Researching And Writing Family History Or Genealogy With TL Whalan

Summary

Podcast Summary: Researching and Writing Family History or Genealogy with TL Whelan

Podcast Information:

• Title: The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers
• Host: Joanna Penn
• Episode Title: Researching And Writing Family History Or Genealogy With TL Whalan
• Release Date: August 4, 2025
• Duration: Approximately 56 minutes

---

Introduction to Tegan Whelan

Timestamp: [18:39]

Joanna Penn introduces her guest, Tegan Whelan, an Australian author renowned for her works in short stories, young adult, and middle-grade fiction. Tegan is also the co-author of The Family History Project, the Wirrabra Whalens, a comprehensive exploration of her family's genealogy.

Tegan’s Background:

• Residence: Hamley Bridge, South Australia, a small country town with a population of approximately 700.
• Personal Life: Alongside her husband, Tegan operates a dog and lamb rescue, having rehomed around 400 animals over 15 years.
• Writing Journey: Inspired by National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in 2014, Tegan transitioned from aspiring novelist to a prolific writer, maintaining a steady writing habit since.

---

Understanding Genealogy and Its Appeal

Timestamp: [20:40]

Definition and Personal Motivation: Tegan defines genealogy as the study of lineage, focusing on tracing ancestors starting from oneself. She emphasizes the personal fulfillment derived from understanding one's heritage, stating:

"I think people are probably fascinated because we're all a little bit self-centered and we want to know a little bit more about ourselves."
— Tegan Whelan [20:52]

Key Motivations:

• Self-Discovery: Learning how ancestors contribute to one's genetic makeup.
• The Thrill of the Hunt: The excitement of uncovering hidden family stories and details.
• Creative Integration: Utilizing family history research to enrich fiction writing, ensuring historical accuracy and depth.

---

Researching Family History: Resources and Strategies

Timestamp: [22:53]

Starting Points:

• Interviewing Living Relatives: Tegan advocates beginning with current family members to gather firsthand stories and data, which serve as the foundation for further research.

Essential Resources in Australia:

1. Ship Records: Crucial for tracing immigration and settlement patterns.
2. Convict Records: Particularly relevant for Australian family histories tied to convict ancestry.
3. Births, Deaths, and Marriages Registries: Available in each Australian state, offering vital statistics.
4. Trove: An extensive Australian newspaper archive similar to the U.S.'s Newspapers.com, providing articles, birth/death notices, and more.
5. Freedom of Information Requests: Accessing governmental records about ancestors, though this requires navigating specific protocols and eligibility criteria.

Global Resources:

• Ancestry.com: A comprehensive, albeit user-submitted, database offering a broad range of international records. Tegan cautions about verifying user-contributed data to avoid inaccuracies.

Practical Tips:

• Corroboration: Always seek original sources to confirm the validity of the information found.
• Local Genealogical Centers: Utilize state or country-specific genealogical centers for tailored resources and assistance.

---

Interviewing Family Members: Techniques and Questions

Timestamp: [32:10]

Depth of Inquiry: Tegan emphasizes the importance of moving beyond basic facts to uncovering rich, personal stories that bring ancestors to life.

Example Questions:

1. Location-Based: "Where did you go to school?" "Where did you live?" "Where did you travel?"
2. Personal Anecdotes: "What was your proudest moment?" "What unique habits did they have?"

Cousin Questions:

• Tegan and her team developed 13 specific questions, known as the "cousin questions," to guide their interviews. These questions are available on her blog for others to utilize.

Notable Story:

"One of the relatives always carried a $5 note in his overalls in case the ice cream truck came by. It not only shows personal quirks but also reflects the economic and social context of the time."
— Tegan Whelan [34:58]

---

Verifying Information and Overcoming Challenges

Timestamp: [35:24]

Methods of Verification:

• Multiple Sources: Cross-referencing stories told by different family members.
• Public Records: Utilizing official documents to back up anecdotal information.
• DNA Testing: Leveraging genetic testing to confirm familial connections and resolve ambiguities.

Challenges Faced:

• Inaccuracies in User-Submitted Data: The risk of incorrect information spreading within platforms like Ancestry.com.
• Access Barriers: Navigating strict requirements for accessing certain records, especially those involving sensitive or protected information.
• Technological Limitations: Difficulty in standardizing and formatting large family trees, particularly with families having numerous descendants.

Example of Verification:

"We discovered a funeral notice for my three-times-great-grandmother and confirmed her identity through DNA matching with a relative sharing the same surname."
— Tegan Whelan [43:05]

---

Utilizing DNA in Genealogy

Timestamp: [44:21]

Applications:

• Confirming Lineage: Matching Y DNA to trace male lineage.
• Identifying Previously Unknown Relatives: Such as confirming an uncle’s illegitimate child through DNA evidence.

Consent and Ethical Considerations:

• Obtaining proper consent from relatives before conducting DNA tests to respect privacy and ethical boundaries.

---

Organizing and Formatting Family History Data

Timestamp: [48:11]

Project Management:

• Collaborative Tools: Using platforms like Ancestry.com to allow multiple researchers to access and update family trees in real-time.
• Document Consolidation: Maintaining a single, comprehensive document that evolves into a detailed manuscript.

Formatting Challenges:

• Creating Readable Family Charts: Especially for large families, Tegan had to manually design charts in Word, allowing for customization in color, font, and layout to ensure clarity.

Efforts in Formatting:

"The family charts were manually handmade in Word to maintain control over readability and aesthetics, especially for families with up to 13 children."
— Tegan Whelan [50:04]

---

Publishing and Sharing the Family History Book

Timestamp: [53:00]

Distribution:

• Sales: Primarily to family members and individuals connected to the Mid North of South Australia.
• Library Inclusion: Donations to state libraries and genealogical centers to preserve the documented history.
• Market Presence: Selling the book at local markets, achieving modest sales but significant personal satisfaction given the niche focus.

Community Engagement:

• Tegan describes positive reception from relatives and community members, highlighting the collaborative and respectful approach taken during the publication process.

---

Final Reflections and Takeaways

Timestamp: [56:20]

Personal Impact: Tegan reflects on the profound satisfaction derived from uncovering detailed and meaningful aspects of her family's past, despite the challenges faced during research and formatting.

