Trove Tuesday - Cause of Death!

I had no intention of  publishing a Trove Tuesday post this week until I came across this article which I was correcting as part of a project for my local area.

I hope those of my grandchildren who are not too fond of study don't read this post and note the cause of death.   

1899 'CATHERINE HILL BAY.', The Maitland Daily Mercury (NSW : 1894 - 1939), 14 November, p. 5. , viewed 28 Jul 2020, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article126338209

From the Archives - July 26 2010

This post is as pertinent today as when I wrote it ten years ago

Monday, July 26, 2010

10 things I can’t live without to support my genealogy addiction

Via My Family History Research, Genealogy Leftovers and Elyse's Genealogy Blog came notification of this meme created by Elyse. "The goal is to write a list of ten things related to genealogy that you can't do without."

Whilst I am a technology addict, I recognise that without people there is no point to genealogy.
Here is the Geniaus list:

1. My Ancestors  who provide the Births, Deaths and Marriages that provide the scaffold for my research and the juicy stories, feded old photos and interesting anecdotes that add interest to that scaffold.

2. My Family and Descendants who provide a purpose for my research. I am trying to record our history for future generations.

3. My Patient Husband who turns a blind to the dust on the furniture and pile of ironing that waits for me as I ignore these for my genealogy habit.

There is no particular order to the remainder of this list - as my needs change so does the importance of the persons detailed from here on.

3. The many Distant Cousins who have contacted me via online forums and the Geniaus website to say hello, offer corrections to my sometimes inaccurate date and generously share photos, certificates and stories.

4. Generous Volunteers who over the years have done lookups for me and given guidance when I have visited genealogical societies throughout the world.

5. Staff of Libraries and Archives Offices who have patiently assisted me with my research.

6. People who read and comment on my blog and website and send compliments via email and Twitter give me positive reinfocement that  encourages me to keep solving my genealogical jigsaw.

7. Volunteer Indexers eg those who do work for Ryerson and FamilySearch and those who index  cemeteries and photograph headstones provide me with  the means to access to many valuable and appropriate resources.

8. My Online Genie Friends who, through a range of tools such as blogs, twitter, wave, provide blogging ideas, encouragement, links to great new resources,great stories and encouragement. 

9. Decision Makers at The National Library of Australia who have a commitment to providing important Australian Resources in an online format. Trove is the most amazing free online resource for genealogical research.

10. The many Registered Members of Trove who are making corrections to the scanned text to better improve access by other users. Whilst I have only corrected 890 rows of text there are  4 volunteers who have done over 4000,000 rows each and are headling for the half million.

Impetus to Reflect

I had a very successful Zoom session with a member of our local family history group earlier in the week. This member wants to start a blog and, as a more cautious soul than me, wants to be prepared prior to launching her blog.

Rosie (a nom de plume) had been doing lots of research on blogging and, prior to our session, sent me a list of questions to be answered. This was a most useful session as we were able to focus her learning on her needs. Rosie went away with many of her questions answered.

The session was also beneficial for me, I am the sort of person who often dives into tasks without much thought and when giving advice on blogging I suggest that others "Just do It". Working with Rosie made me realise that my trial and error approach to tasks doesn't suit everybody.

Going through Rosie's list provided me with an opportunity to reflect on my GeniAus blog which is steaming towards its 12th birthday. I have identified several areas that can do with a tune-up so, this morning I have been carrying out some maintenance on the Topics widget in my left sidebar.

As Blogger doesn't offer a Categories feature I use the Labels Gadget which allows one to display up to ten Labels/Keywords, as a de facto Categories component. When I blog I make sure that I always add one or more of the ten labels featured in the Labels Gadget to each of my posts. On looking at my ten labels I decided that they were no longer as relevant as when I set them up.

I feel that the labels I am now using describe the general themes of my blog. I have introduced two new labels in place of the retired "Family", one is Ancestors (soon to become Our Ancestors)for posts about  deceased members of the family and one is Our Family for posts that refer to living family members. I am in the process of relabelling of posts that fit into these new categories.  I also need to tidy up my up my labels for Blogging and Geneablogging, I can't decide which I prefer to use. I'd like to add an Events label so I think Libraries may be on the chopping board.

Your thoughts on this are most welcome.

Dotting

Ancestry DNA's latest revelation that they are removing matches below 8 centimorgans from our match lists has created a new geneafrenzy or phenomenon, Dotting.

My social media feeds have been buzzing this week as DNA experts and genimates discuss this news. Although experts I follow eg Blaine Bettinger and  Debbie Kennett have written articles explaining why this move by Ancestry is not all gloom and doom many DNA amateurs like me are going dotty as we try to salvage our matches at the 6 and 7 cm level. I noted that two of our Australian experts in an online SAG discussion last Friday explained that they are busily salvaging matches. 

We have been told that to keep these matches in our lists we must do one of three things:

1. Create a note in their match field note 

2. Add them to a group you have created using the Ancestry coloured dot method

3. Send a message to the match using the Ancestry matching system  

My Dotting Schema

Of these Option 2 is the easiest as it does not require as much data input as Options 1 and 3. As most of us have thousands of matches, many in the lower range, we have no hope of salvaging all of these matches before some time in August when Ancestry have indicated the great purge will occur.

There have been many posts from genimates on social media outlining the priorities for their rescue missions. Most of these involve refining their lists of small matches further by surname, geographical location or matches who have online trees. I created a new dot in my schema Match under 8cm  to which I am adding my salvaged matches.

No matter which filtering methods we are applying to our lists there is one thing for certain there is a lot of  Dotting going on.

NB My genimate, Randy Seaver, has created a list of a number of expert responses to this news: https://www.geneamusings.com/2020/07/ancestrydna-changes-coming-soon-what-im.html.