Thank You For My One Lovely Blog Award!

During my last blog binge (i.e. trying to get my Feedly under control again) I was caught by surprise to see may name & blog nominated by Pauline Cass for the One Lovely Blog Award!  This is my first year blogging & this is my first nomination / acknowledgement, so I feel honoured.  Thank you Pauleen, for the nomination but also for reading my blog :)

The rules for participating are:

• Thank the person that nominated you and link back to that blog – see above.
• Share seven things about yourself – see below.
• Nominate 15 bloggers you admire – also see below.
• Contact your bloggers to let them know you’ve tagged them for the One Lovely Blog Award

7 Things About Me:

1.       I am a primary school teacher in Western Sydney.

2.       I really enjoy my job.

3.       I have 2 children.

4.       I am a big reader.

5.       Stephen King is one of my favourite authors.  I think he’s one of the greatest writers of our time.

6.       I LOVE perfume & scented candles.

7.       I love finding out about ancestors I don’t know much about.

Bloggers I Admire & / or Read Regularly are:

Family History Across the Seas (Pauleen Cass) – Pauleen, I found your Beyond the Internet series last night & your week 48 focus on teachers prompted me to search the NSW archives for teacher records.  I now have a list of resources such as teachers rolls, teacher leave cards, teacher career cards, salary registers, results of teacher examinations & the records of the two schools that I know my ancestor worked at.  I’ll be popping into the State Archives on a Saturday morning very soon!

Janelle’s Family Tree Edition (Janelle) – I particularly liked the post about the Victorian BDMs being available for download & transferable to Excel.

Shauna Hicks History Enterprises – Although I haven’t contributed to it, reading 52 Weeks of Genealogical Records in 2014 gives me many ideas for my research.

The Tree of Me (Sharon)  - I like reading Sharon’s responses to Shauna’s 52 Weeks of Genealogical Records.

Kylie’s Genes (Kylie Willison) – I like the variety of topics on this blog.

The Dictionary of Sydney – Not purely genealogical, but this blog has regular historical articles about Sydney - people, places, things & events in Sydney.

Family Tree Frog (Alex) – Alex participates in a few different blog themes.

Geniaus (Jill Ball) – Jill’s pretty much the DearMYRTLE of Australia.

Hack Genealogy (Thomas MacENTEE) – There are some gems here, particularly for computers.

Geneabloggers – This resource provides blogging prompts & is a one-stop shop for finding other genealogy blogs.

Are My Roots Showing? (Jenny Lancelot) – I also like the variety of topics on Jenny’s blog, including her responses to the Geneablogger’s blog prompts.

DearMYRTLE – DearMYRTLE's blog links to her Youtube channel & also to her Hangouts on Air - I watch the recorded versions.

GeniAus' Hangout on Air - What a Month That Was #NFHM2014

I can now add another achievement to my list of activities for NFHM 2014 - I participated in +Jill Ball's (aka GeniAus) Hangout on Air recapping #NFHM2014.

This was my first hangout & Jill made me feel comfortable being a part of this.  Now this is saying something because I really don't like speaking in front of an audience (I'm even uncomfortable & self-conscious about speaking at grade assemblies).  So a special thank you both to Jill & the GeniAus community :)

The New NSW BDM Online Index

I have been using the new NSW BDM Online Index (Lifelink) today & I have to say I miss not having the district show up in search results.  In the past it has really helped me to identify the correct parents / family group in birth searches.  I hope it comes back.

This reminded me that I had missed GeniAUS's HOA about LifeLink from 2 weeks ago so I headed over there & watched it.  There is some good discussion about the issues with the new search facility & some of the workarounds.

I do like the idea of being able to group search results by spelling variants via Family Name.

Thanks for the tip to use the old online search facility +Jill Ball.  It took a bit of searching but I have the links & I'm bookmarking them, the Births & Deaths search page & the Marriage Search page.

Just to compare the results of searches, I tried a marriage search using the same parameters in both search facilities (using the *e / e* workaround that +Jill Ball suggested for the new search facility) & there was a huge difference - there were about 40 results in the new search compared to over 350 results in the old search.  This did give me an idea though, & I tried using only * in the bride's surname field & this produced many more results.

Accentuate the Positives 2013 Geneameme - Part 2

Here is Part 2 of my response to  +GeniAus' (+Jill Ball)  Accentuate the Positives 2013 Geneameme:

An elusive ancestor I found - pretty much every ancestor I've found!  Before I started researching my family history the only ancestors I knew where my grandparents & one set of great grandparents.  I knew three of my grandparents (my maternal grandmother died when my mother was a teenager) & I was very fortunate to know a great grandmother who lived well into her nineties.  I find it surprising that my parents know little of their own grandparents, but this is probably because their own grandparents died when they were young.

A newly found family member who shared - earlier this year I joined the Curran DNA Project - although this relies on Y-DNA, my research indicated that I was related to individuals mentioned in the project & my results came back showing that others in the project were cousins.  The administrator of the project, Marie, is a distant cousin in the US & she put me in contact with another cousin, Ken, in Australia.  He had been searching for information on my g grandfather's family so I was able to help him with that & he has shared some wonderful information with me.  Unfortunately, when he made the initial contact he was on his way out of the country for a year & didn't take all of his research with him.  What I found ironic about this was that his wife's best friend was the principal of the high school down the street from me, in fact she was the principal when my boys went there & I had a few meetings with her.  Not even 6 degrees of separation!

My 2013 blog post that I was particularly proud of - would have to be my first!

A new piece of software I mastered began using - covered in my previous post.

A social media tool I enjoyed using for genealogy - Blogs, definitely.

A genealogy conference / seminar / webinar from which I learnt something - Every webinar I have attended.  In the last year I have watched every webinar on Family Tree Webinars & I've attended several webinars run by the Society of Australian Genealogists.  I have also learnt a lot from Dear MYRTLE's Hangouts on Air, GeniAus's Hangouts & podcasts from Genies Down Under.

Accentuate the Positive 2013 - GeniAus' Geneameme

Just watching +GeniAus's latest Hangout On Air - Happy Dances.  I haven't mastered it, but I have started using a new software program, Evidentia.  I think it's especially useful for problem individuals in my tree.  It guides you in applying the GPS process & allows you to assemble evidence from a range of sources for any individual.  For example, I've started using it for one of my ancestors.  I've examined his Will and extracted all of the information from it.  I can now look at that ancestor, choose an event (say his children) and look at all evidence about his children from a range of sources that I examine & add.  Evidentia is available as a free 30 day trial version so that you can try it yourself.

I downloaded the trial version but didn't actually get around to using it before it expired.  Examining a copy of a Will I recently got from Cornwall gave me a lead on an ancestor's parents, which contradicted everything that I had found online.  This gave me the incentive & the opportunity to try out the program.  I did need to keep referring back to the Evidentia tutorials & DearMYRTLE's Hangout's the first time I used it, but after that it was very easy.  I can see ways I could use it to build up a case using several sources, which I don't think is really emphasised on the tutorials.

Another plus is that it cost less than $25 AUD (cue another happy dance!).

DearMYRTLE has discussed the Evidentia software on a few of her Hangouts & there are video tutorials and examples on both the Evidentia website and on YouTube.