I was going to title this entry "Like trying to draw blood from a stone" but I know that is impossible and in this case I know that the information is there but not forthcoming so I have had to go to any sources I can find for the information.
What I am trying to find is family records from some of my closest relatives - first cousins. I was told that J. is the Family Historian so I figured that she was the person to ask. However, all I managed to squeeze from her was that she has three children and five grandchildren. I have spent the last week searching Trove (archived newspapers) and a related family tree which I have and which in J.'s case is wrong as it shows four children. I know that she has twin sons but one of the twins is called "saw" (Lower case so the person compiling the tree was obviously uncertain). The other son has a different birth date and I am not sure which of her two sons has been given the correct birth date and which is a fabrication
I have also managed to find birth dates and places for J. and her two siblings by going through the Family Notices in the archived newspapers but that is time consuming. I have just emailed her with all the data I now have and asked her for additions and corrections but I am not holding my breath. She might be a historian but she is certainly not a genealogist and the two are really all part of the same equation so I am wondering what history she is researching.
I have the telephone number of a second cousin who is supposedly a genealogist but he is in his mid-eighties and is not computer literate and is very reclusive. I met his two siblings at my mother's funeral but gather that they are now dead and I am reluctant to telephone him simply to ask when his brother and sister died so I have simply entered their deaths as "after" and entered the date of my mother's death.
I am back to doing yoga five times per week and feeling much better for it and I have resumed the "fast diet" because my weight has started to edge up. I am finding this rather hard and will probably do so until my body gets used to it again. I have never found it particularly hard before; it is mostly just keeping busy and drinking extra coffee if things start going tough.
The possum sweater is progressing slowly and I am knitting a lacy scarf from some very, very old spinning where I blended dog hair with the wool and dyed it pink. The dog hair didn't blend in evenly or pick up the dye so it is definitely in the novelty yarn category and is ideal for a lacy scarf. So far it looks very pretty and being mostly holes it is a quick knit and a nice change from the sweater which is serious knitting. I intend to modify the pattern to give the sweater a cowl neckline so fingers crossed that it will work out.
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
Friday, September 15, 2017
Revisting old times
My original online name was Minerva and when I started playing the Douglas Adams computer game 'Starship Titanic' it got shortened to minnie and then, as a reflection of the song Lily the Pink it became minnie the pink. When I wanted to make my nationality clear I became minnie the pink Ozcat which has morphed into pinkozcat.
I decided to see if there was anything left of SST so I googled
minnie the pink + Starship Titanic and found a heap of posts from the forum. I also discovered that I can download the game for under $8 Australian and it works with Windows 10. I am tempted! I still have the book with all the hints which I collected after I became a Captain and stayed to help those who were still working through the game so I could probably play it again if the mood moved me.
I am re-knitting my pink possum sweater. I realised that I was knitting a size (or two) too big and luckily I had not progressed too far. It will now be about 5cm bigger than the Chunderup sweater which fits well but going down another size will make it a fraction tight and I do not want to undo it again and start again with smaller needles . I am in no hurry to finish it as the weather is finally warming up and the sweater may be too warm for this climate even in winter - but 'Have Yarn - Will Knit'.
I have had to turn on the 'happy juice' dispenser as the cats were scrapping BIGLY and Poppy was seriously fighting me when I needed to clip her claws. I know that she has sore feet and arthritis in the right hand but she is always much happier when the claws are short so they both have their nails clipped every three weeks which seems to be the optimum period between comfortably short and ripping up the leather couch.
I am making progress working back through my father's side of the family and am back to 1726 but still no word from a first cousin who is supposedly the family genealogist. I was hoping that she could give me information about my contemporary family but I might have to leave that to the next generation or hope that someone posts on ancestry.com. The problem there is that no details are published for people who are still alive and that is going to limit me possibly only to information about births; but I am not holding my breath.
