Happy New Year to all our members. The beginning of a new year is always a busy time in the genealogy calendar, with many taking their first steps on the exciting journey to discover their ancestors, and others dusting off research to follow new leads. I hope FamNet will be of help to you this year and we look forward to seeing many of you uploading GEDCOMs and finding new contacts.

More Participation from Members

I would like to thank those members who sent us stories, web sites, and emails last year. This year it would be good to see more members sending in articles and other items which we can include in the newsletter. Whether it is just a few lines or a document of many pages we can accommodate articles of any size. The best form is as a Word document. PDF documents can’t be included in the main newsletter text but will be linked to the newsletter. There’s an example of this in this newsletter, Jan Kelly’s article “DNA Proved my Genealogy”.

The next school year is about to start: why don't you start a FamNet group with your local school? Its fun for you, for the kids and their families. The link "FamNet in Schools" at the left of FamNet pages should tell you everything you need to know, but if you still have any questions Robert will be happy to answer them. We'll give free subscriptions to leaders of school groups.

Integration with DigitalNZ

With a new feature that integrates FamNet with DigitalNZ, we have taken an important step forward. This is very exciting: with one click you can search 120 New Zealand sites, and with a second click add relevant information to your GDB (Genealogy DataBase) records. Check out this new feature! It’s well worth doing this with all of your ancestors who lived in New Zealand – you may be surprised at what you find. Even in our initial testing we were discovering new information about our families.

NZ Settlers and Immigrants Table

We’ve set up a table called “NZSettlers”. We invite anybody who has an ancestor who emigrated to New Zealand to add this ancestor into this table, preferably with a link to the GDB record of this person.

FamNet Helps all Over the World

We love getting feedback. This email, from Peter Nixon in England, shows that FamNet is valued even outside New Zealand. Thank you Peter for letting us know: -

"Thank you for arranging for newsletters of FamNet to be emailed to me. I haven't really had time to thoroughly study them in great detail yet, but looking through the latest issue I saw your piece about some information from British Colombia being freely accessible on line. This was of interest to me as one of my father's sisters married a Canadian soldier in WW1 and went to live in Vancouver. I followed your link to the website but unfortunately it doesn't cover the period I was interested in.

It seems a very useful idea to pass on addresses of websites which must be of interest to people. And it's pretty good to think that a NZ website gives information about a Canadian website which is of interest to someone in Britain. I have many such sites in my bookmarks and will go through them and give you details of any that look as though they could be of interest to you".

DNA Testing for Genealogy

Have you ever wondered about the use of DNA testing for Genealogy? What is it? How does it work? Why are some genealogists really enthusiastic about DNA testing? Recently Robert was asked whether he would mind being tested by another genealogist with whom he is remotely connected. He agreed, but at a price: he wanted an article on DNA testing for this newsletter.

The result: Jan Kelly has submitted this superb article to FamNet. It not only tells a story about the Swaysland family it is also a very good example of what records Jan used to do her research. Starting with her genealogy journey through paper and Internet records it tells the story of each family member mentioned with examples of newspaper clippings, certificates, census records. Jan then gives an example of how DNA helped her to confirm the story indicated by the paper trail, with a very good explanation and example of the types of tests and DNA markers. A very good explanation of DNA testing, well worth reading.

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From the Developer

From Robert Barnes

I often comment that FamNet is not just a place where you go to look up stuff to hide away on your own computer; rather FamNet is where you tell your story, and to get real benefit from FamNet you should put your family tree into it. Not just the bare names and dates of a GEDCOM, but the pictures and stories that make your family history interesting. This month I have been busy with a couple of developments of interest to those who have uploaded their family trees: -

Integration with DigitalNZ. A single search can now look for information in more than 120 New Zealand sites, including Papers Past, Auckland City Library, and others. With one click links to these pages can be added to a scrapbook. Remember that FamNet’s ambition is to have a record of every known ancestor of every New Zealander, and for that record to have the best information about that person that we (collectively) know. By easily adding scrapbook information in this way, we take another step towards that goal.

New Zealand Settlers. I have created a table of NZ Settlers, currently with data of my ancestors, other records from our passenger lists, and some other data. A click from this table can take you to the person's record in the GDB. At the moment the table, which contains just over 13000 entries, is reasonably complete to 1846. With your help it can be made a lot more complete: anybody who has records in the GDB should add their ancestor who emigrated to New Zealand into this table. If you add your records by using the link to the GDB then a single click can take you from the settler table to the person’s family tree.

