Ancestor Stories

These posts are a collection of stories about my family, gleaned from family history research and, in the case of my parents and grandparents, supplemented by my personal recollections. 


Frank Cleary War Service   

 The tumultuous war years of 1939 - 1945 and my dad's service in the Middle East, Darwin, and the Pacific.

A Soldier's Photos

What photos does a soldier send home? What does he want his family to see and understand about his life in the army? What impacts are the ancient cultures of the Middle East having on this country boy?

Lucretia, my grandmother

 An orphaned girl, an abused wife, a bereaved mother. But there's also happiness. And can you believe the DNA results?

The Adams Girls

    Three sisters and three very different life stories.

John Toohy, convict

    What every family looks for - a convict in the ancestors. But why didn't my grandfather, Tom Cleary, tell me his grandmother, Mary Ann Hennessey, was the daughter of a convict?

The Hennessey connection

    More Irish in the family, and the surprising Canowindra connection.

Madge and Frank, the early years

    From a wedding in Yass in 1942, to a child's Newcastle birth in 1947

Clearys in Australia - the first and second generations

A summary story of the Cleary connection and lineage from Ireland in 18th C through to 1950s Australia. With thanks to Paul Box for this information.


"The Dawes Family of 'Good Hope' : A Yass NSW Settler's Story"

This link takes you to the book by Joan Murray Dawes, and it's detailed coverage of my Dawes and Duffy ancestors, the family of my paternal grandmother Mary Bridget Cleary nee Dawes. Either put "Dawes" into search function, or scroll down menu on right hand to "Dawes Family by Joan Murray Dawes".

Irish Immigrants. Tom and Bridget Cleary arrive in Melbourne, 16 February 1848.

This link takes you to the research by Maree Woods on our Cleary ancestors, from their arrival in Melbourne, to farming at Kilmore, Victoria, and finally to Grenfell, NSW.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fromelles, finally

Image
 Sunday 6 October, 2024. I'm standing on a dirt track running between two paddocks. From my years farming, this situation is a familiar one to me and the freshly harrowed ground is rich black soil. Good farming country, I think. But what I have come to look at is the far view across the paddock, to the village of Fromelles, rising on a gentle slope about 400m away. I move away from the tour group - I want to be with my own thoughts. Fromelles. A place which has lived strongly in my imagination for the past eight years. I remember the day vividly. A hot February day in 2016, the first meeting for the year of the Canowindra Historical Society. I'm the society's president, and this is our planning meeting for the year ahead. Our resident honorary historian, Dorothy Balcomb, asks the meeting : "What are we going to do to commemorate the centenary of Fromelles?" I didn't have a clue what she was talking about. "What's Fromelles?", I asked, voicing the...
Read more

Second World War Service

Image
  The Second World War Service of John Francis Cleary NX21853 Frank Cleary turned up at Paddington on 25 May 1940 to enlist in the newly re-created Australian Infantry Force (the 2 nd AIF), the volunteer army which would fight in the Second World War. This would probably have been the Victoria Barracks, bounded by Oxford Street and Moore Park Road, and to this day still a functioning Army base in Sydney. War in Europe had been declared on September 3 1939, finally triggered by the German invasion of Poland, the step too far after a series of expansionist moves in various European countries. In a memorable radio address, a sombre Prime Minister Robert Menzies, accepting that Britain’s declaration meant that Australia was therefore itself automatically at war, informed the nation of this event, on the evening of Fathers’ Day 1939, 3 September.   Although memories of World War 1 (1914 – 1918) – “the great war”, “the war to end all wars” – were still fresh, there seems to have ...
Read more

Ypres Salient

Image
 It is a challenge to drive a bus into Ypres, and Phillippe manages it in the unflustered style we are rapidly becoming accustomed to. As you approach the city centre, the cobblestone streets are narrow and the corners sharp. Apparently in the near future buses are going to be banned entirely from the centre. I wonder how this will affect the economy of the town, which is strongly built on battlefields tourism. It's Sunday 6 October 2024 and this is my second visit to this city. 25 years ago, Robyn, Andrew and I had planned to stay here, but with no accommodation available we stayed in the neighbouring town of Poperinge. It was Andrew's gap year after the HSC and he was travelling with us on this segment of our first big overseas holiday. Michelin maps provided our only navigation guides, and Andrew proved to be an excellent navigator. Ypres was our first battlefields stop on a trip that was taking us from Amsterdam to Paris. So there is a familiarity as our bus edges through t...
Read more