I decided to see if there was anything left of SST so I googled
minnie the pink + Starship Titanic and found a heap of posts from the forum. I also discovered that I can download the game for under $8 Australian and it works with Windows 10. I am tempted! I still have the book with all the hints which I collected after I became a Captain and stayed to help those who were still working through the game so I could probably play it again if the mood moved me.
I am re-knitting my pink possum sweater. I realised that I was knitting a size (or two) too big and luckily I had not progressed too far. It will now be about 5cm bigger than the Chunderup sweater which fits well but going down another size will make it a fraction tight and I do not want to undo it again and start again with smaller needles . I am in no hurry to finish it as the weather is finally warming up and the sweater may be too warm for this climate even in winter - but 'Have Yarn - Will Knit'.
I have had to turn on the 'happy juice' dispenser as the cats were scrapping BIGLY and Poppy was seriously fighting me when I needed to clip her claws. I know that she has sore feet and arthritis in the right hand but she is always much happier when the claws are short so they both have their nails clipped every three weeks which seems to be the optimum period between comfortably short and ripping up the leather couch.
I am making progress working back through my father's side of the family and am back to 1726 but still no word from a first cousin who is supposedly the family genealogist. I was hoping that she could give me information about my contemporary family but I might have to leave that to the next generation or hope that someone posts on ancestry.com. The problem there is that no details are published for people who are still alive and that is going to limit me possibly only to information about births; but I am not holding my breath.
Sunday, September 10, 2017
I have sorted the Sarahs
One of the things which you do while you are waiting to fall asleep - think: I need to check the birth date of Matthew's oldest brother.
This morning I did this and found that the eldest sibling was born in 1795 and therefore Sarah Lockwood (married 8-7-1790) is the only possibility. I had the right name but the wrong Sarah on my family tree. Now that that is all sorted I looked at the births of the three siblings - 1795, 1803 and 1808 so either Matthew's father was away a great deal or Sarah had difficulty carrying a baby to full term as in those days the family popped one out every year or so until the mother died of exhaustion, usually after number nine or ten.
D2, who is a doctor, told me that after number three birthing becomes more and more dangerous for the mother and in the late eighteenth century all that the women had was a midwife of varying competence and looking through my tree I have found a number of women who died with a newborn baby which tended to die at the same time. It must have been very scary for women; men had it easier, they just married again.
This morning I did this and found that the eldest sibling was born in 1795 and therefore Sarah Lockwood (married 8-7-1790) is the only possibility. I had the right name but the wrong Sarah on my family tree. Now that that is all sorted I looked at the births of the three siblings - 1795, 1803 and 1808 so either Matthew's father was away a great deal or Sarah had difficulty carrying a baby to full term as in those days the family popped one out every year or so until the mother died of exhaustion, usually after number nine or ten.
D2, who is a doctor, told me that after number three birthing becomes more and more dangerous for the mother and in the late eighteenth century all that the women had was a midwife of varying competence and looking through my tree I have found a number of women who died with a newborn baby which tended to die at the same time. It must have been very scary for women; men had it easier, they just married again.
So Many Sarahs
I have been playing around with the nether regions of my paternal family tree. My mother's family were seriously bad but my father's roots were steeped in non-mainstream protestant offshoots of the official Church of England - in this case one lot were Congregational and one were Methodist and one great great grandfather was a fire and brimstone congregational minister and the other branch had a greatx3 grandfather who was a Methodist South Sea Island Missionary.
I have had a lot of help from a third cousin (once removed) discovering the South Sea island branch but realised yesterday that the missionary's father and mother appeared to have been married when said Gx3 Grandfather was 17 and since he was the youngest of the family I realised that there was an error generated either by me or my cousin.
My great greatx4 grandfather, John, married a woman named Sarah and the couple were supposedly married in 1823 whereas their youngest son was born in 1808 so I realised that if John and Sarah were their correct given names then it must be a different Sarah. Since John's family name is correct I started searching for a Sarah who had married a John within a reasonable time and place to have a child born in 1808 and I have made a non- exhaustive list of possible Sarahs; not that is really matters so far back in the late 1700s which is about as far as the records are available and readable.
