Discovering Missing or Elusive Ancestors and Siblings with new Indexes

How do I identify missing siblings?

I am sure that by now most of you will be aware of the new indexes made available just over a week ago by HM Passport Office aka General Register Office for England and Wales. 
These now contain important additions.  

• the age at death for early years 1837 until 1865 is now included  
• the maiden name of the mother is included on the births 1837-1915, previously the mother's maiden name had only been included in the index from the third quarter 1911. 

This addition will make it easier to find the correct birth and death for those years. I say easier for reasons I shall explain later.

There are no marriages in these new indexes and the Births and Deaths only cover a limited time span.

At the same time as launching the new indexes it was announced that a PDF pilot would start on 9th November 2016. 

This is the information from their website. 

I like many others have used this as an opportunity to look for members of family who may not have shown up on the census or have remained elusive.

Family legend from a now deceased aunt was that there had been a child who had died. I was uncertain as to whether this was a sibling of my father or paternal grandfather. Looking at the indexes and the years of birth it was more likely to be a missing great aunt or uncle but my great grandfather had several brothers.

However given the new information this is what I found.

I have ordered a copy using the new pdf service and assuming the details match I have also found a likely death in the same quarter of a child without first names recorded.

I have also ordered 3 more birth certificates with different reasons.

One of my 2xgt grandmother's was christened in 1845 in Lyndhurst, Hampshire. This is in the New Forest registration district and I have not been able to find a birth registration for anyone with her first name. 

see second entry Selina daughter of Edward and Ann Grant

The above is a copy of the christening record and she is recorded on the census records as Selina.

Below is the only entry for that same year with the maiden name of her mother. All the other children with this mother's maiden name are her siblings, including another registered as Alice Mary, I am now almost certain I have the correct registration but am awaiting the documentary proof.

The other 2 birth certificates were for children missing from the census that had been highlighted by the 1911 census. (If my first certificate is correct then my gt grandparents had forgotten to include their deceased son when they completed this census form.)

My husband's maternal gt grandparents had said that 2 of their children were deceased on the census but I had not seen them on the 1901 census and they had married on Christmas day 1891. In 1901 they had only had 1 child living with them and by 1911 all the other children were with them having been born in the intervening years. This meant that it was highly likely that the children had been born between 1891 and 1899 when their surviving sibling had been born. I had been trying to find them since I found this in the 1911 census but with a surname of WARD ruling out those still living and cross referencing with the corresponding deaths was slow going.

These are the 2 I have ordered. The one for Lilian arrived in my inbox yesterday and the names of the parents match. It also revealed another address for them.

These few I have been certain are correct but even with the mother's maiden name we may still not discover the correct person for our family.

Only this morning I was looking for possible siblings for an ancestor with the surname SMITH whose mother had the maiden name CHAMBERL(A)IN born in the Lutterworth district. A search with the maiden name included brought up several children I had not seen for the family. I decided to look for one of them born just before the 1871 census. I found her with her parents living in another village in the same registration district.

Don't think this is only true for common surnames. My husband has an ancestor with the surname CROWSON the maiden name of her mother was SPEED she was born in 1872 in the Oakham registration district. Her father had a brother who married her mother's sister both couples stayed in the district and named their daughter born in 1872 with the same first name.

So shall I say this you will find the new indexes helpful but you cannot rely on them alone to determine you have the correct individual. Hopefully others have found some missing or elusive family now that we have more information.

I have others to look for including missing siblings in a family of 22.

Please leave comments I would love to know how others have used the new indexes and the slightly cheaper copies of registrations.

Stepping into their shoes

We live in a different world today.
How many of us try to picture what life would have been like for our ancestors. But will any of us get even close to understanding their lives.

Earlier this week just as I was retiring to bed and cleaning my teeth (with an electric toothbrush) we had a power cut. The bathroom had no windows and I found myself plunged into darkness.

I was away from home but knew where the fuse box was and a torch and as it was not totally pitch black went to investigate whether a fuse had blown. No we had lost all power.

