52 Ancestors – Favourite Photo

And just like that, it’s time for Week 3 of the 52 Ancestors challenge. The prompt for this week is ‘Favourite Photo’. I am very fortunate to have quite a few photos of various ancestors, so it was hard to nail down just one to blog about for this week.

After much thought and examining of my photo files, I came across this photo and knew it was the one. It’s one I haven’t done a blog pot on before, but it’s also a really great photo that shows a moment in time. It also shows three generations of the one family.

Jean, Edith and Baby John

The photo depicts the proud, smiling faces of my grandmother Jean Levy (nee Thompson) with her mother Edith Thompson who is holding Jean’s first child John. Baby John was also the first grandchild for Edith, which I can imagine was a very happy moment for her. Given that John is still a very young baby in the photo I believe it was taken in 1945, perhaps to commemorate this happy moment for the family. It is obviously a studio photo, given the formal poses of the women, but my copy of the photo bears no clues to who the photographer was.

For me, it’s interesting to see my grandmother as a young 22 year old mother. Unfortunately, the happiness was not to last. After a few years of marriage, Jean’s husband fell into alcoholism. After the birth of her second son in 1951, Jean left her husband and filed for divorce. The divorce was successful, and I was able to obtain a copy of the records a several years ago. They tell a sad story of a mother being left with no means to buy food or clothing for her children.

Some years after her divorce, Jean remarried and had three more children (including my mother) with her second husband. Unfortunately, Jean ended up separating from her second husband after she discovered that he too was an alcoholic.

Y is for Yankee

As I’m getting close to the end of the A to Z challenge, I’ve had to be creative with the letters X and Y. Yesterday, I had X for ‘X mark’ and today my topic os Y for Yankee. When I originally sat down and planned what to write about for each letter of the alphabet, I couldn’t for the life of me think of anything for the letter Y. So, I did something I haven’t done in a very long time. I pulled out the dictionary in an attempt to think outside the box. Now, I was at my day job as a library assistant at the time so I had a nice fat dictionary in which to hunt for inspiration.  Now, even in a nice fat dictionary Y isn’t exactly the largest section in the dictionary. Finally, I lit on the word Yankee and I suddenly had my inspiration.

Outside the USA, the Yankee nickname is often used to apply to any American but within America the term is generally used by Southerners to refer to people from the Northern states. Originally, the term was specifically used to refer to those from the New England states. My 3rd great grandfather William Henry Thompson was one such Yankee; born in Boston, Massachusetts, the heart of New England.

William Henry was born c.1836 to parents William Thompson and Elizabeth Laycock. As far as I’ve been able to work out, William was the first child born to the couple or at least the first to survive to adulthood. Census records have shown that William had a minimum of four younger siblings, all of whom lived to adulthood. There may have been more children who didn’t survive childhood, but as I’m not very familiar with US records I have yet to find any evidence of this. William Henry appears on the 1850 US Census living with his parents and siblings in Ward 8, Boston, Despite much googling, I have yet to find out exactly where in Boston Ward 8 would have been. I also haven’t found much general information on the whole ward system that was obviously in place.

By 1857 William Henry had left Boston and the US behind, arriving in Sydney, Australia on 3 April.  He arrived as an unassisted immigrant, having worked as sort of the ship’s crew on his passage over. William Henry then disappears from the records until December 1872, when he marries Sarah White in Inverell, NSW. Where William Henry was between the time he arrive din Australia and when he married, I don’t know. But it is likely that he became an itinerant worker, travelling from place to place before ending up in the Inverell area. This fits with his movements after his marriage, as the family travelled vast distances from place to place. This can be tracked through the births and deaths of his children, who were born quite close together with a number of them dying in early childhood. This adds up to a move every 12-24 months, and not just to the next town either. Sometimes the places were hundreds of kilometres apart. On all official documents, William Henry is described as a Labourer and whenever a signature was needed he signed with an ‘X’ mark, indicating his illiteracy.

It seems that the longest place William Henry lived after his marriage was in Bingara, NSW where he and his family lived for at least three years. Bingara was also to be William Henry’s final resting place, as he died there on 4 December 1896 at the age of 60. His cause of death was Heart Disease, which he had suffered from for the past 6 months. He was buried in the Bingara Cemetery just one day later. He left behind a wife and seven children, one of whom was born four days after William’s death.