Encouragement to Listeners: Joanna Penn concludes by inspiring listeners to consider their own family histories or other personal creative projects, emphasizing the blend of personal fulfillment and storytelling excellence that genealogy offers.

---

Key Insights and Lessons

1. Start with Living Relatives: They provide the most accurate and vivid stories, serving as a crucial starting point for any genealogical project.
2. Use Multiple Resources: Combining interviews, public records, and DNA testing can provide a comprehensive picture of one's ancestry.
3. Verify and Corroborate Information: Always seek original sources and cross-reference data to ensure accuracy.
4. Be Patient and Methodical: Genealogy is a time-consuming process that requires persistence and attention to detail.
5. Respect Privacy: Especially when dealing with living relatives, ensure that sensitive information is handled ethically and respectfully.
6. Embrace Creativity in Presentation: Manual formatting, though laborious, can significantly enhance the readability and aesthetic appeal of genealogical publications.

---

Notable Quotes

• Tegan Whelan on Self-Discovery:

  "I think people are probably fascinated because we're all a little bit self-centered and we want to know a little bit more about ourselves."
  — Tegan Whelan [20:52]

• Tegan Whelan on Family Stories:

  "We wanted a lot more scaffolding around that and we really wanted to know who that person was."
  — Tegan Whelan [32:10]

• Tegan Whelan on Overcoming Formatting Challenges:

  "The family charts were manually handmade in Word to maintain control over readability and aesthetics, especially for families with up to 13 children."
  — Tegan Whelan [50:04]

---

Conclusion

Joanna Penn's insightful conversation with Tegan Whelan provides a comprehensive look into the intricacies of researching and writing family history or genealogy. From the initial stages of interviewing living relatives to the detailed process of verifying historical records and utilizing DNA testing, Tegan's experiences offer valuable lessons for anyone interested in delving into their ancestral past. Her dedication to creating a readable and aesthetically pleasing family history book underscores the importance of preserving personal narratives in a meaningful and accessible format.

For those inspired by this episode, exploring one's genealogy can be a deeply rewarding endeavor, blending meticulous research with creative storytelling to honor and understand one's heritage.

Transcript

[Joanna Penn]

