The Family Detective

Evelyn Rose Cotter was my maternal grandmother, a wonderful woman that I still miss twenty-two years later. I remember the day I found out she had passed. I took to my bed and was unconsolable for hours. Those moments of grief are so etched in my mind, I don't know that I have grieved as deeply since. I was still a relatively young woman and it was an unexpected death, unlike the death of my father or in-laws.  Evelyn was born 1 October, 1914. The world was at war and her father Sidney Cotter had secured employment on a property near Condobolin, New South Wales, Australia. [1] She was the third, and eldest daugher of Sidney and Catherine (nee Coffee). Evelyn was named for her Grandmother Rose (Littlewood) and Great Aunt Eveline (Littlewood). With naming patterns in the family, Eveline was possibly Rose's grandmother. My mother was passed down the name Evelyn as her middle name but not liking the name, my mother decided not to give it to me. Grandma Hardy, as she was known to me...

LOOK AT RECORDS BEFORE AND AFTER YOUR RECORDS Having already established that James Hardy was a Military Pensioner, I have previously tried to look at his service records and found little on them. A hint that I need to remind myself about is when you find a record on someone, check the records before and after in the set. It can give you insights into people they may be connected with, or give a historical perspective on what was happening in the area around them at the time. In doing this I have found a lot more out about James including his description, service history, health and that he had been in Canada (which might open up some more searches for him). MILITARY RECORDS While we know James was a soldier, it is often good to search surnames and districts of soldiers in the years where your ancestor might have been old enough to enlist. You might find a relative. Something in my "to research" list is John Hardy who's military record comes after James'. He was also ...

This post will be controversial, but I hope that anyone coming across it will add something to my theory or discussion. To date no one seems to question the validity that John Ross, the convict shoemaker is John Lees Ross' father.  John Lees was christened at the same church John Ross, the convict, was buried at. The time was only a few years apart. But what more do we have to connect the two? Nothing that I can find. John Ross, the convict, was closely connected to another convict Sarah Bird. In one report his brother Joseph was reported as being Sarah's brother-in-law. John and Sarah ran a brothel together in the inner city of Sydney.  I haven't found any connection between them in England, but they had lived in neighbouring towns. Sarah (nee Hill) married Robert Bird at Whitehaven, in 1816 prior to his transportation to Australia. At around the same time John Ross, the convict, was convicted at Wigton to transportation for stealing a watch. It is most likely this time wa...

Having been on holidays last week I missed the writing for the 52 Ancestors challenge. Week 3 was to look at a favourite photograph. Week 4's theme is "curious". Instead of trying to catch up I've decided to combine the two weeks. It's hard to pick a favourite photograph. I do love the two that you will see in this post. I only was made aware of their presence when I was around 40 years of age. It upset me to know that they had been hanging around our family farm for years, stacked against the wall in a dusty storeroom. I would have loved to have known more about the photographs from the man who owned them and maybe clarified the information given to me about them from my father. We don't have many family photographs. One of the main reasons is that I mostly come from a long line of poor farming families or low paid working class people and photography was probably outside their usual means. We also have had in the past big families and my ancestors were never...

I had no idea when I sat down to write this follow up post about Hessie Lang that it has been EXACTLY 10 years since I first wrote about her. When I was researching Edward Lang I started to think perhaps some of the John Lee Ross family had enlisted as well. To my surprise I stumbled across Frederick Ross a name which I knew as Hessie's husband. When I looked at the papers it gave the next of kin as Frank Seymour of Murrumburrah. After a bit of searching Trove threw up something I wasn't expecting to see, though I know I have read this article many times. John Lang's obituary mentions his daughters and one is Mrs Seymour. I'm not sure I ever looked or wondered about who Mrs Seymour might be as I have not included her on my blog or my tree.  "Mr. John Lang."  Murrumburrah Signal and County of Harden Advocate, 7 July 1927, p. 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article214457204 If we compare the names of the children from the obituary to those found on the death cert...

Week Two's writing theme challenges us to reflect on our favourite find in relation to our family tree. It is a big task trying to narrow a favourite find down to just one. In honesty I'm always so excited any time I can find additional proof to pinpoint records for family members or to back up family stories. Some of the best finds are ones that you just stumble across.  I've already talked about the chance find of a "Missing Friends" advert that helped me answer a long standing mystery for those trying to locate John Lees Ross' family. Another favourite was a single line in an online book that shows John Laing had gone to Braidwood as a child and was living with Michael Hart. My latest find using DNA to confirm my "unknown" Grandfather and Great-Grandfather were special moments in my genealogical digs. One of my earliest finds that transformed the information the family knew about Sarah Weatherstone from a few lines about her children to pages that...

I've now finished my two year University course and felt a bit flat not having the challenge of assignments and peer connections until one of my peers posted about Amy Johnson Crow's  52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge . By accepting the challenge you are sent a series of weekly prompts that help you reflect on ancestors and then share your writing with others. As Amy says the guesswork of "who should I write about" is taken care of . Week 1 challenges us to think about the foundations of our family tree.  By definition a foundation can be the base which everything stands on. In a family tree I'm at the base but I couldn't surely be what the family tree stands on. To think of where we came from as our foundations means we have many, many foundations and the idea of writing about those is my ongoing challenge and something I don't feel I could justify writing about in a week.  I started to brainstorm and came upon the idea of the "founding fathers...

 The following was submitted as part of my Diploma of Family History. I would love to expand on it a little more when I can. We were not to submit photographs and it wasn't a recount of war, but how war may have affected our ancestors. Please consider that some of this was written as theory, but there is a bibliography of items I researched when writing this and my references are found at the end. I encourage you to look at them and make up your own opinion about what has been written in this case study. DL Edward ‘Ted’ George Lang was a boy from the bush. [1] His family dynamics may have been a factor in him enlisting. He spent one-hundred weeks training or in hospital, and thirty-seven weeks in battle. Those weeks of warfare saw him involved in major battles in France, that ultimately led to the retreat and surrender of the German Army. In those thirty-seven weeks he was awarded a Military Medal and was wounded twice. [2] His life after returning was as filled with as many high...