Family Tree Frog

Photo by photosteve101 on Flickr Here's what's on for the coming week Family and Local History wise in Brisbane and surrounds.

My great-grandmother, Eleanor Eliza Cook, was born  141 years ago tomorrow on 21 September 1874. I have written about her before but it bears repeating.   I have found some new information this evening which I need to record as well. Eleanor's birth certificate shows that her father James was a Gunner on the ship the Monarch and that her mother was Caroline (nee Jefferies).  They lived at 25 Orange Street Portsea. Eleanor was the eldest of many children.  According to the 1891 Census they were living in 120 Queens Road and the children were listed as follows: Eleanor E aged 16 Emma M aged 14 Beatrice L aged 10 Mabel aged 9 James T.R aged 8 Walter D aged 7 Albert H. aged 3 Frederick W. 2 Winifred I. 1 Caroline, Eleanor's mother was 39 years old at the time of the Census. According to the 1901 Census there were two more children: Grace L aged 9 and John F aged 7 A big family indeed. At the age of 17 Eleanor married Edwin Conner o...

This week's Sepia Saturday prompt is about washing...pegs...laundry...you know...that stuff that for some reason we did on Mondays.... Now we seem to do it on a daily basis.   I love this photo of my mother hanging out the washing in Edinburgh..she looks so hip and gorgeous. See how the clothes line is in the kitchen?  Neat huh?  For colder climes obviously. In Australia, our clothes lines are generally in the backyard because the weather is mostly fine.  In Queensland the washing can be dry in an hour or so - bliss! In my earlier share houses in Brisbane, the laundry was always under the house - often a cool place to be in the heat of summer as in this photo from Picture Queensland.... courtesy of John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland Sitting in the laundry at Maryborough, ca. 1929 Negative number: 164965 This house plan, also found on Picture Queensland, shows how the laundry (if not under the house) is located at the back of...

I'm going to try something new here...let me know what you think....I was inspired after watching a video on Dear Myrtle's You Tube Channel on how to share calendars. Thank you Dear Myrtle!

Sepia Saturday's prompt is an image from the California Historical Society.   It is an advertisement for H Boettcher, a wine grower from Los Angeles. Boettcher was a manufacturer and dealer in wines and brandies.  He owned the trademark for San Pedro Wines. Brisbane's climate (where I live) is sub-tropical whereas Los Angeles' climate is Mediterranean.  But there are a few wineries near Brisbane.  Places like Stanthorpe in the Granite Belt come to mind. And so I sip my glass of wine and ponder. Picture Queensland's database  has photos of the Clinton Vineyard or Colinton Vineyard at Coominya.  I hadn't heard of it before.   Coominya is 83km or 52 miles west of Brisbane in the Somerset Region.  It is in the county Cavendish and the Parish England.  Places near Coominya are Esk, the Wivenhoe Dam, Mount Tarampa and Buaraba Creek.  Last century, people called the area Bellevue, after the local pastoral property there...

At the beginning of the month I suggested that we spring clean or "pimp" our family history blogs. I tidied my blog up - design-wise - and am much happier with the look.  The font is bigger.  The background is light.  I think it looks much cleaner.  I hope it is much easier to read. I've been looking at my stats and created a score card  to analyse my top three blog posts of all time. I used Hemingway App and Wordle as tools for analysis.  My score card and analysis tool is here .  Please use it to analyse your family history posts if you think it's useful. My top scoring blog post in Google Terms and number of page-views was this one.    This post scored 2767 page views.   My headline was 11 words long. The optimal length is 6 words according to this author .  The post had only one picture and was 776 words long.  The optimal words length for a post according to Kevan Lee is 1600 words and according to this post ...