Beyond the Internet: Week 52 the Finale

Beyond the Internet

This is the final post in the 52 weeks Beyond the Internet series. Despite the rapidity of digitisation, there is still so much lurking offline: in people’s heads, in libraries, in museums.

While it’s fantastic to be able to flash our fingers across the keyboard and find information or even digitised original documents from the other side of the world, there’s still so much discover by getting out and getting our boots dirty as the local historians say.

I want to touch very briefly on a couple of sources that haven’t yet been covered before leaving you with a summary of all the topics.

COLONIAL SECRETARY

The letters and documents of the Colonial Secretary (aka COL SEC) are invaluable but also tend to feel impenetrable at first, as well as time-consuming. As you pursue each document reference through its archival hierarchy, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by your search.

However if you think you have something very specific in your family that may have merited correspondence with the government’s senior bureaucracy it’s definitely worth your while to make the effort. Some have been indexed, but many have not, and try searching by topic or place as well as name. For example, Queensland State Archives has an index drawer with references to petitions regarding places. Give them a try and see if they prove useful to your own research.

DEVON COMMISSION

Those with Irish ancestry might find it worthwhile to pursue the documents from the Devon Commission especially if their ancestors left some decades after the Famine. If you’re lucky enough to find your ancestor’s parish documented it will tell you a great deal about where they lived and their economic and physical condition. You can see an example of its value here (Donegal) or read it online via Google Books here.

FAREWELL AND THANKS

I’m going to leave it there and thank you for following along with this series. I hope that at least some of the topics have triggered useful research strategies and may even have produced some successes!

THE TOPICS THAT WENT BEFORE

Here are the topics that have been covered. I won’t hot-link them but you can readily find them by clicking on the Beyond the Internet Category in the right hand column. There’s mostly been a method in the sequence which I envisaged at the beginning of the year, with occasional deviations. I finally made it through to the end though those last weeks were a challenge!

THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

Week 1: Church Interiors

Week 2: Ancestral homes and their history

Week 3: Houses wrapped in red tape: land titles, council rates, sewerage maps, survey maps

Week 4: Donations and Subscriptions (a “ring-in” under this topic)

EDUCATION

Week 5: Off to school

Week 6: School Administration Records

Week 7: Days of the old school yard: school histories, albums and newsletters

VITAL RECORDS

Week 8: Certificates

Week 9: Baptisms, Banns and Burials

Week 10: Church Records (not BDMs)

CHURCH

Week 11: Church Archives

Week 12: Church Histories

MILITARY

Week 13: Lest We Forget: War Memorials

Week 14: War diaries, shipping and photographs

Week 15: Battle, Battalion and Military Histories

Week 16: War Service Records

HEALTH AND WELFARE

Week 17: Hospital Records

Week 18: Benevolent Asylums

Week 19: The poor are always with us: bankruptcy, workhouses, Board of Guardians, Kirk Sessions.

Week 20: Orphanages

Week 21: Pensions

LAW AND ORDER

Week 22: Wills and Intestacies

Week 23: Probate and Deceased Estate

Week 24: Court Records

Week 25: Gaol records

Week 26: Police and Other Gazettes

ARCHIVES AND LIBRARIES

Week 28: Place and Petitions

Week 29: Hallowed halls and reference libraries

Week 30: Books

Week 31: Maps & Gazetteers

Week 32: Journals

Week 33:  Local history adds value to family history

Week 34: Family History Society Libraries

Week 35: Published Family Histories

Week 36: Photographic Archives

MORTALITY

Week 37: Monumental Inscriptions and gravestones

Week 38: Burial Registers

Week 39: Funeral Director’s Records

 MIGRATION

Week 40: A long voyage of Immigration

Week 41: Emigration Records

Week 42: Naturalisation Records

LAND RECORDS

Week 43: Griffith’s Valuations

Week 44: Offline Newspapers (another “ring-in”)

Week 45: Tithe Records and Maps

Week 46: Valuations and Council Rates

OCCUPATIONS

Week 47: Police and Railway Staff Records

Week 48: Teachers

Week 49: Merchant Seamen

Week 50: Licences

 FINALE

Ta dah! It’s done!

Week 51: Oral History (family and local)

Week 52: Colonial Secretary, Devon Commission and Finale

Thank you once again for supporting me along this rather long path!

Beyond the Internet: Week 51 Oral History

Beyond the Internet

This week we’re up to Week 51 in my Beyond the Internet series in which I explore the sources of information beyond our computer screens. This week’s topic is Oral History.

Oral History can be an invaluable asset in our suite of offline research resources. Again and again we read others say that they wish they’d listened to their parents/grandparents/great-grandparents. I too wonder how I could know so little about my grandparents when they lived next door for up to 21 years of my life. However I think we also need to “forgive” ourselves: it’s far more common than not, for us to be self-preoccupied in our teenaged years, caught up with study, work and later our own families.

