One can’t rush these things

It’s close to three years since I reported on the progress of my Surname Study, CurryAus.

My major problem is that there are too many Currys in Australia for me to manage an in-depth study. I should have chosen Pusell, my grandmother’s maiden name for my study.

During those three years I have collected and been given a heap of data that has not yet been added to my database in Family Historian. While I love that platform I am going to try something new. I will export a gedcom from Family Historian and import it into RootsMagic.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

While Family Historian is my preferred platform I have been playing around with RootsMagic for another project. It’s ability to get hints from Familysearch, FindMyPast and MyHeritage and sync with a backup tree and gather hints from Ancestry has helped enormously with that project.

My long term goal is to load the CurryAus data onto the internet and make it publicly accessible. At the moment I am thinking of using TNG that I use for my family site … but who knows what the future will bring?

Ten Months of Tinkering

It’s ten months since I recorded my progress with the CurryAus surname study. I last wrote about my experiment with the import of my data from Family Historian into the Legacy software program so that I could use the feature in Legacy to connect with and share and extract data with Familysearch. This was quite an easy process that took me a couple of weeks.

However, when I looked at the messiness and inconsistencies of some of the data I had imported from Familysearch , I realised the folly of my ways. I experimented by exporting a gedcom from Legacy and importing it into a new Family Historian project but, on examination, found that the amount of effort required to clean up the imported data was just too great.

I shelved the Legacy experiment and retreated to my Family Historian project realising that the best solution for me was to search the Familysearch Family Tree for Australian Currys, check the sources attached to those records and then manually enter selected records into my database.

Apart from the foray into Familysearch I have been tinkering with my database adding extra entries to my CurryAus Resource Progress spreadsheet which I wrote about here. Keeping a record of my progress on this spreadsheet saves me from repeating searches and allows me to relieve the tedium of concentrating on one resource at a time.

While I have added many extra entries the CurryAus database hasn’t grown enormously because when I confirm that two entries belong to one person I am able to merge those entries. There are currently 9794 entries in the database but, as I merge more entries this will likely remain static.

I enjoy tinkering with the CurryAus project and taking a break from my other geneactivities to try and link up the various Curry family groups in Australia. I hope, in the future, to be able to post the CurryAus data online.

Legacy

Although I love Family Historian, the software I use to manage the CurryAus data I am frustrated that copying data from other programs into Family Historian requires a lot of data entry or copying and pasting from a second screen.

I was recently helping the host in a Zoom session about Legacy Family Tree Software, I only had a passing interest in this product as I was satisfied with Family Historian. Curiosity made me pay attention, my interest was piqued when I saw how the direct connection to share and extract data with Familysearch was demonstrated. I hadn’t yet looked for CurryAus people on Familysearch, it was in the too hard basket! Legacy seemed worth further investigation.

So, being someone whose mantra is Just do it, I purchased a copy of the Legacy program, imported my CurryAus gedcom into it and started playing. I found Legacy to be a program rich in features but difficult to navigate, I soldiered on.

It wasn’t too difficult to work out how to check my records against Familysearch, it’s just a matter of clicking on little arrows in the respective databases to move data from one to another and all in one screen view. One does not have to share data that is considered unreliable but only take what is reasonable.

Single screen view to exchange data

Both CurryAus and Familysearch benefit from this exercise. I like that this is a give and take activity,  I am growing my database and at the same time contributing to Familysearch by adding data and merging many duplicated in their database as I go along.

I know I will be importing problems from Familysearch with name variations but especially with the location fields, these can be fixed with the tools in Legacy (when I get to know them better). For an outlay of around $AU50 I got more than my money’s worth.

Concurrently with searching Familysearch I am merging duplicates and correcting errors in Legacy. One day I will have a cleaner database!

It’s early days in my matching as I have only checked 8.8% of my Currys in the Familysearch database. What will I do when this number gets to 100%? Will I go back to Family Historian or will I stick with Legacy Family Tree?  I will stay with Family Historian for my own  GeniAus family database.

What to do with CurryAus is a decision for another day. 

Avoiding the Keyboard

I grew up in the years when one had a secretary to do one’s typing so I never really learnt how to touchtype. I am a hunter and pecker on the keyboard. With loads of data entry to do for my CurryAus study I came up with an idea to avoid some typing.

I created a new private tree on Ancestry and uploaded a gedcom with just a few Curry records to kickstart my process. While I have several private and public trees on my ancestry account I have never done any data entry directly into an Ancestry  tree so this was something new for me.

My idea was to do a broad search for the Last Name : Curry and Place your ancestor might have lived : Australia. My Collection Focus was Australia. It was to be a fishing trip with no real method, this was a test run. Of course with such a broad search I was overwhelmed with hits. There are so many Currys in Australia!

I had no intention of looking at all of these records. All Ancestry Trees in my results were ignored, I concentrated on Records. I added several unrelated Curry records after I worked out how to add a new person. I was eventually after hints, those shaky green leaves. My thoughts being that I could avoid keyboarding if I added people from the Ancestry Records and then at back and waited for the hints to appear.

When the shaky green leaves came on I could once again ignore the Ancestry Trees and add those hints that I thought valid and worthwhile to my records. I tried to avid individuals that I knew were in my Master list in Family Historian because I wanted new people to add to that list.

After several hours down the rabbit hole I downloaded the gedcom of my new tree from Ancestry and merged it into my  Family Historian tree.

Will I do this again? Definitely – I avoided lots of typing and ended up with about 300 new Currys in my database with multiple life events with sources firmly attached. Of course there were a number of duplicates that I have to merge into existing records in Family Historian but there is no typing involved for this.

What will I do differently? I will start a new tree so it is easy to produce a gedcom with just the new results for merging into my Master list in Family Historian. I may create an Ancestry tree concentrating on people on Electoral Rolls or Births, Deaths or Marriages but as I practice Tangential Genealogy I may just follow a whim.

AHPRA

I’m a little disorganised with my approach to the CurryAus study. If I find a new useful resource I go off on a tangent and see if I can find any Curry references in that resource.

Although I suggest this as a good resource for general research I had never checked AHPRA, The Australian Health Protection Agency Register of Practioners, for details of my Currys.

I dipped into this resource today to see who I could find. Firstly I put Curry into the Family Name field of the search box and was rewarded with 50 results in alphabetical order. I got a message telling me that 50 was the maximum number of hits displayed and, that if I wanted more, I should narrow my search. That I did.

AHPRA Search Box

I narrowed by State/Territory and found these Currys:

• ACT – 3
• NSW – 35
• Queensland – 10
• South Australia – 4
• Tasmania – 2
• Victoria – 18
• Western Australia – 4

I was able to tie two of the results to people in my database

Among those in the full list were 50 nurses,  1 dentist, 2 occupational therapists, 2 pharmacists and 6 medical practitioners.

As I really should be doing other things I added AHPRA to my CurryAus Resource Progress spreadsheet to be checked, noted what I had done and went back to the tasks at hand.

CurryAus Resource Progress. Green indicates completed

News from Queensland

The Queensland Government has announced a new Family History Research Service that makes it easier for family historians to search the Queensland indexes to historical records online. This new search engine went live today at 8.30am.  The new service is person centric, so one only has to perform one search to get birth, death and marriage results in one list. One can then order record images and certificates directly from the results.

This is fantastic for those conducting Surname Studies. I just entered the search term Curry and I was rewarded with 1684 results. As I won’t be ordering any certificates at this time I did not test out the ordering facility.

Results for Curry Search

What I liked is that the results I have seen so far include the actual dates of the events rather than just the year of registration thus making it easier to compare the results with other sources.

Up until now I had not made a concerted effort to search the Queensland Indexes – I must have known that a new search was coming!!

Now I just need to find the time to enter all this information into my database.

Trove Tuesday – Curry Images

This week I limited my Curry search on Trove to Australian Content and Availability:Online and looked at the results for Pictures, Photos and Objects.  I got a few hits some of which were for food. Of the relevant images some are still in copyright so I can only share links to these. Each of these images provided information for my CurryAus database.

Les Curry Monument http://monumentaustralia.org.au/australian_monument/display/70042

Picture of Mal Curry
http://trove.nla.gov.au/version/181953882

Source:  State Library of Victoria

Headstone of Margaret Curry
http://www.photosau.com.au/penrith/scripts/ExtSearch.asp?SearchTerm=G00003

 

Back on Deck

2017 so far hasn’t been a good year for CurryAus. Apart from spending a few hours hunting Currys in the Family History Library after Rootstech I haven’t done much work on my database. Straight after Rootstech I set off on a five week holidat with my husband so family history matters and Curry hunting took a back seat.

Yesterday I had a few hours to kill in the city so I headed to The State Library of New South Wales and spent a few hours using their free wifi to add a few more names to my database.

I managed to go through the Daily Telegraph Tributes, Obituaries and Funeral Notices where I found quite a number of Curry entries,  I was able to add all the Curry data I found there to my database so I am feeling rather chuffed.

Trove Tuesday – CurryAus list

I fear that I need to be like a cat and have nine lives. I have so much Curry material. One of the places I store things that I find on my Australian Currys is in a list on Trove.

Our national treasure, Trove, provides access to newspaper articles, photos, websites etc. Genealogists mostly make use of the newspaper archive but searches of the database can bring up other relevant items like music scores and voice recordings.

When I am playing in  Trove I sometimes don’t have time to deal with things I find. As a registered user I have the ability to tag items I find and create lists for later review. These can be easily accessed from one’s user profile or by a Trove search. Even a Google search will find Trove lists.

I have saved over 300 articles in my CurryAus list. I am not sure that I will ever get through them in my lifetime but at least they are preserved as a collection for anyone in the future who may be interested in the Curry surname.

See my CurryAus list here: http://trove.nla.gov.au/list?id=66583

 

Trove Tuesday – Mal Curry

One of my fave activities is Troveing. This morning I thought I’d do a  Trove search for Curry limited to Pictures, photos, objects  and Australian Content.

One of the first images I found was of Mal Curry who was an employee of the Melbourne Telegraph Office, 1949. I am so pleased that the image by Bob Kent in the SLV collection is out of copyrght so I can share it.Now I have a photo I need to find out more about Mal.

Catalogue Record from State Library of Victoria

• Title:
  Mal Curry [picture].
• Author/Creator: Bob Kent 1909?- compiler.
• Date: 1949]
• Description: 1 photographic print : gelatin silver ; 4 x 6 cm.
• Copyright status: This work is out of copyright
• Terms of use: No copyright restrictions apply.
• Identifier(s): Accession no(s) H2010.120/23
• Subjects: Curry, Mal; Portrait photographs; Gelatin silver prints
• Notes: Title inscribed beneath image.
  Date inscribed on note inside verso of album cover.
  Printed on album page above images: Suprs Grade 1.
• Contents/Summary: Bust, full face.
• Source/Donor: Gift; Mr. William Morrow; 2010.
• Is part of: In collection: Employees of the Melbourne Telegraph Office, 1949
• Link to digitised item: http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/89518
• Link to this record: http://search.slv.vic.gov.au/MAIN:Everything:SLV_VOYAGER2100338