Victorian passenger lists on Ancestry

Victorian shipping lists have recently been added to Ancestry. Assisted and Unassisted Passenger Lists, 1839–1923.

This data collection contains unassisted and assisted immigrant passenger lists to Victoria, Australia for various years between 1852 and 1923. The ships were coming from UK ports, New Zealand ports, and other foreign ports. “Unassisted immigrants” are individuals whose passages were not subsidized or paid for by another person or through another agency.

Ancestry can be accessed via the library website on all PCs in all branch libraries.

Queensland Indexes

Search Queensland historical indexes online.
Birth Records (1829 - 1914)
Death Records (1829 - 1964)
Marriage Records (1829 - 1934)

Resources for Forgotten Australians

Forgotten Australians Apology today. The Forgotten Australians Website provides Resources and more to assist people to find out more.

Over 10,000 Visitors

Yarra Plenty Genealogy has had over 10,000 visitors since it was quietly launched on the YPRL home page in late 2006, soon after its sister blog Yarra Plenty Library Local History

It was recently recommended as a resource to the Central Victoria Rootsweb mailing list, so it certainly reaches far more that the devoted family history researchers we know here at YPRL.

I would love to hear from regular readers of this newsletter. Where are you from? How is your research going? What are your brick walls and have you had any recent sucesses in your research?

Preserving Photos

Unknown Lady
Who is this woman with hair of grey?
What was she like back in her day?
Did she love to sing, cook or sew?
What were her dreams? Did they come true?
Someone, somewhere at one time knew.
She was somebody's mother and somebody's wife,
But no-one bothered to document her life.
Photos bridge the distance between then and now.
If we take the time to record who, what, when and how.

Click goes the years

Preserving your family history and photos

Family History Fest winds up at Diamond Valley Library for 2009 on Wednesday 11 November. Preserving your photos and thier story is your legacy for future generations. Come along and learn about how to preserve your unique memories and records.

Some useful websites include:

Clarke Historical Library preservation

Caring for Photographs

Archival Leaflet series

NLA Australian Newspapers - article display

Following the 1939 Victorian Bushfires, "The Argus" newspaper set up "The Argus bushfire relief fund".
Some names are mentioned in this lengthy list:
January 18 1939:
NLA Australian Newspapers - article display:

Is your relative here?

You can read more about the 1939 fires at:
The Age

ABC Online documentary

NSW Passenger lists

Great to see even more new Australian content on the Ancestry database.

New South Wales, Departing Crew and Passenger Lists, 1816-1825

This data collection contains muster rolls, ship’s company lists and passenger lists for ships departing from New South Wales (often from Sydney) between December 1816 and 1825. The records consist of both pre-printed and handwritten forms.