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Sunday, August 22, 2021

Genealife in Lockdown - June - August 2021

 Genealife in Lockdown Week and National Family History Month


Alex Daw of the Family Tree Frog Blog has challenged bloggers Downunder to publish a blog post each Sunday during National Family History Month in August 2021. You can read Alex's most recent post for her blogging challenge right here. Thanks to Alex for thinking of this blog challenge which for many has been just what was needed to resuscitate our blogs!

Chris Goopy who writes the blog That Moment in Time has kindly compiled a list of bloggers and their posts for this Australasian Blogging Challenge. 

I am writing this blog post while all of NSW and Victoria are back in a strict lockdown due to growing numbers of cases of the Delta strain of Covid and not enough of the population being vaccinated yet. Other states have also had lockdowns but Greater Sydney, where my family lives, has been in lockdown for over eight weeks.

One thing I am grateful for is zoom and facetime calls which have kept my friends and family  in touch with each other. I have watched my youngest granddaughter take her first steps from a distance and lockdowns have been made so much more bearable because of technology. Facetime calls are especially fun with my super tech five year old grandson who loves to add filters and effects to each call. 

                                                     A typical facetime call with my five year old grandson


 Ruins from the Second Convict Settlement on Norfolk Island ©

Following The Genealogy Show in June of this year, I was busy preparing a presentation about second settlement convict life on Norfolk island for the AFFO Congress which was to be held there in August. More specifically, I was comparing the diaries of convicts who served time on Norfolk island and religious chaplins who ministered to the prisoners. I set out to determine why this remote penal settlement earned the reputation of being Hell in Paradise. [1]  I find the history and philosophy behind convict treatment and punishment, although difficult to understand, quite fascinating to research.

                                                    Looking towards Slaughter Bay from Shearwater

I can't give much more away about this presentation because the AFFO conference in August was cancelled due to Covid lockdowns in most states of Australia and it has been moved to 2022. I had extended my one week conference stay stay on Norfolk island to two weeks and I was looking forward to catching up in person with many of my genealogy friends as well as returning to a place that I love to visit. I am thrilled however, that now I and others now have Congress next year to look forward to with much anticipation!

                                                                      The Wingecarribee Wetlands

Taking a short break from my year of genealogy presentations, I pursued my love of walking and enjoying the natural beauty of where I live.  Among other places, I have explored the Wingecarribee Wetland area which is teaming with birdlife. Along the river and wetland area are seats for bird lovers such as myself to sit and watch the wildlife. I am fortunate to live in a beautiful part of Australia where there is no shortage of scenic walks. 

                                                       Carrying my large lens camera  while walking.

 My beautiful part of Australia 

I have more presentations to deliver this year and preparing them has kept me busy along with house histories which I always enjoy researching. Finding the chronology of people who lived in houses and their stories can be quite fascinating. With house history research, as with family history, not everything is online so researching throughout 2020 and 2021 has been challenging with intermittent Archive, Library and Historical Society closures. 


                             Using SixMaps (Spatial Information Exchange) to research a house history

As for my family history research, I have used my time at home this year to revisit past research. With many new records available online it has been possible to expand on past research and for me this has been one of my most productive research years. I have crumbled long standing brick walls and discovered new records and family stories.

   I popped up just recently on my friend Angela's tv in Ireland on a repeat of Episode 6 Season 2 of Coast Australia

My love of crochet has helped to fill my days while I cannot see my family. My latest project is a colourful reading rug for one of my grandchildren. The rug, only just started, begins with a round mandala but will be a square when finished.

                                                            The mandala which starts the rug

This year I have spent some time colourising old photographs using My Heritage's photo colourising tool. Seeing ancestors in colour really brings them to life and I think that this is one of My Heritage's most inventive and fun additions to their family history site.

                               My Swiss born g g grandmother and her children in Maryborough, Queensland

I am pleased that I managed to fit in one short trip away this year before NSW plunged back into lockdown. Prior to the current lockdown, my husband and I drove to Canberra. We both love the city and its surrounding countryside. While there we visited the Botanic Gardens, something we have not done before, despite many visits to Australia's capital city. The gardens, constructed from the 1970's comprise a spectacular rain forest, a red centre desert garden and many other Australian native plants. 