Coming soon: GEDCOM download. You will shortly be able to take a backup copy of your own records as a GEDCOM, and create a database on your own computer using your favourite genealogy program. I’d hoped to have this ready this month, but it’s proving more difficult than I’d hoped. More of this next month.

Integration with DigitalNZ

What is "DigitalNZ" I hear you say? DigitalNZ is an initiative with more than 120 partners, led by the National Library of New Zealand. With one search you can find articles from Papers Past, Auckland City Library, and more than 120 other content providers. Click the link to see the current list.

Of course DigitalNZ has been added to our list of useful web sites, both in the URL database and in the shorter list of important New Zealand sites. But as well, we've provided a facility that makes searching it, and linking the results to your FamNet records, very easy. Assuming that we're allowed to keep using this facility (see the note below), this is a great way of adding information about your ancestors.

Open any of your records. Just above the list of scrapbook links you'll see a link, "Add Links from DigitalNZ, FamNet, and the Web to your scrapbook": -

Click this link and FamNet looks up DigitalNZ with the person's name, and their maiden name if they are a woman, within the range of their life. From this record FamNet will look up DigitalNZ with text "Freda PYM" and "Freda COOK", from 1896 to 1991. You can change the search criteria if you wish: -

Click "Review" and the items are displayed in a review window. Here you can simply click [Add to Scrapbook] to add a link to this to the scrapbook for this record: -

Of course many of the records that you find will be irrelevant. Click [Don't Show Me Again] and FamNet keeps a record that you've looked at this record but discarded it, and FamNet won't show you this record again from this record.

A link is stored, not a copy, so when you click the link the web page on Papers Past, Auckland City Art Gallery, etc, is opened via the DigitalNZ alias. The original content provider maintains all rights, and may choose to change or delete the page, in which case the link won't work any more. "Type" is recorded as "DNZ", distinguishing these links from other web links: -

So, if you haven't already done so, put your family tree into FamNet. Then go through the list of all of your ancestors who lived in New Zealand, and use this link to see what information there might be about them in the 120+ organizations holding source data indexed by DigitalNZ. Like me, you may be surprised and delighted by what you find. It's certainly far easier than searching DNZ manually, or even worse, looking up the individual web sites.

We may have to make some technical changes to avoid a legal problem: the user agreement with which FamNet gets access to the DNZ search says that we won't save metadata for more than 30 days. Are we storing metadata? All we store is the DigitalNZ URL and the title, e.g. HOUSING PROBLEM (Evening Post, 16 August 1935) and http://api.digitalnz.org/records/16889301/source. We’re discussing this amicably with the National Library, and there are several technical options to get around the problem. We'll keep you posted. In the meantime, what do you think of this facility? Is it useful? Is it worth fighting for?

Searching FamNet General-Resource Databases

I have also implemented an option that will search the General Resource Databases so that (for example) if there is a relevant record in the burials table you can link this into your GDB record, or set "Don't show me again" in the same way as for DigitalNZ links. There are currently a few programming issues with this option, so it has been defaulted off. I'll change the default when I fix these issues.

Further development of this feature might be to allow you to do a general web search, for example with Google, within the Possible Links frame, and other sites of interest to NZ Genealogists.

NZ Settlers and Immigrants Table

Somebody on the Rootsweb list was looking for a database of New Zealand Settlers. A response was to refer them to the NZSG's "First Family" collection, but this is available only to NZSG members, and is queried by contacting the NZSG. This seemed to me to be anachronistic so I have set up a table "NZSettlers". The table is freely available to all, in fact you don't even need to log on to FamNet if you come through a direct link to the table. Of course you have to register/log on to add data to it for fairly obvious reasons.

I have added my settler ancestors, plus FamNet's shipping data (thank you Tony Christiansen), so currently we have a reasonably complete list of settlers to 1845 plus about 2500 others. There are currently more than 13 thousand records in this table. Can you help us with more? Read on.

It comes as no surprise that in linking my family records to the data from shipping records I found several inconsistencies. The shipping list does not show my great grandfather’s full name, his age is incorrect, and the passenger list includes his son Thomas who died at sea, superficially implying that Thomas was among the immigrants. It is not always the shipping records that are wrong: our GDB records had the family arriving on the wrong date – they can hardly have arrived a month after the ship they were on! I expect that you’ll all find similar inconsistencies.

