Month: January 2016

Letter F challenge

Miss W. Bryant, Chandler, Davey, Dixon, Smith , , , , , , , ,

In the early days of the colonies of Australia, there were three groups of people arriving – convicts, military and

Typical free settler hut

Free Settlers

The first free settlers came in 1793 and were Thomas Rose and his family on the ship Bellona. The government in Britain was trying to promote Australia as a place to go for keen and experienced farmers.

The first free settlers in Tasmania arrived with Lieutenant Governor Collins in 1804. The Maritime Museum had a display about early migration into Tasmania and one of my troublesome free settlers was mentioned on it.

Unlike the convicts, the government did not collect or keep good records of these early free settlers. Maybe they were mentioned by name on shipping lists or in personal papers of the people they worked for or if they got into trouble then there were in the government gazettes.

Often the shipping records would only mention the county they were from in England so it makes it difficult to try and find them back in the old country especially if they have a common surname.

My free settlers are:

John DAVEY – John was born in Devon, England. He was brought out to Tasmania as a servant to George Meredith on the East Coast of Tasmania.  He arrived in Hobart Town on 13 February 1855 on board ‘Wanderer‘.  John was occasionally mentioned in the ‘Meredith papers’ which are housed in the State Library Archives in Hobart.  He was recorded last at ‘Cambria‘ in January 1857.  His wages at this time were 7 pounds and 10 shillings per quarter.  Source: Meredith papers NS 123/1/69 TAHO – Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office  In the 1851 English Census there were over 50 possible John Davey born around 1834. I have narrowed it to a possible 7.

William SMITH – Lots of posts I have written about this ancestor who arrived in Tasmania sometime in the 1850’s from the Navigator Islands (Samoa) and was given the name William Smith. What is his Samoan name?

David DIXON – David and his wife Mary (nee PICKERING) arrived on 30 August 1841 on the ship ‘Andromeda’ with their young daughter Elizabeth. He was age 24 and a farm servant. The family arrived as bounty immigrants applied for by Mr Stevenson at Curramore property near Cressy.  Source CB7/9/1/1/ page 15 – TAHO

William CHANDLER – worked at a nursery at Enfield near London before coming to Australia with another family in the sailing ship Fortitude on 15 February 1855. They settled at Monavale in the midlands where he was the estates gardener. He was then employed as gardener at Government House but left to establish a garden south of Granton. After his marriage he returned to Government House as Head Gardener then before retirement worked at the Grange Taroona. (Mercury 23 July 1985)

Caroline BRYANT – arrived on the La Hogue which was a steamer, then on the Tasmania finally arriving in Hobart  19 Jan 1856 with her mother Charlotte Bryant (nee BULL).

William WYATT – my grandfather who I know nothing about except he married my grandmother and had my father. He then deserted the family and we think headed to New S0uth Wales.

Readers: Please leave a comment about my post or something beginning with F that relates to your family history or your research.

letter F

January Do Over

Miss W. General info , ,

Traffic lights

Creative Commons License Sarah Joy via Compfight

I have started.

I can nearly see the floor of the office area. Lots of old, stained and faded papers have been put out to use in the mulch – these were my handwritten notes from visiting the archives back in the 70’s and 80’s. All the data that I meticulously wrote out is now online via LINC Tasmania Family History and Heritage in the Tasmanian Names Index.  I am so lucky that most of my research from the early 1800’s is only in Tasmania and is either free settlers or convicts. Also lucky that our archives have now digitised all the BDM records from 1804 onwards.

I have ordered Legacy 8.0 from Gould Genealogy and that should arrive in the next week or so. I have joined the Legacy Users facebook group which has already been useful in answering my questions.

Update 1: One box sorted. Most was A4 sheets printed from my computer when I was researching Tasmanian convicts for people during the 80’s and 90’s. They would ask for help via roots web email lists or through RAOGK and I would head to the archives to check the microfilm and send replies back to them. Out of that full box, I have kept about 15 personal records and photos – the rest will go to mulch the garden.

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Update 2: Office area is now clean, desk is clear to be able to use, many of those records I kept are now in folders grouped under married couple names. Legacy 8 has arrived and I have still not installed it on the computer. Filing cabinet is has been cleaned out and very little kept as most of the info is now online. Some are letters from family members who gave me data after having attended a family reunion so will keep these as personal mail – this was in the time before emails.

