With Cowra Probus/Mike Bonnor

The April meeting of the Cowra Mens Probus Club was held at the Masonic Hall in Cowra on Tuesday 1st April. The membership was a bit light on as many members had other commitments but those in attendance were treated to an interesting talk by one of the Club members.

The guest speaker was Geoff Yates who was only given short notice of his talk because the proposed speaker could not attend, so thank you Geoff for your talk.

Geoff is a private researcher who does research into family histories for personal interest and other people. He said the way for people to start an investigation into their family history is to start in the present and then research back. He said it was very important to talk to the older generation still alive and have some form of recording their story. Start by talking about ‘the good old days’ to your ‘oldies’ and maybe discovering there could be a ‘skeleton in the cupboard’ in the history. He said that errors are very common in relating the history and quite often there are hearsay reports.

In the modern age with the help of computers there are many agencies who are in the business of tracing histories, such as myheritage.com or ancestry.com.au these agencies can trace family lines through the use of DNA testing where the inquirer supplies a sample usually taken by sampling a swab taken from the inside of the mouth.

Geoff then revealed a little bit of his own family history. One of his ancestors came here as a convict in 1813 and after a ‘shipboard romance’ she became pregnant to a sailor, James Yates and together they had two children, Anne and James. After that James the son went on to marry three and had 18 children. One of his daughters was accused of murdering her mother-in-law. Another of Geoff’s descendants was among the first ashore at Gallipoli and among the first killed in the fighting, as well as three of his cousins. Geoff obtained these facts from the war records held at the National Archives in Canberra.

As Geoff said earlier in his talk it has become much easier to obtain information of the past and to record it. He said it was very important to record any facts you would find and not store them in the shoe box under the bed. He said that in families there should be discussions about the past of the family so that ‘History will become a living thing’.

After answering many questions Geoff was presented with a gift in appreciation of his talk from President Richard Oliver.