 

 

T is for Thomas

T is for Thomas William Thompson, who was my great, great grandfather. Thomas was born 5 December 1888 in Warwick, Queensland to parents William Henry Thompson and Sarah White (see my ‘S’ post for more on Sarah). The first few years of his life were lived in Queensland, where a younger sister was born and died. By 1894, Thomas was living with his family in Bingara, NSW. It was here that his father died in 1896, when Thomas was eight years old.

Thomas William Thompson and Hannah Mallet

The records don’t tell us how long the family stayed in Bingara or if Thomas stayed with them but by 1911, Thomas was living in Lismore NSW. It was here that Thomas met and married Hannah Maria Darch Mallet on 23 December 1911. Thomas and his wife settled down in the Lismore district and raised a family of nine children, all living to adulthood. Included in these nine children was his wife’s illegitimate child from before their marriage, whom Thomas raised as his own.

Sadly, Hannah died in 1929 at the age of 36 after 17 years of marriage. Thomas was left to finish raising his children alone. As was the customer, the eldest girl of the household was left to run the house and look after the children. This fell to his daughter Jean, who was aged only 12 years old at the time. Thomas was a kind man though, with Jean recalling him coming home one day to find her in tears and unable to cope with the situation. Thomas promptly hired a housekeeper. This housekeeper stayed on for some years, with Thomas later marrying her. Further evidence of his kindness can be seen in his raising of his grandson, whom his daughter Jean had given birth to at 15. Most children in this situation would have been adopted out, but Jean’s child was raised by his family.

Thomas remained in the Lismore area for the rest of his life, passing away in 1956  at the age of 68 years.

S is for Sarah

Sarah White was my third great grandmother and I actually have a fair amount of information on her, despite the fact that it took me years of research to find anything beyond the bare basics.

Sarah was born around 1855, either in or around Sofala in Central West NSW. Today, Sofala is a tiny village that mainly caters to the tourist trade but in the 1850s it was a booming town thanks to the Gold Rush. According to her death certificate, Sarah’s parents were Thomas White and Bridget O’Neil. As I’ve never managed to find a birth certificate this is the best I’ve managed to find. I also don’t know how long Sarah and her parents remained in the Sofala area, but by 1868 Sarah had been admitted to the Newcastle Industrial School for Girls. Entrance records record that this was court ordered admission, with Sarah having been arrested by Coonabarabran Police, bit the crime that Sarah committed is not recorded.

The Newcastle Industrial School (in centre) c.1870. [Courtesy of the Cultural Collections University of Newcastle (Australia)]

At the time of her admission, Sarah was aged 13 years old. In the Entrance Book, Sarah’s mother is listed as Bridget White but her father’s name is not recorded with it simply stating him as ‘Dead’. Sarah is described as being a Roman Catholic and being able to read the second book and write on a slate. I can only assume based on other entries that a variety of book of different levels are provided to the girls to test their reading level on entry to the industrial school, and their ability to read up to a certain number book indicated their level of reading proficiency. Sarah was in the Newcastle Industrial School until May 1871, when she was transferred to the Biloela school which was located on Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour. It was here that Sarah was deemed to be fit for domestic service but she was never assigned as she was released from the school on 9 January 1872 into the custody of her mother, Bridget, and her stepfather William Leather at Warialda, NSW. This release had been specifically requested by Sarah’s mother and stepfather.

Exterior view of the Biloela Industrial School

The dormitory at Biloela, where the girls often sleep without any bedding

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, at the age of 17 Sarah was once more a part of the wider world. But she was not to remain with her parents for long, as she married William Henry Thompson in December 1872 at Inverell. Both parties list their residence as Yallaroi, which is located close to Warialda. It is interesting to note that no parent or age details appear on the marriage certificate, as Sarah would have legally required parental permission to marry as she was under the age of 21. We can assume that Sarah put her age up for the marriage, and was believed, because the marriage takes place. It’s also interesting that previous records confirm Sarah as being Roman Catholic yet she marries in the Presbyterian Church. Her husband was more than twice her age, being 36 at the time of their marriage.

