Family Tree Frog

Julie Goucher from Angler's Rest says: Today is week 57 of what is a 15 month project.  This week's prompt is - Life Chapters Is your life divided into chapters? How has that happened? Has it naturally evolved? Can you easily reflect where one chapter ends and another begins? Are there any surprises? Are those Chapters determined by people and / or places / or significant events? As a person who loves books, these questions have great resonance and give one much food for thought.  Speaking of food....and with apologies to my vegan, vegetarian friends... Seared emu loin, native spiced black pudding, smoked potato, Illawarra plums I ate emu for the first time yesterday.  I joked with my father that it was revenge for an emu stealing my apple many years ago at Tidbinbilla Reserve.  Yes the revenge was a bit disproportionate to the crime, I agree. Why did I choose emu?  Goodness, only knows.  Sometimes I leap ch...

Courtesy of Picture Queensland Large group of men at Enoggera, Brisbane, ca. 1940 Today I attended a most interesting forum at the State Library of Queensland called Serving Country.   There was a beautiful welcome to country from Maroochy Barambah and then the day was jam packed with talks about different aspects of the indigenous stories of WW1.  If you are interested in research in this area I encourage you to look at the program and speakers' biographies .   There is a great article about Indigenous Australians serving on the Australian War Memorial site here. We got to hear from Wesley Enoch and researcher/historian David Williams about the process of creating the Black Diggers production now showing at the QPAC Playhouse as part of the Brisbane Festival.  You can see a trailer here . State Library of Queensland looks forward to uncovering many more untold stories of WW1.  To that end, today they announced four fellowships for resear...

Mounted Police,  King and Elizabeth Street corner from Sydney, 1890 /  photographed by Arthur K. Syer from State Library of New South Wales Flickr Account Are there murders, bizarre accidents or other thrilling stories among your family history? Thriller Thursday is a daily blogging prompt used by many genealogy bloggers to help them post content on their sites.This is an ongoing series by Anne Kruszka at Gene Notes . Well my advice for you this evening is to NOT search under the term "abduction" in Flickr unless you want to have nightmares.  I'm squeamish at the best of times but abduction is obviously a medical term for suspending limbs et al.  Flickr Commons is full of lots of disturbing photos and drawings of the human anatomy. I was looking for the term "abduction" because I found a most interesting notice while searching Find My Past for more information about the Ellis family. I have spoken before of Kate Ellis leadi...

Courtesy of the Tyrrell Collection, Powerhouse Museum, Nave St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney c. 1900 Beatrice Ellis? Wedding Wednesday is a prompt suggested by Carol of Reflections from the Fence and in use by several genealogy bloggers. Here I go again...madly guessing and researching the Ellis family. So, tonight I'm just going to summarise what I have found out about Beatrice Ellis born 1883 in Ararat Victoria.  Beatrice was my 2nd Great Aunt on my mother's side of the family. I haven't been able to find out terribly much about Beatrice's short life. I did find an article in Trove as per below. Courtesy of National Library of Australia, Sydney Morning Herald, 24 February 1905 But then we find a day later the following notice in the Wagga Wagga Express... I wonder what was going on???  Beatrice's older sister Kate Emilia Ellis was living in Newtown and had troubles of her own - four children aged 5 and under with another on the way.  ...

Courtesy of the National Library of Australia (Trove), The Argus, Tuesday 31 March 1868, p. 4 Following on from yesterday's post about the Ellis Family.... Tonight I found a death notice for Isobel Blanche Victoria Ellis who was the fourth child and first daughter of George and Isabella Ellis.   George and Isabella went on to have 12 children altogether - four more girls - Esther Isobel, Kate Emelia, Isobel Mary and Beatrice Sarah Louisa.  Isobel Mary died in 1881.  Both Kate and Beatrice died as young women after having their own children.  Poor Isabella really only got to keep one of her daughters Esther, who lived to the ripe old age of about 86, outliving her mother and dying in 1954. At the time of Isobel Blanche's death, George and Isabella were living at 54 Napier Street Fitzroy.  They would have had George aged about 6 and Charles aged about 4.  George and Isabella had lost baby Paul four years earlier and Esther was a baby or ...

Ellis Family Group Photo Today's blogging prompt comes from Jennifer Geraghty-Gorman, of ‘ On a flesh and bone foundation': An Irish History' . The photo above is a copy of a photo obtained by my parents from a "newly found" cousin last century just before my mother died.  I'm afraid I don't know who is whom.  So I shall just have a big fat guess and hope that my guessing will bring cousins out of the woodwork to tell me where I have gone wrong ;)  I believe it is a photo of the Ellis family or my mother's great-grandparents and their children. Relationship Chart from Alex to Isabella Sinclair and George Ellis. Here's a bit of a relationship chart so you can see who's who in the zoo. That's me at the bottom - the living one.  Then my mother.  Then my maternal grandmother.  Then her mother.  And then her maternal grandmother. So - in the photo...I think is Isabella and George Ellis sitting together in the middle.  Seated ...

Alan at Sepia Saturday says: Three men. One bottle of whiskey. A friendly argument. A woman watching from the sidelines. The photograph was taken in Alberta back in 1916. 100 years later, the discussions still go on and all too often - at our house at least - a decent bottle of single malt will help the participants underline a point or emphasise an argument. The difference is, I am pleased to say, that women no longer hide in the background. There are a bottle full of potential themes for Sepia Saturday participants - drinking, sharing, posing and lurking have been suggested. Just a short one this week as I haven't really been able to find anything to match the theme.  This is the best I can do I'm afraid. There's three men and yes they are posing for the shot.  There's a lot of drink lurking behind them.     The sepia photo above is from the McLoughlin collection.  I think it is part of the set of photos that I posted about before which s...

Julie Goucher of Angler's Rest created this fantastic meme The Book of Me Written By You and you can find out all about it here. This is Prompt 55 of the meme. What is your feel good movie? Can you remember the first time you went to the cinema? What did you see? Can you remember the price? Who did you go with? Recall those magical movie moments? What is your favourite movie or favourite genre? What is your feel good movie? Oh boy.  That's a tough one.  I looked at the lists on IMDB and honestly....can you believe that someone put Trainspotting in the list????  I mean it's a great movie but "feel-good" ??? This is difficult because I tend to like melancholic movies best.  Weird, I know.  But for me the best feel good movies (because I can't restrict myself to one) are (in alphabetical order): The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert Amelie Babe Before Sunrise Cinema Paradiso The Full Monty Muriel...