Blog post

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

My research trip to Melbourne, in numbers

Night view over MelbourneView from my hotel room balcony

I’m home from my first research trip away, which I’m pleased to say was a great success. In fact, I’ve decided to make it an annual event!

I collected a lot of easy-to-find records but also managed to dig out an insolvency (with a little assistance from the PROV staff) despite the lack of a name index, and went further off the beaten track with some government contract registers.

Those insolvency and contract records have given me confidence that I can find items I want in the collections. By my next trip I plan to have a more substantial list of “off the beaten track” to-do items.

So here’s my trip, in numbers.

Nights away: 3
Big family dinners: 1
Family photos scanned: 79
Days in the archive: 2.5
Shopping detours: 1
“New” cousins met: 1

Files viewed:
Probate/admin: 18
Inquests: 6
Insolvency: 1
Contract registers: 2
Tender registers: 2
Title records: 27

Huge thanks go to my Aunt, Uncle and cousins, including my “new” one, for their good company and generosity in hosting me, feeding me, and ferrying me around.

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Mapping family locations with Google Maps

While planning my research trip to Melbourne, I noticed that Google Maps will allow you to import a list of addresses to plot. It’s amazing what you find when you take the trouble to click around the options.

A use for this feature immediately sprang to mind! While my time in Melbourne will be very limited and I’m not planning on making any cemetery visits, I would hate to realise later that I was only a few blocks away from one of my ancestors. I’d much rather drop in and say hello!

Creating a map was a quick and simple process.

Here’s the outcome. I haven’t tried to do anything too fancy. All I wanted was a marker at each cemetery in Victoria where any of my ancestors are buried.



Next post, I’ll tell you step by step how I did this with Family Historian and Google Maps.