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Update 3: All digitised documents and images are now stored in two folders on my PC. Luckily I haven’t done much scanning of documents and photos but that is for the future. Images I had scanned were labelled with SURNAMEfirstnameyear so at least I have started correctly and will only have to change a few to get a common naming pattern. If the images were from newspapers (Trove) I had included the citation info as a tag so I will have that handy when adding to Legacy database sometime this year.

Evaluation:

So part 1 of the January do over is now complete. I have set aside all my previous research and put it on hold in case it is needed in the future. This wasn’t really hard to do as despite having 40 years worth; most of it was already on my Master Genealogist database on my PC or was paper copies of what is now digitised here in Tasmania so will be easy to find when adding to my Legacy database. My office area is now so much tidier and I have found a desk under all the mess that had been there. Last step will be to mulch all the papers I have thrown away.

Part 2 of the do over is to prepare for my research. So here is my list of Golden Rules for Researching that I want to follow in future.

Golden Rules for Researching

  1. Spend no more than 5 hours per day researching genealogy or scanning images – remember I am retired so have plenty of time
  2. Only add data to Legacy database that has proof attached – include citation of sources
  3. When visiting archives or using internet, add information to Evernote so it syncs with home PC where Legacy will be saved.
  4. Create a research check list per person that can be ticked off when you have proof of that event – include citation on check list
  5. Once I have the basic names, dates and places of direct ancestors on the Legacy database, then research their stories for military, immigration and newspaper articles etc

My next step is to learn how to use Evernote before I add the Legacy software to my computer. I have added the web clipper to my PC at home and the Evernote app to my iPad. I have joined the Facebook page Evernote for Genealogists group and am sure I will have some questions as I start using it.

Readers: If you are following Thomas MacEntee’s Genealogy do over or go over, do you think there is anything more I need to add to this post? Reading his workbook, I wasn’t sure about his ‘warm up’ exercises?

 

2016 Genealogy Do Over

Miss W. General info , , ,

geneabloggers-z2nskmThis year I have decided to do Thomas MacEntee’s Genealogy do over. It is a 12 month course in improving your family history research and genealogy skills. You look at the tools to use especially using technology and the methodologies for sourcing correctly etc. You also look at using social media to share research. These things have changed tremendously over the 40 years I have been researching my family history.

There is a workbook you can download or purchase in hardcopy to help with keeping yourself on track. Each month tasks are suggested to help you get back on track with your research and have fun while doing it. See link in first paragraph for the download link.

January Tasks:

  • Setting previous research aside
  • Preparing to research

The first month includes putting away what you have already done. This could be very tough, but as I am going to start using a new software programme called Legacy Family Tree, this means I can totally start afresh.

I already have over 10000 people on my database using The Master Genealogist, which is now no longer being updated. Names. dates, places have been added via my research, emails from relatives and information gathered from family reunions over the last 40 years. But not everything has sources and I am not sure if I have created the sources correctly that I have used.

So this year will be a great chance to start my database again and add all data correctly sourced this time. I will probably only do direct line and siblings rather than adding all descendants.

My first step is to clean out boxes and folders with lots of hand written data and purchase the Legacy programme. I thought I already had one at home, maybe I will find it when I do some cleaning up in the office area. As I get more work completed, I will keep updating this post over the month of January. From the little bit I have already done today, I am feeling the effects, sneezing most of the evening from the dust.

My second step will be to collate any files about family history that I have on my computer into folders and sub folders by surname. This shouldn’t take very long.

Thomas says anything you have paid for can be used but only the data on that certificate not any notes you might have added. I don’t have very many paid certificates as most of my data has been from microfilm, microfiche and then printed while at the archives in Tasmania. Though I suppose these could count as paid – they were 20 cents per sheet.

The second section about preparing to research means I might put together some check lists of things to find out about each person I am going to add to my database. I found that Cyndi’s List has some to use on Evernote and as I am going to use that for my research records, I will set them out on that. That way I can sync my desktop, my laptop and my iPad with all the same info.

Readers:

Is anyone else doing the genealogy do over? What is going to be the hardest thing or most interesting thing about the first month? Please leave a comment.