Chooks or students?

October 25, 2014 4 Comments

ChickensThe Geelong Infirmary & Benevolent Asylum Annual Reports never cease to amaze me – this time for two reasons.

  1. The number of “employees” listed by company / employer.  Even if the company or employer kept an archive of their records, they wouldn’t be easy to track down, but because the company or employer and their employees contributed to the Infirmary & Benevolent Asylum Fund, they were listed in the Annual Reports.  We’re talking about ordinary people – probably our ancestors!  It’s definitely worth checking the Geelong and District database after each major update.
  2. The reason for choosing this photo!  Apart from collection boxes and other donations, the Infirmary & Benevolent Asylum Annual Reports list “Gifts in Kind” – the donors and generally the item(s) donated.  A popular contribution in the 1918-1919 Annual Report was EGGS!  It appeared that local schools raised chooks and contributed the eggs to the Infirmary & Benevolent Asylum.  And what an amazing job they did!  I hope they got plenty of school work done as well and didn’t devote their entire time collecting eggs and looking after the chooks. :-)  This lengthy list is about 3,286 dozen eggs being contributed.  And the top 5 schools? …
  • Ashby State School – 220 dozen
  • Winchelsea State School – 213.10 dozen
  • Modewarre State School – 160 dozen
  • Flinders School – 157.4 dozen
  • Ocean Grove State School – 141 dozen

We now have 1,623,428 records in the Geelong and District database.  This is what’s been added since the last major update on 1st October 2014:

  • Geelong Infirmary & Benevolent Asylum: Annual Report 1918 – 2,524 entries
  • Geelong and District: PROV Wills and Probates 1841-2009 – 35,820 entries
  • Old Ocean Grove land titles: sellers and purchasers – 2,336 entries

Details on these indexes can be found in the Geelong & District Potpourri pages.

And don’t forget to search again for your ancestors in the Geelong & District Database – they could have been in the last load of additions!

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When did they die?

October 1, 2014 Leave a comment

Inventory in Probate fileSometimes we take things for granted and don’t realise how many people are not aware of the myriad of different places they can find a person’s date of death – cemetery records and newspaper notices to name just a few.  Probate files also provide this information and in Victoria we are spoilt with the online Probate indexes to 2009 as well as the option to download digital copies of Probate files up to 1925.

When I was thinking about additions to the Geelong and District database I realised that extracting “local” entries from the PROV Index would assist people researching in our region.  Not only does it give an alternative method of searching [text string searching in our database] but would also remind or teach researchers that there is more than one way to skin a cat!

The PROV links and file IDs are not included as people should always go back to the original source to ensure they get the correct file, however extracting the name, occupation, residence and date of death would definitely benefit our local researchers.  Of course there will always be missed records as they have been extracted by place of residence – and we know how many place names have changed over the years.  Methodically working through possible place names, using the Geelong and District Towns, Places and Parishes file, so far I’ve covered most of Geelong, the Bellarine Peninsula, and the road to Ballarat.  There are heaps more to come so there should be no doubt that the target of 1,600,000 entries in the database will be achieved before the end of 2014.

We now have 1,582,738 records in the Geelong and District database.  This is what’s been added since the last major update on 22 September 2014:

  • Geelong Infirmary & Benevolent Asylum: Annual Report 1908 – 3,009 entries
  • The Drysdale Boys and One Girl: remembering those who fought in the First World War [Book] – 185 entries
  • Geelong and District: PROV Wills and Probates 1841-2009 – 52,354 entries
  • Old Ocean Grove land titles: sellers and purchasers – 185 entries

Details on these indexes can be found in the Geelong & District Potpourri pages and the Geelong & District List of Books.

And don’t forget to search again for your ancestors in the Geelong & District Database – they could have been in the last load of additions!

Filed under New Indexes and content, What's new Tagged with , , , , ,

Update of Ocean Grove land titles

September 30, 2014 2 Comments

B041RAYs Store - now demolishedA lot of titles have been added to the Ocean Grove land titles database so it’s worth checking again.  A lot of new photos have also been added – links to these can be found in the PDF Section Plans.

In the meantime, it might help people understand the Sections that make up “Old Ocean Grove” as these can be confusing – especially as every section starts with Allotment number 1 !🙂

WARNING – hyperlinks to photos in PDF Section files may not work in some browsers – it is best to save the PDF file then open in Acrobat Reader – the links will then work fine.

IMPORTANT DETAILS re owners:

  • Owner does NOT mean occupier
  • There are usually more changes of ownership in recent years which are NOT shown in this database
  • Transactions in the last TEN years are NOT shown in this database
  • Although details for these more recent transactions are available they are suppressed in the online version.

