Taking my own advice

I’m in the process of writing my “next” post. In it I will talk about how I am trying to create Trove newspaper searches taking into account what I learned in my post Perfecting newspaper searches: Birth notices–Part 1.

Warning: this post contains two rambles about information I have found. If you find a paragraph going off the rails, you can safely skip to the next para. You’ll still get the gist of the post.

As I’ve been writing my “next” post (or posts, I’m still undecided), I have been trying out various search ideas. Along the way, I found a memorial notice for my 2 x great grandfather, James Bennett (1831-1900). The details of his death had eluded me for the past 26 years! This prompted me to take another look at his family. I took a chance and purchased an unlikely marriage certificate (30 – count them – 30 years after the birth of their first child) and at last I found James’s marriage to my 2 x great grandmother, Catherine Lucy Darcy. Suddenly I had the correct name of her parents AND her father’s occupation so naturally I tried searching some Irish newspapers for her parents along similar lines and… you get the idea.

After that excitement I got my mind back on the task I started out on. A blog post about combining what we know about birth notices with what we know about searching Trove in order to find birth notices in Trove. Right! I needed to do another quick Trove search, to make sure things work as expected. I thought it best to stay away from the Bennett family. How about the Coupers? My next search turned up an article that followed on from the one I described in my post Bad smelling fat and putrid bones. It was titled “Slaughtering in the suburbs”. I couldn’t put that aside while I finished my “next” blog post, now could I?

So, this is a quick post to say that the “next” post is coming, but if it takes a long time it’s only because these searches are working out so well for me!