At the time I thought how long can we manage without electricity, with food in the refrigerator and freezer and mobile phones needing charging. It was restored after a while and had I been asleep I would have been none the wiser. I note that others I know have had much longer power outages of several hours.

Now I go to write my post this month I reflect on how different our lives are today to those of our ancestors. Our priorities have changed so much. 

All of my grandparents were born at the end of the Victorian era and during their lifetimes much had changed. Time lines such as this one from the British Library or this one from the BBC, show us the major world events and politics but little about the lives of the everyday working person .
Museums such as this one in York try to recreate scenes to help us picture what it may have been like using original or copied items of that era. The Museum of English Rural Life is currently being redeveloped and is using social media to keep potential visitors on board with the messages they want to portray. But can any of the scenes we set of how life was really give us a true understanding of their lives.

So much of what we do has to fit with the social norms of society. We may live in a more liberal society today where there are many single parents bringing up children alone. We talk to the older generation about how things were when they were children and my own childhood is history to my son and nieces and nephews. I can try to convey to them how it was before everyone had colour televisions, automatic washing machines, computers and mobile telephones. But how the innovations have impacted can at first be quite subtle, so much so, that one can barely remember a time without them around. If we have problems recalling the changes that have happened in our own lifetime then we really do need to consider what may have changed in our ancestors lives that could be lost to us. Many could not read or write, photography was expensive so much was passed on as oral history and we all know how unreliable that can be with facts being distorted.  

We cannot think about the past without relating it to our own experience and knowledge. If you have no knowledge of how an implement was used or what it was used for then you can only guess and such guesswork is based on what you know. We have to believe what we are told until we learn otherwise or understand how to distinguish what is possible. 
The same thing is true when we find documents or other items that may relate to our family. A new researcher may not be aware how unreliable a record group may be or of reasons why.
As genealogists we must all realise that no matter how many documents, pictures, stories, etcetera we find we will never be able to step into the shoes of our ancestors.

Our Knowledge does not equate with their Knowledge

Saying Goodbye Too Soon

  Like most of you, I have women in my family tree who had to live through the loss of one or more of their children.
  My paternal Grandmother, Mary Baker Hudson (1920-2910) buried a baby girl who only lived a few hours.
 

Grave of the Infant Daughter of
 Benjamin Allen Hudson (1918-1976) and Mary (Baker) Hudson (1920-2010)
Sumter Cemetery, Sumter, South Carolina 

Azile Juanita (Daughrity) Roberts Sullivan (1921-2009), my maternal Grandmother received a phone call that no mother wants to get as she learned of the death of her grown son, Gilbert Earnest Roberts, Jr. (1944-1999).

Grave of Gilbert Ernest Roberts, Jr.
Quaker Cemetery, Camden, Kershaw, South Carolina

Paternal Great Grandmother, Beulah Mae (Price) Roberts (1897-1980), survived 6 of her 12 children. Three dying in infancy and three dying in WWII.

Funeral of Roberts Brother's Killed in WWII

 Frances Virginia (McRady) McManus (1856-1903), Great Great Grandmother on my maternal side, buried her twin girls a month apart and then went on to lose two more of her children and a beloved grandchild.

Death Notice of Grandson Amos
Sumter Southron and Watchman, 9 April, 1902

  This list goes on and on as one goes back in time. Their stories sad and heartbreaking. As these life experiences are discovered my heart reaches out to them wondering how they kept going, How did the mundane tasks of every day get done?  How did they go on?

 These questions I am now asking of myself. For you see, as of this past weekend, I am joining the ranks of women who have been faced with the enormous trial of losing a child. My 12-year-old son has been diagnosed with a brain stem tumor.
 Cancer. Inoperable. Terminal.

 With the great examples before me, I will go on. There are others to take care of including myself. A child to show a lifetime of love to and make memories with.

 Wonderful family and friends will be there to support and sustain me in what will be one of the hardest trials any parent can face.
 Learning how to say goodbye too soon.

Cheri

 




 

What can your great-great-grandparents predict about you?

There’s been a lot of interest lately in a study looking at wealthy families in England, which shows that people with ‘posh’ surnames are just as likely to be well-off as their ancestors in 1850 were. Social mobility’s a myth, it suggests. You're more likely to inherit your great-great-grandparents' jobs than their height.

