Remembering school years

macdeedle / Pixabay

What do you remember about your school years? Was it a good time in your life? Have you found out anything about your ancestors school lives?

Our questions this week were:

  1. Share some memories of school -funny, happy or inspiring -sad or scary -school rules – tough or easy
  2. Let’s hear about the teachers and school friends
  3. Tell us about your family schooling traditions, school traditions, does your school still exist? Have you visited it?
  4. What about your ancestors education? -have you found their school records or reports? -what records have you found & where? -any teacher discoveries?

Memories

  • Carmel has written a great post about school day memories.
  • Fran has written about her first day at school.
  • Jennifer – We made Waldorf salad in cookery. I didn’t and still don’t eat dressing so I refused to eat it. they made me sit there through the next two classes until I ate it. I didn’t care. I didn’t eat it. Teacher hated me after that.
  • Pauleen – Stubbornness wins! I never had a cooking class at school – the joys of the science class.

  • Sandra – I just remembered, In year 2 I used to write back to front and right to left. Must have been interesting for the teacher. In college, I wrote the same for some notes because I got bored. I’m left-handed if that explains it
  • Pauleen – I have to say I have very fond memories of my high school and its advanced learning opportunities with language and science labs, good teachers and a fab library. I finally felt like I belonged somewhere.
  • Jo – 2 different primary schools & 2 different high schools – though 2nd high school was the 1 I was supposed to go to in Yr 7 so knew some of them. 1 primary school new school – 8 students & I was only girl for a while
  • Jill – In my final years was a gopher for the boarders. I used to post their letters to bypass the censors (nuns) and used to buy all sorts of contraband except alcohol.
  • Jennifer – We recited the times tables over and over every day. They were imprinted on our brains. I’ve never forgotten them
  • Sandra – Not a tradition but we were given a rating first to last in the class. It always motivated. Wouldn’t be able to do that now
  • Carmel – at boarding school we were not allowed to wear “witches britches” – remember those long knickers, usually coloured and sometimes with frills – fashion in the late 60s
  • ANZ – I always wanted to go to boarding school – I think it was all those English books about tuck boxes and midnight feasts. Am sure it wasn’t always like that!
  • Pauleen – I felt for some of our boarders who had a terrible time with teachers but couldn’t speak or write to parents without censorship. Mr Cassmob only saw his parents once or twice a year once a boarder. We made sure our girls never boarded.
  • Maggie P – we had a roster to take turns with torch and clock to stay awake until midnight. I was a heavy sleeper. Took torch in my sleep I think. Someone else woke up and we went downstairs for our feast about 1am.
  • Jill – My most vivid memory was spending two months in hospital in the term prior to our Leaving Certificate. I scraped through. I put a lot of weight on in hospital and wouldn’t go to our end of year celebration because I was so fat – nearly 9 stone
  • Sandra – At primary school, every report said I was too quiet. In year 3 someone poked me in the back with a pencil and I turned around and told them off. I got into trouble and I never forgave that teacher. Mum had to bribe me with a bag of lollies to go back.
  • Jill – I remember us all rubbing ourselves with a bush that gave us a red rash. We were hoping the school would be closed if enough of us got measles
  • Fran – We had out hems measured at a govt. high school. If you leaned forward you could reduce the measurement. I think there was a line of girls leaning forward.
  • GenXalogy – I adored school. I attended three different high schools: a country public school, then two private schools in ‘town’. MUCH stricter rules at the latter! Maths test in about week 3… teacher left the room and nobody cheated or even stopped working/talked!!
  • Pauleen – Frightening memories of primary school, aged 5, being told in graphic detail by my teacher, a nun, what the communists would do to us when they came. This during the “Reds under the beds” scare. Stayed with me for years.
  • Carmel – Boarding school not at all like the story books but I did make some great friends in 5 years there. Was a huge change from a 2 teacher country school, I met girls who even had their own bedroom!!!!
  • Hilary – We had an outside toilet block at primary school in the 1960s
max_gloin / Pixabay
  • Fran – Us too. When my brother started school he was afraid of going there as it was stuck out the back so I had to wait outside for him. Unfortunately, a teacher told me off for hanging around the boys’ toilet so got moved on. Brother was not happy when he came out.
  • Pauleen – School rules weren’t intimidating for me as I was a compliant, well-behaved child (yes, things change!). As a prefect in high school one of my jobs was to ensure compliance with uniform rules etc.
  • Jennifer – My happiest memory of school is riding my bike to and from every day. Rain hail or shine!
  • Sue – Changing schools at high school was terrible – lost all my friends but loved library at new school
  • Hilary – in primary school we had a carpet in the library created static and metal shelving made for some shocks
  • Jill – I can remember being told that people in mixed marriages were evil. I couldn’t see much wrong with my parents! But this was mostly in secondary school. Sister Eugene was a fearmonger/ She was relegated to the tuckshop when I was in third year.
  • Jennifer – Strong memories of very strict rules on school uniform. Who remembers those drab grey winter tunics with box pleats. They looked dreadful on this chubby teenager.
  • Sue – Missing three months of school to travel around Australia as a family, having to teach my brother how to write in cursive while we were in Darwin. Teacher asked me to keep a journal about what we saw and learnt, but my brother’s teacher organized daily lessons which I ended up making sure he did, beginning of my teaching career.
  • Jennifer – I loved library class and just being in the library. I enjoyed shorthand, typing and accounting. I was good at those subjects
  • Maggie P – Doing a short musical in Std 3- aged about 9. I was supposed to help an old man onto a ‘log’ but they forgot to put it on stage until the end of the scene! Loved performing anyhow.
  • Pauleen – Dozens of girls climbing the wooden stairs to the concert hall at high school, making nary a sound with shoes or chatting. Sitting stiff as a board during a performance and not looking around or fidgeting.
  • Carmel – in primary was in a small 2 teacher school learnt lots from older kids in same room. Was always frustrated with prescribed readers, just gave a snippet from a longer novel
  • Jennifer – When I think of school, I think of how much hated it. Primary school was ok but I hated going to secondary school
  • Pauleen – Unhappy memories: at a Catholic primary school feeling often “odd man out” as an only child of a mixed marriage.
  • Fran – My memories of school are both good and bad. Good: one teacher that read out to the class a Famous Five Adventure so I then just had to read books with chapters after that. The first one took ages. By the end of the series I was a much faster reader.
  • Sue – Playing softball with friends, then missing those same friends when changing to another school
  • Jill – We used to do a lot of marching at school – The nuns used to take over Victoria Street, Kings Cross and march us up and down at lunchtime.  The nuns encouraged us to be modest and wear petticoats under our uniforms. I was severely castigated by Sister Christine when she spotted my bright red half-slip. Good girls didn’t wear red underwear!

