Carole Riley — Page 6

How to search for probate files at State Records NSW

4 August 2011 by Carole Riley

Probate is the process of proving that a will left by a deceased person is genuine. Probate files are created by the NSW Supreme Court (or equivalent in other States) and transferred gradually to State Records NSW. They are more commonly called ‘probate packets’, since all the documents are folded in three into an envelope.

Probate packets can contain all sorts of goodies, including a copy of the will, an inventory of assets, affidavits from family members, and sometimes a copy of the death certificate and newspaper notices. Intestate Estate files can also be found, where the deceased did not leave a will.

State Records NSW holds probate packets up to the 1980s, but to find the reference involves searching the index on microfiche created by the NSW Supreme Court. State Records NSW has been gradually adding each packet to it online catalogue, Archives Investigator, so that we can search from home.

Now and Then, the State Records NSW newsletter, describes the packets that have been listed so far and how to find them, and I can do no better than to quote the article here (updated September 2014).

More probate packets listed in Archives Investigator Over 300 000 individual (NRS 13660) Probate Packets are available in Archives Investigator! Listed so far are:

•             Series 1: April 1817 to c. May 1873

•             Series 2: 1873 to 1876

•             Series 3: 1876 to c.1890

•             The years 1928-1976 from Series 4 – Series 4-152150 to Series 4-828673. Part of 1989 has also been listed.

To check if the details of your ancestor’s Probate Packet is now available online just go to Archives Investigator – Simple Search, key in the name of your ancestor followed by the word ‘death’ and click on the ‘Search’ button. If you locate a relevant result you then have the option to order a photocopy of the probate or preorder the probate packet to view in person at the Western Sydney Records Centre (WSRC). A more comprehensive explanation can be found here.

Search for your elusive ancestor today http://investigator.records.nsw.gov.au/

Do a search for all your New South Wales ancestors, male and female, and plan a trip out to the Western Sydney Records Centre (WSRC) at Kingswood. Take your digital camera, or use the camera setup they have. Be prepared to pay for photocopies if you can’t deal with the folded up pages. You won’t regret it!

Retrieval orders for probate packets are only sent at certain times of the day, so you can save time by pre-ordering up to four packets a day or two before your visit, to be waiting for you when you arrive.

Filed Under: Courts, Probate Tagged With: archives, death, probate

Can Google+ replace Facebook and Twitter?

12 July 2011 by Carole Riley

I’ve been playing with Google+ for a few days now, and I’ve had some time to experiment and to see how others in my circles are reacting to it.

Most seem to be using it as a substitute for Facebook – posting to a limited audience in their own circles. Many of them like that you can more easily post about specific subjects to specific people, a capability that Facebook has but hides very well.

The more public figures – developers and power-bloggers, for example, are making everything public; it is part of their professional persona. A few of the power users are replacing their blogs altogether, because they are getting more engagement on Google+ than they ever did in their blogs.

Can it be used both ways at once? Does it have to be one or the other?

I use Facebook for sharing with friends and family, and with my broader genealogical circle of friends, many of whom I have never met personally. I use Twitter for the broader genealogical sharing and for the occasional rant during QandA and so on. Twitter is where I go to find out what is going on in the world.

I have been trying to decide how Google+ could replace both Facebook and Twitter, and I can’t make it work. I’ve been thinking a lot (probably too much, given everything I’m supposed to be doing), and here are some reasons I’ve come up with, in a random and possibly confusing order. I’m sure many, if not all, will change as Google+ matures and grows.

