Moonee Valley Family & Local History Blog

From as early as 1912, buses have been an efficient way for Melburnians to get from A to B. Who were the Moonee Valley locals who drove the first buses from Essendon Station? From what we can tell, it was very much a local family affair! Which perfectly fits August's theme of National Family History Month. The story begins in 1915 with a marriage between a young man from Moonee Ponds and a young lady from Essendon. Sergeant Herbert Vivian Memery, of the 29th Infantry Battalion, married Mona Grant on the 20th of November, 1915 . Shortly afterwards, Sergeant Memery embarked for war in February 1916, along with his brothers John and Samuel, and brother-in-law Edward. Mona was pregnant with their first child, and was living with her father James Grant at his property on Mount Alexander Road while her husband was deployed. Herbert and Mona’s first daughter was born there in 1916. Sadly, Sergeant Memery was injured in battle, but returned home to Mona in 1917. They welcomed a second da...

As it is Family History Month, and we're still locked down with Stage Four restrictions, here’s a list of family history things that can be done without leaving the house. Ten Family History Things To Do From Home: 1. Write your own memoirs – there’s no time like the present to preserve your memories. You could record them too, especially if writing is not your thing. 2. Connect with family members via phone or online to collect their stories as well. If you want to use video chat (like Zoom or something similar) to do this, but you're not sure how, this how-to video from State Library Victoria might help. 3. Document your photos. Note down everything you know about who is who, and when and where. Everything. And a bonus: document that you were the one who did this and you’re pretty much guaranteed to be a favourite ancestor of any family history loving descendants for generations to come!  4. Keep researching. Although libraries and archives are closed the...

August is National Family History Month, and is the perfect time to get stuck into some research on your family history!  Curious about the history of your house? Our Things to do Thursday post last week  hopefully gave you a starting point to begin researching the history of a building. For National Family History Month we continue on this theme, and will be running two online sessions on Tracing the History of you House. Our resident expert Meredith will guide you through the resources available to you to get you started on your own research, and answer any questions you may have. Click here to register for our afternoon or evening session on August 5th.  Woodlands- Built in the mid-1880s as a base from which to supervise the building of nearby Earlsbrae (Lowther Hall). Demolished to make way for units in the mid-1950s, despite being in immaculate condition. Photograph c.1908, courtesy of Essendon Historical Society. The National Family History Month website has l...

Image sourced from National Library of Australia Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/National.Library.of.Australia As part of National Family History Month the National Library of Australia and Trove are working together to answer your family questions. Today from 4:00pm AEST jump on their Facebook page  https://www.facebook.com/National.Library.of.Australia  and ask them anything that might help you with your family history. If you need any more help with discovering your Family History come into any Moonee Valley library branch and ask one of our friendly staff for advice.