Author: Patsy

  • Wool staplers and wool classers

    Wool staplers and wool classers

    The 1891 shearers’ strike is just one consequence of the many pressures applied to the wool industry which has been in decline since Hargreave’s invention of the spinning jenny. some of these pressures include: the mechanisation of weaving through the use of power looms, the mechanisation of shearing through the introduction of powered hand pieces…

  • Census records – one of my gateway sources

    Census records – one of my gateway sources

    I call some of the sources I use my gateway sources. I find them critical to breaking down brick walls. Do I stand at the gateway afraid to go any further? Do I stand in the open gateway thinking about how to approach a completely new set of sources that may contain family stories? Passenger…

  • Land – Laverton

    My methodology for researching land ownership is not necessarily the only way to do land research. Where and when we start with our research depends on the information we have or don’t have. For our current home that is easy. We have the date. We have a place. There is always an element of truth…

  • Melbourne’s laneways

    This is not a story of my family home but of my volunteer home – the Genealogical Society of Victoria. This is a story about the GSV’s home in the lower basement, or cellar, of 257 Collins Street in Melbourne. Sometimes I am so engrossed in searching for stories amongst the books and memorials of…

  • Victoria Land Titles – Introduction

    Almost always I have found family stories in Victorian land titles. So where should one start looking? Certainly not by searching current online databases for family historians. Most of the interesting family stories remain buried in files, memorials and research notes in either the Registrar General of Titles’ General Law Library of land titles at Laverton or…

  • World War I – Walking Wounded

    If you are researching your World War I veteran ancestors don’t neglect Repatriation files. WWI stories aren’t confined to those servicemen who didn’t return. Nor are they confined to those servicemen who were granted land under the Closer Settlement Scheme. Stories about World War I veterans can also be found in Repatriation files held by…

  • Autosomal DNA and Probability

    The general wisdom is that matches on autosomal DNA are only accurate for up to four or five generations (or to second cousins). Beyond this limit any matches that may occur probably occur by chance, not by inheritance. This is because there is always the probability that any match of any kind of 5% or…