Suburb History: Adding the local to your family history

• Which schools did your ancestor go to?
• Where did they work?
• Where did your ancestors shop?
• Where did your ancestors go to church?
• What sports and social clubs where your ancestors members of?
• Which did they play in?
• Are they remembered in any way in their suburbs?

Researching the history of the neighbourhoods and suburbs your ancestors lived can enrich the retelling of their story.  It might even uncover new stories and new avenues of research.   

Including the local history of the area where your ancestors lived can contribute to understanding how your family lived within their community.

Starting points for your research:

• Suburbs
  • Picture Ipswich Places collection includes information on current and former suburbs and localities of Ipswich and the former Moreton Shire.
  • The collection hubs for suburbs on Picture Ipswich bring together all of the assets (images, written and oral histories, documents, videos, etc) and information (schools, businesses, people & family, parks, etc) on the website that relate to that location.  These collections are constantly being added to.
  • Approach local historical societies, such as the Ipswich Historical Society or Rosewood Scrub Historical Society.  They also have extensive photographic collections and documents. 
• Photos
  • Streetscapes and photos of neighbouring houses 

• Newspapers
  • Were your ancestors members of any sporting clubs, churches, friendly societies, choirs, or other groups within their community?
  • Do a Trove search to see if their name appears in sports results or on committees.
  • If you do find their name, start researching what information might be available about the sports club, church, or committee.  This information might appear in the historical newspapers, or information could have been retained by the organisation (if they still exist) or archived at the John Oxley Library (State Library of Queensland) or other libraries such as the Fryer Library (University of Queensland).  Picture Ipswich might have some images and secondary sources available.

• School Records
  • These are held by the Queensland State Archives.  Some are digitised and available online.  School records may include the name and occupation of a parent / guardian, the family address, and the years the student attended.  
  • School photos might include the name of students who were in the same class.  They are also the best source for regular (yearly) images of your ancestors growing up, especially if the family  did not have access to a camera.
  • Schools themselves may have archives that could include examples of school uniforms, textbooks, homework, informal photos, school magazines or newspapers, clipping files, student indexes and admission registers, yearbooks, sports trophies, and school histories.

• Shopping
  • How we shop for food, clothing, and household goods has changed a lot over the generations.  The main retail precinct of Ipswich was along Brisbane, Nicholas, Bell, and Ellenborough Streets, with corner stores, bakeries, and butchers providing access to groceries, newspapers, and other items, within walking distance from home, until the later part of the 20th century, when supermarkets and shopping centres began opening around Ipswich.  
  • Was there a corner store or butchers near your family home?  Most older suburbs in Ipswich (e.g. East Ipswich, Booval, North Booval, Blackstone, Silkstone) would have had one or more corner stores servicing the neighbourhood.  Whilst only a few still operate as a corner store, many of the buildings remain, repurposed today as coffee shops and boutique retail.
  • A search of the Queensland Times on Trove, or a search through Post Office Directories or Almanacs might reveal what shopping opportunities were available in your suburb.
  • Picture Ipswich has the 1918 Block Maps and the 1985 Commercial Inventory that capture the location of shopping precincts for their respective time periods.
  • Picture Ipswich also has several UBD Directories for 1956, 1958, 1961, and 1964

• Council Records
  • Most historical records created by Ipswich Municipal Council and Ipswich City Council are held at Queensland State Archives.  These records have not been digitised.  
  • Rates books, committee books, indexes of letters received, rent journals for Council owned properties
  • Remember that the boundaries of Ipswich changed.  Just because a suburb is in Ipswich now does not mean that it was always part of Ipswich.  You can find some information on Ipswich's history of divisional boards, shires, councils, and towns Former Divisions, Shires, Suburbs, & Localities.

• War Memorials & Honour Boards
  • If members of your family served in the Defence Force, their name might be recorded on a memorial in a neighbourhood park or on an honour board for an organisation they were members of (e.g. churches and friendly societies).
  • Many of the names appearing on memorials have been researched in recent years

• Published histories 
  • Picture Ipswich, the Ipswich History Room, and the Rosewood History Room all have collections of written histories dedicated to churches, sports clubs, businesses, schools, and general Ipswich history that could be of use.
• Business records
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