Staying fresh with old data

On the 23 January 2013 I wrote a post entitled “Crunching the Numbers in preparation for Australia Day”, it helped me to observe very familiar data in a very different way, leading to the possible discovery of the arrival of one my ancestors into Australia, someone who had eluded me for a long time.    I thought I might run a series based on “crunching numbers” from my database to get a bird’s eye view and consequently a new perspective on my ancestors, hopefully leading to different avenues of research and understanding.

My plan – as grand as it is – is to represent the data graphically perhaps using graphics such as graphs or picture grams.   

Just as I was going to post this I received news from Julie at  Angler’s Rest Cassmob at  Family history across the seas about a new February Photo Collage Festival  looks like I’m not the only one working with graphics. 

So now I'm off to create my collage.

Meanwhile here is my first graphic in my series called “Crunching the Numbers” a picture gram based on places were my ancestors were born and died, the larger the type the greater the number of ancestors that were there.

Created using Wordle at http://www.wordle.net/ 

As you can see there is a strong influence from both England and in particular Cornwall and Australia.

Crunching the Numbers in preparation for Australia Day

After reading two interesting blog posts by Sharon that were written almost a 4 months  apart the first in October 2012 entitled  - Individual arrivals in Australia and the second just a week ago called Family statistics it got me to thinking.  What does the “big picture” view of my ancestors look like, I think of myself as Australian but how deep does that really run, for how many generations?

So I decided to crunch the numbers and see what they looked like.

  

After some analysis I can say that my grandparents on both side of the family were born in Australia, and that the bulk of my family has been in Australia for more than 3 generations.

I have lived in Victoria for most of my life with a short stint in Queensland and New South Wales as a child, however I have always assumed that my grandparents and their ancestors had always lived in Victoria.  It’s interesting ponder why I would assume that my relatives were more or less static particularly when they had come an enormous distance to get to Australia. 

So what was their point of arrival?

As you can see above for those individuals that I have managed to pin point coming into Australia, only half came to Victoria initially, maybe they eventually came following work or seeking gold.  They had all arrived in Australia by the 1895, one coming as early as 1816.  It makes you wonder why they chose to come into certain ports, particularly if they turned up in Victoria within in 6 to 12 months later. Was it cheaper to go another state first, or was it the advertising that they say back in the home country,  or was it easier to get tickets to other ports, or were there already  relatives  waiting for them in those places?  Hmmm, lots of unresolved possibilities.

Looks like I need to revisit the data....but where to start?