The Road Builder

Anne-Maree signs a copy of her book for me 

Yesterday I attended a talk by Anne-Maree Harriet Cox Whitaker at the monthly meeting of the  Hawkesbury Family History Group

I was rather excited as she was talking on her latest book "William Cox and Cox's Road" and two of my convict ancestors had worked for Cox on the construction of the road. Can you imagine my disappointment when Anne-Maree showed a slide of the thirty convicts that worked on the road and my men weren't on the list?

While the talk continued I grabbed my phone, brought up my family tree and checked my sources. Yes, my men earned their conditional pardons for working on the road. James Westbrook and William Magick were "On list of prisoners recommended for mitigation of sentence by Wm. Cox" as a result of their work making bricks for the road  (State Records NSW Reel 6065; 4/1798 p.107) As Anne-Maree didn't want the flow of her talk interrupted I had to wait until the end of her talk to ask if the thirty were the only convicts who worked on the road. She assured me that there were indeed more.  I wish she would have mentioned this during her talk!

The talk which Anne-Maree read was supported by interesting and relevant historical and contemporary images. The presentation firstly focused on the genealogy and history of the Cox family before moving on to the story of Cox's road. I found it most interesting to discover that Cox's first career was as a watch and clock maker. Because of my ancestor's connection I would have liked to hear more about the road but, as I have purchased the book which includes a transcription of 36 pages of Cox's Journal I am sure that I will be able to discover more of the story of the road's construction right from the horse's mouth.

When Irish Eyes are Smiling

Even if my eyes are only about 62% Irish they are smiling tonight.

I discovered yesterday that the Irish Civil BDM Registration Indexes are online here :  http://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/civil-search.jsp and haven't I been having a field day for the last few hours. Online are the indexed records of Irish Births, Deaths and Marriages from 1864 and of non-Catholic marriages from 1845 including the Indexed records of Civil Partnerships from 2010 onwards.

Irish Civil Records Search Screen

Several years ago, on a visit to Ireland, a cousin of my Dad's gave me details of some second and third cousins on my Kealy from Kilkenny line but she had no sources for any of the information she gave me. I put the information in my family tree and a couple of people contacted me with further information. I found a few more details in online trees but had nothing that a pedantic genealogist would class as a source.

So here I am ploughing through the indexes and adding sources to my Kealys. Most of the information I was given was correct but where I just had years I have dates as some of the index entries give full dates. Many of the index records for births give the Mother's maiden name so I can be confident that I am referencing the right entries.

Once I finish this task I will think about purchasing some certificates but now it's back to work.

It's not a Happy Dance I'm doing tonight but an Irish Jig.

Slightly off topic

I got some excellent comments on my recent post "How do you react?".

It's interesting to see what people reacted to in my post that I intended to ask how people interact with each other on Google+.

I asked these questions of my readers:

"Have I got it all wrong? What percentage of posts in yor stream do you read? Do you regularly hand out plusses and comments? What are your criteria for giving plusses and comments?  Do you feel that most people miss the point about two-way communication via social media? Should my genealogy contact and I give up on posting?"

What I discovered from the comments is that:

* Others don't use Google+ at all or as heavily as I do (I need to convert them!)

* People appreciate my blog posts  - THANK YOU

* Several readers subscribe to my blog via email (that made me find out who does subscribe by email - I had never looked this up)

* It is difficult to comment on a blog post if one reads it in a reader or isn't logged into Google all the time (like me) 

I am still wondering how people react to posts on Google+. Perhaps it isn't as relevant as I think (or wish) it is.

Noise Reduction

James O'Brien recently blogged about  NOISE.

This blog post really struck a chord with me and got me thinking about my social media and online contacts and how they were (dis)organised. So over the past week I have been in evaluation mode, like James I need to reduce and manage the NOISE in my life.

To date I have tried to organise my email accounts having set up a new Gmail account this week. I now have four free email accounts and an account at my website host. There are three Gmail accounts and one Outlook account (an insurance policy in case Gmail is down/dies). I used to have just one Gmail account but since Google have made it possible for me to log into all of my accounts from my laptops and devices I think it is easier for me to have separate accounts.

My new Gmail account is for stuff I can do without - I have been very busy this week unsubscribing from lots of email lists and resubscribing from this new account to those I still want to follow. When I am on holidays or just too busy I can just ignore the messages that come through here. There will be less NOISE in my main mailbox.

My oldest Gmail account is to be my main account for personal correspondence etc. The problem is that I have been using this for years for family history things as well so it will take some time to move my family history correspondence and contacts over to my second Gmail account that I have printed on my business card. The emails that come in from people who contact me via my family website are presently forwarded to my personal Gmail account, I am will change this so they are forwarded to the account I will use for genealogy.

I am hoping that, by compartmentalising my email, I might be able to reduce some NOISE.

My next job is to follow James' lead and clean up my Twitter contacts so that Twitter becomes a useful tool once more.