Welcome to the Creative Pen Podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur, bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing, craft and creative business. You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint and lots [e-mail] and that's Pen with a double N. And here's the show. Hello creatives. I'm Johanna Penn and this is episode number 822 of the podcast and it is Thursday 31st July 2025 as I record this a little early as we're away this weekend. So in today's show I'm talking to TL Whelan about researching and writing family history or genealogy. I wanted to talk to Tegan about this as I know so many people are interested in this area for family reasons and these kinds of projects nothing to do with anything commercial, but they are super personal, meaningful, creative projects. Very much in the vein of double down on being human. And I want us to keep returning to this. We write because we have something creative we want to achieve, an idea or a story to share, and the business side is secondary for most of us. This as in we would write regardless of whether we got paid for it. And this is a great example. Plus it's fascinating to hear about Tegan's Australian family history and I should share a bit of mine too. So that's coming up in the interview section in Writing and Publishing Things well, if you self publish wide in audiobook format, you can now use Spotify for authors directly for publishing audiobooks. To Spotify, Findaway Voices is ending and you can now use inaudio.com for wide audio publishing from the 1st of August 2025. You can still access your Findaway dashboard at the mom anyone using Findaway Voices will have had multiple emails about this, but just a reminder that things will keep changing and from now on you will need to load to both sites for wide audio or more if you also use Kobo Writing Life and Book Funnel for selling direct. And I was thinking about this like just over a decade ago we only had one option which was acx.com and now the opportunities have expanded so much. We can reach more readers, more listeners in fact in different ways. But yes, it also means more uploads when publishing. Now there's no official word on why they're changing the branding, but my understanding of the business behind this it's a lot more complicated than it used to be. Obviously there are different payout levels to creators through various contracts. There are various revenue models on the listener side and presumably this split enables Spotify Audiobooks to be different than other Wide Audio. And so from inaudio.com you can go and have a look at that. And the letter on Inaudio is from two people from Findaway Voices, so there is a good connection there. So Spotify will transition this infrastructure to in audio on August 1st. In the meantime, we're here to ensure everyone has a great experience. If you're currently using these services, rest assured we're partnering closely with Spotify to make the transition as seamless as possible, requiring minimal, if any action from you. So my action as someone who has been through many system cutovers back in my time as an IT consultant is just to make sure you check next month when royalties come through. It may be that they have a different name on so it might not say Findaway Voices anymore. I presume it won't, but definitely well worth checking. And many of us make good money with Wide Audio, so always a good idea to check these things still continue. And that's no reflection on the companies. It is just my experience in the technical world world. So yeah, also still in audio things there's a new podcast for authors, the Written Word podcast from Written Word Media, who many of us use for their free Booksy, Bargain Booksy and other email newsletter marketing services. There are several episodes up already on free promotions and why email promotion still sells books. You can find it by searching the Written Word podcast wherever you're listening to this and on the Novel Marketing Podcast with Thomas Umstadt how to Sell a Thousand Books a Month and it's not just fiction. Non fiction author Susan Neal is interviewed and says there is a layering of marketing if you want to sell a thousand books a month. For example, am I on a podcast interview this month? Have I written a guest post? Is there somebody writing about me? Have I been interviewed in the media? Did I just win a contest and I can now say the book is award winning? It's like a snowball. You have to keep adding to to so it grows. Multiple layers of marketing will help you sell many books and Thomas says you also have to be active. Authors often ask why is the book I wrote six months ago that I haven't told anyone about for the last two months not selling well? Maybe it's because in the last two months you haven't told anybody about it. You have to tell people about your book at in person events or via advertising or content marketing. Simply existing on Amazon or other stores doesn't get you a sale. Publishing a Book doesn't get you a sale. People won't find you because they're not looking for you. You must do the work to put your book in front of people somehow and tell them about it. You have to let them know why the book is interesting or useful or entertaining. This is so true. And I will never forget Dean Wesley Smith talking about this back in the day when I used to go to the conferences in Oregon. A very visual metaphor. So imagine a sea of books, just millions and millions of books and more books. Day raining down from the sky as they are published and they land on the surface of the water. So like day one, they land on the surface of the water and then they start to sink. So it is your job to keep them afloat. You have to do something. There are no organic sales anymore. So you either engage with marketing and learn to do something that suits you and your book and you don't have to do everything. You do have to do something. So you choose something that suits your personality, your lifestyle, your book, or you decide that your definition of success is only around the creative aspects of writing, which is completely fine if you were writing and publishing for the love of it, then the commercial aspects of marketing and business are less important. And I was thinking about my definition of retirement. At some point I will just write and publish for love and retire marketing. I imagine that is how I will see it. I can't imagine imagine ever stopping creating, but I can certainly imagine stopping marketing. Back to the interview. Susan focuses on pitching for podcast interviews as her primary mode of marketing. And I would say it's definitely successful for non fiction authors in particular. She also says some writers struggle to focus on their readers. But you have to shift your mindset. It's not about you. It's about promoting the topic within your book and helping the reader. They also talk about getting reviews, why blog posts might still be a viable option. Launch teams, marketing to your personality, newsletters and more. And there are lots of ideas. That is the novel marketing podcast. And again, it's not just for fiction. It also has tips for non fiction. But generally the message is you have to keep that book alive somehow. And if you've got a big backlist like me, like many of us have been doing this a long time, it is, I guess about sometimes looking through the backlist and going, going right, what can I amplify here? So often it's first in series. For example, we're not always promoting every single book. So you might also think, oh, I will just hire someone and get a service to do it. And there are certainly some great services out there. But I also had a reminder this week that it is important to double check any services you might be thinking of using. So the alliance of Independent Authors has a list of recommended services and also companies to avoid. You can check WriterBeware Blog for any scams and you could use a site like Weedsy, which vets their professionals. So the marketplace is a trusted resource. Now, I wanted to say this, that someone emailed me, just checking. They said this person is using my name. They said they created a video for me that they didn't. And I was like, no, that person didn't do that. I would not work with them. So I get spates of these things. People say, oh, this person's claiming they did your book cover, but it's not the person you say. So Jane Dixon Smith has done my book covers for only over a decade now, so and is in all of my books. And someone else was claiming Jane's covers on their website. So I was like, that is, we did a sort of takedown notice for that. But if you get pitched by someone who uses my name as social proof, or my picture or pictures of my books, then feel free to email me and check joannathecreativepenn.com if the service is a current sponsor of the podcast. So if you hear me talk about them recently, let's say over the last two years, or if they've been on the show over the last few years, you can probably assume I'm happy with them. But this podcast has been going since 2009 and over the years, people who have been on the show, companies I've featured, have disappeared, changed business practices, done different things. So yes, please check with me first. JoannaTheCreativePenn.com and I would say most authors are going to be happy for you to tell them if people are claiming their names in marketing material. So yes, just keep an eye on that. So in AI things this week, two new things which are pretty cool if you are enjoying using AI tools as part of your book marketing. So IdeaGram AI introduced consistent characters, so it's easier than ever to have the same character in multiple settings for social media, different videos, even book covers. You can use Midjourney version 7 OmniReference, and I've managed to do it with that. But just playing with Ideogram AI, I am pretty impressed with it. It's much easier. Ideogram also does a lot of text on their images, so people are doing some really lovely creative things. With ideogram AI. So that is their new character consistent characters. Also Google NotebookLM, which again many of us really enjoy using just introduced video overviews. So you might already have tried their auto generated audio podcasts about the source MA material, but now they're rolling out videos as well so you can load your book up and have it create a video about a topic. I'm thinking of doing this by chapter for some of my non fiction books and as I record this I don't have access. It's just rolling out this week so I'm going to try that and as ever I'll put my AI tutorials onto my Patreon. I've recently demoed ChatGPT agent obviously midjourney and more. So in personal news I'm recording this a little early as we are having a book research weekend away in your and Durham to visit Gothic cathedrals in both of those cities in the more north of England. I live in the southwest but we are going north. I have been to York before but never to Durham and that is where St Cuthbert's relics are. Regular listeners might recall I walked the St Cuthbert's way crossing over to Lindisfarne at the end there, which became part of my pilgrimage memoir and so this trip has been on the cards for a while. I will be sharing photos. In fact as this goes out the photos are probably already there on Instagram Sr Pen author and I'll also do some posts on booksandtravel page once I have processed the weekend. I only have a few more English Gothic cathedrals to visit now as part of my book research and I have a second trip book to Canterbury. I want to go back to Canterbury and with all the reading I'm doing as well, the book is starting to take shape which I'm pleased about. This week I got the paperback and large print books of the Buried and the Drowned, which is really cool. I've never had these short stories in print before so I just love it. And I don't think it ever gets old having something you wrote arrive in the post and you're like oh cool. This is just. This is very meaningful and I am waiting on the special hardback bespoke edition because obviously it has all the special bits and bobs which takes longer to print and then I will finalize the kickstarter so jfpen.com buried and that will go live on the 1st of September. So thanks for your emails and comments and photos. This week Julie sent a photo from Sanibel Captiva Island, Florida in usa, she said. When I saw this small little graveyard right on the beach and there are graves in the sand next to tropical trees. A pioneer cemetery and that is very cool. I think it's very rare to have graves in sand because obviously, well, for obvious reasons A fauns sent A photo from St. George's Cemetery, Sibbald's Point in Canada. It is an Anglican church and the scene actually looks very English. I would have said it was English, but no, it's in Canada. And Teresa sent a picture from a gravesite at the trailhead for hiking Chimborazo in Ecuador, which at its peak is the closest point to the sun on the earth's surface. The elevation was so intense and there's a snowy peak of the mountain behind the grave markers, which looks very cool. And then Rick left a comment on the show Notes said on the podcast and the Patreon you have spoken many times about being artisanal. However, after listening to Johnny B. Truant on your past podcasts and reading his non fiction books, I was amazed to hear his shift toward your way of thinking. It reinforces my recent decision about how I'm launching my seven year adventure into kid lit writing, indie publishing and educating. I was frenetically pressing to launch three more novels, educational platform, blog, YouTube channel, channel, all of that. However last week I decided to pull back to go a bit slower and be closer to kids, parents and educators via local events. I'm going to balance mass marketing with the local high touch opportunities and see what happens. That is wonderful Rick. I'm really thrilled about that. And yeah, lots of opportunity to be more artisanal. Okay, please leave a comment on the podcast show [e-mail] or on the YouTube channel or email me and send me pictures of where you're listening. JoannaTheCreativePenn.com I love to hear from you. It makes this more of a conversation. And of course send me pictures of your favourite cemeteries, graveyards and churches. So today's episode is sponsored by Draft2Digital who I use for wide ebook publishing to Apple Nook, Library services and more as well as payment splitting with my co author Mark Leslie Lefebvre. For the relaxed author, they also do print. Are you an indie author in need of an easy and efficient print on demand service backed by a world class customer support team? Look no further than D2D print from Draft 2 Digital and just to say on that the customer support is one of the reasons that many people do print with Draft 2 digital. As you know the customer support for some of the other big sites is not fantastic, so some people prefer to go with Draft 2 Digital because they have customer support. D2D print is ideal for authors who've already published ebooks but haven't yet done print. You can convert an ebook to a print on demand file with just a few clip clicks. With just a few clicks, you can turn an ebook cover image into a full wraparound print cover in seconds. Choose from dozens of beautiful interior layouts, industry standard trim sizes and formatting you can distribute worldwide. You can use free ISBNs. You can order author copies within 32 countries and they do not have proof stamped on the book. You can also use free change tokens every 90 days to make updates to your published print books. All this and more with no setup or recurring fees. While brick and mortar bookstores can't physically stock every book, they can check for the print on demand availability of a book when a customer requests it. If you only published ebooks, you could be missing out on a huge opportunity to reach more readers. Let's fix that with D2D print from draft2digital.com so this type of corporate sponsorship pays for the hosting, transcription and editing, but my time in creating the show is sponsored by my [e-mail] TheCreativePen thanks to the six new patrons who've joined this week and thanks to everyone who's been supporting for months and years. If you join the community, you get access to all my backlist videos and audio covering topics on writing, craft and author business, as well as AI tutorials. Yesterday as I record this, we had my live office hours and I shared updates on various AI tools as well as my thoughts on the book Reshuffle in the light of the Accelerationist USAI Action Plan and I answered questions from the live patron audience. The replay went out in video and audio with the slides and you can get that if you join the community. The Patreon is a monthly subscription, the equivalent of buying me a black coffee a month or a couple of coffees if you're feeling generous. And you can go up and down or in and out as you like over time. So if you get value from the show and you want more, come on over and join us at patreon.com P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com TheCreativePenn Right, let's get into the interview. TL Whan is the Australian author of short stories, young adult and middle grade fiction as well as co author of the Family history project, the Wirrabra Whalens. So welcome to the show tv thank.

