In January 2023, on the bicentenary of my Taylor ancestors’ arrival in Van Diemen's Land, I wrote about their voyage to Hobart on the Princess Charlotte. I have since found out much more. My fifth great-grandparents George Taylor (1758–1828) and Mary Taylor née Low (1768–1850), farmers from Balvaird near Abernethy in Perthshire, emigrated with six of their eight children. George and three of his sons—Robert, David, and George—had applied to the Colonial Office in December 1821 for permission to settle in Van Diemen's Land.

In an earlier post about immigration I looked at the 53 overseas-born ancestors of our children who came to Australia. Most of them arrived in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, with 49 of the 53 here in Australia by the end of the 1850s. What place did our family have in the story of immigration to Australia?

Our children have 53 ancestors who immigrated to Australia. Most arrived during the nineteenth century. Fan chart of my children's ancestors showing immigrants highlighted in dark green. Those highlighted in purple came to Australia but returned home. We don't know anything about the immigration of John Clark and Hannah Clark nee Sline highlighted in olive green.

A few days ago one of my cousins named Alan left a comment on a post I wrote in 2021. It was about my fourth great grandfather, a missionary William Mitchell. Alan wondered if I knew when William's father, William Owen Mitchell, died. His comment prompted me to revisit my research, and I now have an answer. William Owen Mitchell died on 16 November 1809, not in Dublin, as the family story would have it, but in Albany, New York.

In 2015 I wrote about the military career of my great-grandfather, Fritz Hermann Boltz (1879–1954). Fritz had been a career soldier before the First World War. He joined the 35th Fusilier Regiment, Füsilier-Regiment Prinz Heinrich von Preußen (Brandenburgisches) Nr. 35, in October 1899 and rose through the ranks to Vizefeldwebel, or senior sergeant. He left the army at the end of 1912, aged 33, and returned to civilian life in Berlin.

I recently came across an idea from Amanda Cook in the Facebook group Genealogy and Artificial Intelligence (AI) of using ChatGPT to generate a five-generation birthplace chart that uses all 31 positions in a pedigree to look for geographical patterns. The important point is not to tidy the data by combining repeated places. If three ancestors were born in Adelaide, Adelaide appears three times.

In Australia and New Zealand August is celebrated as National Family History Month. My contribution is to look back 100 years to 1926 and see what my children's ancestors were doing. In 1926 31 of my children's ancestors were living in Victoria, South Australia, and Germany. They belonged to families that were, for the most part, still entirely unconnected; marriages in the decades ahead would eventually bring their descendants together.

For several years I have been trying to find out more about my third great-grandfather, Wilhelm Bamberg, born at Gollwitz, who married Caroline Wilhelmine Friederike Wolter at Götz on 13 February 1843. After his marriage, the groom is consistently known simply as Wilhelm Bamberg, not by his full name Gottlieb Friedrich Wilhelm. His children's baptisms, for example, use only Wilhelm.

A year ago I wrote a post with the title "Progress using Artificial Intelligence". Clearly tools such as ChatGPT, Google Translate and Transkribus were making historical records more accessible, but I was concerned about their limitations. ChatGPT in particular had a habit of "hallucinating"—producing convincing but incorrect results. I argued that the use of AI had the potential to improve family history research, but I was not yet fully convinced.

My great granduncle Friedrich August Bolz was born on August 12, 1870 in Götz, Kreis Zauch-Belzig, Kurfürstentum Brandenburg, Preußen, Deutsches Reich, son of Johann August Bolz (1839–1916), a Kutscher (coachman), and Friederike Wilhelmine Bamberg (1844–1926). August was the oldest surviving son of four, two of whom died in infancy. Friedrich August Bolz entered the Royal Prussian Hussar Regiment named "Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, King of Hungary" (Schleswig-Holstein) No.

For several years now I have measured the completeness of our family tree by calculating how many of our children's ancestors I can identify. Looking back ten generations my children Peter and Charlotte have 1,023 possible ancestors (in practice fewer, with so-called 'pedigree collapse', where the same ancestor appears more than once.) When I made this calculation in 2018 I could name only 319 ancestors (31%).