THE SARAH MARRIAGES:
Sarah Lockwood 8-7-1790
Sarah Parkin 25-9-1797
Sarah Blagborough 14-8-1789
Sarah Berthwick 27-1-1800
Sarah Garfat 21-5-1801
I will check with my cousin in due course but do not want to rain on her parade just yet as she gave a talk to her local Genealogical Society this afternoon and is probably done with that branch of the family for a while.
The warm weather is finally happening with a green tinge starting to appear on the deciduous trees outside my windows - just when I have started knitting a possum fur and merino wool sweater, hopefully with a cowl neck; hopefully because I am having to combine two different patterns to end up with what I want.
My enthusiasm to extend my family tree is probably, in part, an avoidance mechanism. It is going to be a very warm sweater and will be knitted over a probably very hot summer.
I have had a lot of help from a third cousin (once removed) discovering the South Sea island branch but realised yesterday that the missionary's father and mother appeared to have been married when said Gx3 Grandfather was 17 and since he was the youngest of the family I realised that there was an error generated either by me or my cousin.
My great greatx4 grandfather, John, married a woman named Sarah and the couple were supposedly married in 1823 whereas their youngest son was born in 1808 so I realised that if John and Sarah were their correct given names then it must be a different Sarah. Since John's family name is correct I started searching for a Sarah who had married a John within a reasonable time and place to have a child born in 1808 and I have made a non- exhaustive list of possible Sarahs; not that is really matters so far back in the late 1700s which is about as far as the records are available and readable.
THE SARAH MARRIAGES:
Sarah Lockwood 8-7-1790
Sarah Parkin 25-9-1797
Sarah Blagborough 14-8-1789
Sarah Berthwick 27-1-1800
Sarah Garfat 21-5-1801
I will check with my cousin in due course but do not want to rain on her parade just yet as she gave a talk to her local Genealogical Society this afternoon and is probably done with that branch of the family for a while.
The warm weather is finally happening with a green tinge starting to appear on the deciduous trees outside my windows - just when I have started knitting a possum fur and merino wool sweater, hopefully with a cowl neck; hopefully because I am having to combine two different patterns to end up with what I want.
My enthusiasm to extend my family tree is probably, in part, an avoidance mechanism. It is going to be a very warm sweater and will be knitted over a probably very hot summer.
Tuesday, September 5, 2017
A Cold, Wet Winter
We are now into our sixth day of spring and it has finally warmed up a bit. The winter has been wet, windy and cold and I finally went out and bought myself an electric blanket, something which I haven't felt the need for since I invested in a down duvet many years ago.
I have been doing the usual spinning, reading and knitting as well as getting back into researching family history. I am finding that the new FTM doesn't do its charts the way the old one did; it adds too much detail where it is not needed in the descendant chart but that is really a minor problem as it generally works and syncs well.
I have reconnected with a third cousin once removed who gave me a huge amount of help in my early days of genealogy research and hopefully I will get to meet her sometime soon as she lives in an outer suburb - really a satellite city of Perth, Western Australia. It is two hours each way by public transport to visit Mandurah but she comes up to Perth frequently.
I have knitted thirteen beanies for the homeless people sleeping rough and a couple of others in my knitting group are also knitting for the homeless so between us we have done well but the rush is now off and I have started on a cowl-necked sweater in "eco-fibre" from New Zealand where it is called "merino possum". While possums are protected here in Australia they are an out-of-control pest in New Zealand and the fibre is very light and extremely warm.
I knitted a possum cowl some months ago and it is great to wear when waiting at the railway station as the south wild screams down the line and there is no shelter from it.
The cats are well and sleep a lot during the day now but seeing the state of the apartment in the mornings I suspect that they riot when I am asleep. They are both on a diet but have not lost any noticeable weight but we still have about six months before the Vet weighs them again.
