Red faced again!

We now have 1,223,897 records in the Geelong & District Database. 

Why the red face?  Because I set a target of 1,250,000 entries by the end of 2012.  That’s only a little over 26,000 entries for the rest of the year – we MUST be able to achieve that and more.

Mind you, the entries added in this group have a BIG lump factor from existing records – we’ve included mothers from the Geelong & District Historical Association Church records for baptisms as well as marriages.  The mothers listed in the baptisms in particular are a large number of entries as they’ve been created for mothers with their maiden name as well as mothers with their married names.  We decided that would be beneficial where researchers knew the mothers first names but not their maiden name – conversely the benefit of showing mother’s with their maiden names would obviously also benefit researchers.  Before people complain that we don’t show the child’s name in the same entry as the mother, please understand that we are not able to do that based on agreements made when we created the GDHA Church records database.  In the end the decision was made to include separate entries for the parents rather than not to include them at all.

The other good news on the GDHA Church records database – a lot of work is being done on adding another 15+ years of baptisms for St Mary’s Roman Catholic church in Geelong – something many will look forward to.  This is an ongoing project with many more entries to come.

This is what’s been added since the last update on 12 February:

• Geelong District: GDHA Church records – Baptisms [Mothers] – 101,124 entries
• Geelong District: GDHA Church records – Marriages [Mothers] – 17,982 entries
• Colac Shire: Rate Books 1863-64, 1865-66, 1867-68, 1868-69, 1870-71, 1885-86, 1896-97 [GRS 1393] – 9,857 entries
• Mt Moriac: Court of Petty Sessions – 1876, 1877 [VPRS 335] – 162 entries
• Geelong District: extracts from Crown Reserves Correspondence files [VPRS 242] – 150 entries
• Geelong District: Schools – pupils, prize winners etc from the Geelong Times 1874-1898 – 380 entries
• Gerangamete, Barwon Downs & Forrest: Names on parish plans [VPRS 16171] – 83 entries
• Geelong: Register of Seamen Engaged – 1856-1889 [VPRS 22] – 92 entries for 1857
• Geelong District: Reports of Felony and Stolen Horses – 1853 and 1858 [VPRS 124] – 103 entries
• Geelong District: Geelong Times – Admissions to Geelong Hospital – 1875 – 144 entries

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

Don’t forget to check out your ancestors in the Geelong & District Database.

Database target for 2012!

We now have 1,094,870 records in the Geelong & District Database. 

That’s a good enough reason to set a target for the end of this year – I hope it’s realistic but if we don’t have a target we don’t have anything to aim for!

This is what’s been added since the last update on 28th January:

• Barrabool Shire: Rate Books 1917-1949 [GRS 877] approx every 5 years indexed – 9,675 entries
• Geelong District: GDHA Church records – Marriages [Witnesses] – 13,202 entries
• Geelong District: GDHA Church records – Marriages [Mothers] – 18,890 entries
• Geelong District: GDHA Church records – Baptisms [Sponsors] – 37,939 entries
• Geelong: Infirmary & Benevolent Asylum Annual Report 1878 – 1,466 entries
• Colac Shire: Rate Books 1864-65 and 1875-76 – 2,199 entries

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

Don’t forget to check out your ancestors in the Geelong & District Database.  Good luck with your research!

The database is still growing!

We now have 1,011,499 records in the Geelong & District Database. 

This is what’s been added since the last update on 8 January:

• The Sea War in Bass Strait by Jack Loney [Book]
• Geelong City Council: WWII Servicemen and women enlistments – now complete
• Ashby: State School teaching staff
• Victoria: Exiles and others on Pentonvillain ships 1844-49
• Geelong circuit: Criminal Trial Briefs [VPRS 30]
• Geelong District: extracts from Crown Reserves Correspondence files [VPRS 242]
• Drysdale: stipend subscriptions St James Church of England 1890-1899
• Geelong District: soldiers
• Geelong District: names mentioned in the Geelong Times
• Geelong District: Geelong Agricultural Show results and prizewinners 1868 and 1874
• Geelong District: Grapevine compensation lists
• Geelong District: various entries from Victoria Government gazettes – additions

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

Don’t forget to check out your ancestors in the Geelong & District Database.  Good luck with your research!

