As I lay awake the other night the penny dropped that I had started my family history research in Sept/Oct 1986 so it’s currently the 25th anniversary of my family history trail. This “hobby” quickly became a fascination and then an obsession for me. It has kept me interested through all these years, reinvigorated and … More 25 years of Family History: reflection and celebration: Part 1
Geniaus has set us another challenge with The Ancestors’ Geneameme. This is my response to the challenge. The list should be annotated in the following manner: Things you have already done or found: bold face type Things you would like to do or find: italicize (colour optional) Things you haven’t done or found and don’t … More The Ancestors’ Geneameme challenge from Geniaus
Geneabloggers has been running the 2011 Labor Day challenge to celebrate Labor Day in the US last weekend. Where I live Labour Day is celebrated on May Day, the first Monday in May. In other states it’s celebrated on dates in other months. Even though I’m out of kilter time-wise, this challenge looked pretty interesting … More Labour Day: The occupations of my ancestors.
The topic for Week 35 in Amy Coffin’s and Geneablogger’s 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History series is: Weddings. Tell us about your wedding. You may also talk about your future wedding, the wedding of a relative or shape this question to fit your own life experience. Having talked a little about my own … More 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History: Week 35: Weddings
Inspired by a post by Aillin at Australian Genealogy Journeys I had to give this a go, using Wordle to produce a cloud of my families’ names and places. Haven’t figured out how to deal with double-word places eg Charters Towers but it was fun. And another of just my family names: And some places from my husband’s … More A family word cloud
The biggest roadblock in writing my Kunkel-O’Brien family history in 2003 was trying to give my readers a flavour of the ancestral home village in Bavaria. I struggled with this stumbling block for weeks, but during a day’s creative writing class at the NT Writers’ Centre a lateral approach came to me. Instead of being … More Writing family history -roadblock in Dorfprozelten
Shelley from http://twigsofyore.blogspot.com/ has invited us to submit an Australia Day post on our blogs. She suggests that we “Find the earliest piece of documentation you have about an ancestor in Australia. If you don’t have an Australian ancestor, then choose the earliest piece of documentation you have for a relative in Australia” On Wednesday … More Australia Day 2011 meme: the importance of church records and archives to my early documents.
I am delighted and honoured to receive the Ancestor Approved Award from Kim at Footsteps of the Past at http://footstepspast.blogspot.com/. It was a real treat to receive this in an emotional week as I watched from afar as my home town, and others with links to my family’s heritage, were flooded, lives lost, homes demolished … More Ancestor Approved Award
It’s time to list my “families of interest” again: not just those on my own family tree, but those I’ve come to research: KUNKEL: George, son of Adam & Katharina from Dorfprozelten, Bavaria (Bayern), Germany to Australia -mid-C19th. Brickwall is his brother Joseph Philip or Philip Joseph Kunkel who reportedly went to “America”. O’BRIEN: Mary … More Surname Sunday-my “families of interest”
During the holidays I was reading this book by Jan Walker, published by UQ Press back in 1988. It’s been on my “to do” list for some time & I finally got down to reading it. The book was easy to read but also very informative and insightful, adding new information to previous readings I’d … More Book reading: Jondaryan Station: the relationship between pastoral capital and pastoral labour 1840-1890
Family history across the seas 