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Showing posts from May, 2016

Not a National of the German Reich

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On Wednesday I was a bit excited to receive a nice thick package from the Royal BC Museum or British Columbia Archives.   It was the will and probate for Edward Forfar.  From when I placed the order online to receiving it in the post, it took about 2 weeks - how good is that? There was no less than 37 pages to sift through.  In an ideal world I would have been able to go the Museum myself and look at what was in the file and pick and choose what I wanted copied.  But the Museum is in Canada and I am in Australia.  I am very grateful to the Museum staff for their quick and speedy attention to my request.   The third page of the package contained a really interesting phrase which I hadn't seen in any family history documents before.  The document was a sworn oath made by a solicitor basically saying that he was the solicitor for the executor of the estate and that he knew Edward Forfar.  The last part of his oath reads as follows: " That I well knew the said Edward

Sepia Saturday 330: 14 May 2016

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Alan Burnett from Sepia Saturday says: Our theme image this week shows a type-setter at work. It comes from the collection of the Netherlands National Archives and is part of their Flickr stream. Whatever type of old image you want to share for Sepia Saturday 330, just include it in a blog post, post your post on or around Saturday 14th May 2016 and then add a link to it on the list below. Having nothing in my own collection to match the image prompt, I duly searched Picture Queensland . The image below was one of the results that emerged from the search term "type". Illustrated page from The Queenslander annual, November 4, 1935, p. 37  - courtesy of the John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland This is a cropped image, I hasten to add....and here is the caption: If you want to see the original image go here. Being the family historian that I am, I of course want to know a bit more about Miss M. Morrow.  Grove Crescent Toowong is reason

Merry Month of May Movie Meme

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Lovely Genimate Pauleen Cass from Family History across the seas came up with this great meme. Wanna play along?  Here are the questions: What’s the earliest movie you can remember? My mother told me that the first movie I ever saw was A Hard Day's Night with the Beatles but the first I can remember is probably Fantasia. Where did you go to the movies (place or type of venue)? For the most part, when I remember movie going days I'm thinking of Canberra. There were a couple of places to go in the 70s - there was a pretty uninspiring cinema in the heart of town - the Civic - but it had all the big movies so I saw Chitty Chitty Bang Bang there and Sound of Music I think.  Our favourite cinema by far was the Center Cinema and I have blogged about it and other cinemas/drive-ins here. Did you buy movie programs? Um no?  Did they exist? Why was I not told?  Did you take in food and drink (and what did you like)? Yes.  I never tired of Fantales and reading all

A Wedding and a Will before breakfast

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Wedding cake for June's wedding crafted by Kit McLoughlin (nee Forfar) - my maternal grandmother A short post today.  I just had to crow about finding a marriage between Edward Forfar and Mary Kinniburgh this morning before breakfast. As I sat down with my early morning cuppa, I was chuffed to find a reply to a query I made to the Prince George Genealogical Society in my Inbox.  An exchange of emails made me think a bit harder about where I should be looking for Eddie and Mary's marriage and I realised that I had confined my search to just one province - British Columbia.  So I started to head east...I looked in Alberta - no luck - I looked in Saskatchewan - no joy. Manitoba? Bingo! Edward Forfar and Mary Kinniburgh married on 10 October 1921 in Winnipeg. The registration number is 1921-038153.  I searched here.   It will cost me about $30 to get a copy of the certificate which I think I will order just because I might get all sorts of interesting information includi

Eddie/Ernest Forfar and Canadian Research

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Walter William Forfar in wheelchair with grand-daughter Shirley Wingfield and Ray Jeffrey  My great-grandfather Walter William Forfar, also known as Dick Forfar was one of three brothers.  This post is about his older brother Ernest Albert Forfar also known as Eddie Forfar .   I would love to post a picture of Eddie Forfar here but I think I would be breaking all sorts of copyright laws.  Instead, can I please encourage you to click here and view the pastel portrait of Eddie by Kathleen Shackleton, sister of antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Schackleton.  Kathleen was commissioned by the Hudson Bay Company to produce portraits of "men and women of the North". I want to discover more about Eddie but have never done research in Canada before so I thought I would share some thoughts about my journey and tips and tricks in case they help you too in your family history research. What are my research questions?  What do I know already? What I know Ernest Albert Forfar