My family tree

Carole’s Family Tree

I have been researching my family tree for a few years now, and there is always more information to find, more names to research, more relatives to talk to. My Australian family surnames are Eason, Irwin, Ewin, and Bell from Northern Ireland; Goode, Miles, Oates and Pascoe from England; and Stewart, Thomson and Simpson from Scotland. My Fijian surnames are Riley, Andrews, Whippy, O’Connor, Brown and Simpson.

My family tree is not complete – it may never be complete. It’s here so that you can contact me if you see anything that looks relevant to you or you if would like to add something to it.

Click here to enter my family tree.

When to say Enough is enough

I’ve been part of the 1st ProGen Study Group for nearly 18 months now. Each month we study a chapter or two of the book and do an assignment which is submitted to others in the group for review.

Assignment 16 was the toughest yet – we had to write a proof argument for some part of our family history where the answer required some deductive reasoning. I chose two cases from my own family and started writing each one. The Irish/Australian Eason case seemed too complex for a first attempt, so I chose the other one, on my Fijian Riley side.

Big mistake. You’ve probably already seen it. I didn’t. I’m in Australia, and the records I need are not. I have some, but I need more. So I don’t have enough evidence for the case I was trying to make, and it turned out not to be a ‘proof’ at all.

By the time I realised this I decided it was too late to go back and start again with the other one, so I kept going. My assignment got later and later, and I still didn’t have enough. I’ve almost finished transcribing a ship’s log from 1831-2 and I have two more to go. I’ve searched the Fiji Times from 1869 onwards, which is far too late to be relevant but I had to try!

I handed it in, so to speak, today – non-standard citations, unclear argument and all. I’m over it.

When the frustration has worn off some I’ll post my findings here.

Free access to World Vital Records for 3 days starting today!

An announcement from World Vital Records:

World Vital Records is announcing the addition of the largest number of records to be released in a single day since the site launched in 2006.

To commemorate this milestone, for the first time World Vital Records is offering FREE PUBLIC ACCESS to its entire online collection beginning August 11 through August 13, 2009. This is a perfect opportunity to participate in this incredible promotion.

This is a great opportunity to have a look around at the Australian content in this site, mostly, but not only, provided by Archive CD Books Australia.

Just click on the link below!

“Whoever finds this, put the data to good use”

Another quote from Star Trek Voyager. They’ve found a space ship from way back in the past. The rest of the crew are all envious of the ones who get to go and have a look at it, because it’s a direct look at the past. Explorers are historians, and I guess historians are explorers.

The pilot died but recorded a message first, and that was what he said. He hoped his Dad would get the message, but no, it was Seven-Of-Nine, who has discovered empathy with people from the past that she didn’t know personally.

Ancestor Day on Star Trek Voyager

I just watched an old episode of Star Trek Voyager about genealogy. Star Trek Voyager was a spin-off series of Star Trek, the old series made in the 60s about “space, the final frontier”.

In the episode I watched (Episode 23, Season 5) Captain Janeway (a sort of Katherine Hepburn) was looking into the story of the ancestor who had inspired her to become a Star Fleet captain. As it turned out, the story wasn’t what she was told, and she was disappointed. She decided that the photograph her crew had found (nice to be able to get your crew working on your family history) had no place on her desk after all.

So her crew threw a surprise party for her and called it Ancestor Day, where we celebrate the lives of our ancestors and ponder their significance to us. Even if what she believed turned out not to be true, it still inspired her at the time.

I think it’s a good idea!

Genealogy research in other countries

I am constantly surprised by the differences in genealogy research in different countries (and Australian states). We tend to take for granted procedures and availability of records in our own patch and then get caught out when we start looking at another country. Well, I do!

I am off to New Zealand for three weeks in a week. I’m going to the AFFHO Congress in Auckland on the 16-20th January, and I’m going a week early to do some research on my own family. I’m trying to prepare for the research I hope to do. New Zealand is a small country and yet the records are so decentralised. Most of them, anyway.

I found the same thing in Victoria. The attitudes to some of the records that I take for granted in Sydney, the birth place of the country, are totally different in Melbourne, where a totally separate colony was established without having convicts as its reason for being. It’s no criticism of them, just something I wasn’t aware of. Although it can blind them to records that are based in Sydney from the period before the establishment of the separate Colony of Victoria.

I’ve seen similar attitudes in posts from Americans enquiring about English research. They expect things to be similar to them and find it confusing when it isn’t. I personally find US research more confusing, what with records in courthouses and attics and all. Of course, I’ve never actually down any on-the-spot US research so what do I know!

Time flies when you’re having fun

It’s been a long time and a lot has happened. I’ve decided that for my own happiness I’m not going to try building a business by coaching other people. That’s been a big step for me, and a big relief. I don’t feel split, I’m not hedging my bets and can commit fully to the one thing instead of marking time until I get serious about the other one.

And I have committed myself now – I’ve applied to do the Diploma at SAG, I’ve joined a study group, in fact I’m leading one of the groups, and I’m selling off some of my psychology books.

Not all of them though, so there’s still some little idea in there somewhere that I might go back to it some time. And I guess I might too. One day. But I’ve realised that it’s not something that I can just dabble in. Really, you have to be serious about it to do it properly. Dabbling is unethical, really, it’s not fair to the clients and it’s not good for me.

It’s unethical because I’m not learning any more and I’m not specialising in what they need. A specialist needs to be at it all day every day. A full time job. Not a part-time interest.