My idea: the table lists any immigrant. A column "Arrival in NZ" allows you to sort or select, for example people arriving before 1850, before 1900, between 1850 and 1860. Ideally the record will have a “GDB Link” value so that a single click takes you to the subject’s family tree. To see an example, search for “Family Name = BARNES”. You can also select by locality (of arrival) or other criteria. Should we have a cut-off? For example, we could include records only of people arriving before 1900. My own feeling is that it would be better to have no particular limit as later people can always be filtered out with your search criteria. But what do you think?

I’ll be experimenting to see if I can extract information from the GDB of people born outside New Zealand and dying within New Zealand. If I can identify these records and they are public records I could add a record into the settlers table. However I’m not sure how easy this would be. If place of Birth and Place of Death are recorded at all they are often recorded without naming a country, for example “Rathkeale”. While I know this is in Ireland, a simple SQL query won’t.

Is this table wanted? If yes then let me know, and support it by adding the people in your tree who came to New Zealand. Wouldn’t it be great if this table evolved to become a list of all settlers, with links to their family records? You can add fields by entering them individually, uploading them from a spreadsheet, or using a link that will create records in this table from the GDB.

If this table is not wanted (perhaps this duplicates something that's already been done) then we'll drop it. But if there is sufficient interest then the facility could be enhanced. For example local history societies could display their local settlers on their own web site from the common table. Using the standard search facilities you can show the immigrants on a particular boat, but this information is not necessarily the same as that given on a passenger list. Perhaps we should provide links to this shipping information. I’m open to suggestions.

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Useful Websites

If you know of websites that you think may be helpful to others please either add them yourself, or email Janice or Sue at –

Janice Cornwell or Sue Greene

To find FamNet’s Useful Websites page: either

· Click the [Community] tab on FamNet’s home page. Click the button [Useful Web Sites]. Or

· Click the [General Resource Databases] tab on FamNet’s home page. Locate “Useful Web Sites” in the list of “Other Tables” and click this link.

From Robert

You don’t have to use DigitalNZ through FamNet: you can search the site in the normal way. Just as when you use it through FamNet, you get access to over 120 organizations and NZ sites including the National Library, Papers Past, Auckland City Library, and many more. We’ve included this in our list of Top NZ Sites in FamNet’s Useful Web Sites facility.

From Janice

Australian Immigration:

Elizabeth Rushen's site is titled Female Migration to Australia 1830’s to 1850 with the focus on female migration to Australia in the 1830’s. There are several lists on this site. One list contains the names of bounty women and their ships of arrival. Another list has the full passenger list of the ships involved and includes as well family members and non-bounty women. There are books for sale on this site written by Elizabeth Rushen and Perry McIntyre which are about different topics of female migration to Australia. The Merchant‘s Women pictured here is one of those.

The Perth DPS (Dead Persons’ Society) site passenger ships arriving in Australian Ports is a good place to start if you are looking for a list of passenger ships arriving in Australian ports. Not only does it have West Australia ships it also has lists of ships from the other states as well, and some New Zealand shipping from 1839 – 1905 is also listed as are the convict transports 1788-1868. Enjoy the picture on the home page of the Perth DPS.

If you are trying to find out about the child and youth migrants who came out on their own from Britain try child & youth migration from UK. The NSW archives has compiled a finding aid called Archives in Brief 91 which should give you some ideas on where to research, and further reading on the topic.

New Zealand Immigration:

I find I often spend more time than I should exploring the sites that I highlight. This is definitely one site that I will be going back and exploring further. New Zealand Bound is “Dedicated to identifying genealogical resources to assist in locating which New Zealand bound ship an immigrant ancestor was aboard” The links on the home page are to Passenger lists, Where to start, Navigate site, Search sites, and Main ports. Explore these links. I was amazed at the depth of information available. For example if you want to find out more about Rootsweb there is a good article about how to use it. Just explore.

Olwyn Whitehouse has been maintaining this site since 1988 and it is still growing. I had not used this site until I responded to a request on the NZ Rootsweb list for information about the ship Jura’s voyage to Port Chalmers in 1862. This seemed to be one voyage that had somehow been missed from lists. Olwyn responded with a link to the site and now there is very full information on the 1862 voyage. If you have despaired of finding a passenger list it is time to visit this site.

One of the lists of interest on Gavin Petrie’s site is Immigrant ships to New Zealand – 1835 to 1910. The Jura’s 1862 voyage was listed but did not include the number of passengers. You may find useful information about your ship here.