When I want to make public pronouncements, I go to Twitter, and when I want to make more personal ones, I go to Facebook. If I want to do both in Google+ I have to make a few decisions before each post. Google+ defaults the circle you will post your message to depending on what you had last time. Most of us don’t think or check before we post; we just type the message and hit ‘send’. Maybe that will change over time, and maybe we will get more used to it, but as an IT developer I can see that if it’s not immediately obvious people won’t ‘get it’. And they’re not getting it yet.
There are not many people on Google+ yet, and most of the ones I know are genealogists or techos. (Or both). Mostly they post about genealogical subjects or about Google+, although some are starting to share their photos. There are not many posts, and so not much reason to visit multiple times in a day. Yet. Whereas I have Facebook open all day, and am more likely to comment on my day there. Google+ doesn’t seem like the place where anyone would be interested.
On that last topic – Google+ posts when someone comments on a photo in an existing Picasa Web album, so we are now seeing a lot of photos posted as though they are new. This is mildly annoying but the people at Google are tweaking this.
There is not enough integration with other sites. I have already seen many complaints about Google+ not integrating with Blogger, which is Google‘s own blog site. I would also like to be able to post in multiple sites at once, since I am an active member in multiple sites. Again, I’m sure this will change with time, unless some of the sites lock the others out.
Facebook just feels more casual. I am more likely to use the Like button than the +1 button, because +1 feels like I am recommending something, whereas Like just feels like I like it. There’s a big difference in social terms.
I use Twitter in a more professional capacity, and that’s where I go when I want to be updated on what’s happening in the world in general and genealogy in particular. Google+ feels more like an expanded Twitter than a friendly sharing space for family and friends.
I do a lot of my public speaking explaining to people that Facebook is safe, and that it’s worth trying because that’s where their friends and family are likely to be. And they are. They are not in Google+.
Although it’s easy to put people into circles and post to particular circles, I don’t think the posting is intuitive, and I’m not sure what could be done to avoid problems when you don’t notice that your new message has defaulted to the last circle you posted to. Especially if it was Public.
I can get around this problem in Twitter by using third-party tools such as Tweetdeck, where I can categorise my contacts into columns and I can easily see which of my multiple Twitter accounts (and Facebook accounts and pages) is posting or replying to a particular message. Maybe something similar will come for Google+. There is already an option for multiple users in Google+ that comes with more warnings than I care to deal with at the moment.
Google wants us to bring everything we do on the web together in one place. Why leave Google when everything is there? I have not taken these concerns seriously before, but now even I am faintly uneasy. I don’t like that Google+ shows me the people in my Gmail address book to recommend I add them to a circle without me asking for it.

As a Facebook substitute where people share personal stuff Google+ is not working for me, so I’m going to experiment with it as a Twitter substitute, and go Public. You won’t see YouTube videos I find cute, or pictures of my previous holidays (unless someone comments on one of them perhaps, since it’s linked to my personal Google account), but just what I think about things that matter to me as a genealogist and social media fan.

I don’t know if people who are not in Google+ can see public posts, but I guess I’ll find out soon enough. You can see my Google+ profile at http://gplus.to/CaroleRiley. At least I hope you can!

Filed Under: Communication, Facebook, Social Media, Tools and Resources Tagged With: communication, FaceBook, Google, social media, Twitter, websites

First look at Google+

9 July 2011 by Carole Riley

Google+ is Google‘s new experiment in the world of social networks. I say ‘experiment’ because it is only in limited release; you have to wait for someone to be able to invite you, and then you have to accept the invitation during one of the brief, unpredictable periods when new members are being accepted. I also call it an ‘experiment’ because Google have tried something similar before. It was called Google Wave and it didn’t catch on. Google Wave was removed from circulation.

It is inevitable that Google+ will be compared to Facebook and Twitter, and I will be doing the same. I’ve been using both for some years now, and have watched them evolve and become more useful. Google+ is only a beginner, and will become more useful as it grows, adds more features and tweaks, and more people get into it.

I’ve been on Google+ for an hour or so now; long enough for some first impressions:

Looks

So far I like it. It looks clean and easy to understand. Perhaps that will change as new features are added and it gets more complicated, but for the time being I prefer being there than in Facebook.

Friends

In Google+ you add people to circles. The ability to do this, and to differentiate circles, is built into the product and is very friendly and intuitive. Circles are like lists in Facebook and Twitter. You can categorise people according to whether they are friends, family, acquaintances or people you follow; or you can add your own categories. I have already added ‘genealogists’ and ‘Australia’, as many of the people in my circles are genealogists and/or Australians and some of the things I post are only relevant to them. No point asking a Canadian genealogist about what was on ABCTV in Australian last night.

Messages

Google+ looks much like Facebook when you get into it. You get a feed of all the news from the people in your circles, in descending chronological order from the most recent down. Where Google+ is different is that it is very easy to filter the stream by circle, so that you see only the messages in your Family circle, or your Genealogists circle:

If I am displaying all circles and I want to post something, I am asked who I want to share it with:

And it won’t let me post it without selecting someone. So if I’m going to make it public I can’t make a mistake. But if I then post again it assumes what I said last time – Public. So watch out for that.

I think the difference here is that people now use Facebook for their friends and Twitter for everyone. You know that if you use Twitter all the world can see it. So you make the decision before you go in. With Google+ you have to make the decision each time you post something. I think that could be confusing, and perhaps dangerous.

It’s new, though, and so am I, so I’ll withhold my final judgement for the time being.

Photos

Uploading photos is appallingly slow compared to Facebook. I upload photos to Facebook on a regular basis, often from my phone. It’s relatively quick and I can share them without worrying that they are too big for my blogging software. So I’ve tried to upload photos to Google+ of the HMB Endeavour from a recent trip to Cairns. I started it off and went to do some things. I wish I’d recorded when I started it, because it’s still only half way through. Maybe the quality is better, but who’s going to care?