Friends and teachers


  • Brooke – Most disliked teacher Subbed for 1 term in grade 3. He used to fire staples & blackboard dusters at us. I kicked him in the shins for teasing me. I got in trouble.
  • Maggie – We had a sub maths teacher throw blackboard dusters at us. He ended up having a nervous breakdown (wasn’t me!) and leaving.
  • Fran – I had one teacher that Mum made cry because he wrote something in my report that was not true so he could not be a good teacher if he thought this. He was much nicer to me the next day at school.
  • Jo – music teachers at both schools favourites – now friends on FB! Disliked my Yr 7 English teacher – we were always in trouble. Still friends with school friends and been to 10 yr & 20yr reunion of 2nd high school (no 30yr one organised!)
  • Jennifer and Fran and Sue – I’ve never considered attending a school reunion. That would be my biggest nightmare
  • Carmel – School reunions never appealed to me either but I was contacted for the 50th and set up a private FB group, we all shared photos and a lot of laughs, was quite glad I wasn’t in SA for the actual event but facetimed with them on the night.
  • GenXalogy – My favourite teachers were ones who weren’t afraid to toss out the script and do something completely different. Ms. Dawson (Yr 8 HASS, no relation), Mrs. Merriman (Yr 11 English). Props to Ms. Abbott (Yr 8 English) for starting me off on family trees.
  • Maggie – There were a couple of very special teachers during my school years, who kept me sane (and at school). I was glad to leave and get on with life
  • Jennifer – I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Funny thing is I’ve loved learning as an adult
  • Jill – My two besties from school are good friends. I attend each of our ten yearly reunions. It’s interesting to see the girls have developed. About 20 of us meet up every few months around Sydney. Covid has put a spanner into the works with that.
  • Pauleen – I’ve been to one primary school reunion years ago which was interesting. Despite living at a distance I’ve been to a few high school reunions over the years – interesting to see how we’ve changed and how things that once mattered no longer do
  • Jill – I don’t know how those nuns coped with the huge classes. In our final year English class we had 55 girls.
  • Maggie P – We went to boys’ Catholic HS for physics and chemistry in my last two years of school. Br Luke would never embarrass a girl in front of the boys- always checked we had right answer before asking us. Once gave me 11/10 for a problem, boys couldn’t cope.
  • Sue – I loved Mrs Chalmers, my grade 6 teacher, probably my incentive to teach, 4 of my friends in that class also became teachers. Even went to her funeral
  • Pauleen – I don’t remember any teachers especially disliking me at primary school other than because dad wasn’t a Catholic. He wasn’t as subservient to them about disciplinary action either.
  • Hilary – my language teacher also taught classics neither were my strong subjects I wanted to learn Latin as thought it might help in my career
blende12 / Pixabay
  • Pauleen – My favourite teacher at high school was Sr Mary Benedict – she was such a smart dynamic woman who taught my science subjects. Sr Mary St Christopher who taught physiology in Junior. Sr Mary Borgia taught German very well.
  • Jane – I think I have blocked my school years out … I do recall that I found Art particularly traumatic in primary school because of the mismatch between what I could see in my head and my inability to draw it
  • Sue – I had a German person teaching me French and a French person teaching me German in high school, I loved languages
  • Fran – I think that I was fortunate to have many of my high school teachers and uni lecturers from different countries. Being from a small town in NZ this widened my horizons heaps.
  • Jill – Sister Casimir in 5th and 6th class used to borrow books for me on her library card so I’d have more to read.

