Sepia Saturday: A brace of photos

The theme photo for Sepia Saturday this week includes three men, braces, newspaper, jazz musician and striped trousers. I've chosen some family photos of people wearing braces (suspenders).

Uncle Jack, standing left in the photo below, was a crack shot. But in Australia there really wasn't much to shoot at in the 1930s apart from kangaroos and rabbits. Rabbits were in absolutely plague proportions and a complete menace to the environment and the farming community but in the depression years they were an important source of food. But somehow I think this photo is just for fun. The caption reads 'The Big Game Hunters' and Jack and his mates, Malcolm and Mick, appear to have shot only two or three rabbits. All lived and farmed in Kooloonong in Victoria's Mallee. I saw Malcolm several months ago at Jack's wife, Lena's, 90th birthday and he had quite a few yarns to tell. He probably left out the best ones.

The Big Game Hunters (with two rabbits), Jack Larkin (left), Malcolm Macfarlane & Mick Murphy
 at Kooloonong, Victoria

And this is Jack's father-in-law Ralph Alford. Everyone loved Ralph. He was a farmer at Mologa and in this photo he's wearing his work clothes. Maybe he was just home for a cuppa and one of his daughters said 'Stand there for a minute dad.'

Ralph Alford, Mologa

Another of Ralph's daughters, Shirley, married the kid in the centre of the photo below. Neil Phelan turned 90 a month ago so we had another party! And there's Neil's uncle Gib with him, wearing braces and a tie so I think they've probably been to church.

Gibson Phelan, Neil Phelan (b. 1923) and Ina Phelan at Mitiamo, Victoria

And here are Neil's brothers, Doug and Keith. This time Doug gets to wear the braces but he probably didn't have a choice. Mum would have told him what to wear.

Doug Phelan and Keith Phelan, Mitiamo

And lastly, this is me about 1950. My mum used to draft the patterns and sew most of our clothes, and there are a few photos of us kids wearing shoulder straps of various kinds. These straps would have been buttoned on to the skirt. It looks grubby and so do my knees so I hope I hadn't just got back from church!

Yours truly

You can read more jazzy blogs on the theme over at Sepia Saturday's webpage.

A genealogy meme

Geniaus suggested a geneameme for National Genealogy Month in Australia and provided a set of questions. So here I go.