Again, perhaps this is a startup thing, and it will improve as it gets bigger and more experienced. I haven’t uploaded photos to Picasa Web for a long time so I can’t really make that comparison.

When it eventually finished uploading I saw there was a photo I had selected by mistake, and I can’t work out how to remove it. Perhaps I have to go to Picasa Web to do that.

I’ve gone to Picasa Web and it’s changed now that I’m on Google+:

You can see my Endeavour album here. It seems I can edit the album in Picasa Web but not in Google+. Perhaps that will change. I will leave the odd photo there so you can see it. Leave a comment if you pick the odd one!

Organisations

As social beings we don’t just deal with people as individuals; we deal with organisations as well. Facebook and Twitter both allow organisations to connect with us, sharing their news and new features.

Google+ isn’t yet at this stage, so it unfair to judge. When it is ready for organisations there will be a whole new layer of complexity. Or maybe not!

The default circles include one called ‘Following’. Following is what you do to organisations in Facebook and Twitter, so perhaps Google+ has already distinguished them for us. If the people/organisations we ‘follow’ are in separate circles from family, friends, and genealogists then perhaps the distinction will be enough to keep the separate functions of Google+ in our minds. When we want to ‘read the news’ we open the ‘Following’ circle, and when we want to chat to friends we open the Friends circle. If we want to interact with the organisation we can.

Well, those are my first impressions of Google+. What have yours been?

Filed Under: Communication, Facebook, Featured Articles, Sharing, Social Media, Tools and Resources, Websites Tagged With: communication, FaceBook, Google, photos, sharing, social media, Twitter, websites

Blue Books

19 June 2011 by Carole Riley

Blue books were used to send data back to the Colonial Office in London about how the Colony was doing. Every Colony had to send one every year, including Fiji. From what I can find out they started in 1876 and finished in 1940. The task usually fell to the office of the Colonial Secretary.

Blue Books give a snapshot of the country in time, and since the snapshots are taken every year you can get an idea of how the country is developing over time. Revenue and expenditure, population, education, imports and and exports, agriculture, total grants of land, gaols and prisoners, criminals, lunatic asylums, hospitals, charitable institutions, banks, railways and roads; nothing was overlooked. The British Government was paying for this colony and it wanted to know what it was getting for its money.

Blue Books also list government employees. All of them. So if your person of interest was working in the government or holder of a recognised native office you can follow him or her over time to see what position was held.

The headings listed in the Contents page for 1890 were:

Here is a piece of a random page from the List of Officers on page 77 of the 1890 edition:

You can see everyone here from the Chief of Rotuma and the Buli Bua down to a clerk in Suva Hospital and another in Levuka Post Office. The numbers in the right column refer to the page in the report where the job is described. I’m sorry I didn’t check the page where the Chief’s jobs are described!

Another interesting section is the answers to set questions about prisons:

As onerous a task as it must have been for the Colonial Secretary and his Office to compile these reports every year, we historians must be grateful that they did so.

The Mitchell Library in Sydney has a collection from 1890 to 1940.

The National Library of Australia has them on microfilm from 1876 to 1940 with some gaps.

The University of Queensland has a run from 1889 to 1940.

Other Australian libraries have shorter runs. Check Trove for details.

Filed Under: Fiji, Government Tagged With: Colonial Secretary, Fiji, government

Ask Archivists!

9 June 2011 by Carole Riley

Today was Ask Archivists Day. In much of the world it still is, Australia being ahead of most of the rest of the world. It was/is a great opportunity to ask an archivist a question and have it answered. The hashtag to use is #AskArchivists. You don’t have to be a member of Twitter to read the conversation; only if you want to ask a question.

Questions were varied, from very broad, such as ‘what does an archivist do?’ to quite specific. I asked the National Archives of Australia (@naagovau) a question about understanding the codes and abbreviations on their Defence service records, which are digitised for World War I and in the process of being digitised for World War Two. This is a question that has puzzled me for a while.

@naagovau pointed me to their list of abbreviations and suggested that perhaps @AWMemorial (The Australian War Memorial) could help, which they did with a link to their glossary, which is very comprehensive. Question answered! I’m looking forward to going back through the service records I have for my family with new understanding.

Other questions had to do with such things as where records of births, marriages and deaths are held, and non-British aliens during the two world wars.

