Ancestors Within

Collecting Recollections

2011-11-24T15:24:00.002+10:30

Have you ever put together any audio-visual digital recordings of family biographies and family events, intertwining them in a genealogical way? It is something I would like to spend some time on when I have the right equipment and can give my full attention to the creative editing process.

Putting together something of the recorded recollections of family members would be wonderful, though sometimes people we know can be even more unwilling to contribute in a documentary way than strangers may be. I hope my family members will think of my efforts as worthwhile gifts to future generations.

From my experiences in television production, I know that gathering material together is one thing but putting it in a logical, informative, interesting and entertaining order can be quite a challenge. Keeping a fickle audience engaged in watching and enjoying the result, from beginning to end, especially when the audience happens to consist of your own relatives, should take their level of interest in family history into consideration.

This blog is one way in which I put together some ideas for how relatives, either known well or known slightly or until recently not known at all, can be involved in various discoveries. Having something for my own relatives to experience that is a little more engaging than can be achieved here at Ancestors Within, is the creative next step.

The difficulty, of course, is that there are many different branches of every family, and some branches are relevant to some family members but not to others. Including the relevant and excluding the irrelevant is therefore much more important when putting together audio-visual recordings than it is when producing a blog.

I have recently started three new series of blog posts here:

Getting to know great grandmothers

Lucky or fateful encounters

Peaceful enterprises and lovely surprises

Another series of blog posts, started some time ago, may also interest you:

Bisnonni Blogspot Award

Although I doubt my family history documentaries will win any Oscars, the dvds I intend to produce will be narrated mainly from my own perspective, making the production process much easier, I hope. Having a few series of themed blog posts might help me to develop coherent stories on dvd. I'll let you know how it goes!

Some of my older posts may be useful to you if you are planning your own collections of recollections:

A genealogical look around

Just starting out with family history

A New Awareness

2011-10-21T15:29:00.002+10:30

Have you ever taken an ancestral journey but not been aware of it at the time?

Have you ever found yourself in a place where you discovered something completely unexpected about yourself?

Has researching your ancestors inspired you to go somewhere you would never have considered going before?

Peaceful Enterprises and Lovely Surprises - Part One

2011-09-19T09:38:00.004+09:30

You may be wondering why I am starting yet another new theme here at Ancestors Within. I write this blog as an "amateur" in the genealogical field, researching only my own and my husband's various family branches. I consider myself an amateur as I am not paid for writing here.

Although I am too busy with other aspects of my life to assist on an individual basis with other people's family research, I do have the advantage of being well-qualified in the analysis of evidence, having received a university education in the social sciences. And I love to write, which is also an advantage when recording historical information in a meaningful and creatively interesting way. If this is quite helpful to you, that is wonderful.

With the global economy the way it is at present, you may like to know that there are plenty of ways family history research can help to make the world a better, fairer and more prosperous place. Perhaps you see this blog as a philanthropic activity, or even as a humanitarian pursuit.

We invest so much of our emotional energy in our closest relationships. Many of our economic resources are invested in our homes and our family lives. Many people have lost their homes during the past few years. Many people have seen their families disintegrate through stresses of various kinds.

During adolescence, people often want to steer a path towards independence, spending more time with friends their own age rather than with those boring old people known as parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Some people want to spend time away from older relatives because one or more of those relatives is seen as more of a threat or a danger than as a loving, caring, trustworthy and affectionate friend.

Adolescence is also the time when we think about the future of our own lives as individuals. Do we want to continue our family line through ourselves? Do we want the invest a large amount of our emotional energy in a special relationship with someone we may spend the rest of our lives with in a home of our own?

Perhaps you have noticed that much of the media, and especially the entertainment industry, seeks our attention by tapping into our emotional interests. People employed in the genealogical industry also do the same. You are probably reading this blog because, on at least one occasion, you have already experienced the profound joy family history research can provide.

An emotionally insightful and personal encounter with some aspect of the past can give our lives deeper meaning, and more stability in a world of constant change. The shallow and even predatory aspects of many commercial relationships can leave us feeling a need in our lives for more understanding and respect. And perhaps more attention on our needs.

Unfair businesses are driven by the fact that we often buy on the basis of emotion rather than good reasoning. Fairer businesses employ people who make the effort to ensure that good reasoning also contributes to our decision to buy. Some people have the mistaken belief that social enterprise is just about using social media tools to reach customers and interact with them. I, on the other hand, believe that interactions are not necessarily fair.

More about my views on fair businesses

I often receive emails from companies providing products they hope to sell to family history researchers and genealogists. Most of those emails are very courteous and I do my best to read and respond to them. I sometimes even mention the products when writing my blog posts here, hence the beginning of this new series.

How to contact me in a way I consider courteous

The best businesses give us peace of mind, and may even provide us with lovely surprises. Perhaps you can think of some examples, whether from the field of genealogy or any another industry that has helped you to discover more about your family history.

Lucky or Fateful Encounters - Part One

2011-09-08T12:59:00.002+09:30

I like to put a few series of blog posts here from time to time on particular genealogical topics. They give me the motivation to explore ideas and connections more clearly, at least in my own mind.

When we think about our family histories, our own existence is frequently thought of as the consequence of a series of lucky encounters. For example, what if your parents had never met? Where would you be now?

We may think of ourselves as experiencing both good luck and bad luck. I have never won a lottery, or anything similar, so does that make me an unlucky person? Until very recently, I had not been a hospital patient since the first week of my life, and I have now recovered fully. Does that make me a lucky person?

When I was a child, I thought my maternal grandfather was unlucky because he had his birthday just before Christmas. I thought my paternal grandmother was lucky because she worked in a cake shop. Is luck just a matter of how we view a situation, especially the situation of someone other than ourselves?

Here is a blog post mentioning my experiences a few years ago in New York

Perhaps, unlike me, you believe in fate. I prefer to think we have some freedom in our lives to choose our own destinies, or at least to plan and prepare for the type of future we would like. And I sometimes wonder if my ancestors thought in a similar way.

Getting to Know Great Grandmothers - Part One

2011-09-07T14:02:00.005+09:30

It often surprises me that I probably now know more about my husband's great grandmothers than my own. The maiden names of my great grandmothers were Annie Spottiswoode, Annie Ginn, Harriet Lloyd and Edith (Lily) Howells. The maiden names of my husband's great grandmothers were Agata Bracchi, Carolina Galito, Maria Burratto and Vittoria Fachin.

Anne Spottiswoode was born in Antrim in Northern Ireland. Annie Ginn was born in London. Harriet and Lily were both born in Shropshire. Agata was born in Lombardy. Carolina was born in Basilicata. Maria and Vittoria were both born in the Veneto.

I have especially become a great admirer of Vittoria. You may have seen the picture of her and one of her younger daughters in the right hand column of this blog. I have also put the picture here today:

You may like to know that Vittoria's daughter Carmela, shown in this photograph, was quite a small woman herself. She was my husband's nonna - grandmother. Vittoria must have been tiny!

The photograph was taken in 1953, when mother and daughter were reunited in Italy for the first time since 1927. Vittoria had been a widow for many years, including the years of the First World War, during which time the family home was on the front line of several battles. It is very likely that the family mostly lived in poverty.

I think it important to think of Vittoria of the Veneto in her middle aged years, when she was trying to protect her teenage daughters from the soldiers of both sides in the fighting. Have you ever lived on the front line of a war? Have you heard of the Battle of Vittorio Veneto?

Wikipedia - Battle of Vittorio Veneto

As far as I am aware, Vittoria's daughters mostly left the Veneto upon their marriages. One went to live in Belgium. One went to Switzerland. One went to Canada. One went to Turin, and one, Carmela came to Australia. Carmela had a brother who went to Australia earlier than she did, with her husband Charlie to escape from the fascists' brutality.

Do any of your ancestors come from the Veneto? Did they arrive in Australia in the 1920s? Were they living on the front line during World War One?

I think of Vittoria as a very brave woman, a survivor, and someone with a great sense of humour - as you will find out if you follow this series of blog posts.

Ancestors and Education

2011-09-06T12:41:00.010+09:30

Have you ever thought about how your own level of education may have more to do with your ancestry than your ability? Could it also have more to do with your location than your sense of vocation?

My last years of high school, from the ages of 14 to 17, were spent in Scotland. None of that education was at a private school or anywhere else that could be considered as privileged in British terms. For educational purposes I was also considered to be Scottish, with a Scottish curriculum of subjects offered, even though all I wanted to do was return to England as soon as possible to live with my grandparents.

University was never an option for me at the age of 17.

I just wanted to leave school, and to leave Scotland. I wanted skills for a job as soon as possible so I could gain enough of an income - and the opportunity - to allow me to travel the world. No-one encouraged me to stay on at school for another year, or to consider progressing to university. A job, any job, was more important.

My father worked mainly away from home when I was 17. He would have been considered as having a reasonably high income, at least on paper for that year. In reality, it did not mean that I personally had a high income, or access to anyone else's income.

If I had wanted to stay on at school and then go on to university, I do not know if my family would have been supportive, both personally and financially. None of them had any experience of university life or what was involved with studying in one. I do not know if I would have been able to go to a university in England, or if a university in Scotland would have been the only possibility.

My two closest Scottish school friends were both studying at Edinburgh University when I was working at the BBC in London. My school friends both had relatives to assist them in Edinburgh. I had no relatives in London, nor any former school friends there.

Imagine what options your ancestors had, then compare them with your own options and those of other family members today.

I did not have any family members in any Scottish university area, or any English university area come to that. Seeking an education, or a job, can indeed be a daunting prospect without adequate social supports.

Who might your ancestors have known when they moved from one place to another? Were they part of a process of chain migration, either from a rural area to a city one in the same country, or did they move from town to town, or even from country to country?

How did your ancestors pay for the education of their children? How does that cost compare with the cost of an education today?

Here are two articles you may find interesting:

Edinburgh University to charge £36,000 a degree

Parents of the past paid hefty tuition fees

I would especially like to dedicate this blog post to readers who, like me, decided to return to study later in life, after the age of thirty, when they probably have (or had) a great many additional responsibilities - and deeper relationships - to support, not to mention bills to pay.

Here is one of my earlier posts mentioning the topic of education:

Names and literacy

The Mystery of Keziah

2011-09-01T15:02:00.003+09:30

I wonder what ever happened to my grandmother's sister Keziah Harris. Before starting my family history searches, I did not know that Dorothy had any sisters at all. I now have a copy of Keziah's birth certificate, but she disappeared from all records after the 1901 census. I have not been able to find a death certificate for her.

Dorothy had at least two other sisters I now vaguely know something about. One was called Annie and the other Mary, though Mary was known as Polly. Whatever happened to them and their descendants?

Perhaps I will never know more. You may like to see my earlier blog post about the family. My other remaining questions are regarding my grandmother's mother, Harriet, nee Lloyd.

I have found three Harriet Lloyd birth certificates from the time and place in which she was born, but none match her. She died in 1910 at the age of 38, according to her death certificate. The 1881 census records her as the eldest of four children, her other siblings being Mary, John and George.

Harriet's parents were Maria nee Clark(e) and William Machin Lloyd. In 1881, the family lived in the Mill Building in Dawley, Shropshire. Do you know anything about the family, or about the building in which they lived? William was a coal miner.

I have been unable to trace Harriet's family in the 1891 census, or her mother in earlier records, apart from Maria and William's marriage certificate. It may be interesting to find out more about Maria, though I think all of her ancestors were probably poor coal miners and farm labourers.

Maria is my earliest known matrilineal link.

So Many Cousins

2011-08-18T15:46:00.006+09:30

Since I last mentioned this very faded photograph, I have discovered a few more things about the sitter. Here is a woman of about 25 years of age. She was born in Brussels in Belgium, probably in the year 1848, meaning that the photograph dates from around 1873. She is someone I would like to know more about.

Who were her parents? Did she have siblings? Could she read and write? Which language did she speak? Where was the photograph taken?

The woman is Mrs Gysemans or Mrs Verheyen. She would have been Mrs Gysemans if I knew she became the third wife of Mr Jean or John or Johannes Baptiste Gysemans, my great, great grandfather, in or before 1873. On the other hand, she may still have been Mrs Verheyen, the widow of Jules Verheyen, a merchant.

It is wonderful to put a face to a name when exploring family history, though frequently it is not possible. What we have instead is a collection of cousins. I have quite a few cousins, and they have quite a few children between them. Through this blog I have helped my mother to contact some of her cousins who she did not even know existed before. My father has several cousins, most of whom I cannot remember meeting, and they probably do not know much about me at all.

My grandparents probably had many cousins, and part of my family history research has managed to fit some of them into the family tree. My in-laws have, and had, several cousins, too, some of whom were discovered through my research, but my husband has no cousins at all.

Recently, I had another delightful surprise concerning my Belgian ancestors, namely an email message from a fellow family history researcher of the same family tree. Are you related to the Verheyen or Gyseman family who went to London from Belgium in the 1870s? Is the woman in the picture amongst your ancestors?

My previous blog post mentioning the lady in question

Some people do family history to try to find all of the descendants of a forebear. I am the eldest grandchild of both sides of my family, and many of my cousins are much younger than myself, and/or probably have very little in common with me. You may find the same with your cousins - and even your siblings!

So, why I am I interested so much in the woman in the photograph? I cannot imagine her life having much in common with my own, especially with four children from her first marriage, and at least five from her second marriage. I am interested in hearing from people who share my interest in wanting to know more about her.

Like me, Anne Catherine, or Anna Catrin, or whoever she was known as, was a migrant. She left one society in her mid 20s to live in another, just like I did. Her challenges in life were probably far greater than my own. She died in 1908, in Hendon in London. Presumably, she was living with relatives in her later years, but who were they?

I have been told that Belgian people can have at least three different spellings of their names - Flemish/Dutch, Latin and French. If they migrated to Britain, it is likely that they also had an English version of their names.

The early Italian migrants to Australia sometimes had several versions of their names, too. My husband's grandfather from the Veneto region was called Calogero or Calocero, but in Australia he was usually known as Charlie. I do not have any photographs at all of Charlie, but my mother-in-law says my husband looks more and more like him every day.

Internment in Australia during World War Two

2011-08-12T11:50:00.009+09:30

Some time ago, I mentioned the topic of civilian internment. It is important not to confuse internment with internship, though similar words can often cause confusion. Do you know the difference between the two?

Here is my previous blog post
(16 May 2009)

If English is not your first language, you probably know what it is like trying to make yourself understood in English, and trying to understand others. I know plenty of people who have English as their first language but have similar difficulties, myself included!

I doubt that many readers of this blog post will have Latin as their native tongue, though they may have a first language related to Latin in some way. Most societies use Latin to some extent these days, through scientific terms and legal terms.

Have you heard of habeus corpus?

My husband's grandfather was interned in Australia in the Second World War, as you will know from my earlier blog post introducing the topic. He had been born as an Italian citizen but he became a naturalized British subject in Australia in 1921. He was, in today's terms, an Australian citizen during the Second World War. At the time of his internment he had been an Australian businessman for over twenty years.

Many people are unaware that there were Australians of Italian origin in Australia before World War Two. In relation to internment, I am especially interested in those who first arrived in Australia before World War One. Do you have an ancestor who comes into that category?

You may know that there is an Italian Historical Society in Australia, based in Melbourne, which now also has an Italian Museum associated with it.

More about the Italian Historical Society

Italian Museum - Museo Italiano, Melbourne

My husband's Italian forebears all came to Australia before the Second World War. They were culturally - and historically - quite different from those who came afterwards, just as many people who came to Australia from other countries between the 1950s and 1970s may consider themselves culturally - and historically - different from those who live in their places of origin now.

A few weeks ago, I received some very interesting information from Dr Paolo Baracchi of the Italian Historical Society. He forwarded to me an email from a member of the South Australian Parliament, Mr Tony Piccolo, who is the member for Light.

Mr Piccolo is the National Convenor of the Forum of Italo-Australian Parliamentarians. Here is part of what he has to say:

I am undertaking some research into the experiences of people of Italian origin who were interned in Australia during World War 2. While I am focussing on the Loveday, South Australia camps, I am keen to hear the stories of any person who was interned.

Tony Piccolo

June 2011

Unfortunately, I was overseas visiting family in the UK when the email reached me, so I was unable to put my mind to the task of contacting Mr Piccolo to provide some assistance to him, especially without my extensive documentation to hand.

Another reason for delaying my response is that I am keen to maintain my anonymity as "Via". My father-in-law is now in his 90s and no longer wishes to be reminded of unpleasant past experiences. He wants a quiet life in his old age, like many people of his generation who do not want to be reminded of emotionally upsetting events.

When we do research, whoever we may be, whether in our own families, in academia, in business, in politics, in our hobbies and in our travels, we are often mostly interested in satisfying our own curiosity. The difference in some cases, however, is that we can help to redress an injustice, bring to light the truth, and generally contribute to making the world a better place.

I plan to contact Mr Piccolo today, about the motion he will be presenting on 20 October 2011 to the House of Assembly of the State Parliament of South Australia regarding "the internment of people of Italian, German and Japanese (amongst others) background in Australian camps during World War Two".

Mr Piccolo is keen to hear from anyone in the meantime who "can make a contribution to raising awareness of the impact that internment had on internees and their families".

If you can assist, please visit tonypiccolo.org for the contact details.

You are, of course, also welcome to leave some comments here.

Our Changing Perceptions and Opinions

2011-08-08T14:18:00.002+09:30

We usually form our views in a gradual and haphazard way over time. Yet our perceptions and opinions can suddenly be challenged by new information, not just in family and community life, but also during travels, and when examining economic and political issues.

Have your views about a relative, an old friend, or even an ancestor, ever changed because of someone else's differing opinion?

Lovely Mary

2011-04-19T10:32:00.004+09:30

When I first came to Australia, I met a lovely elderly lady in Melbourne called Mary. She had no link with my family, and no recent genetic link with my husband's family.

Mary's family came from Ireland and they were catholics, farmers and priests.

I briefly mentioned Mary in one of my bigger blog posts at the end of last year: A Genealogical Look Around

Mary helped me to feel more settled in Australia. She was married to Joe, the brother of my husband's paternal grandmother. Joe and Mary had no children but they were happy enough with their quiet life together.

I am especially interested in the fact that Mary married a person from an Italian background. That would have been quite unusual in the 1930s. Perhaps there were some difficulties in their wider families when Joe and Mary's romance became known.

At least they were from the same religion, but Irish catholicism and Italian catholicism were quite different cultural experiences for many years, so I have been told. Do you know much on this subject? I am especially interested in knowing about the challenges faced within intercultural marriages, as I have one myself!

Family Journeys and Electoral Records

2011-03-28T15:25:00.002+10:30

In Australia, state libraries are a great source of family history resources. Past electoral rolls are often found there, and they have certainly helped me to trace the steps of my husband's relatives since the time they became naturalised.

Tracing the journeys of my own ancestors in Britain has mainly been achieved through census records, but next year I may also have easier access to the electoral rolls there:

findmypast.co.uk and British Library digital project

Perhaps I will be able to find out, through the electoral records, which of my Belgian ancestors became naturalised British subjects, and which ones did not.

The Bisnonni Blogspot Award - Part One

2011-03-25T10:16:00.016+10:30

Have you heard that there are quite a few so-called blog awards out there? I am always very touched and honoured to receive nominations in recognition of my blogging efforts, though many of those awards are quite like a chain letter in some ways.

