Chooks or students?

The Geelong Infirmary & Benevolent Asylum Annual Reports never cease to amaze me – this time for two reasons.

1. The number of “employees” listed by company / employer.  Even if the company or employer kept an archive of their records, they wouldn’t be easy to track down, but because the company or employer and their employees contributed to the Infirmary & Benevolent Asylum Fund, they were listed in the Annual Reports.  We’re talking about ordinary people – probably our ancestors!  It’s definitely worth checking the Geelong and District database after each major update.
2. The reason for choosing this photo!  Apart from collection boxes and other donations, the Infirmary & Benevolent Asylum Annual Reports list “Gifts in Kind” – the donors and generally the item(s) donated.  A popular contribution in the 1918-1919 Annual Report was EGGS!  It appeared that local schools raised chooks and contributed the eggs to the Infirmary & Benevolent Asylum.  And what an amazing job they did!  I hope they got plenty of school work done as well and didn’t devote their entire time collecting eggs and looking after the chooks. 🙂  This lengthy list is about 3,286 dozen eggs being contributed.  And the top 5 schools? …

• Ashby State School – 220 dozen
• Winchelsea State School – 213.10 dozen
• Modewarre State School – 160 dozen
• Flinders School – 157.4 dozen
• Ocean Grove State School – 141 dozen

We now have 1,623,428 records in the Geelong and District database.  This is what’s been added since the last major update on 1st October 2014:

• Geelong Infirmary & Benevolent Asylum: Annual Report 1918 – 2,524 entries
• Geelong and District: PROV Wills and Probates 1841-2009 – 35,820 entries
• Old Ocean Grove land titles: sellers and purchasers – 2,336 entries

Details on these indexes can be found in the Geelong & District Potpourri pages.

And don’t forget to search again for your ancestors in the Geelong & District Database – they could have been in the last load of additions!