1. What are the titles and URLs of your genealogy blog/s? I only write one genealogy blog and it's called 'Backtracking' because that's what I think I do - track back through the lives of my ancestors. 
2. Do you have a wonderful "Cousin Bait" blog story? A link to a previous blog post might answer this question. I haven't been writing this blog long enough to elicit many responses from cousins but my experience with my online Flickr photos and my nature blog is that the responses will come in time, and from unexpected places.
3. Why did you start blogging? Is there someone who inspired you to start blogging? I started a nature blog about five years ago and really enjoy reading other bloggers' writing and photographs. They are such a friendly community. So when I started a family history blog I expected the same and haven't been disappointed.
4. How did you decide on your blog/s title/s? I tried to use several other titles but someone else got there first. I'm happy with the one I ended up with. I didn't want the title to be surname or locality specific because it would have been too limiting.
5. Do you ever blog from mobile devices? What are they? I usually use my laptop but when I'm travelling I use my Asus Transformer tablet (which has a detachable keyboard). We're about to buy a smartphone so I'll probably use that as well when we're travelling (doing the lap in our new caravan).
6. How do you let others know when you have published a new post? Sometimes I put a tweet on Twitter, I have put a link to this blog on my other blog, I have registered with Geneabloggers, I've made it easy for people to 'follow' my blog by putting the links on the front page, I have joined several themed blog groups (Sepia Saturday and Trove Tuesday) and I email interested cousins if I have written a blog about their branch of the family. I don't usually use Facebook for family history but that's an area I could probably expand.
7. How long have you been blogging? Since 2007, but only recently about genealogy (even though I've been researching for four decades).
8. What widgets or elements do you consider essential on a genealogy blog? Links in the side panel to the blogs I find interesting and informative is worthwhile (for me and my readers). I also have a link to Geneabloggers (it's amazing that the majority of genealogy bloggers across the world are listed in one place). I have a spot where readers can subscribe to my blog, I have labels on all my posts so they can be more easily found by search engines, and there is a label cloud in my sidebar. I have an 'about me' paragraph that links to my other blogs and there is a second tab on my blog that lists the surnames I'm researching. The title of each blog is important as well because it can attract or deter a potential reader - I usually put a bit of thought into each one. The LinkWithin widget is excellent as well - it puts random links at the bottom of each post to several other of your blog's posts.
9. What is the purpose of your blog/s? Who is your intended audience? When I set up this blog I decided that I wouldn't pretend to be an expert on particular resources of sources, that I would concentrate on the minutia of our family's history. There are so many little stories, incidents, facts, photos, memorabilia and biographical detail and hopefully my readers will enjoy reading snippets rather than a saga. I'm interested in local history but I'm trying to restrict this blog to family but in a local and historical context, so I think my audience is wider than just relatives. So far I've concentrated on the Australian generations but will extend that to ancestors in the UK, Ireland and the USA.
10. Which of your posts are you particularly proud of? I've found that I've learned something new with every blog because I have to use sources or find new sources to back up my story. They've all been fun to write and that's why I keep doing it. 
11. How do you keep up with your blog reading? It used to be Google Reader but since its demise I use Flipboard and Feedly on my tablet, because they recognise my old Google Reader list, and on my laptop I use Feedly, the list in the side panel on my blog and the feed list that comes in on my Outlook email. Sometimes I follow links in other blogs. It's hard to keep up though so I have a core list of favourite bloggers I always read and the rest are if I have time.
12. What platform do you use for publishing your blog/s?  Google Blogger
13. What new features would you like to see in your blogging software? I'm happy with it all at the moment but if they change it I'll probably say 'That's great! That's just what I need.' Blogger is easy to use.
14. Which of your posts has been the most popular with readers? My most popular post has been one about an ancestor who was a ploughing champion. I know, I'm surprised too. Also high up the list are several blogs I've written about World War 1 soldiers and nurses.
15. Are you a sole blogger or do you contribute to a shared blog? A sole blogger
16. How do you compose your blog posts? It starts with a germ of an idea because of a photo, some research I'm doing or an article on Trove. Then I build it into a story. I usually keep it short and usually find something to illustrate it. Sometimes it all happens quickly, sometimes I work on a blog over several days while I have a think about it.
17. Do you have any blogs that are not genealogy related? If you wish please share their titles and URLs. I write a nature blog called Bushranger and several travel blogs about Europe and the USA. I've also set up a webpage about a rural area of Victoria called Homerton but that doesn't have an associated blog. 
18. Have you listed your blog/s at Geneabloggers? Yes
19. Which resources have helped you with your blogging? Trove of course. My family's memorabilia. The wonderful library at the Genealogical Society of Victoria. Other blogs (I copy layout ideas, links, ideas without shame). A Flip-Pal Scanner I purchased a few months ago has been very useful, and I use Google Picasa to organise, process and resize my photos and documents prior to publishing.
20. What advice would you give to a new Geneablogger? Blog often because if we find a blogger we like we're hanging out for the next post and might lose interest and go away if you don't feed us regularly. This might be personal preference but I like simple blog pages rather than fussy and crowded ones.  Read lots of other blogs because there are some wonderful bloggers out there. Above all, enjoy the process

Please feel free to add an extra paragraph or two with extra comments.
Commenting is an important part of blogging. I love to receive comments on my blog posts and the majority have been positive and rewarding. I also love to comment on other blogs. And it's an important way of publicising your own blog.
I will probably convert my Backtracking blog to a Blurb book at some stage. I did that with my travel blog and was very happy with the result.

Trove Tuesday: John Brown of Camperdown

John Brown

John Brown, brother of my great grandmother, was born at Camperdown in western Victoria in 1858 and in 1865 he was one of the first pupils at the Cobden school. His father, also John, was a bootmaker. (You'll find several blog posts about this family if you click on the 'Brown' in the label list in the side panel.).

