NSW Wills

FindMyPast is working with NSW State Records to digitise New South Wales Will Books from 1800 to 1952. The collection of will books will be available later this year and will include handwritten copies of the original wills, from about 1800 to 1924, and typed copies of wills from 1924 to 1952. FindMyPast.com.au has secured the rights to publish all of the registered wills from New South Wales from 1800 to 1952, which make information about ancestors’ wealth, estates and belongings much easier to access. Don’t forget that you can access FindMyPast free of charge at Manly Library and many other public Libraries.

British War Records

Forces War Records has purchased BritishGenealogy.com. This is supposedly the largest British genealogy forum online, with over 40,000 active members and a ton of information to help you discover more about your ancestors. The military portion of BritishGenealogy.com is being merged with Forces War Records to create one central resource. This is one to keep your eye on over the next few weeks as the merger is finalised and access to British Military records is made simpler.

Top providers sharing records!!

AncestryInsider recently revealed that FamilySearch and Ancestry.com sometimes swap records, and sometimes they work together on a project, which results in both organisations providing access to the same records.  (They have recently worked together to digitise, index and publish U.S. probate records). However they both have their own digitisation teams out imaging records, and it would be very rare for both organisations to scan the same records, as it would not be to their economic advantage. Worth remembering as FamilySearch provides free access to its records. For more information on this read the original article at http://ancestryinsider.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/monday-mailbox-familysearch-vs.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+AncestryInsider+(The+Ancestry+Insider)

Digitising Country Victoria Records

A new project to digitise records held by the Victorian Archives (PROV) is being undertaken by Archival Access Victoria. The plan is to make country Victorian records available to those who need them most and are probably the furthest away from Melbourne where the records are kept. They will start with the town of Wodonga, on the New South Wales and Victorian border, digitising the court records from the Wodonga Magistrates Court that date from the early 1900s through to the 1970s. The project will then extend to other towns in country Victoria. To help this undertaking Archival Access Victoria has created a pledge page which allows you to donate or pledge money to their project. Anyone contributing financially to the project will receive their own digital copy of the records, as unfortunately these records will NOT be available on line and people wanting copies of the information will have to pay for the records, which will be made available to them on DVD for as little as $10. If you would like to know more or make a pledge go to http://www.pozible.com/project/22232  

Early Experiences in Australasia

Manly Library is trialling a new database until the end of June that may be of interest to genealogists. It is Early Experiences in Australasia: Primary Sources and Personal Narratives 1788–1901.  According to the vendor this database provides a unique and personal view of events in the region from the arrival of the first settlers through to Australian Federation at the close of the nineteenth century. Through first-person accounts, including letters and diaries, narratives, and other primary source materials, we are able to hear the voices of the time and understand the experiences of those who took the great challenge in new lands.

From the earliest settlers to convicts and free settlers and those who later answered the call of the Gold Rush, these letters and diaries tell us about life on ships and in settlements in a particularly intimate way.

Early Experiences in Australasia: Primary Sources and Personal Narratives 1788–1901 currently includes 33,776 pages of stories semantically indexed to allow users to find stories of life in the new world. Browse by subjects, places, dates and more. You can limit your advanced searches by author details, place written, subjects discussed and more. The collection will continue to grow up to 100,000 pages. Currently live content is a combination of archival content and early published works from around Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific.

If you would like to try this database, please ask at the Library

Passenger Lists to Queensland

The Queensland State Archives has an index to passenger lists of those arriving in Queensland from 1848 to 1912. This index is arranged alphabetically so names are easy to find, and it has hyperlinks to the actual images of the passenger lists. The detail on the Queensland passenger lists does vary over time, but they do include the names of ship, date of departure from European port and arrival in Queensland port, together with the tonnage etc of ships and names of masters, surgeons etc as well as the passenger lists, usually arranged by type of passage (eg free, assisted, remittance, bounty, steerage) or sometimes by type of immigrant (eg railway workers).

Details for each entry for a passenger include the name, whether married or single, male or female and age, whether a child 1-12 or an infant. A summary of passenger totals, including births and deaths, may also be included.

Irish Wills 1858 - 1920

The National Archives of Ireland have made available on-line tools to search for Irish wills from 1858 to 1920. Wills and testamentary records are of assistance to genealogists as evidence of the date of a person’s death and for other information which they may contain concerning the dead person’s family, place of residence and property.

In Ireland, before a will can take effect, a grant of probate must be made by a court. If someone dies without having made a will, the court can grant letters of administration for the disposal of the estate. Since 1858, grants of probate and administration have been made in the Principal and District Registries of the Probate Court (before 1877) or the High Court (after 1877). They are indexed in the Calendars of Wills and Administrations, which up to now, have only been available in the Reading Room of the National Archives of Ireland.

Up to 1917, the Calendars cover the whole of Ireland, but since 1918 they cover only the 26 counties in the Republic; those indexes covering the six counties of Northern Ireland since 1918 are in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI). The Calendars of Wills and Administrations for Armagh, Belfast and Londonderry are searchable online at http://applications.proni.gov.uk/DCAL_PRONI_WillsCalendar/WillsSearch.aspx

You can search the Calendars (alphabetical indexes) of Wills and Administrations for the years 1858 – 1920 and pdfs for those from 1922 to 1982 on the main National Archives website. Further information on how to search these is available at www.nationalarchives.ie/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Will-calendar-search-guide.pdf. The records for 1921 have not been microfilmed, and therefore not digitised, but it is hoped to digitise them in the future.