One MILLION … and still going

What a milestone … One MILLION records in the Geelong & District Database.  To be more specific – 1,005,265!  And of course, there’s plenty more where they came from.

This is what’s been added to reach that milestone:

• Geelong City Council: WWII Servicemen and women enlistments – 2,429 entries [more added, only the “L”s to go]
• Church Records: Marriages [Parent] – 19,306 entries [fathers done, mothers and witnesses yet to come]
• Church Records: Burials [Spouse] – 546 [up-to-date for all burials]
• Church Records: Burials [Parent] – 10,082 [fathers, mothers and mothers with maiden names done – up-to-date for all burials]

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

Don’t forget to check out your ancestors in the Geelong & District Database.  Good luck with your research!

Sometimes you just have to eat your words!

These are the words I used in my last blog just 5 days ago … Yippeeeeeeeeeeee!!  We now have more than 900,000 entries in our database and heading in the right direction to reach that magic 1,000,000 mark.

No – I didn’t “mis-count” or “over-calculate” – I just had one of those flashes when I said to myself … You idiot, why didn’t you think of that before?  I’m talking about the number of records in the Geelong & District Database.  My crazy dream was reaching 1,000,000 entries by the end of 2012 – but that was before I had that flash.

I had a few more indexes to add – one of the fun things you can do when you have some holidays – and I thought we would get the total close to 910,000.

So what was the flash?  I realised that in one of my large databases I had a couple of extra columns of names that weren’t in the Geelong & District Database – and they should be!  I’m talking about the wonderful GDHA Church Records database available at select societies in our region – the societies who have contributed to the GDHA database.  These extra columns of names need some manipulating / tidying up as they were not the key indexes, so some still need a lot of work before they can be added to the Geelong & District Database but some were reasonably easy.  What I’m talking about are the parents, and potentially witnesses and sponsors in the GDHA baptisms, marriages and burials.  The records will NOT be added as a whole but the parents etc. will become new entries showing the name, year, place and event – i.e. Baptisms [Parent].  So they won’t be matched to the child, but will give you enough information to evaluate following up on the records further.

So, we now have 986,027 entries to search free online in the Geelong & District Database!

Now you understand why I have to eat my words?

That’s just 14,000 short of 1,000,000!!!!!

And at the risk of having to eat my words again, I hope to hit 1,000,000 before the end of January.

This is what’s been added since my last blog:

• Geelong District: Schools – pupils and prize winners.  These appeared in the Geelong Times and so far include 906 entries from 1874-1898
• Winchelsea Court of Petty Sessions – 1,082 entries from 1865-1872
• South Barwon Court of Petty Sessions – 212 entries from 1859-60
• Mount Moriac Court of Petty Sessions – 852 entries from 1862-1867
• Birregurra Court of Petty Sessions – 576 entries from 1907-1910
• Higgins Collection – 6412 entries from 1840s-1904.  This is an index to the solicitor’s papers held at the Geelong Heritage Centre.  They’re an amazing collection covering wills, crime files, land transactions and debt cases and most are available on microfilm at the centre.
• Church Records: Baptisms [Parent] – 63,701 entries [fathers only at this stage, mothers and sponsors yet to come]
• Church Records: Marriages [Parent] – 11,058 entries [fathers part done, mothers and witnesses yet to come]

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

As you can see from this and the previous two blogs, we’re trying to include a huge mixture of record types as well as covering all the municipalities in our Geelong & District region.  Apart from our Winchelsea Wonders who I’ve spoken about before we also owe thanks to our PROV Girls and GFHG & GDHA volunteers.