[Tegan Whelan]

You so much for having me.

[Joanna Penn]

Oh, no, this is an exciting topic. So first up, tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and also tell us about where you live.

[Tegan Whelan]

Oh, sure thing. So I guess starting with me, it's pretty obvious from my accent that I'm Australian and I live in a town called Hamley Bridge, which is only 700 people. It's a country town north of Adelaide in South Australia. We chose this country life, my husband and I, because of our animals. So. So we've got dogs ourselves, but we also run a dog rescue. And last year we started bottle raising orphaned lambs and this year we've kept bottle raising orphaned lambs and now we run a dog and lamb rescue over the last 15 years, we've rehomed about 400 animals in that time. So I guess that's a little bit about me, but in terms of my writing. So I was one of those people that was always like, oh, I'm going to write a novel one day and never really got around to to it. And then it was mid-2014 that I decided to get serious and I Googled how youw Write a novel and discovered NaNoWriMo. And I thought, well, that's good because I can wait until November. So I did exactly that. I waited until November for NaNoWriMo and I did write a novel that year. And then I've kind of written compulsively since then. So that's a little bit about me and my writing journey, I guess.

[Joanna Penn]

Just. So those bottle feeding orphan lambs, they turn into sheep, Right? So do you just have loads of sheep?

[Tegan Whelan]

So we've got 10 of our own sheep which are wonderful pets. They're just like dogs. They run up to the fence and they want pats and they want treats. And then the lambs that we're raising this year, we're finding good homes for, for them to live out their lives as lawnmowers and lovely pets themselves.

[Joanna Penn]

Yes. And. And if people don't know anything about Australia. Yeah, it's very, very big. So having animal lawnmowers is quite a good option.

[Tegan Whelan]

Yes. My husband's been very happy since we've got the sheep. He hasn't had to mow the lawn, so it's been a good addition.

[Joanna Penn]

That is cool. So, well, let's get into this family history project. So what is genealogy and why are people so fascinated with it? Because it does seem like a common thing that people are interested in.

[Tegan Whelan]

Yeah, there are lots of people who are quite into the genealogy or their family history and it's basically the study of lineage. So often people choose to start with themselves and then from themselves work their way back, working out who their ancestors are. And I think people are probably fascinated because we're all a little bit self centered and we want to know a little bit more about ourselves. And I certainly do that. You know, when I'm researching my family tree, when I find an ancestor that's particularly exciting, I actually do the maths and work out how much of their DNA is in the me and it's nice to know that person makes up part of me. So there's that. That knowing about yourself and learning about yourself that I think is really motivating for lots of people who are interested in genealogy. I think another part of it is the thrill of the hunt, actually wanting to knuckle down and find out information about these ancestors. And sometimes when you find a really nice tidbit, you actually get to the point that you go, oh, I think I might be the only person alive who knows this about this person. And it's pretty cool feeling to think that you're at that brink of your research and I guess another part of it too. So I've actually done family trees or family history of people in my fiction writing as well. So when I've written historical fiction that's based on true historic figures, I have been known to make a family tree for that person because I want to make sure that I get it right in terms of their siblings, their parents, their aunties, their uncles, the years of their birth, how old they would be and stuff like that. So that's another use of family history or genealogy.

[Joanna Penn]

Yeah, yeah, you're right. And in fact, in a lot of historical novels there are family trees in the front or the back or whatever because obviously they are from history and often famous people. So they are there. And that was kind of all I really knew about it. So that's why I wanted to talk to you because it's so interesting. But so you mentioned there the research and the thrill of the hunt. But how do you, you research family history? What are some of the resources people might use?

