My ancestry DNA is 50% Irish, 42% German, with the remaining 8% being Scandinavian. The first arrivals into Australia, were my Great Great Grandfather Robert Bradbury (born 1806) a convict who arrived in Sydney in 1832 & my Great Great Grandmother Catherine Ryan (born 1830) who arrived in Brisbane in 1851 as an assisted immigrant from Ireland. They arrived in Australia almost two decades apart, but eventually their paths crossed with them getting married in 1853 in Ipswich Queensland. The other ancestors were all Irish & German arriving in Queensland in the second half of the 19th century.
THE IRISH IMMIGRANTS ☘️🇮🇪
Catherine Ryan – Newport Tipperary (arrived Brisbane Queensland 31-1-1851) on board the “Meridian” https://porsche91722.wordpress.com/2023/05/01/catherine-ryan/
Ellen Dunn (Bowen) – Nenagh Tipperary (arrived Brisbane Queensland 12-10-1856) on the “Lady McDonald” https://porsche91722.wordpress.com/2023/03/04/ellen-bermingham-dunn-bowen/
Nicholas Corcoran – Danesfort Kilkenny (arrived Brisbane Queensland 12-11-1864) on the ship “Hannemore” https://porsche91722.wordpress.com/2023/11/26/nicholas-johanna-corcoran/
Peter Bermingham – Carbury Kildare (arrived Maryborough Queensland 9-10-1874) on the ship “Great Queensland” https://porsche91722.wordpress.com/2023/02/22/peter-bermingham/
THE GERMAN IMMIGRANTS 🇩🇪
George M Kubler, Louisa J Streiner – Biberach, Baden Werttemberg (arrived Brisbane Queensland 14-9-1863) on the ship “Beausite” https://porsche91722.wordpress.com/2023/04/22/george-louisa-kubler/
Gottleib F Lobegeiger, Wilhelmine F Topp -Templin, Brandenburg (arrived Brisbane Queensland 17-1-1864) on the ship “Suzanne Goddefroy” https://porsche91722.wordpress.com/2023/04/13/gottlieb-frederich-ferdinand-jeleb-lobegeiger/
Carl F W Krueger, Johanna E Grambauer – Pinnow, Brandenburg (arrived Brisbane Queensland 6-9-1865) on the ship “Suzanne Goddefroy” https://porsche91722.wordpress.com/2023/04/04/carl-johanna-krueger-emilie-albertine-louise-lobergeigerannie-muller-vera-bermingham/
Johannes Muller – Tuttlingen, Baden Werttemberg (arrived Brisbane Queensland 7-2-1879) on the ship “Fritz Reuter” https://porsche91722.wordpress.com/2023/02/03/johannes-john-muller/
OUR CONVICT ANCESTOR 🏴
Robert Bradbury – St Helens, Lancashire (arrived Sydney New South Wales 27-8-1832) on the ship “Clyde” https://porsche91722.wordpress.com/2023/11/08/robert-bradbury-2/
Family pathways our ancestors made on arrival in Australia. Robert Bradbury a convict transported to Australia for desertion was the first to arrive in 1832, coming up from Sydney. His future wife, Catherine Ryan arrived in Brisbane in 1851. Ellen Dunn/Bowen 1856, George & Louisa Kubler 1863, Gottleib & Wilhelmine Lobegeiger 1864, Nicholas Corcoran 1864, Carl & Johanna Krueger 1865, Peter Bermingham 1874, John Muller 1879.
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I have now done articles on most of my ancestors. When I first started on this ancestry journey, to find out where I came from, my initial thoughts were to find out if we had any high achievers in our family history. It has been said by many others that it is a journey of discovery & I can agree. In addition to getting my priorities realigned, I found out more things about myself along the way.
I have my doubts on the accuracy of many of the centuries old records from the original home countries. The world has had to go through two World Wars & way too many other conflicts, since just the beginning of the 20th century.
Even prior to the 20th century, both Ireland & Germany, where my ancestors were from, had endured the ravages of wars, famines & civil unrest throughout their history of the last 500-plus years. Many of the original archives, museums & historic records had been destroyed by invasions, fires & civil disobedience through these periods of fighting between nations & also during internal disputes. So, the chances are greatly decreased, of finding detailed accurate information on the ancestors from the old countries, before they arrived in Australia. The Irish records were dodgy, to say the least. On the other hand, what records I have found on the German side of the tree have been pretty good. The Germans have always had a reputation for being fastidious & some of the ancestral details I have located have been well recorded. I haven’t completely drawn a line on the home country ancestry tracking, but have preferred to stick to the details after they stepped off the boats, upon arrival in Australia.