Another site to visit is Cory Woodward’s NZ Yesteryears. Passenger lists, 34 Shipboard diaries and much more.

Take the time to explore the sites thoroughly, following down the links. Make more than one visit. New information is being found and added all the time and if it is some time since you last visited, go and visit again. I am blown away by the amount of work put into these sites.

From Wayne

Discover everafter - Ireland

Winners of the 'Innovation' Award & Finalists in the 'Most Promising New Business' Category in the Ballymena Business Excellence Awards 2012.

“A graveyard is one of the most accessible sources for studying a community’s history. Each one is unique and has its own collection of headstones, many of which will, unfortunately, deteriorate through neglect, weather or vandalism; some eventually becoming completely illegible. everafter has modernised the way the deaths of our loved ones are recorded. We provide Parishes and Councils with a complete set of up-to-date graveyard records and an online Graveyard Management System to record future burials. The everafter team recognise the importance of preserving the information held by graveyards and we are committed to delivering a unique, high quality service which will guarantee that an accurate record of the deceased exists everafter.”

Overcoming Font Overload in Windows

By Sue Chastain, About.com Guide

“In my Web travels I've noticed that most graphics enthusiasts also seem to be font collectors. In addition, many graphics software programs come bundled with hundreds of fonts. Most of them don't give you the option of which ones you want to install... they just dump all their fonts into your Windows FONTS folder. Often the fonts are visual duplicates of fonts you may already have under a different name. Add to that all those fun, cool, free fonts we find on the Web and before long your system becomes sluggish and you can't seem to figure out why.... Chances are, it's font overload!”

Find a Grave

Find the graves of ancestors, create virtual memorials, add 'virtual flowers' and a note to a loved one's grave, etc. 93M grave records. Search by country, name, cemetery, and more.

About Portableapps.com – a computer on a stick (flash drive)

“PortableApps.com is the world's most popular portable software solution allowing you to take your favourite software with you. A fully open source and free platform, it works on any portable storage device (USB flash drive, iPod, memory card, portable hard drive, etc) as well as local storage and cloud storage options. With millions of users all over the world and a full collection of open source software as well as compatible freeware and commercial software and partners in the software and hardware industry, PortableApps.com is the most complete solution for life on the go.” Carry your valuable information with you.

Video:How to Research Your Family Tree on the Internet

with Jason Phipps

“Research your family tree using certain Internet resources in order to learn more about your family history. Check out these tips for researching to start exploring your family tree.”

Blacksheep Ancestors

“Search for your Blacksheep Ancestors in Free Genealogical Prison and Convict Records, Historical Court Records, Executions, Insane Asylum Records and Biographies of Famous Outlaws, Criminals & Pirates in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada.”

FreeREG Stands for Free REGisters.

“Our objective is to provide free Internet searches of baptism, marriage, and burial records, that have been transcribed from parish and non-conformist registers of the U.K. FreeREG is a companion project to FreeBMD (a database of the GRO birth, marriage and death indexes from 1837) and FreeCEN (a database of census information).”

Dead Fred Genealogy Photo Archive

What Can You Do Here?

“Trace your roots for FREE with our searchable database containing thousands of identified and mystery photos for genealogy enthusiasts looking for long-lost family. Anyone who finds a photo of a direct ancestor that is owned by the archive will receive the photo for free. If the historic photos you find peak your interest in genealogy, you can continue your research by doing a family search here.”

The Genealogist.co.uk

“The Genealogist offers core sources essential to every family historian. Key records include the census for England and Wales (1841-1911), civil registration indexes of births, marriages and deaths (BMD) 1837-2005, Parish Records, Wills etc and much more.” A pay site to rival ancestry etc.

From Sue

An assortment of web sites.

Parish Records Online

For those who have research in Somerset and Norfolk, here are a couple of sites I have found to be very useful. For Somerset try Somerset research and for Norfolk try Norfolk Transcript Archive. Shame there are not more like these.

Digitising Family History

We found this through DigitalNZ: -

“Today we can easily discover, share and use our knowledge and creativity using technologies in ways vastly different from the pre-digital era. Our ability to do this will only increase over time. The Make it Digital approach is to identify elements of good practice for digital content creation based on an understanding of the digital content life cycle. Key to the life cycle and how long your digital content will survive is the use of open standards. See Getting Started with Digital guide.”

Belfast City Council Burial Records

You can look up records using their burial record search facility. You can buy images of burial records that are over 75 years old for £1.50 each.