I also asked a question of archives in general:

And these are some of the answers:

From this straw poll I can see that archives have been on Twitter for up to two years, with at least one jumping on only today. They use Twitter to communicate with researchers and other organisations, and to give snapshots of their collections. Letting people know what they have that we might want is an important job, and I’m so glad they do it.

There were also some jokes. I asked:

The best answer was:

And then there were comments:

You’ve got to love archivist jokes!

It’s days like this that remind me why I love Twitter! It’s still going on now, have a look.

Filed Under: Communication Tagged With: archives, Twitter

Family history societies using social media

8 June 2011 by Carole Riley

I have written previously about how family history societies can use social media and why I think they should. Social media is a great way to connect with people and let them know what you offer, especially people you may not otherwise reach.

I would love to start a list of societies that use social media – Facebook, Twitter, a blog, Flickr, YouTube, and so on – and put it on this site somewhere. Currently the list is so small that it seems almost counter-productive, but I am willing to try it.

If your society uses social media in any way, or you know of a society that uses it, please let me know.

Filed Under: Blogs, Facebook, Social Media, Societies Tagged With: blogs, communication, Communities, FaceBook, sharing, social media, Twitter

My grandfather served in World War Two after all

6 June 2011 by Carole Riley

I have written previously about how I hadn’t realised my grandfather had a defence forces service file until I saw his name in an index. The file hadn’t been digitised when I searched for it, so I ordered it and waited.

I recently got an email from the National Archives of Australia to say that my file was ready to download.

It turned out to be 16 pages. Richard Norman Eason of Hill Street, Blayney, farmer and grazier, was taken on strength of the 26th Battalion of the Volunteer Defence Corps in March 1943.

He joined the VDC, or Volunteer Defence Corps. According to Wikipedia:

The Volunteer Defence Corps (VDC) was an Australian part time volunteer military force of World War II modelled on the British Home Guard. The VDC was established in July 1940 by the Returned and Services League of Australia (RSL) and was initially composed of ex-servicemen who had served in World War I.^[1] Thegovernment took over control of the VDC in May 1941, and gave the organisation the role of training for guerrilla warfare, collecting local intelligence and providing static defence of each unit’s home area.^[1] General Harry Chauvel, who had retired in 1930, was recalled to duty in 1940 and appointed Inspector-General of the VDC. Chauvel held this position until his death in March 1945.^[2]

Following the outbreak of the Pacific War, the Government expanded the VDC in February 1942. Membership was open to men aged between 18 and 60, including those working in reserved occupations. As a result, the VDC reached a peak strength of almost 100,000 in units across Australia.^[1]

As the perceived threat to Australia declined the VDC’s role changed from static defence to operating anti-aircraft artillery, coastal artillery and searchlights. Members of inland VDC units were freed from having to attend regular training in May 1944 and the VDC was officially disbanded on 24 August 1945.^[1]

According to his Service and Casualty Form he was trained at the Millthorpe School of Instruction for a few days. I would love to know what sort of training he received.

There are no further entries on the form until the disbanding of the unit in September 1945.

This does explain why my grandfather was sent off to look for escaped Japanese prisoners of war during the Cowra Breakout. I guess those sorts of orders don’t appear here.

You can see more about the Australian defence forces here.

Filed Under: Armed Services, Case Studies Tagged With: archives, military, war

Twitter for family historians

5 June 2011 by Carole Riley

What is Twitter?

Twitter is what is known as a microblog.

You can send and receive messages, called tweets. A tweet can be a maximum of 140 characters. Tweets can be seen, and searched, by everyone unless you restrict them only to your friends. You can search for messages by a single person, by a word or phrase, or by a topic or hashtag, which is word, often abbreviated, with a # in the front of it. A tweet you particularly like can be retweeted to your followers.

Tweets can include links to websites, including blogs and photo-sharing sites. You are usually able to use a web address shortener to save some of those precious 140 characters, so that:

http://socialmediagen.com/top-10-social-media-sites-for-family-historians/

might become

http://bit.ly/iVfHtR

Why use Twitter?

You can also search for people. People in Twitter are shown with a @ in front of their name. In Twitter I am known as @CaroleRiley, and this blog is known as @SocialMediaGen. Once you have found a person you are interested in you can follow them. This means that all of their tweets will appear in your feed.

You can unfollow them at any time. You can also retweet the tweets that you like for your followers to read.

You can follow people you know to see what they have to say – journalists, commentators, politicians, comedians, conservationists, actors, religious leaders, social media experts – they all have something interesting to say to those who are interested. Here are a very few examples:

@ABCMarkScott

@JohnCleese

@BarackObama

@DalaiLama

@mashable – social media and technology

You can also follow organisations that interest you – archives, libraries, societies, genealogy organisations, and so on.