In saying that, I have tracked the German ancestral line of our family back about 600 years. As anyone who has gone back a few generations can testify, the tree can become a maze of very doubtful lines. Think of it as driving a car in reverse down a network of crossing streets & intersections. One wrong turn & you could easily end up going in a wrong direction. You can find yourself stuck up many dead end streets & alley ways, having to head out & pick up a correct thread/direction & commence again. There are lots of clues on the way. But are they all correct? It is a fascinating journey, but can also be a very frustrating exercise in finding the truth.
Australia, since the arrival of white colonization, has never been invaded by an external country.
That statement depends of course, on your perspectives on the arrival of the First Fleet, in Australia in 1788. Many people will have differing views on that subject. The acts of genocide committed on First Nations people by the colonial inhabitants should not go without acknowledgment & are well covered by modern historians now publishing the uncomfortable truths about Australia’s early colonization. The frontier wars fought between colonists and indigenous peoples in Queensland, were the bloodiest and most brutal in colonial Australia, with Aboriginal fatalities alone comprising no less than 65000 & that figure is considered to be a conservative estimate. I know, in my case, that it only dawned on me as I got older, as to exactly how horrific it must have been for our first nations people to have watched their country invaded & overun by the colonial onslaught that followed after the arrival of the First Fleet. The disease, genocide, the stolen generations, poisoning of food & water supplies, the unbelievable brutality on an entire race made me realise what an absolute load of trash we were taught in our education system at the time of my schooling in the 1960’s. Our colonial governments were no better than the brutal English & German governments that our ancestors had fled from. Right up until the 1960’s, Australia had a “White Australia” policy enshrined in our federal & state government legislation. Sadly, modern day Australia is still a racist country. We all know some of these specimens, some of whom are in our parliaments. Many of us have racists in our families, that in the interest of family unity, we have to tolerate. These are the ones who like to hold the floor & push their views on the rest of us, whenever a friends & family get together takes place, somehow believing that their racist & retarded political outlooks are the answers to all the nations current problems that exist. Detailed proof, photographic & historical records, & first hand experiences don’t mean a thing to them. They live in their own little world of hate & bigotry and tend to surround themselves with like minded people. My own home state of Queensland is probably the most racist state in Australia. Head north of the Sunshine Coast & west of the great Dividing Range & you are really heading into redneck country. But, I digress.
Nevertheless, the majority of our Australian historic migration records have been kept, more or less intact, since the arrival of the First Fleet. The colonial Brits were great record keepers & there were also newspapers recording information right from the early days of settlement. By the 1850s, photography was also becoming more common, so pictures were also being recorded of people, places & events in Australia’s history.
As a fifth generation Queenslander, our earliest ancestral arrival was a convict, Robert Bradbury,who got transported for desertion from the British Army in 1832.
Sidenote – My wife’s earliest recorded ancestor arriving in Australia, was also given an all-expenses paid trip out here. He was a convict on the 2nd fleet – James Beckett arriving in 1790 (17 months after the First Fleet). That makes her an 8th-generation Australian, with an ancestor who became one of the very first Aussie’s. Unfortunately, James didn’t make the trip by choice. He was convicted & transported to Australia after receiving a life sentence. Later, James Beckett was given his freedom & became a brickmaker.
The first census of Queensland was conducted on 7 April 1861 when the population was 30,059 comprising 18,121 males and 11,938 females.
My thoughts on the subject of tracing ancestors are not meant to be interpreted as a perfect way of undertaking the exercise, or to find faults in anyone else’s research. It is primarily just the way I have attempted to trace my past relatives. The reality is that I’m still relatively new to this, having only started after I retired a few years ago. There is no doubt that it is a very time-consuming pastime, however, it becomes very addictive. Some people have been doing this for decades. I must admit, that when we were kids, hearing our parents, grandparents & relatives banging on about the old people in the family’s past, used to make us run a mile in the other direction. Like many others who have only just gotten the bug in later life, we all feel like we should have paid more attention when we were younger.
