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Shortly after my arrival in the parental abode, I've been updated on Dad's adventures in family history. He's recently:
- tracked Brooke's ancestry back to one Isabella Tyson, convict
- established Brooke's relation to James Tyson, son of Isabella, and Australia's first self-made millionaire. Said James and his brothers sound as if they owned half the grazing land in the country by the 1890s, and James was eulogised by Banjo Patterson. He was also a major benefactor of The Women's College, USyd, as it happens
- reasonably established the identity of the unnamed ancestors he found a photo of when pulling apart a photo frame he 'borrowed' from my grandmother, and, in so doing, revised the previously-assumed identity of another set of ancestors in another photograph. This endeavour involved identifying a distinctive chair present in both photographs, also present in a photograph of my great-grandmother age 18; identifying the photo studio to which the chair belonged, and the date of its establishment as a business; and cross-checking ages of various ancestors and blowing up images of faces of great-great male relations. Probably-cousin-Jack and his wife are currently gracing the parental living room bookshelf, while previously-thought-to-be-Jack/now-assumed-to-be-Henry and his family are, I think, at my Uncle's place.
Dad likes ancestor puzzles. It's like detective stories, he says. I told him I know historians who do this for a living, only with charters. He said he likes the internet-enabled versions better.
- tracked Brooke's ancestry back to one Isabella Tyson, convict
- established Brooke's relation to James Tyson, son of Isabella, and Australia's first self-made millionaire. Said James and his brothers sound as if they owned half the grazing land in the country by the 1890s, and James was eulogised by Banjo Patterson. He was also a major benefactor of The Women's College, USyd, as it happens
- reasonably established the identity of the unnamed ancestors he found a photo of when pulling apart a photo frame he 'borrowed' from my grandmother, and, in so doing, revised the previously-assumed identity of another set of ancestors in another photograph. This endeavour involved identifying a distinctive chair present in both photographs, also present in a photograph of my great-grandmother age 18; identifying the photo studio to which the chair belonged, and the date of its establishment as a business; and cross-checking ages of various ancestors and blowing up images of faces of great-great male relations. Probably-cousin-Jack and his wife are currently gracing the parental living room bookshelf, while previously-thought-to-be-Jack/now-assumed-to-be-Henry and his family are, I think, at my Uncle's place.
Dad likes ancestor puzzles. It's like detective stories, he says. I told him I know historians who do this for a living, only with charters. He said he likes the internet-enabled versions better.