Family History News, 11 Aug 2019

Some people apparently didn't receive my email newsletter, so I'll post it here.

News

• In the past month, over 46,000 records have been added to the Ryerson Index. This is a truly magnificent online resource. Ryerson Index entries often include age, place of death, place of residence etc, which can lead you to other sources. Some entries are for death/funeral notices that you can see in Trove. Others are for newspapers that you'll find at a State Library.


• On August 4th I added more names to the Insanity and Unsound Mind index, which now has more than 20,000 entries. This latest batch included surnames beginning with B, C, D, K, L, N and O.


• There have recently been significant improvements to Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages online indexes for Victoria.


• The City of London Cemetery and Crematorium (England) has made 440,000 digitised records, dating from 24 June 1856 to 7 Oct 1955, available online (free) as part of a pilot scheme. Select the time period that you want to search, then scroll through the images.

Specials

Genealogy Discounts and Freebies currently has links for these new discount offers:

• During Aug 2019, downloadable historical birth, death and marriage certificates for Victoria cost just $20.


• Until midnight (AEST) tonight (11 Aug 2019), full transcriptions of historical birth, death and marriage certificates for New South Wales are just $18.


• Copies of Queensland's old age pension records are half price until 9am on 15 Aug 2019.


• Until 14 Aug 2019, AncestryDNA tests *in the UK only* are cheaper.


• During Aug 2019, new members pay a reduced price to join the Queensland Family History Society.


• During Aug 2019, Family Tree DNA has discounts of between $20 and $150 depending on which test or upgrade you order.

More details are on Genealogy Discounts and Freebies.

New publications

• A new edition of Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (by Chris Paton) has just been published.


• Today I noticed that my favourite online book store has the new edition of The Family Tree Guide to DNA Testing and Genetic Genealogy listed at a reduced price, with free delivery worldwide. I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of my copy.

Research tips

Genealogy software won't always warn you when you enter nonsense (eg, someone dying at age 150, or children born after the mother's death date). I recently added this comment to a tree on Ancestry:

'Sarah Jane NICHOLSON is my great-great-grandmother. Your tree says her father was Richard NICHOLSON, born c.1781, who married Mary MILLER 27 Feb 1775. That's impossible - he can't have married before he was born. And the Mary MILLER who married Richard NICHOLSON in 1775 cannot be the mother of Sarah Jane NICHOLSON born c.1830, because by then Mary would probably have been in her 70s.'

To avoid making silly mistakes like this, I recommend using FTAnalyzer (available for Windows and Mac) to find errors in your tree.

Success story

I recently broke down a long-standing genealogy 'brick wall' when I succeeded in identifying another set of 5xgreat-grandparents. My favourite genealogy research strategy worked once again! More details are in How I Found Sarah Sheppard's Parents.

Events

This week I'm going to Brisbane for the first of the 'DNA Down Under' conferences. Similar events will be held in Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney. If you want to book for one of those cities but you live in the Northern Territory, Tasmania or New Zealand, email the organisers and ask for a special discount coupon code for NT/Tas/NZ residents. Note that the Sydney programme is almost entirely different from those in the other five cities. Details are on the DNA Down Under web site. Those who pre-book are entered into a prize draw, with a total prize pool of more than $17,000.

Did You Know?

Members of the Queensland Family History Society can (as a benefit of membership) have free access to the genealogy site MyHeritage from your home computer (via the society's website).

Questions?

Genealogy is my *business*, not just a hobby. My Web site has lots of free advice, plus details of my professional services. Before you ask me a question, please read both of these pages and follow relevant links:

* http://www.judywebster.com.au/prof.html

* http://www.judywebster.com.au/index.html.

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(This post first appeared on https://updatesgenie.blogspot.com/2019/08/family-history-news-11-aug-2019.html.)

No.48 (genealogy news and tips worldwide)

Links open in new windows. If you share the tips below, the Creative Commons license requires that you acknowledge the source as http://updatesgenie.blogspot.com.

• Irish records FREE:   The largest online collection of Irish records (more than 116 million records, including images) will be FREE until 11.59pm (GMT) Friday 17 Mar 2017.


