WELCOME

This website has been set up with the hope that it will bring me into touch with other genealogists that are researching along the same lines. It has taken a number of years to get to my current tree and living on the other side of the world to where most of the records are kept has not made it any easier. However I have to thank the Mormon church and the facilities they provide at very little cost here in Australia, for the provision of records and the means to access them. I also have to thank many other people for giving time and records that have allowed me to progress and publish this tree.

I have not published all of the tree but it does cover a period 1750-2002. There is an absolute and undeniable connection to a Gypsy/Traveller heritage although there will be some that want to deny that, but there is no dispute that the records show this background. I myself feel proud of the fact and I long to know more about it and to research that heritage. I have a wish to find relatives that are a part of the family and have experienced this way of living and that is why I started work on this site

My current research is into William Beeney who I always believed was my fathers brother, but a small mystery has come along in that William (Bill) has on his war record with the War Graves Commission that his father was Absalom Beeney and not Emmanuel.William had a bit of an adventurous life in that as a young man he travelled to Australia and spent a long time working in the bush. He returned to U.K. and joined the Pioneer Corps to serve with the B.E.F. in France. He married Ena May Sterry (Tena) in 1938 and was killed in France in 1940. He is buried in Bucquoy Road Cemetery in France. I am trying to find what year he came to Australia and more about his war service etc.

WHY DO WE DO IT ?

This "Why" from a newsletter called "Sons of Norway"

GENEALOGY . . . . . . . . WHY???

We are the chosen. My feeling is that in each family there is one who seems called to find the ancestors. To put flesh on their bones and make them live again. To tell the family story and to feel that somehow those who went before know and approve. To me, doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead, breathing life into all who have gone before. We are the storytellers of the tribe. All tribes have one. We have been called as if it were in our genes. Those who have gone before cry out to us: Tell our story. So, we do.

In finding them, we somehow find ourselves. How many graves have I stood before now and cried? I have lost count. How many times have I told my ancestors, "You have a wonderful family; you would be proud of us."? How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? I cannot say.

It goes beyond just documenting the facts. It goes to who I am, and why I do the things I do. It goes to seeing a cemetery about to be lost forever to weeds and indifference, and saying I can't let this happen. The bones here are bones of my bone and flesh of my flesh. It goes to doing something about it. It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to what we are today. It goes to respecting their hardships and losses, their never giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family. It goes to deep pride that they fought to make and keep us a nation. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us, that we might be born who we are, that we might remember them. So we do.

With love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence, because we are them and they are us. I tell the story of my family. It is up to that one called in the next generation, to answer the call and take their place in the long line of family storytellers. That is why I do my family genealogy, and that is what call those, young and old, to step up and put flesh on the bones.

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