The State Library and Archive Service is issuing a challenge to Tasmanians to read five different examples of nineteenth century handwriting from our Heritage Collections, each featuring a different set of records held in the State Archives.
Continue reading “Tasmania Reads: Sir John Franklin and his Expedition of 1845 (Part Two: The Answer and Historical Background)”Category: Maritime
Tasmania Reads: Reading an entry from the Log of the Whaling Ship Chance (Part Two: The Answer and Historical Background)
The State Library and Archive Service is issuing a challenge to Tasmanians to read five different examples of nineteenth-century handwriting from our Heritage Collections, each featuring a different set of records held in the State Archives.
Continue reading “Tasmania Reads: Reading an entry from the Log of the Whaling Ship Chance (Part Two: The Answer and Historical Background)”Tasmania Reads: Reading an entry from the Log of the Whaling Ship Chance (Part One: The Challenge)
The State Library and Archive Service is issuing a challenge to Tasmanians to read five different examples of nineteenth-century handwriting from our Heritage Collections, each featuring a different set of records held in the State Archives.
The scripts are selected to give you insights into some of the key strengths of our collection and we hope they will pique your interest to explore further.
This is our third challenge.
Continue reading “Tasmania Reads: Reading an entry from the Log of the Whaling Ship Chance (Part One: The Challenge)”Recently Digitised Material: July-September 2021
This blog features some of the recently digitised items from the Tasmanian Archives and the State Library of Tasmania.
Read on to find out more about our new additions to our digital collections! To discover even more, you can also search our catalogue and Tasmanian Names Index or visit us on Flickr, YouTube and Instagram.
In this blog:
- Richard Simson Photographic Collection – Ref: NS6351/1/1-95
- Albums of Gladys Midwood – Ref: NS6759/1/2-3
- Photographic Albums by Margaret Smithies, Ernest George Record and the McDowell family
- Tasmanian Government Railways
- 1920s aerial view of Hobart city block bounded by Murray, Harrington, Liverpool and Melville Street looking North from behind His Majesty’s Theatre and Hobart Rivulet – Ref: NS892/1/61
- Artworks of Launceston
- Emu Bay by Thomas Unwin
- The Pests of the Prince by Henry Manly
- TGR Williams glass plate negatives – Ref: NS1409/1/46-48
- Judges notes on capital offences committed at Norfolk Island, 1846 – Ref: CSO20/1/449
- Burial Plot Maps, Cornelian Bay Cemetery 1915-16 – Ref: AF86/1/1
- Wills from AD960/1/5
- 1829 journal written from London to Van Diemans Land by John Owen Lord – Ref: NS301/1/2
Recently Digitised Material: October-December 2020
WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that this post contains images and voices of deceased persons.
This blog features some of the recently digitised items from the Tasmanian Archives and the State Library of Tasmania. Each year, we place items online to help promote and preserve our rare and special collections. These images and films are just a tiny sample of an amazing treasure trove of Tasmania’s heritage. From colonial artwork to convict records, fragile glass plate negatives to rare films, private letters to government records, our collections (including the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts and the W L Crowther Collection) tell millions of stories from Tasmania and around the world.
Read on to find out more about our new additions to our digital collections! To discover even more, you can also search our catalogue or visit us on Flickr and YouTube.
In this blog:
- Peter Laurie Reid Carte-De-Visite Collection, c1860 – Ref: NS1442/1/1 to 53
- Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911-1914 – Ref: NS6607/1/1 to 14
- Stereoscopic Photographs of Emu Bay Burnie, c1890 – Ref: NS6664/1/1 to 5
- Stereoscopic photographs taken by George Benjamin Davies for submission to the Postal Stereoscopic Society of Australia, c1921 – Ref: NS6538/1/1 to 33
- Tasmanian Government Tourist Bureau photographs – AA375
- Photograph of Fanny Cochrane Smith and Horace Watson recording Tasmanian Aboriginal Songs: NS1553/1/1798
- Illustrated Travelogue July 1919 – Ref: NS6853
- Fountain in Governor’s garden, Port Arthur – Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts
- Drawing of George Meredith, Senior – Ref: LMSS12/1/72
- Photographs from the Trustees of the Tasmanian Public Library – Ref: SLT23
- Wills Image Replacement Project: AD960/1/1
- Diary of Police Duties kept by Charles H. Brown, District Constable, Coal Mines, Tasman Peninsula 1853 – Ref: CON129/1/1
- Index to General Correspondence, 1836-7 – Ref: CSO4
Continue reading “Recently Digitised Material: October-December 2020”
Recently Digitised Material
This blog features some of the recently digitised items from the Tasmanian Archives and the State Library of Tasmania. Each year, we place items online to help promote and preserve our rare and special collections. These images and films are just a tiny sample of an amazing treasure trove of Tasmania’s heritage. From colonial artwork to convict records, from fragile glass plate negatives to rare films, from private letters to government records, our collections (including the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts and the W L Crowther Collection) tell literally millions of stories from Tasmania and around the world.