On Friday 8 June 1917, the pupils of Lamplough State School marked Arbor Day by creating a lasting memorial to former pupils and teachers serving in the First World War. As the Avoca Mail reported:…

Today is the 222nd wedding anniversary of my 5th great grandmother Dorothy Tobin nee Skelly formerly Duff. Dorothy Skelly was born in 1768 in Yarm, Yorkshire to Gordon Skelly and Dorothy nee Harrison. She was the middle child of three children. Gordon Skelly was a naval officer and drowned in June 1771 when Dorothy was three years old. I believe Dorothy and her siblings grew up at Yarm.

Champion Lodge, formerly known as Woodlands, in Great Totham near Maldon, Essex, was built about 1877 for the local businessman Edward Hammond Bentall (1814-1898) as a residence for one of his sons. The architect was Henry Cowell Boyes (1846-1900). Bentall’s plans changed and he sold the house. The Essex County Standard, etc., 17 August 1878, Page 1. The…

One of my 4th great grandfathers was a British naval officer, Rowland Mainwaring (1782 – 1862).  Rowland Mainwaring kept a diary all his life. He published several books based on his diary. One of these was ‘The First Five Years of My Married Life‘ (1853), a record of his activities afloat and of his domestic life. The book includes a detailed account of 1815, his last year of active service.

My second-great grand aunt Viola Julia Constantia Champion de Crespigny was born on 25 November 1855 at Daisy Hill (present-day Amherst). She was fourth of the five children of Philip and Charlotte Crespigny. At the time of Viola's birth Philip was a gold warden, responsible for enforcing mining regulations and settling disputes on the goldfields. For Viola’s eighth birthday, in November 1863, the Crespigny family and some guests had a picnic at…

The A to Z Blogging Challenge is a friendly annual event where participants post every day of April (except Sundays), matching each of the 26 posts to a letter of the alphabet. This year, 2026, marked my thirteenth year taking part. My theme was the Victorian goldfields. Both my ancestors and my husband Greg’s were connected to the diggings as miners and administrators.

On 26 November 1917 my great grand uncle, Philip Champion de Crespigny (1879--1918), enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force.  He was aged 38 years 5 months, a journalist, married with four children. His brother, my great grandfather Constantine Trent, and the two half-brothers, Frank and Vivian, who were eligible were already serving.

Samuel Thomas Gill (1818–1880) was born in Somerset, England, the son of a Baptist minister, and educated in Plymouth. Trained partly by his father, he worked in London as a draftsman and silhouette artist before emigrating with his parents and siblings to South Australia in 1839. By early 1840 he had opened a studio in Adelaide, offering portraits of people and animals and producing sketches suitable for sending back to Britain.

Gold on the Victorian diggings was weighed by the troy system, the standard for precious metals. The smallest troy unit was the grain, nominally based on the weight of a single cereal seed. Then came the pennyweight (24 grains), the troy ounce (20 pennyweights), and the troy pound (12 ounces). A troy ounce is equal to31.1 grams, heavier than the more familiar…

In the nineteenth century a great many miners on the Victorian goldfields were Chinese. They called the diggings ‘Xin Jin Shan’ (新 金 山), New Gold Mountain. The Californian gold rush, in decline by the 1850s, became known as ‘Jiu Jin Shan’ (舊 金 山), Old Gold Mountain. The number of Chinese miners in the Colony of Victoria was highest in 1857, when it was estimated there were 36,237.

In Australia from early European settlement to the time of the gold rushes there were many more men than women. In 1867 William Henry Archer (1825–1909), Registrar-General of the Colony of Victoria, published The progress of Victoria : a statistical essay. On page 7 he looked at the growth of the population in Victoria and the proportion of females to males.

Johann Joseph Eugene von Guérard (17 November 1811 – 17 April 1901) was an Austrian-born artist, active in Australia from 1852 until 1882. Eugene von Guerard was born in Vienna, Austria. His father was a painter of miniatures at the court of Emperor Francis I of Austria. Eugene toured Italy with his father from 1826, and between 1830 and 1832 they lived in Rome.

Before the gold rushes to Australia there was a rush to California in 1848. The California gold rush (1848–1855) began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. Sutter's Mill was a water-powered sawmill on the bank of the South Fork American River in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in California. The gold was found by…

Temporary housing in Melbourne and on the goldfields was in tents. Melbourne Canvas Town In November 1852 a canvas town was established south of the Yarra near Princes Bridge in Melbourne. It accommodated newly arrived immigrants who had nowhere to stay. Canvas Town, Emerald Hill, Sth. Yarra, 1854. Watercolour painting by Raymond Lindsay.

