The Kilpatrick family of Dublin, formerly Armagh, and the Cranwill family of Dublin City and Ballycanew, Wexford, have without a doubt been the most pleasurable and successful areas of my Irish family research. My paternal Grandmother Mabel Jackson Wise’s mother was named Agnes Amelia Kilpatrick. This information I discovered on Mabel’s birth record. I had never heard of Agnes, the wife of George Edwin Wise, however her oval photographic portrait and that of my Great-Grandfather Wise had hung as a …
Month: November 2015
I hope this factual account about finding James Kidd’s grave inspires others to locate their ancestors amongst the historic graves of Camperdown Cemetery here in Sydney. In writing the story about James Kidd’s life, I realised that I needed to delve deeper into his past, find out who his parents were, where he came from and how and why he came to be transported as a convict to Australia. In this quest I have uncovered an outstanding Australian citizen. My …
Our Robson family were from Wallsend, Northumberland, a town 10 km east of Newcastle upon Tyne in northern England. This general area is where our family had probably lived for centuries. Border wars between Scotland and England would have occasionally disrupted their otherwise peaceful community. The Robson clan were convenient border hoppers, depending on where the war was being fought, they would make sure they were on the winning side of the wall, thus ensuring their family’s survival from the …
In my five years of research into the family history I have, in all branches of the family started off with no knowledge beyond my grandparents and no expectations about what I would find. Family history is the ultimate in pyramid building and, like every modern day family researcher before me, I keyed in my own parents on my laptop to start my family tree. This particular avenue immediately opened up two unrelated areas of research, and by keying in …