Tabla de contenidos para January - February 2016 en Traces

We’re here to help inspire you, whatever your genealogy goals are. And we’re kicking off 2016 with loads of features, ideas and new resources for you to explore. First up we revisit the Biographical Database of Australia, an online portal that we first featured in 2013. If you’re researching early colonial arrivals, this website needs to be on your must-visit list. And there’s been thousands of new records added — read more on page 28. We also hear about a lifesaver who wanted to join the war effort during World War I and decided his lifesaving skills would be best used as a stretcher-bearer on the Western Front. Read his illuminating story on page 36. We’ve also worked with Mark Tedeschi, Senior Crown Prosecutor for New South Wales, who has…

Michael Flynn “The jigsaw of genealogy”, page 28 I’m reading Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Chernow’s biography, Alexander Hamilton, about an aide to George Washington who helped create the United States. His story has been turned into a successful Broadway hip-hop musical created by Puerto Rican American actor and writer Lin-Manuel Miranda, who believes in making colonial history accessible to non-Anglo Americans. Mark Tedeschi “Kidnapped”, page 43 I am currently reading Fascinating Footnotes from History by Giles Milton, published in 2015. For a history buff like me, it is fascinating to read of relatively unknown historical facts that have played a significant role in the lives of many people. It is quirky, well-written and the short accounts in the book fit well into the 20 minutes that I have twice each…

What initially drew you to researching World War I? I wrote, with Raelene Frances, a school text, Women and the Great War. It emerged out of our first sabbatical in Europe amid the war graves on the Western Front. And I found that a deeply moving experience. When I was there, of course, I became conscious of the fact that all across these cemeteries and tombs of the dead, there were messages, poppies, offerings that had been left by pilgrims. I became very conscious that this was a site of visitation for Australians still today. And I found that fascinating, that the Great War had continued to exert such a hold on the Australian imagination. World War One: A History in 100 Stories explores the personal stories of service personnel…

Famicity Free; iOS and Android Famicity is almost like the progeny of a family tree app and an address book. It syncs with the contacts on your device, allowing you to easily invite relatives to join Famicity and access your profile, family tree and any albums you’d like to create (though there are stringent privacy controls). French in origin, Famicity has a clean, straightforward design, and would be perfectly user-friendly if not for the occasional glitches of syntax and untranslated French text. Overall, it’s a simple yet worthwhile app for those who’d like to involve their family members in their family tree. The Voyage Game Free; optimised for desktop This is one for kids and the young-at-heart – though that’s not to say grown-up historians should eschew it, either. The…

We often think of blended families as a modern phenomenon, but they were not so unusual two centuries ago. Shorter life expectancies meant that a partner with a young family could find themselves bereaved and looking for a new spouse to help care for the children. In early New South Wales de facto relationships were common. This mixing and matching of families can often be difficult and confusing to disentangle in the records. Online databases and indexes like the BDA can provide solutions and help fellow researchers understand the theories and findings of others. Take the case of William Douglas, a Lincolnshire pickpocket transported on the First Fleet transport Alexander who married fellow Lincolnshire convict Mary Groves in 1788 and was one of the first settlers on the Hawkesbury River…

What drew you to the case? There are a number of factors. The first was that I was the same age as Graeme Thorne in 1960 — I was eight and he was eight, and so I was very aware of his plight. And I very deeply felt the impact of his kidnapping. I had a photograph of him from the newspaper plastered on the wall of my bedroom, so that if I saw him on the street I could notify my parents and they could notify the police. The other reason was that this case really marked the beginning of modern-day forensic science in Australia — there were techniques that were used for the first time in that case that have since become quite commonplace. The resources that were…

ANCESTRY • Australasia Medical Directories, 1883–1915 • England Suffragettes Arrested, 1906–14 • England United Grand Lodge of England Freemason Membership Registers, 1751–1921 • Gloucestershire, England, Non-Conformist Baptisms Index, 1739–1987 • Ireland Civil Registration Births Index, 1864–1958 (updates) • Ireland Civil Registration Marriages Index, 1845–1958 • New Zealand Cemetery Records, 1800–2007 (updates) • Perth and Kinross, Scotland, Electoral Registers, 1832–1961 • Scotland National Probate Index (Calendar of Confirmations and Inventories), 1876–1936 • Surrey, England, Regimental Rolls, 1914–47 • Tasmania Reports of Crime, 1861–83 • UK World War II Civil Defence Gallantry Awards, 1940–49 Visit ancestry.com.au FINDMYPAST • 1939 Register • Devon Social and Institutional Records (updates) • England and Wales Electoral Registers, 1832–1932 (images) • Lloyd’s Register of Merchant Ships Index, 1843 • London Birth Register of Contracted Watermen, 1865–1921 •…

OUR FAMILY Past is a new online service of creating, preserving and sharing family history stories. There are, as you know, many powerful online family history services that are available for finding historical facts and producing family trees, but Our Family Past is different. It allows family historians and members of their families to create narrative stories of their family’s past, based on their family history research and on the memories of family members. Those stories can include words, audio and video. Importantly, they can be easily expanded and updated — and they can be shared with family members. These stories can be preserved well into the future. So after people pass on, the stories can be preserved online in the cloud. How it all began My background is in…

THIS BEAUTIFUL photograph was taken c.1918, and features my grandmother, Hazel Allen, and her mother, Lilian Allen, née Ladbrook. Lilian was born near Invercargill, New Zealand, in 1888. At the age of 20, she married Thomas Bailey Allen, and the following year gave birth to her first child, Winifred. Unfortunately ‘Wee Winnie’ died at the age of six months. My gran, Hazel, was born in 1911. When Hazel was five, Thomas died of cancer, leaving Lilian and Hazel on their own. So at the time this portrait was taken, they were the only living members in their immediate family. In 1920, Lilian married a young Danish engineer called Anton Christensen. By this stage they were living in Hastings. In 1922, Lilian and Anton welcomed their only child, a son, Arnold,…