It's impossible to avoid noticing that I haven't been posting in this blog for a couple of years. I came back from Australia pretty exhausted, and immediately got distracted by other things like building a Zen garden. And once you get distracted it takes an extra motivation to get back to something like this. Like magic, such a motivation has appeared.
Zen Garden
It turns out that 2018 is the 200th anniversary of the birth of my third great-grandfather, Peter Hallam, who was transported to Australia for stealing a pair of boots. (See The Thief) So I'm working with family members in Australia to organize a family reunion next April. Another expedition to the Antipodes, this time with one of my sisters and one of my sons.
In preparation for this reunion, I've been inspired to fill in some of the blanks in my family tree, using the comprehensive genealogy published by Diana Hacker in 2006 as the source. She tracked down hundreds of descendants of Peter Hallam and put it all together for me. So all I had to do was go through the book, page by page, and enter all the names into my Ancestry.com tree.
All. The. Names.
Yes, it was a pretty tedious task. But it forced me to actually read through the whole book, which I had never done before. In addition to the relationship details, she included many vignettes illustrating the lives my ancestors lived in Australia. The book is full of tales of tragic deaths and unbelievable hardship, and also families making their way in the world through industry and creativity. It's a great legacy to hand down to another generation.
Best name: Ismay Dardanellice Hallam, born 1916. She was born shortly after the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign in the Dardanelles during WWI. The ANZAC troops bore the brunt of the vicious fighting in the attempt to control the sea route to the Russian Empire. It was a national trauma, and Ismay had an uncle who was there.
Rake for Zen garden, made by Tom