                                            The Red Centre Garden at the Botanic gardens in Canberra

We drove to the top of Mt Stromlo to see the ruins of a 2003 bushfire that destroyed much of the observatory atop the mountain. It is pleasing to see that new telescopes and buildings have been constructed in the wake of the terrible fires. 

                                                              Ruins of the Mt Stromlo Observatory

As September and spring approaches, the cases of Covid in NSW are worryingly on the rise and it is a race for the NSW population to be vaccinated. This lockdown does not look like ending until late October or later and it is my greatest wish is to see my family. I am glad however, that they are all fully vaccinated, staying at home and staying safe. Signs of spring in my garden, blogging, researching family history and family keep me feeling cheerful amidst lockdown and curfews. 

                                                     My garden approaching spring


FOOTNOTES

1.  Nobbs, R., (ed.), Norfolk Island and its Second Settlement, 1825-1855, (Library of Australian History), 1991.

Sunday, August 15, 2021

Genealife in Lockdown - 2021 A Year of Online Conferences.


2021, A Year of Online Conferences January - June

                                         

 My RootsTech Ambassador Bag, Beads and Badges from a previous year

2021 began as a blue sky summer and with few Covid restrictions in NSW, Australia where I live. The year has definitely been a valuable year of learning with a wealth of online genealogy  conferences taking place. The first family history conference for 2021 for me was the first ever virtual RootsTech Connect in February. 


I was privileged to be an Ambassador for the virtual RootsTech Conference held 25 -27 February. Although it was disappointing to be not catching up with genea-friends in person in Salt Lake City, I was thrilled to help promote RootsTech Connect 2021 which, delivered online, reached a previously unimaginable number of people from all around the world.


Social media was abuzz with what people were enjoying about the conference and expo hall and although I was attending RootsTech from home, I felt connected to other attendees through social media and the chat hubs RootsTech made available. Excitingly, several of my #RootsTechConnect tweets featured live on the FamilySearch website as I participated in the world's largest family history conference. Above is my granddaughter Clementine, 13 months, watching RootsTech with me. 

                               Genea-friends and Ambassadors ready for the Opening Ceremony at RootsTech 2020

Watching from the comfort of my home and not having a long overseas flight made attending RootsTech 2021 much easier but I did miss catching up with the many wonderful people I have met through attending RootsTech each year since 2015. 


RootsTech Ambassadors in Salt Lake City

The RootsTech presentations were very generously made available for the rest of the year which made it possible to listen to many more informative speakers than I would usually have. I am thrilled that recently it was announced that the dates for RootsTech 2022 have been announced. If you are as excited as I am about attending another amazing virtual RootsTech conference you can read all about RootsTech Connect 2022 here

An exciting new Australian family history conference, which was originally planned to be held on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, was held virtually in March 2021. You can watch one of the Promotional videos  here. Speakers from Australia, new Zealand and around the world gave presentations on a wide range of topics at this first international Australian Conference and I was delighted to be one of the presenters.

                                                        Family History Downunder Presenters2021

I delivered two presentations during the Family History Downunder conference. One was about House History Research and the other was entitled Using Google Earth Tours and Movie Maker to Tell Your Immigrant Ancestors' Stories. Pre-recorded presentations and others delivered via Zoom became the new way of delivering family history content during 2021. While I very much missed seeing genea-friends in person, online genealogy events were a wonderful way to stay connected in a time when getting together in person was difficult or  impossible.

Watching Family History Downunder in March 2021

Easter family plans were happily not interrupted by Covid restrictions and my whole family was able to come together for a wonderful family gathering. Considering the severe lockdown that NSW has been experiencing for almost two months now, I look back on Easter as a very special family time. 

                                              Sharing my love of cows with a granddaughter after Easter

May 2021 brought with it a visit from a friend who I have known since we were teenagers living in Queensland. We share a love of walking and during her two week visit we walked the 9 km Boxvale Tramway track , the historic Berrima River walk which features the ruins of a WW2 German Internment Camp and other walking trails. I had a two week break from my computer, presentations and research while I enjoyed lunches, visits to antiques stores, drives to scenic National Parks along with a great deal of conversation and much laughter. 