You can search for burial records in Belfast from 1869 onwards. Around 360,000 records are available from:

Belfast City Cemetery - records from 1869 (including the Jewish, public and Glenalina extension sections),

Roselawn Cemetery - records from 1954,

Dundonald Cemetery - records from 1905.

Scams

Ever get those emails or phone calls telling you, you have won millions of dollars, phone calls saying your computer has a virus and you need to follow the instructions to remove the virus. Or emails that seem to be too good to be true. Well if it is to good to be true then it probably is. A good site to check out all the scams is scamdetector.com. This site has all the scams you need to know about.

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Group News

Whangarei Family History Computer Group

Contacts:

Gloria: (09) 435 1217 barry.gloria@orcon.net.nz

Wayne: (09) 437 2881 wayne@bydand.co.nz

Pat: (09) 437 0692 whangareifamilyhistorygroup@gmail.com

WOW What a great day! January 1^st saw 6 of our members at the Waipu Caledonian Games, sharing a site with Robert and FamNet.

It was a really good experience yet again, collaborating to provide a service to people stopping at our site. There was a lot of interest in the service we provide, and over 30 people filled out a registration form, expressing interest in both WFHCG and FamNet. Even if we eventually capture only half of them, then that will be excellent. Robert was able to help quite a few people to get a clue or two on their families.

We have already had our January meetings and planned the rest of the year. We have a new venue for our Thursday meetings (see below).

An exciting upcoming event is a Lock-In at the Whangarei Library for our May meeting. We have Jan Gow as our Keynote Speaker. Final details have yet to be confirmed for the event. Full details will be in the next Newsletter. You can register your interest anytime from now.

I hope you have had a good seasonal break, and got at least a little bit of time away from research and enjoyed some outdoor activities.

Happy delving, Gloria.

Venues

Thursday evening venue is 6 Augusta Place, Whau Valley. Call Wayne, Gloria or me or; email me at Whangareifamilyhistorygroup@gmail.com, if you need directions. **NB new Thursday venue

Saturday meetings are held in the SeniorNet rooms in James Street. The rooms are upstairs in the Arcade leading to Orr’s Pharmacy and Tiffany’s Café, Start time 9.30 til finished before 1.30pm.

Programme for 2013

The following programme is subject to change but these were requests from the December meeting.

January	Using flashdrives, discs and external hard-drives to save and download records and photos and “Googling” images for your records/family story/genealogy.
February	Powerpoint – Jane Byrne.
March	The Family History book and the use of Cyndislist and Genuki – what they are and their uses – Vacky.
April	Family Tree and Legacy. A beginner’s basic comparison of the two. Documentation and sources and the source writer function v notes.
May	Thursday will be preparing for Saturday. Saturday Jan Gow from Beehive Books and Hooked On Genealogy Tours is coming to talk to us. Jan Gow (QSM) is an expert in the field of Genealogy and we are looking forward to this meeting. Cost not known at this time.
June	Dropbox. A depository to hold and share your records with people – Jane Byrne.
July	Parish records – sites such as “Dead Fred’, “Findagrave” Shipping lists – Barry Dawson.
August	Using sites Ancestry, Findmypast, Scotland’s people and finding “FREE” sites.
September	Publishing your research. Ideas on what you might do with what you have found. Introduction to the New Zealand Archives with a view to visiting the Auckland branch.
October	NZ Archives and what can be found.
November	Using FamNet from a Users point of view – Jeanette Osborne.
December	A collaborative research day. Christmas break-up.

Each month – Compile a list of websites. If you have a website you have found useful email it or bring it up at the meeting and we can have a look at it or put notes about it in the newsletter and on FamNet.

Calendar dates 2013

Thursday Eve Saturday Morn

Jan	10	Jan	19
Feb	14	Feb	16
Mar	14	Mar	16
Apr	11	Apr	29
May	9	May	18
Jun	13	June	15
Jul	11	Jul	20
Aug	8	Aug	17
Sept	12	Sept	21
Oct	10	Oct	19
Nov	14	Nov	16
Dec	12	Dec	21

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News and Views

We invite contributions from FamNet members for this section: please email me (Sue) if you have any material.

If You Could See Your Ancestors

If you could see your ancestors, all standing in a row,

would you be proud of them? Or don't you really know?

Some mighty strange discoveries are made in climbing family trees,

and some of them, you know, might not particularly please.

If you could see your ancestors, all standing in a row

there might be some of them you wouldn't care to know.

