Two hours in the library

AMHERST HOSPITAL FETE, 1871. (1871, December 4). Illustrated Australian News for Home Readers (Melbourne, Vic. : 1867 - 1875), p. 219. Retrieved December 21, 2011, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article60448591

I had today off work and was without my children for most of the day. This close to Christmas there’s a lot I could or should have been doing…. but instead I made a flying visit to the National Library of Australia. I try to keep note of things I want to check or refer to at the library for when I have a chance to go there. I reviewed my notes and did a little preparation the night before. Although I only had two hours there I think I made good use of my limited time.

Last night I pre-ordered Amherst District Hospital 1859 to 1933 : the outcome of compassion by Bea. Brewster. It was waiting for me when I got to the library this morning. I wanted to find out more about conditions in the hospital where my ancestors had been treated. The sort of information I hoped to find was included in the book, although I haven’t had a chance to digest the material yet. 

One thing I did notice was that the publication included a drawing of the annual Amherst Hospital fete (1871) – a quick search of Trove turned up the cited article. The article claimed that the procession included almost 1,000 men, 300 of them mounted, dressed up in what sounds like a quite astonishing array of costumes. My great-grandfather (then aged 7) was treated in the hospital for an injury earlier that year – I wonder if he was at the fete?

I also checked my research plan* for finding James Bennett’s (1831-???) death. My last firm sighting of him was in 1883 – being checked out “cured” from Amherst Hospital, as it happens. I’ve also got a newspaper mention of him in 1896 when his wife died that I think indicates he was alive. She was referred to as “wife of” rather than “widow of”. I checked:

• Victorian probate indexes beyond 1925 (up to 1925 is available online)
• Victorian inquest indexes

No luck there, but at least now I know that I’ve looked. I was going to make my way through some local directories to see if I could find him and when he dropped out. I decided against attempting that this morning, as there was at least one other James Bennett living nearby and I wanted to collect more information to distinguish between them first.

I then turned my attention to two of my great-great grandparents whose burial place I knew from death records but I hadn’t ever checked for cemetery records. I found that the cemetery has a database online but I wondered if the microfiche at the library had more information. It didn’t, the information was exactly the same. Another case of well now I know.

The vast majority of my known relatives came to Victoria, but I was aware that early church records for New South Wales were available on microfilm at the library. Last night I checked my database for any early New South Wales birth deaths or marriages and found two that looked like good candidates. I’m not used to microfilm (on rolls). For some reason most of the records I’ve looked at have been on microfiche (flat sheets). I’m not sure if I could have kept going with genealogy if it was the other way around as the microfilm whizzing by made me feel quite nauseous! I worked out how the records were arranged and managed to find my target before I started feeling too woozy.

A little advance planning paid off. I think I got good value from my flying visit!

 

* “Research plan” is a bit glorified for a page with a few dot points but it did have the heading “Research plan” and (and this is important) I was able to find it when I wanted it.

Australian federal electoral rolls - part 1

One of my most used sources at the moment is the Australian federal electoral roll. I have used the electoral rolls in the past on microfiche at the National Library of Australia, but searching in that format was very time consuming. In the last few years, a selection of the rolls have become available to search or browse on Ancestry. It has changed the way I search in and use the electoral rolls, but I'll come to that in a future post.

I found the description of the rolls on the Ancestry website to be lacking, so I did a little digging.


Australian voting history, in brief 
The various colonies (now States and Territories) became what is now known as Australia at Federation in 1901. From 1902, both men and women aged from 21 were eligible to vote in federal elections. Enrollment to vote became compulsory in 1911, and actually casting a vote became compulsory in 1924. The voting age was reduced to 18 in 1973. Voting is still compulsory.

The history of the vote for indigenous Australians (and some other groups) is more complex than I feel able to cut down to a few lines. There's a lot of information linked from the Australian Electoral Commission's Australian Electoral History page (which is also my source for the above facts and figures).

Individual States of Australia passed the equivalent laws in respect to State elections at different times, some before Federation, some after. At various points in time there were people - women and indigenous people being the two most obvious groups - eligible to vote in some State elections but not Commonwealth elections, or vica versa.

Reading the rolls 
The rolls are arranged by electorate, then by polling place, then by surname. For each person on the roll the surname, first names, address, occupation and sex are shown. I'll talk more about how I have used the rolls and the information they contain in a future post.

One of the things I discovered while poking around the Electoral Commission site, is that people who were listed on the Commonwealth electoral roll because they were on a State roll, but were not eligible to vote in Commonwealth elections, were marked on the Commonwealth rolls with an "o". This sounded familiar to me, I was sure I had seen some of those "o"s, so I started hunting through my downloaded pages. The first instance I came across was this:

Australian federal electoral roll for Ferntree Gully, Flinders, Victoria, 1924

She's not a relative of mine, just on the same page as one. I checked at the end of the roll to see why Amy Augusta Robertson was not enrolled as a Commonwealth elector, but the way browsing works on Ancestry I couldn't find the right page.

Moving on, I came across a page with many "o"s, including my great-granduncle, Edwin Ernest Baker Lee:

Australian federal electoral roll for Flagstaff Gardens, Melbourne, Victoria, 1924

This time I did find the explanatory page.