Traditions

  • Remember the days when they printed everyone’s exam results in the newspaper … couldn’t do that these days!! – Jane
  • And you’d head to the newspaper outlet to find out your results. Didn’t go well the first year in uni when I bombed some subjects…not at all popular with parents – Pauleen
  • None of my family were teachers in past generations – they were lucky to get to school given they were regularly on the move. My husband’s family has a tradition of teaching which continues today. – Pauleen
  • All schools I went to still exist. Did 1 lot of prac teaching at 1st high school! – Jo
  • Search family memorabilia for school photos; old school report cards; books that may have been awarded as prizes (I have a few from ancestors); Facebook pages for the school or school photos. Ask relatives. I have my grandmother’s Scottish certificate. – Pauleen
  • My primary school still exists & my niece & nephew go there. Sometimes Mum picks them up so she has been at that school gate since 1976. My high school still exists too…you might have heard about it #TheTeachersPetPodcast – Brooke
  • My primary school was demolished in the late 1960s. My high school celebrates its 160th anniversary this year, Qld’s oldest secondary school – Pauleen
  • Hated the ANZAC day races at school so three of us would all run over the line at the end holding hands, so no one came last – Sue
  • I remember the small bottles of milk that we were given and made to drink at recess. They were delivered early morning and sat in the sun until they were given out. I’m sure many people were put off milk for life by it. – Jennifer
  • Yuk, yes by morning recess time the milk was hot- no refrigeration at our primary school. Most of us were from farms so didn’t need bottled milk. – Carmel

  • Family school tradition… after every P/T night my dad would tell me the teachers said I needed to work harder. It took me far longer than it should have to work out they didn’t say that, it was just what he thought. – GenXalogy
  • Primary school traditions: St Patrick’s Day concerts and fetes with home made goods. High school traditions: giving friends holy pictures with personal messages written on the back; celebrating friends’ birthdays bringing home made cakes and biscuits. – Pauleen
  • As part of curriculum at Sorell School, each class spends a week at the Pioneer School in role play as if in 1821, inkwells, nib pens, nose on chalk on chalkboard if naughty, check fingernails before entering room etc – Sue
  • I looked up centennial magazine. There was photo of my aunty in 1922 in school uniform. She was one of the oldest/tallest. She went on from school to train as a nurse. – Maggie P
  • A high school tradition which remains is the ability to sing the school anthem in Latin, Angeli Archangeli. Some things stick in the mind – Pauleen
  • Not only have I visited my old school – I joined the staff as Head of Library 35 years after I finished my schooling. What a blast from the past! Rules were relaxed, there weren’t many nuns, students were allowed to speak in class – Jill
  • all my 6 siblings attended same rural local primary and then my brother’s 9 children went there too – no more in the family to follow – Carmel
  • Three generations of my direct family have attended the same high school: mum, me, our daughters. Special memories over the years. Sadly generation 4 lives in the NT so won’t be going – Pauleen
  • All schools I have attended are still standing, and I taught for 21 years at Sorell school which is the oldest school in Australia still operating from the same site begun in 1821. – Sue
  • We have had several high school class reunions organised by a couple of those who have stayed in New Plymouth. At school 125th celebration, the boarders had lots to say- our bond was so much stronger- and our memories so much funnier or poignant. – Maggie P

Ancestor education

  • Maggie P – Found enrolment for my uncle at Camerons school on the West Coast when he was 5. My mother was born there but must have moved to Kumara soon after. My Aunty, 10 years younger than my mother, never knew they’d lived at Camerons, but school record clinched it.
  • Hilary – FindMyPast have lots of the records and they are an interesting read also found newpaper report of non-attendance prosecution
  • Fran – Newspapers are a good one I forgot about. Many Uni exams, nurses, public servant exams, etc are reported in local newspapers in NZ.
  • Brooke – In the @BNArchive I found reports of truancy. My great-grandmother’s parents were hauled in & fined for her non-attendance when she was about 9.
  • Hilary – just found the scans of those school reports for my Mum need to take another look at them
  • Brooke – I have found some Cambridgeshire school records (can’t recall if it was Ancestry or FindMyPast) which listed my great-grandmother. My gg-grandfather was a schoolmaster in Ireland c.1880 but I’m still looking for records.
  • Pauleen – Have you checked the county archives to see what they might have? Also the national Archives Ireland has some records but they’re not digitised
  • Pauleen – School centenary publications or similar can be useful but do try to check for accuracy. Trove stories of the school’s opening or events…look beyond your family’s name. See if local history museums have any records or information, useful in country areas
  • Pauleen – Qld State Archives also has some records for the Grade 8 Scholarship exams – I need to revisit these.
  • Hilary – My grandmother’s cousin was a pupil teacher. I also have school photos of my aunt’s class