Following separation from New South Wales education in Victoria was provided by two separate bodies. The Denominational School Board oversaw state-funded religious schools, while the National School Board (later the Board of Education) provided secular instruction. On the eve of the gold rush there were around 70 denominational schools and just six national schools operating across the colony. In 1851 when gold was discovered in Victoria many quit their jobs to try their luck on the goldfields.

By the late 1850s easily-found gold was beginning to give out. Shallow alluvial deposits that had drawn thousands to the Victorian gold fields were becoming harder to find. Quartz is one of the most common minerals of the Earth's crust. Most quartz veins do not carry gold, but there are reefs of quartz that contain gold, many in Victoria. Gold-quartz hydrothermal vein (Maryland, USA)

The first police force in Victoria comprised the constabulary attached to the Police Magistrates, the first District Constable being appointed in September 1836. From 1837 to 1853, in addition to the local District and Rural Constabulary, there were a number of separate police forces, including the  Melbourne City Police  Border Police Mounted Police Water Police Native Police Gold Escort  Goldfields Police…

In 1867 William Henry Archer (1825–1909), Registrar-General of the Colony of Victoria, published The progress of Victoria : a statistical essay. From page 19 the statistics concern occupations. A table of occupations for 1854-61 gives the percentage proportions of the following broad classes: Governmental, Professional, and Trading Classes   Manufacturing and Labouring Classes   Gold Mining Class   Pastoral and Agricultural Classes  

In late 1861 Richard Daintree, a field surveyor with the Victorian Geological Survey photographed the diggings at Navarre, south of St Arnaud and northwest of Avoca. Daintree's photograph is a well-known and widely reproduced photograph of Victorian goldfields mining clearly showing a windlass in operation, timbered shafts, and a dense tent settlement. Windlasses were used for hauling ore up a shaft.

The first gold rush in Australia began in May 1851 after prospector Edward Hargraves with others claimed to have discovered payable gold near Orange, New South Wales, at a site called Ophir. Hargreaves managed to publicise the find before authorities could control the response. It was too late to ban the digging of gold. As an alternative to declaring marital law or the government mining the gold itself, the colonial government decided to regulate mining.

In 1987 Denis Strangman, a member of the Avoca and District Historical Society, published an article about the 1859-1860 Lamplough gold rush. First published in Familia Ulster Genealogical Review, Strangman's article has been republished on the Society’s website. Denis Strangman’s great grandfather, William Downing Strangman, born 1831 in County Cork was a Lamplough neighbour of Greg’s great great grandparents…

In the last decades of the nineteenth century gold was discovered in Western Australia. Among the rushes were: 1885 "Kimberley gold rush" near Halls Creek 1887 "Yilgarn gold rush" near Southern Cross 1891 "Murchison gold rush" near Cue 1892 gold was found at Coolgardie. 1893 gold was found at Kalgoorlie Victoria newspapers reported the Western Australian finds. Avoca Mail…

James Curtis (1826–1901) was a Ballarat pioneer and one of the city’s more notable citizens. My husband Greg wrote a guest blog post about him in 2015. James Curtis James Curtis was born in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, England. He trained as a compositor (a typesetter). In April 1849 he sailed as a steerage passenger to South Australia on the emigrant ship…

"Battle of Inkermann - Arrival of Bosquet's division" by Adolphe Bayot (1855)From Wikimedia Commons The Victorian gold rushes, which began in 1851, coincided with the Crimean War (1853–1856). With patriotic fervour miners and settlers named new townships, gold leads, and geographical features after the battlefields and heroes of the war.  Newspapers reported the conflict with enthusiasm. For example:

In the first decades of the gold rushes hospitals were established on the goldfields. The Maryborough and Amherst hospital admission records are intact, and from time to time family historians have found them very useful in their research. Maryborough Maryborough Hospital opened in 1857. Maryborough Hospital 1857, painting by William TibbitsState Library of Victoria Accession No : H84.296/7

In 1851, when the first diggers arrived on the Mount Alexander goldfield near Castlemaine, it was said that nuggets could be picked up without even digging. When this ran out fossickers then looked for alluvial gold in creeks and rivers or deposited in silt on river banks and flats. They used pans, sluice boxes, and cradles to separate this gold from the dirt.