Sarah and her husband went on to have at least nine children, but inconsistencies on her children’s birth records seem to indicate that there may have been more children who simply weren’t registered. Sarah and William moved around both NSW and Queensland, living variously in Yallaroi; Molong; Wattle Flat; Coonamble; Wallumbilla, Qld; Warwick, Qld; and Bingara NSW. It must have been hard for Sarah to move around so much, especially with children, but some descendants have indicated that quite a few of her children were left to other families to look after. This is based on oral histories that have been passed down within the families of other descendants. Bingara seems to be the place Sarah lived the longest during her married life, as she lived there for at least three years. Bingara was where her last two children were born and also where her husband William died at the age of 60 years old.

Sarah Thompson nee White

I’m not really sure what exactly happened to Sarah after the death of her husband, as there is no paper trail for this time. I can trace her children and the marriage and lives of those who survived into adulthood, but this doesn’t necessarily indicate Sarah’s location. For may years I could find no trace of Sarah after 1896, but in researching her children and their families I did eventually find a record of her on the 1930 Electoral Rolls for NSW which shows her living in Kankool with her daughter Lily’s family. However, on the 1936 Electoral Roll (which was the next one to follow the 1930 Roll) I could find no trace of her. I assumed that Sarah had probably died sometime in this time period so now that I had a time frame I could search for a death certificate.

The only problem was that I had no idea of Sarah’s parents names at this stage, and there was a total nine Sarah Thompson’s to die in NSW between 1930 and 1936. With no easy way to determine which record was for my Sarah, I had each entry checked and verified by a transcription agent to see if certain details matched those of my Sarah. Lucky for my patience, and my wallet, I found my Sarah was the fifth entry on the list. This confirmed Sarah had died 7 May 1934 at Glen Innes Hospital. It also confirmed Sarah’s birth place as Sofala, NSW and provided me with her parents names of Thomas White and Bridget O’Neil. The informant was her son-in-law, whose house she had previously been residing in, so obviously she had remained with the family.

 

 

 

O is for Oscar

Oscar Norman Thompson was my great grandfather and is the subject of today’s A to Z post. Oscar was born 25 May 1895 at Regentville, near Penrith NSW to parents Charles John Thompson and Alice Skeen. Oscar’s mother had a mammoth 13 pregnancies, with a total of 15 children born including two sets of twins. Out of these 15 children, 9 lived into adulthood. Oscar was the seventh child born, so petty much smack dab in the middle of his family. Oscar grew up in various suburbs of Penrith, but by 1915 the family were settled in the suburb of Jamisontown.

The year 1915 was a significant one in Oscar’s life as well as in the wider community. The ANZACS landed at Gallipoli and there was a huge drive in recruiting for World War I. Like so many other young Australians, Oscar enlisted. His attestation papers show his date of enlistment as 24 July 1915 and he was assigned to 5th reinforcements of the 20th Infantry Battalion. Oscar was aged 21 years and 2 months at the time of his enlistment.

Oscar in army uniform

All individuals enlisting underwent a physical examination and Oscar was not exception. Oscar’spapers record his height as 5 feet 7.5 inches (or 171.45cm) which is quite tall even for men today and his weight as 126 lbs (0r 57.15 kgs). At this weight, he certainly wasn’t carrying around any extra weight!! This was a physique he carried for the rest of his life, as later photos show how lean he is. What is interesting to me is that nothing is mentioned about his feet, and rumour has it that he had flat feet. Whether he did or not, he passed all the requirements to enlist in the army. From Australia, Oscar was shipped out to Egypt where he arrived on 30 September 1915. Oscar undertook training with his battalion before being transferred across to the Western Front in France.

 

Oscar was wounded multiple times whilst on the Western Front, including being shot in the head and the neck and also suffered from illness causing him to be admitted to hospital. This may have been a blessing in disguise, as Oscar’s frequent illnesses caused him to be in and out of hospitals both on the Western Front and in England. This may well have helped with his survival, enabling him to return home to Australia in mid 1919. At the time, the Spanish Flu pandemic was still continuing in waves across Australia. However, Oscar returned to a rural area full of wide open spaces which would perhaps have helped with containing the disease. All of Oscar’s immediate family survived the pandemic and life went on as normal.

Oscar on his wedding day

In February 1920, Oscar was married to Edith Jane Hartley and the settled down and started a family. Oscar and Edith had five children together, with the first four being born in the Penrith area. However, as the Great Depression hit Australia the family was forced to move from the Penrith area to a cheaper area. As a result, they settled in Brighton-le-Sands before ending up in the inner city suburb of Ashfield.