And you may think that’s not surprising. England’s just as divided by class now, you might say, as it was in the days of Downton Abbey – or Wolf Hall.

But wait a minute – there are similar results in the USA. And in Japan, India, South Korea, Chile, and (surprisingly) Sweden and even China.

So here's the question for genealogists and family historians: do the jobs your great-great-grandparents did predict what you do today?

And before anyone says: "What? I’m a web designer, my partner’s a radiologist, my sister works in TV and my brother’s an air traffic controller," let’s stop and think about what those jobs really mean.

No, Ug, you can't be a farmer. Our family's always been hunter-gatherers.

Why do people do the work they do? For money, of course, or because they love it (if they’re lucky), but also for status. That’s what people are really asking when they say: "And what do you do?" They mean: "What sort of person are you?" and "Are you like me?" And if the answer’s "I’m the CEO of a finance company and my husband’s a rat-catcher" there would be a few startled people wondering what people with such different status (and incomes) are doing together. Even in 2015.

I’ve taken a look back at my own great-great-grandparents. On my Welsh grandmother’s side there were farmers. John Lloyd and his wife Elizabeth Jones farmed, just as their parents had done (and, I’m willing to bet, their own great-great-grandparents did). So did Thomas Davies and Sarah, his wife. They had middle-sized farms and employed help, so they would’ve been comfortably off, neither poor nor rich.

My Welsh grandfather’s family isn’t so easy to track down. Griffith Owen, my great-grandfather, was a mariner and it’s possible that his wife Elizabeth’s father was involved in the same trade. But I haven’t been able to track them down any further, partly because pinning down a Griffith Owen from Anglesey has turned out to be tough – there were a lot of them, and the records aren’t consistent. Still, my research shows that his father was a probably a farmer, an agricultural labourer, a slate-splitter, a brewer, or worked for the railway.

Moyne, where Lucy and Thomas Delaney lived © Patricia Owen

On the Australian side, Thomas Delaney and Lucy Simpson were farmers, again neither poor nor rich. Thomas’s father, Nicholas Delaney, my first convict, settled down as a farmer after being a roadbuilder. Lucy’s parents, both convicts, were a tailor and a farm servant.

Robert Sandon Wilson worked in the New South Wales goldfields but disappeared a few years after marrying my great-great-grandmother, Sarah Emma Henley (or Dicks). A photo of Sarah and their children shows them as respectably dressed, but I don’t know what she did for money after Robert vanished.

On my Aussie grandmother’s side, James Thomas Richards, a convict, became a top waterman and I’ve no evidence of his wife Rebecca Harrington working. John Winter, a rail labourer, was poor enough to take an ‘assisted passage’ to Australia – in other words, his fare was paid by a sponsor – and took up his father’s trade of quarryman. I haven’t found out what his wife, Ann Graham, another assisted immigrant and a blind pauper’s daughter, did to bring in money.

It’s a mixture of poor and comfortably-off people, all hard-working. Mostly they carried on doing what their parents had done. For some, going to Australia meant they had better lives, but they didn’t all end up with higher status – to be a convict, even a well-off one, left you with a ‘stain’ in respectable society. It was my grandparents who broke away from the family trades and moved to white-collar jobs in cities, though my Lloyd grandmother kept the family farm going. All still working hard.

And that’s what I do today – tapping away at my keyboard in a city. Job status-wise, what does that make me? Not high, not low, somewhere in the middle, like most people living in the UK. Despite our obsession with class – and the fact that the income gap is widening.

I’d love to know what you think about this five-generation theory, and if your great-great-grandparents’ jobs have any relation to you today.

Are you working in the same sort of trade or craft? Or have you broken away?

Back To The Days When It All Began

Today,  Protestants from all over the world celebrate Reformation Day. It was on October 31, in the year 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Schloßkirche in Wittenberg. At least this is how the story goes. 