  • Carmel – Have a pic of my husbands mother at school in 1925 Maroubra Primary
  • Jill – My Dad left school at 13 to work on the farm, my Mum left at 15 to work in the Post Office. My parents valued education – I was the first in my immediate family to gain a university degree (or 3).
  • Pauleen – My generation was also the first to go to university – no, there was one person ahead of us in a different family I didn’t know. I’m so grateful to my parents for the opportunities they gave to me, especially being a girl. Mum went to Junior (grade 10). One of the biggest things I owe my parents who were working class and my mother who nagged my high school to admit me – I’d gone to a primary school with a different order of nuns. She was sure determined!
  • Carmel – Me too, none of my siblings completed High school so I was the first to go to Uni etc. very grateful to my mother who valued education as she had to leave at the end of primary school, no money for her to travel to a secondary school
  • Sue – Have found newspaper reports though of ancestor parents being fined for truant children
  • Maggie – I’ve looked through school records at Kent Archives in Maidstone – fascinating details there! Sadly, none relating to my ancestors.
  • Sandra – There are a few reports of school picnics on Trove from my grandparents time. They are always interesting reading.
  • Jennifer – Have found teacher records in @PRO_Vic My gg gfather was schoolmaster on the ship. information about him in passenger record
  • Jennifer – I’ve come across many articles about teachers on @TroveAustralia – school concerts, outings, teachers leaving the school or district. But not for my ancestors
  • Maggie – I had a look on @findmypast in their Yorkshire school records for my great grandmother but couldn’t find her – she left for NZ aged six so probably didn’t start. Will have to look in NZ records for her instead!
  • Carmel – Have school admission records for my father and his siblings in 1921 but hard pressed to find any others
  • Jill – I have found several reports that mention my Mother and her sisters’ achievements on Trove. I’m grateful that the Cobar newspaper reported on school activities.
  • GenXalogy – I have all my grandmother’s primary school reports (hilarious reading!!), and I have sourced quite a few records from school archives over the years as two of my great-grandfathers were teachers. (One of the great-grandfathers dropped dead just outside the school after a particularly trying day. I may or may not have threatened my students that I may do the same.) (I totally have.)
  • Pauleen – School admission registers are gold, and even inspectors’ reports can help. Requests to establish schools can include relatives names, and their children’s ages and names.
  • Maggie P – My father was at the younger end of his family. Once he passed Proficiency in Std 6 he had to go out to work as the family were too poor to send him to high school.
  • Pauleen – I have found most records for the relatives who attended state (government) schools because, where they’ve survived, they’re at the archives. Some have been lost over the centuries/decades. How to find the Catholics is my new challenge.

  • Fran – I have found schools for some of my grandparents in both London at the archives and libraries. In New Zealand the NZ Society of Genealogists have great school records. Helps with names, dates and addresses.

    White77 / Pixabay

    Readers: What are your memories of your schooling? Have you found anything about an ancestor’s schooling records?

Christmas reminiscing

This #ANZAncestryTime discussion is tailored around questions the team submitted & previously published geneamemes. There are loads of quick fast questions for short and snappy answers. Or reply with longer stories, over multiple tweets. It is not necessary to answer all! Have fun!

OpenClipart-Vectors / Pixabay

1. Important traditions to you…

  • Shauna: Just thought of another important tradition – we had to leave out beer and cashews for Santa. Milk and cookies weren’t allowed
  • Carmel: I have no memory of leaving anything out for Santa…strange.
  • Sharn: Poor Santa got water at my house and a biscuit. We left out a carrot for the reindeer
  • Jill: I made my shortbread today in a posh tin then couldn’t get it out. It will still taste good even though it’s been butchered
  • Tara: As kids our family tradition was to spend Christmas Eve scrubbing the house, finding holly and a tree in the woods nearby, decorating, and writing letters to Santa for “a surprise”. Simple but fun
  • Sue: I love listening to Christmas carols and watching Christmas movies on TV in the weeks leading up to the actual day
  • Margaret: I don’t do much at all for Christmas. I put up a few decorations and make my special recipe fruit cake (just out of the oven). I get out my carol music books and try to play them (a damaged wrist makes that difficult). I go to the annual variety show.
  • Pauleen: We always have a tree up with decorations collected over the years. It goes up on one family birthday and down on another.
  • Shauna: I have always liked to have a tree up with some decorations and lights around the house. Otherwise it just doesn’t feel like Christmas to me.
  • Sue: As kids we would go to the park for the carol singing as mum and I loved singing  – haven’t done that for years now
  • Fran: Our neighbours, with no kids, organised Father Christmas to come every Christmas when I was a child. He arrived on a fire engine one year. It lasted until too many of us did not believe any more. Loads of kids on their front lawn getting a small gift.
  • Pauleen: We did Carols by Candlelight for many years but then it got tacky and overly commercial, and annoyed us. Youngest daughter’s 1st Carols by Candlelight she was only a few weeks old….didn’t like the cannon booms though.
  • Brooke: Xmas is not a religious holiday for our family, just festive fun time. My favourite tradition is weeks before Xmas – Pudding Day with my sisters. Usually, family comes to our place, mainly because we have a pool & a big kitchen.


