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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m 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,\u201d said Ms Cantwell.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis work connects families with their history because we get all different types of enquiries.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor example, someone may come in say their great grandfather was a ward of the state and we don\u2019t know what happened to him, so we track down the records and find where he went.\u201d<\/p>\n
The PROV\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Victorian town and parish plans date from 1837 and show property boundaries to keep track of how crown land was divided.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt 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,\u201d said Ms Cantwell.<\/p>\n
\u201cOr it could be for people who are looking for where their great great grandfather lived.\u201d<\/p>\n
Participants will not be given the answers and instead by guided on how to find them using different resources.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a journey of discovery with a lot of different resources they can use,\u201d said Ms Cantwell.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n