Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Who is Your Most Recent Unknown Ancestor?

It's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun time and this week I'm accepting Randy Seaver's challenge to:

1)  Determine who my most recent unknown ancestor is - the one where I don't even know his or her name.

2)  Summarize what I know about his or her family, including resources that you have searched and the resources you should search but haven't searched yet.

3)  Tell us about it in your own blog post - which I am doing.

Genea-Musings: Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Who is Your Most Recent Unknown Ancestor?

My most recent unknown ancestor is #12, my Grandpa's father. Grandpa, Walter Albert Brothers (1876-1964), was born on 19th January 1876 in Attleborough, Norfolk to Elizabeth Brothers (1842-????). He was the last of Elizabeth's 4 children and the only one to survive past the age of 7. Elizabeth never married (formally, that is) and had disappeared from the English census in 1881. England and Wales started registering Births, Marriages and Deaths in July 1837 and the birth certificates of Grandpa and his sibs have no name for their father(s). It is by no means certain that it was the same gentleman each time. I feel that she probably set up house with a gentleman and became "Mrs" something-or-other and her death would have been registered under that name.

My cousins and I have searched extensively for Elizabeth in Parish Registers, Schools, Directories, Shipping Records out of England and into the United States, Canada, and Australia. Nothing! If we ever manage to find Elizabeth we may find some trace as to who her gentleman friends were.

All suggestions are welcome; we are at our wits' end.

Traipsing Through the NSW Lands Department

I've been in Sydney for the past week visiting family and while I was here I thought I'ld go to the NSW Department of Lands to obtain the titles for the 2 houses my parents owned during their life in Sydney. The first of these is in Mosman and we lived there around 1952-1958 and the other in Gordon where my parents lived from 1962 until they passed away. I used Carole Riley's blog to give me some pointers on what to do and where to go.

 

The NSW Land and Property Management Authority, in Queens Square, Sydney turns out to be a conglomeration of at least 3 buildings; the original building, a newer extension, and still another new section. I went to the general enquiry office (new building) and asked the gentleman at the desk for help in finding the Volume and Folio for Torrens Title references for the Mosman and Gordon properties. We found these and the next step was to find a vacant terminal to use to view the images. There were 2 terminals I could use to view the titles but these were occupied. There were, however, more terminals down in the Old Records department.

 

To get to the Old Records you go out  the door, turn left, down the stairs, follow the signs to Old Records past the fire doors, across a little courtyard wedged in between 3 buildings, through more fire doors and then into Old Records. The walls were lined with book shelves containing large folios and you could perch on a high stool at a very high desk if you wished to view these. I was more interested in using the computer terminals.

 

The gentleman in charge down here showed me how to use the system and I finally got the hang of it. I didn't find it terribly intuitive but I'm sure that if I used it for any length of time it would be very easy to use.

 

Starting with the Mosman property (Vol 7812, Folio 44), I found the image was too recent for my use, so back I went to get help on where I could find a reference to the previous property (Vol 3063, Folio 155). Yup!! There are my parents and their mortgage. The Gordon property (Vol 3004, Folio 217) was the one I wanted so I was all set.

 

Now it was back to the Cashier to pay for the printouts; through fire doors, back through courtyard, wind around the bowels of the building and upstairs to the information office to find out where the Cashier was. No problem!  Just go out the door, up some steps and into another building, see the concierge, take a number, wait till your number is called and then pay (they take credit cards).

 

And now, back to where I came from at the front desk. Fill in the requests with the appropriate Folio-Vol numbers, wait a few minutes and I now have very nice printed copies of the Torrens Titles for my parents' homes.

 

I know if I still lived in Sydney I would have all of this down pat and my search would have been accomplished a whole lot quicker. Still, it was interesting to see how the Lands Department buildings have been patched together with duct tape, string, and bailing wire.

Poll Books for Norfolk, England on Google eBooks

I was browsing the Norfolk pages of GenUKI, one of my favourite sites for all things related to genealogy in the United Kingdom, looking to see what has been updated since I was last there. One of the things that caught my eye was the update of more Voting Registers, or Poll Books. Poll Books differ from Electoral (Voting) Registers in that they are a record of who voted in an election rather than who was entitled to vote. They are published after the election along with the results.

Browsing down the list I noticed that there were links to Google eBooks for 6 different elections from 1832 to 1865.

1832: Copy of the poll for two knights of ... - Google Books

1835: The poll for two knights of the ... - Google Books

1837: The poll for two knights of the ... - Google Books

1841: The register of electors to vote in ... - Google Books

1858: East Norfolk election. The poll for ... - Google Books

1865: East Norfolk election. The poll for ... - Google Books

The best thing about this is that they are FREE!! Download them and have them readily available for those times when you don't have an internet connection. Add them to your eReader of choice (love my Kindle).

