The Tree of Me

I have a copy of a page of deaths from a Ryan family bible. The bible belonged to James Ryan, my husband's great, great, great grandfather. In this post I would like to try and work out the relationship between all of the people mentioned in the entries. The entries are not written in chronological order. James Ryan, father of Daniel  James Ryan has identified himself as the father of Daniel, his eldest son. 1.  January 25th 1906 at 3:20 in the afternoon m y brother John died  John Ryan, the son of Daniel Ryan and Ann died at Uralla. (NSW 3306/1906 ) 2. August 28th 1912, at one o'clock a.m. my son Daniel died  Daniel was the elder of twins sons born to James Ryan and his wife Catherine Cleary.  3. September 17th 1912 Patrick Ryan Burrawa died in the afternoon  Patrick Ryan was born in about 1850 in Cashel, Tipperary, came to Australia as a boy with his mother and brother Timothy (Goulburn) and after living in Kiama and Gerringong finally settled in Burrowa...

Each time I visit Armidale I always head straight to the bookshops to see if there are any new local history publications. Last week I was not disappointed. Bob Harden's book European Settlement & Pastoralism at Kunderang Upper Macleay River, 1840-1960 was on the shelf. I always go straight to the index and look up the Armidale families who have connections to my husband's extended family. A quick inspection discovered Brennan, Waters, Dawson, Sewell and Bell. I parted with $64.99 and purchased the 430 A4 page hardcover book. Bob stated that his objectives were  "to provide a coherent account of European settlement and pastoralism at Kunderang in the upper Macleay River, with particular emphasis on who the settlers were, how they lived and how they carried out their pastoral endeavours " (p. 10) He has definitely achieved his objectives. The book has been meticulously researched and is a wonderful history of the gorge country. Each landholder's connecti...

This is my second post in my new series - From my Bookshelf I frequently trawl Abebooks for local history books, particularly for those places where ancestors lived. I have been rewarded with several interesting finds. Whenever I am in a town in Australia where family members have lived I see if there are any books written about the area. I usually find something interesting. Today I decided I needed to update my books on Library Thing . There were quite a few new purchases which hadn't been added. Hopefully, I now have most of my genealogy related books on Library Thing. As I pulled books from my shelves to catalogue I decided that there were many that I need to read more thoroughly. One of those is Close to the edge  - stories of the New England Gorges  written by Dave Vidler. This book is a collection of interviews from 14 people who live in the New England gorge country or as my husband's family called it the falls-country near Armidale, New South Wales. Looking at...