Here is an interesting Wikipedia article about the history of chain letters. Fortunately, though, all of my genealogical encounters have so far been benevolent. Have yours? In my experience, people who research their family history are usually lovely people.

What are your thoughts about blog awards
requesting you send the award on
to several other people?

Today, I would like to mention not just the awards I already know about, but one that is about to be launched. The Bisnonni Blogspot Award is, as far as I am aware, quite different from any of the others. It is one you may like to help establish, too. It does not require any chain communication or any other type of chain mail.

No chain mail required

The Bisnonni Blogspot Award will not be an award for any blogs. It will be an award for the most insightful, interesting and useful comments I discover on any of my blog posts - on any of my four blogs.

So, how should I judge what is insightful, interesting and useful? Perhaps it will be a comment giving me a clearer understanding of something. Maybe it will be a comment that helps me to solve a mystery, a problem, or some sort of puzzle. Alternatively, it could be a comment that will probably be of help to a great many other people, and not just me.

The above image from the Bayeux Tapestry shows a raven banner. Does the raven symbol have any significance in your family history? It does in mine.

If you are a regular reader not just of Ancestors Within, but of my other blogs, too, then you will know that I am quite a busy person, with a wide range of research interests. I am very glad that people find some time in their lives to enjoy the results of my blogging efforts.

I have chosen the above picture as a symbol of the Bisnonni Blogspot Award. It is of two people you may have met somewhere before in your experiences of my writings. The larger person had the name of George. The smaller one is known here as Via.

George is about to throw

a big blue ball to Via.

Do you think she will catch it?

When I was little, the blue ball seemed to be enormous. You might like to view the ball as a metaphor for family history. An older relative passes it to a younger one, who tries to catch it... even if it appears to be huge!

The excitement (and subsequent relief) of catching the ball is like finding the right piece in the historical puzzle. Dropping the ball, or missing it, can represent the struggles of the learning process. Chasing after it as it rolls past is like the energy we expend when trying to recapture the history of our existence.

Have you caught the blue ball yet?

Perhaps in a year or two I will have different priorities than I do at present - and may then have more time to visit other people's blogs. In the meantime, I have a large pile of general history books I want to understand more deeply. The more I read, the more ignorant I feel I am!

Well, that is about all I want to say about the Bisnonni Blogspot Award for today. Do you know that the word bisnonni means great-grandparents in Italian? I think the word sounds so much more poetic in Italian than English.

Lastly, I wish to thank Lori and Alison for nominating Ancestors Within at bisnonni.blogspot.com for a One Lovely Blog Award. You may also know that I was recently nominated for a My Ancestor Award by Shauna Hicks and, a while before that, a Kreativ Blogger Award by Michelina. It is very nice to feel appreciated.

To Know or Not to Know

2011-03-09T14:33:00.002+10:30

Yesterday, here on Ancestors Within, I mentioned some of the dangers associated with online activities. How do you find peace of mind when using the internet?

If your leisurely computer use is something you usually do after a busy day at work or in the garden, then your mind may not be as alert as it needs to be when making decisions about your privacy. You may even be wondering if it is safe to interact here, with an anonymous female blogger who calls herself "Via".

The topic of internet safety is currently in the news in Australia, as I have mentioned on my Quieter Living blog. It is, unfortunately but importantly, a topic in the news quite frequently. Here is another recent news article you may wish to consider.

It is especially important to be skeptical about anyone who requests that you part with some money, even if it is only a small amount of money. Any requests for details about where you keep your money should also alert you to a possible problem. Any reputable financial institution, or person, or company, will never request you send your account details over the internet, especially by email.

To give you an example to consider, I wonder how you know that I am female and that I live in Australia. What makes you believe that sort of information is true? How trustworthy do you consider me to be, and why?

Family Tree - James I

My blog about identity may also be something to consider while you research your family history. Here is a link to some of the posts mentioning privacy on By Any Other Name.

Although family history is a wonderful pastime, I am growing more and more concerned about how much information people are revealing about themselves, and their living relatives, on genealogical websites, blogs, forums and social networking sites.

Older people are, statistically, more likely to be overly trusting, especially of someone they consider to be in a position of authority. Many people take up the pursuit of family history research after retirement, often without much previous knowledge of internet safety.

But whatever your age, there is a chance that someone wants to know more about you than it is wise to tell. Some of those people may even be your relatives!

The Probate Debate

2011-03-08T17:13:00.005+10:30

There are many reasons why people want to trace their family history, some of which involve ethical considerations. Are you researching your ancestry for a particular reason? Could that reason have anything to do with the possibility of receiving an inheritance?
If you are a professional genealogist, you may have been asked to assist in finding an heir to a deceased estate. You may also have been asked by a client to trace a line of their ancestry to find a family connection to a possibly wealthy forebear. Should the motives behind the research have a bearing on taking on the task of doing it?

Genealogists find unknown and missing heirs

Five family history scams to avoid

Are there also some researchers who make unscrupulous claims about people's possible (though more likely improbable) royal or noble ancestry?

A story I heard many years ago on my father's side of the family was that our Belgian ancestors had links to the Dutch House of Orange. I have found no evidence while doing my own research, and no-one has yet been able to tell me where that story came from.

Another story, from my mother's side of the family, relates to a cousin of my grandfather, Harry. My grandfather said his cousin had a degree in chemistry and had a career at ICI. I cannot remember the name of the man, and nor can my mother, but we know the surname of most of my grandfather's cousins, and it is not the same as that man's surname.

There was even a vague reference, somewhere in the family history, that Harry's cousin had won a Nobel Prize. From my own research, however, it may have been that the cousin worked at Nobel Industries, which became part of ICI in 1926.

Nobel Prize - Chemistry Laureates
(The list contains no-one with any surname known in my family history)

Whether any members of my family had won Nobel Prizes or been a powerful part of European history is not really very important to me. Nor is the very remote possibility that I might be an heir to a long-lost fortune, especially if I am first asked to part with a fortune to find out if it is true (or, more likely, false).

A post about inheritance - On my Continual Journeys blog

I am especially concerned that there are people who part with quite substantial sums of money when wishing to trace their family history. Many have been unfortunate to receive little in the way of unique and interesting knowledge in return. Some of those people have merely received a dubious certificate stating the origins and heraldry of a family name, and perhaps even a plaque with a plastic version of a coat of arms.

There are also people who have paid out money to receive lists of people with the same suname, with little or no evidence that the people named in the listings have any place in a particular family tree.

Perhaps I am fortunate to be a social scientist by training, rather than a professional genealogist or novice investigator. I have the ability to question the reliability of sources of information, and to examine the usefulness of data when trying to solve a particular mystery.

Which genealogical mysteries are you still trying to solve? And what are the skills necessarily to find the correct answers?

In Memory of Generations Past

2011-02-28T00:46:00.004+10:30

When a generation passes, we might hold some memories of those people, but we also lose access to the content of their memories, except through documents and other recordings of their experiences. I am no longer able to ask any of my grandparents a question. It is a new experience for me.

You may be aware that both of my grandmothers reached their nineties. Shortly before Christmas, the longest living member of my family, Vera (also known here as Alice) had a fall and developed a chest infection a few days later. She is no longer able to give me any answers in person about our family history.

Always with me
My grandmother - a dedication

I will find it strange to go to England in a few months time and not be able to visit her. One of my aunts recently told me in an email message that my grandmother kept some newspapers from VE Day. It will be interesting to read them. I remember my grandmother telling me she went to Trafalgar Square to join the celebrations that day.

Wikipedia article - Victory in Europe Day - 8 May 1945

BBC article about VE Day

BBC article about VE Day newspapers

YouTube - VE Day

Vera was born during the First World War. She was a mother of young children during the Second World War. Then she became a grandmother - my grandmother - during the Cold War.

Here are some of my other blog posts mentioning her:

The age of reflecting on age

The spice of life - part one

Being earnest with Alice in wonderland

A genealogical look around

Vera lived to be 95. Her cousin Eileen, who was born in the same year as Vera, lived only to be 25. Eileen died of tuberculosis in 1941, as my husband's grandmother Josephine had in 1938. Josephine lived to be 40 years old. She never knew her grandchildren.

I am very glad to have known all four of my grandparents, and that they reached old age. I just wish we could have a few cups of tea together again and share memories of generations past.

Ancestral Scatterings

2011-02-20T23:38:00.003+10:30

If you have visited this blog a few times before, you may have seen a few links in the right hand column about something called a diaspora. If you have not come across the word before, a diaspora is an ancestral scattering of one sort or another.

Here is a link to Wikipedia giving an overview of the topic

The idea of a homeland may have meaning for you, though I personally try to feel at home wherever I may be in the world. It does not really matter to me whether my ancestors experienced life in one place or another, or in several places, though I am quite curious to know about the natural and cultural environments in which they lived.

About the above painting

How does your experience of the world shape your beliefs and your outlook on life? Are you part of a diaspora? Are you part of more than one diaspora, through your ancestors?

Perhaps being a migrant myself has something to do with my ideas about home, beliefs and ancestral origins. I have written on this topic in a few of my earlier blog posts:

We are all related

Taking the best of the past into the future

Connect to your heritage

Today, I thought I would put the links from the right hand column into this blog post:

International Organisation of Migration

Martin Frost - British diaspora

Absolute Astronomy - Italian diaspora

Museum of the African Diaspora

SSCNET - The Indian diaspora

My Jewish Learning - The Jewish diaspora

Ireland Roots - Ireland's diaspora

There are, of course, many other websites and web pages about one sort of diaspora or another. There are also many other topics of relevance.

Another Wikipedia page - List of diasporas

Wikipedia - Passport

Wikipedia - Refugee

Wikipedia - Human Migration

Wikipedia - Immigration

Wikipedia - Immigration history of Australia

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

History of displaced persons in Australia

Have you discovered aspects of your family history relating to displacement or deportation? Were your relatives perpetrators or victims of persecution? Were they slaves and/or slave owners?

Were any of your ancestors, or even yourself, a refugee? Were your family, on the other hand, mostly economic migrants, or seeking to be reunited with loved ones, or seeking a cultural environment to better suit their values and interests?

Perhaps you have Huguenot ancestry. I have not found any (yet) in my own family history. Do you have any Huguenot names in your family?

The Huguenot Society of Australia

Wikipedia - Huguenot

As far as I know, I do not have any French ancestry at all, at least since the time of the Norman conquest (see previous blog post). I do not really know if my Belgian ancestors were only of Flemish origin or if some were Walloon, or from some other group.

From census records, it appears that some of them could probably speak French (the eldest brother of my great grandfather in London was visited on census night, 1911, by a French chef and his wife).

Wikipedia - Walloons

Wikipedia - Walloon names

Wikipedia - Dutch/Flemish names

Wikipedia - Flemish people

Wikipedia - Flemish language

I mainly consider myself to be part of the English diaspora, however scattered my ancestral identity might have been. Like the couple depicted in the painting near the top of this blog post, I migrated as a middle class person rather than a working class one.

Migrating was also my own decision, though the decision to allow me into Australia as a permanent resident was taken by the Australian government. I was allowed in to the country as an "alien" when my husband agreed to be my sponsor for the first two years. I am certainly not a "ten pound pom"!

Whatever people's time and place of migration, whether their departure is forced or voluntary, it has a bearing on their family history. I do not have children of my own, but my decision to migrate may encourage the children of other family members to think about doing so.

Wikipedia - English people

Wikipedia - Ten pound poms

Immigration Museum, Victoria - Ten pound poms

History Compass Exchanges - the hidden English diaspora

Wikipedia - Historical immigration to Great Britain

Wikipedia - British diaspora

New Statesman - 2 August 2004
Exodus: the great British migration

Telegraph UK - 15 November 2007
Emigration soars as Britons desert UK

BBC News - 15 November 2007
Record trends in UK migration

Telegraph UK - 21 February 2008
Why Britain's brightest and best are emigrating

Guardian UK - 26 August 2010
Figures show 20% increase in net migration to UK

UK Office of National Statistics - Migration

Australian - Migration statistics

National Museums Liverpool - Leaving Liverpool 1858

National Archives UK - Emigration and shipping records

Several of my cousins have left Britain permanently since I did, as has my father and one of his sisters. Many of my other relatives have left Britain over the years several times, on a temporary rather than a permanent basis.

Although I have been lucky to be able to afford to travel back quite frequently to visit my family, I am very glad that I no longer live Britain, especially in its cooler months. And I am even more pleased that I am able to escape its crowds.

Genealogical Biographies

2011-02-17T12:53:00.018+10:30

Unless you are exploring your family history just to be able to extend the entries in a chart, which may be called a family tree, then you are probably also quite likely to be a biographer. How do you go about researching and writing a genealogical biography?

I am not particularly interested in finding out if I am related to William the Conquerer or Louis XIV, and I certainly do not want to search my ancestry to the extent that the final printed result resembles a very large toilet roll. If all the living relatives of all my great, great, great, great grandparents were gathered in one place, we might be able to fill a football stadium, an opera house, and/or the Palace of Versailles.

Is he a possible ancestor?

If I managed to trace all the lines of my family history back to the year 1066, and could meet all of my forebears who were alive in that year, would we be able to fill the Coliseum in Rome? Would there even be so many of us that we would be able to conquer a country all on our own?

Although I hope that my ancestors were mainly peaceful people, history often proves otherwise, at least in the written records. How do you go about writing a biography about someone who does not appear very often in any written records?

Some of my ancestors were legitimate offspring, like Louis XIV. Some of my ancestors were illegitimate, like William the Conqueror. All of my ancestors are worthy of written biographies, whatever their parentage. Perhaps yours are, too.

Louis XIV could be an ancestor of mine, or yours, as he, like his cousin Charles II, was known to have had many illegitimate children. In Louis case, many of his legitimate decendants either died of measles or had their heads chopped off. In such cases, it is probably better to be illegitimate.

My mother's maiden name is of French-Norman origin. One of her ancestors is either likely to have been a Norman conquerer of some description, or was a peasant on the lands occupied in Shropshire by one of those conquerers. I do not have any biographical evidence of either possibility, and I have better things to do than attempt to find out. If your own family tree now resembles a toilet roll, perhaps you have some time on your hands and would like to investigate the facts of the matter.

Here are some links that you may find interesting:

Geneabios - Biographies for Genealogy

Cyndi's List - Biographies

Genealogical Society of Victoria Online Bookshop - Family Histories and Biographies

Gould History and Genealogy - Australian Biographical and Genealogical Records from 1788 to 1899

It is useful to investigate the possibility that someone may already have written a biography about one or more of your ancestors. It can mean that you do not have to do so much research yourself.

Sometimes, a biography of someone else may mention one of your ancestors or another relative, or provide a description of the environment in which they lived. I have recently sent my mother a biography about someone who probably knew her Uncle Bertie quite well, Company Sergeant Major Stanley Hollis, VC. I found the book on the Amazon UK site, meaning that I did not need to post a copy from Australia.

Here are some links mentioning Stanley Hollis:

Wikipedia - Stanley Hollis

History Learning Site UK - Stanley Hollis

D-Day to Victory - Stanley Hollis

Flames of War - CSM Stan Hollis, VC

About the book:

D-Day Hero: CSM Stanley Hollis VC - By Mike Morgan

Amazon - Reader reviews of the book

I have read a few of the sample pages of the book, available on Amazon, and it appears to be written in a warm and human way, attempting to capture the family life, background, personality and character of Stanley Hollis. I am not sure how my mother will respond to it, though, as it is probably not at all like the books she usually reads.

My mother, as I have discovered, not only has a possible connection with Normandy on her father's side. She also has a family connection with the Liberation of France, through the Battle of Normandy and her maternal Uncle Bertie's role in it. Bertie Harris was two years older than Stanley Hollis.

More about D-Day and the Battle of Normandy:

The Telegraph - The D-Day Hut - article one

The Telegraph - The D-Day Hut - article two

This blog - About Bertie - article one

This blog - About Bertie - article two

Wikipedia - Normandy

D-Day Overlord - Normandy 1944

Wikipedia - Battle of Normandy

Kids Net - Battle of Normandy

I will not be writing a biography about Bertie Harris, or Stanley Hollis. Nor will I be writing a biography about Louis XIV or William the Conqueror. My biographies will be about my grandparents, and my husband's grandparents.

However, I still find it interesting to read genealogical biographies about other people, rather than go to the trouble of writing them.

Here are a few more links you may find interesting:

Genealogical Search Australia

Wikipedia - Lineal descendant

Wikipedia - Collateral descendant

Wikipedia - Descent of Elizabeth II from William I

Wikipedia - William the Conqueror

Wikipedia - Louis XIV of France

Time Ref - William the Conqueror

Normandy Tourism

What may we learn from reading biographies about how to research and write about our family history? Whether reading about famous and not-so-famous people, the choices of the writer are important in how we respond to the life of the person we may be reading about. There is a huge amount of information online giving advice on writing biographies, much of which I believe to be of little value.

Here are some links I have found interesting, though:

Wikipedia - Biography

Bookrags - How to write a biography

A Sydney University lecture on why biographies matter
(introduction and podcast)

My husband is currently reading a biography about Charles de Gaulle. It is by Sir Bernard Ledwidge, who knew Charles de Gaulle personally. I would like to have more time to read a few more biographies, though I am still in the process of writing up an account of our family history research trip to Italy, which we made in 2009!

Now my mother, my husband and I have a trip planned for this year. We hope to visit Bertie's grave in Normandy for the first time. In my teens, in the 1970s, I went on a school trip to France, staying in the town of Étretat. I returned there about 25 years later with my husband, in the year 2000. Claude Monet visited Étretat some time before we did, and made a visual record of his experiences:

Although we probably will not have time to visit Étretat again this year, we will be going to an area of Normandy I have never visited before. I would very much like to see the Bayeux Tapestry. Have you seen it? Have you even tried making a similar embroidery of your family history?

Wikipedia - Étretat

Bayeux Tapestry Museum

In the 1950s, my mother went to Switzerland on a school trip. At the beginning of our 2011 travels, we plan to take her back there, for the first time since her teens. We also plan to take her to Paris and Versailles for the first time. It will be a very busy two week trip for us all. Fortunately, there is a great deal to see online in the meantime.

Learning about William the Conquerer, Louis XIV and Charles de Gaulle will probably be very useful, too.

Just Starting Out With Family History Research

2011-02-05T20:23:00.012+10:30

Beginning family history research can seem daunting and time consuming, even in Australia, Britain or the United States. In any type of research, including scientific research, the situation can quickly change from having not enough information to having too much to handle.

We begin with the vast unknown, or what we personally consider to be the vast unknown.
If we are lucky, we may soon discover someone who is quite familiar with what we may previously have believed to be unknowable. This is especially true in family history research. We need to know how to find what is easily known, then to distinguish between that and what may be more difficult to find, and then come to terms with what may be impossible to discover.

Perhaps an older relative, or even a younger one, may know more than you, whether that relative fits on the same branch of your family tree, or on another branch, towards the top of the canopy or nearer the roots. A few academic researchers may have been exploring aspects or your heritage, too.

I recently found the above image on Wiki Commons. It is said to represent Tuscan emigrants leaving for New Zealand from Leghorn (Livorno) in the 1890s. If you know more about the picture, or other paintings like it, perhaps you would could contact me. Perhaps some of your own ancestors are in the picture!

As far as I know, my husband's Italian relatives left Europe for Australia through Naples, Genoa, Venice and London. Have you looked up shipping records and passenger lists for your migrant ancestors? Have you collected birth, marriage and death records from a variety of (no cost and low cost) sources?