[Tegan Whelan]

So there's lots of resources that you can use, but I think sometimes people start in the wrong place when they're doing their family history research. So I'm a big advocate of actually starting with people who are alive with us now and interviewing those people to get the most out of them and get those Stories that when that person goes, that story could potentially be gone as well. So I like to start off with living people. I think lots of people get really excited about trying to get as far back on their family tree as possible. And I agree that is exciting. But if we can start with the living people and the resource that they provide, that's a really excellent starting point. And I think once we then have all that information that we can from living people, we can then start to look at other resources. So I know that as an Australian we have a lot of ship records that are really important. So for me it's free settlers, but for plenty of people in Australia there's convict records that are also important in that way. We have birth deaths and marriages in Australia. I don't know that's a universal worldwide idea, the birth deaths and marriages registry, but we've certainly got plenty of those in Australia. So there's a different one in every state which is, which makes it a little bit complicated, but they are a valuable resource. In Australia we have a resource which is called Trove, which is a newspaper website and I think the U.S. equivalent is newspapers dot com. But newspapers have a phenomenal amount of information in it. So they'll have things like birth records and death records, engagement notices, marriages. Sometimes they have whole stories about a wedding which will tell you who the wedding party is and what the bride war and all those kind of details which are fascinating as well. We have also sometimes had to use freedom of information to get information about some of our relatives. So on my father's side of the family, there's my great grandfather was ward of the state. Well, he was charged with being destitute as an 8 year old boy and as a result he was then in what was fundamentally an orphan. So we were able to seek freedom of information from the Department of Child Protection to get information about him. And we're about to do something similar for one of my relatives who was institutionalised in a mental asylum. So those freedom of information for those records can be a valuable resource as well. It's a little bit difficult to give really specific ideas on resources because they are often quite, quite country specific or even state specific as well. So for people who are interested in genealogy, often their state based genealogical centre is a good place to start and then they'll have resources that are specific to the area.

[Joanna Penn]

And then there are bigger websites too, aren't there? Like is it ancestry.com and there's sort of these websites that are more global that you have to pay to get information.

[Tegan Whelan]

Yeah, exactly. And they can be a really good resource as well. So because they kind of make it their business to collate a lot of records, that means that sometimes you can search a lot of records quite quickly. They are useful in many ways with their records, but part of the problem with them is a lot of them are user based. So that means that some of the information that you get is actually what other users have submitted. And sometimes that's useful and sometimes it's really important to get that information that is uploaded by individuals in the community. But sometimes that information is inaccurate. And there's also the possibility of those inaccuracies kind of spreading through many people's records on those sites. So ancestry and other sites are a really good starting point and we certainly used it a lot. We often used it to try to generate hints and get us a little bit further. But like all the resources, you also need to corroborate them and actually find out where that source is and try to access that original source if possible.

[Joanna Penn]

Yeah, it's interesting. I just used the ancestry to try and find more about my grandfather, my dad's dad, who left in the late, mid, late 40s, 1940s to go to South America, which after the Second World War, people going to South America were generally slightly dodgy people. And he never came back. He died, died in South America and left my dad and my grandma and all that. So we did find the ship's passage document and the visa with his photo on. And it was quite shocking because he looks exactly like my dad, which. Which shouldn't be shocking, but it was kind of like, oh my goodness, there's the grandfather that I never knew and the father he really never knew. And so. But that's as far as we got. But of course, because he was in various Latin American countries, we couldn't really find anything else on that. So it's interesting, isn't it, when it goes across, across different countries. I mean, being Australian, did you go further back than Australia? Did you end up looking at Britain or anywhere else?

[Tegan Whelan]

Yeah, so we certainly did. So our ancestors are mostly Irish and that's who we pursue in this book. And we did get to the point that we hired a researcher in Ireland for some of our dead ends that we had in Ireland. Because if you are in a different country, you are more savvy about the genealogical systems that are in place and how to search things. One of the things that can be really time consuming is knowing locations and the proximity of those locations to one another. So If I was to be doing that research in Ireland, I would have to be putting up a map app all the time and searching those locations and working out, could this be it? Because is it close enough to be or not? So there's those kind of complications. Plus you mentioned with some sites where you have to pay to be able to access the resources, then that can also be a bit of a hurdle to accessing records in other countries. So we did get an Irish researcher who was fantastic because she managed to get us one step back, one generation back, which was very valuable to us. But there was another one that we sent her that she wasn't able to get any further on, which made us feel very satisfied that we. We were able to get as far as we did with them.

[Joanna Penn]

Yeah, well, it's interesting also, you mentioned freedom of information, so we should. We might be a bit more specific on that. So I did one of those requests here in the UK for my. Again, for my grandfather, because we had a inkling that maybe he was actually a spy. Of course, you want your ancestors to be cool, Right? And so, yeah, you actually have to contact them. And you do have to ask the right questions, though. Right. So tell us about the freedom of information thing. If people don't know what that is, is.

[Tegan Whelan]

Yeah. So I guess with different records, there's different processes that are in place. So with a lot of the ones that we've found in Australia, you actually have to be a very close relation to be able to campaign for some of those records. So in the case that I mentioned with the Department of Child Protection, because my father was a direct descendant of that man or that child, that's why he was able to campaign for those records. So there's different levels that these organisations require you to meet a threshold in order for them to release that information to you in some cases. So it's certainly worth investigating and it will be very nuanced, depending on what kind of information you're looking for and what that organisation is that you're looking for that information and what that government agency is too, if that's the case.

[Joanna Penn]

Yeah. And there are times limits on things as well, aren't there? So sometimes more time needs to pass before you can get access to stuff. As you mentioned, it was, I guess, more legal around a child or around a mental asylum. And for me it was, did this man work for a specific government department? So. And they didn't actually, in the end, they didn't answer my question. And. Yeah, well, I don't know. I took it, as I didn't phrase it in the exact way, because if you don't phrase it in the right way and if you. You don't ask the right. The right organisation, then you don't really get. It's not like they say, oh, go and try this department instead.