                                                         Walking the wet Boxvale Tramway Trail which follows a disused 1890's railway 
                                                           Reaching the old rail tunnel on the Boxvale Tramway trail

                                                           A drive south to Braidwood near Canberra for lunch 


June brought with it another much anticipated Family History event - The Genealogy Show. This conference has been the mastermind of Kirsty Gray from the UK and I was honoured to be accepted to deliver two presentations for The Genealogy Show. One was entitled Murder in the Red Barn - Finding Ancestors in Newspapers and the other was Using Google Earth Tours and Movie Maker to tell Family History Stories. The Genealogy Show's interactive website was fun to navigate and June was another month of excellent learning and putting into practice newly acquired knowledge.

                                                     Preparing my Murder in the Red Barn powerpoint  presentation 



Social media, especially Twitter and Facetime, family history events held online and zoom  have made staying connected possible during this trying time that has been the Covid Pandemic. I am grateful to live in an age where technology keeps me feeling connected when isolation and sudden lockdowns have become a way of life. 


(Image: courtesy of the National Museum of Health and Medicine, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Washington, D.C., United States.) Wikipedia, Creative Commons

Looking back to times when my ancestors faced the challenges of pandemics such as the Spanish Flu and The Bubonic Plague I admire that they had to cope without social media news updates and check in QR codes for Government contact tracing, the availability of masks and importantly the connectivity of social media and the internet. 

Next week: 2021 June through to Lockdown. 

Monday, August 9, 2021

My Genealife in Lockdown Blogging Challenge Week 2

 Genealife in Lockdown in Australia 

Autumn in my Southern Highland, NSW garden

This is week two of Alex Daw's Genealife in Lockdown Blogging challenge for National Family History Month. You can read about Alex's challenge here and if you would like to read my blog post from last week you can find it here. 

                                                                   Playing with phone Apps we would not have thought using of prior to Covid.

After travelling home from Chicago via LA I had to isolate in my Southern Highland home for fourteen days mandatory quarantine. I discovered just how vigilant NSW Health was being when I put my bins out on the footpath. Noticing a piece of rubbish nearby, I walked a few feet past my driveway to pick it up, only to have my phone ping and tell me "You are leaving your house. Please go home." I was quite happy however, that strict measures were being taken to keep myself and everyone else safe. 

                                                           Flowers my daughter put in my home before my arrival.

My middle daughter Siobhan and her husband Charlie had kindly driven two hours to the Southern Highlands from Sydney the day before I arrived home to fill my refrigerator with fresh food. They also left a beautiful bunch of flowers in the entry of my home which was a lovely welcome especially as I couldn't see any family for a fortnight. 

My vegetable garden was completely overgrown after my long visit to the USA but it yielded a delicious supply of home grown vegetables during my two weeks of isolation. 

                                                                                                   Home grown veggies! 
                                                                       
Having to isolate for two weeks did not seem difficult for this genealogist since it meant I had unlimited time for family history research and I had much to follow up on from my visit to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. While researching in Salt Lake City, one of my exciting discoveries was tracing a branch of Nottinghamshire ancestors back in time into the county of Leicestershire. Having never known I had ancestors in Leicestershire before, this is where I began my lockdown isolation research. 

                                                    © Copyright Tim Heaton and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

While looking at baptism records on Findmypast for Shepshed in Leicestershire, I noticed that the name of my 12th great grandfather Peter Ollerensha was mentioned frequently in the church records. This led to the discovery that he was the vicar of St Botolph Church in Shepshed. His name was recorded on each page because it was he who married, baptised and buried the people of Shepshed. Finding an occupation for an ancestor in the 16th century is not easy and so this was an exciting find. 