Parsifal has finally achieved his greatest goal - getting behind the TV cabinet - and he did it when I was about to head out to COTA. I knew that he had hidden himself away somewhere but couldn't find him and had to rush to catch the train so I left all the doors, cupboards and drawers open just in case he had, yet again, shut himself in somewhere. When I got home he was very much in evidence and very, very dusty so the next time D2 came to do a car swap we pulled the cabinet out and I cleaned out behind it. Now Poppy has been behind as well - amongst all the cords and cables and she actually managed to unplug the power to the DVD player. *sigh*
I have been doing the usual spinning, reading and knitting as well as getting back into researching family history. I am finding that the new FTM doesn't do its charts the way the old one did; it adds too much detail where it is not needed in the descendant chart but that is really a minor problem as it generally works and syncs well.
I have reconnected with a third cousin once removed who gave me a huge amount of help in my early days of genealogy research and hopefully I will get to meet her sometime soon as she lives in an outer suburb - really a satellite city of Perth, Western Australia. It is two hours each way by public transport to visit Mandurah but she comes up to Perth frequently.
I have knitted thirteen beanies for the homeless people sleeping rough and a couple of others in my knitting group are also knitting for the homeless so between us we have done well but the rush is now off and I have started on a cowl-necked sweater in "eco-fibre" from New Zealand where it is called "merino possum". While possums are protected here in Australia they are an out-of-control pest in New Zealand and the fibre is very light and extremely warm.
I knitted a possum cowl some months ago and it is great to wear when waiting at the railway station as the south wild screams down the line and there is no shelter from it.
The cats are well and sleep a lot during the day now but seeing the state of the apartment in the mornings I suspect that they riot when I am asleep. They are both on a diet but have not lost any noticeable weight but we still have about six months before the Vet weighs them again.
Parsifal has finally achieved his greatest goal - getting behind the TV cabinet - and he did it when I was about to head out to COTA. I knew that he had hidden himself away somewhere but couldn't find him and had to rush to catch the train so I left all the doors, cupboards and drawers open just in case he had, yet again, shut himself in somewhere. When I got home he was very much in evidence and very, very dusty so the next time D2 came to do a car swap we pulled the cabinet out and I cleaned out behind it. Now Poppy has been behind as well - amongst all the cords and cables and she actually managed to unplug the power to the DVD player. *sigh*
Monday, August 21, 2017
A Rose by any other Name ...
One of my first cousins is writing a book about one of our
mutual great grandfathers. I am of the
opinion that our Great great grandfather would be a good place to start but it
is not my book. Our Great Great
Grandfather was a congregational minister who emigrated to Australia with his
whole congregation and set up a settlement about 50 miles from Adelaide, but my
cousin prefers the son and it is his book, after all.
I am a genealogist with an extensive Family Tree, am a member
of Ancestry.com and a regular visitor to Trove.gov.au, the National Archives
where old newspapers are being scanned and posted on line. Some (most) of the scanning is full of gaps,
weird words and strange typos and people are permitted to go into the site and
correct the entries which is fun to do and one gets one’s login name credited
with the corrections.
Anyway, our mutual grandfather has, as a middle name, the
maiden name of his paternal great grandmother.
Her family in England spelled the name with two ‘m’s but our
grandfather’s middle name is spelt with one ‘m’. England was a long way away at the turn of
the last century and there was no-one to ask how the name was spelled. My cousin was all for adding the extra ‘m’ to
our grandfather’s name despite the fact that his birth records, death
certificate of his wife and his own death certificate all show the single ‘m’
so it is legal and I think that I have persuaded him that he needs to stay
within the law.
Not so easy is the name of our mutual great great
grandfather. In England it is spelled
with an ‘e’ but here in Australia the ‘e’ is left out. I blame our great grandfather who misnamed
his son (our grandfather) and since he wrote his memoirs and spelled his
father’s name without the ‘e’ and
younger members of the family who also have that name have dropped the ‘e’ and
it has been set, literally in stone, on the wall at the entrance to the church
built in our great great grandfather’s memory.