Particulars regarding Electors enrolled on this Roll in virtue of a property qualification as Electors for the State Assembly.

Australian federal electoral roll for Flagstaff Gardens, Melbourne, Victoria, 1924

I thought that he must have been enrolled for the federal election at his home address, as he should have been eligible. He didn't come up at any other address in the search results, so I navigated to Caulfield myself. There I found his wife, but not him.

Australian federal electoral roll for Caulfield, Balaclava, Victoria, 1924

He was listed in the roll in each of the previous and subsequent years searchable on Ancestry so I suppose he must have failed to re-enrol in time at his new address when he moved sometime between 1919 and 1924.

Did this post help you? Can you add anything that would aid in understanding the rolls? 
If so, please leave a comment! If not, leave a comment and say Hi! anyway!

Searching the library catalogue via google

This may be old news, but it's new to me. I was doing a google search today on some work-related subject, when one of the search results caught my inner genealogist's eye. Or not so much the result itself, but the site it came from.

http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/   -   The catalogue of the National Library of Australia (NLA).

I tried searching google for the names of a few reasonably obscure Australian titles, and sure enough an NLA result came up on the first page. Interesting! When I clicked into a result it looked like the standard NLA result page, except that it also contained a big blue box explaining what the catalogue was, services offered by the library, and how to get back to google.

I've mentioned before that the NLA newspaper site is searchable via google, but I didn't realise that the entire catalogue was.

Time to experiment
I tried searching on the words "Avoca history" in the NLA catalogue and came up with 38 results. The google search "Avoca history site:catalogue.nla.gov.au" came up with 478 results. Looking down the list of results, I soon saw a likely reason for the difference in numbers. The google search was reading the entire catalogue page, including headings such as "search history", not just the record results.

I tried the NLA catalogue again without the word "history". This time I had 236 results. Not enough to account for the difference. The gap widened when I tried google on just "Avoca". 2,810 results. Hmmm.

Another scan of the google results, and I could see that they not only included catalogue record pages, but also catalogue search pages, record comment pages, and possibly others attached to the record itself. Difference explained, I think.

I find the NLA's own search results more useful than the google results. They offer all sorts of relevant filtering and sorting options and don't have google's repetition of the real content, the item record. The one time I think I would want to use the google results is to get at the cached pages if the NLA site was unavailable for some reason!

But still, I thought it an interesting discovery. It's nice to think that a relevant NLA catalogue entry could appear in the results for someone who would never have thought to look there otherwise, when doing a google search.

Going on a research trip

My research trip happened a little sooner than expected...

National Library of Australia

My apologies for the poor quality of the photo. I only had my mobile phone with me. The roadworks didn't help much either!

There had been a few changes since I was last there. The most surprising change was the appearance of a little sandwich kiosk in the space outside the newspaper and microform, and maps rooms. The most welcome change was the ability to scan directly from the microform readers and email the image to yourself, all at no cost. This could save me a fortune in photocopy charges!

Actually I didn't email the images to myself, I uploaded them directly to my Dropbox account so they would be waiting for me on my desktop computer when I got home, sitting in the correct folder, with no further effort on my part. Nice. Very, very nice.

Findings
So what did I find? Well, my main aim was to see the passenger list for Richard ROBOTHAM. I recently wrote about how I found him in the passenger list index. The ship was the "Red Jacket", travelling from Liverpool to Melbourne from January to April 1860. Onboard were 338 adult passengers and 49 children. From a quick scan of the list, Richard ROBOTHAM was one of the oldest passengers, at the advanced age of 41. Most were in their 20s.

I was hoping for some detail that would let me know if this Richard ROBOTHAM was "mine". Sadly for me, there was no additional telling detail beyond the basic demographics they recorded for unassisted passengers (ie those who were paying their own way).

On the other hand, there were some minor inconsistencies with what I know of "my" Richard ROBOTHAM. The Richard in the passenger list was listed as single but my Richard was married. However, as he was travelling on his own I don't expect that they took down that information very carefully. He was also listed as travelling to Auckland, but it seems feasible to me that he could have changed his mind during the 3 month voyage, and decided to stay in Melboune.

What a pity there's just nothing to tell me for sure that I've got the right man. I'll just have to put it down as a maybe for now.

I did a few more quick searches before I went home, where I found an unexpected visitor waiting for me...


He listened patiently while I told him about my research trip, then wandered off again.

Preparing for a research trip

I'm planning a research trip next week. Sounds exciting? For me it is, but maybe not so much for anyone else. Unfortunately I won't be travelling to some far flung (or even nearby location) to see the original records myself, learn about the local history, walk on the ground where my ancestors trod and generally soak up the atmosphere. I'll just be visiting the library.

I recently wrote that I had found Richard ROBOTHAM on a passenger list to Australia. The microfiche is available at the National Library of Australia (NLA). Although the library is only 20 minutes away, I haven't had a chance to do this sort of thing in the last few years. It's hard to get out of the house without at least one very small person along for the ride. So, for me it's exciting.

Am I ready for it? Well, I have printed out my NLA 'to do' list. It has many more items on it than I will have time for. My plan is to look at Richard's passenger list first. Anything else I find will be a bonus! I have a small laptop with my database (nicely synced with my desktop version via Dropbox) to check up on details... I found my NLA readers card... Yes, I think I am!