The Family Detective

One of the most interesting subjects I did this year was Place, Image and Object. As part of this subject you had to research an object that had meaning for your family. I chose my mother's Pedigree Doll. It was an interesting way of presenting family history in a different way. I have a few other objects I might endeavor to present in this way too.  OBJECT BIOGRAPHY: ‘Kim’ – Hard-Plastic, Pedigree Doll When family objects are passed down from one generation to the next, they bring with them shared histories and memories. A toy train might spark memories of afternoons making model landscapes. Old buttons may recall times spent with a departed grandma. A doll which has been played with though, brings with it a story, a personality and a name. A doll may have had one or many playmates. They have probably had many adventures. With dolls it seems more appropriate to say we adopt them, not inherit them.  A doll is something common to every region, culture and time-period in history...

This year I started a Family History degree at University of Tasmania. My first assignment was to create a research question and discuss how I solved it. I decided to start with John Ross and work out when he left Braidwood and why. Many people have researched John and there are still unsolved questions around his parents and their histories but this part of the puzzle was at least easy enough to solve with a bit of  'serendipity'. The biggest solution to solving this question was a small advert. [Please acknowledge my research if you are using it on any other site including Ancestry.com] Digging Up the Past: When and why John Ross migrated from Araluen to Cope's Creek OBJECTIVE When my father died, I inherited a packet containing unpublished family stories compiled by a distant cousin, Pamela Leach. John Ross and his wife Catherine née Toomey's story shed little in the way of personal anecdotes. The group sheets mostly dealt with their incomplete birth histories, the...