David Scott, 140 Pitt Street, Sydney [Photographer]

Successor of William Bradley, 140 Pitt Street Sydney

As mentioned in an earlier post William Bradley, 140 Pitt Street, Sydney [Photographer], David Scott purchased William Bradley's photographic business in November 1869. The business continues to be advertised under the name of William Bradley until 1871 when David Scott's name starts to appear.

Source: Advertising. (1872, January 3). The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), p. 1.
Retrieved September 2, 2013, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13250118

By 1878, advertisements list Scott as being a Prize Medalist at the Sydney Exhibitions for the years 1872, 1873, 1875 and 1877. Also listed is that he is now by appointment to His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh. An example advert for the Australian Town and Country Journal during 1878 follows.

Advertising. (1878, October 26). Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney, NSW : 1870 - 1907), p. 8.
Retrieved November 23, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article70595984

David Scott is still listed at 140 Pitt Street in January 1880.

Advertising. (1880, January 10). The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), p. 2.
Retrieved November 23, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13450135

New premises at 96 Pitt Street

By March 1880, advertisements for David Scott start to appear with new premises located at 96 Pitt Street in Sydney.

Advertising. (1880, March 20). The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), p. 15.
Retrieved November 23, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article28385576

Trove Tuesday: Auld Lang Syne

Well...I was bound to end up writing about it sometime. Now is as good a time as any...

Have you ever tried to search for something, only to find your search results inundated with another, rather common name or phrase? Whilst researching the family name of AULD, invariably the top search results that come up is "Auld Lang Syne"!

Searching Trove for newspaper articles is no different...but how do you remove these unwanted words/phrases from your results?

Auld Lang Syne in print

Scottish poet Robert Byrnes is attributed with writing the poem in 1788. The National Library of Scotland has a digitised copy of Auld Lang Syne available to view online which was printed between 1787 and 1803 in the James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum.

When did it all start in Australia?

Using a fantastic tool called QueryPic (created by Tim Sherratt (@wragge) from WraggeLabs Emporium) we can analyse and plot the frequency of the use of the phrase. Querypic has the ability to search and analyse both Australian and New Zealand newspapers, but for the purpose of this exercise I restricted the search to just Australia. The results follow:

QueryPic results showing proportion of total results per year - http://dhistory.org/querypic/cx/ 

The peak above of 2,620 articles containing the phrase was printed in the year 1900, seeing out the old century, and represents 0.17% of all articles printed in that year

QueryPic results showing number of articles per year - http://dhistory.org/querypic/cx/ 

Looking at the total number of articles per year containing the phrase, the above graph highlights the year 1900 (as mentioned above in the proportions graph), but also highlights in the second peak the year 1915. In this year, a total of 2,696 articles contained the phrase, with the year on either side also recording above 2,300 articles.

It should also be noted that these results are based on the "Auld Lang Syne" phrase that has been successfully converted and/or corrected to text from the printed material in the Trove database. Results do not include the phrase if it has been incorrectly converted to text by Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software and has not been successfully corrected yet by volunteers/users.

How do you remove these phrases from your Trove results

Using the Advanced Search option within Trove you just simply place the unwanted word/s or phrase (enclosed within quotes) in the Without these words field. An alternative, and the option I tend to use most, is to type the following into the main Search field :

auld NOT "Auld Lang Syne"

Happy searching...

Trove Tuesday: Intestate files

Born in country New South Wales to Scottish parents David Auld and Lockhart Agnes Paterson on 1 December 1857, Allan Henderson Auld died intestate 7 February 1923.

Details of Allan Auld's estate were found in the Supreme Court of New South Wales notices published in The Sydney Morning Herald which are searchable on Trove.

Source: Advertising. (1923, July 9). The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), p. 3.
Retrieved July 8, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16079108

Trove Tuesday: Auld Ebenezer Kirk

It has been a while since my last post as my wife and I have had a trip to the UK and been busy with coding, redesign and relaunch of the Claim a Convict website. To add to this we have started up a transcription project for the Claim a Convict website so that we can add new convicts to the site.

...plus in what spare time I have, I have been playing around with the Trove API.

Trove API

The Hawkesbury Library Service undertook a two year digitisation project of the Hawkesbury newspapers in conjunction with the National Library of Australia. Completed in 2011, these wonderful resources can now be searched as part of the Trove Digitised Newspapers.

The newspapers digitised by the Hawkesbury Library Service include the following titles:

• Australian, Windsor, Richmond & Hawkesbury Advertiser 1873 - 1899
• Hawkesbury Advocate 1899 - 1900
• Hawkesbury Chronicle & Farmers Advocate 1881 - 1888
• Hawkesbury Courier & Agricultural & General Advertiser 1881 - 1888
• Hawkesbury Herald 1902 - 1945
• Windsor & Richmond Gazette 1888 - 1955
• Windsor Express & Richmond Advertiser 1843 - 1844

Individual titles can be searched, or they can all be searched as a collective as part of the whole Trove newspaper collection. But unfortunately searching a subset of titles is not an option. This is were the Trove API comes into itself.

Last month I started playing around with the Trove API and have now made a little website called Hawkesbury Newspapers, which enables the visitor to search the subset of Hawkesbury titles. Although I only just got the basic search feature working, it is interestingly none the less playing around with the Hawkesbury subset.
  

Auld Ebenezer Kirk

Using the basic searching that I have online currently, I searched for "Auld"...as I do. The following article on the Auld Ebenezer Kirk of the Hawkesbury stood out, as Ebenezer Church is just up the road.

Celebrating their 118th Anniversary in 1927, the Reverend John Hay Goodlet Auld was in attendance.  

