Family Tree Frog

M is for Malta (and Musters) Image taken from page 237 of 'John Cassell's Illustrated History of England. The text, to the Reign of Edward I., by J. F. Smith; and from that period by W. Howitt' from the British Library on Flickr My great-great-grandfather Edward Conner served in Malta - or at least I'm pretty sure he did because the eldest of his children was born there - Edward G Conner in about 1856/7. According to The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea,  (borrowed from my father's library this week during a visit to Sydney), Malta is: a strategically placed island in the central Mediterranean Sea commanding the relatively narrow channel between the southern extremity of Europe and the northern extremity of Africa...i t was the main base of the British Mediterranean Fleet.      (pp. 514-515) ADM 338/51 and ADM 338/52 have records of Baptisms 1845-1959 (Malta, dockyard) and 1924-77 (Malta (Bighi), Royal Naval Hosptial and ...

H is for Haslar (and Heads) I don't often include pictures of toilets in my blog posts but I think it is important to remember just what conditions were like on board ship.   This is a picture of a  washbasin and toilet hole in the officers' head (bathroom) onboard the USS Constellation, a wooden-hulled sloop-of-war that served in the U.S. Navy from 1854-1933 and 1940-1955. It's now a museum ship in Baltimore, Maryland. The picture is courtesy of Kevin Harber on Flickr.  Creative Commons Licence here. I tend to look at my ancestor's lives with rose-coloured glasses at times...how romantic being in the Navy and sailing the seven seas and all that.  But I'm sure at times it was just plain horrible and hideous.   Toilets are called the Heads in sailor-speak so don't ever accept the offer of being Captain of the Heads if you're on board ship.  It sounds a grand title but it means you're in charge of the toilets...and when they're ...

Portrait of Private Edward Hinde of Gilston, Queensland, pictured in France, circa 1916 [picture] / Photographer unknown.  Picture courtesy of Gold Coast Libraries Picture Gold Coast collection.  This image is free of copyright restrictions. Permission is needed to use this image for commercial purposes. It's on again !   Kintalk's Trans Tasman Anzac Day Blog Challenge.  This year I have chosen to focus on the Hinde branch of my husband's family.  My husband prompted this blog by saying he remembered a photo of a digger on the wall of his grandmother's house when he was growing up. He remembered the man's name was Thomas.  I knew it couldn't be Thomas Daw - he was too young for WWI .  Dorothy, my husband's grandmother, was a Hinde before she married. When I searched the NAA records  for Hindes serving in WWI, I found an Edward and a Thomas.  Edward and Thomas would have been Dorothy's first cousins once removed or to put it another w...