When you start to unearth details & stories about your ancestors, it only makes you want to find more. It is also an incredible learning experience because you are not just learning about your old relatives, but also getting an insight into how people viewed the world back in the day. How religion played a big part in their lives. What was their generational thinking, on politics, education standards & many other facets of day-to-day life at the time? We’re inclined to think of our ancestors as always being elderly people, with old world views & opinions, but they too, were young once & were full of hope & enthusiasm for their futures. I think we’ve all seen plenty of documentaries, read stories & seen old drawings, depictions & photographs of past history. But when it is your own people – our Grandparents, our Great Grandparents, our G G Grandparents, our Uncles & Aunties etc, it takes on a special significance when you see photos & detailed records of what they saw, what their living conditions were like & what they had to contend with, when they arrived in Australia. What they had to do, to make a better life for themselves, and how they raised a family. Starting from scratch to build & operate their farms. They had to clear the land from the thick scrub. They built their own homes, fenced their farms, and transported their own produce & animals with no cars or trucks. There wasn’t much in the way of equipment & they only had basic tools to work with. Everything was done by hand or by using horsepower. Earthmoving & farming machinery were still on the future horizon. But our ancestors were also very innovative. They often came up with ideas & inventions of their own to make their lives easier on the farm. Naturally, they had no idea of what the future held, so they took everything on at face value, with whatever they had at their disposal, back in the day. When you start to dig deeper into their lives, it becomes an enthralling time travel view back into the past, of what life was all about, over a hundred years ago.
One of the other aspects of this exercise, that many people of the current generation tend to view with a certain amount of disdain, is the attitudes that people of past generations had, & dealt with, the issues of racism & the environment, of a hundred-plus years ago. Keep in mind…Everyone was a product of those colonial times. In the British Empire, of which Australia was then still a part, slavery was still very much in vogue. Colonialism, with all its brutal, unethical & antiquated attitudes & laws was still the way governments who formed part of the British Empire, operated in the Victorian era. It’s easy to look back with hindsight & be critical. There was no Social Services safety net for the people who fell through the cracks. The early settlers had to hit the ground running & were just trying to stay alive. Australia was called the lucky country in the early days. But luck didn’t just present itself. It was all hard work & an attitude of never giving up under adversity. Our ancestors had traveled from Ireland & Germany to get out of the mess, that both countries were in at the time. As terrible as it sounds, other issues were superfluous. It doesn’t take away the fact that our First Nations & Pacific Islander people were treated abysmally, but again, without diminishing responsibility, the people of the pioneering years in Australia, were a product of their time & place.
The environment was generally treated as something to be used, not protected. But would we have been any different, if we had been shifted back in time? My guess is…probably not. It is very easy to be critical of some of those stances, looking at them from a present-day perspective. Realistically, it’s probably only been in the last 20 or so years, that we, as a modern society, are now getting very serious about the environment & global warming & we still have a long way to go. Those problems wouldn’t have even been on the radar for most of our ancestors. I think one thing about the environment, that they learned very early, was that if you looked after the land, the land will look after you. So, in some ways, the early farming settlers were already learning about protecting the land & environment, well before it became an issue.
Similar comparisons could be made about our ancestors strict religious beliefs. Religion was a huge part of their lives, in colonial Australia. It was a case of….if you weren’t in, you were out! If you weren’t part of the status quo of following a religious faith, families were often ostracized. Communities were very close-knit. The various church denominations stuck together, even to the point of being, what we would consider these days, as being obsessive & cult-like. Church congregations were full to overflowing every Sunday in all the various religions that most localities had.
Education standards were improving & consequently, people became more tolerant in future generations. In the 19th century, print media (newspapers) had become more readily available & by the early 20th century, radio was also becoming more accessible so people could hear & understand more about what was happening in their communities & the wider world.
Like many others, I steered down particular pathways, that showed persons with interesting backgrounds. I made the mistake of temporarily discarding an ancestoral trail that wasn’t quite as fascinating as others. In time, I came to the conclusion that generally, our mob weren’t as captivating as I would have liked them to be. It quickly dawned on me that this wasn’t the point of the whole exercise. Ancestry tracking is all about finding your roots.