 

But that’s not what I want to write about. I want to take this opportunity to introduce to you my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Adam Reichardt, also known as Adamus Ricardus, one of the first Lutheran pastors in Germany. He was born in the town of Sangerhausen, not far from Martin Luther’s hometown of Eisleben, in 1525. He was baptized catholic but as the reformation was introduced to Sangerhausen in 1539, he and his parents probably became protestants. He enrolled at the University of Vienna in Austria on the fourth of April 1550 and became a Schulmeister (teacher). But he received a call from his homeland to help establish the new Protestant Church and his life would dramatically change.

As the majority of the population in that part of Germany had adopted the Lutheran faith, there was a lot of administration work to be done. It wasn't enough to have believers, the existing (former catholic) parishes needed to be re-organized  and new ones needed to be established. While finding church buildings wasn't such a problem, there was a severe lack of pastors who were needed as soon as possible. Therefore church government made the decision to take in men without any theological education or even catholic priests who had converted. Like Adam Reichardt there were other teachers who wanted to become a pastor but there were applicants with other occupations as well, like sextons and craftsmen and even a servant had applied. All of them were ordinated, often only after having received some kind of theological “crash course”.  It would take years until there were enough pastors with a proper theological education for every parish. 

Adam Reichardt was ordinated in Wittenberg on Friday, November 16, 1552 by the Pastor Johann Pommer and was sent to Immenroda right away, where he stayed for one year. He then left for the parish of Niederröblingen/Helme.

In 1574, it was time to move again, this time he took over the parish of Osmünde, close to the city of Halle (definitely a career step!). 

The church of Osmünde, first mentioned in 1191 (but the village is probably 300 years older), had once been a well known Pilgrimage Church due to its statue of the Virgin Mary.  With the death of the last Catholic Pastor in 1538, it had become a protestant church. Reichardt's predecessor and first evangelical pastor of Osmünde had been Matthias Fischer (Piscator), a pastor who had studied theology and had been ordinated by Philipp Melanchton. These two pastors should change community life in this parish and form the new, evangelical church. The statue of the Virgin Mary was removed and the pilgrimages to this church were put to an end. Also, they made several changes in the church itself: the altar stone from catholic times was removed and became a step to the new altar and all parts of the old altar except of the figures of Johannes and Maria were removed.

 

Due to the increase of population and parish members, they needed more space and therefore decided to build a gallery, which was completed in 1581.

Adam Reichardt remained in Osmünde for the rest of his life, retired in 1600 and died two years later.

What would he have thought if he would have known that only 16 years after his death, there would be a war between Evangelical and Catholic States which would last for 30 years and would lead to devastation, famine, pestilence, dislocation and bring death to many, all in the name of God? Osmünde itself was sacked several times by different troops and in some years the villagers even left in fear of loosing their lives, hiding in the marsh land for months. The Church was damaged more than once, but survived and was restored after the war. And what survived as well, was the gallery with the carving that reads ARP 1581  (Adam Reichardt Pastor).

 

But I do not want to let you go without a song that was sung in the church of Osmünde at the time of my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, the Pastor Adam Reichardt:  Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, written by Martin Luther, who wrote the Ninety-Five Theses and nailed them on the door of the Schloßkirche in Wittenberg (or did otherwise), 497 years ago on this very day.

Ancestral April Fool

Laughing fool, c 1500 (via Wikimedia)

This April, I've been fooled by a name.

I've started researching my father's grandmother's family, who lived in the same area of West Wales for - well, if you believe old family stories, many centuries. I've been looking for great-grandmother Sarah Davies, born in Llandyssilio[gogo], Cardiganshire, between 1853 - 56. And I thought I'd found her in the 1861, 1871 and 1881 Wales censuses. In 1881 this Sarah was living in an old farmhouse that's been in the family for generations. Right name, right age, right birthplace, right-looking address.

Wrong Sarah. I found her in the same house in 1891, but with the married surname James. 'My' Sarah had married Rhys Lloyd of Llandyssil/Llandysul before then.

We can all follow false trails. It's so easy to be fooled by the 'right' details. The fact that my ancestors were unadventurous in their naming doesn't help. Half my foremothers were called Sarah or Elizabeth, and a lot of the men were Thomases. And of course finding a married woman's maiden name can just complicate things even more. Poor Sarah has gone back into my 'to do' file, and I'm picking myself up, dusting my research off, and starting all over again.

