Stories from Dead Relatives

This week's theme in #52ancestorsin52weeks is Military (because it's Memorial Day in the US). Pretty sure I have no ancestors who fought in the American Civil War, so this week I'm going to explore my Step-Grandfather Wilfred "Bill" Norman Saunders, who fought for Australia in World War II. Bill was born in Bingara on 16 December 1911 to Walter George Saunders and Ivy Pearl Harris. He had 3 sisters and 5 brothers and grew up in Bingara and lived there until at least 1936 (from the Electoral Rolls). He enlisted in the Australian Army on 29 May 1940 age 28. He was listed as being single and was sent as part of the 2/1st Pioneer Battalion , which was comprised of men mostly from New South Wales. In June 1940, the battalion went to the army camp at Greta, then Dubbo. At the end of September, it joined a convoy to the Middle East, reaching the Suez on 2 November. They travelled by train to Palestine. 2/1st Battalion on parade in Palestine In Januar...

This week's theme in #52ancestorsin52weeks is Another Language. My paternal great-grandmother Cecelia Morley was born in County Mayo, Ireland; my paternal great-grandfather Charles Parsons was born in Papanui, New Zealand, but his father was from Dorset England. Susannah Freeman (paternal), Fred Martin (maternal) and Elizabeth Jennings (maternal) were all born in the Tamworth area in Australia. Arthur Hardwick and Emma Morton were both born in Manly, Sydney. So all very Australian/Irish/English and certainly all English-speaking. There is one exception to the English-speaking great-grandparents is my father's father's father - Gaspar Sedgwick. Gaspar is variously recorded as "Gasper", "Jasper" and "Jaspar" - goes to show how they rarely wrote their own name and the person recording it just wrote down what they thought they heard. Gaspar married in Australia twice. The first time was in 1882 to Catherine (Kate) Morley (or Marley, dependi...

The theme this week for #52ancestors in 52 weeks is Mothers, so I am going to show you my maternal direct line as far back as I can. Maternal lines can be a bit difficult to research because they gave up their maiden when they got married and often that isn't recorded on things like birth certificates of children. Anyway, here is what have found so far. This is me, Ingrid Elizabeth Sedgwick, born 7 July 1969 in Camperdown, NSW, Australia. I married Andrew McCarthy in 1995 and we have two children. This is my mum, Heather Jeannine Hardwick, born 1 July 1939, in Manly, NSW. She married Terence (Terry) Sedgwick in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, in 1963. They had three children. This is her mum, my grandmother, Martha Pearl Martin (known as Pearl), born 7 June 1917, in Tingha, NSW. She married George Hardwick in 1938 when she was 21 and they divorced in 1943. She then married Bill Saunders in 1944, who I always knew as my "poppy". They had a little boy who die...

This week's theme for #52ancestors in 52 Weeks is "Close Up." No-one lived close or lives close to Canberra. So I went with a portrait of an ancestor - mum and dad had a bunch of old photos and I'm slowly going through and scanning them and uploading to my family tree. I did this one this week. John (Johnny) Patrick Callinan was my first cousin, once removed.  (On a side note - do you get confused with all this first, second cousin, once, twice removed? Sounds like an auction! Well, so did/do I - so maybe this diagram will help you and me figure it out): So Johnny was my Great Aunt's firstborn son. Aunty Hazel was the youngest sister of my paternal Grandmother. There is a whole other story to her, but I'm saving that up for later. Johnny was born on 18 April 1927 to Hazel and John Michael Callinan, who of course, was known as "Jack".  When he was 17, he was mobilised for service by proclamation to the Royal Australian Navy Reserve on 28 ...