When you start down this pathway & delve deeper into your past, you find out some absolutely amazing facts & details about your forebears. A recurring thought was – How cool would it have been to actually meet these people from our past & have a one on one dialogue with them. How & why they chose a particular destination in Australia, & to gain a detailed understanding what their lives were like back in the old country. For most of them, it came down to simply having a gutful of the dystopian way of life that was being forced onto them.
It is easy to get carried away reading some of the facts that become unearthed from a century & a half ago. These people….my relatives, really did some incredible things. They up & left their country of birth. They travelled on a flimsy wooden sailing ship, endured attrocious weather & accomadation, to journey to the other side of the planet. Many never made it, with some dieing from disease on board the ships. Some vessels were lost at sea with all hands going down. Think about that, when you’re sitting in economy class watching a movie on your next flight overseas, & silently thinking 😠😠 Are we there yet!
To put that into perspective…Some of our ancestors had never traveled more than 20 kilometers from their homes during their lives to that point. Some had never seen the ocean. Most had never been on a boat. In our families case, they were all farmers who were used to the Northern Hemisphere agricultural practices & climate conditions, so they would have had no idea what conditions were going to be like in Australia. I wonder, how many knew that Australia was, & still is the driest continent in the world. I’d be willing to bet that the Queensland Government delegations to Germany & the UK back in the 1800s, drumming up prospective immigration, weren’t passing on that information. Our ancestors all made an incredible leap of faith in what was awaiting them on the other side of the world.
I treat all of these ancestry stories as a work in progress. It isn’t totally possible to put together a detailed, factual report on their lives when they lived & died well over a century ago. I’m certainly not suggesting that you prop it up with fiction or inaccurate guesswork, but by necessity, you have to attempt to join some dots. The reality of ancestry tracking, is that unless your relative was a person who led a very public life as a politician, a celebrity, an influential personality or a criminal, there wasn’t much to find, other than shipping logs, births, marriages, obituary notices, cemetery headstones, plus occasionally some land ownership records, military service or the odd rare photograph.
So, in many ways, looking at the living conditions for the general population from Germany & Ireland, & the economic situation in their home countries at the time, helped to fill in some of the gaps & gain some sort of perspective of what they had left behind.
Some official records don’t correspond to other documents that I have found over ancestors’ life spans. I can only put this down to poor record-keeping of the day. On the flip side, a lot of people make the mistake of sometimes disregarding some information, because of a minor discrepancy.
For instance, back in the day when Catherine Ryan (my great-great-grandmother) arrived in Queensland after migrating from Ireland, Brisbane was literally no bigger than a village, with a population of approximately 2000. Many of those were military personel, colonial government employees & convicts. The actual free settler population was considerably smaller.
Queensland only started recording immigration information in 1848, shortly before becoming a state. Prior to 1859, it was part of the colony of New South Wales. Although her name was a very common Irish female name, there weren’t that many “Catherine Ryans” that had arrived in the early 1850s & in her age group (about 23). Following her trail wasn’t going to be impossible, but maybe perhaps just a little bit difficult. I found it easier to sort the arrivals into likely & unlikely categories, discard some of the obviously incorrect records, that in Catherine’s case, didn’t fit her demographic & see what you were left with. It doesn’t always give you the definitive answer you are looking for, but it certainly narrows down the list of possibles from probables. A firm fact is that we know Catherine was married on 8th November 1853. So the natural assertion is that she arrived some time well before then, to have found employment, somewhere to live & to hook up with her future husband (Robert Bradbury).
In the official Queensland Assisted Immigration records, there were only four female Ryans listed in the 18-25 age group who arrived up to 1853 & there was only one “Catherine Ryan”. Some of the assisted migrants, particularly single young women, were known to have adopted a family, for the voyage over here. This scenario took place on many migrant voyages from the UK to the US, Canada, South Africa & Australia. Having a family (whether they were your own or not) on board, no doubt offered a sense of protection for young women who were traveling alone. Security on some of the crowded migrant ships was nonexistent.
There was the possibility, although highly unlikely, that she travelled out here under a false name.
People back then were no different than today. Some lied about their age & activities, for one reason or another. Some records disappeared or were accidentally destroyed over the years, so there’s always going to be a few gaps in government records, archives & museums.