ORAL FAMILY HISTORY

It’s only as time goes along that we start reflecting on missed opportunities, almost always too late. It also assumes that each and all of our immediate ancestors would have willingly bared their souls to us, yet we also know we reserve secrets and private moments in our own hearts. So respect and acceptance are required on this journey into oral history. It was only as I started to write my Kunkel family history that I was able to tease some information from my father before his death, contrary to his decades as a human information-clam.

If we’re lucky some of our parents may be alive and we can start to ask them questions with interest and respect. Even if our parents are not alive there are other opportunities to capture some of their stories: what about close family friends who sometimes know more than we assume, or perhaps there’s an aunt or great aunt to tell the stories?

As you interview your family’s friends and relatives, there are many guidelines to follow so that you tease out answers without prejudicing what you’re told. You also need to weigh up past slights, family feuds etc to get a feel for whether you’re being told the “truth” which of course varies with almost every individual.

If you’re planning to do a series of oral history interviews you might be able to find out if your local library, archive or family history centre offers seminars of how best to go about them.

In Australia, a good starting point is the Oral History Association of Australia (OHAA). They also have useful publications for sale.  Your local archive may even have recording equipment that you can borrow: the OHAA would probably be able to advise you. I know that our reference library here in Darwin offered a training session a couple of years ago which was excellent, and there is now a wonderful resource on the NT Library webpage of Territory Stories.

A book I’ve found really helpful is Family Memories, A Guide to Reminiscing by Bob Price, available through the State Library of NSW Shop. It provides a helpful framework in which to consider the questions you want to ask your family. Quick readers can pick up a copy on eBay at present for a very good price (assuming it’s still available when this post goes up). Or you can get it on inter-library loan through the National Library of Australia.

 ORAL LOCAL HISTORY

So far it’s been implicit that we’ve been focusing on our family’s specific history, but if that’s not possible, there is a way around this apparent “brick wall”. Don’t forget there are other families who’ve lived in the area for many years and experienced many of the same crop failures, weather problems, wars, socials and weddings. You may find that you can learn a great deal about your family’s life indirectly in this way to add richness and texture to your story.

One of the most valuable contacts I made was with the man who was the Murphy’s Creek (Qld) local history experts. Not only did he share a great deal of information with me but also provided me with copies of a recording of my grandfather’s younger cousin, Ann. I had met her a couple of years before her death and we had several discussions about the Kunkel family and as documentary facts proved her stories, it was apparent she was a “reliable witness”. I’ve mentioned this experience previously, and its importance to my own research here.

.However, what was especially interesting was the difference in content between Cameron’s recording and mine. In the local history version the stories were of playing tennis socially and competitively, social outings and people she knew including some relating to the Dorfprozelten descendants though it’s obvious she had no idea of this prior link. My tape of our conversations is about family connections and stories. Both are valuable and offer quite different dimensions to family and life in rural Queensland in the early years of the 1900s.

ORAL PERSONAL HISTORY

I think it’s important that we don’t leave our own life stories as a blank page for our families. We know how much we’d love to have heard or seen our ancestors or to have something they’d written. It’s up to us to ensure that we leave a suitable legacy for our own descendants.

 SUMMARY

 Have you had any successes in recording and documenting your family’s history orally? Do you find it easy to do or challenging? I know I find it quite difficult and don’t think it’s one of my strengths.

Beyond the Internet: Week 50 Licences

Beyond the Internet

This is week 50 (alleluia!) of my Beyond the Internet series and this week’s topic still partially relates to occupation but is a grab bag: Licences

Bureaucracy isn’t a new thing and really we should be grateful for it historically, if not in our day-to-day lives. There’s so much that is documented thanks to the need for governments to raise taxes one way and another, and to monitor appropriate standards. I’m not going to deal with the professionals like doctors here as they are generally fairly easy to track down one way and another, and other occupations I’ve already written about.

Instead I’m going to briefly touch on some licences which may tell you about your ancestors. They may only tiny scraps of information but don’t we just thrive on any snippet?

PUBLICANS

Some archives will hold copies of licences for ancestors who were publicans. As always what survives is a matter of luck really, and while the indexes may be online you will likely have to visit and/or pay for a copy of the actual document. For example here are relevant links, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland etc.

You may also find references in the Court of Petty Session documents for your area of interest.

You will definitely want to see if any good books have been published about “your” pub, or hotels in general, as well as searching for images online or offline in reference libraries (search for the town, not the pub name).

Government gazettes will often throw up links publishing their licence, enabling you to see if your relatives moved from pub to pub.