I know that England was a long way away with no internet and
no Ancestry.com but I am beginning to suspect that my great grandfather
couldn’t spell to save himself and the only reason that the spelling in his
books was correct was that he had a good editor who wouldn’t have known how his
father’s name was spelt and therefore didn’t correct that particular error.
I have pretty well convinced my cousin that his name should
have the ‘e’ since Ancestry.com has a scanned copy of his father’s ( my 3 x
great grandfather’s) application for a marriage license and it is quite clear how
his name is spelled as it has his actual signature which quite clearly shows
the ‘e’.
Probably all or most variations of names were due to
spelling errors but I am a pedant and find it difficult to see it happening in
front of my eyes.
Sunday, August 6, 2017
Tiddley-Pom*
The last week has been abnormally cold with the temperature plummeting to 1 degree Centigrade. For two nights I warmed up my bed with a heated throw and then decided that the time has come to buy myself an electric blanket. Electric blankets have advanced since last I owned one; I can now do a quick pre-heat after which it turns itself off which suits me fine as I usually prefer to sleep cold. But it is nice to get into a warm bed.
I have oiled and sorted my treadle spinning wheel which has been sitting idle since Herself died. Since I mostly now use Ertoel Roberta, my electric spinner, poor Ertoel Emma has mostly been ignored except when Herself and I did spinning demonstrations for little Grade I children who probably think that milk comes in plastic bottles and sweaters magically appear in shops.
At the moment I am using up some rolags which I produced on my blending board but the pressure is on to knit beanies for the homeless who are sleeping rough so I am using up my scraps and since I have been told that most of them like colourful beanies I am letting my hair down and adding stripes from the scraps which are too short for whole beanies.
There are three of us knitting beanies in my knitting group. They are simple to knit and there is not much can go wrong even if we spend most of our time talking - so knit nothing complicated which might have to be undone later. It is a great group where we share our skills and are happy to give advice if someone is having a problem.
My Ex and Wife-in-law are both in hospital at the moment. Wife-in-law had untreated cellulitis and needed help to get around. Ex tried to help her and lost consciousness three times so they were both shipped off the Charlies. D2 has organised them into a private hospital where Ex can be treated by his own cardiologist and W-I-law can have her cellulitis treated.
Nobody knows
Tiddley-Pom
How cold my toes
Tiddley-Pom
How cold my toes
Tiddley-Pom
Are growing.*
A A Milne
I have oiled and sorted my treadle spinning wheel which has been sitting idle since Herself died. Since I mostly now use Ertoel Roberta, my electric spinner, poor Ertoel Emma has mostly been ignored except when Herself and I did spinning demonstrations for little Grade I children who probably think that milk comes in plastic bottles and sweaters magically appear in shops.
At the moment I am using up some rolags which I produced on my blending board but the pressure is on to knit beanies for the homeless who are sleeping rough so I am using up my scraps and since I have been told that most of them like colourful beanies I am letting my hair down and adding stripes from the scraps which are too short for whole beanies.
There are three of us knitting beanies in my knitting group. They are simple to knit and there is not much can go wrong even if we spend most of our time talking - so knit nothing complicated which might have to be undone later. It is a great group where we share our skills and are happy to give advice if someone is having a problem.
My Ex and Wife-in-law are both in hospital at the moment. Wife-in-law had untreated cellulitis and needed help to get around. Ex tried to help her and lost consciousness three times so they were both shipped off the Charlies. D2 has organised them into a private hospital where Ex can be treated by his own cardiologist and W-I-law can have her cellulitis treated.
Nobody knows
Tiddley-Pom
How cold my toes
Tiddley-Pom
How cold my toes
Tiddley-Pom
Are growing.*
A A Milne
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