Category Archives: Letters & diaries

Elizabeth Hardwicke’s letter to her daughter Maria

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I have written before that one of the unexpected rewards of contributing stories to GSQ Blogs is that it has helped me solve a number of genealogical mysteries.  For example, it helped me solve the mystery of the identity of my great-great uncle Francis Needham’s wife in India when a distant relative contacted me after seeing my post and, not only told me that she was an Assamese lady called Mary, but also provided me with a photo. However, I … Continue reading

Family History Revelations

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With the continuation of COVID and its restrictions on movement of people and lockdowns, 2021 has been a difficult year; a year of disrupted and/or cancelled regular, enjoyable activities with no travel to compensate for these losses. To fill in time, I decided to sort through all the family documentation that had been handed down to me over the years and was now laying hidden at the back of a cupboard in an overlarge lidded tub. On opening the tub, … Continue reading

Filling gaps with Dead Letter Office lists

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There are gaps in my knowledge of the life of my grandfather Philip Shepherd[1], who died before I was born. One of these gaps lies in the decade between his marriage in November 1882 to Catherine Heffernan in Cometville, on the Central Queensland Railway, and his purchasing of a town allotment in Jericho in the central-west in April 1892. Philip was a carrier so that the building of the railway line west from Rockhampton provided him with work carrying goods … Continue reading