I had always thought if I had convict ancestry I would have liked to be a descendent of someone who arrived on the First Fleet and be part of the Fellowship of First Fleeters. So when I found a convict, Sarah Chapman, in my lineage I was slightly disappointed that she did not arrive until December 1801 on the Nile which was 13 years after the arrival of the First Fleet in Sydney Cove. I wrote about Sarah Chapman in … Continue reading
I have heard stories about you all my life. I would see our family name on the Toowoomba Mother’s Memorial and ask, “Who was GH Maag?” The answer was always the same. “That’s Uncle George.” As a family, however, we knew little more than that you fought in WW1 and the family story that your life had been saved during fierce fighting in The Great War because a bullet had struck a cigarette case in your breast pocket instead of … Continue reading
My great grandfather Helgi Julius Jónsson was a man of the ocean, just as his father and countless generations before him were. He was an Icelander and they were bred tough, especially in the region where he was born – the Westfjörds, one of the most remote and rugged regions of Iceland. Helgi was a born and bred fisherman. He knew that the ocean was something to respect and gives thanks for. It gave life with the sustenance of fish … Continue reading
May 1919 is the 100 year anniversary of “Spanish Flu” hitting Brisbane then spreading throughout Queensland. “Spanish Flu” does not come from Spain but was first majorly publicised there as Spain was a neutral country in WW1 and the press was not censored so it acquired that name and it has stuck. It had been a long four years of war. The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than did World War I, at somewhere between 40 and 100 … Continue reading
I have several ancestors in my family who could be considered troublemakers or ne’er-do wells; the problem is deciding who would be the one to write about for this blog post. It must be William Nelson McCann, aka William McCann Neilson, he is fascinating, but I need to sort through the pile of newspaper clippings I have on William to write coherently. William Nelson McCann (my 2nd great-granduncle) was born on 27 September 1837 in Launceston, Tasmania, the son of … Continue reading