[Tegan Whelan]

Yes, that's right. It can be really tricky working out those things. And a lot of family history is just taking your time and doing things bit by bit. You certainly don't do everything all at once. You can pursue one line of your family tree at a time, try to get that information. You can put it down and pick it up later and try again. And it might be that that organization has now changed their rules about releasing the information. It might be that, as you mentioned, the time has passed. So often 100 years is a bit of a. Things get quite loose after about 100 years. There's more willingness to release records. So all those kind of things combined, it's worth revisiting those resources because things can change.

[Joanna Penn]

Yeah, for sure. Okay, so circling back, you said it's a good way to start is by interviewing family members who are al. So when interviewing those people, what are some of the questions that you asked? I mean, was it literally like, what was the name of your mother, do you remember her birthday kind of thing, or did you go much wider?

[Tegan Whelan]

So we went much more in depth than just asking those basic information. So when my parents and I started this project for the Araba Whalens, we really wanted to make sure that it was more than just a person's name, when they were born, the children they had and the date they died. We wanted a lot more scaffolding around that and we really wanted to know who that person was. So we compiled 13 questions, what we call the cousin questions. We use them much more broadly than the cousins, but for the most part they were distributed to my father's cousins and they are available on my blog. So if anyone wants to specifically see them, they can have a look at the Cullen question on there. But a lot of the questions we had were around location. So we asked things like where they went to school, where they were born, where they lived, where they travelled to. And that's because that information becomes really important when you're searching later on. So when you do find a record, if you know that that person was living in that area, then that helps to confirm that the person on that record is the one you're talking about. About. And that becomes particularly relevant if you have a surname like Smith, which is a little Bit too common then that helps to narrow things down. One of the benefits we had in terms of the Arabra Waylands is Wayland is a very common name in Ireland, but it's not a common name in Australia. So that helped us with our research quite a lot. The other parts of those interviewing family members was questions about human stories. So we asked questions about idiosyncrasies of people. We asked what that person was proud of in their life. And I really feel like that gives you the flavor of a person. It gets you an idea of who they actually are. So one of my favourite little stories that we were told, and this was actually the next generation down, so it didn't make it into the book. But a man was telling me about his father and he said that his father, when working on the farm, always wore his overalls. And in the front pocket of his overalls he always carried a $5 note in case the ice cream truck came by. And I just think that's a beautiful way of explaining a person. It gives you so much more character than his name and his date of birth and his date of death. Would you know that he's a farmer, that he wears overalls, that he must value ice cream to carry around $5 in his pocket all the time. We know something about the currency system and that $5 was enough to buy an ice cream at that point. And it also seems like it was a cash based society. So we actually learned quite a lot from that little phrase. And that's the kind of rich colour that we wanted to illustrate our family history book as opposed to just those really clinical details.

[Joanna Penn]

Yeah, that's really lovely actually because, yeah, I mean the date we're born and die and got married or whatever really is quite meaningless in so many ways. But yeah, there is the basics of genealogy. Well, what about you mentioned before about inaccuracies and corroboration. So, you know, maybe somebody says that about that man, but how do you know that that is true? Do you make an assumption and what do you check and what don't you check?

[Tegan Whelan]

I guess the first part is when we're interviewing someone is how close they are to that person as well. Well, so in this particular case, the person telling me this story was his son. And I feel like his son was probably quite well placed to tell this story. And also as he told me this story, his wife was in the background and she laughed remembering the story with him. So that gives me information that two people are remembering this same story, which gives me a little bit more confidence that it's true. One of the things that we can do is try to find other evidence that feeds into that, too. So, for example, during one of our interviews, we had a couple of older ladies talk about their father, and they said that they lived in Yandi, and they described them living at Nyundi because of some kind of government chicken farm. I asked them more details. They could not give me more details than that. It was very vague. But that sent me on a reading research journey, and I was able to find out more about Yandi and was able to determine that it was set up by the government to teach impoverished families how to farm chickens as a way for them to gain some foundations in the world and set themselves up. Now, it was just that comment from these two ladies talking about their father that seemed very vague, but in reality, it was steeped in truth, so I was able to find something to back that up. So all those resources that I've already talked about can be helpful in finding those threads, and especially location threads being really useful. If you interview multiple people, you can often get several versions of the same story. And when we're interviewing different people, too, I, again, am more likely to believe the son of someone than I am to believe someone who is a niece or a nephew or heard this story from their mate. So it's important to consider that as a source. But when there's multiple people telling you the same thing, you start to believe that there's more truth in it than not. Another element, I guess, of that is that when we produce this book, sometimes we use direct quotes. And so in that way, we're kind of stepping back. We're not necessarily describing it as an absolute truth truth. We're describing it as what someone has said about these people, which, again, gives an impression of a person.

[Joanna Penn]

Yeah. And so how far back did you get? How far? On all sides, I guess, because obviously as soon as you start doing a tree, it starts going in all kinds of directions.

[Tegan Whelan]

So for the Rabbilands, we go back to 1810, and that was a bit of a happy surprise that we. We managed to get ourselves back to 1810, to be honest. But that was as far back as we got. And that 1810 birth. She did immigrate to Australia in 1855.

[Joanna Penn]

And then what did people think? Like you're asking stuff of family members and asking for memories. And of course, some people have very happy memories of everything, and a lot of people don't particularly want to talk about. About their family. So how did people feel about making A book. And also, I mean, it is available to buy so it can be public. How did the family feel about that?