Beginning your family history research

Just like migrants going out into the world in search of a new home in a new land (I include myself here, as I am a first-generation migrant), taking the first steps into family history can often be the most difficult. For anyone just starting to scratch the surface for information about the ancestors within themselves, I would recommend one basic way to begin. It is to protect what you already know, and already have, in terms of family records and heirlooms. This is so much easier with digital technology.

Knowing the questions you want to answer

Being able to judge whether a record is of any importance in helping you to trace the steps of history backwards, you may like to think about the who, what, where, when, why and how questions for what you already know, and what is still a mystery.

This picture, from the report of 1853 by John Cobden, called The White Slaves of England, may depict some of my ancestors, of even one or more of your own. How much of your own family history do you already know about in a fairly general way?

Were any of your ancestors employed as hurriers? Were they migrants? Were they educated? Were they healthy?

If you have British ancestors, you may find this link to the British Library quite useful.

Making copies of your records and findings

If you are yet to buy or borrow a document/image scanner, this might be the time to look for a good one, especially if you have a collection of old slide films sitting in a box in a cupboard somewhere. The link above is to a Wikipedia page about the history of scanners. We can discover all sorts of interesting things about cultural history while researching family history, especially about the invention and development of various tools and technologies.

Quite a few digital cameras these days can make fairly good copies of most pictures and documents, but slides (and cine film) can be more difficult to copy cheaply and quickly. A good scanner with have a feature that will turn your neglected slides into digital slide shows. Here is a link about the history of cameras.

Harry

My main scanner (I have two now, for different purposes) also came with an easy-to-use photo editing program. Above is my grandfather Harry, in a picture I enlarged from a very small original. Being a non-technical person, especially as far as computers are concerned, the easier the better is my usual preference, as long as all the features I require are available and accessible. Being able to enlarge little pictures is certainly a great advantage.

Protecting the originals and the copies

Making copies and collages of family records and pictures is so much easier with digital editing options. All of my most precious photographs, old slides, cine film, videos, as well as the pictures I have taken of heirlooms and souvenirs, and digital copies of important documents, are now on dvd and cd in various spots, high and low, around my house. They are also in my mother's house on the other side of the world.

Several of my most precious photographs are also on my blogs now, too - for even safer keeping (I hope). Some photos are also kept online in a couple of my email accounts.

Dorothy

Insurance cannot replace the loss of unique records. I especially cannot imagine what it must be like to lose family photographs. How safe are yours?

Still searching for those totally unique originals

Perhaps it is even worse for people who have never owned any family records in the first place.

I wish that I had a photograph of my husband's maternal grandfather, who died of silicosis in 1945 after working for almost twenty years in the mines in Broken Hill. My mother-in-law says that my husband looks quite like her father, an educated man who had trained for the priesthood in the Veneto region of Italy before the First World War.

Sharing the Lode: The Broken Hill Migrant Story

I also wish I had some photographs of my paternal grandfather's family (George was orphaned before the age of five), and more photographs of my maternal grandmother's family (Dorothy was also orphaned before the age of five).

Asking others for advice and support

If you have been researching your family history for some time, you may find that other people seek your advice on where to make a start on their own quest. What do you say to them?

If you are new to family history research and are feeling at a loss, then I hope you will find this blog useful.

Have you joined a local family history group? Have you joined a group associated with a place connected with your ancestry?

Have you gathered all of the useful information you think might be available from and about the family members you already know?

Gaining confidence and competence

If you have never done any sort of research before, the wonderful thing about family history is that it provides a range of skills that are applicable to many other areas of knowledge. What you are mainly searching for is evidence, for facts, for the truth. Some of your family members may feel uncomfortable about that, especially if aspects of the truth have been hidden for a generation or more.

You will become a genealogical detective, follow leads, weigh up whether findings actually relate to your family, or to someone with a similar name, and you may also find that you will have some difficult personal decisions to make.

More exciting than fiction

Unlike the predictable stories in many works of fiction, family history research can be far more interesting and entertaining than any film or television drama. You will be in a starring role, with a hidden script that gradually reveals itself in all sorts of surprising ways. It will take you on a fascinating journey.

Have you read my first ever blog post on the topic of family history?

Have you read my second blog post about identity across the centuries?

Some genealogical news

Ancestors Within has become quite well known to family history researchers, both professional and amateur, since I first began writing it. My family history has become more known to me since then, too.

You may know that some time ago, I was nominated for a Kreativ Blogger Award. Much to my surprise, I have now been nominated for an Ancestor Approved Award by Shauna Hicks. It is certainly an honour as Shauna is a highly experienced researcher.

There are so many interesting connections and relationships within family history research, whether people are related or not. I have just discovered that one of my family surnames - Gyseman - may be pronounced in many different ways.

I have always known the first syllable as Guys, as in the musical Guys and Dolls. Now I have just discovered that it may also be pronounced as Geez, thanks to some comments recently left on my 1870s Migration from Belgium to London blog post.

The comments were by Charlotte Gyseman, who is studying computer games design at university. I wonder if a family history computer game has been developed. Do you know of one?

Here is another of my blog posts that Charlotte, and other Gysemans, may find of interest: Flemish Ancestors. I have also listened to the sound of the original name, Gysemans, on Google Translate. Unfortunately there is no Flemish available there, only Dutch. In the latter language, Gysemans sounds to me like Hissy Mons.

Have you heard the sound of your family surnames as spoken by speakers of other languages?

Well, this is one of my longer blog posts, so apologies if it is keeping you from your own research, whether into family history, computer games design, or digital imaging. It has been keeping me from preparing dinner!

Family Names

2011-01-20T10:49:00.006+10:30

You may know that one of the topics of interest to me is the origin of names - and all sorts of other topics to do with names and naming. I even devote an entire blog on the subject, which is, of course, called By Any Other Name.

The links between family names and geography is quite a fascinating one, especially if the names in question happen to be part of your own family history.

Here are a few links to websites you may find interesting:

Public Profiler - World Names
(I have used it mainly to find out the common surnames of particular districts, especially in Italy and Belgium.)

Public Profiler - GB Names
(I have used the surnames page with the year 1881 chosen, and have discovered more about my family origins that way.)

Guild of One-Name Studies

Wikipedia - One-name studies

Wikipedia - Surname DNA project

Many of my own ancestors' family names are very common, though with many variations in their location. Having regional family origins may sometimes become clearer through a one-name search, though it still depends on tracing back the written records step by step.

Here are links to a couple of my By Any Other Name blog posts about family names. I hope they will enhance your reflections:

Family honour and freedom

Origins of family names

And here are a few Wikipedia links to some of the very common surnames that have appeared in my family history - though none of my relatives have biographies on Wikipedia, as far as I am aware:

Bailey | Barker | Cole | Harris | Lloyd | Clark or Clarke | Rowe | Morgan | Nash | Howell or Howells | Wilson | but I am yet to find a Smith or a Jones!

What are the most common surnames in your family history - and the most unusual?

Public Records and Privacy

2011-01-15T09:50:00.006+10:30

Have you discovered some surprising, disturbing and even amusing things about your family members while exploring public records? Have you even found some surprising things that have been said about you, or that you feel invade your privacy or portray you inaccurately?

You may think that genealogy is one of the most nosey forms of pastime. It unveils secrets. It dismantles carefully built images. It brings indiscretions to light. It reveals injustices. It opens emotional wounds, and perhaps also heals them.

The Wikipedia article about public records is quite interesting. Are you compiling dossiers on your ancestors rather than trying to understand their role in your personal development and identity? Have you even found official - perhaps even "secret" - dossiers on some of your ancestors?

My husband's family history contains several political issues that are difficult to write about in a public way. My own ancestors, as far as I am aware, were not at all politically active, politically suspect, or politically oppressed (except by their poverty).

I have taken much more of an active interest in politics than my parents, grandparents and siblings. I sometimes wonder if there are any secret dossiers anywhere about me!

It can come as quite a shock to read a dossier on someone you already know something about, especially as records from the past can reveal the prejudices of the authority figures who wrote the reports about your ancestors. Police officers and military personnel (like diplomatic staff and journalists) sometimes take more interest in advancing their own careers than in producing an accurate and unbiased account of a situation.

Are your own accounts of the past accurate and unbiased? Were any of your ancestor's lives shaped by politics in some way?

Food Rationing

2011-01-08T07:14:00.005+10:30

Have you ever had to go without your favourite foods because they were either too expensive or not available at all?

Can you remember rationing in Britain during and after the Second World War?

Here is a link on the subject - from the Science Museum in London

My maternal grandparents, especially my grandmother, frequently mentioned rationing. As she grew older, my grandmother Dorothy sometimes forgot that rationing had ended. She would often wonder when she would be able to have "best butter" again.

My mother can remember the end of sweet rationing in 1953 and how wonderful it was for her as a little girl. Even today, my mother can sometimes become very excited in an old fashioned sweet shop.

Perhaps I should not write about food at the moment as I am feeling hungry myself. It is time for my breakfast!

New Pages

2011-01-03T23:06:00.008+10:30

As a new year has begun, some people plan to turn over a new leaf. I have decided to create two new pages for this blog instead, especially as I don't really think I need to turn over a new leaf.

I hope have no bad habits, except for being somewhat untidy!

Whether thinking of a book leaf, a blog post, a web page, a new approach to life, or even a whole lot of leaves on a huge family tree, then I wish you the very best for 2011.

My pages have links at the top of the blog, but I have put some extra links to those pages here:

Via Existence

Via Assistance

You will also find that there are a now quite a lot of "read more" links in this blog, so I hope they will make your navigation very easy. They mean I can find my way more easily around Ancestors Within, too.

The previous blog post was a marathon one. You might like to explore it, especially if you have a few hours to spare and you are a reflective and thoughtful sort of person. It will give you a complete overview of the story of this blog so far.

A Genealogical Look Around

2010-12-09T12:52:00.029+10:30

One of the most useful resources when exploring family history is an atlas, especially one giving both political and topographical features. I find historical atlases useful, too, as they enable me to compare changing political boundaries over time.

Does your family history involve changing boundaries and political upheavals?

Have you had a genealogical look around an atlas recently?

Online atlas with an interesting way to compare the history of Europe

Online atlas of world history

Online historical atlas of the 20th century

There are also many local maps, street directories, archive resources and other materials to explore. I am especially interested in my husband's Italian ancestors' connections with various Australian places in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Their stories are unusual because very few Italians migrated to Australia until after the Second World War.

Perhaps I might find something useful and interesting through the following:

City of Sydney Map Collection

Queensland Historical Atlas

Melbourne University Map Collection

There are a few family history blogs with information I find useful - when I have time to take a look that is. Here are two I have found of particular interest:

Moonee Valley Family and Local History Blog
(Even though I have no known family connection with Moonee Valley itself, the blog has a wide range of useful themes and resources providing me with inspiration for my own research)

Anglo Italian Genealogy Research
(Even though I am mainly of Anglo ancestry with no Italian connection and my husband is only of Italian ancestry with no Anglo connection - except for marrying me of course - it is interesting to hear about non-Italian speakers experiences when attempting to obtain information from Italian sources)

I am also always on the lookout for people who may have research interests in common with my own, and particularly those who may already have done the searching I am intending to do.

It saves a lot of time and effort, and sometimes even money, if someone else has already done the work so I don't then need to do it myself. Perhaps you can recommend blogs and people who may be of interest to me:

Do you have Italian ancestors who came to Australia before the Second World War?

Do you have Belgian ancestors who went to England in the 19th century?

Does your family have a connection with coal mining in east Shropshire and/or south Staffordshire?

There are so many online resources that save time and money, too, especially when considering visiting a place (or not being able to afford a trip there).

I wrote an earlier blog post about the ways I use Google Street View to explore places in a virtual way. It is very convenient when I am trying to find out where my own ancestors lived. And it is especially nice to be able to avoid the expense of going there in person, without airports, jetlag, motorways, unpleasant weather and noisy hotels to contend with:

Research and nostalgia through Google Street View

Another very useful source, and one that I use quite often for all four of my blogs, is Wikipedia.

Wikipedia Commons Category: Maps of the history of the United Kingdom

Wikipedia Commons Category: Old maps of the Unite d Kingdom

You may also find videos online of where your ancestors originated. Have you taken a look?

YouTube

A video about my cultural heritage

But I did mention in my last blog post that I was going to take a break from writing blogs. What has happened to that?!

I thought I needed to tidy up and sort through my findings, yet again. For this reason, this is a very long blog post. It contains an overview of the whole of my research so far. Perhaps it is itself like an atlas!

It is also a time of year when I send out a great many more family history emails than usual. Do you map the past with the help of emails? Do you share photographs and information across distances of time and space?

Explore my approach to tidying up in a genealogical way

Reflect upon domestic views on being neat and tidy

You can probably see quite a few family photographs in the right hand column of this blog. They are of some of the people who will be featured in my postings next year. In the top picture, you may recognise my grandparents, Harry and Dorothy. The little girl is my mother and the boy is her late brother, Garry.

My grandmother is wearing a blouse we think came from Hungary. We do not know how Dorothy came to have a beautiful, embroidered Hungarian blouse, though. Do you know if it is Hungarian, and which part of Hungary it came from?

I am interested to know if you write about your family history in the same way that I write about mine.

Most of the documents I have collected, and my analyses of them, are mostly for the private benefit of close relatives. I do not publish many intimate details about my ancestors as I am sure they would be horrified if they thought the world could pry into their private matters, whether during their lives or afterwards!

But how much of a "public life" is appropriate for your ancestors now, and would they approve of what you write about them?

Here are some examples of blog posts mentioning my grandparents:

The working lives of ancestors

A Shropshire lad called Harry

Superstitions and traditions

Ancestry and privacy

The age of reflecting on age

Names and literacy

Liberty, Normandy June 1944

My grandmother's maiden name was Harris. Having a common surname is not very helpful to family historians! However, I have persevered and this has paid off in some wonderfully unexpected ways.

Making comparisons:

Staffordshire miner becomes Prime Minister of Australia

Making connections:

Something quite marvellous

I have not revealed either of my grandfather's surnames for reasons of privacy, especially for the benefit of my living relatives. However you may wish to know more about their lives and their families:

Harry's mother - Lily of Lawley Common

Harry's grandmothers - Emily or Eliza?

Songs my mother never taught me

On the right hand column here is the London Heritage picture of the Ginn family in 1901, part of my father's ancestry. The Ginns have already been mentioned a few times. Are any of your own relatives linked to the Ginns of Huntingdonshire, especially around St Neots?

Here are my three earlier Ginn blog posts:

Family discoveries in the Dardanelles

Being earnest with Alice in wonderland

Huntingdonshire heritage

Here are some more blog posts mentioning my great grandmother, whose maiden name was Annie Ginn:

Working families

My fair ancestors in Mayfair

Faces from the past
(from my By Any Other Name blog)

I also have a photograph of a mystery house I am still trying to identify. Perhaps you can help. To me, the house looks as if it is in a neo-renaissance style, meaning that it was likely to have been built when that style was still fashionable. The house may be in England or it may be in the United States.

Here is a Wikipedia article about the architectural style

I have also mentioned the topic of ancestry several times on my other blogs. Here are a few posts you might enjoy reading:

Appreciation

Growing older in Australia

Earth hour every hour

Sacred mountains

Age and identity

Cultural identity

The real world

Then there are the three family history series I have written here at Ancestors Within, and elsewhere. Have you seen them?

SERIES ONE

The Mill in Ossolaro part one

and part two.

Part three of The Mill in Ossolaro is continued within a Continual Journeys blog post called Why Travel?

You can also find out more about the story in my blog posts called Via the independent scholar. and From Ossolaro to Australia.

SERIES TWO

The Spice of Life part one

Part two

Part three

Part four

SERIES THREE

At the Seaside part one

Part two

Part three

Part four

Part five

Returning to the right hand column of this blog, you will see a picture of a very glamorous young woman under the heading of Australian Heritage. Her name was Mary and her husband's name was Joseph. I think that is quite an appropriate thing to mention at this time of year, though they did not have a baby called Jesus as far as I am aware!

A picture of Joseph (to the right, not the couple above!) is under the heading of Basilicata Heritage further down the column, with a family group in between called Lombardy Heritage. Joseph and his sister Josephine were born in Australia and their parents were born in Basilicata. Josephine married a young man who came to Australia from Lombardy, and they became my husband's paternal grandparents.

Learn more about Josephine

Justice for Josephine

Unlocking Australia's past

Learn more about Josephine's family

Her maternal grandfather - A man from the Mezzogiorno

Her father - in search of - A better life

Her husband - Civilian internment in the Second World War

Another young man, who was born not far from where Joseph and Josephine's parents came from, may be familiar to you. He was known as Rudolf Valentino although his real name was Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Piero Filiberto Guglielmi. I think Joseph may have quite easily been a rival of his for similar roles in Hollywood, if Joe's parents had chosen a different migration destination.

We can often learn more about the lives of our own families by exploring the biographies of those who may have been more famous. My husband is not related to Rudolf Valentino as far as I am aware, though you may wish to see a photograph of the movie star on Wikipedia and compare him to Uncle Joe.

The Wikipedia article also gives an interesting background to conditions in Southern Italy during Rudolf Valentino's childhood - and perhaps it has cultural relevance to my husband's ancestry.

I have written a few blog post on other ways to gain insights into the social and cultural history of family members:

The art of knowing

Understanding ancestry

Finding great grandparents

My heritage, your heritage, our heritage

Connect to your heritage

We are all related

Celebrities and you

Exciting new discoveries

Objects or subjects - your ancestors

Dealing with dark clouds and black sheep

Lost relatives regained

Taking the best of the past into the future

Treasure troves

Public history and you

Where you are now

Important years in history

Community and commonality

A postcard from a stranger

You may like to know that Joseph became a sailor, a dental mechanic and a very good golfer. Both he and Mary had a long and happy life together, too. I think Uncle Joe was very glad he did not become a movie star!

You will see in the right hand column that there is a photograph entitled Belgian and British Heritage. The children look rather cold on the beach, don't they?! The picture was taken in the late 1920s, probably by their father Jack, whose own childhood is especially interesting to me:

A Carnaby Street childhood

Shadows of inheritance

1870s migration from Belgium to London

Flemish ancestors

Much of my Spice of Life series (mentioned above) also relates to Jack's family.

I have mentioned family life in a more general sense on my other three blogs and you may also find those posts useful while exploring your own family history:

A perfect afternoon tea

Optimumism

Family honour and freedom

Educational journeys

Imagine the sound of one world

Menial roles, higher goals and social enterprise

Stopping sectarianism

Changes

A respectful exploration of identity

Entertainment, friendship and identity

Theories of cultural identity

Special times

Virtual Via Nation

Of good moral character

Origins of family names

Uncertainty, rejection and art

World class

Quietly unfamous

Pro-social living

Pseudonyms

Another you

Naming or shaming?

I hope I have mapped my family history research quite well in this blog post. It will be one of my main reference points in the year ahead.

At the bottom of the right hand column is an In Memoriam picture of Arthur Ginn, who died at Galipolli during the First World War. The picture above that is of my husband's maternal grandmother and great grandmother, who were also on the front line at the time, but in Italy in the Veneto.

Are your ancestors from the Veneto region, especially the Crocetta del Montello and Piave River area? Did they migrate to Australia after the First World War but before the Second World War? If so, you may like to get in touch with me and compare notes.