• AncestryDNA:   Until 19 Mar 2017, save up to 30% on Ancestry's DNA test for genealogy (the one you've seen advertised on TV).


• More discounts:   New discount offers (relevant worldwide) are coming soon, so check Genealogy Discounts and Freebies this weekend. If you use ChangeDetection to monitor that page, log in at www.changedetection.com and edit your alert for http://www.judywebster.com.au/specials.html to 'daily'. If new offers are added twice in one week, you will then be alerted twice instead of missing one.


• Conference & Fair:   The 'Footsteps in Time' Family and Local History Conference and free Fair is at Southport (Gold Coast, Queensland), 19th to 21st May 2017. I'm looking forward to it. Conference registration closes 14th April.


• Catholic records:   The Catholic Heritage Collection (available only on FindMyPast) is a growing online digitised and indexed collection of Roman Catholic records for Ireland, Britain and the USA. Most of the records have never before been accessible by the public, either offline or online.


• Electoral rolls:   You can do either a name search or an address search in the Australian electoral rolls collection at FindMyPast. The new search page explains which State and Commonwealth rolls are included. There are some for Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania, the Northern Territory and Western Australia, and more rolls will be added in the future. Ignore the 'birth year' search field (it doesn't help).


• Gen-Ebooks:   Genealogy Ebooks (known as Gen-Ebooks) is one of Australia's largest Ebook stores for genealogy. They currently have over 550 titles, with more being added every month, all instantly downloadable. They offer four 50% discount specials each month.


• Web pages from GEDCOM:   GedSite by John Cardinal is a new program that creates 'family tree Web pages from GEDCOM files. It generates narrative or grid style person pages, a master index, a surname index, source pages and any other pages you want to add. You can review the pages on your own computer before you share them via DVD or flash drive or publish them on the Web. I expect GedSite to be even more popular than John's other program (SecondSite for The Master Genealogist, which I use to create the family tree on my Website).


• Digitised records:   Many records from around the world have been digitised but not indexed. You just have to know how to find them! See Image-Only Collections.


• 53,000 names:   You'll find information about an amazing number of interstate and overseas folk, as well as locals, in records at Queensland State Archives. My Web site has over 53,000 names from original documents there. See the list of record types, with links to alphabetical lists of names.

(This post first appeared on http://updatesgenie.blogspot.com/2017/03/no48-genealogy-news-and-tips-worldwide.html.)
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No.46 (genealogy news and freebies worldwide)

Happy New Year! I hope these tips will get you off to a great start in 2017. Links open in new windows.

• Free access at FindMyPast:   For 4 days, from 10am 12 Jan to 11:59pm 15 Jan 2017 (GMT) FindMyPast (my favourite genealogy subscription site) is giving everyone FREE access to billions of birth, marriage, death & census records. You don't need to give credit card details - just register (free). You will be able to see images of many original parish registers! I've had huge success with this for my Yorkshire families in particular.


• Mackay (Qld):   FindMyPast now has indexes to Mackay records (funeral directors' records, and funeral notices from Melrose and Fenwick 1955-1984 and from Mackay's Daily Mercury 1984-2012).


• Passport records:   FindMyPast also recently added an index to passport registers 1915-1925. Applicants were in Australia, Canada, Papua, Ceylon, Fiji, China, England etc but the records are held in Queensland.


• Victoria:   This is a very exciting resource! Images of original Court of Petty Sessions records at the Public Record Office Victoria are now online, with defendants and complainants indexed. There are over 3 million records from 74 courts dealing with minor cases such as drunkenness and theft. Dates range from 1854 to 1985.


• Indexes & Sources:   40 of my favourite genealogy indexes and sources. Which is your favourite, and why?


• Trove Helper:   This nifty tool provides a series of clickable links to Trove newspaper search results based on the details you enter in Trove Helper. The results obtained by clicking each of the links is intended to quickly provide a reasonable starting point which can then be further refined on Trove.


• Saturday series:   My new 'Saturday series' of family history tips (quite different from last year's series) is now underway at Judy Webster - Queensland Genealogy.


