Thank you to all of my readers

I am delighted to find so many readers worldwide who seek out my books on writing and publishing family history.  Thank you.  I hope to continue to work with and support how family history can be presented, written and published  through my workshops, talks and books.  Please contact me if you have questions, ideas or just want to say helllo!

There is nothing as joyous as the enthusiasm and delight of the young

Citing Sources when writing your family history

I wrote my book Citing Sources: a manual for family historians  in 2013.  It remains one of the more popular topics in my workshops and when I receive queries via email.

It is the case that one of the more difficult tasks we do as family historians is working our way through the plethora of sources available today and then work out  how to reference these in our work.

However,  there are general principles that are useful to keep in mind which, if you keep these in mind, will make your job as a historian so much easier and more professional:

• Consistency - whatever citation method you choose stay with that choice throughout your book/writing.

• Sufficient information - okay so that letter/document/story/newspaper report you found seems to be in  a complicated  place which almost defies commonsense referencing.  Keep in mind that your task as a writer and a family historian is to include as much information in your footnote, endnote or other reference so that your reader will be able to find it, do further research  and check for further information about it.  In other words, 'my mother's bible' is not sufficient as a reference.  If your mother's bible is a reference, then you might do something like the following:
• The Holy Bible, The Stereotype Edition, printed Dublin by Richard Coyne, 1847, a family bible of the Kyle family found in the papers of Kathleen Kirkpatrick, in possession of the author. 

• Acknowledgement - the inclusion of a footnote/reference is to tell the reader where you have included, text, either verbatim or in a paraphrased form, from another author's work  Citing these sources is your obligation as an author to ensure your writing is professional and free from plagiarised material.  There is much to find online about plagiarism, the following is a beginning:   What is plagiarism?  This website provides the following succinct note:

All of the following are considered plagiarism:

                   ·         turning in someone else's work as your own

·         copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit

·         failing to put a quotation in quotation marks

·         giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation

·         changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit

·         copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not..

https://events.mosman.nsw.gov.au/events/3617/creative-characters-and-blazing-sunsets-writing-family-history

Creative Characters and Blazing Sunsets. Writing Family History

These days, with a plethora of information available on the internet, it’s become easy to collect your family history, find names, dates, and the places and anecdotes unique to your family history.

The challenge comes in having the confidence to shape this information, to build a narrative and write a family history that is credible, riveting and professional. Dr. Noeline Kyle will focus on using specific strategies to help you shape your family stories. Looking at ways of weaving memoir, biography and local history to enrich a family tale and ensure it is both an interesting read and a professional family history.

Mosman Library is one of my favourite libraries where local studies is valued, supported and highlighted in the collection. I have presented several workshops here in the past and look forward to catching up with the librarians and participants on 2 May.  

It is always a pleasure to listen to the family and local historians of our communities, to learn from them and share their amazing research and writing journey with them. 

Investigate the laws, conventions and social customs of relevant past eras

Investigate the laws, conventions and social customs of relevant past eras, this is another useful strategy for finding the sources and writing about your female ancestors.

There is no doubt that becoming more knowledgeable about the laws, social conventions and customs of the era your women lived in is important. Unless you think about the broader historical context of women’s lives in various historical periods and study the laws and conventions therein you will not know what to do when the same old problem emerges: the names of women are missing and how we construct their history will remain limited and bare.

See my website www.writingfamilyhistory.com.au for lists of books and other resources for researching and writing about women.

 A good example of this is  how women fared in relation to property after marriage, their rights to care for and be with their children, separation and divorce, and domestic violence. More about this in a later post.

My Aunt Wilhelmein Florence Kyle and Ernest Chaffey on their wedding day in 1927, with Wilhelmein's dress in a  suitably shortened 1920s style, and her headdress that could from a  Downtown Abbey set!!  Wilhelmein was born in 1907, the eldest child of my paternal Grandfather Billy Kyle and Florence Maude Matilda Rose.  Wilhelmein died in a car accident in 1951. 

Image Gallery

I put this together to remember some of the wonderful people who have been on this life and writing family history journey since the 1970s..

Image Gallery

Publishing conference

https://www.bookpublishingconference.com.au/index.html

Use original records

Original records usually have much more detailed information, are less likely to have errors, and are more likely to be located in the context of the times. Original cemetery headstones, certificates, probate data and property records will yield information not available elsewhere. For women ancestors such a strategy is especially important as we try to locate names and construct a fuller biography. Finding a photograph or a biography of an individual on the internet is usually only a first step in the research process. Your next step is to locate the original source/s from which the web story or images were drawn and then access these directly. The National Library of Australia, the British Library, Library of Congress, state libraries and archives will have leads to find an original source and you should continue your search here. Inter-library loans, digitised records and online library resources will help you gain access to the documents once you have located the original source. Use birth, death and marriage certificates to map out a woman’s life, and research backwards and forwards across these documents to find more information.

Mary Holland is one of 7 convicts in my family.  She was tried at Surrey in  and sentenced in 1794 with three other women Mary Mattingly, Elizabeth Evett and Elizabeth Robinson.  She was transported to Botany Bay arriving in 1796 on the French-built convict ship the Indispensable. Mary Holland began her life in Sydney in a de facto relationship with a Marine Corp soldier Lachlan Ross.  She had two children and was deserted by Ross in the early 1800s. Mary began another de facto relationship with the convict Joseph Butler and their son Sylvester's daughter married into the Rose family linking Mary Holland to my father's family history.

Writing about Mary Holland   illustrates how the stories of convicts, crime and criminality are vexed and complex things, their stories enmeshed with and mired in the strictures of social class, gender, continuing injustice and grinding poverty. Mary Holland was caught in a time of history when the seething masses of poor in England had to fight, literally, for their bread. That she stole bed clothing most likely from the beds she was then making is ironic and poignant. But that she survived to be a grandmother and perhaps see her children prosper[i] suggests there is a lasting and positive legacy to link us to her long, tough and largely forgotten life.

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[i] I have yet to find the exact record of Mary Holland’s death but according to the convict musters she was still alive when aged in her 50s.