Table of contents for Edition 3 in Traces

MyHeritage England and Wales • 33 million searchable records from the 1939 Register of England between 1911 and 1951. Canada • Two million obituary and memorial records from the 10 provinces, from 1997–2017. United States • More than 6.6 million new records added to the New York City Marriage License Index 1908–1972.• Historic Kentucky newspapers comprising more than 1.3 million pages across 19 newspaper titles.• Historic West Virginia newspapers comprising more than 370,000 pages across 18 newspaper titles.• Historic Connecticut newspapers comprising more than 2.3 million pages across 23 newspaper titles.• 96, 216 records from the New Jersey Death Index 1901–1903.• 769,976 records from the New Jersey Marriage License Index 1901–1914. Denmark • More than 18.7 million new records added to the Denmark Church Records from 1576–1919. Visit www.myheritage.com FamilySearch…

Theatre Heritage Australia (THA) was awarded a Public Record Office Victoria (PROV) History Grant for the digitisation of the scene books from the JCW collection held by Scenic Studios in Preston. The collection comprises thousands of images of sets, backdrops, scenic details, lighting rigs and more from 1898 to the 1930s. Setting the Scene: The JCW Scene Books Project JCW mounted a great number of productions and toured them throughout Australasia. Named after James Cassius Williamson, who formed his first company in 1882, the business became known as JC Williamson Ltd or ‘The Firm’ from 1899. When it wound up in the mid 1970s, among the records were many volumes of old share registers containing pasted-in photos of JCW stage sets. Some of these were thrown into rubbish skips, while…

Constructed by convicts in the 1850s, and still remarkably intact, Fremantle Prison provides one of the most authentic glimpses into convict life in Australia and is a must-do activity for any traveller to Western Australia. In commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the Hougoumont, the last convict ship to arrive in Australia, the prison has launched a new convict-themed tour and developed a new exhibition, ‘Transportation’, exploring the forced migration of convicts from Britain to Australia in the 18th and 19th centuries. The new Convict Prison Tour explores the convict-era history of Western Australia’s only World Heritage–listed building, focusing on why almost 10,000 men were transported from Great Britain and Ireland, and how they built their own prison and helped shape the future of Western Australia. ‘Transportation’…

Genealogists have always used death certificates to determine the date of death and ‘kill off ’ the individual. Frequently today, the researcher is also looking for further information, such as cause of death and perhaps how this relates to hereditary conditions, occupation, age and place of death, to gain a more complete picture of their forbears lives. The causes of death on modern certificates are fairly easily interpreted, even if they are in ‘medical speak’, but for some older certificates the terms used appear to be from an archaic language – for example, ‘marasmus’, Colica pictorum, ‘scrofula’, ‘inanition’ and ‘phthisis’. Many doctors wrote the Latin name for the disease, so a knowledge of Latin can be useful (or put the term into a Google search). For example, Morbus articularum, translating…

In the past, the use of slang was frowned upon; many people considered it vulgar. Today, the historical newspapers on Trove provide a fascinating glimpse of the words or sayings that were fashionable during particular periods of time. Let’s take a look at vernacular of the 1870s. The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser printed a detailed article about the addictive use of slang among Australian women. It was considered unladylike and the writer hoped they would modify their language. It was so ingrained in society, however, that they admitted it would be a ‘task truly herculean to wholly eradicate the mischief ’. Several examples of the slang terms were provided. When describing a person or thing they disliked, people might use the words ‘beastly horror’ or ‘horrid wretch’.…

Begun in 1793, Elizabeth Farm was redesigned, modified and extended over the following decades. Today, 225 years after it was first built, the house sits within a garden that evokes the lives of the Macarthur family, a garden centred on an olive tree, likely planted in 1805. On a block far diminished from the estate’s original 1000 acres, the house records the achievements, political intrigues and personal struggles of one of the early colony’s most influential and controversial families. Its calm atmosphere today belies its sometimes turbulent past: within its walls, plans were hatched to topple Governor Bligh in 1808, and the private anguish of isolation and mental illness was endured. In 1904, Elizabeth Farm was bought by William Swann, and until 1968, it was home to his family, whose…