                                                          Peter Ollerensha, Vicar of Shepshede, Parish records

Whenever I hit a brick wall I find it best to research another branch of family. Often it is better to come back and look with fresh eyes at a later time so as soon as I hit a dead end in Leicestershire I decided to research another branch of my English ancestors. On my visit to, and drive around, England in 2019 before attending RootsTech London, my husband David and I had visited the tiny village of Polstead in Suffolk where I had traced my Stowe family back to the early 17th century. I found it very moving to see the church and baptismal font that ancestors were baptised in so long ago.

                                      Baptismal Font in the Medieval St Mary's Church, Polstead, Suffolk, Image Sharn White ©

As part of researching my family history I always look at newspapers. Often the most interesting family stories can be found in newspapers and fortunately for us many newspapers are digitised and online now.  I searched the British Newspaper Archive for 'Stowe in Polstead', expecting to find little about my very ordinary farming Stowe ancestors of Polstead, Suffolk. I was in for a surprise!

                                                            The Cock Inn, Polstead, Suffolk 2019, Image Sharn White ©

My Stowe family of Polstead seemed to be unable to stay out of the news. I discovered a wealth of news items about Stowe family members and the wide range of misdemeanors they committed in and around Polstead in the 1800's. Several were charged with being drunk and disorderly at the Cock Inn, one was repeatedly charged with poaching and another stabbed his brother by the pond in Polstead. Often it is our felonious ancestors who made the most headlines in newspapers and I find that sometimes our worst behaved forebears can be the most interesting ancestors.

                                    The Pond at Polstead, © Paul Farmer, Licensed for reuse under Creative Commons License 

One crime which particularly intrigued me was the burning of a red barn in Polstead in 1843, by Samuel Stowe, the son of Francis and Pheobe Stowe. These names were familiar to me because they were on my family tree. What puzzled me, though, was why the burning of a barn was news that made headlines all around England. As I continued reading news articles I discovered a shocking story about the Red Barn in Polstead, Suffolk.

                                         The Red barn Murder, The Suffolk Chronicle, 3 May 1828, p3., British Newspaper Archives

As I reached page eight of my newspaper search I saw the title of a news item which read  "The Red Barn Murder". This murder was notorious in England however, living in Australia I had not heard of it. The mention of my relatives Phoebe and Francis Stowe in the news item immediately caught my attention. 

                                                      The Marten Cottage, Polstead, Postcard in author's possession.

In 1827, in the sleepy village of Polstead, Maria Marten, daughter of Mole Catcher, Thomas Marten mysteriously disappeared after telling her family she was meeting her lover and father of her late baby, William Corder at the Red barn on his father's farm. Maria told her family that she and William were to meet in the Red Barn situated on his father's farm and then they would travel to Ipswich to marry. Maria was never seen again and despite William offering Maria's family a number of excuses as to why Maria had not written to them. a whole year went by with no one hearing from the young woman. 

                                                               William Corder, an original 1828 news clipping purchased on ebay.

Researching the murder further I discovered that Maria's body had been found in the Red Barn on the 19th of  April 1828, a year after her disappearance and following a dream that her step mother had. My ancestor Pheobe Stowe had been suspicious of William Corder ever since he had borrowed a spade from her cottage on the very night that Maria went missing. The Stowe cottage was quite near the red barn and Pheobe regularly saw and spoke with William Corder. Pheobe, cited in newspapers as being the village gossip, questioned William each time she saw him and his strange replies made her increasingly suspicious that foul play was involved in Maria's disappearance. She became a crucial witness in the Red Barn Murder trial along with her husband Francis. 

As sure as I am that you would like to hear more about The Red Barn murder and my ancestors part in the event and trial but I am not going to give away any more of this story as I it deserves a blog post of its own. Blog post to come!

                                                                    Launching the #ANZAncestryTime Twitter Chat, October 2020

Spring arrived in the Southern Highlands and I came up with the idea to start an Australian and New Zealand Twitter Chat. Along with my wonderful genea-friends Fran Kitto, author of the  TravelGenee blog and Pauleen Cass of Family History Across the Seas blog we formed the admin team of what is now a successful weekly family history Twitter Chat. After setting up a website (a huge thankyou to Fran for her technology wonders!), Twitter accounts, a Facebook page, a number of entertaining zoom calls and following lots of publicity, we launched the first ever  #ANZAncestryTime Twitter Chat in October 2020. 

