From Athabasca 19 July 1998

From Athabasca

19 July 1998

Dear Alan,

Thanks for your letter and previous telephone call, it really helped. I have not heard from mum and dad, but then it is I that owe them both letters. We don’t have e-mail yet, but we are getting it. One day. Sorry.

You seem to misunderstand me. I worked on and off constructing a family tree for over twenty years- age 11 to 33 years. No small effort. I regard it as quite unfinished, but I want to “finish” it. I am the only one who can decipher it. I am the one who visited: a very old lady in Armadale, Grandpa Neyland’s last surviving cousin on his father’s side, who went through the hotel registry at the State Library to find out if a Harrison was a hotel keeper at Creswick in the 1870’s, who found Martin Carlton’s obituary of 1916, to discover he had been in Ballarat over 50 years. Nobody was interested at the time, except mum and dad. I was the one who spent her own money as a teenager on certificates and reproductions of photographs. I was the one who wrote to strangers. I don’t want to keep it all. I have no problems with parts of what I pulled together being returned to Australia e.g. Grandpa Carlton’s scrapbook (which I found deteriorating on the factory floor while cleaning one day), the relevant pages cold be photocopied, and maybe the original should go to the historical society. I wanted to find information not collect heirlooms, There are no objects involved only printed matter and photographs (most are copies), and with today’s technology could be easily recopied here for everybody who is interested. By accident I have a reproduction of a photo of George Arnall Solomon here. The original was loaned to me by Auntie Phyll and returned.

I am quite hurt that what I regard as my work has become family property. Of course it is (as you indicated) something that can and should be shared. I’ve always intended to make it available to others in the family if and when they were interested and when it was in some semblance of order. But it is very much an unfinished work. My unfished work! Just because it concerns family, does not mean all family members are entitled to take parts without my approval. My feeling is that I’d like to make a gift of my work to family members; if its common property the giving is taken away from me.

Because of the distance and my position in the middle of the family, it’s easy for others to lay claim to what is rightfully mine. I did the legwork. Mum frequently drove me around. Grandpa Neyland started the ball rolling. A lot of people helped me. Aunt Laurel had a great grandparent’s marriage certificate. She found a distant relative who for and unknown reason had the only photographs of Helen Gibson before her ill-fated marriage and her (then) only surviving sister. (I think her mother should have a book written about her). I can’t remember her name, but she came from Ireland in 1846, age 16, to Portland and married Andrew Gibson, had 12 children, including several Helens, Helen Gibson was the only survivor until adulthood, the only one to have children. The mystery woman died as Mrs McPhee and there is a tiny photograph, of the grandmother, Helen and a couple of children (Maggie and Grandpa Carlton?), outside a rented slum house in Castlemaine Street. Yarraville. 

I remember so much, but also have forgotten so much. I have a knowledge of Victorian history within which to frame it. I fail to see how a letter written to me from Great Grandpa Solomon is not mine. I always wanted to know why our ancestors migrated to Australia and what formed our collective heritage- the Irish, the Scottish and the English. As I am an immigrant myself, this not only still holds true, but is magnified. Names are important to me, tracing them back in time is very revealing. Why is your middle name McDonald? Why is dad’s Harrison? These are obvious. But others are not so clear. Grandpa’s sisters were (if I remember correctly), Margaret Way and Annie Marion, his brother Andrew Lindsay, Margaret Way was Anthony Carlton’s mother, Annie Marion, his brother Andrew Lindsay. Margaret Way was Anthony Carlton’s mother, Annie Marion, Helen’s dead sister, Andrew Gibson’s mother was Helen Lindsay. There was also a dead brother James Martin. I remember you not knowing that Dolly’s real name was Amelia.

How many people can name their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents’ names? And give a summary of their lives? I don’t want this lost. I want it passed on to the next generation, not only cold facts, but stories as well. We were provided very little oral family history. I had to ask a lot of questions in order to find out the little I did. I wish I had of asked Great Grandpa Solomon did he find gold in Kalgoorlie? I only know he got typhoid and returned to Crystal Brook. He married someone from (Emily Eliza Lawson) from there, but why in Hobart? Was her grandfather really a black sheep like Uncle Arthur thought, sent to Australia because he got the servant girl (Elizabeth Brown) in trouble? Is it true that Matilda Maria Webb was a ward-in-chancery and that she bought her bedroom furniture with the money? Her mother, Harriet Handover did die when she was two.

I am a long way off. I have very tenuous family connections. So I’m really vulnerable. My children have no real sense of their grandparents or my siblings; for example we have few photographs either recent or old. I cannot show them where and how I grew up nor what relatives I have. I paid $3,000+ to get things sent from Australia, only to find some of the things I really valued (especially the family tree I’d worked on so long ago) were missing. $3,000 for a bicycle? I’m not blaming anyone, certainly not mum, I’m just telling you how I feel. I left the family tree in the top drawer of the front room; it was never hidden. When I was overseas in Tonga and Swaziland, if mum came across a death notice or something else of interest she would put it in the drawer. I’ve never wanted to rock the boat, which is why it took from 1994 to 1997 to even ask for it. Though I have thought about it a lot. It is quite an emotional thing with me.

We have a scanner, anew computer (I’m using the old one, still). I don’t know anything about genealogical searching in 1998 but it wouldn’t take long to find out. when I stopped researching the Mormons were just getting records on microfilm. As they are the world’s experts in this area I’m sure every tiny parish church in the British Isles has had its records copied. I am sure I could do most of my research from home, and Salt Lake City, is not that far away. One day we will visit Aurora in LA.

Please tell me more of Robert and his band. That’s great. And Jo is much nicer than Jolene, I agree whole heartedly with her. But as mum and dad still call me Pamela, I imagine you will not change either. If a friend rang up, mum would say “you mean Pamela.” We have had a beautiful summer, but not enough rain for the crops. We’ve been dining on fresh raspberries for a couple of weeks now.

Love Pam