#52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2024 - Week 4 - Witness to History

For this week’s prompt I have decided to write about my own witness to history.

I have lived through the Covid years.  In Australia the first case of the Covid 19 virus was recorded in January 2020.  We  are still living with Covid but now in 2024 it is an accepted fact that we have to do just that ….live with it.  My husband and I as a retired couple were vaccinated and kept up to date with booster shots.

But in reality it didn’t have a big impact on my life til about mid 2020.  We were advised to stay at home first and then the compulsory lockdowns came into place at different times in differed states.

Being retired it became our practise of tuning in each morning to the TV for updates on the cases in Australia and the advice being given by the Health Authorities.  

We became very adept on hand washing and sanitising everywhere we went.  There were Apps on our phones that had to be signed into if we visited anywhere for medical or other appointments.  We were also required to wear masks wherever we went outside of the home.

Being in the age group of most at risk, family were not allowed to visit but the ones in our town were able to drop things off to us without actually coming inside.  We became adept at online shopping and online grocery shopping became the normal with home delivery or click and collect.

Non essential workers were required to stay at home and work from home if possible.  Schools were only open for children of the essential workers.  So this then meant that parents were now working from home and also supervising their children’s online school work.  I know that it was a challenge for our three families with children. But amazingly they all adapted and embraced the challenge but it was still not easy.  Children missed out on the vital interaction that goes on in the classroom setting.  Many of the children’s outdoor sporting activities were suspended and I feel a lot of children once they stopped playing weekend sport found it difficult to return to it.

For me personally as an avid “crafter” and being retired, I didn’t find it difficult to fill my days.  I made approximately thirty face masks and also joined an online Patchwork and Quilting Mystery Quilt group, which filled my days easily and resulted in a new passion and quite a few quilts finished with more in the making.

We became excellent Zoom participants with our 4 children and their spouses and our grandchildren.  But these Zoom gatherings were missing the physical component of hugs and cuddles with our Grandies.

We zoomed with our friend groups as well. But it was never the same as sitting with a drink or cuppa with treasured friends. 

These are just some of my thoughts on being a witness to history, which the Covid Pandemic was and still is!  Many lives were lost and many suffered.  It impacted on people’s mental health and well-being in lots of ways, including through isolation and loneliness, job loss and financial instability, and illness and grief.  

But most importantly I think it has taught a lot of us that life is indeed precious and worth looking after each other and that family is a great blessing.

#52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2024 - Week 3 - Favourite Photo

For this week's prompt I have chosen not one of my favourite photos, but technically more like one of my Family History Interesting Photos!

Let me elaborate on how I came to take this photo out of the passenger window of our car on the 7 September 2016, along the Coonabarabran Road, Gunnedah.  There is no-one in it, but I have an interesting story and theory as to the stone wall you may see.

My husband and I were doing one of our bi-annual holiday trips north to see my sisters in Queensland. It is usually at least a two day trip so we planned on doing a little Family History Research as a side trip on the way to break up the journey.  My early paternal Great Grandparents were in a town called Gunnedah between the years 1877 -1915.  My G/Grandfather Alfred Brandt was there until his death in 1883 and my G/Grandmother Louisa until her death in 1915.

The Back Story

My Grandfather was the Publican of the Sugarloaf Inn, on the Coonabarabran Road, near Gunnedah until he died when he fell down a well in 1883.  His wife took over the Publican’s license after his death and continued to run the Sugarloaf Inn up until late 1891 and after that another pub the Bank Hotel until the early 1900s.  Then deciding that she needed to slow down she established a Lodging House in the Imperial Hotel in Gunnedah, until her death in 1915.  Her life had been hard, she buried two husbands and one son at the age of fourteen.

My Theory

So what does the accompanying photo have to do with all of the above?  We had decided that we would like to find the Sugarloaf Inn and Alfred and Louisa’s grave sites. 

• We knew there was a range of mountains with the name Sugarloaf.  
• We knew where they were buried.  
• We had an appointment with one of the volunteers of the local Historical Society.  

How hard could it be?  Well harder than we thought!

The Historical Society had records that confirmed my research of where Alfred and Louisa were buried.  Although they didn’t have any information about the Sugarloaf Inn.

We were informed that the cemetery was no longer in use, so we set out to see what we could find.  Unfortunately there were many graves with headstones that were no longer legible and we eventually gave up and decided to try and track down where the Sugarloaf Inn may have been.

We knew the road and thanks to Google Maps we were able to find the area known as Sugarloaf.  The road was no longer the small country track that it would have been a hundred years ago.  It was now a major road on the outskirts of the town with mainly farmland property on both sides.

From memory we were also able to pinpoint where we thought the Inn would have been and it was here that we found a farm house.  So taking a hunch that the owners would be receptive to a couple of strangers asking questions, we drove down the long driveway. Of course there was no one at home, so another dead end!

But on leaving the property we decided to drive back and forth on the road  for a few kilometres a couple of times.  On one of these trips I noticed in the paddock what looked like some stonework.  We managed to get off the road close to the fence and it looked like a stone wall that had seen better days.  

So I took a photo of it and until somewhere down the track in my research or another trip to Gunnedah, I hold onto the belief that it was indeed the remains of the Sugarloaf Inn.  It was close to the road which was a necessity for a thriving Inn.

For now it is enough to have this theory and maybe one day I might actually be able to prove it!

#52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2024 - Week 2 - Origins

What were the origins of my family to Australia? 

