November 2015
newsletter no. 156
What’s Happening Next for our Society:
12th November – Street Stall: don’t forget the street stall. We have booked Thursday 12th November, outside Coles in High St, Wodonga.
We are looking for help to set up the stall. If you or if you have a relative or friend who can spare an hour first thing on the morning of the street stall (7.30 onwards) to move the heavier items it would be greatly appreciated. We will also need people to help out on the stall. We will be well and truly packed before 2pm.
If you can help in any way, please leave a message with our Fundraising Officer Yvonne Wilson on 02 6025 5553 or via email on
If you are donating plants could you please name them? Prospective buyers ask about the plants and we don’t necessarily know the names of the plants (some of us are not gardeners!!!).
17th November – There will be a sausage sizzle followed by a Scrapbooking session with Debbie Llewellyn.
16th December – This will be the end of year function with our Christmas Party at the Felltimber Community Centre. Partners of members are most welcome. The cost will be $10 per person and we will start at 6pm. Please contact our secretary, Wendy, by 9th December, for catering purposes, to advise if you are coming along.
19th January 2016 – This will be a Fun Night and members will be asked to provide suggestions for subjects for the year.
Disclaimer: The WFHS Inc. does not accept any responsibility for opinions or
accuracy of information contained in this newsletter.
Information is reproduced in this publication for educational purposes.
Newsletter of the Wodonga Family History Society Inc.
PO Box 289 Wodonga Vic 3689 www.wodongafamilyhistory.org
Email:
Published in February, May,
August and November
ISSN 1327-3167
November 2015 Page 10 of 10
The Research Room is situated in the premises of the Upper Murray Regional Library in Hovell Street, Wodonga VIC. The opening hours for research are Tuesday & Wednesday from 10.30am to 3.30pm and Thursday from 1pm to 5pm.
Our meetings are held on the 3rd Tuesday of each month [except December] at 7.30pm at the Felltimber Community Centre, cnr Felltimber Creek Road and Melrose Drive, Wodonga. Entry is via Ritter Road.
November 2015 Page 10 of 10
November 2015 Page 10 of 10
Research enquiries: If you wish our Research Officer to do research for you, please include a business sized, stamped, self addressed envelope with your enquiry details. The initial research cost is $20.00.
Please include all the details you can: names, areas, dates, any births, deaths and marriage details you may have and what you want the Research Officer to find out. There is no point in paying for what you already know.
November 2015 Page 10 of 10
November 2015 Page 10 of 10
Membership Details
Membership of the Wodonga Family History Society Inc. includes the benefits of receiving a quarterly newsletter and allows access to all the resources of the Society’s library which is growing all the time. Your attendance at our monthly meetings will ensure that you have contact with our researchers who share your interest in family history.
Subscriptions: New Members Joining Fee $ 10.00
Annual Membership $25.00
Part Year Membership
[join between 1st April & 30th June] $10.00 + joining fee
Membership fees are due and payable in July of each year.
November 2015 Page 10 of 10
November 2015 Page 10 of 10
Committee members
President Norma Burrows phone: 02 6024 1591
Vice President Heather Lauritzen
Treasurer Sue Jarvis
Secretary Wendy Cooksey phone: 02 6056 3220
Barbara Baxter Doreen Gibbs Lyn Larkin Bob Cousins Lynda Cuper
Pat Hopkins Heather Lauritzen Dawn Newman Yvonne Wilson
Christine Young
We are updating our members' information andwould liketo include details of a person to contact in case of emergency. The information required is "Person to contact and contact number". Please forward these details to: , call Wendy on 02 6056 3220 or post to PO Box 289, Wodonga, 3689.
November 2015 Page 10 of 10
President’s Report
Our new treasurer is Sue Jarvis. Thank you to Sue for taking over this very important role.
Did you visit the “Spirit of Anzac” display – it was certainly a great exhibit.
Congratulations to the winners of the Bedella and Townsend Awards – Sue Black, Glynn Brown and Wendy Cooksey. I was lucky enough to win the Novice Award this year.
The Street Stall is on the 12th November so we look forward to seeing you there. If you have any books, plants, cakes, etc., to donate they will be very much appreciated. Some members of our group knit and sew items for the Street Stall. If any members have wool which they no longer require Lynda would be happy to receive it.
Our display in “Reflections on High” was well received. Well done to the members who put it all together.
The members of the Project team, who do all the transcribing of records on a Monday each week, have now published three more DVDs. Details of these items are mentioned in this newsletter. The new publications are for sale and increase the number of items we have on offer to the public. Income is generated and so we are able to purchase more items for our library. Congratulations to Pat and the team.
“Scrapbooking” is the theme for our November meeting. Our guest speaker will show us how to use our photographs to tell our stories in a creative way.
Due to illness and retirements we are looking for more members as library volunteers. Two hours a month would be very helpful and if you have more time that would be great. Talk to Lyn, our librarian, if you can help.
A reminder that our library opening hours on Thursdays are now 1 – 5 pm. This is due to a change in the operating hours of the Wodonga Library. Tuesdays and Wednesdays have not changed.
This year we have decided to have a Christmas meeting/party on our regular 3rd Tuesday (16th December). This will be held at the Felltimber Community Centre. As we are planning to have a meal, the evening will start at 6.00 pm. Details have not yet been finalised. We will let you know more details at our November meeting and on our website. We will want numbers for catering.
I wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I look forward to seeing you all in 2016.
Norma Burrows
President
In relation to the Bedella and Townsend Awards the judges were June Shanahan and Cheryl Ryan. A big thankyou to those 2 ladies. They gave the entrants written feedback as well as giving a pen to each of the entrants who did not win to encourage them to keep writing.