Every Tuesday night since, we have posted questions or prompts about different genealogy topics and along with our wonderful team of hosts which has included Alex Daw, Maggie Gaffney (NZ), Jennifer Jones, Shauna Hicks and Seonaid Harvey Lewis (NZ) we have enjoyed interesting, informative and very enjoyable discussions. The amazing Sue Wyatt from Tasmania is our official #ANZAncestryTime blogger. Sue writes a blog called O'er The Seas We Go and she kindly writes a weekly summary of our twitter chats which makes catching up and keeping up much easier. 

We have all had to learn to type at a miraculously fast speed to keep up with the lively chat. We are thrilled to have had people from England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland join us each week along with those from Australia and New Zealand. The chat has proved to be a wonderful way to stay connected with genea-friends and we all learn something new from each other every week!

          
                                                                               Peelwood Cemetery where my husband's ancestors are buried.

Towards the end of 2020 in Australia we were very fortunate to live relatively freely while the rest of the world struggled with large numbers of people with Covid. My weekends consisted of drives around country NSW enjoying the wonderful views in National Forests, navigating off road tracks and deciding whether or not to cross flooded remote dirt roads. Being a family historian, of course, country drives always involve stopping at cemeteries and finding the graves of ancestors. 

                                                                                              A view of Bungonia Gorge on a weekend drives

 In  2020 I prepared a number of family history presentations which included two for the first Australian online Family History conference which had been originally planned to be held in Queensland on the beautiful Sunshine Coast. The Family History Downunder Conference was moved to 2021 and one of my presentations was on Using Google Earth Tours and Movie Maker for Telling Family History Stories and the other was about House History Research. Online presentations became a new way of life for family historians and presenters.

                                                                          A Screenshot from one of my Google Earth Powerpoint Presentations

Among the events cancelled throughout 2020 was the annual Southern Highlands Tulip Festival which is held each year in Corbett Gardens in Bowral. As a local to the area I quite enjoyed strolling through the gardens without the huge crowds the tulips attract each year although I couldn't help but be concerned for how local businesses must have missed the tourists. 

                                                                                A photo I took in Corbett Gardens in October 2020

A splendid display of Waratahs in the town of Roberston also added colour to The Southern Highland. 2020 was a strange year as grand-childrens' birthdays went by celebrated with zoom calls and posted gifts instead of birthday parties. Facetime calls became a much more important part of my family life and a wonderful way to read books, sing songs with and talk with my grandchildren.

                                                          Banksias near the Railway Station in Robertson, Spring 2020, Image Sharn White

One of the highlights of 2020 was that our family tree was added to with the birth of two new beautiful granddaughters, born three months apart, to my middle and youngest daughters. Covid lockdown was a difficult time for birthing babies with no visitors permitted at hospitals and few visitors allowed in homes. Possibly the hardest part of this Covid pandemic for myself has been seeing my family and grandchildren far less than I would normally do. Sydney, where they live, is in a strict lockdown as I write this blog post and living in a regional area, I cannot travel to see them nor can they visit me.

                                                                       Title Deeds and Probate records I found in an Antique Store in Mittagong, NSW
 
Between writing presentations, researching family history, writing a book and exploring the NSW countryside in 2020, I made an exciting discovery in an antique store in Mittagong in the Southern Highlands. I found a rather large bundle of Title Deeds and Probate Records and of course I purchased them. I am sure there will be a blog to come about these wonderful old documents. I find it sad when valuable family documents end up in a store for sale and I hope I can track down some of the families and return these to them to.

                                                                                                        My Family Christmas

2020 came to a close with a family Christmas celebration for which I am very grateful. There were no travel restrictions at the time and we were all able to enjoy a wonderful day few days of fun family time together in the Southern Highlands. A planned annual holiday to the Sunshine Coast in January had to be cancelled however and this marked the beginning of a new year of Covid Lockdowns. 

Next Week: 2021 - a year of online family history conferences and lockdowns.