2. Commercialised festive season traditions…

  • Sharn: Boxing day for my children was a day on Sydney Harbour boating and watching the start of the Sydney to Hobart yacht race. We haven’t done it for a few years now
  • ANZ: Anyone else remember paper decorations and spraying snow stencils on the windows? One of my earliest Christmas memories. Odd to think of doing it in Queensland’s summer but we did for quite a few years before we took up camping at Christmas
  • Sharn: We used to drive somewhere near the Glasshouse mountains to cut down a Christmas tree when I was a child. Now I wonder if we were actually meant to do that
  • Shauna: I used to take my son to see the Myer windows each year and my mother used to take us to see McWhirters Christmas display – so I guess that’s a tradition. Now all I need are some grandchildren!
  • Sue: Don’t like the over commercialism especially when it starts straight after Thanksgiving. We are going too American. Should only start mid December
  • Pauleen: We moved to Secret Santa for adults, probably a decade ago, to avoid the overindulgence that the shops push at us.
  • Shauna: Going to work or group Christmas parties is also good because you get to know people better outside of the work environment. We all have personal lives as well as work or group responsibilities.
  • ANZ: The older grandkids prefer to get $$$ so they can hit the sales. The littlies love presents. I find shopping for 12 kids tiresome
  • Sharn: Every Christmas my mother made matching outfits for herself and we children and entered the beach wear competition at Maroochydore…

3. Seasonal events…

  • Carmel: Had presents all wrapped before projected arrival so this morning head to Pack and Send – delivery scheduled for early NY they say – Noosa to Thirroul, luckily Santa will know where kids are🤪
  • Pauleen: We have seen Santa arrive on a small plane, landing on an island off Port Moresby, arriving on a fire engine, hmmm. what else?
  • Sue: Used to love doing Christmas decorations and cards with the kids at school but always sad when some kids due to religious beliefs were not allowed to join in
  • Pauleen: Christmas was always inextricably linked to religious practices as a child and for many years as an adult.


4. Other annual traditional celebrations…

  • Brooke: My husband loves the Melbourne carols. I just make snarky remarks about the same old singers they trot out every year. I’m a bit worn out on Xmas Eve.
  • Fran: Check out the Christmas and other seasonal traditions from your family elders before it is too late.
  • Brooke: All these tweets of festive traditions makes me think, I better ask all the elders what their childhood Christmases were like.
  • Fran: We went to a friend of Mum’s property and their son took us up the hill to get a fresh, correctly sized pine tree. The town was called Pinehaven.
  • Brooke: Husband told me that Saturday before Xmas is his favourite day of the year – the day we pick up the (award-winning) ham. Lucky he likes it because no one’s coming to Xmas now. All 7kg for us! (Mum is keeping the prawns hostage on the Northern Beaches)
  • Sharn: My daughter asked me recently if when I put my children’s home made decorations on the tree I really put them at the back for others to see from the window or was it so I didn’t have to look at them….. staying mum
  • Carmel: We grew turkeys especially for Christmas usually took about 30 to market and always had roast turkey in the middle of very hot SA Christmas Days
  • Sue: Definitely Christmas pudding with sixpences inside them, mum used to make about a dozen of them to give away and for us to eat throughout the year

5. Festive music…

  • Pauleen: Mary’s Boy Child (Boney M), Ode to Joy, Little Drummer Boy.
  • Jill: We usually watch the Carols from Melbourne on Christmas Eve. Not sure if they are going ahead this year.
  • Sharn: I have certain Christmas songs that I always play while cooking on Christmas Eve. Mostly it’s “All I Want is You” Mariah Carey and I dance to it. Not this year with fractured ribs and foot

6. Holidays away…

  • Shauna: When we were younger we always went on camping holidays at Christmas time with our parents. Looking back I wonder how we managed in a tent with no electricity just the gas lamps and esky. Life was much simpler then.
  • Fran: As a child we went away after Christmas. It was always at home. We had a neighbourhood Christmas Day. In my teen years we joined up with Mum’s family Christmas Day. Holidays away happened every 2nd years. Painting the house some alternative years
  • Pauleen: We never went away over Christmas when I was a child. I did miss my friends when they were away though.
  • Sue: We would often head to Devonport Caravan Park or Douglas River on the east coast for our holiday around Christmas – loved kayaking in the river

7. Holidays at home…

8. Holiday photos…


9. Family entertainment…Couch or backyard cricket…

  • Jill: I’m looking forward to the days after Christmas. My double first cousin’s DNA results have come in, A fab Christmas present as I am an only child
  • Tara: My plan is to indulge in research and reading over the holiday. Can’t wait
  • Sue: Boxing Day is mum’s time to watch the cricket and start of the Sydney Hobart yacht race.
  • Jill: Just remembering my Grandmother who bought me the pogo stick and roller skates my parents wouldn’t let me have
  • Shauna: Couch or cricket – mostly couch sleeping off the excess food especially if it was hot
  • Sue: My dad’s step father had a beautiful pine in their backyard and would decorate it ready for Christmas. They had room enough for a small game of toey rather than cricket.

