The easiest branch of my family to research has been my
mother’s family – the Whittens. This is because
so much research was already done by the time I came along – By one Russell
Bell, who married my mother’s first cousin, Doris Whitten.
Russ was a teacher in Quirindi when he met Doris – he actually
taught my mother, so was a colleague of my father on the staff of Quirindi District
Rural School in the late 1930s.
When he retired from teaching (in the 70s, I think) he
decided that a family history would be an interesting project, and he set about
collating all the information he could find from all branches of the
family. My mother’s half sister, Gladys
(born 1903) was a good source of information, and there were third generation descendants
of the original migrating brothers (Edward, Henry, Anthony, Joseph) and sister
(Annie) who all had stories to share. He
was lucky that the Whittens are all great storytellers, so everyone had interesting
tales to tell.
Russ’s history is all the more remarkable because it came
long before the internet made communication so immediate. He had to write letters…. and wait for answers. He had to apply and pay for for birth, death
and marriage certificates that sometimes turned out to be for someone who wasn’t
related at all. The document he produced
at the end, in 1984, was handwritten, and duplicated on that now-ancient
machine known to all teachers – the gestetner.
More recently another family member – my second cousin Tim
Hobson, has updated the entire Whitten family tree and placed it all on the internet
on a site called, “Whittens in Australia”.
And I too have a tree on Ancestry which has, thanks to modern
technology, expanded and enlarged upon Russ’s original story.
It’s not all easy, however, as any researcher of Irish history
will tell you. The Irish records are
still a struggle and I have a few burning questions yet to be answered.
Were the original Whittens in Ireland Huguenots?
Was their land really granted to them by Oliver Cromwell?
And (a true Aussie question) … Are we related to legendary AFL
player Ted Whitten?
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| Russell Bell |
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