But here is another question that requires a different view:

if you could meet your ancestors, what would they think of you?

Author Mable Blake.

More Army Pensioner Records Online

Findmypast have added tens of thousands of new records for army pensioners, including over 19,000 that were held by the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham in Dublin. Those records are held under WO 119 at the National Archives; other records added at the same time are from WO 121, WO 122, WO 128 and WO 131, most of which relate to the Royal Hospital, Chelsea.

World War 1 Records Saved

The Western Front Association (WFA) is delighted to announce that it has secured the safe storage and preservation of a major archive of over six million Great War soldiers' pension record cards.

Some two years ago, the WFA learned that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) was no longer able to retain and manage its archive of Great War soldiers' pension records cards and related archives. The MoD had held these cards, passed to it from prior custodians, all of which date from the time of the conflict.

There was a possibility that the records would have had to be destroyed unless they could be passed for safe keeping to a reputable organisation. The WFA has, in this time, made a study and catalogued the primary information for of each group of records in the archive, and arranged the safe transfer and storage of the records to the WFA's secure premises.

The Gatwick Airport Baby 1986

Last year just before Christmas I (Sue) watched a documentary on TV about the Gatwick Airport Baby. It was the story of Steve Hydes who had been abandoned as a baby, left in the toilets of the Gatwick Airport 1986. It was a very moving story but also very interesting following his quest to find his natural mother. With this newsletter having an article from Jan Kelly about DNA, it is interesting to note that it also helped Steve to give him some idea of his roots, placing him somewhere geographically, even linking him to specific family lines. As Steve said in the show, it helped prove he was not from Mars.

When we start our genealogy for most of us we can go back four or more generations. Imagine what it would be like if you couldn’t get back any further than yourself. No parents, grandparents, or great grandparents that you can call your own, no sense of belonging to anyone not knowing where you were born.

If this newsletter happened to reach someone that had some information that would help Steve with his quest you can read his full story I was the Gatwick baby and contact him.

Letters from Scotland's Victorian Asylums go on Display

BBC Scotland's health correspondent Eleanor Bradford reports: documents which give a fascinating insight into life inside Scotland's Victorian lunatic asylums will be revealed to the public. Archives from Craig Dunain Hospital, in Inverness, will be available to the public in the Highland Archive Centre. Hundreds of letters from patients at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital have been analysed as part of its bicentenary celebrations.

Help Transcribe the National Archives of Australia’s Records with ‘arcHIVE’

The National Archives of Australia has the records, now they’re after your help to transcribe them. While they already have millions of records online and searchable using RecordSearch, there are still thousands (if not millions) more unindexed. Through the new ‘arcHIVE’ website that the National Archives of Australia have set up, you can help them by transcribing records, and by doing so, it will allow them to be searched, and assists in these items being added to RecordSearch.

As a bonus, earn points towards NAA publications and copies of Archives files for your research. So, the more you transcribe, the more points you earn. Register and get started – all you have to do is start typing!

NSW Probate Laws are Changing on 21 January 2013

From Monday, 21 January 2013 all notices of intention to apply for probate, administration or a reseal to the Supreme Court of NSW will be required to be advertised via the NSW Online Registry website. A link to the Online Registry website will be provided on the Supreme Court website. From Monday, 21 January 2013, advertising these notices in the newspaper will no longer be necessary and will cease to meet the requirements of the probate rules.

View Early Colonial Office Photos in Australasia Through a Lens

The National Archives England has released online thousands of early photographs and drawings of Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga and other Pacific Islands, just in time for Australia Day and Auckland Anniversary. You can now view images of Australian towns, buildings, landmarks and people, dating back as far as the mid-nineteenth century. The photographs have been uploaded to the photo-sharing website Flickr so that you can tag and contribute comments and suggestions to help improve the descriptions.

Good Grief! Irish BMD Certificates Double in Price
Long-form copies of birth, marriage and death certificates via both the GRO in Roscommon and the online facility have doubled in price to €20 with immediate effect. These certificates are the 'long-form, full copy of the registered entry' and can be used for most legal purposes. They are not to be confused with the 'research' photocopies that most researchers prefer to buy from the GRO* and cost only €4, with a €2 fee for searching. (The photocopy is generally all that's required for most research, but in the absence of an online facility via the GRO, many overseas researchers have been buying the full certificate via www.certificates.ie when possible.). This info is from Irish Genealogy News Blog

Why You Are You

Kapiti Branch has been invited to Masterton. See flyer for more details.

