gathering dust

Well it appears I may have found the antecedent to that bushranger anecdote passed along by my father: "HIGHWAY ROBBERIES ON THE GREAT NORTHERN ROAD." The Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser  (NSW : 1843 - 1893) 22 Dec 1863: 3. Web. 26 Feb 2014 < http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article18711885 > Mrs Friend being Mary Maria Friend (nee Baker), my 4th Great Grandmother and the outlaw she met none other than Captain Thunderbolt  or at least someone purporting to be him.

I often joke that I am related in someway to half the people in the town that I grew up in, and with my maternal grandmother's family having been in the region since the 1840s it is pretty true. So it is no surprise that when Mum and Dad came to visit this weekend Dad had plenty of family anecdotes and gossip to share. He'd been to have his hair cut and the barber is his second cousin. They talked a lot it seems about their mutual great-grandmother Julia Christiana Boss later Winter then Bird. I have a bit of a fascination with this part of the family due to the lashings of scandal  that make life interesting. In any case I now have the following tidbits: Julia was, according to our cousin, born in Australian waters and as such was an Australian Citizen. Now this is something I have been having trouble proving, she is not listed as one of the births on the Commodore Perry. The family was questioned as enemy aliens during WWI.  As such I really hope I can find the fil

because I'm not having any luck finding an arrival for Patrick Lynch (b.1832, Ireland d. 1891, NSW) his wife Bridget nee McGraie/McGrail or his children Mary (b. 1856, Scotland?) and John (b. 1857, Scotland?). I have a marriage record for 1855 in Scotland and a birth record for a daughter Annie in 1859 in Wellington NSW but between that... Yeah. They swam.