12th Australasian Congress on Genealogy & Heraldry

Marie Hickey, Karen Kalopulu, Paul Veart & Bridget Simpsom from Auckland Research Centre attended the Australasian Congress on Genealogy and Heraldry from 16 – 20 January 2009.

Attendees tended to be from Australia or New Zealand but there were also a few from further afield. These congresses occur every three years with the next being held in Adelaide, Australia so if you have an interest in family history this may be an event worth considering saving up for and perhaps combining it with a holiday.

The basis of the congress was a series of talks and workshops presented by an array of international and national speakers. We had a stall and promoted Auckland City Libraries collections to family historians from all over New Zealand, Australia, some from England and the States. This was invaluable for the Auckland Research Centre as it gave us a chance to dispel the myth that material held relates just to Auckland. As a result of this and arranged visits to the library a number of attendees came in to ARC and had an enjoyable day/s. Also we made time to speak to stall holders about their wares, websites and archives material.

A copy of papers presented at most of the sessions are published in the Proceedings book and can be found in the Auckland Research Centre. Book is called Preserving the past for the future : proceedings of the 12th Australasian Congress on Genealogy and Heraldry held at King's College Otahuhu, Auckland 16th-19th January 2009, hosted by The New Zealand Society of Genealogists for the Australasian Federation of Family History Organisations / editor, Vivienne M. Parker.

Excerpt from Marie Hickey
I found attendance well worthwhile as I was able to see and hear about some of the innovative ideas of what is happening in the world of family history as well as what will be available in the near future. Another plus for me was catching up with old friends but the downside was that we were very well fed so I’m sure most of us put on a little weight over the weekend.

John Grenham spoke about Irish census substitutes and the Irish Loan Fund records otherwise known as the Reproductive Loan Fund (not what it sounds). Some of the records for the latter have been digitised and can be found on the following website http://www.movinghere.org.uk/ Click on “search our catalogue”, enter the surname in the “search for” box and tick Catalogue of digitised records which is to the right of this. This will bring up the results list and click on the link to be taken to the digitised image. [These instructions are not included in the paper]. A very useful source if your family are found.

Other talks included David Hey discussing apprenticeship records, Sherry Irvine - land records in Scotland, Cathy Pilgrim and the digitisation project of Australian newspapers. The presentation everyone talked about and were impressed by was Elaine Collins’ talking about the 1911 census by satellite.

Excerpt from Paul Veart:
Dick Eastman was a plenary speaker and investigated the rapid development of technology in family history.

Ever since he started using a mainframe computer in the 1970s to organise his genealogical data, Dick Eastman has been at the forefront of technology in family history. At Congress he was particularly interested in the increasing transfer of data from the world of microfilm to digital, proclaiming the death of the microfilm reader.

However Mr Eastman did not have everything his own way. Clark Stiles, a curator at New Zealand’s National Library, talked about Papers Past, a website of digitised New Zealand newspapers. He pointed out that to digitise newspapers they first needed to be microfilmed, making the seemingly old technology increasingly vital in a digital world. However despite this ideological dispute, or perhaps because of it, Congress was a real hub for the latest developments in family history, from the new 1911 UK Census to the use of DNA tests in genealogy.

Excerpt from Bridget Simpson
Two of the talks I went to were by Christopher Watts. The first, on emigration and immigration, was called Every journey has two ends. Watts discussed the importance of departure and arrival records in a search for family members and cited useful websites such as ancestorsonboard.com, Ships to New Zealand(some of the ships having links to passenger lists), Archives NZ for passenger lists, Inward Passenger Lists, Victoria (PRO Victoria database online), the NSW passenger lists (available through Ancestry), castlegarden.org (for U.S. immigration) Border Crossings from Canada to US, 1895-1956 (on Ancestry), and so on.

His second talk was called Is there a Tommy Atkins in your tree? Here he talked about the inconsistencies when searching British Army WWI records. He mentioned ways of accessing particular records through Ancestry’s Pension Records thru the National Archives in the UK and the Military-genealogy website for military and family genealogists.

Using indexes session: tips & traps, was on the potential pitfalls when searching indexes. Judy Webster pointed out the dangers of name variations, the benefits of using wild cards when searching and the importance of keeping records of your searches. Jennifer Harrison called her talk on recording your story, Days of Our Lives: preserving our own life stories. We ran a successful series of workshops on Telling your Story over November 2008 and have had one follow-up meeting with another planned for next week for the participants to share what they have started to put down. This talk by Harrison reiterated points that we had discussed in our workshops but she also talked in detail about the different methods of recording your story and variations on the order you tell it in.