World War II Invasion of Sydney Harbour, 31 May 1942 by Japanese midget submarines In October 1907, my grandfather, John Fuller Junr., on his World Tour, observed the Japanese nation during his ten day working holiday in Tokyo, when he described Japan as a hermit nation. A hermit nation is a country which isolates itself from the world with its customs, language and culture – rather like modern North Korea today. There would not have been many men from New …

Many trees on ancestry.com incorrectly list Frances Paynter of Boskenna as the son of William Paynter of Trelissick (1609-1669) and his wife Jane Keigwin of Mousehole (1603-1640). This is due to a combination of two factors. One is a 1930 Paynter Family Tree uploaded to some trees on ancestry.com without authorship. The other most confusing issue is a conflicting account of the Paynter family of Boskenna by John Burke Esq. in his book, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the …

Just when I thought I had finished researching my Cornish family history, I found a book mentioning William Camborne alias Paynter of Deverell, Cornwall from Burke’s Family Records (Indexed) by Ashworth P. Burke, 1897; a database recording the genealogy of the junior houses of the British nobility. Burke explained that “details of family origins, surnames, events and locations are recorded for about 300 British cadet lines; some are accompanied by coats of arms.” Cadet being the terminology used for the …

My mother, Lavinia Robson nee Fuller, died in January 2016. I was feeling melancholy in the months after and searched through her photo albums and then moved onto her dad Johnny Fuller’s scrapbooks, finding his 1907 diary of his trip around the world. After all my family research since 2011, I found myself looking at the Fuller family history with different eyes, noticing things I had previously overlooked, or things that earlier didn’t mean anything to me, were now substantial …

Geoff and I visited Auckland in March 2019 and I imagined visiting the Fuller’s grave would probably have been our first destination, however as things turned out, it actually became our last, but no means least important place to visit. Scottie Fuller gave me excellent directions and also gave me a wonderful photo that he had taken on his visit some years ago. Waikaraka Cemetery Auckland, image courtesy of Scottie Fuller Email from Scottie Fuller March 2019: Hi Virginia, Onehunga …

  John Fuller’s Myriorama Through Ireland on a Jaunting Car, image courtesy of Australian National Library Collection, originally printed in Dunedin, New Zealand, by Caxton and Co 1895 was the year when the rest of John Fuller’s children, Walter, Benjamin and Lydia arrived in Auckland, New Zealand for the family reunion that John Fuller Snr had so anticipated and longed for. Early in 1895 John Fuller went on tour to Australia with The Continentals, visiting both Adelaide and Melbourne. Express …

John Fuller Snr, my Great Grandfather and his second wife May Matilda “Ma” Cryer, are married for a little over a year when John leaves London for Australia, after being offered a place in the touring London Pavilion Company, organised by F. E Hiscock of Sydney. John had apparently been offered a position with the Company a few years earlier, but due to his difficult family situation, after being recently widowed, he had reluctantly turned down the offer. Now with …

I always knew my grandmother Lavinia “Winnie” Fuller’s maiden name was Moar, just as I knew her birthday was 27 July 1888, and that she was born in Lyttelton, New Zealand. These facts were drilled into me from childhood by my mother, Lavinia “Vena” Robson nee Fuller. Visits to South Head Cemetery in Vaucluse, Sydney, Australia over the years, saw my grandfather, Johnny Fuller head up a list of names on the Fuller family headstone. There was an inscription for …