August is Family History Month and State Records of South Australia will be holding two free webinars to help people find out what kind of records they hold and how they can access them.

The seminars will be held Wednesday August 10 at 12pm and Wednesday August 17 at 6pm. Interested people should register via Eventbrite.

State Records include things like passenger lists, Aboriginal family history sources, historic house and land records and police and court records.

The results of inquests are also available and offer a very sad but insight into the lives of people living on the Fleurieu in the 1800s. For family historians the witness statements can tell them much about their family’s circumstances and connections.

Goolwa seems to have been a particularly dangerous place with dozens of inquests held in the 1800s and early 1900s as a result of drowning.

In 1856 an inquest was held into the deaths of Charles Burton and George Shipway. They were drowned at “the Goolwa” as the town was known then. The man and boy had taken a cart down to the river to collect water but took their horse and cart in too far and drowned.

There are also many records of inquests into people falling off paddle steamers and disappearing into the muddy waters of the River Murray.

Records of court proceedings are also invaluable. Such as the case brought against Thomas Dugan, one time publican at the Alma Hotel, who was brought to trial at Willunga in 1926 on a charge of murdering Charles Byles.

Dugan was accused of shooting Byles (a woodcutter) at Pages Flat after his wife left him to live with Byles.  

Despite Dugan giving himself up to police and confessing to the shooting he was found not guilty by a jury.