months at a time. He died in Mexico in 1890, but his widow did not apply for administration of his estate until ten years later. An affidavit gives a translation of details from his death certificate (age, cause of death, burial place, native place, occupation, wife's maiden name, father's name, mother's maiden name).


• Margaret STAPLETON died in Queensland, Australia, and her death certificate says 'born Ireland, parents names unknown'; but her probate file at Queensland State Archives reveals their names. In her will, Margaret left property to her sister Johanna in Ireland. As Johanna's surname was spelled incorrectly in the will, she had to prove that she was the person named as beneficiary. Johanna was unable to supply her birth certificate because her birth had not been registered. Instead she sent a copy of her baptism record from a parish register in England! It gave her father's name and mother's maiden name.


• Patrick DOWNEY was born in Tipperary, Ireland, and died at Cairns, Queensland, Australia. A Supreme Court equity file at Queensland State Archives says that his brother, John DOWNEY, died at Paterson, New Jersey, USA, in about 1884.


• James Edward BUTLER was born in Ireland. He was charged with wife desertion after he left his wife and six children in New Zealand. A few years later his wife was in Sydney, Australia, trying to find him. This information, plus a detailed physical description of James, appeared in a New South Wales Police Gazette. (Many Police Gazettes for various Australian States can now be searched online.)

There are entries for people from many parts of the world in:

1. Records described in 6 Genealogy Sources You May Have Overlooked.


2. Ancestry's collection of wills, administrations, probate records and death duty registers (including the National Probate Calendar for England and Wales)

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You might also like:

• Genealogy 2014 - 2015: Successes and Goals


• Use FreeBMD postems to find new relatives


• CuriousFox: a gazetteer and message system


• Widen the Search: a Genealogy Success Story


• A Genealogy Indexing Addict in Australia

A Genealogy Indexing Addict in Australia

Hello. My name is Judy Webster, I live in south-east Queensland (Australia), and I am an indexing addict!

I grew up on a sheep and cattle grazing property in outback Queensland, and I have been doing family history since the 1970s. My mother's grandparents came to Queensland from Germany and Prussia, but at the moment I am concentrating on my father's ancestors and their siblings in England and Scotland, plus a recently discovered Irish ancestor.

Agar headstone, 1794, Yorkshire

Most of my Scottish ancestors were in Argyllshire, and I suspect that siblings may have gone from Tiree to Canada. My English research mainly involves Yorkshire and the Greater London area (Surrey/Middlesex), but a few families were in Somerset, Durham, Lancashire, Kent and elsewhere. Others emigrated to Australia and settled in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. One of my ancestors may have been a Lancashire convict who was sent to Tasmania, but as yet that is only a theory.

I have started using DNA testing for genealogy, and I have already contacted one 'new' relative whose relationship we can confirm by traditional research. I hope my success rate will increase as more British family historians are tested.

After graduating from university in Brisbane, I worked for thirty-four years as a medical scientist in a hospital's Haematology and Transfusion Medicine departments. In the 1980s I switched from full-time to part-time work, did a Graduate Diploma in Local and Applied History by external study (University of New England, Armidale NSW), and established my own part-time business as a professional genealogical researcher and indexer.

Prison hospital register

I love working with unusual sources that overcome dead ends in family history. My Web site, www.judywebster.com.au, has about 130 pages with advice on sources and techniques for family history, and more than 53,000 names from my indexes to local, interstate and overseas folk mentioned in archival records. I also allowed FindMyPast to publish three of those indexes. As I said, I am an indexing addict!

Apart from my main Web site, I also write about my family and share research tips in... (links open in a new window)

• my seven genealogy blogs (UK / Australia Genealogy;  Genealogy Leftovers;  Queensland Genealogy;  UpdatesGenie;  Jottings, Journeys and Genealogy;  Yorkshire Genealogy;  Outback Story)
• Twitter
• Google Plus
• Facebook.

I am the founder and coordinator of the Genealogists for Families Project, which is a magnificent example of international teamwork. In 2011 we received an award for 'Best New Community Project'. After only two years we have more than 270 members in 13 countries (Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Germany, Netherlands, NZ, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Spain, USA and Wales). Many contributors to this blog are already part of the team, and I hope more of you will join us. Please take a moment to read about 'Genealogists for Families'. Together we can make a difference!

In my next post here I will talk about ways in which (perhaps unexpectedly) Australian records can help family historians in other countries. In the meantime you will find many research tips in my genealogy blogs.

I look forward to learning from you all as the year unfolds. It will be interesting to see what thirty-one people can accomplish by contributing to an international collaborative blog.
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You might also like:

• Genealogy 2014 - 2015: Successes and Goals


• Use FreeBMD postems to find new relatives


• CuriousFox: a gazetteer and message system


• Widen the Search: a Genealogy Success Story


• Finding Genealogy Data in an Unexpected Country