The Tree of Me

My husband's family are very fortunate as his great grandfather travelled back to Germany from Armidale, NSW from May to September 1885. While visiting family he sent many letters back to Australia and kept a diary of his time overseas. I'll post his letters on the day they were written. These letters can be seen at the University of New England (UNE) Archive in Armidale, NSW, Australia.   Biographical Entry Beilstein  Marbach the 24 July 1885 My dear Wife and children I have received 3 letters from you since I am in Germany the last two dated the 31 May and 2 June and I received the letter of recommendation from the Lodge as well as the 4 Expresses I see that you are all doing well and get on with your work well as for giving you any instructions or advice is of no value now because we are too far apart and I see through the letters that you manage right enough. When I wrote my first letter to you from here I was only 3 days here and they were wet so I could tel...

For many years I had put research on my husband's twenty-five percent German ancestry into the too hard basket. His great grandfather's name Jacob Scheef wasn't on the shipping list indexes. It wasn't until I found the name of the ship on his naturalisation papers and then went directly to the shipping list that I found Jacob Scheef. He arrived on the Grasbrook on 26 September 1865 aged 20. I couldn't read the name of the town where he was born on the shipping list so I was still lost. It wasn't until many years later I happened to be in Sydney at a SAG event and I went to the German stand and someone said with only a quick glance that it was Untertürkheim. Armed with that information, a quick search of Scheef and Untertürkheim revealed many treasures. Someone had already transcribed many Church records and I could now progress a few generations further back than my husband's great grandfather. I was soon in contact with a few people over the world. This...

Amanuensis Monday  was started by John Newmark in his blog  Translyvanian Dutch  and encourages family historians to transcribe family letters, journals, audiotapes and other historical artifacts. An amanuensis is a person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another. My husband's family are very fortunate. They have a series of letters written from Germany to Jacob Frederick Scheef who lived at Rocky River, near Armidale and later at Tilbuster and Puddledock. These letters date from 1859 until 1894. It's a shame we can't read German! There is also a diary Jacob kept and the letters he wrote home when he returned for a holiday to Germany in 1885. At least these are in English! Currently these documents are housed at the University of New England and Regional Archives , in Armidale, New South Wales. Letter sent from Stuttgart to the Rocky River diggings. It went around the world! Appears to have been writte...