Tuesday, January 15, 2008

My new infatuation

When I have the time to indulge in this one who knows but it is fascinating! I am starting to dabble into my family tree. I never thought that I would ever be interested in it but once you start digging.... I know there is a lot of hype here in Australia at the moment about people's family trees but thats not what got me started. That is just coincidence. I am reading a fascinating book about one man's search for a branch of his family that died in Poland during the German occupation and how he is going about finding out what happened to them exactly. So I began creating a family tree on ancestry.com.au . At first you seem to find nothing that relates to your family and then when you dig a little further things start to look promising. The only problem is the important records like birth, death and marriage notices cost to look at. But eventually I will have to fork out but I just want to know that they are the right documents to look at. Anyway, I'll let you know if I find an axe murderer or something.

14 comments:

Odyssey said...

Keep us updated sis. Unless you find the madness runs deep into the tree, in which case I'd rather not know... :-)

mouthfulofpancake said...

Researching a family tree makes you mad!!!!

JollyRgr said...

We do have a charged and convicted murderess (I believe) and a mercenary who worked with some infamous 'professional soldiers'......so I guess it could be interesting

mouthfulofpancake said...

Who was that?

Odyssey said...

The mercenary was/is Uncle Bill. Who was the murderess?

Goose said...

This could be fun!

Odyssey said...

It's occurred to me you and Goose may not remember Uncle Bill, or maybe never met him. He was Marion's first husband. Had been in the British army for some time and then spent some time as a mercenary (JollyRgr will correct me if I'm wrong). If I remember rightly he was part-gypsy. One day he just up and disappeared. Went back to being a mercenary.

Odyssey said...

Oh yeah. We also had someone on the first fleet to Australia (at least they shared our last name). I don't think he survived the trip (or maybe that was the murderess?). The government published a list of who was on the first fleet back when Australia celebrated it's 150th. You should be able to find it somewhere sis.

And I vaguely recall someone in New Zealand once contacting Dad to see if they were related... Not sure we want to lay claim to a Kiwi branch, do we?

Odyssey said...

Okay, now I'm getting into it too. First fleet guy can be found here http://members.pcug.org.au/~pdownes/dps/1stflt.htm. Sentenced to seven years. Don't know what for. Probably stole a loaf of bread.

mouthfulofpancake said...

Yes I remember Uncle Bill. Knew the gypsy part but not the mercenary bit. There were actually three "C's" in the first and I think the second fleet. Not all of them were convicts. But at the moment I'm looking at Mum's side and Nanna's heritage in particular. May have found our Great Grandad's first wife and maybe an unknown son to that wife?!?! Its addictive! I can invite family to contribute to the tree. It's in ancestry.com.au under my married name if you want to have a look.

JollyRgr said...

Correct on Uncle Bill...he was involved in the Govt overthrow in Angola back in the 70's....apparently he was a close associate of 'Mad' Mike Hoare (not sure on the spelling!) who was a legendary merc during that time....there was lots of work in Africa for those types back then

The murderess is a longer story...:-)

mouthfulofpancake said...

You big tease!! Neither Mum or Dad have mentioned the "murderess"! Who was it???

mouthfulofpancake said...

The murderess is Dad's cousin who stabbed her own husband. Apparently in self defence.

JollyRgr said...

Well done.....we'll make a detective of you yet:-)

Babs! I believe