Phelan and Atkin Family History

While Dad didn't talk about his uncles, aunts and cousins on the Phelan side too often, he did recall - in fact, my recollection is that Mum remembered at least as well as Dad - that his Uncle Bill (William Anthony Phelan) had too sons: Peter and Kevin. Strangely, they forgot to tell me that there was another son, also named William Anthony, but known as Tony. Yes, that's right - another Anthony Phelan, you would think that he would have remembered him! :) In fact since I started this research and coming into contact with more Phelans, I have actually met Tony's daughter Robyn (so, my second cousin) on a few occasions, and she is quite interested in all of this stuff too, so hi to Robyn if you are reading! But back to the story. The reason I remember Mum and Dad telling me about Dad's cousin Peter Phelan so distinctly was that they told me he had died, quite young, in a car accident. This tragic event happened in 1958, when Peter, who was a printer, was just 27 years ...

When I was contemplating going over my genealogical research from scratch, the prospect of starting this blog was one of the reasons I decided to go ahead. The first time around, I made sure I mentioned any interesting discoveries to family members, but then that would be that, it would all be soon forgotten. Yes, the information would be contained on my online ancestry family tree, but no-one would be 'reading' that.  So now, going back over the tree branch by branch, as I come across all the good bits again I put them in writing here. The other bonus of this is that I get a head start in compiling and writing the full family history: last year's diploma saw me write one branch of my mother's family history, but there are seven other branches to write about in Australia alone. Fairly soon after I started, I realised I had the opportunity to create something else that I had wished I'd done the first time. And that was to create a map upon which I could plot all th...

Dad's father Phillip Stanley Phelan was one of twelve children (eight boys and four girls) born to Joseph Phelan and Mary Gasperino. By the time Dad was eight years old, he had five uncles and three aunts surviving. As I have mentioned previously, I don't recall hearing much about them from him when I was growing up, and certainly not Austin George Phelan, who was the youngest of the boys in the family. Austin was born in Benalla in 1904, lived in the Essendon area all his life, like many of the Phelan clan, and worked as a brewery employee. But it is how he came to meet his wife Sara that proved to be of most interest once I started digging.  As you can see above, Austin was listed as the 'co-respondent' in the 1931 divorce case between John Carnegie Lovick and his wife Sara Annie Lovick. In other words, he was the 'other man' who had become involved with a married woman (who would later ultimately become his wife). Officially John Lovick was petitioning...

A postscript to my last story on how I met the Lesocks. When my parents and sisters moved to Roslyn Street, Burwood in the late 1960s, Frank Lesock and his family were living in Parer Street, just one street parallel to Roslyn, and were there for at least a few years into the 1970s, going by the electoral rolls. I touched on the fact that his children and my sisters were possibly attending St Benedict's Primary School at the same time. Well a couple of years after that article was written, after my parents had passed away, I was left with the family photo albums, including many of Wendy, Sue and Cathy's school photos. I was amazed to discover that not only was my sister Sue in the same class as Frank's daughter Cathy Lesock (in at least Grades 2 and 4), in the Grade 2 photo of 1962 they were actually seated next to each other! Second cousins who probably never even realised that they were related! St Benedicts Primary School, Grade 2, 1962. Cathy Lesock is seated fro...

Currently I'm researching the Lesock family. Dad's aunt Veronica Mary Phelan (known as Vera) married Frederick James Lesock, the grandson of a very early Chinese immigrant to Victoria, in 1922. Tragically Vera died in 1934, aged just 35, leaving a very young family. Perhaps her death at a time when Dad was still a child is a reason why he had no recollection of her. In any case, the story of how I came into contact with this family is an interesting one, and led to an amazing discovery regarding my workplace. I was asked to write about it for a family history newsletter called the ' Ah Shin Chronicles ' several years ago. I thought I would reproduce that article here in my blog: NOT JUST A LONELY PLANET BUT A SMALL WORLD TOO By Anthony Phelan I had always been interested in history, but for some reason had never thought much about my own. My Mum had a big family, that we were all close to, but my Dad’s side was a bit of a mystery. While he didn’t have any s...