The PROV Girls regularly make the trip up to North Melbourne for a day of focussed work.  One is responsible for photographing pages of registers which can be indexed from the images at home, and the others index directly into their notebook computers from other registers.  As you can imagine it’s quite a logistical exercise pre-ordering the right records for the team and this is all co-ordinated and managed by Pam Jennings who is also the chauffeur for the day – What a team!

In the meantime the GFHG (Geelong Family History Group) and the GDHA (Geelong & District Historical Association) volunteers are working on local newspapers and the huge collection of indexes from the GFHG Library.  Most of this library now resides at the Bellarine Historical Society at Drysdale and to search for a name in these 100s of indexes would take a week – thanks to the GFHG we are progressively indexing / transcribing these to go into our online database.

What a team effort – thankyou to EVERYONE involved!  By the way, the new target for the end of 2012 should be something like 1,250,000!!!

If you’ve got this far, you’d better scurry for the Geelong & District Database and search for YOUR ancestors!  HAVE FUN!!!

MORE reasons to celebrate: 900,000+ entries in our database!

Yippeeeeeeeeeeee!!  We now have more than 900,000 entries in our database and heading in the right direction to reach that magic 1,000,000 mark.

It’s amazing what you can get done when you have a few days off – like sort out some of the indexes done by our terrific volunteers and manipulate them to import into the Geelong & District Database.

Since the last blog – and that was only one and a half days ago – this is what’s been added:

• Portarlington: Mechanic’s Institute petition in 1860 [VPRS 5357]
• Murroon: names on Parish plan
• Geelong Times: Deaths at Geelong Hospital 1882-83 – there aren’t heaps but what’s there is pure quality – wish they were my ancestors!  Details include age; date of admission; date of death; cause of death; former abode; native place; arrival date and ship
• Drysdale: Police receipt book
• Victoria: Geelong Advertiser list of Ayrshire emigrants of 1854
• Colac Shire: Rate Books 1863-64
• Barrabool Shire: Obituary Book 1972-77
• Drysdale: Racing Club Minute Book 1874-1895
• Drysdale: Court Suitors Book 1862-1864
• Geelong City Council: WWII Servicemen and women enlistments
• Geelong Decorating Company: employees at William Nash’s Paint and Paper Store
• Geelong Branch Australian Womens National League: members in 1906
• Additions to Geelong Court of Insolvency records

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

Updating those stats from the last blog – as most of these indexes were done in 2011 – they just had to wait until I had a bit more free time to work on them and get them in the database!

• 9th January 2011 – 785,753 entries
• 2nd January 2012 – 901,013 entries
• 115,260 entries added to the Geelong & District Database in 2011

I think we can all celebrate that sort of effort.  I hope you find YOUR ancestors in this great collection.

What a wonderful team of volunteers – THANK YOU!

Reasons to celebrate: more indexes added!

To celebrate the New Year, more indexes have been added to the Geelong & District Database.

Recent indexes added:

• Murroon State School No. 940: students [VPRS 4123]
• Travancore passengers: Geelong Advertiser 1849
• Duneed / Mt Moriac Police Occurences Book [Police Department Geelong District]
• Geelong & District Surnames of Interest
• Remembering our Anzacs [publication]
• The Queenscliffe Lifeboat : Wreck and Rescue at Port Phillip Heads [publication]
• St Mary’s, Geelong (RC) baptisms 1867-1872
• Leigh Shire Voters Roll 1872

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

Looking back at what our local volunteers have achieved in 2011:

• 9th January 2011 – 785,753 entries
• 1st January 2012 – 890,126 entries
• 104,373 entries added to the Geelong & District Database in 2011

If we managed the same number of entries in 2012, we would end up with 994,499 entries by 1st January 2013 – that’s rather scary!

Mind you, 2011 was an amazingly productive year so we should probably set out target at 950,000 entries by the start of 2013.

Then again we could be really rash and aim for 1,000,000 or is that just plain silly?

Oh who cares – our team of volunteers have been absolutely amazing and simply deserve a huge THANK YOU and WELL DONE!