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The Spanish Influenza: a family’s story.

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By Sue Bell. How many times over the last few months have we heard the words ‘Spanish flu’? We have heard them from historians reappraising its effect on the world; health professionals who have been making comparisons with its treatment and that of COVID-19; and statisticians comparing the grim rates of death. But what was the impact on individual families and the stories that have been told within these families about this time? My husband’s grandmother, Alida Sleewijk Visser (née … Continue reading

How do you pass on family stories to your grandchildren?

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My first grandchild was born last year and I spent six weeks with him a month after he was born.  He lives in Chicago so while I was there I spent some time thinking about how I could pass on some stories of his Australian family without just giving him a list of relatives with names and dates. One day during my visit, I was in the American Writers Centre on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, which had just opened, reading … Continue reading

William Alexander Dorsey Bell

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Many years ago, my aunt told me a story in which she remembered sitting in a car in a car park while her father visited someone in an adjoining building. She wondered why she could not go with him, but her father made it clear he was going alone.  She learnt later that she was outside the Goodna Mental Asylum where her father was visiting his older brother William Alexander Dorsey Bell. This story lingered in my mind so a … Continue reading

‘A very merry man’: John Harris

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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

Dame Nellie Melba and the Boer War: Duke Bell

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What do Dame Nellie Melba and the Boer War have in common? I would have thought very little until I started researching the story of one of my relatives, Marmaduke Alexander Thomas (Duke) Bell. The name Marmaduke seems very quaint and unusual but as it was passed down for a few generations in my father’s family, it has become quite helpful in doing family research. I commenced researching Duke Bell because I knew he had gone to the Boer War … Continue reading