Month: December 2014

Who is William Smith?

Miss W. Family History Course, Smith , ,

William SMITH is my great great grandfather but from his application for a Master Mariners certificate he was born in the Navigator Islands in 1840. Therefore he should have a Samoan sounding name.

 

Master Mariner certificate

 

Here is a scan of Master Mariner PDF to see it enlarged.

I have also seen it mentioned in a book which is a secondary source 1

Captain William Smith arrived in Tasmania in an open boat (from who knows where) and sailed up the Derwent into the waiting arms of officialdom. He was accepted and given the name “Smith”.

I am going through the Marine Board shipping log records at the moment trying to find when he first had his name changed to William SMITH. But I am stuck on the boat name between Offley and Calypso in the certificate above.  They are all whaling boats so far always in and out of Hobart.

Shipping logs are a great primary source as it is filled in when a sailor agrees to serve on board a ship. Information included is:

  • Signatures of each crew member – both Christian and Surname in full
  • Age when signing agreement
  • Place of birth – can be any of these city/town/country/state
  • Ship in which he last served and port the ship belonged to
  • Place and date of discharge from that ship
  • Place and date of entry onto this ship
  • In what capacity they will serve
  • Time when he should be on board – usually at once or a date given
  • Wages per month or voyage
  • Lay – black oil, sperm oil, whalebone
  • Amount of wages advanced
  • Amount of monthly allotment

Readers:  Can anyone using the PDF work out a possible boat name for me?

  1. Poulson, Bruce. Recherche Bay: A Short History. Southport Tas.  Southport Community Centre, 2004. Print. ↩

Interview questions

Miss W. Family History Course, Smith , ,

Pushfit cube question mark
Creative Commons License Photo Credit: Leo Reynolds via Compfight

As part of the discussions on the family history course, we have to work out six questions we will be asking at our interview. We also have to mention why we think these will be helpful to our research and what did we think of  Thompson‘s suggestions.

Last night I read through the summary of the chapter by Thompson about interviewing and the types of questions that will get lots of information from your interviewee. It is similar to what we did in teaching; the how and why questions are better than just who, what, where and when. The last four will give facts but the why and how will give reasons.

So this is what I wrote in my discussion area:

I am going to hopefully interview a SMITH cousin who lives at Oyster Cove, Tasmania. His father is my grandmother’s youngest brother (I think).

So other than the basic when and where born etc, I want to add more information to the tree about social life and family life.

So here are my questions:

1. Where did you live as a child and who were your most common visitors?

2. Where did you go on holidays and was it with/to family?

Now questions about his father:

3. What do you know about your dad’s life as a child? Who did he live with and where?

4. Who were the people your dad often talked about? Were they relatives, friends or working buddies?

Now questions about his paternal grandparents:

5. Did your dad ever talk about his parents? What did he tell you about them?

6. What have you found out about your grandparents during your research? Where did you find out that information?

I know that Glenn and his wife are also researching the SMITH side of the tree so will be great to join our knowledge and add it to my blog here.

Now that I look at the questions, none are why or how at the beginning. But I think asking these questions will still gather more information to add to my tree and perhaps lead to more research areas in future.

The Thompson summary was great in that it asked questions in chunks – firstly the interviewee him/herself then progressing to parents and grandparents. Also dividing again into smaller chunks like early childhood, schooling, life at home, marriage, children.

To my readers: Are there any other questions you think I should be asking Glenn that could add to my family tree? Here is a link to what I know so far.

STOP PRESS  UPDATE

I just did a google search about “Voice of the past: Oral History” and came up with an Oral History society in Australia with lots of resources.

Sources of information

Miss W. Family History Course ,
First page of letter re Ann JACKSON

Since beginning the course we have been told about the importance of collecting primary source data. Our second video this week was by Stefan Petrow about primary and secondary sources. Here are my notes.

Approach your sources with a set of questions in mind – on the trail of a problem

Seven steps to good research

  1. Ask right questions
  2. Find relevant documents
  3. Search in documents
  4. Taking notes by summarizing or quoting
  5. Writing arguments or stories from info
  6. Position yourself in relation to what others have written
  7. Draft, edit and revise to produce polished piece of historical prose

Fun lies in finding interesting information, continually finding more questions and documents

Don’t ignore evidence that is not what you expect to find

Primary Sources

First hand accounts of an event and created during time event took place or created retrospectively by a participant in the event

Best form of evidence is original document or record – next can be scanned or microfilmed or photocopy of original

Seven categories of primary sources

  1. Family
  2. Public
  3. Institutional
  4. Newspaper and post office directories
  5. Non written sources
  6. Physical evidence
  7. Oral history

Newspapers often secondary source as journalist not always at the event

Basic questions to ask re primary sources

  1. Where and when was record made – published or personal
  2. Who made it
  3. For what purpose – official or personal
  4. Did info come from someone with personal knowledge of facts
  5. What conventions exist that shape info – church vs tax lists vs census
  6. Reason for informant to provide inaccurate info – bias
  7. Corroborating testimony

As family historians weigh evidence – don’t blindly accept information – evaluate and record sources – trace back to primary record

John Tosh’s book about history – research carefully and systematically, gather lots of information from lots of sources

Secondary sources

Written after the event – sometimes based on primary sources

Provide background information relating to life or period of time in your families life.

Questions re secondary sources

  1. Who is author – claim to expertise – do they have bias
  2. Book or article for general audience or scholarly work – sources clearly set out
  3. Claim of author, interpretation or range of evidence

Footnotes are most important to cite your sources for future generations and researchers

The primary source used for the image above was found at the National Archives of Ireland in June 2014. I used the “Outrage papers of Donegal for 1847” looking for any reference to my JACKSON family.

For my readers: What has been the most unusual primary source you have found with information relating to your family history research?