======
Meeting Notes
21st July - This was our Annual General Meeting. The meeting was well attended. At this meeting we put forward a resolution to change our fees and this was passed. For new members the joining fee is $10 and the annual subscription is $25.00 – a total of $35.00 when joining. The annual membership fee thereafter is $25.00. New members who join between 1st April and 30th June – the joining fee is $10 plus part subscription $10.00 – a total of $20.00. Annual membership runs from 1st July to 30th June and fees are due by 31st July.
New committee member, Sue Jarvis, is now our treasurer. Our guest speaker was Doug Elms from VicGum. He talked about the family tree programmes which VicGum covers. He also gave a very informative talk about the benefits available to people who become members of their group. Doug had conducted a Family Tree Maker Workshop on the 17th July. This workshop was very well attended and everyone came away with a better knowledge of their FTM programmes.
18th August - Winners of the Bedella and Townsend Trophy Awards were presented with their trophies. The winning entries were read to the meeting. The winners were: Bedella Novice Award – Norma Burrows; Bedella Intermediate Award – Sue Black; Bedella Open Award – Glynn Brown; Townsend Award – Wendy Cooksey. The stories covered a varied range of subjects – Christmas at grandma’s, an ancestor who married more than once and ended up with a very large family, a musical memoir and the story of a convict lady who became very wealthy.
15th September - Members Barbara and Wendy gave insights into using some of the resources available on the internet. They demonstrated how to use some of the programmes available. These included Rootschat; Penwith Genealogy (Cornish information); Occupations in Australia; Rootsweb; Free BMD; VicGum and Random Acts of Kindness (RAOGK). We all went home with new ideas to try and I believe one member broke down a “brick wall” after this meeting. Helping each other is what it is all about!
Here is some useful information that Barbara Baxter gave to the members that attended the meeting on 15th September.
November 2015 Page 10 of 10
November 2015 Page 10 of 10
Useful Websites
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/. Rootsweb. A free site that offers a wide variety of useful information and links. Be aware that there are search boxes under the toolbar that lead to paid sites.
http://www.raogk.org/. RAOGK (Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness). This site is where you can enlist assistance from genealogists worldwide to do such things as look up records or take photos. You are expected to reimburse the person for costs incurred such as petrol, parking fees etc. However, you NEVER pay for their time.
http://www.freebmd.org.uk/. FreeBMD. A boon for those researching England and Wales from 1837 forward. Totally free. Volunteers worldwide are transcribing indexes from the beginning of civil registration on 1st July 1837. This site also gives details of movements of records, where they are currently held and contact details.
http://rmhh.co.uk/occup/c.html. Hall Genealogy --- Old occupation names
http://coraweb.com.au/occsites.htm. Occupations in Australia
http://www.cartes.freeuk.com/time/date.htm. Card Dating website - date an old photo.
Useful Tool
Snipping Tool: Go to : All programmes; Accessories; Snipping Tool
This tool enables you to cut a section from your screen and copy it into a WORD document or save it as a jpg, etc. It is useful when you find a record such as a census page that has a lot of black around the page. You only cut out the part you want making a neater record.
======
Welcome new members
We welcome the following new members to our Society:-
Victor Addinsall and Dawn McQuilton
We hope you will take advantage of the many resources we have available at the library.
November 2015 Page 10 of 10
November 2015 Page 10 of 10
======
November 2015 Page 10 of 10
The LDS family history room in Wodonga Place Albury has changed its open hours to only once a week: Thursdays 10am to 4pm
======
There are times when you discover something new. Perhaps you would like to share that information with the other members of our club. Send your titbits to our Editor Christine, with WFHS Newsletter in the Subject, at
Members’ stories
The WFHS committee are always trying to encourage you, the members, to write short pieces for the newsletter.
The aim is to give you the confidence to keep writing short or longer pieces for yourself and your family to preserve and pass on your family’s history.
It would be great if you wanted to share those stories with fellow members via this newsletter.
They can be as short as 300 words which is half a page, depending on the font you use, or up to a page and a half [approx. 900 words].
//////////
Here is a story from Lee Howard.
“Holy Buttons”
The phone rang early one Monday morning. It was my clear thinking, organising daughter. She asked: “What is the religious meaning of buttons?”
I hesitated. This is right off beam, don’t give a glib answer. “What do buttons mean? Why do you ask, when did you see it?”
Daughter: “Well we went for a drive yesterday and came across a cemetery [Mum is always wandering around cemeteries so let’s have a look]. We pulled into the gateway and there were all these buttons.”
It was my turn to be puzzled, so I asked: “Just where and how were they?”
Daughter: “They were all over the path, through the gate and up around a couple of large stones.”
The large stones were memorial stones with plaques in memory of the pioneers.
Well I really couldn’t make any sense of what she was saying, so I said I would try to find out!
Two days later it got the better of me and I drove out to see for myself. Yes, from the roadway to the gate was a thick layer of grey work shirt buttons, this continued through the gate and along the path to the two stones where they gradually thinned out along the path.
Luckily there was a couple there tidying up their own family graves and after they realised who I was, told me a chap who has family there had ‘acquired’ all these buttons and decided to use them instead of gravel. “When wet they were very slippery”, I was told.
I later found out that the chap had attended the clearing sale at the YAKKA factory in Wodonga and purchased a large container of grey work shirt buttons. I don’t know if he had decided what to do with them before or after he purchased them.
Whilst visiting another local cemetery, where a young member of his extended family is, I was surprised, well not really, to see handfuls of buttons scattered there.
No daughter, buttons have no religious meaning, you are not losing your marbles, [but maybe someone else is]. So I owe you an apology.
The 2 cemeteries are Moorwatha on the Burrumbuttock/Howlong Road and the Goombargana on the Balldale/Rand Road.