Then 1885 The opposite photograph, taken in 1885, shows Windmill Tower on Wickham Terrace, Spring Hill, Queensland. Built in 1828 to process the wheat and corn crops of the Moreton Bay penal settlement, the windmill was first regarded as ill-conceived, due to the often windless location chosen for its erection. But the true function of the windmill became clear when a treadmill was attached and convicts, under the direction of Penal Commandant Patrick Logan, were made to power the windmill when there was no wind. Convicts were set to work as a punishment, wearing eight-kilogram leg irons for 14 hours straight in the burning sun. Wearing only rough leather hats for protection, they had to grasp an overhead rail with both hands and walk the 23-centimetre wide steps continuously. If…

Many in Adelaide were thrilled and intrigued in late 1930 when Dorothy Sym Choon, the elder Miss Sym Choon of Rundle Street’s famous China Gift Store, married her fiancé Leslie Poy Hing Young in a lavish ceremony at St Paul’s Anglican Church. Announced by her mother in the society pages, the wedding blended Eastern tradition and up-to-the-minute Western fashions. Gongs were beaten and firecrackers exploded, as throngs of curious onlookers struggled to catch a glimpse of Dorothy as she left the church. What is the story behind this glamorous figure whose father started the family business from a handcart? We became fascinated by this tale of hard work and social mobility. How it all began The Sym Choons were a Chinese-Australian family who, within two generations, went from selling vegetables…

A new study by the University of New England’s Professor Martin Gibbs and Associate Professor David Roberts – called Landscapes of Production and Punishment – is exploring this dichotomy, and challenging the traditional view of the convict experience. Convict labour and its varying contexts The convicts worked in greatly differing physical and administrative contexts, from highly skilled artisan craft to industrial workshop production and labour-intensive manual work performed in irons. It is widely recognised that fluctuations in colonial labour demand and changing administrative practice are likely to have influenced the management of convicts, but there is little understanding of the way this worked. Explorative techniques Landscapes of Production and Punishment is an interdisciplinary project that uses innovative digital humanities and archaeological techniques to explore the physical impacts of convict labour…

Bob was my father. He died suddenly when I was 22. He seldom spoke about his war experiences. I grew up knowing he had been a bomb aimer with the Royal Air Force (RAF) during World War II, but did not know the details. After Bob’s death, his photo albums, flight logbook, war diary and medals came to me. Then recently, after contacting the archives of the New Zealand Defence Force, I was sent his full military records. These documents gave me a much greater understanding of Dad’s war service, and it was from all this that the idea of making a photo book emerged. The intention of the photo book was to record Bob’s war service and experiences for his family, especially his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I also wanted…

1. Don’t take it for granted that ancestors were telling the truth! As Sandy Guy explains in ‘Skeletons in the closet’ in this edition, secrets can be successfully kept for many decades. If all of your research roads are dead ends, think outside the box and consider whether your ancestor falsified their age, name, birthplace and other details. 2. Be aware of name variations: It was common and perfectly legal for people to change their names informally. A common cause of confusion is the use of a middle name as a first name, and vice versa, or the use of a nickname. In addition, low literacy levels resulted in variations in name spellings, so researching your ancestor using a variety of different spellings could reveal new information. Also try searching…

Lesley, what can you tell us about Lucy’s childhood? My great-great-grandmother Lucy was born to Ann Hurley in 1846. Poor Ann was born to a convict named Bridget Connor who died of alcohol poisoning when Ann was only six, causing Ann to be brought up in Parramatta Girls Home, in New South Wales. She met John Hurley, a convict, when they were both teenagers, and married on Norfolk Island. When John became free, they settled in Braidwood where Lucy was born, but when she was only seven, he died in an incident with a horse. Things were fairly tough for the family from that point. What have you found out about Lucy’s later life? When Lucy was a child, her mother lived with bushranger Jingera Jack on his farm, so…

