Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Trove Tuesday - Mr Geniaus is overjoyed

Last night we were babysitting and, after we had the kids settled, I decided to do a little bit of Troving. 

Knowing that new newspaper titles are being continually added to Trove I decided to see if I could find anything new on some of our direct ancestors. As Mr Geniaus was with me I started with his side of the family. His great-grandparents lived in George Street Liverpool, NSW in a house called Dorking Villa, their names were Emily and John James Ball.

Their son, James Ball, Mr Geniaus' grandfather died at a very young age followed not too many years later by his wife Harriet (nee Parkinson). We have no photos of Harriet and only a tiny, tiny photo of James in a group photo of the Fire Brigade Band which, when we blow it up, is a pixellated mess.

I played around with my search terms and was rewarded with some new hits that were all from one newspaper, The Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate (Parramatta, NSW : 1888 - 1950), that was a recent addition to Trove. Once I had found one or two relevant articles I moved to searching just this newspaper. I was surprised to find articles about Liverpool in this publication as I would not have thought its coverage would have extended to Liverpool. As the evening unfolded we found more and more articles that mentioned my husband's grandparents, great-grandparents, uncles aunts and cousins.

I can't being to describe our elation as we read the warts and all stories of the Ball family in Liverpool. Mr Geniaus has been boring the socks off anyone who will listen today as he recounts the stories of these ancestors (he is not into family history but he loves these stories).

I will share just one of the articles in this post. Being greedy I will save the others up for another day.

Mr Geniaus' Grandfather, James Ball is in the centre of this image

1915 'A LIVERPOOL FIGHTING TRIO.', The Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate (Parramatta, NSW : 1888 - 1950), 18 September, p. 10, viewed 22 January, 2013, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article86095653
Mr Geniaus is jumping for joy now that he has a photo of his grandfather.

At present only issues of The Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate (Parramatta, NSW : 1888 - 1950) from 1888-1919 have been digitised. As Emily and John James Ball  lived until 1944 and 1950 respectively in the Liverpool area imagine what treasure awaits us when later issues of the paper are digitised and made available on Trove.

5 comments:

Tracy Bruce (irishconvict) said...

What a fantastic find, a real treasure that has been waiting to be found all these years!

Crissouli said...

How exciting, Jill... great finds. Trove really is a treasure. I was wandering through there tonight also and found several new items from my paternal family...
to think we have all this at our fingertips!

Anonymous said...

These are some of the best finds on Trove! It's always wonderful to finally be able to put a face to a name. :)

Cassmob (Pauleen) said...

Truly a treasure Trove of discoveries!

Anonymous said...

Wonderful... Congratulations!!!21

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