Trove Tuesday - A Silver Medal

I paid attention to one of those shaky green leaves that appeared on my Ancestry account this morning, this directed me to Trove.  I did a search for " Gowans September 1899" and immediately  found what I was seeking.

The back story is that we knew that William Purves Gowans, Mr GeniAus' Great-Grandfather, had taken part in a rescue in December 1898 and had previously read a newspaper report of that event. The new to me article I found described the event at the Sydney Town Hall at which Gowans received his medal. This excerpt from the article sets the scene:

"ON Monday evening, August 21, the National Shipwreck Relief Society of New South Wales held their twenty-second annual meeting in the Town Hall, his Excellency the Governor, Earl Beauchamp, presiding. There were also present on the platform: His Grace the Archbishop of Sydney, the Chief Justice (the Hon. Sir F. M. Darley), the Premier (the Right Hon. G. H. Reid, Mr. Richard Teece, F.I. A.., the Hon. Jacob Garrard, and many other prominent citizens ; also the following members of the committee : Mr. J. H. Storey (chairman), Mr. W. S. Buzacott (vice-chairman), Messrs. A. Kethel, M.L C., J. O. Fairfax, and Captains J. M. Banks, B. Jenkins, and A. W. Webber (secretary.)

The Town Hall was tastefully decorated with festoons of flags, and the handsome trophy of the

society occupied a prominent position in front of the great organ. From 7 to 7.30 the boys of the Sobraon Band (under Bandmaster F. J. Bourke) most creditably played from the eastern gallery several good selections, which were followed by a pro-gramme of music, well arranged by the secretary, Captain Webber".

Source: 1899 'No title', The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW : 1871 - 1912), 2 September, p. 563. , viewed 30 Mar 2020, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article163701318

Further on the article describes Gowans' act of heroism:

"William Purves Gowans. -On December 3, 1898, Mr.

Gowans, who was on the North Coast Company's wharf,

Sussex-street, rescued a youth named Rose, who had

fallen into the water, Awarded Silver Medal and Cer

tificate of Merit."

It was pleasing to see that William was presented his award in such superior surroundings but the icing on the cake for us that, included with the article, was a photo of the awardees on the evening. 

 That's William looking serious on the right end of the front row. 

Being a good old VolunTrove I have tagged the article and image with William's name so that other descendants searching Trove will easily locate it.

For the curious: http://www.braveryaward.org/about.php gives a history of The National Shipwreck Relief Society of New South Wales

Rescheduled

I was disappointed a few weeks ago when we lost our phone line and internet connection. I discovered this just a day before I was to present a webinar for The Society of Australian Genealogists on Online Books for Genealogy. Telstra managed to fix our issue in just under three weeks but that was too late for the webinar.

Online Books for Genealogy is topical for any time but is even more appropriate now that many of us are on self isolation. I'm thrilled that the webinar has been rescheduled as a lot of  time and energy went into its preparation. I hope to see may fellow members of SAG online for the webinar on April 9th. You can book on the Society website.

Trove Tuesday - Doing my bit as a VolunTrove

As I believe in "paying it forward" I have been a VolunTrove since 2009. Around February this year the Trove  team coined this phrase for those volunteers in the Trove community who undertake what they call #TroveHomework ie participating in activities that add value to our amazing national resource, Trove . As well as those who correct text in the newspaper zone of Trove  VolunTroves  can make virtual collections by tagging items and creating lists on various topics.

Although I have been correcting text for over ten years I have not made the enormous contribution of those Hall o' fame  text correctors who have each corrected millions of lines of text. My contribution is but a drop in the ocean...but the ocean is made up of many drops!

I am classed as an "elderly at risk person" for the current Covid-19 Pandemic so I am practising Social Isolation  by self isolating at home.  This means that I have a lot of time on my hands. Of course, as I am a genealogy tragic, I will always have something to amuse myself.

Earlier this month I opened my Trove User Profile to check on my text correction status. 

My text correction tally is not too impressive. I have managed between 0 and  552 corrected lines per month since 2009 until February 2020. Nothing to gloat about!

I have made a commitment to be a good VolunTrove during my isolation and commit to correcting more lines per month. To date March 2020 has been my best month yet; as of this morning I have corrected 753 lines of text in March. That places me at position 2930 in the Hall o' fame table. I aim to improve on that.

I am concentrating on correcting articles relating to persons in my family tree. However, when I am in a Family Notices section, I correct some of the entries neighbouring those of my ancestors. I am also tagging entries with ancestors' names and creating lists for descendants of my first ancestors to arrive in Australia eg Descendants of Elizabeth Phipps. 

Please consider joining me as an active VolunTrove during your period of isolation. 

Getting ready for the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge

During April 2020 the month of this #AtoZChallenge I will be sharing short posts on some of the 2,000+ descendants I have identified of my 3x Great-Grandmother, Elizabeth Phipps. 

Elizabeth Phipps 1785-1869 was a convict who was transported from England to New South Wales in 1814 per Wanstead. 

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Having participated in the challenge previously I realise that it can be a very difficult challenge that requires quite a deal of preparation.  I am devoting the next ten days to to preparation. So what am I doing?

1. I created a template for my posts so that will all have a consistent loo and feel. From this template I have created in Blogger twenty-six draft posts - one for each day of the challenge.

Some of my draft posts

2. I have created a spreadsheet on Google drive that has a line for each of my 26 posts. So far the columns I have are: Day,Date,Letter,Topic/Title,Descendant,Status,URL,Notes, Themes.

My nearly empty spreadsheet needs to be populated!

As I find an interesting ancestor or happy/sad/funny event in in ancestor's life I am adding it to my spreadsheet as a possible post.  

3.  It is many years since I researched this branch so I have forgotten the names of these cousinsso I have made a list of  Elizabeth's descendants from my software program as a memory jogger.

4. As many new records, especially on Trove and in the State BDM Indexes, have become available since I researched this branch I am updating their records in my database.

5. Concurrently with this I am adding any ancestor related article I find in Trove to my Trove List "Descendants of Elizabeth Phipps". 

6. I am trying to get at least one post written and scheduled each day until April 1 so that I have a buffer for days when challenges might arise!

7. I need to update my online family tree prior to the first post so that it reflects my recent research.

Wish me Luck!