Source: OUR OLDEST CHURCH. (1927, February 4). Windsor and Richmond Gazette (NSW : 1888 - 1954), p. 10. Retrieved April 15, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article85950712

Relaunch of the Claim A Convict website

I have been remiss in my blogging duties over the last month due to a more pressing assignment the relaunch of the Claim A Convict website.

Background

Started by researcher Lesley Uebel, the Claim a Convict website originally went online on 19 August 1998. The site offered other researchers a free service that enabled those researching the same convicts ancestors to contact each other directly by email. Although the site did not include every convict that arrived, the researcher lists provided an invaluable resource to the research community. Unfortunately Lesley fell ill during the second half of 2013, passing away on 20 January 2014.

It was during the later part of 2013 when Lesley's website was no longer active, a small team of individuals set about to get the website back online. With the help of Lesley's husband, Colin Kennedy, and friend, Coralie Hird, the original website files were found and sent onto the new Claim A Convict team of Michelle Nichols and myself. At the beginning of 2014 the data contained on the original website files (created from Word) was converted into a more manageable format and a new SQL database driven interface was designed for the site.

New website URL

The URL for the site that will be launched on Australia Day at 1am is http://claimaconvict.hawkesbury.net.au/.  At the moment the link only shows a countdown to the launch time.

How the website looked this afternoon with the countdown timer

How does this fit into Auld Genealogy?

I had to rack my head around this one as there are no Aulds currently listed, but alas I did find mention of a Robert Auld who was convicted in Edinburgh for 7 years transportation. He apparently arrived into Port Jackson (Sydney) onboard the Susan (1) during 1834.

One of my aims for the new Claim A Convict website is to have a feature so that contributors to the site can assist and help find Lost Convicts...Robert Auld being one of those lost convicts and hence I am nowing blogging as such.

Happy hunting for your convict relatives.

Alston Auld and the Scottish pension list

Alston Auld receives a pension

The following article appeared in the Dundee Courier on 25 April 1907 which lists Alston Auld as being a successful candidate to receive a £13 pension.

Source: Pensions for Aged Scots. (1907, April 25). Dundee Courier, p. 7. Retrieved January 8, 2014, from http://search.findmypast.com.au/bna/viewarticle?id=bl%2f0000164%2f19070425%2f122

A transcript of the article follows:

PENSIONS FOR AGED SCOTS.
At a special court of the Governors of the Royal Scottish Hospital, held for the purpose of electing candidates to fill vacancies in the pension-lists, the following were, at the close of the poll, declared to be the successful candidates:-
£13 PENSIONS.
Catherine Forrester, spinster, aged 65, at Kincardine, 1041 votes.
Catherine Connan, widow (66), Aberdeen, 988.
Henrietta Laing, spinster (68), Leith, 962.
Wm. Mitchell, unmarried (87), New Monkland, 906.
J. F. Mackenzie, spinster (68), Redcastle, 904.
Janet Cowper, spinster (70), Whitburn, 898.
J. L. Sutherland, widow (77), Paisley, 875.
Jas. Meikle, married (72), West Calder, 790.
John Mackenzie, married (72), Ullapool, 649.
Elizabeth Jack, married (69), Rhynie, 643.
Isabella Conlan, widow (55), Darnaway, 624.
Alston Auld, married (65), West Calder, 609.
John Cullen, married (80), Douglas, 597.
L. P. Chisholm, unmarried (77), Jedburgh, 576.
Vacancies in the £18 pensions-lists were filled by the following promotions from the £13 lists:-
Jean Beardwell (78), or Orkney; Elizabeth Conolly (87), Stromness; Mary Gillies (76), Arbroath; Jas. Ewing (77), Glasgow; Annie Grant (74), Inverness; Jessie Tolmie (75), Black Isle; Elizabeth Sutherland (74), Edinburgh; Margaret Smith (67), Aberdeen.

Scottish key dates and background information

• 1574-1845 - Old Scottish Poor Law
• 1845 - Poor Law (Scotland) Act 1845
• 1908 - Old-Age Pensions Act 1908 - the beginning of the modern welfare system in the UK 

There is also a good breakdown of the English Poor Laws that also provides information on UK poor laws.

Trove Tuesday: Follow the clues and paper trail...then recheck

Searching for something to blog about for today's Trove Tuesday, I came across the following death notice:

DEATHS.
AULD.-At his mother's residence, Pound-street, on 21st December, 1883, JULIAN CHARLES FREDERICK AULD, eldest son of the late ROBERT T. AULD, surgeon, in the 29th year of his age ; esteemed and regretted by all who knew him.

Source: Family Notices. (1883, December 22). Clarence and Richmond Examiner and New England Advertiser (Grafton, NSW : 1859 - 1889), p. 4. Retrieved January 7, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article62141584

From the information contained in my Auld database, I knew Julian Charles Frederick Auld was the first of six children born to Dr. Robert Thomas Auld and Mary Webb Clarke. Using the information contained in the death notice we get several clues that Julain's father has previously passed. A previous search of Trove and blog post on Trove Tuesday: Dr Robert Thomas Auld reveals that both Julian and his father passed away at the family residence in Pound Street, Grafton, NSW ...within two weeks of each other - Dr. Auld having passed away on 8 December.

Although I had previously found a small obituary for Dr. Robert Thomas Auld, another search of the online newspapers came up with a rather extensive obituary that was printed in the local Grafton newspaper, the Clarence and Richmond Examiner and New England Advertiser. The obituary follows:

Source: Clarence & Richmond Examiner. (1883, December 18). Clarence and Richmond Examiner and New England Advertiser (Grafton, NSW : 1859 - 1889), p. 2. Retrieved January 7, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article62141560

Even if you think you have found everything there is to find, always remember to recheck and perform another search. New newspapers are being adding constantly to the vault of treasures that Trove offers the researcher. You never know what may turn up!