Manufactured in 1891 in Birmingham, England, this appealing little object is a nutmeg grinder. Made by Hilliard & Thomason from sterling silver, it has been designed to look like a nutmeg seed. The hinged cover opens to allow access to a silver-mounted steel grate. The grated nutmeg is collected in the second half of the shell, and can be retrieved by removing the steel grate. Nutmeg graters were made in a great variety of styles and shapes and were in use during the first half of the Victorian era. The most common shape was the rectangle with a hinged cover and base. Another common design was the barrel shape, which unscrewed at the centre. Handcrafting small, fine silver objects such as this was a precise art accomplished by very skilled…

Historical air-raid shelters uncovered Air-raid shelters have been uncovered during the construction of the $110-million Howard Smith Wharves, a Brisbane riverfront development. Five shelters were discovered, among which were two pillbox shelters and two pipe shelters. As many as 230 shelters were built across Brisbane between 1941 and 1942, but few of these still stand today. In the postwar years, structures like these were seen as of little importance – and no heritage value – once they had served their purpose. The five shelters had been concealed by vegetation, but will now feature in the parklands of the new development for people to visit and appreciate into the future. The Wild Deserts project preserves Aboriginal artefacts where they belong In May, the Wild Deserts project began the delicate task of…

Contemporary Australia is opening its ears to the marginalised and the minorities, and their silent stories that have shaped each of our journeys. The history of the colonial convict female factories is one of these stories. The voices of at least 9000 women are now being drawn into the broader narratives of Australia's past. This history, her story, is our story. The colonial convict women coming to Australia were experiencing the effects of the industrial and agrarian revolutions and the consequences of the failed Irish Revolution, the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. Of the estimated 166,000 convicts transported to Australia, at least 24,960 were female. Just over 11,000 came to New South Wales. A considerable number of the women went through the Parramatta Female Factory, the first…

Elizabeth Pulley had been rowed ashore after nine months aboard the convict flotilla the First Fleet. She disembarked to stumble into a clearing where her soon-to-be husband, Anthony Rope, had been toiling in the January heat of Sydney Cove. Rope possessed handskills, a rare commodity among the passengers of the First Fleet. Shortly after their first meeting, the pair conceived a child and built a hut with a place to cook. They also possessed a bed. Pulley and Rope’s crime is revealed in documents, including the testimony of a witness in their trial who said that she and a marine had sat on this very bed a week before the trial while they attended a supper to celebrate the convict couple’s wedding on 19 May. The supper’s main course was…

Alone in a strange country, victims of poverty, bereavement and colonial prejudice, these young girls bravely grasped the opportunity for a new beginning. They secured work, married, typically raised large families, often experienced the hardships of frontier settlement and showed a feisty willingness to stand up for themselves. Today, the number of Australians that can trace their descent from these few girls is disproportionally large. Perhaps, too, these girls’ spirit, humour and attitudes to authority have also made a generous and lasting contribution to the national character. The scheme was one of the British Government’s responses to Ireland’s Great Famine. At the time, the potato was the staple food of the Irish rural poor and around half the population subsisted almost exclusively on this crop. When, in 1845, the fungal…

With barely 300 houses and a dozen buildings in the town, the community was able to sustain three breweries, but there were also educated and cultural colonists who sorely missed the intellectual pursuits of the mother country. The colony resolved to form a Melbourne Mechanics’ Institute in 1839, with its stated purpose being ‘the diffusion of literary, scientific and other useful knowledge amongst its members’. In the early days, this was achieved by establishing a subscription library, a reading room, a museum and an art gallery. The institute, later renamed the Melbourne Athenaeum, provided a central focus for the community, and the variety of activities recorded is probably one of the best indicators of the social and cultural interests of the community at the time. There were boxing and wrestling…

If you have been going back through your parents’ or grandparents’ bits and pieces, you may have come across red and black packets marked ‘Kodak’ or white packets with blue writing that reads ‘Harringtons’. On opening, you may be lucky enough to find a photo in black and white. There might also be up to a dozen black indecipherable squares on what looks like plastic. What you have come across is a photo negative Without going into a lengthy history of photography – briefly, light comes into a camera and causes a chemical change on a material at the back. In a phone camera, this change is amplified electronically and stored as digital data, which can be made into a picture. In the past, the change happened to a silver-based…