@naagovau

@srnsw

@PRO_Vic

@TroveAustralia

@ancestry

@ancestryAU

@ancestryUK

Many organisations release news first on Twitter, and if they don’t then others probably will. Here is an example from recent posts by State Records NSW:

You can also follow people that are interested in the same things that you are. The best ones to follow are the ones that are good at collecting and retweeting information from other people and organisations, so that you don’t have to wade through a lot of stuff you are not so interested in. Some people are more addicted to Twitter than others, and they do the sifting so that you don’t have to!

Get involved

Hashtags are used to keep conversations together. If you do a search in Twitter for the hashtag you can see everything that has been posted on that topic. If you watch QandA on ABCTV on Monday nights you can follow the hashtag #QandA to see what people are saying about the program as it is running. It’s more fun than it probably sounds, and as long as you ignore the comments about hairdos and so on it can be very interesting.

Hastags are also used when something big is happening. You have probably read in the news about how national revolutions such as the recent one in Egypt have been organised and spread through the use of social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

I was watching Twitter during the Queensland floods earlier this year and sitting in front of the TV. The news on Twitter was by far the most up-to-date. There was some mis-information, as there is on any TV news channel when news is only trickling in, but most of it was real, from people who were in the thick of it watching the water coming up, and from authorities telling us locals what was going on and what they should do. Even the photos and videos being shared through Twitter were hours ahead of the news programs, and many of the best ones were later shown over and over on the news, including the ABC.

It is also becoming more common for Twitter to be used for events such as the recent NSW Expo at Coffs Harbour. Presenters and visitors can all tweet about their experiences and what they are learning, and those who can’t attend can learn too, and almost feel like they are there.

Get answers

Once you have a reasonable following of like-minded twitterers you can ask questions and get answers. I’ve seen people asking for advice on gadgets to buy, software issues, research problems, and recommendations for places to go, and they get good results. Yes, you can do this by email as well, but Twitter is quicker and behaves more like a normal conversation. You may get answers from people you don’t even know!

I don’t log in every day, but when I do I always learn something I didn’t know before.

Do you use Twitter?

Filed Under: Communication, Communities, Computers, Featured Articles, Social Media Tagged With: communication, Communities, social media, Twitter

NSW Lands Department User Guides

21 May 2011 by Carole Riley

The NSW Lands Department, or Land and Property Management Authority as they prefer to be known [or Land and Property Information as they are now known – 2012], have reformatted and republished their collection of User Guides. Here is a complete list, blatantly lifted from their website:

First Stop Guide to the Records of the Registrar General (PDF 1.2MB)
Published 20 Apr 2011

The First Stop Guide is the first of five publications that detail the history of and information about searching and accessing land titling records in NSW. This guide aims to be your “First Stop” in helping you decide which publication(s) suits your particular searching needs.

A Brief History of the Records of the Registrar General (PDF 3.1MB)
Published 20 Apr 2011

This publication offers a brief history of the Office of the Registrar General since its inception in 1843 and the records it holds which date back to 1792. It also describes how land was initially acquired and consequently managed.

Old System Information and Search Guide (PDF 9.8MB)
Published 20 Apr 2011

This guide explains the intricacies of Old System land title and offers advice and tips on how to search the indexes and documents that have been registered with the Registrar General since New South Wales (NSW) was founded.

Searching the Registrar General’s Maps and Plans (PDF 4.7MB)
Published 20 Apr 2011

This guide has been prepared to provide a reference guide to Land and Property Information (LPI) mapping and plan resources and as a research tool for historical inquiry.

Torrens Title Information and Search Guide (PDF 5.0MB)
Published 20 Apr 2011

This guide describes how Torrens title information has been recorded historically and offers practical information on how to locate current and historical Torrens title information.

I haven’t examined them in detail as yet, but on first inspection they appear to be much more manageable and more concise than the old ones. The Old System Information and Search Guide is 45 pages and is much clearer and more friendly than the old 148-page User Guide to Old System Searching published in December 2009.

Here is an example. This is the first page of Chapter 1 of the old (2009) and new (2011) versions:

2009

2011

No comparison really. The descriptive text appears to be the same, at least in the first few pages, but the explanations are much clearer.

I recommend you go and find these guides if you have any interest in land and property in New South Wales. Researchers from other States are also likely to find the explanations useful, as the types of land records are similar in all States.

With grateful thanks to the NSW Land and Property Management Authority

Filed Under: Government, Land Tagged With: government, land

How to search for probate files at State Records NSW

Blue Books

Ask Archivists!

My grandfather served in World War Two after all

NSW Lands Department User Guides

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