Anyone embarking on this type of ancestry exercise can vouch that not all official records are accurate. The dates, the correct spelling of names & places, shipping records etc, by the original record keepers, were often, fairly dodgy. Once again, to use my great-great grandmother Catherine Ryan as an example, when investigating her life, like all ancestry tracking, it is generally a case of attempting to join those dates, places, records & media reports. I also work on the basis of…..Is the person mentioned in a document in the right place, at the right time, to fit into your ancestor’s timeline? A great way to get into an argument with fellow ancestry investigators, is to hold stubborn unshakeable views on a particular aspect or subject, if you don’t have an ironclad guarantee that they are correct. Going into these tracking exercises, you must have the good grace to accept that you can sometimes get it wrong & the respect, to accept that other people’s version of events may be correct. Anybody who thinks that they get it right the first time is kidding themselves. Another thing that I have learned since I started this ancestry journey of discovery, is that you should talk to, & LISTEN to as many people as possible. Older relatives are a hive of information. Talk to them & hear their accounts before they eventually pass on. Most want to tell their stories, if they have the attention of someone who will listen. That historical item of significance or family gossip may die with them unless someone has taken the time to record it.
There are also plenty of bullshit stories & urban myths that get passed down through the generations too. People were no different a century or so ago about making up malicious stories to discredit a relative or associate that they had a disagreement with. They may not have had modern day digital social media to spread misleading information, but they certainly had word of mouth & later, the ability to write a report, if they wanted to denigrate someone. Being able to sort out fact from fiction can be a big help in getting completing a true story.
I also understand the business models of the ancestry tracking sites. They are not benevolent societies. However, a lot of their clues & hints can send you in a completely wrong direction. They tend to bleed information through to you at slow rate, in order to keep you interested. In saying that, it’s well worth the money to get access to their vast records. Just don’t totally rely on what you get from them. There’s plenty of free archives & libraries, many with the original hard copy records, to obtain information from too. The best are often some of the smallest, that are run, usually by a team of volunteers.
I can highly recommend visiting these various local archives & museums in the localities where your ancestor has come from. Many families often donate photo’s & records from deceased estates, so there is always new ancestral records arriving. A new snippet of information that sometimes may come from a source that you previously had never considered, can head you in a totally new direction to uncover more about your past. A single sentence mention in someone else’s ancestors story may shed a completely new light on to the story of a relative of your own.
With all my ancestry blog articles I continue to update them, whenever I find more detailed accurate information. With something like only 3% of Queensland State Government Archive records being available online at present (2023), there will always be more details that are forthcoming & inaccuracies to correct, as online records are expanded & updated. It would certainly help the cause, if our State Archives were a little more pro-active in getting all these old records on line. Their online accessibility to information, is pretty hopeless. Other Australian states are much more advanced.
I was talking to a distant relative recently & he made the point about our mob not being involved in anything crooked in the past. Since I started doing this ancestry tracking, I have held the view that whatever happened in the past, good or bad, will always stay there in that historical timeline. We can’t hide any details of any nefarious activities of an ancestor, & neither should we! Some things would certainly not make us proud of any dishonest or illegal dealings they may have engaged in, but it is now history. It is what it is….. or should I say, what it was! Good or bad, I would want it kept on any of my ancestry records of relatives. Having said that, thankfully, we didn’t have any serial killers or shady characters in our past. Not that I know of, anyway.😃
In this same discussion, that grew into a group of close & distant cousins, talking about ancestry, the point was raised regarding if any of us felt an ancestry bond towards one or more of the family lines that we descended from. Some said they identified with a particular line of the family, due to a farming heritage, growing up in the same district, a religious connection or a common interest etc. For me, when anaylising my own historic connections, I found that I felt a bond with all of them. There were many parts of the stories on each of the grandparents & great & great/ great grand parents that I found were interesting. But it was more of a sense of pride in their accomplishments & what they had achieved since their arrival in this foreign land, from where they had all come from.
SOME FINAL OBSERVATIONS :-
I have found in chasing the trail of past relatives, that most families had a few skeletons in the closet. There appears to have been a generational attitude by our ancestors who had what they felt were embarrassing issues, that may bring shame upon the family name. Sometimes, they went to great lengths to make sure that these details didn’t get spread to the outside world.
It was a much more conservative period, with the vast majority of the population holding strong religious beliefs & commitment to King & country. People had a totally different moral & cultural mindset about how they looked at the world & how the world looked at them. There was no internet & no television & radio was in its infancy. With newspapers being the only form of media, it was a time when people trusted & believed what they read in them. In regional localities around Australia, the traditionalist citizens weren’t known to be very accepting of minority groups that went against the grain of the local social & religious fabric.