Keep a look-out too, for local history websites about pubs in the region, as well as references to the hotel in local newspapers.

FARMING

How about looking for horse and cattle brands? In the early days horses were day-to-day transport so you may well find out something about your ancestor’s livestock. Does it tell me much that George Kunkel’s brand was GK2…not really but it makes his farming work more real to me.

If you’re in Scotland, you might want to search the farm horse tax rolls or the female and male servant taxes (useful for my farming Sim family). You can find the link here (yes I know they’re not offline) but for those of us who aren’t in Scotland offline is good, especially for digitised original documents.

OTHER OCCUPATIONS

Shelley from Twigs of Yore talked about the public health requirements for her butcher ancestor, Daniel Miller Couper, in her Australia Day 2012 challenge and it provides interesting insights into how some occupations were carefully monitored.

Similar requirements were surely in place for the likes of bakers and confectioners but to date I’ve been unsuccessful in tracking them down for my own family.

I would generally expect that these might appear in the government gazette or be recorded by the Court of Petty Sessions.

RADIO, TV and DOG LICENCES

Dog licences don’t appear to have been preserved in the records, though I’m willing to be corrected on that. However it was plainly a requirement as old newspapers will record that ancestors may have been fined for not paying their dog licence. Another of those moderately useless pieces of information that add texture to our stories.

Did you know that in the “olden days” (ie when I was young) you had to pay a licence fee to own a radio or TV? I expect it will take a while they become available, assuming they’ve been preserved. Just imagine our descendants being astonished by there being no television!

Will our car licences one day be available for our descendants to view? Will they be embarrassed by our choices in vehicles or will they be astonished at what we owned? Will they be impressed that someone that thought quite sedate once owned a flash car or be astonished by a mid-life crisis vehicle purchase?

YOUR THOUGHTS

I feel sure I’ve missed some licences that would be helpful to other researchers but my mind is simply not retrieving any. Have you used licences in your research? If so which have been helpful? Please share them with us via the comments or your posts.

Beyond the Internet: Week 49 Merchant Seamen

Beyond the Internet

If you’re feeling it’s a case of “that week went quickly”, you’re right. I’m busy catching up with my Beyond the Internet series. So let’s just pretend it’s now Week 49, not weeks 48 or 50,as weexplore the sources of information beyond our computer screens and this week’s topic is Occupations –Merchant Seamen.

 I have a whole branch of these on my family tree and even after they left this occupation they remained my international travellers even 100 years ago or more.

TICKETS

Writing about this topic is a classic example of the speed of genealogical events and records overtaking us all. I’ve had this on my scheduled list since the beginning of the Beyond the Internet series. Meanwhile the subscription site, Findmypast UK, has added digitised records which you can search here, under Education and Work. To see the image you will either have to pay, take out a subscription or visit a local reference or family history library (or order in the microfilm via the LDS church).  What you are mainly looking for here are your merchant seaman’s ticket.

Family Search, which is free, has indexed some of the same merchant shipping records enabling you to identify which microfilm you might wish to order in: this is how I’ve done my maritime research pre-digitisation. You can also search the Family Search catalogue for the keywords “Board of Trade” to see what other records are available and pertinent. It’s worth noting that sailors on British ships will need to have been ticketed with the Board of Trade so these records also include men from non-British countries including Ireland and Scandinavia.

Of course there are more records available for officers within the merchant navy so you should also explore the records for these as they had to sit for exams to gain their officer’s and captain’s tickets.

READING & IMAGES

You should also make it a priority to beg, borrow or “steal” a copy of Records of Merchant Shipping and Seamen by Smith, Watts and Watts, in my opinion THE benchmark book for understanding this occupation. This book explains in detail the cryptic entries you will find on your ancestor’s ticket which you’ll want to pursue to complete your understanding of his service. You might also find information on the National Maritime Museum (NMM) useful to understand more. You may also want to read more widely on your ancestor’s specific responsibilities in the merchant navy.

Online there are many sites with images of various ships (but make sure you’re not looking at a later one than the one your ancestor served on, as the names are often reused). You may even find postcards of them on e-bay which I’m pretty sure are mainly copies of an original. In Australia you will want to look at the Mariners and Ships in Australian Waters (who might come from anywhere in the world)

A further source of information on the ships is to look at the Lloyd’s List for the timeframe so you learn more about where it was registered, who owned it, size etc. Another option that has come online instead of needing to search in a reference library.

CIVIL REGISTRATION

It is also worth paying particular attention to maritime deaths, and also newspaper reports, which will tell you more about their lives including the hazards of working and living on board ships which sailed in dangerous conditions.

It might even be wise to check that there’s not a second marriage lurking somewhere in the records, not that I wish to malign our ancestors.

