Tracing Family Branches

Back in November last year while coming home from one of my husbands medical specialists appointments in Canberra we finally stopped and had a good look at the Jugiong Catholic Cemetery.  Many of my maternal grandfathers family are buried there and I had been wanting to explore it for many years!  When I was a child we would frequently go on wonderful day trips to the Murrumbidgee river at Jugiong, passing the cemetery on our way to our families favourite spot on the river.  I knew family members were buried there but was not overly curious about it, as getting to the river and having a swim were my top priorities at the time.  The cemetery had been recently mowed on the day we went there and so it was easy to find my way around it.  It is quite steep in places and I would recommend wearing good hiking shoes if you are going to explore it. It is a beautiful cemetery and I hope to explore it further some time in the future as we had to cut the trip short as my hu...

On this day in 1788 my 5th Great Grandmother Mary Turner (also known as Mary Wilks/Wilkes) was a female convict on the first fleet ship Lady Penrhyn suffering below ship in hot, harsh and extremely squalid conditions after a horrific voyage from England. Mary’s feet would not touch Australian soil until February when the true perils of her situation here would make itself known to her and the other convict women!  A young former servant convicted of stealing clothing she was unwanted in her homeland and exported to this country to be used for domestic and other work and as sexual relief and breeding stock.  Her experience as a convict and this harsh foreign land should have broken her but she was a resourceful, tenacious survivor!  She was sentenced to 50 lashes in 1789 for stealing cabbages (some wanted to execute her as they believed she had committed perjury as well) and in 1790 she was sent to Norfolk Island where she stayed until 1793. Mary died in Sydney in 1808 and...