Family History Month 2023
Wir Unst Family
by Morag
7M ago
For Family History month this year, we had a lock-in event in the Tauranga Library. After the library closed on Saturday to the public, those people who had registered for the event were allowed in (and locked in) for the evening. We started the event with a tour of the library with a family history perspective, which included biographies, magazines, and of course the family history research area with microfiche, and library editions of online family history websites. We had two speakers for the evening. First up was Carol Neill, who gave a thought-provoking look at the overlap between family ..read more
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Scribbled in the margin
Wir Unst Family
by Morag
11M ago
This story is from when I was helping someone out when volunteering in the library for Genealogy Drop-in. It shows the benefit of always viewing the images of a record and not just using the transcriptions, as you never know what might be scribbled on the record. I’ve written before about how there is very sparse information in UK 1841 census returns. There are no relationships recorded on the census records like in later decades, although you can guess given the order the names are generally listed. And other things you learn to expect in later decade census returns are also missing. Read mor ..read more
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Family History Month 2022
Wir Unst Family
by Morag
1y ago
August is family history month in New Zealand, and Tauranga Library held an event on Saturday 6th August. We had four presentations with a mixture of in-person and Zoom presenters and a mixture of in-person and Zoom audience too. This combination could be problematic, technology being what it is, but all went well. Morag Hughson presenting in person I was first up, in person, speaking to a live and a Zoom audience on the subject, “First Steps into your Genealogy”, a new presentation written for this event. A PDF of the slides and notes can be viewed and downloaded from here. Next up was Mich ..read more
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Another unusual middle name
Wir Unst Family
by Morag
2y ago
I’ve written before about where interesting middle names come from. Some come from the local minister Some come from the local doctor Another gentleman I’ve written about before, William Parsonson Anderson, has a – very helpfully – unusual middle name. I was chatting to a cousin today about naming conventions and the like, and he came up, and I had entirely forgotten that I did actually know where his name came from, so to stop me forgetting again, I thought I would make a small post about that too. One more for the unusual names set! It’s quite simple, and just like an earlier example, as i ..read more
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Once upon a time
Wir Unst Family
by rhodahughson
2y ago
Once upon a time, on a faraway island, There lived two little girls. They were safe on their little island, And could explore and roam the hills and shore. There were very few cars in those days, so they walked everywhere. One day, they walked with their mother As they often did, across the island to visit their grandad. While their mother talked with her family, They would roam about the croft, explore and play. Sometimes, they were allowed To climb the stairway to the upper rooms. There, in their grandaunts room, Under the sloping coomb ceilings, Were the kists (wooden chests). Lifting th ..read more
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What kind of cousin?
Wir Unst Family
by Morag
2y ago
Question on Facebook which prompted this post I’m a member of various genealogy Facebook groups and one of the questions that seems to crop up often is about cousins and once/twice removed etc. A couple of days ago I saw this question posted on Facebook and it occurred to me that her picture was just the same way I draw things out when I am trying to work out how I am related to someone. What tends to happen is I’ll be sent a snippet of someone’s lineage back to an Unst person that I can find in my tree, or the statement, “so-and-so was my great-grandfather”. Once I can find that person in m ..read more
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Tracking Joan Anderson
Wir Unst Family
by Morag
2y ago
I’ve done quite a lot of research of families in Unst, but I have not yet spent time researching the branches that left Unst and went out into the new world to places like New Zealand. I had the opportunity to look into one of these today. It was prompted by a New Zealand cousin getting in touch via a Facebook group. From my Unst research, I only knew about two of Gilbert and Anne’s children I knew of her great-grandfather Gilbert Anderson because he was born in Unst. He and his wife and two daughters were marked in my tree as having gone to NZ but I hadn’t looked into it further. From my Un ..read more
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Family History Month 2021
Wir Unst Family
by Morag
2y ago
August is Family History Month (in New Zealand anyway) and my contributions expanded this year from previous years. Last week was particularly filled with Family History events. On Tuesday we had our usual 2nd-Tuesday-of-the-month Drop-in session from 10-12noon in the Tauranga Library, but before hand we had a session with the librarians before the library even opened, as they had lots of questions that they wanted us, the volunteers, to help them with so know how to help people who come into the library. Then on Thursday I was over the hill at the Rotorua Library giving a presentation on Scot ..read more
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Three Generations of Weddings
Wir Unst Family
by rhodahughson
3y ago
A wedding in the 1900s My grandparents were married in 1908, and there are no photos from their wedding, but here are their photos. Robert lived with his parents in Uphouse, the family croft house. My mother talked about what she had heard about her parents wedding. She remembered that they cleared all the furniture out of the house (a small two room Shetland croft house) into the barn. They left the sturdy kitchen dresser for the fiddler to sit on! The wedding took place in the nearby chapel and the guests would then walk down to the reception in the house. Looking at the bill from the loca ..read more
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Gold Miner in New Zealand
Wir Unst Family
by Morag
3y ago
One cousin in my tree, William Parsonson Anderson, I had no idea where he was during the 1871 census. A timeline for him simply had a gap. Then today, when I brought up one of the records I had already attached to him in Ancestry, there was a suggested record for the same name in New Zealand. His name is somewhat unusual. Parsonson is not a common Unst name. He appears to have been named after the minister who baptised him who was called William Parsonson. This combination of names therefore make you feel it is likely to be the same person when you find another record with the same name. Befor ..read more
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