CENSUS and CREW LISTS

If you can identify one of your ancestor’s ships it may lead you through the others that he served on. You should then see if you can find the ship’s crew lists through the CLIP site even though you may need to order them in. I have one friend who was very lucky with this (sadly I haven’t been, at least so far!). Some of these are also on Findmypast UK under Education and Work.

Census records may include your ancestor’s name on board ship, provided they are in port somewhere in England/Scotland or Wales: in fact you may even find your ancestor mentioned twice! It’s worth searching to see if there are special CDs which coincide with the census, as some years ago I discovered a series called Seamen’s Crewlists 1851 which was most helpful.

SUMMARY

And a final word of warning: don’t rely entirely on the online transcriptions. I know I have entries which are mis-indexed on the online sites as well as some information that I’ve found in microfilms or on site at the National Archives in Kew, and vice versa. I only regret that I didn’t have more time to spend in the NMM when I was there a couple of years ago.

This is a huge topic which needs further development. My intention had been to do that here, but it will need to be a topic in its own right in 2013. Meanwhile if you have an interest in this area, you may wish to have a preliminary look at a series of conversations on RootsChat from a few years ago. The researcher found the tips he’d received from a few of us very helpful and you might do as well: no point everyone re-creating the wheel.

Beyond the Internet: Week 48 Teachers

Beyond the Internet

This week I’m belatedly writing Week 48 in my Beyond the Internet series in which I explore the sources of information beyond our computer screens and this week’s topic is Occupations – Teachers.

I wrote a few posts early in the year about school admissions and other school records, which will obviously be of relevance if you have teaching ancestors.

However you’re probably looking for more personal information about their careers.

I have no teachers in my family tree but Mr Cassmob’s is fairly littered with them so much of the information I’ve acquired has come from them. Some are his immediate ancestors, one is our daughter, and others go back to the early-mid 19th century.

Where to look

The first port of call will be the relevant archive for the area where they taught.

If they were in a religious school, you may have to approach the school or religious order they worked for (not so easy, sometimes).

I’d also look at reference libraries to see if there’s more general information about their records.

 So what might you find about your teaching ancestors?

 Their inspection reports: Remember those school visits when we thought the inspector was only assessing us, but in reality was probably mainly interested in the teacher, and whether they’d taught the necessary curriculum to the right standard. They must have been intimidating for the teachers as 50 years later we met a lady in Alotau who remembered her mother being inspected by Mr Cassmob’s father (who could do intimidating quite well in his professional role).

Their other roles in the community:  for example my mother-in-law was the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages in her rural Victorian community when she was only 20 or so. As a family historian you have to love information like that!

Their academic training: whether they had teachers’ college training, university, or were thrown in largely at the deep end to sink or swim.

Their history in schools: For example: my in-laws were both teachers and both were required to establish small bush schools in rural Victoria with absolutely minimal training. In their specific case this experience was no doubt invaluable as they launched and taught at new schools in Papua New Guinea.  Did your ancestors teach in large urban schools, small multi-class schools or even one-teacher schools? Who was in their class? Did their own children have to call them “Mrs Cass” in the classroom, for example.

Books: You may find some reference to your teaching ancestors in books relating to the areas where they taught, or specialised books on education.

 Gazettes: Government and Education Their postings may feature in the various gazettes –check them out. (I’m indebted to Rosemary Kopittke who alerted me to the education gazettes last year). Goulds have a range of the Queensland Education Gazettes which you can see here.

If you have teachers in your tree I hope these tips will help you learn a little more about them. If you have used other records please do share with us via the comments or your own blog so we can all learn.

Teachers really are pivotal to the development of a community’s children, a debt we all owe them, as they work so hard to educate and care for their students. In the past week we’ve also seen their heroism as they protected children, sometimes with their own lives.

So let’s all say a huge “thank you” to the teachers who’ve helped form us into who we are today. 

Did you have a pivotal teacher: if so who was it? 

The teaching images are from Microsoft clipart.

Beyond the Internet: Week 47 Police and Railway Staff records

This week I’m writing Week 47 in my Beyond the Internet series in which I explore the sources of information beyond our computer screens and this week’s topic is Police and Railway Staff records.

Archives can be a rich source of occupational records, ranging from publicans to police, railways or business, mariners or teachers. As always which records survive for your area of interest is variable and dependent on historical chance.

RAILWAY STAFF RECORDS

Firstly a word of warning: not all railway workers will have been employed by the government-owned railway even in Australia. Lengthsmen and gangers, the labourers of the railway line, may have been employed directly by large railway contractors such as O’Rourke & McSharry.

Overseas where the railway infrastructure and operations were undertaken by different companies it will be necessary to see if those business records have survived. Findmypast UK has some railway staff records online but others may remain elusive.

