Research can put your home on the record

THE Victorian Public Records Office, or PROV, is running a session in Ballarat this June to help residents learn how to research their house and learn how to understand town plans.

The session will be presented by Marlene Cantwell and Charlie Farrugia at the Eureka Centre and is offering practical demonstrations of how to research records.

“I’m an access service officer at the Ballarat Archives Centre and I facilitate people using the catalogue and show them how to order and use records,” said Ms Cantwell.

“This work connects families with their history because we get all different types of enquiries.

“For example, someone may come in say their great grandfather was a ward of the state and we don’t know what happened to him, so we track down the records and find where he went.”

The PROV’s collection is available for public access at the research hub in the Eureka Centre and can provide information about the land a house was built on and the physical building.

Victorian town and parish plans date from 1837 and show property boundaries to keep track of how crown land was divided.

This session will use these resources and be useful for people wanting to find the history of their home or wanting to locate where a relative lived.

“It can be for people who buy existing homes and want to know its history or how to renovate to keep it within the history style,” said Ms Cantwell.

“Or it could be for people who are looking for where their great great grandfather lived.”

Participants will not be given the answers and instead by guided on how to find them using different resources.

“It’s a journey of discovery with a lot of different resources they can use,” said Ms Cantwell.

“The most interesting part is learning about all those people who have lived in the house, and you can find their occupation, their will, newspaper articles about them.”

The session will be held on Wednesday 21 June and tickets can be purchased at bit.ly/3NfYF7a.