During today's session Jane took notes (refer below) of suggestions made by Graham, Barry and Andi on writing and sharing family history, while David compiled a list of the references he'd drawn upon for his presentation on Virtual Irish Records.  Thank you Graham, Barry, Andi and David!

Graham Jensen   In recording the histories of his fifteen original ancestors arrivals in Australia in his book 'Leaving the Shore', Graeme has given each person context, placed himself in their shoes and produced enjoyable and engaging stories.  He shared his experiences with the group and offered these hints:

• Define the project, ie, 15 original ancestors.
• Set a project timeline - otherwise family research has the potential to go on forever.
• Make the information an engaging and enjoyable experience for the reader.
• The process of doing family research can give an unexpected sense of connection to the past.
• The background reading that gives character context is quite enjoyable.
• The National Library is an excellent resource and includes many family histories written by other genealogy sleuths. In this case, Graham found many references to relatives, including to James Weaver, his first ancestor to arrive in Australia. 
• Graham also offered his genealogists resource books for borrowing.

Barry O'Connor  Barry is constantly updating his family history .. as are we all. He recently had contact with a cousin which resulted in considerably more family information.
So it was interesting to hear Barry's hints on organising new information, as well as other broader suggestions.

• Separate information into maternal and paternal branches. 
• Create a separate section in the records folder for "new" information.
• This new information can then be sorted by individual ancestors.
• Systematically update the data on each ancestor - a big task.
• Barry also suggested: 
  • include a statement acknowledging records, books, notes etc will have gaps.
  • Like Graham, draw a line under research.
  • Download ancestor data from Ancestry.com in alphabetical order. (Finding the Alphabetical List of Names on Ancestry.com (Barry O'Connor)

Andi Stevenson Andi has used her family data, including photos, to create a fascinating family tree. Copies have been printed and framed to be gifts for extended family members. While keen to share the information she has, Andi is also mindful that not all family members share her level of interest. So, for anyone thinking about creating and gifting family trees, here are Andi's hints:

• CorelDRAW is relatively easy to use and offers many tree design options (there is 15 day a free-trial version).
• Go easy on expenditure if you are gifting to a few people, and you know some people might not be that interested. Andi used A3 certificate frames and medium quality paper - inexpensive and elegant. 
• Photos in family trees can stimulate interesting talking points, for example, noting similar facial features, and the development of photography over time.
• Non-reflective glass can make a difference.

David Hall spoke on the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland - a project to recreate the Irish Public Records Office records.  David's slideshow presentation is available here.  David has suggested the following of links to the group: 

• A news item covering the project.https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/irish-virtual-record-treasury
• A review by Irish Genealogist John Grenham.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-FAfkJBX-o&t=6s
• I have also had a brief look at some of his other YouTube posts, that look to be very useful.https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh1WNp17x-hGdMdbpChrE6Q
• A brief outline of using the site.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0PSa_Ugb3c
• The site itself.https://virtualtreasury.ie/

Following on from last month's presentation on Free Irish Records, Elizabeth has sent us the handout she promised on websites which we may find useful - I've attached this below.  

Elizabeth also provided a USB containing the Word document of her talk and the images of the documents handed out in class.  I've incorporated the images of the records  into the text and worked with Elizabeth's feedback to prepare a second document which reflects the effort she put into preparing her  presentation and the case studies she developed drawing on her own family records.   I hope you find it useful as a review of the session and that Elizabeth is able to draw on it in future if asked to do a similar presentation. 

Bev Lee

Irish Geneology drawing upon Free Irish Records - presentation by Elizabeth Kearns to the Family Research group, U3A Benalla,  on October 28, 2021 (large file)

'Free Irish Records' - handout of useful websites,  Elizabeth Kearns 29 October 2021

Our 'Pains and Gains' reports to the group this month were wide ranging. Barry reported finding his maternal great grandmother's death certificate listing senile decay (or old age) as a cause of death, while David visited the Family History Research Group where he was able to locate the birth certificate of an uncle he was searching for. Marg said that most of her work during the month related to researching the topic for today, however asked the question 'How do you find people who came in via New Zealand?'.  This led to lots of discussion and sharing of ideas.

Robyn expressed frustration that a lot of people who are DNA matches don't have family trees online, while others have private trees.  We talked about the advantages of public trees, particularly for the sharing of photographs and documents, some of which can be quite rare.  Andi described sharing photographs helpful, recently finding some photos and documents of a grandfather she knew little about.  Andi is currently accessing a lot of BDM certificates and described taking a sharing approach to them.   A useful suggestion which all agreed on - to make your tree private while working on it, moving it to public view at other times. 
 
Our focus area this month was Irish Records.  Irish born U3A member and keen family researcher Elizabeth Kearns gave a most informative presentation on Free Irish Records, using a case study and other resources relating to her family to demonstrate the process of discovering a range of documents.  Elizabeth answered questions from the group during her presentation and stayed to contribute ideas to people with Irish ancestry who wrote about 'black holes' in their research later in the session.  We would really like to thank Elizabeth for the effort she took in preparing the presentation, for the handouts and list of resources prepared as a follow up to her presentation. 
 
Having missed last month’s topic ‘Family Treasure Chest’, Wendy brought in a handmade scarecrow doll and her grandmother's treasured doyley's...