[Tegan Whelan]

Overwhelmingly, the response has been pretty positive. And the ones that haven't been positive have been neutral. So that has been a success in that way. When we were going around interviewing people to get information for this book, we were approaching a lot of people for those interviews. We spread out that workload. So my father is quite well connected and has stayed in touch with lots of the Whalens. So that really helped him to be able to call up a Whalen, introduce himself, talk about his father, and manage to get an in to that person to be able to interview them. I had the more difficult job because I was doing more of the cold, cold calls. So there was a branch of the family that is the stars, so they're Wayland descendants. But we haven't been very actively involved with that family for quite a while. So I was literally cold calling people to introduce myself, explain how we're related because my surname is different to theirs, and then ask them very, very nicely if they might be able to help. And I probably had a 50, 50 success rate in that. So those people who weren't willing to help, that's quite okay. And we respected that choice. But there wasn't hostility in that. They had just. It wasn't something they were interested in. I feel like a lot of people think that they don't have anything to contribute to the project, but in reality they do. Almost everyone that we interviewed would start with, well, I don't know much. And from there you could ask them more questions. And they knew quite a lot. You know, those two ladies that I interviewed who mentioned their father's farm in Yundi, that was valuable. What I got out of that interview, it was all these little tidbits that all came together and helped polish off more than just their father's story. So it was all really valuable. One of the decisions we made really early on was that we were only going to feature people who had passed away in the book. So that meant that we didn't have as much conflict, I think, than if we were presenting people who were living. And there was other concerns that we had around privacy and things like that. So in the current era, publishing someone's date of birth and where they live and possibly the name of the street that they lived in as a child, like, all those kind of things are things we don't want to put forward in a book. We want to protect people's privacy in that way. Another way that we can kind of protected ourselves around people who might be uncomfortable with. The idea is not only did we interview them, but once we had completed a chapter about their loved one, as part of our publication process, we gave them that chapter and asked them to review it. So to look over it and let us know if there was anything that they wanted changed. And every now and then there was one or two things that they wanted to remove. And for us, you know, family is quite important to us. That's why we've done a family history book and we're not intending to upset anyone. So if there was someone who wanted a sentence or two deleted, we deleted that sentence. It was okay in the whole manuscript that we've produced those. That sentence or two is not going to make a big deal. So we have just decided that if people were uncomfortable about certain details, details which were fairly minor details in the scheme of things, we just removed it from the book.

[Joanna Penn]

Yeah, it's funny, isn't it? I'm sitting here thinking about my. My grandfather because another sort of fear is that you discover something that maybe people don't want to know. You know, like, we've always thought that my grandfather must have had another family. He must have done. He left when my father was like 2 years old. This is a man in a time of life. He could have had another family. And yet, do we really want to know? He was in Brazil. Sometimes we do talk about it and maybe there's people who are part of the family and yet we don't push it because maybe we're scared about it or. I don't know. And for my dad, it's difficult memories, but was there anything that came up with your family history that was. I guess, I mean, you've said those to the child and the person who was in the asylum, but was there anything else that sort of was surprising?

[Tegan Whelan]

So the most, I guess, shocking parts of it was just a lot of bar fights and they weren't so much shocking.

[Joanna Penn]

But I guess I was gonna say that's Australian.

[Tegan Whelan]

Yeah, exactly. Especially for the era. But I think this, the one that always shocks me and I come back to time and time again was this bar fight that was described in a lot of detail and. And one of my relatives broke the leg of another man. And I just imagine the force you'd have to put in to break someone's leg. It's just horrific to me. But that made it to the book, so it's one of the more colourful stories to have in there. But, yeah, there's Plenty of bar fights and they're all published in newspapers. So even though we've chosen to publish them in the Rappawalan, so repeat that publication from the newspaper. It's all readily accessible details. It's not new things that aren't already out in the public domain. There was a little nice surprise. So the nicest surprise that we had was when we did manage to go back one extra generation and that was when we found a funeral notice for a woman that turned out to be my three times great grandmother. And that was a very welcome surprise. And later on we were able to corroborate that with DNA. DNA. So my father's DNA matched with someone with the same surname as her which as far as we're concerned confirms that she is who we think she is. So that was very satisfying part of our journey.

[Joanna Penn]

Wow. Actually going down the DNA route that's, that's quite hardcore. So did, I mean and that's not something easy to ask people to do like oh, would you mind just spitting in this thing and getting a test? So was that something that you had to ask this person to do?

[Tegan Whelan]

So my dad has had his DNA submitted for quite some time but he did when he began his DNA journey he found his oldest relative, he could so his dad's brother and did get his consent to spit in a tube for DNA purposes. And that meant that we had one generation further back which is really useful. And dad particularly wanted his Y DNA which is that male line that can be really important, important for research as well. So we didn't get to the point of asking for I guess our cousins to contribute their DNA. But the DNA was certainly useful. Another one that we found with DNA is that my dad's uncle did have an illegitimate child and we were able to confirm the name of that child through DNA. We knew they exist. We had an idea what they named name was and then the DNA match confirmed it. So that was just another way that we had these two resources that were saying the same thing.

[Joanna Penn]

Yes. And I guess that is, that's one of those things, isn't it that sometimes comes up and children born without the knowledge of other people in the family, it's sort of a surprise. Can be a real surprise. So I think this is really a fascinating thing. I guess on. You did mention the newspapers there and I was wondering about the like photos because there must be some photos. How did the image permissions work? How did you get permissions for images if you don't own the images or what kind of things did you do around the newspapers?

[Tegan Whelan]

Sure thing. So with the images, there is a lot of images in the book and a lot of them come from state library. So most of our state libraries in Australia, if you attribute the source to the state library, they're willing for you to use that image if it's no longer in copyright. So a lot of the images come from the state libraries. There was the occasional image that we did purchase from library collections, especially international library collections. My parents drove all around South Australia taking photos of gravestones. So they're all our own images that are those gravestones images in the book. There was lots of family photos that were donated by family members and they gave us the consent to publish that photo. There was one particular one where we got this beautiful image of a house which was in ruins, but it was a house that was important to our story. The house was now destroyed. So I had to trace down the person who had taken that photo and luckily she gave us permission to put publish that ruined image in the house. So with all the images, we got permissions to use those images when we can. The newspaper articles, they often do appear in the book as full articles. They might be slightly, slightly fixed up at times when there's some glaring errors or inaccuracies for them, but for the most part they're reproduced as they appeared in a newspaper and they're all fully credited. So the book that we've produced has resources, so it has a bibliography and it has references for most things throughout the book. So it was really important for us to make a valid resource. And that includes those newspaper articles?

[Joanna Penn]

No, that's great. And then how did you keep everything organized? Because, I mean, it's just a huge amount of work. So how did you organize it?