My husband’s family has a connection with the mining hamlet of Homebush in the goldfields of central Victoria; just under 120 miles north-west of Melbourne; 50 miles north of Ballarat (where I live); and six miles north-east of the town of Avoca. Four Mile Flat, later known as Homebush, was first settled in 1854 following a rush to a rich claim nearby. 

In April 1852 while searching for stray horses Joseph Crook found a gold nugget a few miles north-west of present-day Bendigo. Within a short while 20,000 diggers had rushed to the district. Eaglehawk was a particularly wealthy goldfield. Joseph Anderson Panton, Assistant Gold Commissioner at Kangaroo Gully nearby, wrote that the upper part of Eaglehawk Gully was ‘the richest alluvial ever discovered’.  

The artist Samuel Thomas Gill loved dogs, and they often appeared in his sketches of life on the goldfields. Dogs were useful on the diggings; they could keep you warm at night and guard your tent while you were off prospecting. "Fossicking" by S. T. Gill

Goldfields miners did not work on Sunday, which was widely observed as a day of rest and worship. Most miners were Christian; many of them attended religious services. These were initially held in the open air. As the diggings grew church buildings began to be erected. In 1852 an Englishwoman, Ellen Sturmer, later Mrs Charles Clacy, travelled to the goldfields of Victoria with her brother.

Within months of the Colony of Victoria separating from the colony of New South Wales in 1851, gold was discovered near Ballarat in the Central Highlands 110 km (68 miles) north-west of Melbourne. Within days of the announcement of the discovery of gold, a rush began, bringing thousands of prospectors to the Yarrowee Valley, which became known as the Ballarat diggings.

Amherst, site of a former gold-rush town of that name, is 180 kilometres northwest of Melbourne. In 1849 gold was discovered there by a shepherd, Thomas Chapman, on the Glenmona Run. He sold some of his find to a Melbourne jeweller named Brentani. On 31 January 1849 the Melbourne Argus published a special edition with news of the discovery.

by Rafe de Crespigny Continuing the journey from Australia to England in 1954. For the previous instalment see 1954 Naples to Amsterdam Part 2 We travelled by bus from Innsbruck through Salzburg to Munich; and the first thing to notice was the bomb damage. I had seen a few scars in Naples, but this was quite different. Like most German cities, Munich had been heavily bombed in the last months of the war, and now, almost ten years later, there were still streets of buildings with nothing but a façade and a skeleton framework.

2026 will be my thirteenth year of the ‘Blogging from A to Z April Challenge‘, where participants post  twenty-six times, a letter a day for every day of the month except Sundays. This year I will be writing about the gold fields of central Victoria. Many of my and my husband's ancestors were involved in the gold rushes of the 1850s.

by Rafe de Crespigny Continuing the journey from Australia to England in 1954. For the previous instalment see 1954 Naples to Amsterdam Part 1 One thing we did before leaving Rome was visit the American Express office and collect our mail. At that time, of course, letters were the main form of communication – no email or fax, and international telephone calls were extremely expensive.

By Rafe de Crespigny Continuing the journey from Australia to England in 1954. For the previous instalment see Betting on sea horses When the  Oronsay docked at Naples, passengers leaving the ship were received into an ocean terminal. A substantial concrete hall, constructed in the 1930s by the government of Mussolini, it was very different to the open dockside with sloping gangways we had met at previous ports.

Eliza Hale, daughter of Jasper Hale and Mary Nelson, was born in 1844 in Brighton, Victoria. In 1865 she married a miner named George Crowhurst. They had nine children, three born in the Avoca dist…

This month, February 2026, I have been blogging about the Chinese diggers of the Avoca district. Tens of thousands of Chinese joined in the mid-nineteenth century rush for gold, but when it ran out…

By Rafe de Crespigny Orient Line postcard of the Oronsay On 7 July 1954, at the age of eighteen, I boarded the Oronsay at Adelaide for passage to Europe with my mother. I had left school at the end of the previous year and had been accepted by Clare College at Cambridge University for the academic year beginning in October. There were entrance examinations, but I suspect that I owed my acceptance more to the references my headmaster gave to colleagues in England than to those results; it would be a great deal more difficult now.