Author Archives:

Bell’s picnic party

GSQ Blog Posted on by

Bell’s Picnic Party was the title of a small piece in The Worker in May 1908. It expressed the newspaper’s view of a trip my great uncle, Joshua Bell, who was Minister for Lands at the time, was taking along the Queensland coast in May 1908 on the Government steamer Lucinda. Mr. Bell, in the fostering atmosphere Ministerial authority, is developing a great gift of conviviality—at the country’s expense…taking with him a few chosen pals and political tuft hunters…[1]    … Continue reading

‘A decidedly neat speech’

GSQ Blog Posted on by

I am always on the lookout for information about women that provides a fuller picture of their lives to add to the information which is usually available such as where they were born, how many children they had, what their husbands did and when they died. But this is often difficult as previously women were usually invisible with few or no signs that they had lived, and even the wives of ‘important’ men were often only recorded when they were … Continue reading

A Trip to County Galway, Ireland

GSQ Blog Posted on by

Occasionally you hear a story of someone who arrives in a country looking for their ancestors and commences wandering the roads and byways. Suddenly, seemingly by chance, as they have done very little research, they stumble across a record, a house or the burial place of a long lost relative. The other story, and the most common, especially if your relatives came from Ireland, is the one where you do endless research, go up and down genealogical roads, constantly hitting … Continue reading

Looking for a letter: Elizabeth Hardwicke’s (née Chapman) letter to her daughter Maria

GSQ Blog Posted on by

Do many of us who are doing genealogy research think, as we are searching Trove or gazing at microfilm to find that missing link, that one way we may find the answer is to write our story and put it out there on a blog and see whether some distant relative suddenly presents the answer? Sounds far fetched doesn’t it? I certainly thought so when I started to contribute to this blog. Perhaps I was naive because I thought you … Continue reading

Sisters of Charity at the Female Factory, Parramatta

GSQ Blog Posted on by

They have been so sadly tormented by the mosquitoes, especially Mrs Cater, and Mrs O’Brien suffered no little. Yesterday was a most oppressive day on account of the heat. [1] Mrs Cator and Mrs O’Brien were two of five Irish Sisters of Charity who arrived in Sydney from Ireland on the last day of 1838 and After residing some weeks in Sydney, they established themselves in a house founded for them in Parramatta, that they might be able to attend … Continue reading