Oscar’s health was obviously stable enough after the war for him to continue to work in his job at Sydney’s Schweppes factory, where he had been employed since the age of 15, and raise a family however as he aged his health deteriorated. As a result, Oscar died at the relatively young age of 49 years old in 1945. This may have been due to him being heavily gassed during his war service, which has since been proven to cause serious and ongoing health problems. At the time of his death, Oscar’s two youngest children were aged just 11 and 6 years old respectively.

 

E is for Edith

Edith Jane Hartley was my great grandmother and is the subject of my letter ‘e’ post. I never had the pleasure of meeting her, but as my mother spent a lot of time with her growing up I’ve heard a lot about her over the years.

Edith was born in 1898 at Jamisonton near Penrith, NSW to parents James Edmund Hartley and Elizabeth Brownlow. She was the first child born to the couple, but had four older half-siblings and a younger brother was to follow her two years later in 1900. Nowadays, Penrith is a busy metropolitan area but in the late 19th Century it was still very much a rural area.

Edith’s father worked as a Railway Guard on the NSW Railways with her mother having the usual occupation of ‘home duties’. We don’t know many details about Edith’s early life, but it would probably have followed the usual form for a girl in those days: learning how to run a house and becoming accomplished in all those domestic science tasks such as cooking and sewing. It seems likely that Edith would also have attended the Anglican Sunday School at Jamisontown, which was established in 1889. Additionally, there would have been the social round that existed in country Australia, with weekly church services and country dances.

Edith as a young woman

But the usual gentle round of country life was interrupted when WWI broke out in 1914. Edith was 16 years old, and over the next four years she would watch many of the local young men leave to go fight overseas. Reading the local Penrith newspaper from the time, there is a plethora of articles relating stories of local men heading off to the front and the going away parties that were held fro them. One such article, from the Nepean Times on 20 November 1915, details how Edith was involved in one such gathering and with another young lady handed each young man heading to the from a going away present of a safety razor.

Edith’s future husband Oscar Norman Thompson was one of these local men to head off to war. Whilst there is no record of a relationship between them prior to him going away to war, the two families did live very close to each other and the couple were well known to each other. More newspaper articles from the time detail the home front effort of knitting socks and mufflers for men at the front, which Edith as a young women would have undoubtedly been involved in.

Edith and Oscar on their wedding day

The war ended in 1918 and by 1919, Edith’s future husband had returned to live with his family in Jamisontown. On 28 February 1920, Edith and Oscar were married at Holy Trinity Church Jamisontown. A beautifully descriptive article appeared in the Windsor and Richmond Gazette in April of that year, with the bride’s dress described as being of “white organdi (sic) trimmed with lace and insertion, finished with a white folded satin belt” complemented by the traditional veil and rope of pearls around her neck and a bouquet of white and pink asters. The article goes on to describe the bridesmaids and flower girls outfits as well as naming all individuals involved in the wedding party, before stating that the reception was held at the residence of the board parents’ and that the wedding gifts “were numerous and costly”!! As a family historian, it is so rare to receive an insight into an ancestor’s life like this and I still remember how excited I was to find this article.

Edith with her three eldest children

The couple’s first child was born in 1921 with a total of five children to be born in the period 1921 to 1939. The couple settled in Jamisontown, on a small parcel of land that was gifted to them by Edith’s father as a wedding present. In recent years, I had some photos shared with me by the couple’s eldest child of their life in Jamisontown and later Penrith itself. However, as the Great Depression began to bite in the 1930s, the family was forced to move to a cheaper location. In those days, cheaper meat closer to the ocean and their new home was in Brighton-le-Sands. Today, this is a bustling seaside suburb but in the 1930s a lot of Australians moved to similar suburbs as they were the cheapest places to live.

It was while they living here that Edith’s eldest son was struck down with Polio and she spent a lot of time going backwards and forwards between home and the hospital. Eventually, he recovered and moved back with the family. By this time, they had moved to the inner western Sydney suburb of Ashfield. The family lived at Ashfield until at least 1945, which was when Edith suffered the loss of her husband. Out of the five children, two were still dependants when Oscar died and Edith relied on the War Widow’s pension to raise them along with any income made by her elder children.