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How We Were

A section for our memories and stories of the times of our ancestors. We invite reader contributions for this section.

As it’s summer in New Zealand it’s time for those fortunate enough to spend time on the beach, playing in the water and enjoying the warm weather. I wondered what it might have been like for our ancestors who lived in the Victorian age in the heat. What did they do and wear?

Fashion-Era not only gives us an insight into swimwear but also many other categories of clothing. It might help with photos you have that you can’t date: you may find the type of dress which will help date your photo.

Below is a photo of Victorian attire for the beach.

In the early Victorian era women had worn serge or dark flannel bathing dresses, but by the 1860s two piece belted costumes replaced the earlier styles.

The swimwear bodice top was jacket like and the swimsuit bottom part three quarter trousers which had been rejected only a decade earlier when Amelia Bloomer urged women to adopt them.

Even when bloomers were accepted by many late Victorians as cycling wear in the 1890s they still remained only on the fringes of fashions of the day.

Swimwear fashion changes moved very slowly. Differences in swimsuit styles were simple such as the introduction of short cap sleeves. Eventually sleeveless styles with more ankle showing beneath the bloomers became usual.

Grandma’s Cookery Nook

From Aunt Daisy’s Cook Book. This sounded rather yummy. I might even give it a go.

Banana Bread (Boston).

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon baking powder

3 mashed bananas

½ cup butter

1¾ cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

Cream butter and sugar, add eggs, flour, baking powder, and soda and mashed bananas.

Cook in a slow oven.

I have noticed with Aunt Daisy’s recipes that the temperature of the oven is not mentioned in some cases, the time of cooking is not mentioned as in the recipe above, nor is the size of the cake tin you might need to use. Must have been a lot of guess work and a lot of waste if you got it wrong.

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Book Review

Three books by Ken Follett

Fall of Giants, ISBN 978-0451232854

Winter of the World, ISBN 978-0525952923

Pillars of the Earth, ISBN 978-0451232816

Reviewed by Robert Barnes

Mary came home with a copy of “Winter of the World”, thinking that it was my kind of book. She was right, but when I started reading it I found “This is the second in the Century Trilogy”, so of course I had to get “The Fall of Giants” and read it first.

With these books Follett has written a couple of historical epics covering the tumultuous periods of the first and second World Wars, telling his story through five families: two British, one German, one Russian, and one American. Although the plot sometimes felt a bit too contrived, the books give good insights into the period from different national and class (upstairs/downstairs) perspectives. For me, I wasn’t as gripped by these books as I had been with the Philippa Gregory books I reviewed last time, and they were covering a period of history that I was reasonably familiar with, so there wasn’t the same sense of discovery. Mary however thoroughly enjoyed Fall of Giants (she hasn’t read further yet), and she says that the depiction of World War One conditions in which her father fought gave her more of an understanding of what he went through than our recent tour of the WWI battlefields. We look forward to the publication of the third book of the trilogy.

I enjoyed reading these books enough to want to read more from Ken Follett, so I next bought “Pillars of the Earth”, a novel about the building of a cathedral in the 12th Century. I really enjoyed this book, more than the first two, as it was set in a period of history that I know little about. Unlike Gregory’s books that I reviewed last time it doesn’t so much deal with people and great events shaping history as with country and small-town life in 12th Century England. None of the characters are real historical people and the book focuses more on ordinary people rather than kings and queens, but one feels that this is an authentic picture of the way life was lived then.

Are Paper Books Doomed? My Experiences with a Kindle e-Book Reader

I have always loved books. For Christmas 2010 I was given a Kindle, an electronic book reader from Amazon, but I continued to buy most books as paper. We bought “Winter of the World” as a normal paper book, but when I found I wanted “Fall of Giants” I went straight to Amazon.com and bought it as an e-book. Winter of the World cost us about $NZ60, Fall of Giants cost $NZ11:45. Now that Mary has a Kindle too so that we are able to share books we have bought several more e-books (including “Pillars of the Earth” - $US7.59). So will I buy any more paper books? Well, yesterday I bought “Nigellissima”, a book of Italian cookery by Nigella Lawson. A good example of the genre “Food porn”, this cost about $NZ65 at my local bookstore.