[Tegan Whelan]

So it was a huge amount of work. And I think there was many different things that we did and I'm not sure all of them were great. So my. I was working with my parents on this project and we do live geographically separated, so that meant that we had to use online ways to communicate and store information and things like that. So we did actually use ancestry.com for a lot of our research collation. And part of that was because we could both access it from our locations. And when one of us worked on a particular tree, we would call the other one and say, okay, I've updated this tree. Now you can go have a look at it and refer that into the book or generate questions based on that or whatever it might be. So that was part of the way that we organised it the crux of the work in terms of formatting and organising the work was my work. So my parents did a lot of the research and I did some of the research while I did a lot of the formatting and putting it into words. So almost from Day Dot, I had a document document that I was adding information to. Sometimes I added it in a really untidy fashion in like a note format instead of entire words. But it was basically one document from day.that just kept growing and growing and growing into the 450 page manuscript that it is now.

[Joanna Penn]

Wow, 450 pages. And then I guess in terms of formatting the book. So in my, you know, everyone can imagine a family trip. How do you get a family tree into a book? Like, does it have to go across. Well, it would have to go across multiple pages in order for the font not to be tiny. Or how did you manage that kind of practical consideration of formatting into print?

[Tegan Whelan]

So I just sighed because it was such a painful experience reading family charts. So at the very early days, I knew that I wanted a family chart for every family. So every time you started a chapter that you would see that person's family chart on the side. I did a lot of searching online, trying to find different programs that could do it, and basically all of them fell down. Once I got to a family with 13 children, it was just impossible. And as a result, the family charts in our book were all manually handmade in Word and then utilized in the book. That meant that I could have a lot of control over the colors, the font, the size of the font, and also the readability in terms of when there is a family that has 13 children, how that actually appears on this page. So it was a lot of work. And actually I had two family members help me in the formatting of those. So I did like a first draft and it was getting towards the end of the project and I was quite time poor and I farmed that out to one family member who mostly fixed it, and then I farmed it out to another family member who got it even closer and then I had to fix up the final bit. So those family tree charts were a nightmare, but they are very readable and they look just how I wanted them to. So that's a small win, but there was a lot of pain to get there.

[Joanna Penn]

Yes, I imagine so. And yeah, doing that manually in Word sounds crazy. Those 13 children, I imagine that's the Irish Catholic side, is.

[Tegan Whelan]

Is Indeed. I think 13 is the largest number of children we had. But there Was quite a few, 10 children families as well.

[Joanna Penn]

Wow. Wow. And did all of those children live?

[Tegan Whelan]

So not always. So some of the families were very large and did have all children survive. So yes, my grandfather is one of 13 and he all 13 of those children lived. So that was pretty impressive odds. And that's why the book is so long because there is so many children.

[Joanna Penn]

So many. Well this, this makes more sense because I mean my family tree is pretty sparse. I mean mine really would fit onto a page. So it. But then like I said, maybe there are more of them that we don't know about. But it is interesting that because you come from that kind of family background, of course it is going to be much, much bigger. But I did want to ask. So I completely understand this project from like a family perspective, family interest, you know, just a nice family project to do and then everyone gets a copy or I presume they had to buy it because there's so many of them. But you've actually put this up for sale on your website. So I wondered about that, like what was the reason to make it more, more commercially available and are people buying it?

[Tegan Whelan]

So I mean we did a lot of work on this project and we really want people to not just learn about our family, but learn about all the aspects that fed into our family. So we sometimes liken this book to actually being a history of the Mid north of South Australia. The index that we compiled for this book book is enormous and if there is someone who has a Mid north name, you can look up that name in the index and you're probably going to find it because there was a lot of the same families moving around in the Mid North. So that means that we do get interest from people who just have a connection to the Mid north instead of necessarily the Whalen family. So most of our book sales have been for family, which is entirely what we expected. We do have quite a few people who buy the book in Rarabra. So we recently had a market that we went attended in Rara and Rara is a very small country town, quite far from the capital city of South Australia. So it's probably about a three hour drive from the capital city of South Australia. And in at that market we did sell six books which is not a huge number. But for a very niche family history book we were really happy with that result. And a lot of people are buying it because they do know a Whelan. You know, there was 13 children living in the town so they probably did. And it was quite. They either knew my grandfather, they knew my grandfather's brothers. They have a connection to the Whalens and even if they don't have a connection to the whaling, sometimes they just have a connection to the Mid North. And I think people who do have an interest in the Mid north will enjoy elements of the book because a lot of it is about the pioneering days of the Mid north before these townships were established and how the shepherd lifestyle worked in that area and the impacts of some of the developments in the Mid north as well. So yes, there are some people buying it, but it's a very, very niche project and we're quite well aware of that.

[Joanna Penn]

Yeah, I mean, did you also send to the state library and things like that? Because it, as you said, it's more like a history book.

[Tegan Whelan]

Yeah, it certainly has. So it is in all the libraries that we have to supply in Australia and then some extra ones as well. So we also had a lot of involvement from some of those resources or organisations that we used in our research. So in some cases we've made donations of the book to those collections to make sure that that information is preserved in their records as well.

[Joanna Penn]

Well, I think it's fantastic. So tell people where they can find you and this book and everything else you do online.

[Tegan Whelan]

Certainly. So my website is tlwayland.com au and Wayland is felt W. You can also find me on Facebook as T L Waelan. And I guess the note is that the Arab Whalens is my only book at the moment, but I am working on a young adult fiction series and that will appear on all those places once I get it around to it.

[Joanna Penn]

Yeah, I was gonna say you've been busy with all those animals as well.

[Tegan Whelan]

That's right. Bottle feeding lambs four times a day.

[Joanna Penn]

Yeah. Well, look, it's been lovely to talk to you, Tegan. Thanks so much for your time. Thanks, Jo. So I hope you found the discussion with Tegan interesting. Did it give you any ideas about family history or genealogy or what kinds of personal creative projects might you consider? Let me know what you think. Please leave a comment on the podcast Show Notes at the creative pen.com or on the YouTube channel or email me joannathecreativepenn.com send me pictures of where you're listening or your favourite cemetery or church. In your next Monday I'll be delving more into book marketing ideas and in the meantime, happy writing and I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening today. I hope you found it helpful. You can find the backlist episodes and show [e-mail] podcast and you can get your free author [e-mail] blueprint. If you you'd like to connect, you can find me on Facebook and X at the Creative Pen, or on Instagram and Facebook @jfpenauthor. Happy writing and I'll see you next time.