Plans, Allotments, Address, Transactions, Photo links

  • Old Ocean Grove Section ASection A plans
    The boundaries of this Section are:

    • Tuckfield Street in the east
    • The Esplanade in the south
    • Eggleston Street in the west
    • Madeley Street in the north
    • SECTION A file with address, transactions and photo links
    • LP1854 [lodged plan number]
  • Section B [bottom] plans
    The boundaries of this Section are:

    • Eggleston Street in the east
    • The Esplanade in the south
    • Presidents Avenue in the west
    • The Avenue in the north
    • SECTION B file with address, transactions and photo links
    • LP1855 [lodged plan number]
  • Section B [top] plans
    The boundaries of this Section are:

    • Eggleston Street in the east
    • The Avenue in the south
    • Presidents Avenue in the west
    • Madeley Street in the north
    • SECTION B file with address, transactions and photo links
    • LP1855 [lodged plan number]
  • Section C [bottom] plans
    The boundaries of this Section are:

    • Presidents Avenue in the east
    • The Esplanade in the south
    • Field Street in the west
    • The Avenue in the north
    • SECTION C file with address, transactions and photo links
    • LP1856 [lodged plan number]
  • Section C [top] plans
    The boundaries of this Section are:

    • Presidents Avenue in the east
    • The Avenue in the south
    • Field Street in the west
    • Madeley Street in the north
    • SECTION C file with address, transactions and photo links
    • LP1856 [lodged plan number]
  • Section D [bottom] plans
    The boundaries of this Section are:

    • Field Street in the east
    • The Esplanade in the south
    • Sweetman Parade [now Wallington Road] in the west
    • The Terrace in the north
    • SECTION D file with address, transactions and photo links
    • LP1857 [lodged plan number]
  • Section D [top] plans
    The boundaries of this Section are:

    • Field Street in the east
    • The Terrace in the south
    • Newcomb Street in the west
    • Asbury Street in the north
    • SECTION D file with address, transactions and photo links
    • LP1857 [lodged plan number]
  • Section E plans
    The boundaries of this Section are:

    • McCutcheon Street and Sweetman Parade [now Wallington Road] in the north east and east
    • Orton Street in the south
    • The Barwon River in the west
    • Guthridge Street in the north
    • SECTION E file with address, transactions and photo links
    • LP1828 [lodged plan number]
  • Section F [left – west] plans
    The boundaries of this Section are:

    • Eggleston Street in the east
    • Madeley Street in the south
    • Field Street in the west
    • Thacker Street in the north
    • SECTION F file with address, transactions and photo links
    • LP1858 [lodged plan number]
  • Section F [right – east] plans
    The boundaries of this Section are:

    • Tuckfield Street in the east
    • Madeley Street in the south
    • Eggleston Street in the west
    • Thacker Street in the north
    • SECTION F file with address, transactions and photo links
    • LP1858 [lodged plan number]

Background information and original announcement …

Some things are worth waiting for!  Just over 10 years ago – 10 May 2004 – I purchased and downloaded a digital copy of a Certificate of Title Vol 1946 Fol 389059.  This was the largest of several early Titles for Ocean Grove and contained 82 pages.  It, together with the other titles, was an absolute gold-mine for anyone researching early land owners in Ocean Grove.

Ocean Grove began as a private subdivision containing more than 2,263 allotments – by the time land-owner details were given to the local council for rates & valuations, unravelling the puzzle of who owned which allotment was just too hard to contemplate.

Way back in 2004 I knew these Titles were the answer to this puzzle but it just seemed too daunting.  A recent week’s holiday when it was cold and wet was the perfect environment – turning those ideas into a workable database.  And it worked!  10 years might seem a long time but when you see the end result, the wait was definitely worth it!

The names of the Sellers and Purchasers have all been added to the Geelong & District database but the detail is what will help people with their research.   These links will take you to the Plans showing allotments from the original subdivision for Sections A, B, C, D, E & F.  Reports from the Ocean Grove land database are also available in text searchable PDF format for these six sections.  These reports will be updated periodically when more Certificates of Title have been added to the database.

Filed under New Indexes and content, What's new Tagged with , , , ,

Ocean Grove land titles

June 14, 2014 1 Comment

Old Ocean Grove Section ASome things are worth waiting for!  Just over 10 years ago – 10 May 2004 – I purchased and downloaded a digital copy of a Certificate of Title Vol 1946 Fol 389059.  This was the largest of several early Titles for Ocean Grove and contained 82 pages.  It, together with the other titles, was an absolute gold-mine for anyone researching early land owners in Ocean Grove.

Ocean Grove began as a private subdivision containing more than 2,263 allotments – by the time land-owner details were given to the local council for rates & valuations, unravelling the puzzle of who owned which allotment was just too hard to contemplate.

Way back in 2004 I knew these Titles were the answer to this puzzle but it just seemed too daunting.  A recent week’s holiday when it was cold and wet was the perfect environment – turning those ideas into a workable database.  And it worked!  10 years might seem a long time but when you see the end result, the wait was definitely worth it!

The names of the Sellers and Purchasers have now all been added to the Geelong & District database but the detail is what will help people with their research.   These links will take you to the Plans showing allotments from the original subdivision for Sections A, B, C, D, E & F.  Reports from the Ocean Grove land database are also available in text searchable PDF format for these six sections.  These reports will be updated periodically when more Certificates of Title have been added to the database.

Plans and allotments:

Details of address and transactions from database:

We now have 1,519,503 records in the Geelong and District database.  This is what’s been added since the last major update on 18 May 2014:

  • Old Ocean Grove land titles: sellers and purchasers – 1,180 entries
  • Names mentioned in the Geelong Advertiser – 57 entries
  • Geelong District: Nurses from the Victoria Government Gazette 1951 – 119 entries
  • Geelong Infirmary & Benevolent Asylum: Annual Report 1889 – 1,797 entries
  • Geelong and Portland Bay Immigration Society [1845-1846]: Inward migrants ex Tasmania – 769 entries

Details on these indexes can be found in the Geelong & District Potpourri pages.

And don’t forget to search again for your ancestors in the Geelong & District Database – they could have been in the last load of additions!

Filed under New Indexes and content, What's new Tagged with , , , , , ,