This seems a perfect opportunity to reflect on this new way of book buying. Is the paper book doomed? Instant delivery, cheaper, no delivery costs, no GST: the competition is tough for books in the traditional format. Certainly there as signs that book retailing is in trouble. In Auckland we’ve seen the closure of Borders, before that Dymocks, and the days of the large book retailer seem to have gone. While stationery shops like Paper Plus and airport bookstores still thrive, they naturally concentrate on a limited range of best sellers. The Internet has changed the way we buy books: if we want a particular title we will search for it, often ending up on Amazon.com, and so bookstores are bypassed with purchases coming from Amazon or direct from the publisher. I have been a customer of Amazon.com for at least 15 years, in some years spending over $1000 on online book purchases. Even with freight costs Amazon has proven cheaper than local retailers, and the range available is incomparable. With the advent of e-books, which can be read on-line on any device with a browser or on specialist e-book readers like a Kindle this advantage increases. e-books are cheaper than paper books, and delivery is immediate. What’s not to like?

Well, sometimes an e-book just won’t do. Somehow the thought of having a recipe open on a laptop in the kitchen just doesn’t work, so we never considered purchasing Nigellissima electronically. Besides, the pictures would not be attractive displayed in black and white on a Kindle. I agree with Nicholas Carr: print books are here to stay for the foreseeable future. But I don’t know that I can foresee very far. I can see me purchasing more and more books electronically when I know what book or author I want to read, but continuing to make impulse purchases at a bookstore when I just want “something to read”.

e-book readers are very cheap (Kindle prices on Amazon range from $US69 to $US119 depending on model), and they feature a black and white screen that is readable in bright light (including full sunlight). Don’t think of them as cheap tablets. They are designed specifically for book reading, and they seek to combine the reading experience of physical books with electronic advantages. Even if they have a web browser and other software they are pretty hopeless at general computing tasks, but they provide a better reading experience than a laptop or a tablet. I prefer to hold a Kindle and read it in bed than a heavy paper book. With its built-in light, I’m even allowed to read in bed after Mary has gone to sleep. I love my Kindle for books that are entirely words, like novels, that you read from beginning to end. They are not so good for textbooks or other books where diagrams or illustrations are important or where, like Nigelissima, you just skim to find the parts (recipes in this case) that you want. As I said, we didn’t want Nigellissima as an e-book, and I have been disappointed with the few textbooks that I’ve bought electronically.

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Community

Ask an Expert

Q. From, Maureen Tempero. Looking for 2 Aunts,

Jean Budd born 29/9/1909 at Ohutu, Taumaranui to Eva and William Hopewell Budd. Cathleen May Budd born 17/11/1912 at Rongatea father unknown.

Eva is shown on the 1911 electoral roll in her maiden name of Eva Bentley Verchild at Marton as a spinster.

Do you have any suggestions as to what could have happened to these 2 girls, were there orphanages for girls? I can find no trace of either of them in marriages or deaths.

Eva and William were married in Bristol UK 23/1/1907 and arrived here some time before 1909. William remarried in 1914 in Auckland to Amy Raymond.

Eva had 2 more children in Palmerston North, Richard 1914, Mavis 1915.

Richard was adopted out at almost 4 and Mavis( my Mother ) kept.

Do you have any suggestions of where else I can look.

A. Hi Maureen,

I have been having a look to see if there is anything I could find out for you. A couple of things come up.

In Papers Past there is a Jean Budd mentioned in the Feilding Star under Manawatu Schools, Feilding Presbyterian, 27 Oct. 1914.

Another interesting little bit I found was in the Otago Daily Times, 1952, Jean Budd appointed principal Columbia College, School Education. I wonder if this could be your Jean Budd?

The mother Eva is buried at the Waikumete cemetery which is in Auckland. Interesting to note that she is down as a married woman. Was there a divorce?

Do you have Eva's death certificate? This may have how many children were living at the time of her death. This could help prove if the two aunts were alive. Also have you tried newspapers at the time of her death? You may find an obituary which will name family.

Re orphanages. I don't know if there were any in the Manawatu area, someone may be able to give you more information about that. Churches were also used for orphans and for children where a parent may be on their own for one reason or another the parent was having difficulty looking after the children.

Re deaths & marriages. Have you used the fiche? These go up further than the online indexes. If a child was adopted, on the fiche there should be another number beside their birth entry. This number was the folio number used for the adoption.

Hope other readers will be able to help you.

Sue

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In conclusion

A Bit of Light Relief

You have got to love the animals. I had an assortment of photos sent to me with cats asleep in all sorts of positions. These two are titled “Reassemble the Cat”.

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