In her later years, Edith lived in the Sydney suburbs of Croydon and Fairfield. When living at

Edith (centre) with her two sisters Amy (left) and Ethel (right)

Fairfield, her eldest daughter (my grandmother) separated form her husband and brought her family to live with Edith. This included my Mum and they lived with Edith for many years until they were allocated a house by Government Housing. During the years my Mum lived with Edith, she heard many family history stories (some of which weren’t entirely true!) and those stories were passed on to me and helped birth my love of family history.

Edith lived at Fairfield until her death in 1980, at the age of 85. In those 85 years, she loved through an immense amount of change in her family and the world around her.

Edith’s memorial plaque at Northern Suburbs cemetery, Sydney

 

 

 

 

#52ancestors – Family photo

So Week 8 of #52ancestors was ‘Family photo’. Well, I have decided to share one of my favourite family photos of my great grandmother Jean and some of her siblings.

Left to Right: Adeline, Jean, Eddie, Neville, Trevor (seated front)

I was lucky enough to have my great grandmother around when I was growing up, and she lived to the grand old age of 93. I was always interested to hear about her stories of growing up as her life was so different than the one I knew. She was born Jean Thompson on 20 March 1917 in Lismore, NSW to parents Thomas William Thompson and Hannah Maria Darch Mallett. Jean was the fourth child in the family and another five children were to join the family in the years to come.

I remember hearing when I was a child that Jean had grown up in a poor family where there wasn’t much of anything, which was something I could relate to as my own family wasn’t at all well off when I was growing up. But as a twelve year old, I felt sad at the fact that when Jean was twelve years old, she had the unimaginable loss of her mother and as the eldest girl at home was forced to grow up quickly and take care of the family.

Knowing that Jean and her siblings had grown up poor, I never thought anything of the fact that I didn’t see any photos of her as a child. When I started doing family history, however, I began to be more interested in her growing up and I began to search out photos. I plucked up my courage and got in contact with my great uncle, Jean’s son. Well, lo and behold he volunteered to scan and email me whatever he had as he had all of Jean’s collection of photos at his house.

At first it was candid photos of her as a young woman before she was married and as young mother. And don’t get me wrong, these photos were great and as a family historian I appreciate any and all photos of my ancestors. But then the most exciting photograph appeared in my inbox. Not only was it a photo of Jean as a young girl along with some of her siblings but it was a professional photo in which they all had their best clothes on and were posed so cutely. I was completely amazed. To this day it is one of my favourite photos, perhaps because I was fairly close to Jean and maybe also because I felt sorry for the children in the photo knowing that it was only a few years after the photo was taken that they would lose their mother.

#52ancestors Week 7 – Valentine

Running a bit behind but finally getting my Week 7 post up.

For this week’s prompt, I scoured my family tree looking for someone who was married on Valentine’s Day or was called Valentine but there was no one. I also don’t really have any Valentine’s Day stories, so I thought outside the box and decided to write about someone called Rose as roses are typically given on Valentine’s Day.

Let me introduce you to Rose Beatrice NIPPERESS. Rose was the first wife of my great grand uncle (my great grandmother’s brother). I don’t really know a lot about this lady, perhaps because she isn’t really and ancestor more a family connection, but when researching her husband William Edward (Eddie) THOMPSON I found that she went through some hard times. Rose had been born in 1910 in the Lismore, NSW area and grew up there as did Eddie. The couple married in 1937 in Lismore and by 1941 the young couple had a lovely baby girl. But everything went south when Eddie enlisted into the Australian army in 1942 and was posted overseas to Papua New Guinea. I can just imagine Rose sending her husband off to war, thinking that perhaps she might never see him again but that he was ‘doing his bit’ for the war effort. Little did Rose know that the war would change their little family forever.

Prior to being posted overseas, Eddie conducted training exercises in the northern areas of Australia and according to his war records he was granted special leave without pay 30 April 1942. Presumably, he went home to see his family

Rose and Eddie THOMPSON with their daughter

before being shipped out overseas. Photos of the young family lend credibility to this argument, with Eddie appearing in his army uniform in the photos. However, it seems Eddie never actually made it overseas. A pattern of being AWOL

emerges in his records, the first occurrence happening 2 October 1942 and lasting till 3 November 1942. His pay was docked and he was placed in detention. But he didn’t learn his lesson and absented himself again following more training and this time he never returned to the army. A warrant was issued for his arrest but he was never found and he was discharged for misconduct in 1946.

