patientgenie

One of the things I look forward to at RootsTech is the new technology and tools that are released. On a huge scale the various digitising companies are using machine learning to read handwriting - on those documents we love to get our hands on - we had the 1921 UK Census come out in January 2022 and no doubt my USA genie friends are looking forward to the 1950 USA census release later this month. What about something closer to home? Researching a number of unknown photographs that had belonged to my maternal grandmother, turned my casual interest in Family History into an addiction. I look back now and see how much I was striving to find connections within those photographs - and eventually to find someone other than my father whom I looked like. I grew up as an only child of an adopted mother, living with my parents and my maternal grandmother in her family home. Sadly Grandma ( Ada Irene Douglass nee King b 1884 ) died when I was 7 years old. My father had left his home in England y...

As new features roll out on websites, developers have to make room for changes, and what often happens is that rarely used features move or may even disappear. One of my favourite tools on the Ancestry home page for many years has been the Quick Links feature and the upgrade which is being rolled out is going to limit Quicks Links once the updated site is bedded down. So NOW is the time to think about this feature. If you already use it - it is time to review, if you have never used it - now is the time to check it out and see if you "wish you had known about it earlier" . This is the notice on the recently updated home page: Why use it? Quick links is a tool which directly takes you to specific Ancestry Datasets or Collections. I have a long list of specific data sets that I regularly use for UK, Australia and New Zealand as they rarely turn up near the top of any global search and require a bit of filtering to find. As I use many datasets for these countries on a regular ...

Exciting to see this new free index called " The Wilson Collection " launched on 1 March 2021. Thanks must go to Diane Wilson and her "chocolate fish team" who have gathered information from a range of sources around New Zealand for more than forty years, and have decided to share it freely with us all via this website. Those of you that have heard my family history lectures over the years you will recognize my tips for the first time you visit any new site: SCROLL DOWN read THE WHOLE SCREEN move your mouse around to see which images are CLICKABLE find the HELP and read it So bearing in mind that many of you will click straight away on search , here are my three key tips: Search Tips  once you have pressed on the Search Index link at the top of the home page 1. Scroll down and read the site help on searching 2. Scroll UP to see the index sources: Clicking on any topic will show the information about the individual indexes within this collection. For instance the NZ ...

After the whirlwind that was this years RootsTech - with over 500,000 registrants, over 350 speakers and more than 1,000 videos online to watch via the Expo Hall as well as the Speakers area, we now have time on our side to watch and absorb.  But how best to manage this? You can watch these presentations free via the RootsTech website until early 2022, but here is a tip to help more efficiently manage the ones you want to watch by using the tools within the YouTube environment, which not only shows what you have already watched, has additional tools under the Watch Later option. This is how a session looks within the RootsTech website There are a couple of things you can do from here Either 1) click on the Watch Later button in the top right and do this for all the videos on the RT site so that later you can come into your YouTube account and use the Watch Later menu to watch or reorganise the list into categories (ie: make playlists by topic or speaker). On a mobile device you m...

My genealogy mate Christine Clement isn't into social media, so has asked me if I could help find George. Many of you will know Christine from her many talks given around New Zealand, as the hostess of the genealogy website  Sooty  and author of   Migration to New Zealand . Back in April, Auckland Libraries hosted a Military week and Christine gave a talk about New Zealand's role in the Battle of Trieste. So I wasn't surprised when she emailed me for help in identifying George. "In April 2020 the RSA National Office received an email from Italy looking for ‘George’ who had been at the Liberation of Trieste on 2 May 1945 by the 22nd  New Zealand Battalion. The email continued “ It was during a concert or dance intended to bring together these two very different populations, that my aunt and uncles met an officer of the 22nd Battalion. His name was George. Despite numerous invitations to my family to travel to New Zealand, they were never able to visit...

Just off the phone from my cousin Warrick - he is the third generation to serve in his family and has been the ANZAC Day march leader in Bega for some years. I had intended on blogging about his grandfather's service this year, but as most of you will have seen I blogged about my husband's HAMBLYN family. Wok had questions about his grandfathers service, which I could not quickly answer over the phone, so dearest Warrick, this is the start of an answer for you. We are lucky in Australia that the only bombing we experienced in WWII did not destroy our early military records as they did in countries Up Over. The National Archives of Australia in Canberra have digitised the records they hold of Australian Military service during the Great War. Back in 2002 I visited my Uncle Keith Edward OTTON and was fortunate to be able to scan the images he held of his father, Edward Thomas (Ted) OTTON - the son of Henry and Elizabeth (Bessie) OTTON (nee JAUNCEY). Henry & Bessie...

It has been some time since I have posted, focused as I have been on volunteering for various genealogy society activities. Yesterday I had the privilege to chair the AGM of Te Puke Branch of the NZSG and gave a presentation called Digging for Treasure in Online Newspapers . One of the images I use in this talk comes from the Taranaki Daily News and is of relevance this ANZAC Day 2015. It struck me after giving the presentation that I should look further into this branch of my mother-in-law's family. So who were "The HAMBLYN Soldiers"? The war service records show that they were the sons of Charles John & Mary Ann HAMBLYN (nee HOSKIN) According to the book Hamblyn Family History, Plymouth to New Plymouth by M N Shaw pub 1976 "Four Sons: James Edward, Harry John, Thomas Day and William Charles Hamblyn all lost their lives during World War One and their names are on the Monument at Inglewood, in Taranaki." How could one come close to unde...