The Tree of Me

Yesterday I started thinking about all my data and how it is backed up. I use a Time Machine from Apple which automatically backs up every hour or so. It's great to go back to recover an old file. In fact two weeks ago I accidentally deleted a page on my Newspaper lookup spreadsheet.  (This is the speadsheet I create with publication dates of death and funeral announcements taken from the Ryerson Index . i.e. those that are not on Trove or the Sydney Morning Herald Archives site. When I am in Armidale I go to the University and look up these dates in the microfilmed newspapers.) Fortunately I was able to go back into the Time Machine and recover an earlier version of the document. Lucky this happened two weeks ago as last week my Time Machine died. I am now paranoid that my laptop will die before I get a replacement. However, I have been backing up my genealogy files each night. I also have some information backed up on Dropbox and still more in iCloud so hopefully...

Week 3 – Free Online Genealogy Tools : Free online genealogy tools are like gifts from above. Which one are you most thankful for? How has it helped your family history experience? Where does one start? There are so many fantastic free online sites so I don't think I'll be able to stop at one. I love The Ryerson Index  which is an index to death notices in current Australian newspapers. It is a fantastic resource and thanks must go to those who freely give their time to work on this project. I'm only sorry that the newspaper from where I grew up is not one of those indexed. I'd index it if I had regular access to the paper. Unfortunately, I read the paper fourth hand in bulk about three times a year and I can't guarantee that issues aren't missing. Recently I've been spending a lot of time on the Public Record Office of Victoria  website, particularly looking at their Wills, Probate and Administration Records 1841-1925 . I have been able to ac...

As I'm on holidays I have taken out a week's subscription to the Sydney Morning Herald Archives.  These archives cover from 1st January 1955 until 2nd February 1995. I have been using them to look up death  and funeral notices to add names to more recent branches of my families. I use the Ryerson Index and electoral rolls on Ancestry  in conjunction with the SMH Archives. The archives are relatively easy to search. When you hover over a page, a section turns yellow and that section is enlarged when you click on it. You can print or save the page as a pdf if you wish or add it to My Collection on the website. Each time I find a death on the Ryerson Index I add it to a spreadsheet with the details from the index and the main family name it pertains to. I have a separate page for each newspaper. After I find the information from the newspaper I delete the line from the spreadsheet. Usually I conduct this research at Dixson Library at the University of New England in Arm...