John was 13 years old when his older brother, David, drowned in a lake near Camperdown, and 17 years old when his father accidentally died. Effectively these two deaths left him the 'man of the house' because he was the oldest surviving son with a number of younger siblings. In 1879 his mother remarried so that probably eased his burden, but sadness in the family was compounded when another of his siblings died accidentally - his sister Isabella drowned in a well in 1880.

John appears to have worked as a station hand on properties in the Camperdown district all of his life, especially Manifold's 'Purrumbete' estate at Weerite.

Manifold's 'Purrumbete' homestead, 2012. Source: The Australian

 In 1887, when he was 28, he married a local girl, Mary Ann Dews (daughter of Bridget and Joseph Dews). At Trove I found this newspaper item that provided a bit more detail of his life at that time. It describes an incident involving the threatening behaviour of Mary Ann's father at John Brown's home.

Camperdown Chronicle 21 Dec 1887

Sadly Mary Ann's mother, Bridget, died several years later and, in the same year, 1892,  her daughter Mary Ann, John's wife, also died. Their son, Francis (Frank) George Brown was born earlier the same year so possibly there were complications following his birth. Frank Brown was brought up by Mary Ann's sister, Sarah (Wyles).  John published memorial notices in the local paper for several years. 

Camperdown Chronicle 3 Sep 1892

Camperdown Chronicle 3 Sep 1892

Camperdown Chronicle 4 Sep 1894

In 1895 John married Flora Cooper, daughter of Charles and Elizabeth Cooper. She was born at Lismore, an area not far from Camperdown. They had seven children but one son, Arthur, died when he was three, and the two older boys, John and Gordon, enlisted in the army during the first World War and both died in France. His four daughters survived childhood and married.

Camperdown Chronicle 19 Jul 1930, published a few days before John Brown's death.

I was about to finish this post when I realised that John had yet more deaths in his immediate family when his younger brother, James, died as the result of an accident in Cobden in 1925 and another brother, Frank, died at the age of 55 in 1919. Their mother had died in 1907 but she was 73 so, unlike the other family members in this story, had reached her full 'three score years and ten'.

Was John's life a sad one? I have no idea but hopefully he had a lot of happy times and relationships in between it all. There is obituary in the paper but the copy is very poor and I can't read it all but it appears that the pallbearers were fellow employees on the Purrumbete Estate so that means they held him in esteem, and it also states that he had a 'huge circle of friends in the Camperdown district' so that is also reassuring.

PS. There is a lesson here for researchers. I was able to find all of the above articles on Trove despite the fact that my great-uncle's name was 'John Brown' so don't give up if you too are searching a common name. I am researching Brown, Green, Taylor, Smith, Carter, Andrew and Cook ancestors!

Sepia Saturday: Family and friends

Sepia Saturday's theme this week had me searching through the albums looking for trios. It's been an interesting exercise working out the relationships and who the photographer might have been.

All of the photos below are from the Sims family album, and were taken in the 1920s probably. Chas, Edie, Annie and Elv Sims (and their other siblings) lived in a little town called Mitiamo in north-central Victoria. Their father owned a very busy general store in the town and it was probably an agency for film and developing.

Maybe this photo was taken by Annie Sims. It's of her two sisters and her future husband. Did she ask the women to hold their hands like that? And again, in the second photo probably taken on the same day - same handclasp. I wonder which of the siblings most often remembered to get the camera out of the cupboard, posed the friends and family members, sent the film away to be developed? Did dad pay for the developing?

Two sisters, Elv and Edie Sims, and their brother-in-law, Roy Phelan

Elv and Edie Sims with a friend

Edie Sims with her brother Chas Sims (right) and her future brother-in-law Les Twigg (left)

Sisters, Elv and Annie Sims, with Olive Phelan. I can't place the venue. Maybe it's Bendigo or Melbourne.

Annie Sims (centre) with friends

Elv Sims with fiends.

Elv and Edie Sims with unknown friend (centre)