Australia Day 2018

Having a very relaxed Australia Day 🇦🇺 With a First Fleet ancestor in family the day always has a strong genealogy tie for me. My ancestor Mary Wilkes Turner arrived here on the Lady Penryhn, a ship which had been built as a slave ship. The female convicts who sailed captive from their homeland on her voyage here must of regarded it as a ship of misery. The treatment of the female convicts of the First Fleet is something not enough people know about, one of those darker stories of history that people prefer not to acknowledge. Mary may very well have been a flawed human being (who isn’t) but she was obviously mentally and physically strong, a true survivor! Without her being forced to come here my family and I would not have the life in this wonderful country that we do and so today I will celebrate and toast her memory.
More posts on Mary can be found here and here.

Lady Penrhyn

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Tracing Family Branches

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