There's an up-side, though, with names and false trails. I'm guessing that if you've looked at online family trees which have your own ancestors in them, you'll have found some cuckoos in the nest. A John Jones married 10 years after he was buried, perhaps, or a Jane Smith who emigrated in 1865 when records show she never moved from her Scottish birthplace. They're in your family's tree, but they don't belong there - and you have the documentary proof.

I've got my own cuckoos in the family nests. For instance, my 3xgreat-grandfather, Nicholas Delaney - the one who got me interested in genealogy - was transported from Ireland to Australia in 1802, and married Elizabeth Bayly (Bayley, Bailey) in 1808.

Reed warbler feeding cuckoo (Wikimedia)

A look at some family trees have him married before, in Ireland, to a woman with a very 'modern' looking name. Now fair enough, a name could be spelled in plenty of different ways, like Elizabeth's surname in the last paragraph. But when it looks extremely 20th century, like Kathryn, Debra or Barbra, you have to go 'hmm'. And if her second name is also not what you'd expect in rural Ireland in the 18th century - Jay, Kay or Dee, for instance - well, it's time for a pinch of salt.

It turns out that this cuckoo wife was born in the US (and would have had to cross the Atlantic as a young woman to live in deepest County Wicklow in order to meet and marry Nicholas). Digging a little deeper into her history, I find she was born in the mid-20th century. How she ended up in Nicholas's tree in the 1790s, I do not know.

So in this case the name is a hint that you need to look very closely at the proof for this claimed 'relative' - which Worldwide Genealogists would do anyway, of course!

When I start searching for great-grandmother Sarah Davies again, I plan to use names as clues. I've said that my lot were all very traditional in the forenames they chose, so maybe they followed traditional naming patterns, at least for the first few children (many of them had traditional large families, too).

In many parts of the UK, couples would use this pattern, strictly or loosely, until the later 19th century:

1st son - named after the father's father
2nd son - mother's father
3rd son - father
4th son - father's eldest brother

1st daughter - named after the mother's mother
2nd daughter - father's mother
3rd daughter - mother
4th daughter - mother's eldest sister

Of course, it's never that simple in real life. Some people used variations on this pattern. Some only followed it for the first few children. Some didn't use it at all. Parents who were firstborns could choose another sibling's name for baby number four. Children could be named after other relatives, a powerful local family, royals, role models or political figures. And if someone had fallen out with a parent or sibling they might well not want to name their baby after its spiteful granny or criminal uncle.

Still, I'm glad of any clues which might help me track down those elusive ancestors hiding away in the records.

I'm looking at you, Sarah.


Apologies to all my fellow Worldwide Genealogy bloggers - in its wisdom Blogger/Blogspot has decided not to let me make comments once again. I thought I'd sorted out the glitches! (Sigh...) So I just wanted to let you know that I'm enjoying your writing and all the inspiring ideas and information. And please do comment on this post. I'd love to hear from you - I just won't be able to chat!

The 5Ws - Where did they come from?

 I wrote in last month's  post that Who, What, When, Where and Why will guide me in this and subsequent posts for my contributions to this blog. I wrote two Who posts so thought I would attack the next on the list WHAT and now I am quite flummoxed as to how I should describe the WHAT of my genealogical activities.

Should it be:
What am I researching?
What do I use to research? 
What involvement do I have in the geneaworld?

As a born procrastinator I will park the What post for the moment and move on to Where.

