U3A course: Opening the Door to Family History

Topics

1.        Starting from nothing; Certificates (and informants)

2.        Creating an overview; Family tree software, shipping lists, cemeteries

3.        Convicts and colonials; Newspapers (Trove), State records, British newspapers

4.        Family migration; Goldmining; The effect of a death on a family

5.        Short articles and longer stories; travel and family history

6.        Migrants: a special case; National Archives; genealogy societies

Session 1: Files for downloading

Template: Profiles of couples (new file, 7/10/25): Word document so you can amend layout.

Five-generations chart

Alternative five-generations chart

Slides for Session 1

Session 2: Materials for download

(New file, updated 7/10/25) Search Guide (Contains link to new Irish records (virtual treasury), and land titles)

Software for family history (Note: common providers, beyond Ancestry and MyHeritage)

Cousins defined (A useful map of the various terms used)

Session 3: Resources

These files cover a few topics. First is a brief introduction to researching family history at the State Library

Next: Irish history via the Ulster Historical Foundation (Northern Ireland, but remembering that this occasionally will include records from elsewhere in Ireland): Ulster Historical Foundation

And: Notes from seminar at State Library about researching the history of your house: six files in all. The first file is an overview of the contents. These files are the hand-out from the seminar.

Overview

File 1 File 2 File 3 File 4 File 5