Find My Past Subscription Price Comparison

kira0030

I use both Ancestry and Find My Past because they use different search algorithms so that what you can’t find on one site you may find on the other and they also have some unique data sets too.

My Find My Past subscription is due so I checked the subscription prices for findmypast.com.au, findmypast.com and findmypast.co.uk.  Here are the results for a twelve month worldwide subscription.

FindMyPast.co.uk
£129.50 converts to AU $223.28

FindMyPast.com.au
$199.50

FindMyPast.com
US $59.99 converts to AU $64.11 (and a small currency conversion fee depending on how you pay the sub)

For the last two years it has been cheaper to buy the FindMyPast.com twelve month world subscription. I’m really not sure why there is such a price difference. Does anyone have any ideas? I hope this helps others to make the choice between the subscriptions available.

fmp
Thanks for this comment from Judy Webster, “I don’t know the answer to your question, but… anyone who is undecided about FindMyPast may be interested to know that they can get 50% off a one-month ‘Britain subscription’ (£5 instead of the usual £9.95) if they join during September 2014. The link for this offer is on the Discounts and Freebies page at www.judywebster.com.au/specials.html

A Lost Photo Album

kira0030

I found an old photo album at a market today and on looking through it realised that my Mum may know the family pictured therein.  I bought it with the hope of returning it to a family member.

2014-09-07 19.54.16

The album belonged to a Miss Elizabeth Rachel Cornell and Mum and my Grandma both worked for Cornell’s a well known South Australian business.  The album contains a guest list for Elizabeth’s 21st birthday as well as photos, telegrams, letters and newspaper articles.  The party was held on 10 Aug 1945.  Elizabeth’s parents were Frederick William and Marjorie Cornell nee Fox.

2014-09-07 19.55.15

 

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This newspaper article which is in the photo album I also found on Trove http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/130238256

If any Cornell descendants would like this album please leave a comment with your email address and we can make arrangements for its return.  I’ll also be persuing any leads my Mum and Stepfather can give me.

 

The Mystery of Mary’s Mother

kira0030

There are three daughters of Edward George Clerk for whom I haven’t been able to ascertain the mother.  They are Mary Emily Clerk 1838, Susan Bundarra Clerk 1839 and Anna Maria Clerk 1840. From what I’ve been able to determine they were all born in New South Wales, Australia.

Edward George Clerk was born in Somerset, England in 1813.  He married Anna Maria Stafford on 9 Apr 1835 in Winscombe, Somerset, England.  I found out, in researching this blog post, that Anna and Edward set out for Tasmania, Australia on 19 Jul 1835 but tragically Anna died at sea on 31 Jul 1835.  They had been married for only three months.   I had initially thought that Anna Maria might have been Mary, Susan and Anna’s mother.  Here is a partial timeline of Edward’s life.EdwardGeorgeClerkTimeline

AnnaMariaClerkProbate

I haven’t been able to find birth registrations for any of the three sisters.  In Mary Emily’s marriage notice it states that her father is E.G. Clerk Esq. of Clerkness, Bundarra.  (Clerkness is the name of the family property in New South Wales) but it doesn’t list her mother.   I obtained a transcription of her marriage certificate but her mother’s name wasn’t listed.

HuxhamClerkMarriage

1859 ‘Family Notices.’, The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser (NSW : 1843 – 1893), 24 May, p. 3, viewed 20 August, 2014, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article18637746

In two documents I found reference to Mary Clerk visiting or living at Clerkness, Bundarra in 1839/41.  They are Clerkness Station and a memoir by Susan Bundarra Young (formerly Buchanan, nee Clerk).  I bought a copy of Susan’s reminiscences from the Royal Australian Historical Society.

So this leads me back to the date of Edward George Clerk’s marriage to Mary Ann West.  I know plenty of children are born outside marriage but in this case I don’t think it is so with Susan and others stating that Mary Ann Clerk was at Clerkness from around 1839.

My conclusion is that there was an error made in recording the date of Mary Ann West and Edward George Clerk’s marriage or a very early transcription error which has been copied many times over the years.  I now believe that they married in 1837 not 47 and I will be ordering the original marriage certificate to verify this.  I started out this blog post with a question but now I have a possible answer!!  I’ll post the result when I receive the marriage certificate.  Although this is part of a tree I’m working on for someone else I’m enjoying it almost as much as researching my own family as the stories and people are all fascinating to me.

Linux In Genealogy

kira0030

I’ve been using the Linux operating system on my desktop pcs and laptops since about 2002. I used to administer Linux systems and a network as well as building computers and teaching computing using the Linux operating system. Now I’m more of an ‘end user’.  There are many flavours of Linux operating system.  I’m currently using the Debian Linux distribution but will soon be changing to Linux Mint.  There are several benefits to using Linux on your computers but the main ones I like are that it is Free and Open Source Software, people don’t tend to write viruses or spyware for it, and it works well on older hardware.  I don’t have to keep updating my hardware to work with the latest operating system version which means less E-waste going into landfill.

I haven’t heard much about genealogists using Linux lately so I did some searching this morning to see what people are saying about it and how popular it is these days.  At first what I found was mostly outdated but with a few changes of search terms I got better results.  The bulk of what I found was about genealogy software programs and no real discussion on the benefits of using Linux or Free and Open Source software in genealogy.

I found this article from May this year Six of the Best Free Linux Family History Software Programs which provides a good review of the genealogy software programs available.

linux_genealogy_software_in_computer_software

I’ve tried using the GRAMPS program recommended in the article above and I find it difficult and non-intuitive to use for data entry.  I do like some of the reports and search functionality in it so I do use it sometimes.  I use ancestry.com to create my family tree and collaborate with my sister and I upload the GEDCOM to PHPGedView on my own website so that more people can find it.  Naturally there is a lot of focus on genealogy software for Linux, Windows and Mac and other software programs aren’t discussed as much.  I wrote this blog post in 2012 Software I Use For Genealogy and the only things which have changed since then are that I rarely use Picasa now and I use the Chrome for Linux web browser.

Would you consider changing your computer operating system?  Are you dependant on one particular operating system to run your gadgets and computing peripherals?  What do you think of the almost monopoly that Microsoft has in the computer operating system department?  I am interested to hear people’s responses and start some conversation on using a different computer operating system.

tux-vs-msn