One of my tasks away from blogging will be to finish writing in a more private way (ie. not online) about the discoveries I have made over the past eighteen months or so, most of which have not been revealed here. One of my biggest struggles is the fact that I do not speak any Italian, or any Italian dialect, and nor does my husband.

An introduction to my task for next year:

Amazing genealogical discoveries
(Which I have not yet had time to write about in much detail)

Well, this is a deliberately long blog post, meaning that (hopefully) I will not need to write another one for quite some time. It may also give you an indication of why I rarely have time to leave messages on other people's blogs! Your comments on any of my posts are still welcome at any time, however, as are your email messages.

I wish you a very pleasant, peaceful and productive genealogical year in 2011.

.

At the Seaside - Part Five

2010-12-03T13:37:00.004+10:30

When you think of the seaside, does the song Rule Britannia spring to mind? Perhaps ideas of slavery comes to mind, however, especially if some of your ancestors were slaves and/or slave owners.

If you think about the seaside as a pleasant holiday destination in southern France, Spain, Italy or Portugal, or anywhere else in Europe with an accessible, sun drenched coastline, would you have thought the same way before the mid 19th century? If you had been on a European beach until quite recently, you may have been taken aboard a ship by the Barbary corsairs.

I am very glad my ancestors did not live near the sea:

Wikipedia - Rule, Britannia!

Wikipedia - Slavery in medieval Europe

Wikipedia - Slavery in the Ottoman Empire

Wikipedia - Barbary corsairs

There is something quite contradictory in all of this, however. You may be aware that the United States' Navy was formed in 1798 to fight Barbary pirates. The pirates had enslaved white American sailors. Who was fighting to free slaves in various parts of the Americas at that time?

Wikipedia - First Barbary War (1801-1805)

Wikipedia - French invasion of Algiers in 1830

Wikipedia - Slavery in the British and French Caribbean

Wikipedia - Impressment in Britain

To me, Rule Britannia should not be thought of as a song about imperial dominance or jingoism. It is a song about protecting freedom, in my view, especially when sung with the original words. But I would like to change the words Britons never will be slaves to People never should be slaves.

Wikipedia - Britannia

Wikipedia - Liberty

Well, I might go off to the beach for a while now. You may like to read some of my other blog posts on similar subjects before I return:

A peace of chocolate

Freedom without force

Belief

A respectful exploration of identity

Understanding the world

At the Seaside - Part Four

2010-11-13T11:07:00.013+10:30

When you think of ice cream, do you think of the seaside? Is ice cream something you connect with the Belle Époque, Art Nouveau, and elegant ice cream parlours serving extravagant ice cream sundaes? Is ice cream something you associate with Italy?

Wikipedia - Ice cream and its history

Wikipedia - Gelato - Italian ice cream

Something more mundane to think about is refrigeration. Not all of us have access to a snowy mountain in the summer time or big blocks of ice gathered from glaciers, which is all very well for the environment, but how do you make ice cream during an Australian summer?

How would ice cream have been made in the back streets of Melbourne in the 1890s or in Geelong in 1912? In either case, you may wish to consult my husband's ancestors.

Two young Italian men were probably in Geelong at the time this picture was taken, at the opening of the tramway in 1912:

Advancements in the development of refrigeration, in the mid 1850s, were due to the inventiveness of a man in Geelong called James Harrison, who was the first person to create an ice-making machine. He is someone well worth knowing about whenever you need to keep something chilled or frozen:

Wikipedia - James Harrison (1816-1893)

Wikipedia - Geelong and its history

Wikipedia - Refrigeration and its history

Geelong is at the seaside, as are many of Australia's larger cities and towns. The two Italian brothers went there in 1912 to establish their own ice cream making business. One of them became my husband's grandfather. The other never had children and never married, but he went back to Italy with the money he made in Australia.

My husband's great uncle was known as Peter or Pierino. He invested in property in the town of Cremona during the Fascist era of the 1920s and 1930s. It was a time in which Australian money was worth a great deal more than Italian currency, which meant that one of the buildings he bought was a very large Art Nouveau one in the Liberty style:

Much of the family history I have been exploring is from the time of the Belle Époque: The late 19th and early 20th centuries in Europe. It was a time of poverty for many people, yet one in which hopes of, and plans for, a better future were rapidly rising. Something similar was happening in Australia and North America.

Wikipedia - The Belle Époque

Wikipedia - Art Nouveau

Then came the First World War. It changed lives and took lives away. It is not an era I associate with ice cream or beauty. Even though I studied the First World War in anglo-centric history lessons at school, I never associated Italy with the "Great War", either. That changed when I started researching my husband's family history, and the Grande Guerra (as the war is known in Italy).

Nor did I associate Italy with Art Nouveau architecture. Italian architecture is something I have always associated with much earlier eras. The age of much of Italy's architecture is one of the reasons why it now costs so much money to maintain:

Wikipedia - An Introduction to Italian Architecture

After reading this blog post and visiting its links, you may be feeling ready for an ice cream yourself, or even a gelato. If the weather is nice tomorrow, I might go to the beach and buy myself a little tub of something. Which flavour should I choose? Which one would you prefer?

At the Seaside - Part Three

2010-11-07T09:38:00.008+10:30

Not far from where I live, there is a hill looking over the sea. I love to go there to see the vast horizon. Somehow, the experience is often very peaceful, even though hills can be cold and windy places.

As a warm weather person, time in frost and snow, or even in cold water further than my ankles, does not appeal to me. I like sunshine, not shivering. Perhaps you do, too.

It is not usually humid where I live. The air is especially dry in summer. Standing on a hill, overlooking the ocean, could have been the nearest my ancestors may have been to flying. Some of them may have thought about relatives far away, over the ocean. How small would they have felt? How big would the world have seemed?

At the Seaside - Part Two

2010-10-30T16:39:00.006+10:30

For quite some time now, I have been quite fond of a paddle in the sea, as this picture taken with my mother may suggest. Our holidays were often spent camping on the coast of North Wales, where the weather was often cold and wet! We were fortunate, however, in never experiencing a tsunami there.

My brother and father loved to fish. My mother was the one who often did the gutting and cooking. We had a small, fibreglass boat that my father built. I found it boring to be in the boat, especially when the men and boys had their fishing lines in the water. I preferred just to paddle along the coast, not much deeper than my ankles.

Perhaps you have many family photographs taken near the sea. Holiday snaps can provide many interesting excursions into the family history. My family throughout the 19th century lived inland, mainly in Shropshire, Huntingdonshire, London, Brussels and Belfast. I lived in Staffordshire, right in the centre of England, for most of my childhood so the sea was usually only a summer holiday experience - and an exciting one, too.

Is your family heritage mainly inland or coastal?

At the Seaside - Part One

2010-10-27T15:23:00.008+10:30

Does your family love the beach? Are you someone who thinks of bliss as walking along a beach at sunset, hand in hand with a special person? Are your childhood memories brightened by remembrances of sandcastles, rock pools and shell collections?

Whatever your recollections, the sea holds many varying memories for people. My paternal grandmother has always loved the sea. In her London childhood, she went to an open-air school as that was thought to be the way to cure her chronic bronchitis.

Holiday times were spend at the seaside with her family. I have photographs of her and her brothers happily making sandcastles in the sunshine. My grandmother is on the right of the picture. To her left is her cousin Eileen. By her figure, you may think she could become a supermodel today.

Eileen worked in a hat shop as a milliner in the West End of London while my grandmother worked in a variety of jobs, including at the spice warehouse where Eileen's father was the manager. The poor air quality and damp weather of London would have made a sunny day trip to the seaside a very pleasant change:

A history of sea bathing - Wikipedia

British weather and health - BBC

A history of an outdoor school (in the north of England) - Local Heritage Initiative

Fresh air for sick children - Historic Hospital Admission Records Project

You may have noticed that this is the beginning of another series of my blog posts. You may find the following youtube video appropriate, too:

Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside - Basil Rathbone

A Better Life

2010-10-08T17:21:00.011+10:30

The steamship Oroya had only been in service for a couple of years when a young man by the name of Domenico embarked on a journey to the other side of the world in 1889.

Sometime in the intervening months or years, Domenico had travelled from his native village of Viggiano, in Basilicata, to Naples, where the Orient Line vessel was awaiting its additional passengers.

Born in 1868, Domenico was 21 years old in 1889, illiterate and probably only spoke the local dialect of his home region. Why was he travelling all the way to Australia? Did he have companions? How did he pay for the journey? What were his hopes and dreams for the future?

Having never been to school, Domenico's prospects did not seem particularly bright. He had spent his childhood as a shepherd boy in the mountains near his village. The summers were warm. The winters were very cold. There were few opportunities for advancement.

Yet here is a picture of an elegant young man looking very successful. I wonder how old he is as he looks out at us across the years. Was the portrait a statement of some kind?

I have a feeling this picture was painted around the time of Domenico's marriage to Carolina, who was also born in Viggiano but had arrived in Australia in 1886 as a young child. Domenico was about 29 on their wedding day and Carolina was a girl of about 16. They married in the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Melbourne.

The newlyweds had a series of small businesses over their long years of married life, with two children, many friends, and plenty of hard work. They were pioneers of Australia's Italian community, were naturalized in 1910, and never returned to their homeland.

If your ancestor's arrived by ship in Australia, perhaps you can find a postcard of the vessel that brought them to these shores. You might like to try the Simplon Postcards passenger ship website, like I did. There are many other historic shipping websites, too. Even if your ancestors travelled between different ports than Domenico did, and even to and from different continents, you may discover something of their journeys.

Meet Domenico's father in law

Meet Domenico's daughter

I have discovered that the Oroya probably sailed from London, stopping off at Gibraltar before reaching Naples. It then went through the Suez Canal and to Aden before continuing to Australia. It was one of the fastest steamships of the time, though I am sure Domenico would be amazed at the speed at which we can fly between continents nowadays.

My husband and I visited Viggiano last year for the first time. It was certain a fascinating experience. You may like to visit my Continual Journeys blog post about it:

Sacred Mountains

I wish I had more pictures and documents of my husband's Italian ancestors. Perhaps some photographic treasures were discarded over the years by relatives who could not see the value in keeping such fragmentary reminders of the past.

It would be easier if I could communicate with Italian archives more easily, but I do my best. And at least I am not illiterate.

Shadows of Inheritance

2010-09-09T16:28:00.007+09:30

I wonder if any of my ancestors are in this picture from a short film of Trafalgar Square in 1890. The scene is very familiar to me from my life in London in the 1980s. Some of my great, great grandparents may have recognised many of the same buildings if they had been there with me.

When we piece together our family histories, we are often dealing with shadows of one kind or another. Our family photographs, portrait sketches, films, videos, diaries, and little reminders of lives gone by, are often just the beginning of the imaginative journey we can take to bring the past alive.

See the film on Wikipedia

Huntingdonshire Heritage

2010-08-31T15:30:00.008+09:30

A long, long time ago, in a small town called Eynesbury, there lived a carpenter called Robert and his wife Martha. It is not exactly known how many children Robert and Martha may have had but it is known that they had a son called Tom who was born in 1840.

Tom grew up to be strong and healthy. He and his family left Eynesbury sometime in the late 1840s and went to live in London, in the borough of Southwark, south of the River Thames.

Eynesbury was not very far from the Great Northern Road, leading south to London. I know this even though several census records state that Eynesbury was in Hampshire. Eynesbury was in Huntingdonshire. This means that there was some confusion by the census recorders in Southwark between the pronunciation of Hants and Hunts, the shortened versions of the counties names. Have you found similar confusions when searching census records?

History of Eynesbury in Huntingdonshire - Visions of Britain

To add to the confusion, Eynesbury is now a part of the town of St Neots, rather than a separate village. The town of St Neots is now in Cambridgeshire as Huntingdonshire no longer exists as an administrative county. Tom's surname was recorded on his birth certificate as Gin, when the family surname is usually spelled Ginn, and pronounced with a hard "G" as in garden, rather than like the alcoholic spirit.

Read a book, published in 1820, called The History and Antiquities of Eynesbury and St Neots in Huntingdonshire and of St Neots in Cornwall

In the 1841 census for Eynesbury, Robert and Martha and their children were living in the High Street of the village. Next door lived a woman and her baby daughter. The daughter grew up to be Tom's first wife, which is very romantic. Her name was Annie Anderson. It is not known if Annie and Tom had any children of their own, but after Annie died, Tom married Sarah Cole and had a daughter called Annie, who was my great grandmother.

Sarah died in 1911, and Tom's eldest son, called Arthur Tom Ginn, died on the first day of the Gallipoli campaign in World War One. I think Tom is wearing one of Arthur's medals in the above picture.

My earlier blog post about Arthur Ginn

My great grandmother - on my By Any Other Name blog

Tom became a carpenter like his father when he grew up. He later became a builder's foreman and he frequently moved with his job to various parts of Surrey and Middlesex. I wonder how many of the buildings still standing in London were Tom's workplace at one time or another.

Even though Tom moved from Eynesbury when he was a boy, he still kept a connection with St Neots. I would like to know more about that connection, and its part in my Huntingdonshire heritage. Perhaps you can assist me.

Emily or Eliza?

2010-08-22T22:15:00.005+09:30

Do you have any portraits in your family that are difficult to identify? Here is one of mine. The photograph is probably of one of my great, great grandmothers from Shropshire. Is it Emily or is it Eliza?

Perhaps you can work out which year the photograph was taken. I think it may have been sometime in the 1890s though it could be from the 1880s. I am not very knowledgeable about fashion of any era!

It is likely that the woman is one of my grandfather Harry's grandmothers. Both died before he was born. The maiden name of his paternal grandmother was Emily Bailey. I have discovered from census records that she was illegitimate and did not have any siblings. The maiden name of Harry's maternal grandmother was Eliza Rowe. She had many siblings and was illiterate until later in life.

Eliza learned to read using a very big reference book, with the assistance of her children. My mother now has the book. I remember reading through it at my grandparents' house when I was a child. Perhaps that is why I still enjoy exploring encyclopedias today.

Unlocking Australia's Past

2010-07-29T15:40:00.007+09:30

Exploring our own family history and heritage, and that of the people we marry, can bring to light aspects of the broader history of our nations, the parts of history often left out of history books.

We learn, through our own investigations, and those of others doing similar research into their own families, that there are many versions of history that are yet to be adequately acknowledged.

The picture today is of Josephine, my husband's paternal grandmother. You may have read my earlier blog post about her. Although her parents were born in Italy, Josephine was born in Australia and lived here all her life.

Even if you are not particularly interested in what is happening today in Australia's genealogical world, the history of Australia has been shaped quietly by women like Josephine and this is something worth exploring. The "Josephines" of this world rarely make the history books but they are the people who have shaped the best aspects of the societies in which we live.

Here is a link to a website you may find useful: Unlock the Past. I have not had much of a chance to explore it myself yet, so if you find it helpful, please let me know more.

The Art of Genealogy

2010-07-25T17:29:00.006+09:30

Here is one of my little computer artworks from quite a few years ago. I think it is quite an appropriate addition to this genealogy blog.

I like taking a creative, artistic approach to the compilation of my research efforts, whether on paper or online. Do you lovingly compile your own family history into works of art?

Being Earnest With Alice In Wonderland

2010-07-23T16:40:00.013+09:30

Unlike his elder brother, Arthur, Ernest Ginn managed to survive the First War and married Alice. In 1933, when his brother-in-law Louis Veheyen died, Ernest left his job on the London trams and went to assist his sister Florence in the spice warehouse.

Well, that is what I think may have happened. I have been wondering about Ernest, just as I have been wondering about Alice and various other relatives. The Alice in question here is not my grandmother, who you may recall is mentioned elsewhere in this blog as being known by the name of Alice, but this other Alice is Alice's Auntie Alice.

Family history research can be very perplexing at times, as Ancestors Within may indicate. For example, my paternal grandmother may be recorded on various certificates as being called Alice, but she has never, ever been known by that name. My great grandfather, Jack, went to record her name on the birth certificate and he told the registrar that the baby's name was Alice. However, my great grandmother wanted her daughter to be called Vera, which Jack somehow forgot.

So the Alice I have known all my life is not called Alice at all but Vera, a word meaning 'truth'. To make matters even more confusing, my other grandmother, who you may remember is called Dorothy, is recorded on her birth certificate as Dorothy Alice. However, the name 'Alice' is then crossed out, making my mother wonder whether her mother may have had a twin sister called Alice.

Some creative detective work on my part reveals that I may have worked out why Alice was crossed out between the word 'Dorothy' and 'Harris'. Do you know how 'Harris' is pronounced in eastern Shropshire and southern Staffordshire? It may, very likely, have been the case that 'arris sounded to the registrar like the word 'Alice' when my great grandparents registered my grandmother's birth.

So, there has really been only one wonderful Alice in the family, to my knowledge, that being Ernest's wife Alice. If you have managed to follow this story, you have done extremely well!

We Are All Related

2010-07-20T14:43:00.009+09:30

I like to remember that we are all related, sometimes quite closely and sometimes more distantly. However peculiar we may think another person might be, there are aspects of their lives that may be very similar to our own, and other aspects that are probably very different.

Here is a Wikipedia link you may find interesting on the topic of social normality.

I am yet to meet anyone who has a great deal in common with me, with very similar tastes and interests and values, a similar style of communication, and a similar sense of humour. Perhaps that makes me very peculiar!

How different might you be from your ancestors over the last seven million years, and how similar, too?

Why is it important to make no apology for an interest in anthropology?

How civilized might you be?

What does migration mean to you?

Are you part of a diaspora?

Well, my six billion human relatives, I think there are enough links here for today, literally and figuratively.

The Spice of Life - Part four

2010-07-19T16:48:00.003+09:30

It is good to have plenty of variety when exploring family history. We can often become bogged down when looking for details about one particular person, event or place, and even lose our enthusiasm in frustration, so it is good to put those particulars to one side for a while and research something different.

You may recall that I mentioned the National Library of Australia's online Trove facility fairly recently. The National Library also has an online section just on Australian newspapers. I am finding that useful, too, especially when learning about the lives of early Italian settlers in Australia, some of whom were my husband's ancestors.

Little fragments from the lives of past generations can spice up our own lives tremendously. I would be very interested to hear about how researching your own family history has brought a rich and varied palate to your experiences of life.

The Spice of Life - Part Three

2010-07-10T18:17:00.009+09:30

Louis Prosper Verheyen was born on 10 June 1867 in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, near Brussels, Belgium. He had two brothers, Charles Cesar and Joseph, and a sister, Anne Joseph.

The children's father, Jules Cesar Verheyen, died on 8 December 1868, leaving their mother. Anne Catherine nee Dehouwer, to bring up the four children on her own.

Jules had been a merchant, according to the council records in Molenbeek. Anne, who may have been known as Catherine, was about 20 years old when her husband died and she moved her young family to the nearby town of Saint-Gilles on 18 December 1869.

Molenbeek-Saint-Jean at that time was in the industrial centre of Belgium. Anne, sometimes known also as Anna as well as Catherine, was born sometime between 1846 and 1848 in or near Brussels. On my great grandfather's birth certificate, her maiden name is recorded as Hanwer. It is all very confusing!

If you have explored this blog before, you will know that my great grandfather's name was Jack. He was the half-brother of Louis Verheyen, the son of Anne and her second husband, Johannes Gysemans. Johannes was also known as Jan and John. He had been married twice before and was much older than Anne.

1870s migration from Belgium to London

More about Flemish ancestry

A Carnaby Street childhood

I would be very interested to know how my great great grandparents met and what sort of people they might have been. Anne and Johannes had several children and some of them appear to have been in trouble with the law in their youth.

