What a very interesting and informative post. There are a number of items that interest me and I am following them up. Regards ----- This is a forwarded message ---------------------------------------- From: "Ailsa Dee" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Received: 14/10/2010 2:11:29 PM Subject: [WIG LIST] Just a thought: A new resource for British & Americanresearchers; & M'Lean / McLean late of Duchra / Dochra's death Like others over the past week, I was inspired by Diana Henry's posting on 6 Oct 2010 to hunt around for James McLean, Normanton Queensland. (Wigtown Free Press dated 29th April 1886: Near Normanton, North Queensland, on March 2nd, James, eldest son of James M'Lean, late of Duchra, aged 41 years.) As Wigslisters, Jan Royal and Betty Telford did, I also searched for Duchra and also for McLean's death notice in old Australian newspapers. The National Library of Australia (NLA) has been digitising our old newspapers, the earliest 1803. Those already digitised are freely available and fully searchable on http://newspapers.nla.gov.au/ using Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Sometimes OCR misreads words in newspapers that are in poor condition, but volunteers are visually correcting the OCR images for the NLA. On the whole, this website is fantastic. Australian genealogists and historians now have a very powerful new tool to use for research. It occurred to me while searching for McLean's death notice that the website might be useful to British, New Zealand and, to a lesser extent, American genealogists, as well as Australian. Because Australia had such a small population in the 19th Century, the locals often got their names in the press, even if it was only to advertise their business. So if you wanted to find out what ever happened to someone from Wigtownshire, for example, who immigrated to Australia, you could try looking for him or her on http://newspapers.nla.gov.au/ by searching for his or her first name+surname. You could also search for his or her name/s + Wigtownshire or name/s+Wigtonshire (without the middle 'w' as both spellings were used). Some reports give the town or Parish from which the person came, eg Stranraer, but not the County. So it would also be worthwhile trying the person's name/s+ town or name/s+parish as keywords. Using a + (plus) between some of the words you write into the Search field helps find these words in close proximity to each other in the text. Furthermore, Australian newspapers published international news they gleaned from the overseas papers that arrived here by ship. It was not only the major stories that got into our newspapers, but also minor international stories, gossip, and even letters of interest that colonials received from Britain and elsewhere and handed over to journalists for publication. New or returning colonials also brought personal news and opinions with them from the "Old Country" or the States, and the journalists published those as well. The news was months out of date of course by the time it had travelled to Australia, but that did not matter to the colonials who were desperate for any news of "Home". So if you are looking for a particular British or American newspaper story or you want some background information about life in Britain or the US at a certain time, but you are finding it hard to access old newspapers in your own country, you might be able to find these details in the Australian newspapers. However, just remember to allow for Australian publication a few months to even 6 months after the date of the actual event! Back to Diana's email about McLean / M'Lean's death notice in the Wigtown Free Press dated 29th April 1886: Near Normanton, North Queensland, on March 2nd, James, eldest son of James M'Lean, late of Duchra, aged 41 years. Putting the keywords James+McLean in the Search box in the NLA website brought up many James McLeans. Luckily the website lets you search by decade, then year and then month which narrowed the 'hits' down to accounts of a James McLean who died near Normanton in March 1886. There does not appear to be a death notice. However there are a number of reports about his death, mainly focussing on one of the men who died with him, the Hon. Frank Stubley, an MP. Their deaths got nationwide coverage, no doubt because of Stubley and also due to the unusual circumstances. The Mercury (Hobart), Wed 3 March 1886, p3: Queensland. Deaths from Intense Heat. Brisbane, Tuesday. Mr Frank Stubley, late member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly for the Kennedy district, a well known mining speculator, Messrs John Thomas, James McLean and Thomas Covey, died at Creve Creek, on the road from Normanton to the Crozden goldfield. Six others are not expected to live, the heat at Normanton being terrible. The Hon. McDonald Paterson, Postmaster General received a telegram from Mr Shanklyn, auctioneer of Normanton, that Mr Stubley reached Normanton by the [ship] City of Melbourne on February 20, and stayed at the O'Shanghanassy Hotel. He left with two others on horseback on Thursday for the Crozlon field and they reached a shanty 65 miles from Normanton on the 27th February, when Mr Stubley complained of being feverish. He rested for six hours and then rose and mounted his horse then got off again and died within a few minutes without pain, at 5 in the evening. Excerpts from another newspaper give slightly different details: Queanbeyan Age (NSW) Sat 6 March 1886, p2S: ... Mr F Stubley, formerly MP, and once a wealthy miner, left Normanton for the Croydon goldfield with a party of ten..James McLean.. Other deaths occurred on the same day, on the same road...A further telegram from Normanton to the colonial secretary reports four deaths, including Stubley's, and that six other persons were found on the road and are not expected to live. The place where they died is near Green Creek. The date of death in the newspapers matches the date in the WFP death notice exactly so this definitely was the James who was lately of Duchra. So, for those who might have been wondering how James died,we all now know that he sadly died of heatstroke at Creve (or Green) Creek trying to reach Crozden, Crozlon or Croydon goldfield. Presumably the creek, whatever its name, was dry. (The postal clerk who sent the telegram to the newspapers or the journalists who wrote the articles must have had trouble deciphering the place names.) I just received Diana's email saying that Duchra was in Wigtownshire. That explains why I could not find any reference to Duchra in the newspapers. However between 1857 and 1871 a Mr ANGUS McLean was overseer of the Rothbury Estate, now a major Australian winery in the Hunter Valley NSW. Rothbury shared a boundary with a property called Dochra! Regards ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message