Have you ever thought about your family history and documenting it in a family tree?
Wendy Bloomfield has. Her family tree currently has 16,500 people in it – all confirmed they belong there – with a direct line going back to 1510 – incredible!
Talking to Wendy in the Local History area of Joondalup Library, it’s clear she not only has a passion for family history, but for helping other people.
Wendy has volunteered in the City’s Family History Help program since 2014, having joined Family History WA in 1993.
“I met a lady at the State Library and she put me in their direction because they were looking for volunteers. I saw it as a way to learn about how to research, where to look and the records available. It was all microfiche, films, newspapers and books back then, not like it is today.”
Wendy said she joined Joondalup after we were looking for a fill in volunteer, and has stayed for the next 11 years.
“I love the libraries, the staff and our volunteer group. Everyone is so helpful and we are constantly learning from each other – that’s what I love. Everybody researches differently and looks in different places,” she said.
“It’s all about helping people. It’s cool to watch people find out stuff and they’ll go, ‘Wow, I never knew that about my family’. It’s really rewarding.
“Having the dedicated Family History program means people get to know we are here and what to expect.”
While Wendy’s passion for history started in high school when she discovered her family included eight convicts who had come to Tasmania, it was truly ignited when she returned home from serving in the air force and found an old photo.
“I just wanted to know who everyone in the photo was, so I drove to Mount Barker and went straight to the local pub. I gave the lady behind the bar a list of names and she went around and found people who knew my mum’s grandparents and it just exploded from there,” she said.
“It’s now a great passion in my life. It’s interesting what sets you on a certain path. If I never found that photo, I don’t think this would have ever happened. Now my motto is, ‘housework whenever, genealogy forever’.”
When asked about one of her favourite cases, Wendy didn’t hesitate to talk about Michael.
She said he came into the library looking for his father. He said he was Burmese but his father was a British soldier and he had already done his DNA.
“He told me he had been looking for his father for 10 years. Paid people in England and Australia thousands and no one could tell him who his father was,” Wendy said.
“I input his DNA into a program and in three hours, I had him.
“Since then, he has met up with some of his siblings. They flew out from Wales to meet him.”
Another interesting find was a lot closer to home, when Wendy discovered her mother was the first telegram delivery woman in WA.
“She didn’t even know,” Wendy said.
“I found a newspaper article about her uniform and how it had to be designed especially because women didn’t wear trousers then.”
Wendy said sometimes it’s just about “gut feelings” and piecing it all together.
“It’s like putting together a puzzle without the picture to help you. You have to be a detective and you learn really quickly,” she said.
“It used to take a month to go back three to four generations but now I can do it in half an hour. While I still use microfiche if I need to, and reference books, the majority is all online now. It’s an ever-changing world, which makes it more and more interesting.”
The Family History program runs at Woodvale Library every Tuesday from 9.30am-12pm, Joondalup Library every Wednesday from 9am-12pm, and on the third Saturday of every month at 1-3pm.
Volunteers provide tips and explore resources to help people trace their family tree.
The Local History collection is extensive and includes books, microfiche records, passenger lists, shipping and convict records, births, marriages and deaths, Census data, baptism records, pioneer indexes, digital photos, motion pictures, online databases, CDs and oral histories. Attendees can also access free online resources while they are in the library such as ancestry.com and FindMyPast.