Johannes' step-son Louis Verheyen was even sent to a reform school for wayward Catholic boys. I wonder what his experiences there might have been like, especially as the reputation of the Catholic hierarchy has been under the spotlight recently.

The school was called the St Nicholas Industrial School and it was in Manor House, near London, in the former home of the 19th century prison reformer Elizabeth Fry. If you know something about it, I would be delighted to hear from you.

I am also interested in the education Louis may have received there, and how he managed to become the manager of a spice warehouse. My great aunt Florence was his second wife. His first wife was called Kate Owen, I think.

My grandmother thinks the spice warehouse was called Van den Berg and it was somewhere near the Tower of London. If you know something of its history, I would be very grateful for any information you might like to send by email: writetovia (at) gmail.com. Thank you!

The Spice of Life - Part Two

2010-07-08T15:58:00.007+09:30

Which of your ancestors had the most varied life? Is that person also the most interesting inhabitant of your family history? What is it that makes a person interesting? Is it variety, continuity, notoriety, or perhaps even their ability to create wonderful food?

I am very fortunate to have had many wonderful meals with my relatives over the decades, even though it is difficult to remember exactly what was on the menu on each occasion. Remembering the enjoyment of a meal, lovingly prepared, and lovingly shared, can be assisted with photographs of such occasions. For some reason, I was always munching on something whenever a camera was snapped at family lunch and dinner gatherings!

This is just a little blog post again today. Life is very busy and varied for me at present, and I have some meals to prepare, too...

The Spice of Life - Part One

2010-06-23T14:41:00.007+09:30

.
Here is the first part of a series (I hope!) of blog posts I intend to write on the topic of The Spice of Life. I have already introduced the topic on my Continual Journeys blog so please click the link if you plan to read future parts of this series.

Your spice heritage

Do you have family connections with the spice trade? Do you know much about the spice warehouses in London in the late 1800s and early 1900s? Do you know much about the history of the spice trade?

Perhaps you were an original "spice girl", as my grandmother Alice and her aunt Florence were. My grandmother, now in her mid 90s, used to travel home from work smelly very spicy on a London bus during the 1930s. Her "double uncle" Louis Verheyen was the manager of a spice warehouse. I'll tell you more about Louis in later blog posts. If you know more about him than I do, then please get in touch.

Well, I think I have spiced up this blog enough for today. Now, where did I put the pepper?

My Fair Ancestors in Mayfair

2010-06-07T13:35:00.009+09:30

.
Here is a six minute youtube video clip that is (sort of) connected with some of my ancestors, although I do not know if any of them were called Alfred P. Doolittle. I do know that the Londoners in my family probably pronounced Mayfair as "My Fair".

When I was a little girl, my great grandmother Annie pronounced cake as "kike", and so did I. My accent has changed over the years and, like Eliza Doolittle, I developed RP instead of Cockney, or even Aussie!

Annie's grandfather, on her mother's side, was called Welcome Cole, whose father and grandfather had the same name as he did. I am very fortunate in that a couple of people had already researched the family line before I started, not because they were directly related to any of the men called Welcome, but because they thought it was an interesting name. Luckily for me, some of that research was online when I began searching for my family history.

So, what is my possible connection with My Fair Lady?

Well, Alfred P. Doolittle, Eliza's father, was getting married in a high society church in Mayfair. I know from examining other people's research into my ancestors that some of the information about my own family history is probably inaccurate, but I am intrigued by one particular record: I want to know if a very important (at least to me) marriage took place in St George's Church in Hanover Square almost exactly 200 years before my own marriage.

St George parish was very large at around the time of the French Revolution so my ancestors, Welcome Cole and Elizabeth nee Wilson, may not have actually married in the main church. But I would still like to know, especially as I like the music of one its earlier parishioners, George Frideric Handel, not just during weddings.

The marriage records are in the Archives at Westminster City Council so if you are in London, and you have a spare few moments, perhaps you might like to assist me!

Lily of Lawley Common

2010-06-01T23:17:00.008+09:30

My mother has only ever known one grandparent, her grandmother Edith, who was known as Lily. Unlike me, Lily had a beautiful skin in her youth, which is why she was called Lily.

Throughout her life, Lily lived on the edge of Lawley Common in Shropshire. In her childhood she lived with her parents, Enoch and Eliza, her only sister Louisa, known as Louie, and many assorted brothers. I think they went to the Methodist chapel in the village on Sundays.

Shropshire Family History Society

Eliza's father had been a watch maker. Enoch was a farm labourer/waggoner. Edith/Lily lived near to her parents after her marriage to my great grandfather. They lived not far from the railway line as far as I can gather. There is now a heritage railway along some of the old line, though a public bus service now operates for most needs.

A history of Lily's local railway line

A history of Lily's local community

A history of Lily's local district

A map of the area

What did Lily's ancestors wear?

I do not think Lily ever went very far from where she was born. The family was never wealthy. Even in her old age, Lily did not have running water in her rented house. Whenever she wanted any water, she had to walk to a tap (a faucet I think Americans call it) down the lane. The tap was shared by many of the villagers.

The cottage where Lily lived is no longer standing. New housing developments have taken over many of the semi-rural communities and coal mining villages around Lawley Common since the Second World War. Even the open space of the common itself is threatened with the prospect of imminent development.

Naturenet: Common Land

I had hoped to visit Lily's grave when I was in England last year, but unfortunately most of the gravestones from St John's Anglican churchyard in Lawley have been removed. All I can do is pay my respects to my great grandmother here. If you go to a church, temple, mosque or other religious place in Shropshire, you might like to remember Lily, too.

St John's church, Lawley

Lawley Bank Methodist chapel

Hello to Shropshire Hindus

Hello to Shropshire Muslims

Hello to Shropshire Buddhists

Update - December 2010:

Are your ancestors from around the Telford and Wrekin area? I have added a few more links above that you may find of interest. There are a few below, too:

Is this a picture of Lily's mother or mother in law?

Working families

Songs my mother never taught me

Superstitions and traditions

A Shropshire lad called Harry

.

Public History and You

2010-05-17T13:30:00.007+09:30

If you publish anything historical, even just in a little blog like this one, you may be a public historian. I often see myself as a creative public historian. My research methods might be a bit messy but I like to keep the administrative side of my work in a more immaculate condition. Perhaps the latter is because my early vocational training was as a private secretary.

I was a very good secretary, as all my old employers kept reminding me - especially when I wanted to advance my career into research and television documentary making. That was why I eventually went to university to gain qualifications in a broad range of social sciences. There are not many job opportunities for people who just study history, especially those like me who do not want to be a teacher in a school or university.

Well, today I have been reading the Wikipedia article about public history.

Here are some more links I have been discovering:

Australian Centre for Public History

Institute for Public History

What is Public History?

From being a very good secretary, I became a very good student of the social sciences. My academic achievement even entitled me to become a member of the Golden Key International Honour Society. But will academic historians recognise me as a public historian? Possibly not.

Sharing evidence-based knowledge about the past, and assisting others to gain a better understanding of the development of the world around them, are always valid forms of historical activity, regardless of how that knowledge and understanding is presented and structured.

Well, I hope this blog inspires your learning and enriches your awareness, even if you do not regard yourself (or me) as a public historian.

Treasure Troves

2010-05-07T15:31:00.003+09:30

There are many treasures that have far more worth to me than their monetary value may imply. On a philosophical level, I often explore this topic when writing my Quieter Living blog.

On Ancestors Within today, I thought I'd provide a couple of links to online treasure troves that are part of my non-monetary wealth:

Trove - a wonderful online historical resource from the National Library of Australia

The Staffordshire Hoard - part of my Mercian heritage

For those of you who have read my previous blog post, you may be wondering how my family's new treasured relationships are developing. My mother was very nervous about meeting her cousins for the first time last Monday and she is overjoyed at finding out how lovely they are. They, and I, will have many years of catching up to do as we piece together our re-discovered history.

Something Quite Marvellous

2010-04-29T14:19:00.015+09:30

A week ago, I received a response to one of my earlier blog posts. The comment began like this:

Hello there. I've just read your lovely blog on Bertie Harris. I can answer all those questions you asked in the blog because I am his great grandson. So yes, he did have children. He had two... I would love for you to contact me through my email where I could send you more pictures of Bertie and carry on this conversation...

If you are not familiar with my writings about Bertie Harris, here is a link to my earlier blog post:

Liberty, Normandy June 1944

As my blogs will never reveal email addresses or other contact details of visitors, I did not publish the comment under the post. But now I have some wonderful new pictures of Bertie, and a whole new set of relatives.

A week ago, I did not know that Bertie had children. It had crossed my mind that it was a possibility. When I first discovered his grave location, date of death, and the surprise that he had been married (finding this out was made possible by visiting the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website), I then wanted to know more about Bertie's wife. That was a much more difficult task.

On the trail of the almost impossible

Eventually, after purchasing several lists of marriage records, I managed to find the right one and could order a copy of the marriage certificate. It was dated 1937. That was as far as I could go with my family research in that direction. The only direction left was through military records, but who really was Bertie's next of kin? As you may be aware, it is not easy to obtain military records unless you have proof of being the person's next of kin.

Next Monday, my mother will be receiving some very special visitors, Bertie's son and daughter - my mother's only cousins. Without this blog, and a thoughtful grandson's visit here, my mother would never have known that she had any cousins.

Tidying Up

2010-04-15T17:33:00.007+09:30

I am not the tidiest of genealogists. My preference is for creative chaos over orderly investigation. In the end, though, I find out all sorts of interesting things that a more methodical approach might miss.

Some people have been surprised at how quickly I have discovered facts that they have not been able to find even after many years of fruitless searching. My usual approach is to identify the most likely direct source of information and contact those particular individuals.

What is your approach? What motivates you towards taking that approach? And what do you hope to achieve through your genealogical endeavours?

When I make an effort to tidy up my findings, I try to build up mental pictures of past social environments. You may have heard that my approach is part of what is called "History from below".

More about history from below

In many ways, I am far more interested in history from below than I am in genealogy in general. So many people have had very similar lives, existing in similar circumstances and with similar experiences. I like to discover people from the past who have broken stereotypes in their own times, and may also do so in the minds of historians and others today.

Nevertheless, this blog gives access to all sorts of genealogical information for beginners and advanced researchers. I use Ancestors Within as a place to put the interesting links I find. Here is a link you may find useful:

25 Most Popular Genealogy Blogs

My own experience is that many genealogy blogs have similar information, or details mostly relevant to people with an interest in one particular family or region. Hopefully, I provide something a little different here, so you may find things that are useful whatever your family origins, current location and level of research expertise.

One way I tidy up my research is by involving people who may have already discovered the information I am attempting to discover. I like to encourage family members to write down their memories of the past, perhaps even record them in audio or video form, looking through old photographs and documents to recall memories, and make lists of the questions they themselves are hoping to answer.

We can often forget that family history is not the work of a single person. It involves the input and memories of many. Fortunately, my untidy yet successful research endeavours have inspired my mother to type her memoirs. Here are some youtube video links for her - though they may also jog the memories of people in your family:

Puff the Magic Dragon

The Hippopotamus Song

Ah... memories...

The Art of Knowing

2010-04-12T14:48:00.010+09:30

Do you love art? Do you love the art of knowing? What do you believe it means to know? What is art? How might you gain a deeper appreciation of your family history through an awareness of art history?

If you have ever visited any of my other blogs (see right hand column for the links), you may have discovered some snippets there about my own interest in the arts, art history, discovering history through art, and developing an understanding through history.

By delving into the lives of people who were contemporaries of my ancestors, I often gain an appreciation of the events and cultural experiences of their times. This is especially so when making comparisons between my ancestors and various unrelated people who worked in the arts.

Enjoy the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

Unlike wealthy patrons of the arts, the original producers of paintings, music, books, dramas, and philosophical ideas came from a wide range of backgrounds and cultures. I especially like to compare the lives of those who were born around the same time as my great grandparents. Unfortunately, I am yet to find biographies of anyone who was born at around the same time and in the same community as any of my known ancestors.

A Carnaby Street Childhood

2010-03-09T18:25:00.006+10:30

My great grandfather Jack grew up in the Soho district of London, where his Belgian father worked as a theatrical costumier. The family lived in Carnaby Street during the 1890s.

Click here for one of my earlier blog posts about the family

If you are a dedicated follower of fashion, you may recall that Carnaby Street became famous in the 1960s as a hub of popular culture. I am too young to remember the 1960s in much detail, though two of my aunts were in their teens at the time and remember it well.

About Carnaby Street

About theatre costumes

Jack died at the age of 65 in the early 1950s. He worked for 41 years as a conductor on London trams. In his teens he was a pageboy, perhaps in one of the grand houses in Mayfair, not far from Carnaby Street. I would love to know more about his experiences of growing up.

When I lived in London, in the 1980s, Carnaby Street was a dull and rather tacky walkway. I never knew at the time that my ancestors had once lived there. To me, it was just a short cut on the way to my favourite shop in the city:

Liberty of London

I wonder if Jack's father had any association with Libery of London, in particular its costume department. Edward William Godwin (1833-1886) was a founding member of The Costume Society in 1882, when he was director of Liberty.

The Costume Society

Although I could not afford to buy much in the shop when I browsed there on Saturdays in my late teens, I did purchase a few small pieces of beautiful Liberty fabric, which I incorporated into a hand stitched patchwork quilt during the evenings after work. Perhaps my interest in hand sewing quality textiles derives from my Belgian ancestors.

While my friends would spend many of their evenings in pubs, restaurants and nightclubs around London, I would often stay quietly in my room, making my patchwork quilt while listening to beautiful music. I saved money towards my future travel that way.

And I still have my patchwork quilt, too.

Justice for Josephine

2010-03-02T13:58:00.007+10:30

Here is a picture of my husband's grandmother, Josephine, long before she even became a mother. I wonder if bonnets will ever come back into fashion?

Well, the photograph is from around 1903 and it was taken in Australia. Josephine's parents had migrated from the Basilicata region of Italy in the 1880s.

Here is a link to one of my earlier blog posts with a picture of Josephine's grandfather:

A Man from the Mezzogiorno

The family probably experienced quite a lot of prejudice and this is one of the topics I am researching. It took me a while to find Josephine's official birth record, too, mainly because her surname is not spelled correctly in government files. Fortunately, the staff and volunteers at St Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne were able to provide me with some very kind and useful assistance.

About the Cathedral

Sectarianism in Australia

Anti-Italianism

In adulthood, Josephine was a kind, highly cultured and elegant person. She played the piano beautifully, did charity work and used her managerial skills to great effect in the family's businesses. Why would anyone want to be prejudiced against her?

The Mystery House

2010-02-15T20:17:00.005+10:30

If you have seen my previous blog post, you will know that I am trying to identify a house.

Here is the photograph I mentioned:

It looks to me as if it belongs in Bellevue Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island. It could, of course, be somewhere else. Do you know it?

Taking the Best of the Past into the Future

2010-02-07T15:36:00.013+10:30

.
If you have navigated your way to this blog using its web address, or have looked at the top of your screen at the address bar/navigation bar, you will have seen that the address of Ancestors Within is:

http://bisnonni.blogspot.com

Bisnonni means great-grandparents in Italian. It can also mean great-grandfathers. If you know of any other meanings of the word, you may like to let me know about them. I am always trying to improve my language skills.

I hope to spend more time working on my research over the next few weeks, away from the Internet, as there is such a lot for me to write up. That's very good from my point of view. It means that I am probably making some progress!

Some pleasant distractions

One of the companies to contact me recently is ancestry.com, based in Provo, Utah. You may know that ancestry.com is sponsoring a version of Who Do You Think You Are? in the United States. The series will be shown on NBC from Friday 5 March.

With Faces of America also showing on PBS (see my blog post of 8 January), those of you in the United States will have some interesting television viewing in the coming weeks. It will be a good way to keep out of the snow for those of you in the eastern states.

However, my interest is mainly in the family history of myself and my husband. We have some family members who are now in the United States and some who have lived there in the past.

Where did Aunt Lucy live?

My great grandfather Jack had a sister, Mrs Lucy Coleman, who migrated to America in 1920 with her husband Job, also known as Joe. I have a photograph of the house where they worked. It was a big, grand house so I will post the picture on this blog in the coming weeks. If you can help me to identify where the house might be, that would be wonderful.

Job may have been employed as a chauffeur, according to my grandmother, though he may previously have been an estate manager for a wealthy English family. Do send me an email if you discover anything at all about Lucy and Job: writetovia (AT) gmail.com

Here is today's link list:

ancestry.com

ancestry.com on Wikipedia

Provo, Utah on Wikipedia
(the town where the ancestry.com headquarters is situated)

Who Do You Think You Are - NBC
(keep your Friday evenings free from 5 March dear American visitors)

Facebook page of Faces of America - PBS
(if you write a genealogy blog that is more interesting than this one, you may be in with a chance to win a DNA kit, courtesy of Faces of America)

Guardian newspaper article from 2007
by Alex Graham, UK Executive Producer of Who Do You Think You Are?

(Hello Alex if you visit this blog. I remember you from the Diverse Productions days in the mid 1980s when I was a young secretary in the current affairs department at Channel Four Television in Charlotte Street, London... Greetings!)

.

Via the Independent Scholar

2010-02-05T19:01:00.013+10:30

.
I have recently received quite a lot of emails from various genealogy and media organisations so I thought I should write a blog post to clarify my status as an independent and unpaid genealogical scholar.

If you work for a commercial organisation and I have provided free reviews and/or free links from Ancestors Within, you may like to consider making a donation to:

The Italian Historical Society, Melbourne, Australia

One of the independent research projects I have underway is about the interrelationships of Italian migrants to Australia between 1848 and 1948, with a special focus on three family groups. I am also developing a film script about one of those groups.

You may recall some of my earlier blog posts about the little village of Ossolaro in Lombardy. I took the above photograph in 2007 when making a very brief stop there. Last year, my husband and I had a longer, and very fruitful visit.

One of the first people from Ossolaro to arrive in Australia, as far as I am aware, was young Carlo, pictured above. This portrait was probably drawn sometime around 1880. Two of his grandchildren, now octogenarians, believe he went to London and South Africa before heading to Melbourne. We also know that Carlo had an older brother called Costatino who also came to Australia.

Carlo's journey gradually took him from poverty to prosperity and he helped many people to achieve success on their arrival in Australia, including several members of his extended family. Carlo was one of the youngest of several children of Ossolaro's blacksmith. His youngest sister became the second wife of a miller in the village.

Here are links to two of my earlier blog posts about the mill in Ossolaro:

Part One

Part Two

Last year, I discovered that the mill building still exists but that it is now a private home. I have been collecting information about the watermills of the Po valley and have found that they have a very long and interesting history.

My Heritage, Your Heritage, Our Heritage

2010-02-01T16:54:00.004+10:30

What does the word "heritage" mean to you? It is a question I asked in my By Any Other Name blog back in October last year. Here is a link there:

Heritage, Inner Peace and World Peace

In Australia, my husband (the angel one) and I are members of the National Trust, a very important heritage organisation. Our membership gives us free access to many interesting places, not just in Australia but in other parts of the world, too, especially Britain.

National Trust of Australia

The National Trust, UK

Australia's heritage is very important on a world scale because it is unique. There has never been a revolution or civil war here. Most of the history of European settlement has been underpinned, at least in principle, on the rule of law. The Aboriginal heritage of Australia has been based on unwritten tribal laws for thousands of years.

