Family Tree Frog

It's my favourite time of the year when I get to reflect back on what I've done over the past 12 months - in a good or positive way - thanks to geneabuddy GeniAus. Wanna join me?  Copy and paste the relevant items below and then email Jill or comment on her blog post here to let her know you're participating too. So here goes me.... Accentuate the Positive ! (Please delete the items that are not relevant to your situation.) 1.  An elusive ancestor I found was barp on this one I'm afraid.  Who are my elusive ancestors?  Well I guess Margaret Jones from Caernarvonshire, Wales (can I actually find her and her family in Wales?) and Robert Forfar from St Ninian's, Stirling, Scotland (where did he die?).  On my husband's side of the family we would be delighted if we could find the burial place for Robert James Daw born in Brisbane in 1873.  I suspect we will never find him as he was on the run from the law.  Last heard of at Augathella.  I am reading ...

The fabulous and amazing Jill Ball from Geniaus has invited us once again to reflect on our Geneayear.  What a great tradition.  Here are the questions with the proviso that we Accentuate the Positive and stop lashing ourselves for those things we didn't get round to or achieve: 1.  An elusive ancestor I found was Thank goodness for death notices.  I discovered my ancestor Peter Sinclair was a librarian at the Parliamentary Library in Melbourne on this blog post here.  2.  A great newspaper article I found was I reckon I found a photo of my maternal grandmother and her twin sister at Randwick Destitute Asylum in The Star in 1908 as per this blog post here.   3.  A geneajourney I took was I had hoped to go to the NSW Family History Conference in Orange this year but we mustn't be maudlin.  By all accounts it was fantastic.  Shauna Hicks reports on it here. 4.  An important record I found was Peter Sinclair's death certifica...

Today I'm taking a quick break from the #AtoZChallenge to participate in good old Sepia Saturday.  Yes I know it's Sunday here in Orstralia but in some parts of the world, it is still Saturday so....as soon as I saw this picture I knew which one from my collection I wanted to use.  Here it is... Flat at Summer Hill in Nowranie Street It's a bit of a crappy old dirty picture isn't it?  But there's some writing on the back which I think must be my mother's writing....except for the bit in darker ink down the bottom which is mine. Transcription: This ain't no master-piece but its not bad, considering, is it?  I mean, I didn't have the proper equipment. I vos very surprised and pleased.  Doesn't the chair look good?  Looks like a ????  I had it on about 20 books to get the height.  Dad would have corpsed. And then my words are Flat at Summer Hill (Arthur Mee's).  I think my words were written maybe 20 years ago after my ...

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...

Julie Goucher from Angler's Rest says: Today is week 57 of what is a 15 month project.  This week's prompt is - Life Chapters Is your life divided into chapters? How has that happened? Has it naturally evolved? Can you easily reflect where one chapter ends and another begins? Are there any surprises? Are those Chapters determined by people and / or places / or significant events? As a person who loves books, these questions have great resonance and give one much food for thought.  Speaking of food....and with apologies to my vegan, vegetarian friends... Seared emu loin, native spiced black pudding, smoked potato, Illawarra plums I ate emu for the first time yesterday.  I joked with my father that it was revenge for an emu stealing my apple many years ago at Tidbinbilla Reserve.  Yes the revenge was a bit disproportionate to the crime, I agree. Why did I choose emu?  Goodness, only knows.  Sometimes I leap ch...