Welcome to my web site.

 

         Genealogy detail is of particular though enduring  interest to individual descendants. The process of assembling information from old records and memories is unending. So  I shall be pleased to be advised of errors and omissions, and am happy to correspond with readers, whether descended from my pioneers or not, on any matters covered in these pages.

       There is a predominence of Irish material, both in Ireland itself and among the early Irish in New South Wales. This derives from the fact that fifteen of my sixteen great great grandparents were Irish. And the sixteenth, born in the Colony had an Irish mother and an English father.

      The added bonus of my genealogy research is the exposure of early colonial New South Wales life of  settlers in a new land, and their interaction with their communities. Consequently, much of the recorded social and historical information in these pages goes beyond genealogy and deserves a wider audience. My objective, in setting up this website, is to advance that process.  At the same time, I thank my relatives, close, distant, and very distant, for their contributions to these papers. Hopefully, once they examine these records, they will be encouraged to continue their own research.

      Father Timothy Reen’s 1939 booklet “Catholic Cowra – An Outline of Its History”  contains a great many names and locations of interest to historians and genealogists researching the Cowra region and its pioneer Irish settler families, including many of interest to me. Consistent with my aims expressed above, I have added the searchable text to my website.

      As to the painting above, which I purchased from an unwitting vendor at a  footpath stall in Portabello Road, London, in the late 1970s, who might SWC have been? I have tried very many sources over the years without identifying him or her. Was the artist professional or amateur, resident or visitor? Help!

  [NOTE: This website is a work in progress and development - January 2012.]