Australian Heritage Magazine

Australian Indigenous Cultural Heritage

A very important part of my own heritage includes my family's experiences of the home front in Britain during the Second World War. I learned to appreciate the simple things in life because my parents and grandparents knew how to mend and make do when times were hard. It has also developed in me a strong aversion to wastefulness.

The Home Front - History on the Net

The Home Front - BBC History

Perhaps my experiences of growing up were influenced by the food rationing system of the war, even though my early childhood was in the more prosperous 1960s. I remember that sweets and cakes were special treats. My siblings and I could have no more than two biscuits at a time. Fizzy drinks were mainly just for birthday parties.

I am glad I had a healthy, nutritious diet when I was growing up, being taught the difference between good food and indulgent luxuries. Today, some former luxuries are cheaper than good food, which can cause quite a lot of confusion in some people's minds!

A Wikipedia introduction to luxury

Did you know that the American Revolution may have been mainly a response from rich colonists who were resentful of the taxes on the luxuries they like to enjoy?

Luxury taxes as a cause of the American Revolution

Some people consider heritage a luxury but there is an increasing awareness around the world that it is a necessity. This may be especially evident from the growing numbers of people who are taking an interest in their own heritage.

I have recently received a very nice email from MyHeritage.com. Are you a user of its services? If so, please let me know about your experiences.

If you are yet to explore the offerings of MyHeritage.com, here are a couple of links you may find interesting:

MyHeritage.com

Wikipedia entry from MyHeritage.com

Well, this is a very long blog post for the beginning of a new month, so I hope you will enjoy exploring the links in the coming weeks and months.

Neat and Tidy

2010-01-21T17:16:00.007+10:30

Research can be an enthusiastic pursuit, whatever the topic. We accumulate knowledge and gather it together, or, at least in my case, let it overflow all over the place.

I love the investigative side of research but do not particularly enjoy the task of organising everything so that it is neat and tidy and easy to find. It might be because I ran out of spare room in the house long ago. How do you keep your research organised?

My approach to housework is a bit like my approach to research. I like to keep food free from contamination but that is about as far as my efforts usually go.

Our research can become contaminated if we give in to peer pressure, take someone else's opinion as truth and forget to question the validity of our (and their) findings. How independent is your research?

The above picture is of my great grandmother Annie G in her maid days in London before the First World War. I don't know what sort of maid she might have been. The house number is 114 but I don't know where the house is or was located.

Annie was a very efficient housekeeper when she married Jack and had five children, four of whom were very boisterous boys. She was able to knit and sew while her husband could mend shoes. I don't know how tidy their house might have been. I know that they did not have any servants.

Here is a picture of my grandmother Dorothy and her best friend Beatrice beside the River Severn in Shropshire, England. I am not sure when this picture was taken but it looks like it may have been in the 1930s after Dorothy married Beatrice's step-brother Harry.

Dorothy was a well-organised housewife, according to my mother. I lived with Dorothy and Harry for a while after I left school. My grandmother would always do the laundry by hand. She did not want a washing machine though she did have a small spin dryer.

She did not want a refrigerator either as she had a perfectly good larder and she and Harry would shop for their essential food items several times a week. My grandparents never had a telephone. Why would they need one of those when they could write letters?

Beatrice married a man I know as Uncle Jimmy though his real name is Fred. Uncle Jimmy is 97 years old and is a lovely, poetic old gentleman but he misses his wife very much. After the Second World War, Beatrice and Jimmy lived in a caravan for many years. They had two children there and when the family finally moved into a council house, Beatrice became very house proud, in the nicest sort of way.

Celebrities and You

2010-01-08T15:44:00.010+10:30

.
Are you one of those people who has been inspired to learn more about your own family history after watching television documentaries about the family backgrounds of well known people?

Are you an avid reader of biographies and autobiographies?

Have you been told that you are related to a famous or otherwise important person, or even a notorious one?

I am one of those people who has no famous or illustrious ancestors, as far as I am aware. Unfortunately, I do have a few living relatives that I prefer to avoid!

No-one in my family is a "celebrity". Most of the people you may think of as celebrities are probably unfamiliar names to me, especially as I rarely watch television. I do like watching documentaries about historical events and the unfolding of interesting lives. Some of these are now available online or on DVD.

Ongoing series about celebrity genealogy include these:

Who Do You Think You Are? - SBS Australia

Who Do You Think You Are? - BBC United Kingdom

The BBC also has a useful family history website

For those of you in the United States, keep your Wednesdays free between February 10 and March 3, from 8-9pm ET for a PBS series called Faces of America. It is presented by Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jnr.

More about Faces of America (including a video trailer)

Faces of America on YouTube

There are also many magazines and books on genealogical topics, however I have been able to do most of my research without using any of these. Most of the information I have found has been freely available, both online and by directly contacting people who might know more than me.

I have recently purchased a copy of the November 2009 edition of a UK magazine called Your Family History. It was rather expensive to buy on a one-off basis here in Australia but I wanted to have a copy at home for reference purposes.

Well, that's all for now. Good viewing, good reading, good research, and good luck!

Exciting New Discoveries

2010-01-07T17:58:00.007+10:30

Hello again everyone and welcome to a new year here at Ancestors Within. What do you hope to discover in the weeks and months ahead?

Genealogy is certainly an exciting adventure for anyone exploring their own cultural and genetic origins. I have had some fabulous moments over the past couple of years or so when doing online family history detective work, telephoning relatives with my questions, receiving emails from family members and experts who have been able to provide answers, collecting copies of photographs and documents, and have even been learning a few words of other languages along the way.

Today I received an email about a genealogical documentary series by PBS in the United States. I hope to tell you more about it tomorrow, when I should have access to a faster Internet connection than the one I am on now!

How is the weather with you? We are experiencing a heatwave here in the town of Dorothea. You may know that Dorothea is a fictitious name for the town in which I live, just as Via is the name I use online but not in real life. Identity protection is an important consideration these days.

Well, I have so much to tell you, but for now, please enjoy this and my other three blogs. There is quite a bit of information between them to spark your imagination as you think about your family heritage, and your future.

Keep warm if you are in North America, Europe or northern India. Keep cool if you are in Australia or New Zealand. I hope you have a wonderful year ahead with your own research.

Lost Relatives Regained

2009-12-15T14:19:00.011+10:30

Unlike the unhappy ending of Madama Butterfly in Puccini's opera, many people today are able to be reunited with long lost children and long lost parents.

Even for those who cannot trace close living family members, more distant relatives might be discovered.

Madama Butterfly is one of the world's most popular operas. It is a tragic story of selfish behaviour and lost hope, wrapped in some of the most beautiful music ever composed.

Here is a summary of the opera

There are many women in the world who are like Madama Butterfly, and many men like Pinkerton.

Whatever the irresponsibilities and military personnel involved, the children who were the unintended consequence of fleeting passions are now able, as adults, to use the Internet to trace their ancestry. For example, I know of people who have had great success with GI Trace.

Here is the gitrace website

If you know of similar websites, please feel free to leave some comments about them below.

My Quieter Living blog also contains several posts on war, peace, poverty and children. Here are two that I think are especially appropriate for this time of year:

Innocence

A Peace of Chocolate

Here in Ancestors Within, I provide these posts that may assist visitors who have a general interest in their own family history, whatever that history may be:

Family History - Ancestry and Privacy

Your Ancestral Heritage

Understanding Ancestry

The length of my blog pages should be shorter in 2010 as I will write more about the people in the photographs in the right hand column and move them to the relevant blog posts.

I'll take a break until then. In the words of the inimitable Spike Milligan, I wish you love, light and peace.

Kreativ Blogger Award

2009-12-04T08:15:00.009+10:30

Here is the logo of Kreativ Blogger, which you may have seen on a few of the other blogs you have visited, whether genealogical or on some other topic. Thank you to Michelina for giving me a Kreativ Blogger Award for Ancestors Within.

I am very pleased that Michelina has been in touch with me because she has a wealth of knowledge to share through her own blog, Preserving Heritage.

You may know that I am interested in the origins of all sorts of things, not just my own heritage, so I have been doing a little research into the award. I am a social scientist by training so I tend to question everything!

Simon Leong, a food blogger from Sydney, Australia has done a wonderful job in identifying the origins of both the logo and the award. And I must admit here that have similar reservations as Simon about the award's "rules".

Read Simon's blog post about the Kreativ Blogger Award

My own blogging experiences only began in January this year and I am yet to explore many other blogs. Researching and writing four blogs has been consuming rather a lot of my time so perhaps 2010 will be more of a reading year than a writing one. I would especially like to be able to read and reflect upon the blogs of all the people who have been following my blogs, and/or who have left some comments on them.

My other blogs are called Continual Journeys, By Any Other Name, and Quieter Living. I frequently write my blogs with only a modem connection, so I am especially appreciative of blogs that download more quickly than mine do!

Many of my older relatives find the Internet intimidating and most do not have a computer at all. I wonder what our great grandparents would make of it all...

GeneaBloggers

2009-11-22T12:45:00.008+10:30

.
Hello to everyone who may have found this blog through the GeneaBloggers.com website. It is very nice of you to visit.

This is the first time I have heard about the website, so thank you especially to Dr Bill Smith for leaving a comment about it.

Best wishes to you all, Via

Ps. Thank you also to Mr Thomas MacEntee at Geneabloggers for sending me the email that arrived soon after I published the above post.

.

Where You Are Now

2009-10-27T10:08:00.006+10:30

.
There are several reasons why it is important for each of us to explore the aspects of the past that have made us who we are today (as individuals and collectively). One reason is that much of our sense of identity derives from the past, especially as we reach full maturity/middle age.

New experiences can seem to be part of us, but they are often just fleeting fads and fashions. Children, teenagers and people in their twenties and early thirties are especially confused by their continually changing sense of identity. It is one of the reasons why I have written a blog especially on the topic of identity. You can find it here.

When we are young, many of us rebel against aspects of the past that restrict, deny or challenge our own sense of identity. Self-expression is a vitally important part of our mental well being, yet how many of us truly understand ourselves enough to express that self? Do fashions - and traditions - prevent us from being who we truly are?

If you would like to explore this topic further, please visit my By Any Other Name blog when you have a spare moment or two.

Many people who arrive at this Ancestors Within blog are usually interested in researching their own family history, genealogy, ancestry, whatever you want to call it. My interest is in enriching that process, deepening the experience and making it more meaningful, here and now, and in the future (even for future generations of your family).

This is especially beneficial for those who are trying to encourage reluctant family members to take more interest in exploring (and valuing) their heritage.

.

Amazing Genealogical Discoveries

2009-10-21T16:48:00.005+10:30

.
You may be wondering why this blog has not been updated for a while. Well, I have been in Europe for a couple of months visiting archives, libraries, museums, family members, genealogical researchers, town halls, churches, interpreters, towns and villages. It has all been very worthwhile.

I will be telling you more through this blog in the coming months as I have now solved many of the mysteries I have been trying to solve.

Hopefully, my findings will help you to solve a few mysteries yourself.

Important Years in History

2009-08-27T20:45:00.007+09:30

.
Have you managed to work out the most important years in the history of your family? Why are particular years so important?

Your own year of birth is probably very important to you, as might be the years of life's significant milestones. How might wider social and political events feature in your family's story?

Here are a few dates you might like to think about:

1870 - a year I think was a very important turning point

1930s - economic depression in Europe

1789 and all that - when democracy took root

1848 - more revolutions

Do you think mainly in terms of issues, events, chronology, experiences or philosophy when thinking about the past?

.

Community and Commonality

2009-07-18T15:05:00.009+09:30

.
Do you sometimes feel as if you have little in common with the people around you? In what circumstances are you more likely to feel that way?

These are important questions for everyone to think about, but the desire for community and commonality might be why so many people are interested in tracing their family histories today. The modern world of constant change and the ever increasing specialisation of knowledge can fragment our identities and take us further and further away in cultural terms from our origins.

Here is a wikipedia article about genealogy

Here is a wikipedia article about a sense of community

Do you search for people who might be related to you through a common ancestor? Do you search for people who may have known a family member you never had the chance to know well?

Perhaps you are more interested in filling in the gaps in your family tree because it is a pleasurable form of personal detective work. Many people do that even without being particularly interested in or concerned about living connections.

Are you interested in your family history mainly to know how you ended up being who you are and where you are? Do the accidents of fate intrigue you?

This blog is about many aspects of family history, some of which you may not have considered exploring before. It especially explores community and commonality in the lives of ancestors.

Do you know much about the communities in which your great grandparents lived?

.

Working Families

2009-07-12T15:25:00.011+09:30

.
Although working families has become an overused populist slogan in Australia in recent years, I think of it in terms of the past rather than the future. Families are groups of people who do more than work, at least in my idea of a good society.

In this blog post, I want to write more on the topic of the jobs done by ancestors. Do you know what your great grandparents did to earn a crust?

In her youth, my great grandmother Annie G worked in one of the many Lyons tearooms in London, along with her sister Flo. It was somewhere near the Tower of London.

Meals away from home

My great grandfather in Belfast worked as a yarn dresser, which I have recently found out involved preparing flax fibres ready for spinning.

An interesting list of old occupations

My great grandmother Edith Emma in Shropshire worked as a book sewer in her youth, as did her sister Louisa. It was probably a fiddly job to sew the pages of books into place.

Sewing books

My great grandfather Jack worked as a conductor on North London's trams for most of his adult life.

Take a journey back in time

Many in the angel one's family were busy making and selling ice cream in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

A history of ice cream

My great grandfather in Shropshire was a store keeper. He did not own a shop, though. He was responsible for maintaining an inventory of supplies at an iron works before the First World War, and at an munitions factory during the war. Many of his fellow workers in the factory were women.

Munitions factories in World War One

Some of my family took in lodgers to help pay the rent. Housework was always a chore, too. Then there was the strain on women of regular pregnancies. Many of my ancestors had little or no schooling. They had to work from a very early age.

Poverty and families in the Victorian era

The wealthiest relative I have so far come across from the early to middle 1800s worked as an inspector of London post offices in the 1840s and 1850s. He was my great, great, great grandfather and his first name was Welcome.

A museum about the history of the post office in Britain

The wealthiest relative from the early 20th century was my grandmother Alice's uncle Louis. He was the manager of a spice warehouse in London. He was the only person in the family who had a car (automobile to North American visitors here).

A history of the spice trade

You will already have met some coal miners, tailors and migrating musicians in some of my earlier blog posts. Some of my ancestors were also carpenters and builders in Huntingdonshire and London.

What did your ancestors do for a living? How different is your family's working life now from that of previous generations?

.

Songs My Mother Never Taught Me

2009-07-06T18:39:00.007+09:30

.
Have the musical traditions of your family been lost? What was the music your family knew one hundred years ago?

With so many sources of music available through technology, we can lose the songs of our ancestors. I am especially interested in the songs that may have been sung in East Shropshire in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Here are some links you might like to explore:

English Folk Dance and Song Society

English folk and traditional music on the Internet

Folk music of England

If you come across music sung around Lawley, Dawley, Red Lake, Coalmoor, Little Wenlock and Ketley Bank before the advent of radio, please let me know.

.

From Ossolaro to Australia

2009-07-05T14:46:00.016+09:30

This blog has already introduced the little village of Ossolaro in Italy.

The village is about 50km as the crow flies from where one of the most important battles in Italian history, and world history, was fought.

The Battle of Solferino took place just over 150 years ago, on 24 June 1859. As a consequence of the battle, the Red Cross was founded.

Osso in Italian means bone. I am yet to find the origins of the name Ossolaro. If you can assist, please do!

Here are some links you might find interesting:

Brief background to Italian unification (the first sentence of the article is very funny)

More about Italian unification

The Kingdom of Italy (1861-1946)

The Battle of Solferino

Solferino today

You may be wondering about the connection between this family history blog and Solferino. The reason is that it affects anyone with Italian ancestry.

Did any of your ancestors fight in the battle? Were any of them subsequently conscripted into the Italian army?

Conscription has long been a part of Italian life. It only ended in the last few years.

Conscription is likely to be one of the main reasons why so many young men decided to migrate in search of a better life elsewhere. Most probably wanted to save themselves from being sent to battlefields.

The end of conscription in Italy

The lead up to abolition of Italian conscription

Article with a history of Italian conscription

My husband, the angel one, is likely to be in Australia because his family members from Ossolaro wanted to avoid being sent to war. It seemed to them to be safer to go to the other side of the world than to stay in Italy.

The Italo-Turkish war (1911-1912) was a precursor to the First World War. Did your Italian ancestors migrate during that time?

Learn more about the Italian-Turkish war

The main town near Ossolaro is Cremona. It was not a good place to be during the Fascist era, either, as this link might indicate:

Roberto Farinacci

Did your ancestors migrate from Italy to escape Fascism?

.

Superstitions and Traditions

2009-07-04T17:37:00.028+09:30

Why did my grandmother Dorothy cover mirrors whenever there was a thunderstorm? Why did my grandfather Harry believe he saw a ghost of an old lady when he visited a big old house in Shropshire?

What are the superstitions and traditions followed in your family? Which stories are passed on from generation to generation?

Learn about the science of superstitions

Some common superstitions

Dorothy was born in 1906 and died in 1997. She was a lovely grandma. She was round and jolly and had the smell of soap flakes. In her youth, she was slim and graceful. Yet I knew very little about her or her family while she was alive. Questions were never asked. The present was so busy when I was growing up. The past was so remote.

British culture and traditions

There have been quite a few surprises over the past year or so for me and my family. We have discovered some long-hidden family truths from census records and birth certificates. In a previous blog post, I mentioned the siblings of Dorothy, only one of whom had ever been mentioned to my mother, and then only very vaguely.

During her early childhood, Dorothy and her family lived in Wednesbury in Staffordshire. I am not sure if she still lived in Wednesbury during the First World War, but a very unpleasant event would have profoundly affected the people who did live there:

The Great Zeppelin Raid

I recently found another very interesting website. One page has photographs of the war memorial in Darlaston in Staffordshire. Darlaston was where Dorothy's brother had lived in the years before he went to war. The only military person with a full first name engraved for the 1939-1945 conflict was my great uncle Bert Harris.

Darlaston War Memorial

There are many ways to remember those who died.

The tradition of Remembrance Day

Mourning rituals through time

Traditions may have a practical basis or a superstitious one. Which traditions do you follow, and why?

Many people have mementos of the past that bring life to their family histories. Which objects make your ancestors seem closer to you?

Here are my lovely grandparents, Harry and Dorothy. I do not have many photographs of them so every one is precious to me.

Harry and Dorothy were never known by their first names by people outside the family. Traditions of courtesy and formality were very important in their opinion.

I am also interested in finding cultural connections between different parts of the world. On a personal level, I have gathered some Staffordshire-Australia links:

In memory of Australian cancer specialist Professor Gordon Hamilton-Fairley (1930-1975), who died in an IRA bombing targeted at Harry and Dorothy's Member of Parliament

Mr Cook (1860-1947) the Staffordshire miner who became Prime Minister of Australia

Staffordshire rooms in a Tudor mansion in Australia

Mr Jervis (1735-1823) who went from the middle of Staffordshire to lead the Royal Navy

Mr Wedgwood (1730-1795) made a Sydney Cove Medallion in Staffordshire using Australian clay

Do you know of any other important connections between Staffordshire and Australia?

