Costa, Emilia. Crowns of glory, tears of blood : the Demerara Slave Rebellion of 1823. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. As a teenager old family letters about the Van Cooten family in Australia triggered my interest in family history. … Continue reading →
In a previous item I referred to the Australian Newspapers on line project. There are a number of other resources that I have encountered in my research. The first I would like to mention is the transcription of Guyana colonial … Continue reading →
The National Library of Australia released in December 2008 the first stage of their project to digitise out of copyright newspapers. They are creating a free online service that will enable full-text searching of newspaper articles. This is a really fantastic project, … Continue reading →
Someone contacted me recently trying to determine if he was connected to the Annie Jones lurking in the Van Cooten tree. The information I had for her was sparse, so the contact prompted me to do a little more research. … Continue reading →
In working out the equivalent value in today’s money of the legacies that Anna Maria left, I found the Measuring Worth site. Very useful for gaining some idea of equivalent values of money, but also a little confusing as the different … Continue reading →
The handwriting in Anna Maria Van Cooten’s will was fairly hard to decipher. The copy I received was a register copy, and thus it was written in a copyist’s script, rather than Anna Maria’s handwriting. There’s a really good site … Continue reading →
I’ve mentioned before that John Van Cooten was a physician. There are a variety of sources of biographical information on medical practitioners in England, but I will focus on those that are relevant to find out more about John Van … Continue reading →
Google Books contains a surprising mine of genealogical information, particularly when searching for a relatively uncommon name like “Van Cooten”. I occasionally check Google Books to see what might pop up. For full text books in the references below, search … Continue reading →
The Genealogical Society of Victoria Library provides members free access to findmypast.com – a commercial site specialising in British family history records, including complete birth, marriage and death records for England and Wales from 1837 to 2004, fully transcribed census … Continue reading →
I referred to FreeBMD in the previous post. FreeBMD is an ongoing project, the aim of which is to transcribe the Civil Registration index of births, marriages and deaths for England and Wales, and to provide free Internet access to … Continue reading →