10. Favourite meal…

  • Sue: I love the trout or salmon cooked on the barbecue at my brothers and the berries with icing sugar and cream
  • Pauleen: A favourite meal is one where family gathers. Usually these days it’s seafood, ham and special salads followed by tiramisu. This year will be roasts cooked in s-i-l’s smoker.
  • Jill: When I’m in charge it’s a traditional meal. Turkey , ham and sometimes Duck
  • Pauleen: we had rum balls when I was a child – without the rum! We also had apricot balls and white Christmas but never did baked ham
  • Carmel: Mother and Mother in law both made christmas puds with threepences. Have M-I-L delicious recipe but no longer make it
  • Shauna: Always like having a ham for Christmas and Mum was all for a hot roast dinner with a bit of everything. Followed by plum pudding and custard. And the fight for the threepences.


11. Invite ancestors to dinner…

Sharn: I would love to know how my German and Swiss ancestors celebrated Christmas before coming to Australia

Jill: Would love to invite the ancestors for Christmas lunch. Top of the list would be Elizabeth Phipps 3xGGM. She may be able to tell me who fathered her son – our ancestor.

12. Family functions…

  • Fran: We were just talking today that it is a year since visiting London. Miss that I cannot go to visit cousins if I just wanted to go. Every time I read more lockdowns I feel for my cousins.
  • Brooke: She did talk about a drive-by delivery to my sister’s house (also in the lockdown zone). Something about tossing them over the fence like she did with the Easter eggs (we were locked down at Easter too)
  • Fran: Never make people get dressed up. It’s the food that has a theme. And some decorations. Covered a big tree with printed pineapples and hibiscus flowers one year with loads of tropical cocktails and island theme food
  • Pauleen: With dad having worked shifts, and our daughters also when working hospitality during uni years, we became adaptable about when we celebrated. I did hate the drive to Nambour on Xmas Day when it was only two lanes
  • Shauna: Lots of families alternate with Boxing Day to cater for in laws although if you go to both that’s a lot of food and drink. Memories of feeling stuffed.
  • Jill: I prefer to have the family on Boxing Day (we do alternate Christmas years with the inlaws.) We have a relaxing meal by the Lake and the kids paddle and kayak.

13. Family recipes…

Pauleen: My mother’s Christmas cake, my grandmother’s pudding and shortbread, my green peppercorn Christmas cake, my daughter’s tiramisu.

Carmel: gathering with family, rum balls, apricot balls, Christmas cake, spiced baked ham

LindaTa / Pixabay

14. I always wanted a……

  • Brooke: A Xmas Memory My brother still believed in Santa & just before bed on Xmas Eve showed his list which included ‘Scarf for Snoopy’ (stuffed toy). That’s when I discovered my mother could knit. She stayed up late to keep the Xmas magic alive for another year.
  • Shauna: My special Christmas present to myself arrived today after being ordered over a week ago and paying express post delivery. Still it is here and I am excited. Max will wrap it – best way to get what you really want
  • Pauleen: A good Christmas (and birthday) was one where I got a book, or preferably more than one!
  • Jill: I always wanted a bicycle.
  • Shauna: I always wanted books but I kept getting dolls
  • Sharn: My worst Christmas. I was told I had to wait until I was 12 to get a bicycle. That Christmas I ran out to the tree to find my beautiful bike parked next to one for my sister who was NINE. But we ended up having fun together
  • Sue: I loved getting jigsaw puzzles as gifts, but at least one person would nick a piece so I couldn’t say I completed it on my own ..
Wounds_and_Cracks / Pixabay

15. Favourite, worst, funniest gift…

  • Brooke: Worst Xmas Coming down with chickenpox on Xmas Eve (like many of my high school bandmates; we’d been on tour together the week before) I had to watch Xmas Day from my bedroom window. (3 siblings came down with it 2 weeks later. I was so popular that summer NOT)
  • Pauleen: the best gift (maybe) for our older two daughters: the dolls’ house Mr Cassmob made one year in PNG and I decorated. They loved it.
  • Sharn: When I was 9 I got a joey for Christmas. My father had found it by the road. We raised it and it played with our dog but then it had to go to Lone Pine
  • Pauleen: Funniest – having to go to Brisbane’s biggest shopping centre on Xmas eve to get a present for DD3. We found what we’d actually bought months later, hidden in her sister’s wardrobe. Or gifting the photo story book to the wrong child and vice versa
  • Sharn: best present I had was a huge slot car set my father gave me… well really it was for him! It took up the entire lounge room and my mother was not happy
  • Pauleen: a $2 calendar was the most disappointing gift from a close relative. The best was a photo album of that line of the ancestry from the same person

16. Family concerts….

Fran: Had concert on front lawn with the neighbourhood kids. No one could play an instrument. Used recorders, tin whistles, home made drums (pots) and even combs with tissue paper can make a tune. Practice that morning, bar in the tent closed, all parents had to watch.

Sharn: If my family had Christmas with my paternal grandparents we had a family band. Every single person played an instrument and it was such fun!

17. Regular stocking fillers from your childhood?

JillWellington / Pixabay

Christmas blog posts from the past

Sharn: A meme created in 2014; reply to Pauleen’s geneameme;

Pauleen: in 2012 she created a Christmas geneameme and here is her response to it

Carmel: Christmas past and present

Disappointments for this Christmas

Feeling very bah humbug tonight, kids with 3 little grandsons were due to arrive today but closed out by Covid outbreak in NSW – Carmel

Santa’s helpers usually distribute sweets to kids on the jetties but in a nod to Covid he’ll just sail by this year – Jill

Readers: What are some of your Christmas traditions or memories?