Read on to find out more about our new additions to our digital collections! To discover even more, you can also search our catalogue or visit us on Flickr and YouTube.
In this blog:
- Glass Plate Negatives of Sea Captains, c1920 – Ref: NS6192
- Stereoscopic Views of the ‘Franklin Relics,’ 1860 – Ref: NS1155
- Mt Biscoff Tin Mine Photographs – Ref: NS6719
- Gentleman Jim, 1942 – Reference: Ref: NS4264/1/5
- Hobart High School Photos – Ref: AG162/1/6
- Charles Street School Register 1902-08 – Ref: AB753/1/1
- Return of Convicts Embarked for Port Arthur by the Ships Tamar, Isabella, Shamrock, and Lady Franklin (1834-1855). Ref: CON126/1/1
- Return of Money Forfeited by Prisoners at Port Arthur (1864). Ref: CON132/1/1
- Letter from the Colonial Secretary to the Commandant, Port Arthur (1834). Ref: CON86/1/2
- Film: Timber Makes News, 1947 – Ref: AC672/1/219
- Film: Les Skelly talking about Tiger Hill, 1986-9 – Ref: NS1391/1/1
- Film: Burnie Mill, 1956 – Ref: AC672/1/1
Esther’s Story, Part Two: Getting By in Hobart, 1860-1870
“Cross Street, Sandy Bay Road,” “Be a good girl, Esther,” “Esther shall not go out again,” “Bombay is in Asia, ABC,” “Evil communication corrupts,” “Love your grandmother Esther” – each of these were written over and over again in a whaler’s logbook, and signed “Esther Mary Paul” in November or December, 1865. What was little Esther doing writing these lines, in -between and alongside the records of her uncle and aunt’s adventures at sea long before she was born? Was she being educated or punished, or both? Where was she living and why was she there? In this continuing story of little Esther Mary Paul and the whaling logbook in the Crowther Collection, we’ll try to piece together Esther’s young life. It’s a tale of sorrow, struggle, and abandonment, but also of strength, resilience, and love.
Continue reading “Esther’s Story, Part Two: Getting By in Hobart, 1860-1870”Esther’s Story, Part One: The Whaler’s Log
In November of 1865, a five year old girl named Esther sat in a house in Sandy Bay, writing lines in a small, leather-bound book. Some days, she had geography lessons. Some days, she was in trouble. Some days, she just needed to memorize her new address. Two months came and went, and the little girl wrote line after line. Her notebook had once belonged to her Uncle William, and recorded his whaling voyages to the Pacific Ocean and the Timor Sea. In the spaces in-between the stories of whales and gales, little Esther did her school work. So did her Aunt Charlotte, who copied out poems and ballads for the little girl to memorize. Aunt Charlotte knew that logbook well, for it was the record of her own honeymoon at sea, nine years earlier. Now it became a part of a different family story – of tragedy, loss, love, abandonment, and survival.
Esther’s Story is actually the story of three nineteenth-century women: Esther Mary Paul (Lithgow), her mother Cecilia Eliza (Rowland) Paul, and her aunt Charlotte Ann (Rowland) Jacobs. Over Family History Month, we’ll follow these women through three blogs and fifty years of their lives, using digital collections together with library and archival resources. It’s a tale of adventure, improvisation, and resilience, but it’s also something else. It’s a reminder – of how our own historical present can change how we think about the past. Read on to discover more.
Continue reading “Esther’s Story, Part One: The Whaler’s Log”Island Life: The Volunteer Work and Photographs of Trauti and David Reynolds
At the end of National Volunteers Week, we wanted to take a moment both to thank our volunteers, and to highlight a new collection that tells stories of volunteering in Tasmania’s historic and wild places. These are the photograph albums of Trauti and David Reynolds, which document their volunteer and conservation work around Tasmania over many years. Thanks to their generous donation, these albums are now digitized and available to everyone.
Continue reading “Island Life: The Volunteer Work and Photographs of Trauti and David Reynolds”
Time-balls and feminism
What was a time-ball and how did it contribute to the feminist movement?