How times have changed! These days, if anything, that stance has had a complete 180 degree turnaround. The mainstream TV & print media, manipulate the reporting of news to their own editorial standards & political leanings. Most people try (not always successfully) to get unbiased news from the multitude of internet news outlets. Fake news is in abundance. It is also a world where far too many people want to overshare everything from their personal lives, via social media platforms. Since the introduction of mobile phones c/w cameras, sound & video recording, modesty & privacy hasn’t been a priority for the current generation. Whereas our ancestors could view a photograph of a person or event, as factual evidence, that is no longer the case with the advent of AI – artificial intelligence.
I have also noticed that many of our past relatives carried a certain amount of shame or embarrassment, in relation to their convict ancestry who were transported to Australia from the UK in the 1700’s & 1800’s. Shame is an unusual emotion, given that most of our other emotions – sadness, happiness, anger, fear etc are felt as a reaction to something that is happened directly to us. Shame seems to be a reaction to what other people may think of us. Practically all of the convicts who were sent to Australia were transported here because they committed a rediculously low level crime. Some didn’t commit any offence at all. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Most were poor & had no access to legal assistance, so they ended up being put on a boat & sent to the ends of the earth without any chance to prove their innocence. However, on the flip side, there are now many modern day descendants who are proud of their convict ancestry. The convicts who eventually gained their freedom were part of an important chapter of our history & performed a major part in the development of our country.
The only other mystery yet to be put to bed, is about my Great Grandfather – Peter Bermingham. https://porsche91722.wordpress.com/2023/02/22/peter-bermingham/ As mentioned in my blog article about him, I know that he arrived in Australia in 1874 at Maryborough & died sometime around 1908. I know that he married my Great Grandmother – the recently widowed Ellen Dunn, in 1877. They had a child – my grandfather -Edward Bermingham. They had a farm at South Pine. But, that’s just about it! No citizenship, no voting details, no census, no death notice, no official date or place of death, no funeral, no burial, no grave. Nothing, zero, zilch! Who was he? Did he leave the country? Was he placed into a jail or asylum? Was he murdered? Did he take his own life? There’s too many unanswered questions about the life & times of Peter Bermingham. Most of the other ancestors left a few clues along their lifeline. Unfortunately, Peter didn’t leave much of anything that gave us a clue of his life in Australia, after arriving from Ireland. What did he do & why did he disappear without a trace?
While travelling along the journey of tracing ancestors, I have encountered some people who class themselves as the fonts of all information relating to their family’s ancestry records. To those people, I would simply say – “Please…..Be nice & learn to share!” The more people we have involved means that the pool of knowledge, records & photographs is greater. For me, I got interested in our family history when our daughter-in-law asked me about our family’s history & I didn’t have many answers at the time. It started me out on my quest to find the truth.
Our family didn’t have many records. My own parents, for one reason or another had very little. There were a few family members, my cousin Mary, in particular, who had a treasure trove of old photos & records that had been passed down to her. Thankfully, she was quite happy to share everything she had in her possession. Our extended family have been, in the main, fairly co-operative in sharing.
I have seen some sad stories of some families who won’t share this vital history from their past, & seem hell bent on taking it to the grave with them. Once it has gone, it can never be retrieved. If family members aren’t interested in keeping family historical records, pass it on to a local historical society or museum. DON’T F*****G DUMP IT! Generally speaking, it’s one of those areas where the records & photos are pretty much, only of interest, to the descendants. They are like gold to me & hold great historical significance.
One day, a family member will ask the question – “Who are we & where did we come from?” It’s nice to be able to give the factual answers, instead of some made up bullshit nonsense that many families spread. I believe that we all have to copy & paste the facts that we find on our ancestors, before it disappears. Whether you find it by chatting to the old relatives, searching in family records & photos, microfiche/film in an archive, a library, a museum or on the internet, someone else has done the hard yards research before you. This whole exercise/industry is built on copying & pasting.
