Crumbling memories

Several years ago I decided to research my ancestry as I was curious about some of the stories I'd heard over the years.

Part of me had put them down to half-truths retold over time into garbled stories that had little meaning or truth to them at all so I got a subscription to a website that searches people's history and, starting with my parents, began to trace backwards. It wasn't long before I found out I was wrong about the half-truths as I uncovered factual accounts, birth, death and marriage records, shipping lists, court documents, electoral rolls and other documents, corroborating the stories.

I was fascinated, and hooked.

I traced back hundreds of years on my mothers side. It's a long way back, but the British kept excellent records and the website has access to historical records from around the world as well...seeing the name of an ancestor written in a book from all those years ago is an interesting feeling, I guess I sort of felt a connection across time and space.

Over time I began to piece it all together, a genealogical jigsaw puzzle, and after about a year or so had a reasonably complete map of my family history.

I've looked at it since, added a few people, my niece and nephew, adjusted people's profiles like the death-date of my father, and followed a few leads that have popped up. If you've ever seen and used it, the worlds largest genealogy website, you'll know it's extensive and ever-changing as new records, photos and information come online.

It's been a couple years since I've looked at it now, but over the weekend I had an email come in advising I had a message from another user. That could only come from someone who had, or wanted ,some information that related to my family tree.

I keep my family tree set to private so no one other than me, or people I grant access to, can see it, so she had no choice but to contact me, after all we're actually related in some convoluted manner.

The woman who contacted me wanted information on one of my ancestors. My great great great grandfather on my mothers mother's side is the brother of her great great great grandfather.

The two brothers were sons of an Englishman who was convicted of burglary and sentenced to death back in England in the early 1800's. He, and two accomplices, broke into a house and stole items totalling seventy pounds in value - English law was brutal back then, hence the death sentence. His death sentence was commuted, after an appeal, to transportation meaning the penal colony on Tasmania, Australia a world away which often was a death sentence anyway, but for John it was not. He served his time in the penal colony, later getting married and then the two brothers arrived. That's pretty cool right?

The brothers came to Adelaide, South Australia (individually) in the mid-1800's to escape the stigma of being a convicts sons and things went from there. They were seventeen and twenty eight. My great great great grandfather was already married at the time, I'm not sure about his younger brother.

I've seen the court documents from their father's trial, transcripts, the ships he travelled to Australia on as a convict, the ships they travelled on later from Tasmania to the mainland, marriage certificates, death certificates...it's all documented. As I delved deeper I came to feel pride for those people, their persistence, the endurance and fortitude they showed to make it in the brutally harsh place Australia was, and as the sons of a convict; the father especially; the penal colony of Port Arthur was a brutal place, often a death sentence but he survived. I have been there, know the history and yes, it is totally eerie and unsettling being in such a place and it's difficult to comprehend that humanity lived there, and survived.

Anyway, I gave the other user as much of the detail as I could muster; this all happens in secure and private direct messaging, and she then asked to have access to my family tree. I've not decided to do so yet, for security reasons, although I understand the hunger for it...delving into these histories has been very rewarding, given me a better sense of myself and helped me to understand a lot more of my history...it's also confirmed all of those stores I thought were garbled half-truths.

The small snipped above about the two brothers and their convict father is just a fraction of what I have uncovered about my ancestry in a history that spans the globe and many hundreds of years.

It's a little odd to think I can reach back so far and I wonder if my ancestors would have done anything differently had they knew I'd be able to reach back and know them. I guess not though, people just tend to live their lives and don't think too far forward. It's funny though, people seem to think they'll be well-remembered but in truth, most of us will fade into anonymity, crumbling memories that over time will cease to be remembered at all. I guess, that's another reason I wanted to find them...I wanted to reveal their stories, to...honour them in some small way.

My family tree goes a long way back, much father in time than John the convict and his sons, one of which was my great great great grandfather on my mothers mother's side. Not all the details are there, but a lot is and it's been interesting, humbling and enlightening to reveal it. Looking at the tree, the lineage, with the last two entries right at the bottom, my niece @smallsteps and nephew @MrBonkers I wonder...will their great great great grandchildren ever look their family tree up and find me?

Have you followed your family tree back in time? Would you want to? I know people who simply don't care about it and I admit, it wasn't until the age of 47 that I decided to delve into it. Are you interested in what you may find? Do you think you'd feel differently if you could draw a line back several hundred years to your ancestors? How far back in your family tree can you trace? Feel free to comment, I'm interested to know.