GSV News

REMINDER: Applications for the GSV/UTAS 2024 Family History Diploma Scholarship close on 31 October 2023. GSV members interested in applying should lodge or complete the online application ASAP

You may have read on the inside front cover of the latest edition of Ancestor that the University of Tasmania is again offering a scholarship for a GSV Member to study their Diploma of Family History. The article outlines the details of the scholarship that commences in February 2024 and the application requirements.

Alan Rhodes, the inaugural recipient of the GSV/UTAS Diploma Scholarship, has commented that he believes ‘the course is well suited to GSV members who are familiar with the essentials of doing family history research and have made a good start on researching at least some branches of their family history.  The Diploma will stimulate your interest further, provide lots of ideas and resources, and develop your skills to continue your research and writing about family history.’

He writes that whilst the workload is not onerous, ‘it is important to keep up with the readings and activities in the weekly units so that you have a chance to make good use of the resources and to explore the topics fully. The units and resources are broad-ranging, interesting and useful and you also have access to the UTAS library resources and databases of journals and books that you can explore for in-depth research.  The lecturers and tutors are highly knowledgeable, friendly and very responsive to any questions.  You also have access to discussion groups with other students.’

Applications are now open for the 2024 Diploma Scholarship and can be made online through the University’s Scholarship Office: https://www.utas.edu.au/study/scholarships-fees-and-costs/domestic-scho…

This is an excellent opportunity to develop your family history research skills and to expand your knowledge in finding and interpreting information about families in the past and sharing family stories with others.

Do you wish there was an easy place to go for help with your Welsh research, the language, the place names?

At GSV we have many interest groups and discussion circles but nothing covering Wales (so far).

We are looking for expressions of interest at this stage. Would you attend if we started such a group?

If we have enough interest then we can look at the frequency of meetings, who can help with the group, and who might have special knowledge they can share.

Please email education@gsv.org.au if you are interested.

The Annual General Meeting will be held on Saturday 7th October at 2pm, and we hope to see as many of our members as we can accommodate. Included on the agenda are the awarding of the GSV Writing Prize (with a report from the judges) and a nomination for the award of a GSV Fellowship, the Society’s highest honour.

We still have a couple of Council vacancies that we hope to fill, so nominations will be taken ‘from the floor’. This could be your chance to become involved.

In particular, we are looking for a member to join Council as Honorary Secretary for the Society.  If you have experience in the role of Secretary for another society, club or company, we'd love to hear from you.

The GSV's Annual Report and Financial Report will be available under the GSV Council tab in the Members area of the website for your information.

Please book online if attending by Zoom, or contact the Society (gsv@gsv.org.au) if you wish to attend in person. For those unable to attend, a form for you to nominate a proxy is available under the GSV Council tab as above.

This month's Family History Tips and Tools will be a chance to quiz a panel of GSV members about how they research. Partly a discussion of research strategies, partly a good stickybeak into what others are doing, the session will ask each panel member a series of questions about how they build their family trees and why they do it that way.

GSV members Penny Mercer, Jenny Redmond and Claire Johnson will be there to answer questions like:

• How do you decide what to research next?
• How do you decide who to include on your tree?
• What information or records might we typically find on a person in your family tree?
• How do you judge that a particular line of inquiry is 'done' (for now at least)?
• How thoroughly do you flesh out an individual's history before moving on to someone else?
• How do you determine the validity of a piece of evidence?  
• How do you use publicly available trees in your research?

If you have questions you would like answered, bring them along with you on Wednesday 27th September at 10:30am. Don't forget to log in before you register here:

https://www.gsv.org.au/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=2424

We are very pleased to announce that the Genealogical Society of Victoria is partnering with Family History Connections and the Ulster Historical Foundation to hold a seminar on Irish family history research in February 2024.

The seminar will be held over two days, Sunday 18th and Monday 19th February, with the option to register for either or both days.

Sessions will be presented by expert speakers from the Ulster Historical Foundation on a range of topics covering all of Ireland.

The seminar is open to anyone interested in researching Irish family history.

To ensure the content of the seminar aligns with the research interest of possible participants, we have created a survey to garner opinions. Please have your say on which topics should be covered over the two days. We appreciate your assistance.

The survey is completed online and accessed via the link below. The survey should take under 10 minutes to complete.

If you are keen don't forget to save the dates in your diary.

https://forms.gle/HX2qDULND6Fc8SNY8

You may have read on the inside front cover of the latest edition of Ancestor that the University of Tasmania is again offering a scholarship for a GSV Member to study their Diploma of Family History. The article outlines the details of the scholarship that commences in February 2024 and the application requirements.

