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?

Q for Queenstown

Miss W. Dawson, Smith, Somers , , , , , ,

Queenstown, like Lottah, is a mining town in Tasmania but it is on the west coast of the state.

Around 1862, alluvial gold was found nearby, and in 1881 the Mount Lyell Gold Mining Company was formed. About ten years later they started searching for copper.

In the mid 1890’s, the actual town began to develop – a post office and a general store. The population in 1900 was just over 5000 in the town of Queenstown but around 10,000 in the whole mining district. In the early part of the 20th century, the town had many hotels, theatres, churches and schools but many of these are beginning to disappear since the mining company went into care and maintenance in 2014.

Queenstown had a bad reputation because of the pollution occurring from the Mt Lyell smelting works. Visitors would say it was like a moonscape as the trees had been cut down to feed the smelters needed for melting the copper from the underground mine. The smelters also sent out sulphur dioxide fumes which fell to the ground when it rained and was eventually washed into the King and Queen River.

But the most fascinating fact I have read about is that the Queenstown football oval has been inducted into the Tasmanian Football Hall of Fame. Why you might ask? Well the oval is gravel as grass was hard to grow due to the pollution and heavy rain.

Now to Queenstown’s link to my family history.

Firstly I thought it was through the Smith line – Robert Edward Smith was a sawyer on the west coast around Queenstown and Strahan. His wife, Irene Somers, was my great grandmother who was born in St Helens or Lottah area. But when my father had a DNA test, we found he wasn’t related directly in the Smith line. All his cousins from there were only half-cousins. They all had  Samoan heritage but dad didn’t.

We found instead that my great grandmother had a child from another person Alexander Dawson who lived and worked as a miner in Queenstown. My dad’s mother was that child. She was brought up as a Smith and was known as the eldest child in the family.

We don’t think Alexander ever knew he had another child. But in 1912, Alexander and two of his brothers survived the North Mt Lyell mining disaster. I am presently researching the miners who died as well as those who survived and were rescued. This research is on WikiTree.

 

Overlooked

Miss W. #52ancestors, Chandler, Davey, Dawson, Smith , ,
RitaE / Pixabay

This past weekend I took part in the WikiTree Connect-a-thon. Adding new profiles to the tree, I noticed there were many cases of infant or child mortality. In some families, 5 out of 10 children died before age three. Then when I searched newspapers for the death of parents, I found many of these infants were not mentioned as deceased children in the family.

These children had been overlooked by their siblings who wrote the death notice in the newspaper. Maybe they didn’t know they had more siblings who had died young. Some of these infants didn’t even get a formal name.

Looking in my direct family tree:

  • Mum had an older sister Iris who died aged 9, just a month after mum was born. She is remembered on the family gravestone and in photos I have inherited.
  • Dad was an only child but ended up having 7 half siblings who all survived to adulthood. But one was in a mental hospital from a young age and I can’t find his death.
  • My paternal grandfather William Elvis Allen had 2 siblings and three half siblings. His older sister Ethel Maud Allen only survived two years and I have not yet found any headstone for her.
  • My paternal grandmother Irene Smith had 14 siblings (DNA they are half maternal siblings) and another 3 siblings (DNA they are half paternal siblings). Only one of those half siblings died less than one year old.
  • My maternal grandfather Henry Lewis England had 3 sisters. The youngest Lucy died aged 20.
  • My maternal grandmother Hannah Davey had 11 siblings. Her younger sisters Elsie died aged 11 and Lila died aged 8. Both are remembered on the same headstone as their parents in Evandale, Tasmania. They were always mentioned in newspaper reports as well.

Hannah had 44 nieces and nephews and only one of them died young aged 14.

If I were to go further back in my tree and look at nieces and nephews of my direct ancestors, I know there are a lot more families with infants or children who have died young.

So to make sure these youngsters are not overlooked, I am making sure I write a profile for them in WikiTree. Here are some of them: