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A Genealogical Map and a Surprise it has Revealed

When I was contemplating going over my genealogical research from scratch, the prospect of starting this blog was one of the reasons I decided to go ahead. The first time around, I made sure I mentioned any interesting discoveries to family members, but then that would be that, it would all be soon forgotten. Yes, the information would be contained on my online ancestry family tree, but no-one would be 'reading' that.  So now, going back over the tree branch by branch, as I come across all the good bits again I put them in writing here. The other bonus of this is that I get a head start in compiling and writing the full family history: last year's diploma saw me write one branch of my mother's family history, but there are seven other branches to write about in Australia alone.

Fairly soon after I started, I realised I had the opportunity to create something else that I had wished I'd done the first time. And that was to create a map upon which I could plot all the major places that feature in the tree. Predominantly this would be people's residential addresses over time (largely from the extensive electoral roll records available on ancestry.com), but I have added a few other locations such as churches where people were married and cemeteries where people are buried - the possibilities are endless of course.

When I first had the idea many years ago I thought I might mark up an old Melway I had lying around, but clearly the way to go these days was to create my own 'Google map'. And so it is that the map is being developed as I go: those who have been reading the blog would know that lately I have been working on Dad's uncles and aunts. Already I am seeing a heavy concentration in the Essendon area, where many of the siblings and cousins remained very close to each other.

Aside from this, there have been other benefits as well:

  • Discovering relatives such as cousins sharing the same house - this is not always immediately obvious when you are entering information into an online tree one person at a time. Not every address you see is going to stick in your head by the time you come to enter that address again for a second person. 
  • Realising just how close people from different branches of the tree lived to each other. Perhaps they even had dealings with each other without knowing they were distantly related, or perhaps the connections between their lines might still have been years away.  
  • Establishing great coincidences. For example one of the places Mum lived in Melbourne before marrying Dad was 32 Lewisham Road, Windsor - I think it might even have been the last one, which meant she would have been there in 1949. While entering information for Dad's uncle Cecil Lawrence Phelan, lo and behold his address just five years later in 1954 was also 32 Lewisham Rd, Windsor. Given that Cecil was not an uncle Dad appears to have had a lot to do with, I can only imagine this was just a coincidence, and I wonder if those involved may not have even been aware of it at the time.
This project will be ongoing for some time to come, and I'm looking forward to seeing what other surprises this Google map might reveal! If anyone in the family would like to view the map, I am happy to share it with you, just let me know. :) 

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