Although I do not think of myself as a superstitious person, and I do not like having other people's superstitions, traditions, or other beliefs and behaviours imposed upon me, I enjoy learning about many aspects of heritage and culture. A quiet sit down with a cup of tea is one English tradition I do like to keep, but I never try reading the tea leaves!

.

Flemish Ancestors

2009-07-03T11:24:00.017+09:30

Back in February this year, I wrote an introductory blog post about my Flemish ancestors.

Some of my family came from Lier, not far from Antwerp. Others were from Brussels and the villages around there, most of which are really sprawling cities in their own right today.

Do you have Flemish ancestors?

For anyone who is unfamiliar with Flemish identity, the language of the people of that region developed to be similar to Dutch, as far as I am aware. Flemish people now usually speak Dutch.

Do I speak double Dutch?

Dutch is similar to Flemish but originated as the main language of the Netherlands, otherwise known as Holland. However, the Flemish people came from Flanders, which is now in northern Belgium. The main difference between the Dutch and the Flemish is religious. The Dutch predominantly became protestants while the Flemish people remained Catholic.

Belgium as a state has only been in existence since 1830. It combines two language groups, as the southern half of the country is populated mainly by French speakers. Before 1830, various aristocratic powers in Europe vied for control of the land that has since become Belgium.

Here are some links for anyone who wants to know more about Belgium:

Begin at the Beguinage

The Wikipedia page where I found the beautiful map of Lier

Flemish art

Belgian chocolate

Belgian family history

Discover more about Lier

Belgian foods

Take a peek at Molenbeek

A History of Belgium

There are many things I have been discovering about my Flemish ancestors since February. There are quite a few mysteries still to solve, too. You might be able to help!

.

A Man from the Mezzogiorno

2009-07-01T11:30:00.016+09:30

Who is or was your most enigmatic relative? Who has had the most mysterious life? What would you like to find out most about that person?

This photograph is of Vincenzo Galito. He came to Australia sometime in the 1880s and was later joined by his wife Mattia and daughter Carolina.

The photograph was taken in 1903. I do not have any photographs of his wife. The only ones I have of his daughter Carolina show her as an old woman in her 70s.

Who was Vincenzo Galito and why did he come to Australia? I know that he was born in the south of Italy, in the village of Viggiano. Southern Italy is known as the Mezzogiorno. In English, mezzogiorno means midday. The region is also called Italia Meridionale.

Viggiano is in the region known today as Basilicata. In the past, Basilicata was known as Lucania. In ancient times it was known as Magna Graecia. Vincenzo was born in Viggiano sometime around 1854. He died in Australia in 1908.

Mattia Galito was born in Viggiano in around 1856. She died in Australia in 1897, soon after giving birth in Melbourne to a child who died a few months later. The family had lived in the "slums" of McGrath Place off Little Lonsdale Street.

Mattia had been a greengrocer and Vincenzo sold ice cream at the Eastern Markets in Bourke Street. They had three daughters who reached adulthood and two children who died in infancy. Only one of their surviving children was born in Italy, Carolina, who was born in 1880.

About Southern Italy

About Magna Graecia

About early Italian Migration to Australia

One of the reasons why the Galito family came to Australia may have been because two of Mattia's brothers had arrived in Melbourne as child musicians in the late 1870s.

The musical heritage of Viggiano is worth knowing about. Did music play a part in your ancestors' lives?

The musical heritage of Viggiano

More about the history of Viggiano

Mattia's brothers were Domenico and Pasquale Gargaro. Their father was called Giacomo. They were part of Viggiano's long tradition of music and migration. I do not yet know if Vincenzo Galito was a musician, too.

.

A Shropshire Lad called Harry

2009-06-23T09:36:00.019+09:30

This is Harry (1906-1988), one of the most important people in my life. Harry was the Shropshire lad who managed to survive until he reached old age, unlike his elder brother Arthur who died of double pneumonia at the age of fifteen.

Arthur died in 1917. Harry's father died the following year, so Harry left school as soon as he was old enough to do so and helped his mother to make ends meet.

Harry's first job was in an iron foundry near Lawley. From his descriptions of it, the place was more like hell. Yet the countryside of Shropshire can often seem heavenly.

A PDF map for walking through the district

Today, the iron bridge, just down the road from where Harry grew up, is a World Heritage site and one of the most picturesque, too.

Have you read A E Housman's cycle of poems called A Shropshire Lad, or heard a few of them being sung?

A Shropshire Lad on Wikipedia

Read the poems for yourself

George Butterworth's music to the poetry - on YouTube - sung by John Shirley-Quirk, plus an orchestral interpretation

Music by Ralph Vaughan Williams and George Butterworth - to the poetry of A E Housman

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now - read by Eleanor Bron

Iron Bridge Gorge UNESCO

Iron Bridge Gorge Museums

A video I found on YouTube about the Iron Bridge

A video about Blists Hill Victorian Town in Shropshire

A whistle stop tour of Shropshire

Although very few of my family members are known to have been military types, Harry's ancestors fought in another way. They were at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution, though they never became wealthy. You may know that Shropshire is where the Industrial Revolution all began.

Timeline of the Industrial Revolution

What happened?

What caused it to happen?

The Darby family's activities in Shropshire (they are not my ancestors)

Without the industrial revolution, and its agricultural precursor, most of my ancestors (and quite likely yours too) would probably have stayed as rural peasants, tilling and weeding and harvesting and spinning and weaving and trying to eek out a living.

Although a few people were involved in coal mining before the industrial revolution, the colliers of the 19th century in Shropshire included several of my ancestors - men, women and children. When the coal began to run out, some of my family moved to the more productive mines of Staffordshire, not far away.

About mining coal

Coal mining in Shropshire

Children at work - in the past

More children at work - in the past

Children at work - in the present

I continue to admire my grandfather's tenacity and dignity. He worked long hours in horrendous conditions while studying at night to better himself. He was mainly self-taught and became a skilled fitter from the 1920s to the 1940s, the proprietor of his own small business mending and maintaining "wireless" (radio) sets in the 1940s, and an engineer for a large company from the 1950s to the 1970s.

My mother thinks Harry was also a member of the Freemasons, though he never spoke about it.

Here is an update - December 2010
Did you know that this is one of the most popular blog posts at Ancestors Within? I have added more information and a few more links above to provide an even more vivid introduction to Harry's life and cultural heritage.

Learn more about him here:

The working lives of ancestors

.

Understanding Ancestry

2009-06-10T20:24:00.008+09:30

.
Who were your ancestors? Are they still with you? Do you know the difference between nature, nurture and knowledge?

In a scientific sense, your ancestry has a genetic basis. Why is this important to know? How healthy, or otherwise, were your great grandparents?

In a cultural sense, your family history might be similar to that of many other people, yet there may be unique aspects you are yet to uncover. How will you go about discovering the most interesting and personal histories?

Were your family members caught up in the horrors of wars, revolutions, uprisings, epidemics, brutal exploitation, grinding poverty, domestic abuses, workplace abuses, bureaucratic abuses, accidents, natural disasters, violence of any type, or conflicts over money, land or possessions?

Did your family members have mundane lives with nothing dramatic happening at all?

What were the greatest achievements of your family members?

How have the achievements, challenges and disappointments of the past generations shaped your life?

Whatever your family origins might be, I hope that my research experiences and familiarity with genealogical records online, and in various archives, will be useful in your own search.

For example, did your ancestors spend part of their lives in Italy, England, Australia, Belgium, Belfast, or elsewhere?

How much do you know about the general history and geography of where and how your ancestors lived?

How might you build up a picture of what life was like for your great grandparents, and their parents?

.

Liberty, Normandy June 1944

2009-06-06T11:20:00.019+09:30

I wonder if my mother's uncle, Bertie Harris, would have had much liberty in his life before his contribution to the liberation of Europe in June 1944. Today marks the 65th anniversary of his landing at Gold Beach.

The reason I began exploring my family history towards the end of 2007 was because my mother wanted to know what happened to her uncle. She had not mentioned much about him before, except to say that he had been killed during the Second World War.

I have already written about Bertie in this blog. You may recall that he was born in December 1910, twelve days before his mother died of infection, fever and exhaustion after giving birth to him, at the age of 38.

I don't know how Bertie died on 1 July 1944, but he had spent the last few weeks of his life in Normandy, saving his sister's children and grandchildren from becoming the slaves of a brutal regime.

Bertie may be somewhere in this photograph. It is from the Imperial War Museum collection.

Click here to see a larger version.

What would have gone through Bertie's mind at the time? What did Gold Beach mean to him?

I have provided a couple of links here in honour of Bertie:

His memorial at Tilly Sur Seulle

The Green Howard Regimental Museum

You may recall that my grandmother had quite a lot of siblings, according to census records, but the only one we have ever known about was Bertie. Did the others die before the war? What happened to them? What became of Bertie's wife Florence?

My grandmother never mentioned Florence. Perhaps there had been a family rift. Dorothy had been a lady's companion and an elegant dancer in her youth. Florence had been a factory girl for much of her life, making nuts and bolts.

Florence was 26 when Bertie died. He was 34. I don't know if they had any children.

Search the Commonwealth War Graves for one of your relatives

Learn more about what happened in Normandy in June 1944

Explore the Second World War

Discover our shared heritage at Gold Beach

Normandy Veterans Association

Royal British Legion

More about what happened at Gold Beach on 6 June 1944

Some more information about Gold Beach

Gold Beach Museum

Youtube - Gold Beach in recent years

Youtube - The D Day landings taking place

Next year will mark the 100th anniversary of Bertie's birth in Staffordshire. I hope to have the chance to visit his grave in Tilly Sur Seulle in Normandy. I wonder if Florence ever went there.

At least the Staffordshire countryside now has a place of peace and contemplation where we can remember people like Bertie.

National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire

Bertie of the Black Country

Tilly Sur Seulle, Normandy

I have always had a problem with the word "sacrifice" being used in relation to any type of violence or force, even when combat is justified. My interest is in peace, and with commemorating the sufferings of civilians as well as those whose job it has been to bring peace to the lives of civilians.

What is the best way to resolve conflicts and create lasting peace in the world, whether within households, between neighbours, or on a global scale? Explore my other blogs to find out!

Quieter Living

By Any Other Name

Continual Journeys

If you have any comments or questions, I would be delighted to hear from you.

Update - December 2010:

I have added more links above today, to co-incide with the 100th anniversary of Bertie's birth. If you know of other links I may find interesting, please let me know.

Did one of your grandparents or great grandparents have a sister called Dorothy (born in Wednesbury, Staffordshire in 1906) and a brother called Bertie (born in Wednesbury, Staffordshire in 1910)? Are John Harris and Harriet nee Lloyd amongst your ancestors? They were born in east Shropshire in the early 1870s.

I know now that Dorothy and Bertie had several siblings (though I did not know this when I started looking into the family history at this time of year in 2007):

Brothers:

John Harris, who married Amy (maiden name perhaps Carter). Married 1927? Children - John and Bertie who both became military police officers.

Leonard (Len) Harris, who married Mary (maiden name perhaps Bailey or Bayley). Married 1922? Children Len and Ray - both remained unmarried.

Sisters:

Annie Harris married William E Butler in 1913. Children: Annie, May, Bill, Jack, Harry.

Mary (Polly) Harris married Arthur Harper in 1918. Child, Arthur, born 1922.

Another sister was Keziah Harris, whose fate is unknown.

Harriet had a brother John Lloyd who married Agnes Maria Fisher in 1899. John and Agnes were living next door to Harriet and John in Wednesbury in 1901.

Bertie's wife Florence nee Hague was the daughter of John T Hague and Ruth nee Rudkin. Florence had a brother called Ralph and sisters called Iris and Vera. She also remarried after the war. I also now know that Florence managed to visit Normandy before she died.

I also have information to suggest that the photograph of Bertie at the top of this blog post was taken in India in the 1930s, perhaps in Bangalore circa 1932. Bertie was in the British army even then, perhaps with the second battalion of the South Staffordshire Regiment. He may have reached the rank of sergeant major, though his great grandson is still awaiting a response to his request for Bertie's military records.

So now I am reminded of Mahatma Gandhi whenever I look at the photograph of Bertie. Although I have since been lucky enough to receive more pictures of my great uncle, taken before and after the one above, I will probably always think of Bertie as a thin, young man with dark hair, almost as if he was an Indian himself.

Mahatma Gandhi and the civil disobedience movement in India

Rabindranath Tagore writing in October 1936 about the English in India

You Tube - A Road in India, 1938

If you would like to know more about this family history, or you think you can help me to know more about those within it, here are some more blog posts you may find interesting:

Something quite marvellous

Superstitions and traditions

Songs my mother never taught me

.

Connect to Your Heritage

2009-06-05T15:58:00.007+09:30

If you have visited this blog in recent weeks, you will have noticed it contains quite a lot of links. The right hand column has been quite cluttered as a result so I thought I'd put a few of the main links in this blog post instead:

The origins of your family name

Migration museums around the world

Australian links

National Archives - Australia

Italian Historical Society, Australia

A list of other useful Australian links

British links

National Archives - United Kingdom

Free births, deaths, marriage records, UK

General Register Office, UK

1911 Census UK

United States link

Ellis Island Passenger Records, New York

I hope you will find these links useful in your own family history search.

Names and Literacy

2009-05-19T10:13:00.014+09:30

.
Being able to read blogs is something people with computers can easily take for granted. How would you feel in front of a computer if you were unable to read and write?

Two of my great grandmothers were probably illiterate, as were several of my great, great grandparents. I do not appear to have had any particularly well educated ancestors at all!

Harriet nee Lloyd had her first name written as Hariet in some official records, though she signed her name with a cross. Her daughter Dorothy was my mother's mother.

Annie nee Spottiswoode or Spottiswood or Spotswood or Spotiswood, signed her name with a cross, too. Her son George was my father's father.

Illiteracy and poverty

Perhaps it is a tragic coincidence that both Harriet and Annie died before my grandparents reached the age of five. I am lucky that, in spite of their early poverty, Dorothy and George reached adulthood.

Poverty and language barriers

Sometimes, foreign names can be a problem in family history research. For example, I have already mentioned my search for records in Belgium, even though I can barely understand French and have no understanding of Dutch at all.

Even so, I managed to find records there right back to my great, great, great grandparents, the Gysemans of Napoleonic times. Their surname may have sometime been written as Gijsemans or Geysemans, but I was fortunate to trace them with the assistance of some very helpful people at the town hall in Lier - just by email.

Sometimes, language can be a further barrier to the development of literacy and understanding. My husband is of Italian ancestry. Many of his family members who migrated to Australia in the 1880s and early 1900s could neither speak English nor read and write in any language.

They spoke dialects rather than the official national language of Italy, meaning that they would have had difficulty communicating with people from outside their own region. Their names on records are often either spelled wrongly, or the given name and family name are mixed up, or the records do not exist at all.

Several of my husband's ancestors, including his paternal grandmother, never had birth certificates, nor even wedding or death certificates, perhaps because they did not know they were required, or because they could not communicate with officials.

How difficult must it have been for them to get along in daily life? Is it much the same for migrants and refugees today, especially those who are illiterate?

Update - December 2010:

I have since managed to locate some of the missing certificates of my husband's ancestors. By finding the spellings of their names as used in church records (and by providing a rough guess of dates), I was then able to find information in civil registers.

Here are some Wikipedia links about the history of education/literacy:

History of education - general world overview

History of education in England

Learn more about the civil registration of important events in people's lives:

Civil registry - Wikipedia article

Civil registration and the World Health Organisation

Human rights and registration of vital events

Objects or Subjects - Your Ancestors

2009-05-17T19:46:00.009+09:30

I find there is something rather unsettling about the work of historians, journalists and social scientists when my own ancestors are a topic of their interest. My husband (the angel one) and I both come from backgrounds of a lower socioeconomic level than many of the people who attempt to unravel the life experiences of the poor. It is as though our families have come from a different species than those who wish to observe them.

It is always important to see people as subjects of study rather than objects, even if they lived in the past. Statistics can often turn people into objects of study, too.

Poverty and human worth

My relatives came mainly from poor areas of London, Belfast and the English Midlands. My husband's father's family, on their arrival in Australia from Italy, lived in the Little Lon area of Melbourne from the 1880s onwards.

There were a lot of little alleyways off Little Lonsdale Street in Melbourne for many years. Poor migrants from a variety of non-English speaking backgrounds were the characteristic population. The newspapers of the time described the area as one of dangerous low-life, criminality and the most unpleasant aspects of humanity. In reality, there were many family groups leading fairly 'ordinary' lives, albeit on low incomes in many instances.

Making comparisons

I am especially interested in comparing the lives of the various people who have lived in similar circumstances in different parts of the world, and how they are observed by those who have more power. Like my father-in-law's Italian family members in Little Lon, my Belgian relatives who went to Soho in London in the late 1870s may have had similar experiences of a new language and culture, and the prejudices of mainstream society.

The side streets off the Shankill Road in Belfast, before the First World War, are also of interest to me as that is where my grandfather George was born. His family was protestant. His future wife's relatives in Soho were Catholic. George's father was a yarn dresser in the linen industry. I am yet to find out what the job involved.

Perhaps you know about Little Lon or Soho. Do let me know if you can assist my research in any way.

Civilian Internment in the Second World War

2009-05-16T12:35:00.009+09:30

Internment is the imprisonment of people without trial. Were any of your relatives interned during World War Two?

See the Wikipedia article about internment

For family reasons, I have a particular interest in the unjustified incarceration of non-combatant civilians in Australia and elsewhere. I'm especially interested in those classed as "enemy aliens" even though they had long been naturalised British subjects (Australian citizenship did not exist in law until 1949).

See the Wikipedia article on Australian nationality law

The National Archives of Australia have quite a lot of information about internment in this country. Find out more here.

When I became a permanent resident in Australia, I was classed as an alien. Have you ever been classed as an enemy alien?

The policy of internment during the 1940s

The detention of innocent people more recently

I often wonder if any of my relatives in Britain were interned because their Belgian surnames might have been thought to be German. My main interest is in the internment of people of Italian ancestry, especially as Italy was on the side of the allies in the First World War.

The internment of people with Italian ancestry in the United States

British policy on internment under Churchill

Internment of Italians in Canada

More about the history of Italians in Australia

Tatura museum

Loveday camp

There are quite a few articles by academics on the experiences of Italian internees. Here are just two:

Anti-Fascism and Internment: The Case of Francesco Fantin - by Paul Nursey-Bray

The Proletarian migrants: Fascism and Italian Anarchists in Australia - by Gianfranco Cresciani

The only "crime" my family member had committed was to help raise funds so that the children of Italian immigrants in Australia could receive Italian language lessons on Saturday afternoons during the mid 1930s. Internment caused him to lose the business he had built up over twenty years.

Dealing with Dark Clouds and Black Sheep in Family Life

2009-05-13T10:24:00.007+09:30

The family is one of the most political of social institutions.

Whether it is rivalry between siblings, arguments over money or acceptable standards of behaviour, or even disagreements over what to eat, who to spend time with, and what to believe, there are many challenges to be faced when living within family households.

There are also plenty of conflicting attitudes to be faced when members of households interact with the wider world.

Here are some links about families and society:

Sociology and your family

Family diversity

The idiom of black sheep in the family

Dark clouds - the abuse of power within families, and in other relationships

Violence in family life

It is rare for a family to be entirely free of politics. How do you treat incidents of abuse that have occurred in the past when you explore your family history?

Who do you consider to have been black sheep in your family, and why?