The steam train arrives at Murphys Creek station.

Where they exist, railway staff records can be rich in detail. My ancestral ones include dates of birth, commencement of service, progression through the ranks, commendations or penalties, relocations around the region and illness. Some of mine came directly from Queensland State Archives but others were obtained from dusty old card systems in Ipswich long before the Railway Museum was built.

There are also some excellent indexes to Queensland Railway staff and these may highlight the employment of women as gatekeepers or cleaners. It was not uncommon for married women whose husbands had a responsible role at a particular station to take on these duties, or for them to be given this type of work if a husband died at an early age. Government gazettes and parliamentary papers may also list railway workers.

Time does indeed make the heart grow fonder for Qld Rail as it seems the closer in time we are to the person the less likely we are to find staff records. While I have some from my 2xgreat grandfather, two great-grandfathers and my grandfather, my own father’s records were destroyed some time ago even though he retired less than 40 years ago!

Roma St Railway Station -the old shunting yards extended up to and beyond the right corner of this image. Photo taken P Cass about 2006.

These staff records can be used in conjunction with other sources to reveal more detailed information about their specific location location eg while posted to South East maintenance, a man might actually be working in a number of places in that area. School admission records are a great way to track movements within a region. Similarly Trove may provide useful tidbits about their lives.

Other Sources: If you want to know a little more about what life was life as a railway employee, or a member of their family member, this book, Living on the Line, provides first hand oral histories of railway life. You can also search my blog (top right hand corner) for search terms “railway” or “Queensland Rail” for my own experiences in a railway family. Also don’t forget to see if you ancestor was involved with railway operations during either World War I or World War II.

POLICE STAFF RECORDS

 Police staff files are generally even more valuable to family historians than railway staff records (especially if you have policemen in your family!). They include much of the same detail but are more likely to include pages of documents rather than just a card index summary.

I have made significant finds in police files so I’m pleased that some of my family members diverted from serving the railway to the police.

 Character references had to be obtained when applying to enter the police and one for Thomas Kunkel is elusively enlightening. A letter from Patrick O’Sullivan, MLA in Ipswich states that he had known my 2xgreat grandparents “so long and so well”. Had it perhaps been Patrick for whom George Kunkel had worked as a servant in his hotel? Or is this just my imaginings? Ironically nearly 100 years later I would know Patrick’s great-grandson who was the Jesuit priest with responsibility for the Newman Society at The University of Queensland.

Spouse checks: In the old days (not sure when it ended), Police had to obtain permission to marry. They advised the name of the woman they wanted to marry and there was then a character check on that person and her family.  One can only assume that he must have asked his bride-to-be before sending off her name, otherwise the proposal would hardly have come as a surprise!

Thanks to this, I learned that one of my grandfather’s uncle applied to marry a particular woman, whose family provided a glowing reference from Archbishop Dunne, previously their parish priest. What went wrong after that is lost to time, but Thomas never did marry her. Adding insult to injury she married his brother Edward not long afterwards.  Thomas’s performance record had been of a good standard before that but all of a sudden he was going AWOL, being drunk on duty, losing prisoners. Coincidence, I hardly think so.

Another relative’s file reveals his problem of “borrowing” a small amount of official money – when he volunteered this information and was repaying it, he was promptly discharged. I can imagine him confessing his sin to the priest and being told to make restitution only to then be tossed out – entirely justifiably, but no doubt distressing for all the family. The timing of this event coincides with his mother, Bridget McSharry, moving to Rockhampton and setting up a boarding house. Around this time or a little earlier, his father, James Sherry, entirely disappears from view – did he desert the family (not in police gazettes) or did he die but his death not get recorded? Was the timing a coincidence? Not sure.

Police staff files are subject to closure periods which may affect your ability to look at all or part of the file.

 Other sources: once again try Trove to learn about arrests or events your ancestor may have been involved with and also look at Police Gazettes or Government Gazettes.

I think you’ll find these sources to be very helpful if you are lucky enough to have railwaymen or police on your family tree.

Beyond the Internet: Week 45 Tithe records and maps

Beyond the Internet

This week I’m writing Week 45 in my Beyond the Internet  series in which I explore the sources of information beyond our computer screens and this week’s topic is Tithes and Tithe Maps.

Attentive readers will note that I got ahead of myself the other day by posting Week 46….that’s what happens when (1) you get behind and (2) you’re keen to get to the end. There are some overlaps between valuations and tithes in that assessment of land and property was common between the two and was done by an approved assessor and subject to appeal.

So what exactly are Tithes and the Tithe Maps?