It seems nothing much has changed over the years. In 1835, two of the candidates had words and were bound over to keep the peace towards each other.

The poll for two knights of the shire for the western division of the county

Tuesday's Tip - FamilySearch now has Images!!

I feel rather silly that I hadn't discovered this before. After all, I've used FamilySearch, lots! I have to thank Ancestry member ChristineS_51 for this tidbit. I came across a parish register image on one of her trees, copied it, and sent her a thank you note. She kindly gave me the link for it.

1. Go to FamilySearch in the usual way.

2. Scroll down to the bottom and click on "All Record Collections"

This brings up a list of Historical Record Collections (currently 622). Use the filters on the left to find your area by Place, Date, or Collections.

Here is what got me so excited!

Mothers Day - Mum Planted With Her Roses

Happy Mothers Day Mum

Avid gardener that she was, her wishes were always to be planted under a bush.

Eileen Mary (Brothers) Tissott was born 11 Nov 1908 at Chadwell Heath, Essex; married Eric Henry Lindsay Tissott on 6 Mar 1937 at Narrogin, Western Australia and passed away on 24 Aug 1994 at Gordon, New South Wales.

She rests under a rosebush at Northern Suburbs Memorial Gardens. The inscription reads:

Eileen Mary Tissott

11-11-1908     24-8-1994

Loving Wife of Eric

Mother of Rosemary

Elizabeth and Robert

Fond Nana of Her Grandchildren

Founders & Survivors - Vandemonians on the Victorian Goldfields

I just received the latest copy of the Founders & Survivors April newsletter "Chainletter". This issue of their newsletter looks at Vandemonians on the Victorian Goldfields, a Vandemonian being a convict who was transported to Van Diemen's Land and who then made his (or her) way legally or otherwise to the goldfields of Victoria.

 

My great grandfather Henry Tissett (Tissott) was one such convict. When he was 13 he was sentenced to death for cattle stealing, the sentence later being commuted to transportation for life in Van Diemen's Land. He eventually made his way to the Victorian goldfields and spent the rest of his life there, mining, farming, and this and that.

 

Founders & Survivors is a partnership between historians, genealogists, demographers and population health researchers. It seeks to record and study the founding population of 73,000 men women and children who were transported to Tasmania. Many survived their convict experience and went on to help build a new society. They are concentrating on Tasmanian (Van Diemen's Land) convicts because the Tasmanian records are better and more extensive than those from the other colonies. Tasmanian convict records can be viewed online from Archives Office of Tasmania convict records online .

 

Now I have to add details of my 2 direct-line convicts to their database.

(1) Great Grandfather Henry Tissett (Isabella)

(2) Great Great Grandfather Robert Wells (Moffatt)

Indexing Summary - April (FamilySearch)

Over the years I have done indexing for both FamilySearch and FreeREG. FamilySearch should be very familiar to anyone doing family history research; FreeREG is probably less well known.

For anyone doing research in the United Kingdom, Parish Registers are essential for tracking down that elusive person who was Baptised, Married, or Buried before 1837 when official registration of Births, Marriages and Deaths commenced. This is where FreeREG shines. Not only does it contain parish register data pre-1837 but also some registers well into the 20th Century. The Dorset marriage registers I transcribed recently were from 1971.

If you subscribe to Ancestry with either a World or United Kingdom subscription you will be very familiar with FreeBMD. FreeREG is a sister site containing searchable parish register transcriptions while FreeCEN allows searching the UK census data. These sites, particularly FreeREG and FreeCEN are works-in-progress, and there are large gaps in the databases. Both sites need volunteers.


In April I didn't do any indexing for FreeREG but concentrated mostly on FamilySearch. This is what I managed to get done:

• New Zealand Passenger Lists  1871-1915 Part 2A [605]
• UK Bristol - Parish Registers 1837-1900 Part I [168]
• UK Essex Parish Registers Part 1 [16]
• UK Dorset Church of England Parish Records [638]
• US Kansas 1930 Federal Census [50]
• US Missouri 1930 Federal Census [50]
• US New Hampshire 1930 Federal Census [50]
• US New Jersey 1930 Federal Census [400]
• US New York 1930 Federal Census [2350]

I try to do at least one batch a day from a high priority database (1930 US federal Census), one from Oceania (New Zealand Passenger Lists) and one from the United Kingdom (Parish Registers in this case). If I really can't read a batch I send it back for someone else with better eyes to handle. Once in a while there is a 1930 US Census page with totally abysmal handwriting and some of the UK Parish Registers are in an old font that I'm completely unable to translate.