CAFHOV Family History Day 2021

This year CAFHOV hosted their Family History Day on Sunday 22 August 2021 via Zoom. The event featured guest speaker, Dr Janis Wilton OAM, with talks from CAFHOV members Diane Gillespie, Dr Kristy Love, Leigh McKinnon, Laraine Ramsey and Anne Thorogood.

Presentation recordings

Dr Janis Wilton – Sharing Family Memories

Janis spoke about the key things that you need to consider when planning an oral history interview and raised some of the challenges family historians might encounter in recording oral histories. She also, of course, talked about how valuable and rewarding they can be too!

Janis, a very experienced oral historian, has worked with family and community historians in the Chinese Australian history space having been responsible for the Golden Threads project in rural NSW. For over thirty years Janis taught and researched local, family and applied history at the University of New England (UNE) and is a past president of the International Oral History Association. Now an adjunct associate professor at UNE, she is currently co-curating an exhibition and website, “A Conspicuous Object,” which documents and shares stories about the Maitland Hospital. For more details about her work see https://www.une.edu.au/staff-profiles/hass/jwilton

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Laraine Ramsey – Discovering Andrew Pang ….. revisited

It seems Laraine’s grandfather was theatrically inclined. Laraine would love to know more about that side of his life, but then she would really love to know anything there is to know at all about the ancestor she never knew.

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Dr Kristy Love – Busting Brick Walls: How the FAN Club can help

In 2014, a DNA test taken by Kristy’s mother confirmed that Kristy’s maternal great-grandfather was Chinese. In the absence of close DNA matches, a name, or any documentation at all about her Chinese ancestor, the task of learning more about him seemed impossible until she used Elizabeth Shown Mills’ ‘FAN Club’ method. In her talk, Kristy gave a case study of her use of this method, what she discovered and how it might help your own research. Dr Kristy Love is the owner and lead researcher at Family History Agency.

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Anne Thorogood – Finding my Chinese Connections

Anne spoke about the search for her biological grandfather and discovering her Chinese ancestry and the family descended from that ancestor in addition to discovering other links to the Chinese community. Anne has been very interested in researching family history and finding out about the lives of her ancestors. Anne’s father was adopted, and she always wanted to find out what his background was.

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Diane Gillespie – Buy One, Get Two – A New Chinese Dynasty in Australia

Diane has been researching family history for over 40 years with her attention focused on her
maternal line with convicts and Irish & Scottish free settlers. Diane’s interest in her paternal family history exploded after she met and collaborated with her second cousin, Ray Langtip. It has taken many years of research to unravel the fascinating life and times of her Chinese ancestor.

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Leigh McKinnon – Discovering Early Chinese Communities in the Wimmera with the CEDT Index

The recently online Victorian CEDT Index has opened up further avenues into archival records for Leigh’s project on early Chinese communities in the Wimmera district and Leigh’s presentation gave an overview of some of the stories and images which have become accessible through or have been enriched by CAFHOV’s online index. Leigh is Research Officer at Bendigo’s Golden Dragon Museum.

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