Author: kira0030

Love Stories Online

kira0030

Ancestry.com.au recently asked their subscribers to send in their ancestors’ love stories.  These have now been posted on the Ancestry blog ‘Sticky Notes’.  Here’s a snippet from one of the stories;

My parents met when they worked for the same firm in Purfleet, Essex in post-war Britain. Their friendship developed when they both played sport for the firm’s sporting club, and subsequently started dating.

In 1952, Dad decided to immigrate to Australia, following his brother who had left England in 1949 with his young bride, to try life in “the lucky country”. Dad and Mum continued corresponding once Dad left England.

In 1953 Dad proposed to Mum by letter. I can only imagine his nervousness while he waited the six weeks for his letter to reach England and then another six weeks for Mum’s reply to reach him.

now you’ll have to go to the Ancestry blog to find out if she said yes.

 

My Great Grandparents Jessie & Charles Wigley

Software I Use For Genealogy

kira0030

I use PHPGedView for my family tree website.
http://www.phpgedview.net/

PhpGedView is a free, collaborative genealogy program that allows you to view and edit your genealogy online. PhpGedView has full editing capabilities, full privacy controls and support linking to multimedia files such as images and videos. Your latest genealogy information is always available online for others to see.

http://www.kyliesgenes.com

 
This blog is made using the WordPress blogging software.
wordpress-logo-notext-rgb
http://wordpress.org/

WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

The core software is built by hundreds of community volunteers, and when you’re ready for more there are thousands of plugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine.

Although I used Blogger for many years I actually find WordPress easier to use as the WordPress dashboard has ALL the configuration settings there in the one place.  It’s also easier to teach new bloggers how to use it too.

 

PicasaPicasa_logo
http://picasa.google.com/

Picasa is an image organizer and image viewer for organizing and editing digital photos, plus an integrated photo-sharing website.

I use Picasa to download the photos from my phone and digital camera, it has some quick and easy photo editing options which I like and I can upload to my Picasaweb albums too. I currently have two Picasaweb albums of headstone photos. If you scroll down the page you’ll see the links to these albums in the right hand side column.

 

I’ve written about Billion Graves and Family Bee before, these are both apps I use on my Android mobile phone.

 

The Gimp

GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages.

I use GIMP for many graphics tasks – repairing old photos, pasting screenshots, editing scanned photos, creating graphics for web pages and this blog, and experimenting with pictures and photos for my art work.

 

PHPGedview, WordPress and The GIMP are all what is known as free and open source software or FOSS.  FOSS is also sometimes called freedom software too.  Users of FOSS are encouraged to use, modify, copy and distribute the software. This differs greatly from proprietary software where it is illegal to do those things with it.  In genealogy, as in all things I do, I want to use software which has similar ethics to mine.  I encourage people to freely share their genealogy knowledge, databases, and time as much as possible.  We are stronger and more effective when we work together!!

Norwood Community Markets

kira0030

This Saturday I will be at the Norwood Community Markets with my crocheted, embellished hats, drink bottle covers, hand painted t-shirts and mobile phone pouches.

Clayton Wesley Church
280 Portrush Rd, Beulah Park, Adelaide, SA – Corner of Portrush Rd and The Parade.
10am to 4pm
Here are some of the hats I’ve been making lately.

Butterfly Wing – needle felting

Needle felted design

Using a variety of yarns

More needle felting

This is quite a funky hat, you can’t see it very well in this picture.

Needle felted leaves

My First Family History Talk

kira0030

I gave my first family history talk to a lovely church friendship group today. The people appeared to enjoy it and they asked good questions as well. I was also able to do some lookups for a lady afterwards and she was amazed by what records there are on the Internet.

Oh Adelaide

kira0030

You can’t go anywhere in Adelaide without seeing someone you know or someone seeing you! Yesterday I got a message from my cousin asking if I attended the Australasian Genealogy and Heraldry Congress a couple of weeks ago because she thought there was a photo of me in her work newsletter.

Pic of me at genealogy congress

Me at Genealogy Congress

That’s me sitting in the front row wearing a bright orangey brown skirt and brown top. Kelly works for the Public Trustee’s office. They had a stall at the Congress and their genealogy officer Suzanne Maiden gave a talk. This is one of the photos which was taken to mark that occasion. Thanks for sending it to me, Kelly!!

Solving A Mystery

kira0030

My German ancestors the Burings came to South Australia on the Princess Louise in 1849. On various passenger lists are Friedrich Adolph & Caroline Buring and their three children. On the passenger list from the South Australian Maritime Museum a G. Buring is also listed.

Passenger List for the Princess Louise

Gustav Buring in Adelaide in October 1850, The South Australian

Last weekend I was looking through the National Archives, with my cousin, for another Buring and came across naturalisation papers for a Gustav Buring. In this document he states that he is thirty three years old, a native of Berlin, Prussia and that he came to Australia on the Princess Louise in 1849 just as my ancestors did. The mysterious G. Buring on the passenger list is Gustav Buring.

Naturalisation Papers For Gustav Buring

Naturalisation Papers For Gustav Buring

I can’t quite read both pages of the naturalisation papers. I’ve printed them out, I’ve tried adjusting them to black and white in a graphics editor and reading them on screen but not much luck. If anyone has any other ideas of how to read these pages please let me know.

From what I’ve found out Gustav and Friedrich Adolph went to the Victorian gold fields between 1854 and 1856. It is said that Friedrich became sick and returned to Adelaide where he died in 1856. Gustav’s application for naturalisation was done in Sandhurst, Victoria in 1857. He died in Victoria in 1880. I’m still looking for more information to fill in the gaps. Was Gustav Buring Friedrich’s brother? If he was then this may help to identify their parents in Germany!! Yay!!