gathering dust

Yes, yes, I am aware that it is now 16 days into 2015 but the truth is between finishing my Masters, getting the results - I passed of course - Christmas, New Year and the beginning of this week; I kind of just collapsed. In a heap. And did a whole lot of nothing. Well, if nothing is defined as eating too much, drinking too much and reading a whole lot of novels. But thanks to Janelle, over at Janelle's Family Tree Addiction , I was back into the swing of things by the 13th. You see Janelle was lovely enough to organise a day trip and tour of the State Records Office at Kingswood. So spurred into productivity I preordered 4 probate packs but didn't think about what further I might want to look at. One can only be so organised when one is still off in the land of novels and general laziness. The tour of the archives lasted about an hour and was a brilliant look at the masses of buildings, shelvings and infrastructure needed to house the State Archives and the Government Doc...

I often joke that I am related in someway to half the people in the town that I grew up in, and with my maternal grandmother's family having been in the region since the 1840s it is pretty true. So it is no surprise that when Mum and Dad came to visit this weekend Dad had plenty of family anecdotes and gossip to share. He'd been to have his hair cut and the barber is his second cousin. They talked a lot it seems about their mutual great-grandmother Julia Christiana Boss later Winter then Bird. I have a bit of a fascination with this part of the family due to the lashings of scandal  that make life interesting. In any case I now have the following tidbits: Julia was, according to our cousin, born in Australian waters and as such was an Australian Citizen. Now this is something I have been having trouble proving, she is not listed as one of the births on the Commodore Perry. The family was questioned as enemy aliens during WWI.  As such I really hope I can find t...