Black sheep ancestors

Australian convict ancestors

The Old Bailey Archive

Finding criminal records

If you are a survivor of an abusive relationship, whether as a child or an adult, here are some links that may be of assistance to you:

Adults surviving child abuse

Surviving trauma - a guide for young (and not so young) adults

If you would like to know how to prevent others from suffering abuse, perhaps these links will help:

Recognising child abuse

Signs of abuse and neglect

It is important to remember that many adults have never had any scientifically-valid training in how to bring up children. Most of us learn about adult roles from the setting in which we were children.

Learning about one's own family history can help to put childhood experiences into a long-term context, taking into consideration the past, present and future.

The working lives of ancestors

2009-05-09T10:58:00.013+09:30

From the late 1940s to the 1970s, both of my grandfathers, George and Harry, had arrived in Stafford, Staffordshire from different parts of England and went to work as engineers at English Electric.

It was quite an upheaval for my other family members, too, with new schools, new homes, and with local people who spoke with a different accent than my relatives did. George and Harry had very different accents from each other, too. George had a Devon accent and Harry had a Shropshire accent. George's wife had a London accent.

Stafford was a centre of heavy engineering. My grandfathers helped to build the huge bits of equipment called transformers that make electricity work in coal fired power stations. Perhaps that sort of work will not longer be required in the 21st century with the problems of global warming.

About Stafford

More about Stafford

Here is some background information about English Electric. Do you know about the work it did in Stafford?

Here are some scientific facts about transformers.

The engineering of transformers

Here is some information about power stations.

George had been in the Royal Air Force for over 25 years before going to work for English Electric. He was responsible for ensuring military aircraft were safe to fly during the Second World War and he reached the rank of flight sergeant.

Harry had been in a reserved occupation during the Second World War. He was responsible for ensuring that bank safes were, well, safe. After the war he had his own small business for a while, but difficulties arose owing to the alcoholism of his business partner.

More about how people experienced the Second World War in Britain.

Have you discovered very much about what your ancestors did for a living? How might the work of your ancestors have shaped your working life, and your personal life?

Perhaps you have, or had, relatives or friends who worked with my grandfathers. You may have know them yourself if you worked at General Electric in Stafford.

If you live or lived in Shrewsbury, or the surrounding districts, are you familiar with the area around Sundorne Road? Perhaps you can remember a relative talking about having their radio batteries recharged in a shop near there in the 1940s.

Sundorne

Harlescott

Ditherington

A history of the battery

Harry loved working with radios and batteries, and I am sure he would have been fascinated by the technology of today.
.

Family Discoveries in the Dardanelles

2009-04-21T10:44:00.014+09:30

This Saturday in Australia, we will commemorate ANZAC day. I will be thinking about Arthur Tom Ginn who was born in Finsbury, London at 1.45 in the morning on 27 December 1892. He died in the Ottoman Empire on 25 April 1915, aged 22.

Arthur was in the first battalion of the Border Regiment and his service number was 10399.

He is mentioned somewhere on Panel 119 to 125 or 222 and 223 of the Helles Memorial, an obelisk at the tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula. Arthur is listed there along with more than 21,000 other names.

Arthur is the cheeky little boy in the front row of the 1901 family portrait in the right hand column of this blog. His sister Annie (top left) was my great grandmother.

I do not know much more about Arthur's short life though I think he may have become a regular soldier before the war began. I don't even know if his name is on a memorial anywhere in London or near to his regiment's museum at Carlisle Castle.

What can the first 20 years of the 20th century tell us about humanity, and about life on this planet today? What were your family members doing during the First World War? What happened to them? Did some of them not survive the influenza pandemic afterwards?

In 1985, I helped to steer a ship across the Dardanelles towards Troy (there will be more on this topic in my Continual Journeys blog). What can the history of the Dardanelles tell us about the relationship between human behaviour and geography? What might a deeper understanding of this relationship tell us about how our ancestors related to other people?

Update - November 2009:

I now have a photograph of Arthur, a very handsome young man he was, too. You can see him now in the right hand column of this blog. I recently found the picture in one of my grandmother's albums.

.

A Postcard from a Stranger

2009-04-03T08:08:00.008+10:30

.
Are you trying to locate a long lost relative?

Have you looked up the online telephone directory of a town where your family once lived, to find out who might have the same surname as you?

You may be searching for the genetic history of your family and want to know of the experiences of others who share your genes.

Perhaps your parents or grandparents had siblings who were sent to orphanages and you want to know if you have cousins somewhere out there.

Maybe your family was separated by war, or you are the child of a fleeting wartime relationship.

Here are some links you may find useful:

Barnardos Australia - tracing service

Red Cross - tracing service

Genetic Genealogy

International telephone and address listings

There are, quite rightly, many privacy issues relating to contact with strangers. I find that the best way to initiate contact is to send a postcard (not in an envelope).

My postcards usually include my email address and post office box, plus the name of a person who may be a common ancestor. It's best just to have two or three brief sentences. I like to have a cheerful but otherwise neutral picture on the postcard, such as a cute animal, beautiful flowers or a colourful bird as that might show that I'm friendly.

Good luck with your own searches!

.

Research and Nostalgia through Google Street View

2009-04-02T08:17:00.009+10:30

.
Have you used Google Maps recently and clicked on a little yellow figure above the zoom feature? In some ways Google Street View can be seen as an invasion of privacy when anyone with access to the facility can wander virtually down your street.

Yet there are some great benefits of using Google Maps, and Google Earth. Satellite images of urban and rural landscapes where ancestors lived can be explored it a relatively easy way, as if you are flying over the area in a helicopter.

Street View can save a research trip, and hence quite a lot of money and polluting energy - and no helicopter noise, either. I recently took a virtual trip on Street View to where I used to live and work in London, and to where some of my ancestors lived in the city. I also enjoyed the nostalgia of being able to wander up Regent Street from Piccadilly Circus, in the comfort of my Australian home.

If you would like to know more about using Street View, here is a helpful Google link.

I often enjoy using Google Maps to see satellite images of places I have lived or visited, and places where my ancestors lived. There are also interesting websites of local areas (especially tourist websites), many with photographs. Another useful source of pictorial views is flickr.com.

I find that Flickr is also a good place to find better images than my old, out-of-focus holiday snaps. I'll mention more about this in the coming weeks in my Continual Journeys blog.

Well, let me know what you have found out... and enjoy exploring!

.

Your Ancestral Heritage

2009-03-08T10:48:00.007+10:30

.
What does your ancestry mean to you? What is your heritage?

Has anyone in your family written a history of the lives of its previous generations?

Are some of your most treasured possessions the photographs and heirlooms passed down to you from your parents and grandparents?

Why is it important to know about the past, and especially your own past? Can it provide a more personal link to major historic events?

How have you become who you are today?

Please enjoy reflecting on the above questions as you explore this blog, and leave a few comments, too.

.

1870s Migration from Belgium to London

2009-02-16T20:10:00.013+10:30

.
In the late 1870s, some of my father's family left Belgium in mysterious circumstances and went to live in Soho in London.

My great great grandfather's first name is written in various records as Johannes, Jan, Jean and John. He was a tailor by trade and was born in Lier, south of Antwerp, in 1830. My great great grandmother was his third wife.

The family lived at various Soho addresses, including Carnaby Street, Wardour Street, Poland Street and Leicester Place. In the late 1800s, John was a theatrical costumier. At around the time, the family name changed slightly.

Belgian history

As I learn more about my Flemish heritage, the more I discover about the turbulent history of Belgium and its frequent use as the battleground of various belligerents. There are some similarities with the history of Italy, with constant invasions and a shared Catholic culture.

Your family history

Three of my blogs now have nine posts each. I have decided to postpone their continuation for a while until there are some interesting comments from visitors for me to explore.

Wherever your family originated, on whichever continent or continents, I look forward to hearing from you.

.

Staffordshire Miner becomes Prime Minister of Australia

2009-02-11T19:06:00.015+10:30

.
Many people have heard of James Cook the 18th century explorer, who was a Yorkshireman, but fewer may be familiar with the name of Joseph Cook, a coal miner from north Staffordshire who became the 6th Prime Minister of Australia.

My great grandfather, John Harris, never became a politician, but he was a coal miner in south Staffordshire in the early 1900s. It is very difficult to research the life of my great grandfather. His name is so ordinary but at least I know that he was born in Shropshire in around 1871.

Joseph Cook was born in 1860. He became Australian Prime Minister from 14 June 1913 until 17 September 1914. You can read about him here:

Article one - Australian Dictionary of Biography

Article two - National Museum of Australia

Article three - National Archives of Australia

Article four - Parliament of New South Wales

Article five - National Library of Australia

Article six - Wikipedia

Article seven - Australian War Memorial

Finding biographical material about my great grandfather is far more difficult! Perhaps you can help.

I probably need to spend some time searching this website:

Black Country History . org

Through that link I have found some interesting photographs and information:

Colliers at Riddings Lane, Wednesbury
Perhaps I am related to one of them

Pit bank wenches, Wednesbury
Some of my ancestors may have looked like them

Other notes

I have changed my picture again today. I am no longer a blue rose.

If you are looking for part three of The Mill in Ossolaro, it will appear soon in my Continual Journeys blog.

Update - December 2010:

I have added a few more links above. I hope you have you found them useful.

Do you make comparisons between your ancestors and people who came from similar backgrounds but who had very different career paths and/or life experiences?

If so, you may like to read some more of my blog posts:

Objects or subjects - your ancestors

The art of knowing

Superstitions and traditions

A genealogical look around

.

The Mill in Ossolaro - part two

2009-02-06T23:52:00.016+10:30

.

My face is a blue rose today, at least on my blogger profile. It represents the fact that we are having such strange weather here, and no-one really knows how this might affect us in the future.

I did not feel like seeing my smiling face shining back at me when we are expecting a scorching day tomorrow, with strong winds and the possibility of bushfires (wildfires to those of you in the northern hemisphere).

Finding certainty

The only place where we can find certainty is in the past. Yet the past no longer exists, except within our minds. All we have in the external world to remind us of the past are the remains of it in the present; in material form, in documents, and in the minds of others.

Uncovering the truth about the past can sometimes be very difficult. For example, I am trying to research the lives of people who came to Australia from three regions of Italy in the 19th and early 20th centuries: The Veneto/Venetia, Lombardy/Lombardia and Basilicata/Lucania.

It might be difficult enough for someone who understands Italian fluently, but I do not know very much of the language at all. My good fortune has been that I have had the kind assistance of several Italian-speaking academic researchers. They have been helping me along the way and pointing me in the right direction.

Important aspects of research

Most of the research I have done, though, has been through my own initiative, and this is an important aspect of any research project. Trying to uncover the history of a small village in Italy that no-one appears to have written much about before, especially in English, is important to me. I like to know the reasons why people made particularly significant decisions in the dim and distant past that affect my life today.

The history of Ossolaro is also important to the history of Australia. My father-in-law's paternal family came from that village. They had ice-cream factories in several Australian cities from the 1880s to the 1950s, pioneering the multi-cultural interaction and acceptance that have become an enriching part of Australia's social life and national values.

Shared heritage

Building up a picture of the cultural and political background to life in Ossolaro is important to our understanding of Australia's heritage and values. Why, for example, did people from a small village in Lombardy come to Australia? Many other Italians, after independence in 1870, headed for other parts of Europe, especially France. Quite a few established communities in London, large numbers went to the United States and South America, and some went to South Africa.

Local histories

Exploring the wider context of our ancestors' lives can enrich the story as we weave it, slowly and consistently seeing the picture develop before us. I am still to find the mill in Ossolaro. Perhaps I'll succeed in doing that sometime this year. My father-in-law's grandparents had that mill.

The discoveries I have already made are giving me a deeper connection to the past. By reading local histories, those of us who have European ancestry can take our personal story back to even before the Romans. We can identify patterns of continuity and change and find a sense of place in the wider world.

How strong is your connection to the past, and to the future?

.

The Mill in Ossolaro - part one

2009-02-05T18:18:00.016+10:30

.
There is a small Italian village to the north of Cremona on the Lombardy plain, hidden during summer amongst fields of maize, except for the bell tower of the church. There are not many streets in the village. One to the north west, called Strada Comunale Paderno Ossolaro, leads to the larger village of Paderno Ponchielli.

Paderno Ponchielli was previously known as Paderno Fasolaro, but had a name change to reflect the contribution to music of its most famous inhabitant, Amilcare Ponchielli (1834-1886).

Ponchielli was a musical prodigy, who left Paderno at the age of nine to take up a scholarship at the Milan Conservatory.

A musical sense of place

As far as I am aware, no musically talented child came from Ossolaro, though the population has historically had great respect for talented musicians if the names of its streets are anything to go by. As well as the narrow road leading to Paderno, there are side streets in Ossolaro with names such as Largo Guarnieri, Via Monteverdi and Via Stradivari.

Guarnieri and Stradavari

You may be aware that Cremona, the nearest town to Ossolaro of any size, has a long tradition of making quality musical instruments, including violins and cellos. Two of the best luthiers (makers of stringed instruments) were Andrea Guarnieri (1626-1698), and Antonio Stradavari (1644-1737). If you like western classical music, then perhaps these names will be familiar to you.

Monteverdi

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), who was born in Cremona, was at the forefront of musical development even before Guanieri and Stradavari. Monteverdi's innovative approach assisted the transition between the Renaissance style of music and the Baroque. Although he composed many madrigals and sacred works, he is especially remembered as the first composer of operas that are still performed today.

If you are wondering what any of this has to do with my ancestral journey, and your own, then you are welcome to follow this blog in the weeks ahead!

.

The Age of Reflecting on Age

2009-02-03T15:45:00.021+10:30

.
Growing older is quite a privilege. It means that we have survived this far, unlike many other people who once lived.

Perhaps it is vanity that comes between us and the way we look as we age, making us wonder why we do not look the same today as we did last year, or ten years ago, or many years ago. Yet I would not want to be young again. I enjoy the pleasures of having a longer memory.

What ages do you consider your ancestors to be in your imagination when you explore their lives?

Our grandparents were not always old people. Our parents were not always adults. Sometimes, our parents and grandparents may forget we are not still children!

Names and Faces

In daily life, I often remember faces more than names, especially when I recognise familiar features. The picture I use for my blog profile happens to change quite frequently, too, reflecting the physical and emotional changes life presents to me when I look in the mirror each day while cleaning my teeth. Sometimes the picture I use for my online profile is not of me at all.

Until the orthodontist intervened, my teeth were like those of my father. Now I have teeth like my mother.

I have green eyes. My brother has blue eyes. My sister has brown eyes. We have been assured that we share the same parentage.

Each one of my closest relatives prefers to live quietly. Is that just a general sign of growing older or something yet to be understood from our genes?

At a deeper level, identity really has very little to do with either names or faces. It is frequently a complicated and confusing topic for many people. Is your identity based on your relationships with other people, past and present (and future), rather than the name you are known by or the way you look?

Similarities

Which of your relatives looks the most like you? Are you an identical twin or triplet? Even if you were a single birth, do you mainly see yourself in the mirror or the features of one of your parents, aunts or uncles?

My mother is beginning to resemble her mother, Dorothy, now. She looks and acts in a way that is similar to how I remember my grandmother being when I was a child. It makes me think my grandmother is still with us, even though she died over a decade ago at the age of 92.

People used to say that I looked more like my father but now they say that I look a lot like my mother. My mother thinks I look like one of my father's relatives, a person my mother does not particularly like much!

My father's mother, Alice, is still alive. She looks the way I remember her mother being when I was a small child. My great grandmother, Annie, was a high spirited and resourceful woman, just like the sprightly 94 year old Alice.

Annie was the only great grandparent I ever knew.

Youth and time

Older people can often seem boring to the young. The present and future can appear to be so much more interesting than the past, especially when you do not have much of a past yourself.

Old people tend to tell the same old stories over and over again, in my experience. When I was growing up, no-one ever thought to ask questions about why particular stories were told, and where else the tales might have lead, and why other topics were never discussed.

When I was younger, the past was something for old people. I thought just the present and the future were for me. Now I relate to time in a different way.

Reflections

Mirrors, and the comments of others, can only tell us a small part about ourselves. Our beliefs, values, tastes and interests are part of our social selves, yet will those aspects of our identities stay the same for long? What does your family history tell you about yourself, and your identity?

Our knowledge of the world shapes us too, as does the way we communicate. I have noticed that many people's blogs mainly consist of pictures and digital gadgets. They really say very little about the minds behind those online expressions of identity.

As I often use a dial-up modem connection to visit blogs, the download time is sometimes so frustratingly slow that I go elsewhere if a blog takes too long to appear on my screen. It is one of the reasons I will usually choose small pictures, or none at all, in my blog posts.

How do you travel online, and through time? And would your ancestors approve?

Update - December 2010:

There are many online resources that may assist you to reflect upon age, time, identity and the life experiences of your ancestors. Here are a few you may find interesting:

Wikipedia article on the year 1906
(The year my maternal grandparents were born)

1906 in Australia

1906 United Kingdom general election

1906 San Francisco earthquake

Britain 1906-1918

Very short film of Trooping the Colour, 1906 - in colour!

Film - London in 1903

Enrico Caruso singing in 1902
Cielo e mar, Ponchielli, La Gioconda

Marie Lloyd singing in 1903
That's how the little girl got on

Early coal mining photographs

Have you seen my blog about identity?

By Any Other Name
.

Family History - Ancestry and Privacy

2009-02-02T15:17:00.021+10:30

.
Identity is a topic I find very interesting, as you may have already gathered. With so much identity theft happening now, how can we protect our own identities from misanthropic misfits and still find the information we seek? There is quite a lot more information on the topic of identity in my By Any Other Name blog. Have you visited it?

Why is it that genealogy is a more common hobby in some countries than in others? And why is it that many people in previous decades did not want to reveal much about themselves and their ancestors, even within families?

Your research

Have you uncovered interesting information in your search for clues about your family history? Why did some information remain hidden for such a long time? Was it because of shame or guilt? Was it, perhaps, because it was seen as normal and not considered a worthy topic of conversation?

There are a lot of issues relating to ancestry that are very important in our sense of identity. If you were conceived by IVF, or were adopted, or fostered, or never knew one or both of your birth parents, like many people in a similar situation you may feel a sense of longing to know more about your genetic links to others.

My research

My grandmother Dorothy may have never known that she was one of eight children. Her mother died when she was four. Soon afterwards, Dorothy and her youngest brother, the only sibling she ever mentioned, went to live with an aunt. We do not know what happened to any of the other children.

I have discovered quite a lot about my own family history by looking at census records. Have you done the same?

Cultural identity

There are other aspects of our individual identities that are shaped by the cultural environment in which we live, for example how we speak, the vowel sounds we make, the words we choose to use, and even how we spell those words when writing.

When looking at the multitude of interests of bloggers, do you think about how each person might have gained the tastes and interests they list as part of themselves? How did you acquire your tastes and interests, and your sense of identity?

.

A Search for Understanding

2009-01-31T13:42:00.013+10:30

.

There are many reasons why people search for understanding of one type or another. Usually it is to solve as puzzle or a problem, especially an emotional or physical one. We especially search for understanding when things have gone wrong for us somewhere along the way.

Cultural links

How do you think and why do you think as you do? What are your cultural links to the past? How much of you can truly can be identified as being purely of the 21st century?

Natural links

Genetics is a very interesting topic. How might your genes have adapted to cope with the environment in which your ancestors lived?

.