Where my earliest ancestors came from:

Richard Aspinall - Wigan, Lancashire, England
Katherine Bowe - Kilkenny, Ireland
Catherine Connolly - Kilkenny, Ireland
Mary Cregan - Eniskillen, Fermanagh, Ireland
Patrick Curry - Clare, Ireland
Eliza D'Arcy - Templemore, Tipperary, Ireland
James Duncan - Aberdeen, Scotland
Robert Hayward - Oxfordshire, England
James Homer - Manchester, Lancashire, England
Patrick Kealy - Ballyfoyle, Kilkenny, Ireland
Catherine Maxwell - Glasgow, Scotland
Margaret McRone/McKeon - A mystery woman
Michael Molloy, Meath, Ireland
Eleanor Moore - Limerick, Limerick, Ireland
Elizabeth Phipps - London, England
James Pusell - Warrington, Lancashire, England
Bridget Ryan - Kilbeggan, Westmeath, Ireland
Dennis Tierney - Roscrea, Tipperary, Ireland
John Tucker - Datchet, Buckinghamshire, England
James Westbrook - London, England

Looks like my blood is mostly Irish with a good dose of English and a dash of Scottish.

Using Google Maps I created a custom map to show where those ancestors came from. The birth places of my ancestors can be found on the map below. You can use your mouse to navigate around the map.

So that's where I come from. How about you?

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I'll be blogging here again on the 2nd of next month. In the meantime, I'll be blogging at http://geniaus.blogspot.com . You can find me on Google+ as Jill Ball and sometimes on Twitter as @geniaus

That Ol' Newspaper

We as family historians and genealogists, spend hours, weeks, months and years researching our ancestral & collateral lines.  We look for documents that will tell us who our 3x or more great grand parents are, who their parents were and their brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles and cousins on down and across the lines to get a better idea of the people, whose DNA we walk around with in our blood.

Sometimes all we have are facts to go on.  We find out when they were born, when they died, where they lived, who they married, and who they birthed.  As genealogists, we build stories around the information we have.  We read about the history of the towns they lived in, we look for leads as to who the neighbors were, and what organizations they may have belonged to, and where they might have worked.  We want to know what churches they went to and if they even went to school.  Who were these people that we call our ancestors?

I spend much of my time carving, molding, forming, putting skin upon the bones of my ancestors and as if I were a god, breathing life into them so I can see them, feel them, and know them.  One of the resources I use regularly are old newspapers. Newspapers have been key for me in building my ancestor's lives.  I have lost count as to how many articles I have found through online newspapers and indexes.  Some newspaper articles, I have had to order through libraries, and historical archives for a small copying and mailing fee.  It has been well worth my efforts.

Some of the databases I use are:

1. Genealogybank.com

2.  Newspapers.com

3.  Ancestry.com

4. ProQuest.com: Newspapers
5. Library of Congress

6.  and Googling newspaper archives where lots of other sites pop up.

I recently searched for my maternal great great grandfather William H. Cully and found that he sold or gave 100 acres of land to his son George Cully months before he died.  Seeing this gave me a clearer picture as to why George didn't receive land in the probate records after his father passed and why his other children did along with my Great Grandfather Ambrose Cully.  It is the little details that make the stories clearer.

New Berne Weekly Journal, 11 March 1902, Page 4
Newspapers.com

Another example is that my father Walter Porter was an entertainer and active in politics in Los Angeles, California before I was born.  My mother Betty was right there with him participating in civic and political affairs as I have always known her to be.  This article adds to the wealth of information I have received over time.  My parents are no longer living, so to have these articles have helped me to hone in on their lives in Los Angeles and what specific events and people they knew while they were there.

My Parents, Wally & Betty Porter w/Atty. Billy G. Mills

There is so much information one can find by researching online for newspapers.  If you are unsure where to look, start with my list.  Going to your search engine is one of the other great ways to find newspapers that you can immediately search or to find indexes to where you can go to order the information you need on your ancestors.  I would type in the city, county, state, country, etc with newspaper archives, etc., and you will soon be on your way to making great discoveries.  

Let's breathe life into the one's that came before us.  You will discover that they lived fascinating lives.

Who, What, When, Where and Why

For this month I am swapping days with Julie Goucher so here is the post for February 1.

Pondering on what to post next on this blog I thought of the 5 Ws: Who, What, When, Where and Why which will guide me in this and subsequent posts.

I told you a little about Who in my first post when I talked about myself. In this link ridden post I will talk about my ancestors and refer you to my family site and blog posts I have previously written about them.

