On Thursday July 15, 2010, Marie Hickey and myself, attended the first NZ Family History Fair in Hamilton, representing the Auckland Research Centre, Auckland City Libraries as exhibitors. It was organised by the New Zealand Society of Genealogists, who the Auckland Research Centre has a close relationship with.

We left about lunchtime so that we could get to Hamilton early enough to do some professional visits to Waikato University and the LDS Family History Research Centre.

Waikato University have some lovelyinhouse databases, of interest to the family or local historian - many of which can be accessed only onsite. Its worth remembering, that you don't have to be a student at the University to access their library.

On Friday morning, we visited Hamilton Public Library, who have a very good Waikato focussed family history collection. One of the things we were surprised and happy about, was the fact that they had Intentions to Marry 1880 to 1956 for the Hamilton district available. Well worth the visit if you have Waikato ancestors.

The Fair started on Saturday morning with seminars being run throughout the day over both days of the weekend. Marie and I alternated between looking after the stand and attending seminars.

We had probably the best position right at the entrance to the exhibition hall and right next door to the main NZSG stand; which meant we attracted a lot of exhibitors.

Our stand was decorated with posters and flyers of our Family History events, and leaflets promoting our Family History collections, as well as a few promoting the Governor Grey Special Collection and the Library as a whole. We had a Powerpoint presentation running on loop on the datashow, which showed off our digital library and what sort of information could be found within, and again, slides of our posters about our FH events.

The datashow proved very successful at pulling people into the stand, and allowed us the opportunity of being able to do live demonstrations on the other laptop of how to search on our digital library. On Saturday morning alone, I managed to find a total of SIX ancestors for researchers - immensely satisfying!

The NZSG seminars were of good quality - they covered all different topics and were relevant for the beginner right through to the more experienced researcher. As I often present to the public these days, it was of interest to me to watch the different presenting styles. Of value, too, was getting insight and inspiration of what might prove useful for future family history lunchtime sessions.

For me, personally, the most useful tip I learned was to use a different colour folder, box etc, for each branch of my family tree, and to start a new folder for each member of the family once they got married. That way you can tell at a glance which branch they belong to. Useful, as my personal research has got so large, its become quite hard to manage and so a major re-filing event is a head for me, when I get a chance.

The Fair closed at 5pm on Sunday - and was extremely successful. Well in excess of 1000 people visited the Fair over the two days, and its hoped that it will be held again in two to three years time.

Can't wait for the next one!

Happy hunting
Seonaid

People often don't realise that there is a difference between genealogists and family historians.

In the simplest terms, genealogists collect names and dates for a family tree and family historians flesh out the family trees, adding leaves and flowers by researching information about individuals on the family tree.

Like most people I started out as a genealogist, collecting names and dates until I started to hit brickwalls. Once the adrenalin rush, of discovering new ancestors started to calm down a bit - I started to become curious about them.

What did they do for a living? Alot of occupations don't exist today. Improvements in technology has meant that seventy per cent of jobs that existed 50 years ago no longer exist today.

Gorgeous books like Mastercrafts and The River Hobbler's Apprentice: Memories of Working the Severn and Wye, can give you an excellent insight into what your ancestors did for a living.

Books like the "Tracing Your" series can give you clues to finding more information out about your Railway, Pauper, Labour Movement,Criminal and Air Force Ancestors.

Those researching ancestors around the 1830s period could look for their ancestors in the Machine Breakers series of books. Machine Breakers were "Luddites", who's protests about the mechanisation of their jobs in the textile industry culminated in their breaking up of machines during the 1830s riots.

These "Machine Breakers" are well documented in books by county, with names and often family details, of those that were arrested, tried and often transported. Newly arrived we have:

Hampshire Machine Breakers
Kent Machine Breakers (vol. 1 and vol 2)
Buckinghamshire Machine Breakers
Essex Machine Breakers
Gloucestershire Machine Breakers
Dorset Machine Breakers

What was life like for them? Invaluable books that can tell you about historical events like the newly arrived On the Home Front: Melbourne in Wartime: 1939-1945 and The Great War Handbook.From East End to Land's End will tell you about the evacuation of Jews' Free School, London, to Mousehole, Cornwall during World War Two. There is even a list of the children's names in the book.

The Auckland Research Centre has many such books purchased specifically to assist you in putting the leaves on the trees. Online indexes and databases, CD-Roms, microfiche and microfilms are excellent resources for dates and names - they provide the branches and twigs.

But don't forget the books . . . they are your leaves and flowers.

Hope to see some of you at the Family History fair in Hamilton this weekend: http://nzfhf2010.dnserver.net.nz

I have had a number of enquiries about my previous blog, where I have mentioned what a boon Facebook has been to me, in uniting me with lost or unknown family members, and assisting me in my own family history research.

So this is a brief tutorial on how to get your family interest group page started.

I have called mine for example:

Genealogy: HARVEY, POTTLE, SNOW, NOEL/NEWELL - NEWFOUNDLAND

and

Genealogy: Alexander McKENZIE (b Feb 1865) m Georgina SWANSON (b Apr 1869): ABERDEEN 

This means that your group will be able to be found by someone doing a search, but they won't be able to view anything other than brief details about the group, and they won't be able to post. If they want to join then they will have to request an invite.