Tithes were essentially taxes charged on the value of produce and labour from properties to fund the operation of the parish of the established church. In early years the tithe payments were mainly payable in goods or produce. Such was the scale of the tithe collections that huge tithe barns were sometimes built to store the produce which had been tithed. The National Archives provides a comprehensive and expert guide here.

However over time it became increasingly common for the payment of tithes to be in currency rather than goods, and this became the requirement after the introduction of the UK Tithe Act of 1836. The assessment was undertaken by independent commissioners and resulted in large scale maps and valuations of each person’s property holdings, whether as a tenant or owner.

These documents provide the family historian with the opportunity to learn not only the value of their family’s land (rented or owned, remember) but also its specific location.  They are also important because with the inevitable time lags it enables links between the census, the tithe schedules and maps. and the Ordnance Survey maps.

Tithe Barn, Leigh, Worcestershire, England. Image from Wikipedia Commons.

The Tithe Applotment records in Ireland are even more valuable because in the absence of 19^th nominal census data, they provide one of the key ways of tracing family in the pre-Famine era. Unfortunately many families farmed land which was not of sufficient value for them to have to pay the tithes, leaving them hidden from us. The payment of tithes towards the upkeep of the established Church of Ireland certainly caused consternation in Ireland for those Catholics who were liable to pay the tithes.

How can these records help us?

As with valuations from Week 46, these records can do one of two things: either break open aspects of our family history, or simply add another piece to the puzzle. They will tell us:

• Whether our ancestors owned or leased their land and property
• Who the landlord was
• Whether their land ownership, and hence possibly their economic circumstances, changed over time, by comparison with other records
• What type of property they owned
• Who their neighbours were & their relative wealth within the community
• Whether they owned/leased one or more properties

Where can they be found?

As with so many other records, more and more is becoming available online, or able to be ordered online. However the following sources will be useful to see the original documents:

• The regional records office for the county where your family lived
• The National Archives (England/Scotland/Ireland)
• Parish chest records (check out what’s available on the Family Search site for your family’s parish –this can be very helpful for those living overseas).

You might also try a newspaper search through the British Newspaper Archive (available by fee) or through the 19^th century British newspapers (available online from the National Library of Australia, or equivalent, with your NLA library card) to see if there is any mention of the tithe assessments in your family’s parish.

Remember every little snippet of information helps us build up a picture of our ancestral families and can sometimes open up a whole new perspective and field of research.

The liability for tithes in the mid-19th century may be inter-linked to the enclosure of land in the parish. You can read my ancestral discoveries on enclosures here.

Have you made any discoveries about your family by using tithe records and maps? Why not share them on your blog or in the comments? 

Are there additions/clarifications/corrections regarding Tithe records which would be useful to other readers?

From Week 47 (the next post), we’ll move into resources for occupations.

 

Beyond the Internet: Week 46 Valuations and Council Rates

Beyond the Internet

Today I’m posting Week 46 in my Beyond the Internet series in which I explore the sources of information beyond our computer screens and this week’s topic is Valuations and Council Rates. Unfortunately I’m running late with a couple of weeks due to our recent trip back to PNG and family commitments so will be playing catch up over the coming week or two.

Once upon a time when I was helping with adult education classes on family history I used to suggest that one way to think about finding research resources for our ancestors, is to reflect on our own interaction with the public record. It’s surprising how many of these we have in common with some variations. Valuation records are one of these on-going resources which were touched on briefly back in Week 3 of this series.

Through the centuries it’s been necessary to tax people for the services they, or their community, use whether it be for workhouses, poor relief, support of the clergy or more recently public services such as roads, libraries, water etc. One of the ways taxes have been assessed is on land or property owned or leased by individuals, or businesses. These days this would usually translate into your local government rates or taxes. You may find them listed as council rates (more recently) or valuation rolls (in the UK) depending on where or when you’re searching.

WHY USE VALUATIONS?

These records can potentially tell us a great deal about our ancestors, for example:

Whether they owned or leased their land and property

• Who their landlord was
• Whether their land ownership, and hence possibly their economic circumstances, changed over time
• What type of property they owned
• Where their property was within a street
• Who their neighbours were & their relative wealth within the community
• Whether they owned one or more properties

 WHERE TO FIND THEM?

State or national archives in your home country or your ancestor’s country of origin

• City archives (eg City of Sydney archives- now available online)
• Local reference libraries
• Parish records especially for older periods (check out what’s available on the Family Search site for your family’s parish).

 WHAT DISCOVERIES HAVE I MADE WITH THEM

The locations of my McCorquodale 2xgreat-grandfather’s residence on the Ardkinglas estate in Argyll

• Landlord information for my Kent ancestors and changes of property
• Location of the Dorfprozelten Germans and other families in inner suburban Sydney.
• Details of my Kunkel, Kent and Partridge ancestors properties in Ipswich, Queensland.
• The residential location of Mr Cassmob’s McKenna family in Melbourne, and hence its economic circumstances.
• Tenancy and later ownership of my Irish ancestors from Co Clare, and subsequent inheritors of the land.
• Probable residence of my Sherry ancestors outside Gorey, Wexford.