As Eddie’s next of kin, I presume that Rose would have been informed about her husbands desertion or at the very least questioned about his whereabouts. But she presumably didn’t know about his whereabouts at that time or for some time after. Interestingly, Eddie’s war records include letters from family members to army officials looking for his whereabouts but none from his wife. Who knows what the reason for this is: embarrassment and shame that her husband had not only deserted from the army, but hadn’t seen fit to return to his wife and child or perhaps she was simply struggling to keep her and her daughter afloat.

Nobody I have spoken to in the family knows if Rose was ever contacted by Eddie again but one way or another a divorce must have occurred as in 1952 Rose remarried. She and her new husband continued to live in the Lismore area where Rose and Eddie’s daughter was also presumably raised.

Week 3 – Longevity

The prompt for this weeks #52ancestors challenge is Longevity, so I have decided to focus on my longest living direct ancestor. My great grandmother Jean ILES (nee THOMPSON) lived until the age of 93 years old. She by no means had an easy life, and overcame some obstacles to reach such a grand old age.

Jean THOMPSON (seated left) and siblings

Jean was born on 20th March 1917 to parents Thomas William THOMPSON and Hannah Maria Darch MALLET in Lismore, NSW and was the fourth of nine children to be born to the couple. Jean remembers that there was never a lot of money around when she was growing up due to the large size of the family and the unskilled work that her father did. However, she remembers a happy childhood until at the age of 12 her mother died from pneumonia. Jean’s life changed overnight: she had grown up doing her share of chores and helping her mother around the house as the second eldest girl, with her chores increased after her eldest sister left home but upon her mothers death she was suddenly responsible for running the entire household. Jean had to drop out of school so there was someone to run the household and look after the younger siblings, three of which were aged under five at the time.

For some months after her mother’s death, Jean shouldered the responsibility of looking after the house and all it’s inhabitants until one day it became all too much. In a video interview recorded on Jean’s 90th birthday, she recalls collapsing into tears one afternoon and her father arriving home to find her in a state. Her father considered the tears, and announced that tomorrow he would find a housekeeper to help with the house. Looking back, Jean can’t think how the family afforded it but before long this became a moot point when her father married the housekeeper a few years later.

Eric THOMPSON

Jean continued to love at home until she was about 14 or 15 years old at which point she became pregnant out of wedlock following an attack. Jean was sent away to the town of Casino which is a scarce 30km away where she stayed with the local Salvation Army officers (ministers) and helped look after their children. There is the suggestion in the family that this arrangement was helped by their then housekeeper who attended the Salvation Army church in Lismore. After 9 months, Jean gave birth to a son who was namedEric THOMPSON. Interestingly, Eric was not adopted out following his birth. He was absorbed into the family and raised as a sibling to Jean’s younger siblings.

Jean became more and more involved in The Salvation Army and became a Soldier (member) of the church, moving around with the officer from Casino when they moved on to their next location. It was through the Salvos that she met her husband, who spotted her at an open air meeting and declared to his mates “I’m gonna marry that girl right there” and marry her he did. They went on to have two children and time passed. Then in the 1990s when Jean was in when she was in her 70s she was diagnosed with breast cancer. But she managed to beat it through chemo and a radical double mastectomy and went on to live until the ripe old age of 93.

Jean ILES (nee THOMPSON) later in life with her eldest grandchild.

 

Starting

After much deliberating, I have decided to start a blog as a way of recording my family history journey and family stories. The #52ancestors challenge has finally given me the motivation to start the blog rather than still thinking about it. The topic for Week 1 was “Start” so here is my post about how I started my family history journey.

Ever since I can remember I’ve been interested in history and how people lived “in the olden days”. As a child I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandmother, who was born in 1922. I can vividly remember coming across a black and white photo of a young child playing outside in a rural setting. I can remember asking my grandmother who the child in the photos was and her replying that it was her as a little girl. to me, who was only young at the time (maybe 8 or 9 years old) this was amazing. Over the years, I can remember her telling stories about her growing up years and haring stories from my mother who had heard them from her grandmother. When my grandmother died, my mum and I decided to do some investigating into my grandmothers family and we found something quite quickly on the first ancestor of hers to come to Australia: a convict. And with that, my family history journey was started.