Searching for MG is a slow process of sifting through records and waiting for DNA matches to appear. One day someone will take a DNA test that magically unlocks the mystery. I’m not the type to sit quietly waiting, doing nothing, so while I wait for that magical DNA match I’m running a magnifying glass…
Author: KINdling
The Baron of Yarramalong
You briefly met my great grandfather William Hill in an earlier post. William Hill was the son of an Irishman named William Hill, the cousin of William Hill, the father of (George) William Hill and the grandfather of… you guessed it, William Hill. In 1937, one of the Williams featured in a handful of news…
Timothy Callaghan is good… and probably useful
Doctor Allayne, Mr Wise, and the Reverend Sheridon, all of the Immigration Board, came on board the ‘Samarang‘ as she lay in Sydney harbour. The crew of Samarang were tired and impatient to offload her passengers. After 108 days of being relentlessly tossed about on an unforgiving sea, they were all keen to go ashore….
Alfred John Jones (1894 ‒ 1916)… forever 21
Alfred John Jones was born in the Tasmanian town of Zeehan to an ordinary family, and like many ordinary young men of his era, when war broke out he rallied to the call. Alfred enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 29 Oct 1915. Despite his boyish looks, he was 21 on enlistment – in…
The mystery of baby John
On 24 November 1846, the death of an eight month old baby was recorded in Hobart. His name was John Goodson. His parents were not named, he was simply a ‘child of a convict’. Who was baby John? From time to time (perhaps too often), female convicts gave birth to babies which were taken from…
The Willocks, a family divided? Edna, part 13
You guessed it, I’m still waiting for the missing link. New DNA matches come and go, but none of any significance in the hunt for my Mystery Great Grandfather, dear old MG. Not yet. In the meantime I haven’t been resting on my Christmas derriere, no no no, I’ve been working quite hard – in…
Tamar Seed
Two hundred years ago, or thereabouts, an illiterate convict ploughman named James Goodson began sowing the seeds of a dynasty; first in poverty-stricken despair in Essex, and then in the rich and fertile north of Van Diemen’s Land, at Windermere on the banks of the River Tamar. Tamar Seed is a collection of family stories…
All at sea
Cold, starving, poor and desperate. A wife and two small children to feed; vagrancy, homelessness, had become a reality. With diminishing means and the lives of his family in his hands and on his conscious, he stole some oats – 2 1/2 pecks, not a small amount by any man’s standards, but maybe enough so…
What are the odds? (an Edna Extra)
I have a new DNA toy! What are the odds? It is a tool inside a website called DNA Painter. The tool is called WATO or What Are The Odds. You can register at DNA Painter for free and there are two versions of WATO, I’ve used version 2 beta. WATO calculates how you might…
Tuppence and Thrippence
I’ve got a new mystery to solve. Its about these pictures of my second great aunts. They are my great grandfather Francis Sendall’s sisters. They were working class people; their father was a butcher, their grandfather was a blacksmith. How did they afford to look so grand? And to be photographed? The women in the…
KINdling 