Ireland is a very specific instance of the importance of valuations as the Griffith Valuation remains one of the critical ways of tracing Irish families prior to 1901.

Valuations can also be used to complement other records such as wills, land documents, census enumerations and the like. As always comparing information from different sources provides us with a richer picture of our ancestors’ lives and permits us to critically assess each record’s data.

 Have you used valuations to good effect in your research?

Have a look at these posts by other family historians about how they’ve used valuations/council rates (this is just a sample):

Family History Fun

Becoming Prue

Genealogy in New South Wales

Genealogy’s Star (a slightly more indirect reference)

Beyond the Internet: Week 44 Offline Newspapers

This is Week 44 in my Beyond the Internet series in which I explore the sources of information beyond our computer screens. This week’s topic is Offline Newspapers. Being in something of a newspaper mindset lately, I’ve moved this topic up on my planned schedule.

Australian family historians are quite rightly enamoured with the astonishing resource we have in Trove. TThe New Zealanders have Papers Past, Americans Chronicling America, and the British the British Newspaper Archive or 19^th Century British Newspapers (available here via NLA membership).

Old and new technology: image from wikipedia commons.

It’s easy with so many options at our fingertips (quite literally), to forget that there are still many newspapers which have not yet been digitised and may never be so.  If your family lived in a major city, it can be a case of swings and roundabouts –the paper will probably have a complete run and be digitised but against, that the average person is much less likely to hit the pages except in the public notices like births, marriages, deaths, funerals or probate.

However if your family lived in a smaller rural area it’s well worth finding out what papers were published there over the decades –often changing names or starting and folding over a short period. Once upon a time there was a small monograph called “Australian Newspapers” which included all the known papers published in different areas. I imagine there are copies languishing in a reference library near you and that would be one way of finding what papers might have been published. point.

 I’ll give you a few examples of offline newspapers and leave the rest to your own discoveries.

Official welcome to the Queen to Bundaberg 1954. SLQ image from the Australian Womens Weeklyoai:bishop.slq.qld.gov.au:423633 Copyright expired.

I was excited way back when the Australian Women’s Weekly came online with Trove. BUT there is a hidden trap which I wrote about early last year.

The Post Courier is the most commonly read newspaper in Papua New Guinea. There would be a wealth of references to Australian, and other expats, living there especially in the pre-Independence era (before 1975). While there is an index of Australians in PNG available through QFHS, it cannot include all these entries. How do I know? Because our family makes zero appearances even though I know there should be at least half a dozen in the public notices alone. Sadly the National Library can’t afford to digitise this newspaper without significant sponsorship, so if you know an organisation that could provide the funding, why not bring it to their attention.

The Toowoomba Chronicle, a wonderfully gossipy newspaper, is not on Trove although the  contemporaneous Darling Downs Gazette is. If you find a reference in one it might be worthwhile looking in the other for a slightly different spin.

After my posts on German newspapers over the past weeks, Prue discovered that the newspaper of interest to her research has not been digitised for the timeframe she needed.

How about your ancestors’ religious affiliations? Might there be stories about them in newspapers published by that religion, eg The Catholic Leader? Advice I need to follow myself when I’m next near the relevant research opportunities.

FINDING ANCESTORS’ STORIES

Of course the biggest trick with searching newspapers offline is actually finding the stories. We’ve become so spoiled by Trove that we’ve lost the art, and the patience, for steadily trawling a microfilmed copy.

The limitation is that you will be searching for likely known events such as obituaries, weddings and the like. The unexpected finds that turn up in Trove become even more serendipitous if you happen across them scanning a microfilm. Luckily if the event was news-worthy enough it may be mentioned in a paper from further afield, tipping you off on the date when you need to search locally.

WHERE ARE THEY?

Here are a few places to search:

1. Check your National Library, searching by place and limiting your search to newspapers
2. Ditto with your state reference library
3. Check the catalogue of the major university libraries and their reference sub-libraries (you’ll be surprised by what you’ll find there). For example there are 55 reels of the Queensland Times for Ipswich at The University of Queensland.
4. Ask the local historical society who may know whether there are copies held anywhere –including in their own libraries.
5. Like Prue, ask an expert in the local area especially if it’s overseas.

So there you have it, even more opportunities to build up your family stories through offline newspapers. Offline searching is much more laborious and time intensive but may well repay your efforts. Why not experience what genealogy life was like in the pre-Trove era? Trust me, you’ll appreciate those digitised papers all the more <grin>.