My maternal grandparents were Ethel Jane Pusell and Frank Duncan  who met and married in Cobar NSW. Ethel's first ancestors to arrive in Australia were all convicts and Frank had quite a few as well as an Irish Famine Orphan.

Frank and Ethel 1948

My paternal grandparents Mary Tierney and Thomas William Curry whose ancestry was 100% Irish met and married in Canowindra NSW. My first Curry ancestor to arrive in Australia, Patrick Curry, was also a convict as was his wife Ellen/Eleanor Moore, the remainder came as free settlers under assisted passage schemes.

Mary and Tom 1948

There were no jumbo jets around when my ancestors came from England, Ireland and Scotland so they all had to endure long and challenging journeys by sea to reach the colonies. I have found reading the journals from the surgeons on of some of my ancestors' journeys most illuminating. I read about Patrick Curry's bouts of scurvy on his voyage on the Hooghley and of another ancestor's flogging. Holding these precious resources in my hands and reading their yellowed pages at the National Archives in the UK has been a highlight of my research.

Patrick Curry outlined in 1846 The Advantages of Immigration:
ADVANTAGES OF EMIGRATION. — StatementNo. 33. — Paddy Curry, Limerick- — NewSouth Wales, January 6, 1846.— I left mynative home in 1823, arrived in this country in1825. I was assigned to Messrs. James andWilliam Macarthur, and was five years beforeI got my liberty, then I married ; and whenthe youngsters gathered about me, Mr. Macar-thur gave me to cultivate 30 acres of land. Henever charged me any rent ; he made a sort ofa memorandum, but he never took a shillingfrom me. I take a load to Sydney now andthen— shear for him — job now and again ;well, when I was getting on well, my wifetakes sick, and really the Macarthurs behavedlike Christians to me. Mrs. Macarthur usedto come in her carriage to her, and eased hermind by telling her that it was nothing thechildren should want, and it's a true-wordedwoman she proved. Well, my wife died ofher fifth child, and after three years I marriedagain, and then Mr. Macarthur gave me a se-cond farm, and so I hold two, and it's not abetter farm he has on his estate. I get 30bushels of wheat to the acre— the weight isfrom 60 to 64 lbs. the bushel. I get about 50bushels of Indian corn to the acre— have had60. I have now in my barn 400 bushels ofwheat— plenty of corn— have above about 60head of cattle, 3 horses, 2 mares, 2 drays, acart, 1 plough, a new house, 36 feet by 16 ; se-veral out-buildings as you see — poultry inabundance. We consume one chest and a halfof tea in the year, 4 lbs. of sugar a day— nostint; I kill four bullocks in the year at thevery least, mostly five, besides pigs. I keeptwo men, pay them £18 a year, and theirboard, lodging, and tobacco. In the harvesttime I pay 5s. a day. I have reared a largefamily in comfort, want for nothing. Now,what I have say of the Macarthurs is this—there is no gentleman at home or abroad thatcould behave better: for twenty years I canspeak of them as masters and landlords— therecannot be better found ; their words are to betaken—you need not touch paper with them ;they seem to like me to get on; they ridethrough my farm, and are always willing toaccommodate me with a bullock or grain. Forthe two farms I pay 15s. an acre, on a 21 years'lease; it's five years getting to the 15s., atwhich it keeps. I had to clear it; but it is acheap farm, because the land is good—it is,you see, upon the banks of the river. Theyare Protestant gentlemen, but they are kind totheir Catholic servants and tenants. Indeed,when they had a good lot of government men,they kept a clerk that they allowed to readprayers for us ; indeed, I could not describe toyou the goodness of these gentlemen." —Douglas Jerrold's Paper.1848 'Advertising.', The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), 8 June, p. 3, viewed 1 February, 2014, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article12902254

As far as I can ascertain I am the first in my direct family lines to have left Australian shores since my ancestors arrived between 1812 and 1877. I think that they were pleased with conditions in The Lucky Country.

When I look at the charts above it seems as though I haven't done much work on my family tree but over the past 25 years or so I have connected with many distant cousins and discovered lots of stories about my ancestors and their families. And yet I have miles to go before I sleep as I continue to hunt for the Who, What, When, Where and Why of my family history.