Not Just a Lonely Planet but a Small World Too

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 siblings (his only sister had passed away at four years of age), he had many cousins, but we had virtually no contact with them. My sister Sue had compiled a family tree back in the mid-1990s (in those dark days of the pre-Internet age), and come Christmas 2010 our family gathering was at her house. Around this time I had been seeing ads for ancestry.com on TV and thought that it would be a worthwhile exercise to put Sue’s work into a family tree online – so I borrowed her research that Christmas day and set about the task.

When I entered the information online and those first few ‘shaking leaves’ appeared, it is fair to say I was hooked! One discovery led to another and soon I had fleshed out the tree and even made one substantial correction – I found a Phelan ancestor on my Mum’s side of the tree – but I digress. I started making connections with other people using the site, one of which was a distant (third) cousin in Sydney by the name of Jackie Shearwood. She and I shared a common ancestor, an Italian by the name of Antonio Gasperino, who had met a young Irish immigrant, Hannah Hourigan, in western Victoria, and married in 1860. Jackie had found Antonio’s naturalisation papers which showed that he had arrived in Portland on the General Hewitt in 1856. She wasn’t sure about the truth of this, based on other family sources, and had reason to believe that there was something not quite straightforward about his arrival.

As I continued my research, I discovered the very useful Gould Genealogy website, and from there learnt that there was to be an ‘Unlock the Past’ family history expo in Geelong in September 2011, so I booked myself in to a few sessions over the two days. In between those sessions I wandered the hall where a variety of software providers and genealogical societies had set up stands to promote their products and services. At the AIGS (Australian Institute of Genealogical Studies) stand I started talking to one of the ladies there about the programs they had specifically targeting Irish research. She asked me if that was my background and I mentioned that mainly it was, apart from some English, Scottish and one Italian who had arrived in Portland in the 1850s.

She said “Oh we have a volunteer who comes in every week who is researching an Italian ancestor, who arrived in Portland around that time. What was his name?” When I gave the name Gasperino she told me that we were indeed researching the same person and as we continued to discuss how we were connected to this Italian, we worked out that the volunteer was a first cousin of my father. She was Lesley Lesock, a name no doubt familiar to readers of this newsletter. From further discussion about Lesley’s research I learnt that Antonio Gasperino had indeed been part of the crew on the General Hewitt but it was thought that he had ‘jumped ship’ at Portland with some fellow crewmen, and that is how he came to settle in Australia.

I have since found more snippets of info about the desertion of Antonio Gasperino. It appears that these men deserted in order to head to the goldfields, but from what I can tell Antonio never made it there, ending up working on the land not that far inland from Portland. After marrying Hannah they made the small town of Sandford, near Casterton, their home, where they raised six children and lived out their days. Their third child, Mary Agnes Gasperino, married Joseph Phelan and had twelve children. One was Veronica Mary Lesock, nee Phelan, Lesley’s mother, and another was Phillip Stanley Phelan, my grandfather.

I left my contact details with the woman from the AIGS, and within a few days I received a phone call from Lesley. We arranged for her sister Lucy (Lou) Lee to get in touch with me to organise a meeting with myself and my father Brian (Lesley having neither computer access nor a car). As Veronica Lesock had passed away in her thirties, when my dad was only small, he never remembered having her as an aunt. So this was to be a meeting for Dad with two cousins he never even realised that he had.

Our meeting took place in a little café in Wattle Park over lunch on Saturday 8 October. Lou brought a photo of her parents’ wedding which was great to see, and Dad thought Lou and Les reminded him of two other aunts, Sheila and Lucy Phelan. Dad and I learnt so much about the Lesock family whom we had known nothing about. It turned out that the eldest Lesock child, Frank, had raised his family in Burwood, the same suburb our family lived in, and in fact had sent their children to the same primary school that I had attended (St Benedict’s). They almost certainly would have been going there at the same time as my sisters!

But if that wasn’t coincidence enough, once the conversation turned to occupations, an even greater surprise was in store. I told them that I worked at Lonely Planet, they replied straight away with “Oh, we have a relative there, do you know Chris Lee Ack?” Of course I was able to say that I did - it turns out that Chris is a cousin of theirs (second cousin, once removed, to be precise).

Now in my time at Lonely Planet it has been strangely common to meet people who know someone who I have worked with. But this time was just that bit more remarkable, given that we were talking about a family connection (even if only through a marriage between our families many years ago), but also the fact that it was Chris - one of the few remaining employees of Lonely Planet who had worked here longer than me; the same Chris that had interviewed me for the job back in 1995 (which I didn’t get; I had to try again!); the same Chris who helped train me in AutoCAD; the same Chris I had shared countless games on the volleyball court with in the late 90s; the same Chris I had won a soccer grand final with in 2002, and the same Chris who I continued to battle on the soccer court against in the Lonely Planet lunchtime comp (me firing countless shots at him in goal, him usually stopping them). All this time and I had never known the connection, and Chris himself, despite having a keen interest in his own family history, had never noticed that Phelan (Veronica) sitting in his tree. What was perhaps the funniest about the whole thing was that at the time of this discovery, I was in a secondment to the team Chris was part of, and our desks were next to each other!

Lesley, Lou, Dad and I finished up the meeting after a few hours of enjoyable conversation and on the following Monday I revealed the discovery to Chris back at work. From that point on, when we cross paths in the workplace, one of us will more than likely say hi to the other with a simple “Cuz!” or “Bro!” So indeed, it turns out that Lonely Planet is also a ‘small world’.

Unfortunately as a sad postscript to this story, my Dad passed away suddenly, only five weeks after meeting Lesley and Lou. As I continue my journey, it is sad that I am not able to share my discoveries with him, but I will always be glad that we were able to have that meeting, I know that Dad really enjoyed the experience. And as I write, I am hoping to arrange another meeting with them soon, as many more months of research have gone by for us to discuss.

An old photo provided to me of the Lesock siblings: from left Lucy (Lou), Margaret (Peg), Frank and Lesley. Frank passed away in 2015.

   The convoluted connection between me and my Lonely Planet colleague Chris Lee Ack