gathering dust

Yes, yes, I am aware that it is now 16 days into 2015 but the truth is between finishing my Masters, getting the results - I passed of course - Christmas, New Year and the beginning of this week; I kind of just collapsed. In a heap. And did a whole lot of nothing. Well, if nothing is defined as eating too much, drinking too much and reading a whole lot of novels. But thanks to Janelle, over at Janelle's Family Tree Addiction , I was back into the swing of things by the 13th. You see Janelle was lovely enough to organise a day trip and tour of the State Records Office at Kingswood. So spurred into productivity I preordered 4 probate packs but didn't think about what further I might want to look at. One can only be so organised when one is still off in the land of novels and general laziness. The tour of the archives lasted about an hour and was a brilliant look at the masses of buildings, shelvings and infrastructure needed to house the State Archives and the Government Doc...

Um hello. Yes, it has been awhile, but my Masters project was submitted last week and suddenly my time is once again my own. Well except for job hunting and hausfrau-ing, the latter of which I am unbelievably terrible at.  It runs in the family ;) Of course now that I am ready to pick up my research again I have found myself in a bit of a pickle. My notes are in absolute chaos and I cannot remember exactly what it was I was working on. Not to mention the build up of untagged and unfiled documents and photos. And my favourite genealogy program; The Master Genealogist becoming obsolete. Where should one start?

The year has been creeping away from me. Not much genealogy has been done in the past few months as I have been head down and concentrating on my Master's but with recent contact from various relatives and a couple of weeks break I am enthusiastic and ready to dive in again

Last night I attended a 2 hour session on Writing Interesting Family Histories by Carol Baxter  at Hornsby Library. Carol is a fabulous speaker and the information she imparts is invaluable. Her intent is to encourage and help family historians break away from the habit of listing dry facts and dates and instead create engaging narratives, to write histories. I just wanted to hug her, because she encourages people to do all the things that, due to my history training, I am almost desperate for people to do: read widely, understand the context and properly cite your bloody sources! I know the gentleman sitting behind me will probably ignore the latter message [oh the snarky comments I could make about some of the overheard conversations and audience questions] but if even half the audience internalises these 3 things as the take home message, I shall be happy. So, what was my take home message? How to approach the happy medium in writing. I have spent so long in academia th...

Well it appears I may have found the antecedent to that bushranger anecdote passed along by my father: "HIGHWAY ROBBERIES ON THE GREAT NORTHERN ROAD." The Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser  (NSW : 1843 - 1893) 22 Dec 1863: 3. Web. 26 Feb 2014 < http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article18711885 > Mrs Friend being Mary Maria Friend (nee Baker), my 4th Great Grandmother and the outlaw she met none other than Captain Thunderbolt  or at least someone purporting to be him.

I often joke that I am related in someway to half the people in the town that I grew up in, and with my maternal grandmother's family having been in the region since the 1840s it is pretty true. So it is no surprise that when Mum and Dad came to visit this weekend Dad had plenty of family anecdotes and gossip to share. He'd been to have his hair cut and the barber is his second cousin. They talked a lot it seems about their mutual great-grandmother Julia Christiana Boss later Winter then Bird. I have a bit of a fascination with this part of the family due to the lashings of scandal  that make life interesting. In any case I now have the following tidbits: Julia was, according to our cousin, born in Australian waters and as such was an Australian Citizen. Now this is something I have been having trouble proving, she is not listed as one of the births on the Commodore Perry. The family was questioned as enemy aliens during WWI.  As such I really hope I can find t...

because I'm not having any luck finding an arrival for Patrick Lynch (b.1832, Ireland d. 1891, NSW) his wife Bridget nee McGraie/McGrail or his children Mary (b. 1856, Scotland?) and John (b. 1857, Scotland?). I have a marriage record for 1855 in Scotland and a birth record for a daughter Annie in 1859 in Wellington NSW but between that... Yeah. They swam.