Family Tree Frog

    How are you going with your Family History Bingo card for August, National Family History Month? One more day to go and I had hoped to achieve them all but some are still languishing. There have been so many great posts this week and I was particularly impressed by Jill Ball's bucket list , Pauleen's questions about succession and Claire's take on where she was and what was happening during the Census at various times in her life. I've had an extraordinarily busy week with babysitting for four days, bookclub one night, bridge another night, lunch with Dad and his partner for their birthdays and a sewing workshop.  Not much family history got done let me tell you! And so today, I vowed to make a start on a few fronts Plan a Research Trip This has not happened. Record an oral history interview  Nor has this.   Cap Badge for Navy - Edwin Conner born 1869 Portsea, England died Sydney Harbour 1927 Preserve a family heirloom I spoke to Dad today about plans fo...

Sepia Saturday   this week encourages us to consider the dogs in our life or past lives and maybe the training thereof.  I could bore you witless with tales of the Adorable Arwen. Adorable Arwen She is, without a doubt, the Apple of my Eye and walking companion par excellence.  She has us wrapped around her dew claw and we have to be careful not to give her too many treats or she will end up as tubby as me. Let's have a look at some other puppies in the family tree. My mother and father both grew up with dogs.  I desperately wanted a dog when I was very little.  A black spaniel, Dino, was duly purchased and given to me when I was about six I think.  But Dino did not like me one little bit so he had to go.  Then the dachshund across the road bit me on the knee when I went to visit Elizabeth-Anne, so I was a bit shy of dogs after that.  My friends had dogs who were all very lovely - Jill's beagle Jip and Judith's endless success...

X is for X-Craft You can imagine how delighted I was to find something beginning with X for the Blogging from A-Z challenge.  Thank goodness for my father's Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea.  It has truly saved my bacon. "Hazards of the Royal Navy" Chronicle (Adelaide, SA : 1895 - 1954) 29 May 1952: 12. Web. 25 Apr 2016 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article93924842>. X-craft were miniature submarines of 40 feet (12m) in length and operated by a crew of four.  As it was impossible within this overall length to handle a normal torpedo or to mount a tube through which to fire it, they carried instea tow large detachable side charges each containing two tons of explosive fired by a time fuse.  (p. 946 of the Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea ) You can read another interesting story about X-craft here.  This has been my contribution to the Blogging from A-Z challenge.

S is for Ships My father and I often have this exchange: Me:  That's a nice boat Him: That's not a boat.  It's a ship. Me: What's the difference? Him: It's too big to be a boat. Me: So how can you tell it's too big. Him: ..... I can't remember what he says next (if it floats, it's a boat is my logic and I tend to tune out to specifics).  I would probably have known the difference between a boat and a ship if I'd listened to him. But I didn't, so I was forced to google it the other day in preparation for this post. (Gasp of shock from fellow librarians)   Google told me that if you can put a boat on another boat, then it's a boat and the other one is a ship.  Or something like that. If you wish to investigate further then you can go here or here. Here's a ship for you. HMAS Choules RAN Can you see all the sailors lined up neatly on the deck? Here is a boat.  And my dear father. These p...

B is for Books (and Battleships) Don't forget to read books while researching your family history will you?  And read them over and over.  Any new area of research is challenging...filled with unfamiliar words and phrases.   Your brain is trained, I think, to look for the familiar.  It's a kind of efficiency mechanism.  We get so flooded with information that our brain, in processing the onslaught, hones in on the familiar - "Look, that's what you've seen before. Is that what you want?"  That's why learning is difficult.  We're looking at new things - a new ontology (there's a big word for you that I learned at Uni - I think it means a ways of capturing and analysing knowledge in a subject area).  Yet our brain scans continually for the old and previously encountered stuff beause it recognises it and, via shorthand, you know how to respond. So keep reading and re-reading until the new information/structure of the new subject...

Chart of the Pacific showing French, German, Spanish & British occupancies.This map of the Pacific Islands shows French, British, German and Spanish occupancy in the Pacific. It was lithographed from a British Admiralty map of 1884. French territories are shown in blue. From Archives New Zealand on  Flickr  A is for ADM. Welcome to the first of my posts for the A-Z Challenge.  I am a family historian/librarian and my chosen theme for this month is all things Navy!   My goal is to feature posts on everything from ships to archival records, from job descriptions to places associated with the Navy.   I am based in Australia but my heritage lies in the UK so when I say Navy, I will be referring to the Royal Navy and the Royal Australian Navy to a large extent. Please forgive my parochialism/ethnocentricity.   ADM is an acronym or abbreviation for  Admiralty  used with The National Archives series of records. Records within t...

Okay - it is well and truly time for me to reveal my theme for this, my first participation in the A to Z challenge.  I thought I would be the last to sign up for sure, being number 1459 - but there are now 1612 bloggers who have signed up for the festival.  It's not too late to join in.  There are 6 days left. So, my theme is all things Naval or the Navy.  I am researching my great-grandfather and my great-great-grandfather and their time working for the Royal Navy.   I will be looking at everything from ships to job descriptions and from records to places so....grab your cutlass and standby for some fun.  I hope you find the posts helpful for your own family history research or at the least amusing and/or interesting. Creative Commons Licence here.   Found on Flickr https://flic.kr/p/9pu4rp

Gramps This is the next photo in the February Photo Collage Festival dreamt up by the lovely Julie at Angler's Rest and cleverly named by the lovely Pauleen at Family HIstory Across the seas. Okay - let's have a change of gender. This photograph is obviously a copy of a copy. It bears the simple word "Gramps" on the back of it. I am assuming it is Edwin Conner - my father's grandfather - because of the uniform and it's in my paternal grandmother's family album. Edwin was born Christmas Day 1869 at 46 Albert Street, Portsea Island, Southampton in England and died in the Greycliffe disaster in Sydney Harbour 3 November 1927 at the age of 57 - nearly 58.  He was buried in the Methodist section of South Head Cemetery by a Salvation Army Minister.  There is a memorial page which I have just discovered on Find A Grave here . The newspapers said he lived at 58 Salisbury Street Watson's Bay. However his death certificate says he...