I’ve remarked in family history courses that it’s interesting how we have such a generally low regard for journalists in the modern era, yet take almost every word they say as gospel for times past. (Bias warning: we have a few journos in our families).

Beyond the Internet: Week 43 – Griffith’s Valuations

Search Beyond the Internet

This is Week 43 in my Beyond the Internet series in which I explore the sources of information beyond our computer screens. This week we’re off to Ireland’s green fields with the Griffith’s Valuations.

I could make my life easier, and this post very brief, by exhorting you to beg, borrow or buy a copy of James Reilly’s book  Richard Griffith and his Valuations of Ireland. If you have Irish ancestry, do yourself a favour and check its availability at your favourite bookstore or library. Hint: an preview of this book is now available to read through Google Books  – enough for you to see how much value this seemingly slight book contains. In the meantime have a read of this short article by Reilly called Is there more in Griffith’s Valuations than just names?

Reilly’s book will astonish you with just how much lies behind those tables of information that we Irish researchers treat as a substitute for the census. I think the temptation for us is to simply look at the superficial facts of the size of our ancestor’s land, its value and who the immediate lessor was. Reilly makes it clear just how much more there is to even the summary information and in particular the significance of the number and alpha reference at the start of the line.

An extract of the Valuation for Ballykelly townland in the parish of Kilseily, Clare.

The new online access at AskAboutIreland makes it easy to link the search with the map reference indicated by that originating number, but again, do we go beyond that? How about the field books, perambulation books and house books that lie behind the valuation? Yes, they don’t exist for all parishes but wouldn’t you want to check? Unfortunately they’re mostly only available in Ireland but if you’re sufficiently keen you may choose to employ a researcher to follow it up, especially if you can determine they exist.

As a teaser: If your ancestors were either Michael Meaney or James Carmody of Mountrice townland in Kilseily parish, Clare, you would no doubt be interested to know that the landlord intended “to build houses for them and then throw down the houses on which they presently live”. Notes from the Perambulation book for the Parishes of Kilseily and Killuran by surveyor Michael O’Malley (The National Archives of Ireland). Or you may wish to know who ran huxteries in the area or…

The complication throughout is to know which one is really is your man (or woman)! From my point of view you need some other way, eg parish registers, to be assured of which one you need to be following.

The Irish Valuation Office now has current valuation information available to search online (try typing in your county and townland). While there are no maps available, I see this is “coming soon”. I was surprised just how familiar were the names of people still holding land in Ballykelly – echoes of the 1911 census and also Griffith’s. Also surprised to find one missing that I expected. Not really of great specific use but interesting none the less!

REVISION LISTS

These are one of the unsung heroes of Irish research. Have you found your ancestors in the Griffith’s tables? If so, they will enable you to trace who took over the family’s property generation after generation. Not only that, you’ll have a good chance that they’ll tip you off on when various family members died.

How does that work? Well, the original valuations were reassessed on a regular basis for change of tenancy or ownership, improvements or deterioration of the property. On the original books held by the Valuation Office, these amendments are messy but able to be followed because they are in different coloured inks and different hands. Your 2 x great grandfather’s death might result in a new entry with his wife’s name, then subsequently various children until it perhaps passes to a distant relative or out of the family.

An extract from the Ballykelly, Co Clare valuation revisions. It notes that in 1950, my ancestor’s family home was in ruins.

The good news is that these are available wherever you live because you can order them through the Family Search catalogue and have them delivered to your local family history centre or approved library. The easiest ways to find the correct film is to search the catalogue by keyword (not anything else). For example if I enter “valuation revision Ballykelly Clare” I promptly obtain film number 819471.

The other benefit is that it lets you search beyond the timeframe of the initial valuations to perhaps find your ancestor. For example, I wanted to see where my James Sherry and his family were living in the townland of Knockina outside Gorey, Wexford in the 1870s before they emigrated (I had Knockina from the Gorey parish registers). The valuation revisions suggested to me that they must have been living in a property owned by the Southern and Eastern Railway as that was the only property not attached to a specific family and I knew he was a railway worker. If my deduction is correct, it suggests he may have held a position of some responsibility although it’s likely he was still a grassroots worker.

I really can’t emphasise enough the value of following your family from the original valuations through the revision lists to see what happened to them and their property.

And as a finale, here’s a new occupation for you: the meresman was the hired local resident who assisted in identifying boundaries (Reilly, op cit page 4)

You may also want to have a look at my post, Finding Irish Ancestors Part 2-The Old Country, if you haven’t seen it already.

Advance Apologies: Week 44 may be a few days late as I have some upcoming commitments and I doubt I’ll get it scheduled in advance.