The Story of ‘Myrtle Vale’ – Part 1

The story of the Friend family in New South Wales has been well told in the pages of Barbara Hufton & Enid Friend’s family history publication ‘Remembering Friends’. For that reason, the particular details of the family’s arrival and temporary place of settlement in the new colony need not be reproduced here. This is a...

‘Butcher Dick’ and Son; Dalton’s Butcher and Builder

This story discusses the lives of my maternal 2x great-grandfather, Henry Richard Alchin (1861-1942), and his son, my great-grandfather, Harold Gordon Alchin (1888-1986). Henry Richard Alchin (born 1861 in Gunning), and his family were long time Dalton residents. Henry Richard married Ellen Pollard in 1884, a daughter to Benjamin Pollard; one of his twenty-six children...

Grave distribution: the limited geography of ancestor burials

During my family history research project, I have investigated the lives and movements of over 100 of my direct ancestors in New South Wales. Surprisingly the geographic range that these families have covered in the past 190 years is not overly extensive. All of my ancestors in Australia began their new lives after arriving in...

Husband of 2, Father of 26; Benjamin Pollard and his remarkable women

When Benjamin Pollard died in 1915 at ‘Sunrise View’ near Dalton, New South Wales, he had recorded a remarkable statistic; fathering 26 children. Perhaps even more remarkable is the fact only one of the 26 children died in infancy; even with a serious diphtheria outbreak in the area which claimed many young victims in the...

Shaw & O’Donnell – an interfaith marriage that divides a family

The phrase, “beyond the ministration of the Christian ministry”, used in reference to Shaw family by the Methodist Newspaper in 1892, may be an adept description of two periods of young Ann Shaw’s life. Ann Shaw, my 3x great-grandmother, and the subject of this story, was five years old when she arrived in Australia with...

Three Wheatleys

In family history research, you often come across the problem of having multiple descendants of the same name. That almost no longer existent custom of naming the first son (or at least one son) after the father. This was the case for the descendants of my maternal grandfather (Frederick Otho Alchin). His mother was the...

Maria Brown and the mystery portrait

Photographs of our Australian colonial ancestors are hard to come by. Painted and sketched portraits are even rarer. Fortunately, one of my ancestors (my maternal grandmothers great-grandmother) was not shy of camera or canvas. Stashed behind an old refrigerator, in my grandparent's garage, are two portraits that were among items passed down and stored after...

Convicts in the Whittington/Noakes line

During my family research project a number of convict ancestors were discovered. Five were discovered in all; four of which belong to this (my maternal grandmothers) line of my family ancestry. Three belong to the Whittington side and one to the Noakes side. The other convict belongs to the Alchin side (my maternal grandfathers), but...

Dalton: bailed up

In November 1863, during the height of the Australian bushranger period, the Melbourne Age reported that "the hitherto quite village of Dalton, on Jerrawa Creek has become the theatre of as daring an act of bush ranging as the already famed Canowindra". Only a handful of accounts exist that detail the incident which involved three...

William Brown’s Bible – “the best book to read”

Personal objects can often be overlooked when conducting family research. It may be that they are seen as merely possessions, however objects can provide us with rich and invaluable information and stories. While consulting a well-crafted genealogy publication, concerning the Holgate family, I observed an interesting note. On the pages that were of interest to...