Alan Rhodes, the inaugural recipient of the GSV/UTAS Diploma Scholarship, has commented that he believes ‘the course is well suited to GSV members who are familiar with the essentials of doing family history research and have made a good start on researching at least some branches of their family history.  The Diploma will stimulate your interest further, provide lots of ideas and resources, and develop your skills to continue your research and writing about family history.’

He writes that whilst the workload is not onerous, ‘it is important to keep up with the readings and activities in the weekly units so that you have a chance to make good use of the resources and to explore the topics fully. The units and resources are broad-ranging, interesting and useful and you also have access to the UTAS library resources and databases of journals and books that you can explore for in-depth research.  The lecturers and tutors are highly knowledgeable, friendly and very responsive to any questions.  You also have access to discussion groups with other students.’

Applications are now open for the 2024 Diploma Scholarship and can be made online through the University’s Scholarship Office: https://www.utas.edu.au/study/scholarships-fees-and-costs/domestic-scho…

This is an excellent opportunity to develop your family history research skills and to expand your knowledge in finding and interpreting information about families in the past and sharing family stories with others.

Is your local society a member of VAFHO? Does your society have some local newspapers hidden away that you’d love help to digitise?

The Victorian Association of Family History Organisations (VAFHO) is offering grants of up to $5000 to VAFHO member groups to assist in funding the digitisation of local newspapers to assist family historians in their research.

The purpose of this grant is to enable smaller family history societies with limited resources that may otherwise be unable to undertake a digitisation project.

The format and quality needs to meet Trove guidelines. Information on the digitisation process can be found at https://trove.nla.gov.au/partners/partner-services/digitise

The completed records must be made available to Trove for public access.

VAFHO will give preference to projects where there is a lack of similar resources already available on Trove.

The deadline for submissions is 30 Sep 2023

Apply to the Secretary of VAFHO
secretary@familyhistoryconnections.org.au

The Gisborne Genealogical Group is holding a one-day seminar on Convicts to mark Family History Month. The day will run from 9.30am to 4.00pm on Saturday 26th August, to be followed by question time and afternoon tea. The presentations will include:

Descendants of Convicts Group - Bronwyn Quint
Personal Stories – GGG members
Vandemonians - Professor Janet McCalman
$20 for GGG members, $25 for non-members

Venue: Uniting Church, Brantome Street, Gisborne.

Find more details at https://www.ggg.org.au/events-activities

Come and join the Victoria and Tasmania discussion circle for their National Family History Month event (our interest groups are usually only open to GSV members).

Australians born in 1895 were an unlucky generation. They survived the horrors of World War I and the Spanish flu epidemic, only to be faced with the Great Depression. Our ancestors faced long dole queues, shanty towns, and destitute men (and sometimes families) roaming the country in search of work. Australia was one of the hardest hit countries in the world with over a third of the workforce unemployed in 1932.

Joan Beaumont AM explores the resilience of this generation in her 2022 book Australia’s Great Depression. They ‘made do’, helped each other, and survived.

Joan is an internationally recognised historian of Australia in the two world wars, Australian defence and foreign policy, the history of prisoners of war and the memory and heritage of war.

Perhaps you have a resilient ancestor from this generation. There should be time for questions and sharing after Joan’s talk.

Hope to see you there (on Zoom) on Thursday 24 August at 7.30pm.

Please register on the Activities/Events page of the GSV website. If you are not a member of GSV, you may need to phone the office to register: +61 3 9662 4455.

Over 160,000 convicts were transported to the Australian colonies over 80 years. That works out to around 20% of modern Australians having convict ancestry. If you’re one of the 20%, curious or wanting to broaden your genealogical skills, join us at August’s Family History Tips and Tools (FHTT).

On August 23rd at 10:30am Bronwyn Quint of the Descendants of Convicts Group will join FHTT to model how to uncover your convict ancestor’s history. There will be a brief overview of transportation to Australia to help you identify the information central to investigating a convict’s life. Then, using case studies from New South Wales and Tasmania, Bronwyn will show which sources to access to trace a convict’s life story. Resources on Western Australian convicts will be noted too.

Questions will be encouraged throughout the presentation. Bring along your convict related research puzzles or conundrums. During the discussion we also are keen to hear of any sources that you have found particularly helpful when researching your own convict forebears.

Members can register to attend here. Don’t forget to log in first.

Rebecca Landy
fhtt@gsv.org.au

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