My passion for genealogy started in 1991 when my cousin Grant and I spent a adrenaline fuelled day in the State Library of Victoria acting like crazies on a microfilm machine. This came to a head on Christmas Day in 2009 when I presented everyone with a 50 page book of the Cleary Family History. I am so proud of it.
I worked on it off and on over the years. In 2008 it got out of control and I spent many nights up until 4am trying to finish the project. It was so exciting that I literally could not sleep! Anyone doing genealogy will tell you – it is majorly addictive. With the Victorian Births Deaths and Marriages supplying so much information online it is way too easy to spend hundreds of dollars simply buying… certificates.
I found out more and more about my nana’s side which got me sidetracked and then I would pick up stuff on the Telford Family tree (my mum’s side) that I was also doing at the same time but have not yet put together in book form.
When I moved over here, the National Library of Australia digistized some major newspaper collections. This allowed me to find even more – so I picked it up again. Mainly working during my lunch hour at work, I slowly wrote the history as best that I could and I was so happy with the end result. I got it color printed and bound and it was the best Christmas present I could ever give!
Fast forward to now… I thought I was finished but using some new resources and with so many Irish records slowly being added to databases, it looks like the Cleary side is going to keep on going. The first Cleary in my tree, was always a dead end. Then at 1am on a random Saturday morning a few weeks ago I think I have found what may be his baptism record from Tipperary.
Saying that, since the Cleary one was ‘finished’ this meant moving back on to the Telford tree that Grant is also still working on. He has recently called upon the assitance of the genealogy office in Co. Cavan. When I visited there in 1999, they were unable to help me find any further information over the few days I was there… now with the amount of databases always growing, hopefully they can help unblock our dead end. The other complex part of the Telford research is this tree has a major branch of ancestors in Lebanon. Another challenge! Saying that, here has always been a lot more family information and photos on the Telford side than I got on the Cleary side which has made it easier.
Just to note, if I was just needing names to fill branches, the tree would not have taken this long to put together. In my research I like to find out what the person did, where they lived, what they were like, where they worked, what their house looked like, how they died, where they were buried. I want to find out about the person.. rather than just a name. Doing it this way and finding out as much as possible about them is what gets me hooked. For my great-grandfather, who was a Prisoner of War, this then led me down a path of researching his battallion, the others who were prisoners with him and amazingly, a copy of a diary that was kept by one of the other soldiers in his battalion that was handed over to the National Library. I also the the same with any ships that I come across that the person had been on – I end up researching the ship to find anything that I can. It goes on and on but is so exciting!
So here comes my rant. The show Who do you think you are? I find this show totally infuriating. A celebrity simply arrives at some office, talks to some people and in the space of an hour they have their whole family history done for them. They get certificates, meet people, everything just ‘pops up’ on the computer.. and it is all in a nice little package. I know what the show is trying to do but it is the one show that I wish I could love but I just can’t. This is only because they make the whole process just seem so easy and uncomplicated and this drives me crazy as it is anything but that. I can’t enjoy it because I know what it is really like. Saying that, Cousin Grant loves it. I guess for me, it is total jealousy that they can get all of that done so easily. It really isn’t fair… but then again I have been lucky. With all of the frustration that such a project brings, it has also bought me many hours of enjoyment.
So much so, I am now starting the Blevins Family History. Here we go!