My first ancestors to arrive and settle in Australia happened in 1792 on my maternal side.^⁠1 

On February 14 1792, my Great Great Great Grandmother Elizabeth Selwyn arrived in Port Jackson, Australia, as a convict and was assigned as housekeeper to Lieutenant Thomas Rowley who arrived on the same convict ship the Pitt.^⁠2 

Elizabeth originally was from Great Britain and possibly Gloucester as she was tried at the Gloucester Assizes, Gloucestershire on 23 March 1791 for stealing clothing worth 34 shillings from her employer.^⁠3 

As I have written previously in posts on my blog I will just give a quick profile of them in this post.  

She had five children to Thomas Rowley from 1792 to 1803, Isabella(1792), Thomas(1794), John(1797)^⁠4  Mary(1800)^⁠5 and Eliza(1803/4) who was my Great Great Grandmother. I haven’t found birth records for Eliza but she was mentioned in Thomas’ Will, so she did exist!^⁠6

Although having five children with Thomas there is no evidence that they ever married, in fact she was still recorded as Elizabeth Selwyn on documents up until her death on 22 June 1843.^⁠7 

Thomas served in the NSW Corps becoming a Captain in 1796.^⁠8  He also did a stint as Commandant in Norfolk Island between November 1799 til July 1800. Thomas resigned from the military in November 1801 due to ill health. 

He then turned his hand to farming after receiving many land grants around the Georges River area.  He named their  homestead “Kingston Farm” after his home (allegedly) in Great Britain.  This will be another area of research in helping me to establish further information as to his earlier life. Thomas died in 29 May 1806.^⁠9

So my origins in Australia are definitely in the Sydney, New South Wales area.  This is where Elizabeth Selwyn and Thomas Rowley settled, although the country may not  have been their choice, the area was and they did manage to put down roots for those that followed.

_________________________

¹ Ancestry.com. New South Wales, Australia, Convict Indents, 1788-1842 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. This collection was indexed by Ancestry World Archives Project contributors.

² Ancestry.com. New South Wales and Tasmania, Australia Convict Musters, 1806- 1849 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2007. Original data: Home Office: Settlers and Convicts, New South Wales and Tasmania; (The National Archives Microfilm Publication HO10, Pieces 5, 19-20, 32-51); The National Archives of the UK (TNA), Kew, Surrey, England. Retrieved May 20 2016

³ STARR, MARION, Unhappy Exiles Convicts of the Pitt and Kitty 1792, Australia 1016, p141.

⁴ Ancestry.com. Australia, Birth Index, 1788-1922 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Original data: Compiled from publicly available sources. Retrieved April 15 2015

⁵ Ancestry.com. Australia, Birth Index, 1788-1922 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.Original data: Compiled from publicly available sources. Retrieved April 15 2015.

⁶ Ancestry.com. London, England, Wills and Probate, 1507-1858 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.Original data: London, England, Wills and Probate. London, England: London Metropolitan Archives and Guildhall Library Manuscripts. Images produced by permission of the City of London Corporation Libraries, Archives. Retrieved June 10 2016.

⁷ Ancestry.com. Australia, Death Index, 1787-1985 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Original data: Compiled from publicly available sources. Retrieved June 1 2016.

⁸ B. H. Fletcher, 'Rowley, Thomas (1747–1806)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/rowley-thomas-2614/text3605, published first in hardcopy 1967, accessed online 3 February 2018.

⁹ Ancestry.com. Sydney, Australia, Cemetery Headstone Transcriptions, 1837-2003 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016.

Original data: Sydney Metropolitan Cemetery Records. Society of Australian Genealogists, Sydney, Australia.

#52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2024 - Week 1 - Family Lore

FAMILY LORE

I am struggling with this prompt as I really don’t have any stories passed down through my family that I can remember.  

Unfortunately my parents weren’t into sharing stories of their life and my grandparents were all gone by the time I had turned two years of age.

But through my research and doing an online University Diploma of Family History, I have dabbled in the creative writing genre and written a few stories of my ancestors and shared them in my blog.

As these stories are all Creative Non-fiction it means that research has been done and names, dates, places etc are correct, as far as I am aware. I have added flesh to the bones of my ancestors with stories of what or how things might have happened.  So in a lot of cases minor characters, may also be named from actual document records, but my imagination comes into play with scenes and descriptions.

So I am once again going to attempt to complete the #52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Writing Challenge with Amy Johnson Crow. I have participated in this challenge on and off since 2018.  I have never lasted the distance though, but maybe this year I will. My mantra will be from Amy’s own words…“Whatever you write or record is more than what you had before.” I agree with her wholeheartedly!  With all the best intentions to see a thing through though, sometimes life just gets in the way.

So what happened to Family Lore I hear you ask? 

Our adult children gave my husband and I an online subscription for Christmas 2022 of a weekly writing exercise where we were each given a prompt chosen by them to write a story or memory from our life.  These stories will be turned into a hard cover book now that we have finished.  We have to proof read the 53 stories and edit them in the next three months. Then we hit submit and we will both receive the books in the mail!

So maybe some stories from our books will evolve into Family Lore from here on in!  

I am hoping with this practise now a weekly habit, this year will be the year of success in the #52 Ancestors in 52 weeks. I look forward to this challenge and appreciate the push to continue and preserve my Ancestor stories and maybe create some Family Lore of my own! Thanks Amy Johnson Crow!