WikiTree

Australia Project challenges

Miss W. General info, WikiTree , , ,
AI_Solution / Pixabay

I haven’t been doing too much of my own family research lately. Instead I have been taking part in the Australia Project challenge in WikiTree.

Each month there is a different challenge:

  • January – 20th century connecting
  • February – clean up Australian profiles
  • March – Miners connections
  • April – World War I profiles connections
  • May – Mother’s Day connections
  • June – clean up Australian profiles
  • July – cemetery connections

The idea of these monthly challenges is to connect a profile to the big WikiTree rather than having them alone in the WikiTree website. Statistics at the moment say:

  • Over 1 million members of WikiTree
  • Over 42 million people connected as ancestors and cousins
  • Over 15 million have DNA connections

The person organizing most of the challenges sorts the profiles into individual states of Australia, so I have been working on the Tasmanian profiles for each challenge. Sometimes the person in the challenge may have been born in Tasmania or Van Diemen’s Land, married there also but then died in another state. That means I am learning how to use the birth, death and marriage record searches in those other states. Using Trove for newspaper articles under family notices or obituaries can also be helpful.

There is a group of people who are members of various Australia Project Teams who take part in these challenges each month. If I get stuck and can’t work out how to connect a profile to the big tree of WikiTree then there is always help from others. Many of them are members of Discord where I can ask for help and get a reply very quickly.

I really enjoy using WikiTree as you have to include sources when adding a new person to the tree.

Readers: Are you a member of WikiTree? What do you enjoy most about using WT?

A surprise in your research

Miss W. Davey, WikiTree

My answer:

One surprise was when researching John Davey born in Devon around 1834.

I had travelled in England in 1990 and stayed in a bed and breakfast in Clyst Honiton near Exeter in Devon while doing that research. I began with over 50 John Davey born around 1834 in Devon. By the end of three days research, I had him down to one of seven possibilities by using 1851 and 1861 censuses using microfilms.

Little did I know then that 30 years later, I would make contact with a Davey relative through a DNA match. The match said John Dav(e)y and his parents and siblings lived in Clyst Honiton back in the 1830s.

Social media from the ancestors

Miss W. WikiTree , ,

My answer:

Here in Australia we are so lucky to have lots of digitized newspapers where we can actually see what our ancestors posted on their social media of the day. My parents always used to check the hatch, match and dispatch as they called the births, marriages and deaths columns of the local paper. But nowadays less and less of these records are now found in the papers.

But my ancestors also had their divorces reported in the paper. If they were caught up in a court appearance, what they said was reported word for word. If they bought or sold land, it would often appear in the papers. Of course, after an ancestor passed there could also be an obituary telling their life story, often as they had told their children so not necessarily accurate especially if they had been a convict in the early years of our country.

Readers: What exciting news might your ancestors have posted on their social media?