Growing the Family Tree Again

Hello!

Last week I completed my Diploma in Family Historical Studies through the Society of Australian Genealogists - at least I hope I have: I await the results, of course. It is almost eight years since I embarked on building my Phelan & Atkin family tree, using ancestry.com.au, and in that time it has grown to include over 4000 people with many records, photos and articles attached.

But since doing the Diploma (and the Certificate in Genealogy before that), and learning more about the 'proper' way to conduct and record genealogical research, the problem of the large amount of unverified information has bothered me. Rather than try to wade through it all and fix it, I have decided to start the tree again!* This will of course be a long process, but I thought it would be a good one, for the following reasons:

I can build a better family tree, with fully verified information (or at least notes to make clear where it is not)
I had been unable to keep up with the extra hints ancestry had been sending me, so the end result will hopefully yield more information than I had before
I will take the opportunity to revisit all the records I have personally collected from visits/enquiries to local and family history societies around the country as I go, to make sure I haven't missed anything
And finally as I go through this process I will write this blog - something I wished I had done when I did this the first time. As I rediscover interesting facts, records and stories I can share them with you (but only the most interesting ones I promise!)

I won't commit to posting regularly or often, as I also intend to work on other related projects over the next few months. And of course there's stuff like 'work' and 'life' that will no doubt get in the way.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, and any feedback and comments are welcome.

Anthony

*I have retained my original family tree on ancestry, but have made it private. I want to limit the spreading of unverified (and therefore possibly wrong) information from going any further than it has already.

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A Sacrifice, By Any Name

Prologue Before launching into today's story, I thought I might give an update on how my research is going. I started this blog back in 2019 as a way of communicating some of the more interesting stories about past family members, as I embarked on a 'redo' of all my original research. Having completed my Family History Diploma the year before, I'd learnt the importance of verifying information, and my family tree had plenty of information with no proven sources. Across the last four years I have completed the 'redo' of seven lines of the family: Phelan, Gasperino, Cowan and Davenport on Dad's side, and Atkin, Collins and Kenny on Mum's. I have also done a lot of work on the remaining maternal line, Lawless. But this line's Australian history goes back an extra generation, and has not just one but five brothers who emigrated here, so it represents by far the largest chunk of work to get through. As of now, I estimate that I've completed about 85%...

A 'Painful Accident'? You're Not Kidding!

Perhaps it stands out when compared with the tendency of today's media to sensationalise, but the understatement of much of the reporting of yesteryear is remarkable. Take the following 'painful injury' to Martin Clohesy, a farming contractor of Leongatha, as reported in the Great Southern Star on Friday 5 February 1915. Martin Clohesy was a cousin of my great-grandfather Nicholas Lawless (as shown in the chart below), who some readers might remember was a hopeless alcoholic and ultimately divorced by my great-grandmother Margaret. You can read about that elsewhere in this blog. Martin was married and had two children at the time of the horrific incident, and had other relatives in the Leongatha district - including the Cantys mentioned in the article - so presumably his family were able to lend plenty of support in his farming work (he was later listed in the electoral roll as an 'onion grower').

The Record-Breaking Adventure of the Utiekah III

Today's post is about one of my distant relatives on Mum's (Atkin) side of the family. My 2x great-grandfather Samuel Atkin came to Australia from Lincolnshire in 1853, and three years later was followed by his older brother Henry with his family. Henry settled near Newstead (not far from Castlemaine), and his daughter Elizabeth married Charles Slee, the Slees being another prominent early Newstead family. Elizabeth and Charles had 14 children (!) and this story is about their grandson Mark Mackie - my third cousin once removed - and what would have been, for the time, a pretty incredible adventure. Mark Mackie was born in Camberwell in 1899, and was educated at Scotch College. He worked as a photo-engraver and had a keen interest in yachting. In 1927 he was one of several ex-public school boys to undertake an 8 month trip in the South Pacific, aboard a yacht named Utiekah III, a 37-ton, 56 ft, auxiliary ketch built in Tasmania two years previously. The Utiekah...

Phelan and Atkin Family History

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