• Boonah (Qld):   If you have family history in this area, see Boonah Branches.


• NSW Archives:   The State Archives and Records Authority of New South Wales is now called State Archives and Records NSW or State Archives NSW.


• Publishing family trees:   If you want to publish a family tree, read The Opt In Default.


• Recommended reading:   The Truth About Ancestry's Hints.

(This post first appeared on http://updatesgenie.blogspot.com/2017/01/no46-genealogy-news-and-freebies.html.)
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No.31 (genealogy worldwide)

Links open in new windows so you won't lose your place on this page. If a link won't work, try a different browser (I checked them with Chrome). If you share these tips, please say that you saw them on http://updatesgenie.blogspot.com.au.

• Rockhampton, Qld:  There is a family history beginner's course in Rockhampton on Sat. 13 Sep 2014 (9am to noon).


• (Updated Nov 2014)  NSW wills:  New South Wales will books 1800-1952 are back online. This magnificent resource includes wills for thousands of people from interstate and overseas, including Queensland! Search the index, then view the images of the original records (not just the transcriptions). My search tips are in 6 Genealogy Sources You May Have Overlooked.


• BDM index (NSW):  The new index on the NSW Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages site is rather challenging to use. Joy Murrin's tips make it easier.


• Postems:  Postems on FreeBMD describes a strategy that has worked brilliantly for me. If anyone in your family tree was born, married or died in England or Wales from 1837 onwards, try it!


• Congress 2015:  The Australasian Congress on Genealogy and Heraldry is in Canberra (ACT) next March. I'll be there! Register by 31 Oct 2014 to get the cheaper 'early bird' rate.


• Online trees:  You can now attach records to your family trees at FindMyPast.


• Discounts:  This week more offers were added to the Discounts and Freebies page. You can use ChangeDetection to monitor the page (look for the button 'Click here to receive email...'), but sometimes the email is delayed. To avoid missing last-minute offers that only apply for one weekend, check the page every Saturday.


• Although I don't agree with all the suggestions in the free downloadable e-book Family Tree Tips: 23 Secrets to Organize Your Genealogy, some of the ideas are good.

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No.3 (genealogy worldwide)

Links open in new windows so you won't lose your place on this page.

• Genealogy conferences:  Whether you are organising a conference or thinking about going to one, you will find useful tips in recent articles about attending genealogy conferences and speaking at genealogy events. You are welcome to add comments below each article.


• WorldConnect family trees:  CeCe Moore (My Tangled Vine) refers to many ways in which Google is useful for genealogy. She also says that many researchers with well-documented family trees do not put them on Ancestry, but they do put them on Rootsweb. Names from Rootsweb's WorldConnect trees are included in Google search results. Those on pay-to-view sites are not.


• Can you identify these photos?  They are mainly from Toowoomba and the Darling Downs.


• New index to immigrants 1922-1940:  The latest addition to indexes on the Qld State Archives Web site is an index to immigrants 1922-1940. Note, though, that you will usually find extra information in a different series of records. To find those records, search for (1) the person's name in the CARD index to immigrants, and (2) the ship's name in the CARD index to ships. The card indexes are in the Public Search Room at the Archives.


• Genealogy seminar at Townsville:  On Sat. 18th June I am giving two talks in Townsville: 'Who Else is Researching Your Family?' and 'My Favourite Archival Sources'. Admission is free. For more details, see my 'talks' Web page.


• NSW probate records:  Another 30,000 probate packets have been listed in Archives Investigator.


• London history:  Interesting articles in the London Historians blog may provide background and historical context for your ancestors' lives.


• Indexes for Wales:  The National Library of Wales has put indexes to wills, gaol records and marriage licences on the Internet.


• New Zealand:  New Zealand military records have been released on FindMyPast and Ancestry.


• Wanted:  One of my clients wants to buy Queensland birth death and marriage indexes 1915-1919 on microfiche. If you can help, email me and quote a price including postage in Australia.


• Recommended reading:  Profiling Your Ancestors.

Some of these tips are from other people, as shown on my Twitter page.