On his mother’s side he is researching his great, great,
great grandfather Thomas Griffiths who was sailing schooners out of Hobart
between 1839 and 1850 before being lost at sea, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean
sailing to San Francisco.
He spent 18 years preparing maps and building databases for
the NSW Office of Water and was involved in a family company selling GIS
(Geographic Information Systems) software, as well as providing consulting and
training services.
He has also been a user of the Historical Land Records Viewer (HLRV) since 1999 and is now using it to research historical land records to enhance family research.
Jeff also has an interest in digitising records and images
due to the large photographic collection left by his wife’s grandfather who was
a professional photographer with a studio at Ashfield. He left a legacy of
glass negatives, photo albums, celluloid negatives, diaries and 16mm movies.
This collection is now being digitised. He is currently Managing the digitisation process of the manuscript collection for the Society of Australian Genealogists.
He has lived at Gymea Bay for the last 54 years with his
wife Roberta. He is a member of Botany Bay Family History Society, Society of
Australian Genealogists, Newcastle Family History Society, Sussex Family
History Group and the Royal Australian Historical Society.
Many are the changes
in technology in that time.