Follow Friday - An accumulation of my weekly research - 4

Time is what we want most, but... what we use worst.

William Penn

Yes, this is me to a "T".  Grand plans but they always seem to fall to the wayside.  It is a couple of weeks since I shared my weekly research finds.  One area that I have spent considerable time on has been setting up my Evernote  account and as I have out lined in my blog on Evernote I must report it has been rewarding.

As for my other research, I have been sidetracked a little by an email from a lady who is researching the Rushworth Family from Yorkshire and Lancashire.  This is a branch of my husbands family tree and goes back to George Rushworth (1801-1884) and his wife Martha Halstead (1805-1845). My husbands great great grandmother was their daughter Elizabeth Rushworth (1841-1947). The Rushworths lived in the towns of Colne, Barnoldswick, Spotsland, Burnley and Stacksteads, Lancashire. It is so exciting when someone contacts you and you find a whole new source of information and photos connected to your tree. 

To assist her with her research I sent a list of research sites that I had found useful and interesting for family tree research in these areas.  On the off chance they may be of interest to other researchers here is some of the sites that I have found useful.

Lancashire Family History and Heraldary Society, http://www.lfhhs.org.uk/index.htm

UKBDM (UK Birth, Deaths and Marriages), http://www.ukbmd.org.uk/

Manchester and Lancashire Family History Society, http://mlfhs.org.uk/index.php

GENUKI Lancashire Site, http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/LAN/

Lancashire Family History Societies, http://www.ancestor-search.info/FHS-Lancashire.htm

Lancashire Archives, http://www.lancashire.gov.uk/corporate/web/?siteid=4528&pageid=30539&e=e

Lancashire's Criminal Past, http://lancashirehistory.wordpress.com/

A Vision of Britian Through Time, http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/index.jsp

The Barnoldswick Historical Society,  http://www.barnoldswickhistorysociety.co.uk/welcome.html

Burnley a Town among the Lanchashire Pennine Hills, http://www.jacknadin2.50megs.com/index.html

The Lancashire Lantern (great source for photos), http://lanternimages.lancashire.gov.uk/

Colne, http://www.pendle.net/colne/

The History of Colne, http://www.colne.towntalk.co.uk/about/history

These links are only the tip of the iceberg.  This is an area that I am very interested in and if anyone has any other resources they would like to share with me that have information on Lancashire especially between 1800-early 1900's I would greatly appreciated it.

Tuesday’s Tip - Evernote and Family Tree Research

This week I made a concerted effort to familiarise myself with some of the features of the App Evernote.

As most of my family will agree, I am not good at taking my time to read instructions and generally just jump straight in, often missing some of the basic and vital tips.  So this time I, started carefully, by first watching the short introductory video on how to get started http://evernote.com/video/

Then I went to their How to Get Started page  and made my way through each step, testing each application. These steps provided information on installation, creating an account, creating your first entry, adding an images, synchronising with your phone, laptop etc, saving web content.  All pretty basic you might say, however, after a week of playing around with Evernote, I think you need to have it set up properly and understand its applications to really reap the benefits.

I was really impressed with the fact that I could sync with my phone, work and home computer, Ipad, and laptop (yes!! gadget tragic). This means that if I find a interesting article/photo when reading paper on the train, I can take a photo of it with my phone and send to Evernote, or if I am  reading article on Ipad I can send the link with the appropriate "filing tag" for later reference.  Likewise, if I am researching in a library, I can take a photo of article/photo from book or magazine and link to my Evernote account.

My gadgets really came to the fore over the weekend.  I was visiting an Aunt and she had some old family photos and was very loathed to part with them for even a second so that I could scan them. However,  I was able to take a photo of them with my phone and immediately send the pictures to my Evernote account, tagged with the appropriate family names, and a short note of who were in the picture and the approximate date that the picture was taken.

To gain the full benefit I have taken the time to set up NoteBooks (folders) to correspond with the four main branches of my family tree.  Then as I save items, I am tagging them with the Surname within each branch, and description of the item eg "photo", "newspaper article",  "link" , "certificate" etc. 

I have to confirm that my so far my Evernote experience is very positive and I am sure as I become more familiar with it's different applications it will prove to be among my most valuable research tools.

Follow Friday - An accumulation of my weekly research - 3

Only Robinson Crusoe had everything done by Friday - Author Unknown

Oh yes Friday is here again!!! and as usual, there are a lot of things on my to do list that have not been ticked off!! (Hence my opening quote), I am definitely not Robinson Crusoe!!!

I did manage to finish my story on my grandmother Eliza Hazel Palin and have to reflect that writing these short histories of my female ancestors is taking longer that I thought. I have found that I am getting caught up in the stories of their times and the events they lived through.  What is becoming even more obvious to me is the huge holes in their stories, all that information that has been lost along the way.  It makes me wish I had taken more time years ago to gather the stories while there were people around to tell them.  All very well in hindsight you might say.

My biggest project this week has been reading and learning about the online application called Evernote.  So far I am quite impressed with its different applications and plan to write next week on how it can be a useful tool for the genealogy research.  If you are interested in checking this application it can be downloaded from http://evernote.com/.

Earlier this week I did get sidetracked researching one of my husbands great uncles that fought in WWI, so this week I will share with you a few useful sights if you are planning to research a member of your family that fought in the Great War.

The Australian War Memorial; http://www.awm.gov.au/

Role of Honour: Search site http://www.awm.gov.au/research/people/roll_of_honour/

ANZAC's Diaries: http://www.anzacwebsites.com/gallipoli/diaries.htm

The ANZACS: http://www.lighthorse.org.au/

Gallipoli and the Anzacs: http://www.anzacsite.gov.au/

Indigenous Australians at War: http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/collections/exhibitions/iaaw/home.html

The Australian Light Horse Association:  http://www.lighthorse.org.au/

Australian at War: http://www.australiansatwar.gov.au/default.html

National Archives: Army WWI: http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/explore/defence/service-records/army-wwi.aspx

Australian WWI Nurses:
http://www.travel-nurse-information-australia.com/World-War-1-Nurses.html

Evernote - Will this be a useful tool for my genealogy research?

I am sure I am not on my own when it comes to having bits and pieces of their geneaology research in a number of places.  I try very hard to keep the all the pictures, files, useful links, newspaper clippings, emails and letters from other researchers and so on,  in some kind of ordered manner.  However, I must admit the amount coming in is often far greater than the time I have to sort them. 

I am hoping I have a solution.  I am an avid follower of Paul Higgins site on Emergent Futures and receive his monthly news letter which gives a great summary of new innovations and trends.  In the last newsletter there was an interesting article on his Favorite Applications.   The first application was on  Evernote.  Now I have to confess, when I first purchased my Ipad (which I love) I madly downloaded many of the new apps, that were going to make my life easier and fun.  One of these apps was Evernote as it came highly recommended by many.  I did set up an account and after a brief look at its applications, didn't get back to using it.

Now after reading Paul Higgins article, I have decided that this could be the tool that I can use to tie all my research together. 

This tool allows you to store your notes, pictures, develop check lists, maps, clip interesting articles, etc.  Then the bonus is that you can now access all the items you have saved at any time on your Ipad, phone, or laptop. 

I can see great potential for this app with family tree research so I plan to explore this further, and make an effort to learn the full value that this tool has to offer.  Watch this space as I share my progress.