Since I’ve been on my ancestry journey, I’ve seen plenty of cherry-picking of records, by those who just seem to be interested in finding a great story, whether it is fact or fiction, on their past relatives. The tenuous links that some people use to connect themselves to a well-known person eg Australia’s famous outlaw/bushranger Ned Kelly, are mind-boggling. It’s nice to acknowledge a source, but we pinch everything we can off someone else. That’s how it works!
JUST MAKE SURE IT IS FACTUAL & DON’T BE AFRAID TO FIX YOUR MISTAKES.
It is interesting to note how some people become quite short tempered with others, who are questioning their research. I don’t understand this attitude which mainly takes place via the internet, on line. It can be a long & frustrating journey, not made any easier by hotheads who can’t see past their own, often wrong, recording of what they steadfastly believe is the truth. Face to face usually provides a much more pleasureable & productive outcome. I’ve met & had lunch or a coffee with many family & ancestry enthusiasts. As a general rule, I’ve found that most ancestry enthusiasts want to share. This is how it works. It’s a continuous learning process. Most genuine researchers are all in it for the same reason. We want to find the true story. You have to be flexible. For instance, in our extended family, I know of at least a few different versions of our family tree. I have gotten together with a few of them & discussed this issue. I have also found & clarified many things that I have gotten wrong. It works both ways.
I have also seen many people quoting newspaper articles from a hundred years or so ago, as being their factual research. With all due respect, these people need a reality check. These articles can often be just feelgood stories to satisfy their own fanciful wants. Jounalists & newspapers were no different back then, from what the print & digital media is, in modern times. They were both capable of manufacturing stories & manipulating the truth. All too often, newspapers were publishing human interest articles & playing to their local readership. Many of those articles were printed & newspapers were sold, knowing full well that the facts were distorted to satisfy the circulation. Truth telling (or the lack of it) in the media hasn’t changed.
I genuinely believe that we should make our ancestry research available, to as many as possible. I welcome both critiques & fact based responses. Personally, I don’t care who copies my records, because, in reality, they doesn’t belong to me! These are factual records of our past. I’d rather see the true story available, to as many as possible, who are genuinely interested.
In closing, the story is about them - the ancestors! Not about you - the descendant. They didn’t all live exciting lives, being bushrangers, making lifesaving discoveries or being talented celebrities.
With our families ancestors, both men & women, they were all just plain hard working farmers & laborers, who worked the land. They worked their butts off all their lives, to make a living & provide for their large families. They weren’t perfect! There were plenty of things they would have done differently if they had the chance. But they made the best, with what they had. Most of those families lost children at birth or as infants. Many of the families had members who served in our military forces. Some lost a family member who served in our armed forces in wartime. Some of whom were original Anzacs.
We also had ancestors who were members of the medical profession, saving lives & delivering health care to provincial Australia. We had teachers & policemen.We also had people who worked in the media, the trades, politics, communications, transportation, manufacture of food & in supply chains & in many other professions.
Some ancestors died young, from disease or lack of available treatment. Hardship was an expected way of life. There was an old saying that I can remember my parents using – “Life wasn’t meant to be easy”. Well…..It wasn’t, for the vast majority of our ancestors. Most of them lived through wars, financial depressions, famines & hardship, that most people these days thankfully haven’t had to endure. People of the past were only human, like the rest of us! They had lives, loves & encountered happiness, joy, sadness & tragedy.
They enjoyed success, suffered & learned from their failures, but when they fell down, they got up again, brushed themselves off & got on with their lives. They were a tough breed! There was no birth control. Many families had 8, 10 or more children! There was a family in the Fassifern Valley that had 22 kids. Many of our forebears were lucky to survive. We should be extremely greatful that they did. They didn’t live in an upmarket suburb, with a 4WD & a second car parked in the driveway or a swimming pool in the backyard. What they had, was built on hard backbreaking work. There was no pension or superannuation schemes in place for their retirement. What they built has since been expanded to give us all the privileges that we enjoy in modern Australia.
So…..to go back to my initial reasons when I started this research, I’ve come to the belief that they were all high achievers. These people are my Role Models, although I very much doubt that I can emulate their achievements.
In closing, it’s worth noting that despite how much investigation you do in tracking some of your ancestors, you occasionally hit a brick wall. However, don’t give up! You’ve got to be in it for the long haul. There’s always fresh information being unearthed as others start on their journey of discovery. Fresh sets of eyes often find things that you perhaps overlooked. It is definately, an exercise in perseverance.
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