Food, wonderful food

congerdesign / Pixabay

Our questions were:

  1. Food is part of our heritage. What recipes, foods and food traditions have been passed down in your family?
  2. How have meals and foods changed since your parents’ and grandparents’ time?
  3. Have you researched any aspect of FOOD in your ancestors’ lives? What resources have you found useful?
  4. What are some ways we can record and preserve family food, recipes, and food traditions for future generations?

As many of the participants had an Aussie/NZ/English background, many recipes and traditions were similar.

But many memories came back of things forgotten:

balouriarajesh / Pixabay
  • Shelling peas with grandma – eating more than went in the bowl
  • Making Christmas foods – finding money in the puddings
  • Coffee fudge at Christmas … roast beef and Yorkshire pudding every Sunday
  • Preserving foods and making jams, chutneys, pickled onions
  • Kids birthday cakes from the Women’s Weekly
  • Trying recipes from grandma’s cookery book
  • Discussion about scones – jam first or cream first
stevepb / Pixabay
  • School lunches and sandwich fillings – peanut butter or paste, vegemite or marmite, sugar sandwich
  • School lunches were vegemite, peanut butter, ham or egg sandwiches. A cheese roll from the tuckshop was a treat. Eating a hot lunch with the boarders was a punishment
  • Mr @cassmob would agree that boarders’ lunches were far from a treat. He tells a gruesome tale about being made to eat prunes before chapel. Tuck shop treats were finger buns with pink icing.
  • We lived in an area with Greek migrants. I remember how different their school lunches were from ours. No sandwiches at all
  • Warm milk at school
  • The mulberry pies…the piecrust was all covered with sugar
  • Growing your own veggies, fruit trees
  • Looking after chooks and turkeys – on farm then killing for meals
  • Butter vs margarine – dairy company adverts
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  • Part of baking has to be the entitlement to “lick” the bowl!!
  • Different cookery books – Green and Gold, CWA or WI (UK), Edmonds (NZ)
  • We also used to go foraging in the woods for blackberries, blaeberries (bilberry) wild strawberries and geans (wild cherries). Mum would make jam or fruit crumbles
  • Make a slice for my husband once a month and fruit cake once a year for me
  • Having not long come out of rationing many things were still considered luxuries when I was a child
  • I know we had some rationing but no idea what impact it had on our #familyfood. More impact in the UK.
  • I cook 4 nights and husband does 3 or we eat out, often prefer to eat in the middle of the day now rather than at night. Still prefer fresh home cooked
  • My go-to cakes for the kids are choc mud cake and lemon sour cream cake – making our own traditions. But we still enjoy Mum’s one

How times have changed

  • Children not talking at the table was fortunately not a rule in our house. Dad said in the 1920s when he was young you did not talk.
  • They did use to boil veg until within an inch of it’s life! Nothing like our crisp veg today
  • My foods have had to change as I’m on a special diet. But the style is much the same as my mother’s. I rarely bake
  • I feel that way about brains, tripe and lambs fry, not to mention peas as hard as marbles
  • Lots of food things were delivered when I was a child. Milk, fish, soft drinks, bread…
  • I love home cooked cakes and biccies but my hips don’t 🙁
  • We always had tea with our meals and there was always bread and butter on the table
  • Mealtimes were more formal with everyone gathering at the same time. This can still happen but is more relaxed nowadays. Some people never use the table, eating from a tray on the lap
  • I had never had restaurant or takeaway food until I was about 19 or 20 always home cooked
  • We thought we were exotic when we went to the Chinese Restaurant for Curried prawns and rice or a Chinese omelet.
  • We concern ourselves more with dietary requirements and providing healthy food for our families, such as low fat or sugar free
  • we now have more Asian style food and use chili and curries which my grandparents never did.
fudowakira0 / Pixabay
  • Eating outside the home (except on a picnic) was rare. Occasionally a fish & chips takeaway and very rarely a special visit to a Chinese restaurant to have Aussie-fied meals.
  • My paternal grandmother was Irish so she cooked traditional Irish cuisine. My mother’s family were Swiss/ German and her cooking was heavily influenced by her German heritage. She was very excited when the first Pizza Hut opened though
  • Meals “back in the day” were always served with a cup of tea and a slice of bread. Wine was never seen and beer only for special events.
  • I have memories of heavily boiled vegies. Lightly steamed would have been unthinkable in my grandmothers kitchen
  • So I do have a tradition. Creaming the butter and sugar properly. But if my Mum got it from Nana I will never know. No marg.
  • My grandmother at some point in the 60s saved a “diet plan” from a women’s mag that was 10 days of various ways to serve potatoes… only potatoes (ok and some butter & spices). I love potatoes… but no thanks!
  • Food when I was a child was very much of British origins. Food is much more multi-cultural now. There was no fast food. My favourite memories of food are my grandmother’s home made ice-cream, caramel custard and rosella jam
diapicard / Pixabay
  • The variety of veg and fruits has expanded though we always had 1 or 2 bowls of fruit in the house and often had many veg on our plate. I thought it was odd at friends places when you had meat, potato and one other veg
  • Visits to Grandma (Mum’s Mum) always meant Saos, tomato, cheese and lots of butter!
  • My mum used to bake every Saturday – biscuits, slices, cakes. Fruit cake was a good option for lasting through the week
  • I treasure Mum’s recipe book but would never cook her recipes. My grandmother was a wonderful cook but she didn’t have written recipes, they were all in her head.

