Sometimes at night, I just trawl through Trove using a combination of surname and place. Often the results just turn up finds I’ve made previously, tagged and linked to the relevant lists I maintain. And then, out of the rabbit hole, pops a completely unexpected rabbit[i]. I have no idea why this was a surprise … More Another Trove discovery: Miss McSherry joins the convent
Sleuthing through Trove yesterday for articles on courtesy or good manners, it was interesting to see the results: a mere 46,061 containing the phrase “good manners” and 5391 including both “good manners” and courtesy. Plainly these issues were prominent discussion points over the decades. So today I thought I’d share some of these with you. … More Trove Tuesday: Good Manners
The people had to go where there was work for them and where there was a living. Wages were six shillings a day. They followed the establishment of the railway line right through. It’s been said that it’s a pity they ever left Ipswich because they could have bought something in Ipswich. But then there … More Trove Tuesday: The Kunkel family leaves Ipswich
My East Clare Emigrants blog has been neglected since the cruise but today I was determined to add a story, and the one I’d selected was about Mary Ann Morton, nee Massy. One thing led to another, as it does, and eventually I also followed up her husband, James Morton. An Irishman born in Ballymena, … More Trove Tuesday: James Morton of Ballymena, County Antrim and Grafton, NSW.
I was mentioning last week how Dad had lived in the street in Kelvin Grove his whole life, and had memories stretching back decades. Some years ago I asked him a little about it. There was a time when he would “clam up” and not tell stories like this, but when I wrote my family history, he … More Dad’s and Mum’s Neighbourhood Reminiscences on Trove Tuesday
There I was, thinking of the myriad picnic photos I could use for this week’s Sepia Saturday 190, when I had a sense of déjà vu. A quick search of this blog and I realised I’d posted at some length on this very topic during the February Photo Collage Festival. If you’d like to read what I had to … More Sepia Saturday and Trove Tuesday: Two for one on picnics
This evening I learned through my TDDFHS membership emails that the Western Star and Roma Advertiser newspaper (published in Toowoomba, Queensland) is in the throes of being digitised by Trove. With three branches of my Kunkel family living in that area at the time (Paterson, Kunkel, Lee), I immediately hotfooted it to the computer to … More Trove Tuesday: Joseph Francis Kunkel
A year or so ago I wrote how ice skating was one of my teenage pleasures. At the time I could find little about the origins of an ice rink that existed at Mowbray Park, South Brisbane in the 1960s. Those searches had left me unsatisfied so with today being Trove Tuesday it seemed only … More Trove Tuesday: Let’s go ice skating
While we were visiting Samarai in the Milne Bay District (PNG) a couple of months ago we saw the memorial which appears on Tropical Territory today. Apparently there was quite a lot of conflict over it when it was erected, and couldn’t be placed anywhere else so it was eventually placed on Samarai even though there … More Trove Tuesday: Christopher Robinson
I’d venture that well-sinking isn’t something most of us think too much about these days. In the pioneering days ensuring that your farm had sufficient water was critical to survival. With no piped water for humans or stock, buying a block near running water like a creek (but not too close because of floods), was … More Trove Tuesday: The hazards of well-sinking
Family history across the seas 