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WAGGA WAGGA & DISTRICT FAMILY HISTORY SOCIETY Murrumbidgee Ancestor - October 2006 A Computer and a Credit Card: Researching family history from home Les Hetherington A recent discovery—new to me, though perhaps not to more advanced searchers after Scottish ancestors— has highlighted the way world wide web is revolutionizing family history research, and how not so hidebound and dusty institutions are taking advantage of it. It was in relation to a brother of Wagga’s famous daughter, Dame Mary Gilmore. Born Mary Cameron, she had two brothers who went to the Boer War, one as a soldier and the other as a war correspondent. I had a great deal of information about the soldier—Hugh James—but less about the correspondent, John Alexander. I did know he had written a novel called The Spell of the Bush, had worked as a journalist in the UK and Europe and had for a time been an employee of the British Foreign Service—as Vice-Consul and Consul, in Europe and the United States. But I was otherwise ignorant about his life and family. I had been unable to verify information suggesting John had died in Scotland in 1949: until, that is, I stumbled on ‘Scotland’s People’. ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk is a great website if you are looking for a birth, marriage or death of a Scottish relative. More usefully than its New South Wales equivalent, but in the same way as its Victorian equivalent, not only can you access the index to these records, for a small fee, but you can also obtain an instant electronic version of the original document, for a larger fee. Hence the need to pair the computer with a credit card. In the case of John Alexander Cameron, I found he had died in Glasgow on 3 March 1949. The index record provided his name, year, district and city of death, gender, age and a reference number. The full record provided the following information: 1949 No
232 Among a number of interesting facts provided by this record, was the notation under his date of death that it had occurred at ‘0h 50m PM’ - that is, I presume, ten minutes to one in the afternoon. Also of interest were his two marriages, and that his occupation was given as ‘journalist (retired)’ rather than diplomat or civil servant. His reported foreign service did not rate a mention, it seems. The value of these types of resources is the access they give to information that was previously only available at the site where it was held. To obtain Scottish birth, marriage and death records you needed to go there yourself, or find someone who would go there for you, either out of love or for money. Now you can access these records in full from an Australian study, twenty-four hours a day. Compared to the cost previously, a few pounds, even when converted into dollars, is a small price to pay. We can only hope that all such records will be equally available soon!
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