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...

Well my intention to blog more frequently this year fell by the wayside yet again as life has been a bit busy of late and so it has been a while since my last post.  Our household has recently expanded as our daughter, her husband, the four grandchildren and their pets are living with us while they save for a house of their own and so we are currently multi generational living like many of our ancestors did. The August 2021 Australian census should be an interesting one for us and hopefully for future generations of our family too!   I hope that everyone had a lovely Christmas! We had a wonderful day with our children and grandchildren.  Children really do make Christmas extra special! China, Isabella and Benji on Christmas Eve

 On Tuesday this week our beautiful Charles Cuthbert Drake, better known as Charlie passed away due to heart failure.  He was the most gentle, loving family member, friend and companion.  He was meant to be our daughters dog (she got him with her birthday money when she was sixteen) but two days later my husband and Charlie had totally bonded with each other and it stayed that way until the end.  My husband had been medically retired from the Australian Army in 2006 after twenty two years of service and Charlie arrived in his life at just the right moment for him and all of us.  Earlier this year he seemed to step back and let our other dog Isabella lead with the support duties instead, passing the baton so to speak but maintaining a close watch to make sure she did everything right.  He passed away peacefully in my husbands arms on Tuesday morning, tended to by an amazing caring veterinarian and surrounded by love. We were blessed to have him in our family...

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Sorry the blog has taken a backseat the last couple of weeks, we have been busy with spring cleaning, gardening, my husbands health issues and the grandchildren.  There have been some new exciting developments genealogy wise though!  My mother finally agreed and has done an Ancestry DNA test!  I really appreciate her doing so and am currently very impatiently awaiting her results as I am hoping they will give more insight into the Stevens line of my family, of which I presently have more questions than answers. If only one could time travel to talk to and DNA test our ancestors!  The DNA would probably reveal more than the talking with some of my ancestors though as they did guard their secrets fiercely! New contact has been made recently with some extended family members that has proved very informative and is always welcomed.  I have also been continuing to work on figuring out where my DNA matches fit in my tree and adding the new information to my trees whic...

I started this post a while ago and was going to finally finish and post it yesterday however our four grandchildren came over and I got sidetracked.  Our grandchildren range in age now from six down to one;  they are so full of life (each of them lights up a room when they enter it) and we feel extremely blessed to have them in our lives.  After spending the afternoon researching this post, their arrival made this tragedy even more poignant for me and so I appreciated their company even more than usual and hugged them a bit tighter too!  This morning I woke up to a cold, wet and windy Wagga day and the thought of three little girls out in August weather like this, in light weight dresses with no shoes or jumpers impacted on me even more. Those poor babies! One of the girls was found still clasping her doll that she had carried with her over the whole tragic journey. When my husband and I were looking around the Wagga Wagga Monumental Cemetery some time ago we came a...