#52 Ancestors Week 52 You

#52 Ancestors Week 52 You

Here’s what I know about me from my research.

 My parents and grandparents were all born in Australia

 Of my 8 great grandparents, all but 2 were born in Australia.  Those two, on different sides of the family, were both Irish.  One was Catholic, one Protestant.

 Of my 16 great great grandparents, only 2 were born in Australia.  They were both on my father’s side of the family. Charles Stanford, born on the Macleay River (Kempsey) in 1843  and Mary Barry, born at Bathurst in 1842. 

 Of my 32 great great grandparents, I know that 15 were born in Ireland, 8 in England, 1 in Scotland and 1 in New Zealand. 

That leaves 7 great great grandparents unaccounted for.  Some are almost certainly Irish – the wives of Michael Gleeson, William Crummy, and Robert Lucas.  The ancestry of William Barry and his unknown wife is a mystery, but he is our only possible convict and was probably Irish too. 

·       The two real enigmas are John Wilson (whose wife Ann was Scottish) and the mother of New Zealand born Edward George Morgan

Here’s what my DNA tells me:

·         59% of my DNA is Irish or Scottish

·         31% is from England, Wales and north western Europe

·       The other 10% is a mixture of Swedish, Germanic and Polynesian.

What I glean from this is at least the answer to one mystery – the mother of my 2 x great grandfather William George Morgan, born in NZ in 1831 to John Morgan, sailor and an unknown woman.  I now know that she was almost certainly Maori.

I can probably also continue to believe that some of my forebears were Huguenot, as family myth has it.  I have no proof yet.

Here’s what else there is to know about me.

I was born in the middle of the 20^th century in Australia, which is to have been born lucky.  I missed the Great Depression and WW11, and while I knew boys and men who served in Vietnam it was not a major upheaval in my life.   My father always had a job and my mother always stayed home. They were loving parents who cared about their community and made sure we did too.  They valued education and encouraged us to do well in school and sport.

I was well educated in the public school system at a time of good funding and good teachers.  In the country towns where we lived, almost all the children of school age went to the same school, so it was a fairly egalitarian experience.

I had a free tertiary education because of Government scholarships.

I have never been seriously ill, but I have been cared for in hospital a few times at almost no cost because of Australia’s universal health care system.

As a woman I have occasionally been discriminated against, but I have never suffered because of my race or culture or religion.

I have never gone hungry or unsheltered. 

All of this privilege is an accident of birth.