The Tree of Me

Since purchasing Ernie Dawson's war medals, I have been trying to find out more about his war experiences. A search at the National Archives last night for All Records, not just WW1 turned up a digitised 244 page document of post war information. I will discuss this in more detail in a later post. This post, however, is dedicated to a family story that has not previously been documented. My second cousin Fay asked me earlier this year if I had heard about Bridget's (our great grandmother's) twins - her first born children. Her aunt had told her about them. This was news to me! I only had 16 children born to Bridget Mylan and her husband Harry Dawson. A thorough search of NSW BDMs failed to find the birth or death of twins. A search in Victoria also proved fruitless. However, while going through the document last night I discovered evidence that the twins existed. Ernie had applied for benefits under the Repatriation Act and had to give details of his family's me...

My nanna would always tell me stories whenever we visited her place. It's a shame now I can't recall them all. However, I do vividly remember her telling me that her father Michael Ryan was a good runner and often ran in races in  Sydney. Her future father-in-law Harry Dawson was his coach. I've often searched on Trove without luck for some evidence to support this story. Earlier in the week I think I may have hit the jackpot. The difficulty was knowing exactly what to search for in Trove. I was browsing for something totally unrelated when I saw an article about a Carrington Handicap. I now had the possible name of a race. The following advertisement from 1888 indicates that professional footraces (or at least some of them) in Sydney were worth winning. Sydney Morning Herald, 14 January 1888, p. 2 A search for Carrington Handicap and Ryan in the period 1886-1895 (years selected as likely years he would be running) produced many results. Unfortunately the Sydn...