Some Christmas and birthday recipes

LindaTa / Pixabay

My mother made ‘snowballs’ at Christmas. Basically a scone mixture made into balls, coated in jam when cooked and rolled in desiccated coconut – Angela

Mum’s “Xmas Balls” are a riff on truffles that make dessert worthwhile. Marshmallows wrapped in crushed wine biscuits in choc, rolled in coconut. Delish! – Melissa

Short bread, White Christmas and Christmas puddings with money inside

The family birthday cake was always the One Egg Chocolate Sponge recipe from the Edmonds Cookery Book. My mum last made it on Sunday for my youngest’s birthday! Still tastes good 🙂 – Maggie

Researching food

Good old Trove has given me excellent stories about my ancestor who was a pastry cook and had refreshment rooms in Charters Towers as well as winning prizes at the Ipswich Ag Show – Pauleen

Show competitions would be a good thing to check out in newspapers. Women’s institutes, church fetes sometimes did recipe books and could also have details of the event – Fran

 

The local history for my Bavarian ancestor told me what was served in his family’s inn – Pauleen

Something to consider when thinking about the food our ancestors bought—it wasn’t always wholesome! This is from “Adulterations of Food: With Short Processes for Their Detection” by Rowland John Atcherley, published 1874. – One Place Studies

 

Convict records sometimes described what they ate. It usually wasn’t a great diet – Sharn

A combination of oral history and Trove stories revealed my ancestor’s citrus specialties, sharing fruit with neighbours and making wine – Pauleen

Some of my ancestors were in workhouses and I have used that website to learn about what they ate and what conditions were like – Shauna

 

One of my relatives who worked as a gardener had a bit written in his obituary in the paper – Hilary

Some of the shipping documents reveal that and also the compulsory levels of food people needed to be allocated. The German ships weren’t always as well managed compared to those from England – Pauleen

Only when it’s recorded that a particular person was ‘noted’ for a dish or cuisine, eg my 3x great grandmother Betsy who apparently made a mean South African Bredie. -Gen X Alogy

Methods of cooking were different too. A big range with no temperature regulator is worlds away from a microwave! – Angela

 

I have really looked into shipboard diaries to see what they ate on the voyage out. Log of logs is a great resource to find diaries – Shauna

I’m trying to research my gg-gf, Harry Bevin, who was a baker, and I would kill to find a photo of his bakery in Wanganui! My g-gf, his SIL, worked with him too. I think I need to make a trip to the library. – Melissa

Advertisements in newspapers for FOOD imports, from the time and place where ancestors lived can tell us what kinds of foods were available to purchase for those who could afford them – Sharn

I was very fortunate to get a fabulous oral history about my German ancestor’s food traditions and preparation of sausages. Fantastic story – Pauleen

Ingredients have changed over the decades. Even cookery books from the 1970s do not have many spices that are readily available nowadays. – Angela

 

Recipes were often handwritten or kept in their heads! Early cookery books were for ‘big houses’ I think. Mrs Beetons Cookery Book was an early UK one. Doorstop of a book! – Angela

 

Recording for future generations

Sharn: Scan and enter family recipes to EVERNOTE to keep them in one folder. You can use TAGS to search easily. Pinning family recipes on a PINTEREST Board enables you to keep them in a ‘folder’ online which can be shared with others

Jill: I have scanned and digitised all my favourite recipes. I tossed out many I had ripped out of magazines.

Hilary: talk to younger family and make recipes to share with the family

Pauleen: Teaching our grandchildren to cook can introduce them to #familyfood traditions as well as teach them cooking skills.

Hilary: We need to share our recipes and memories through video, audio and written records on blogs and websites

Sharn: Print family recipes on tea towels, in frames or a recipe book to give family members as gifts

Shauna: we can write about these food traditions in our blogs or include them in family histories. I’m also keen to learn how to cook some of the old recipes eg Cornish pasties that I know my Cornish miners must have eaten

Pauleen: Photobooks are easy to produce – we could even take photos of the steps as well as tell the background story.

Maggie: Continuing traditions (or starting new ones) with younger family members. My kids and I make a gingerbread house every Christmas.

Pauleen: Back in the day our family members shared their favourite recipes with friends. Over the years we’ve done the same, only more recently it’s been done electronically.

Brooke: after Grandma died we made a photo memory book & included a couple of her Xmas recipes, pate & rum balls. We make those recipes every Xmas time

Online websites about food in general

Blogging about food

Loved these comments

I still bake using recipes from my grandmother – it reminds me of all those wonderful afternoon tea times with her. Plus, the kids love the yummy food!

What a shame Twitter does not have scents – we would all be swooning over bakery smells.

Readers: What are your favourite memories about food? Who were they with and what were you doing?