« Reply #61 on: Wednesday 12 December 07 05:06 GMT (UK) »
All of the branches on my father-in-law's side (5th generation in Australia on the oldest branch) have a convict as the first arrival in Australia, apart from one wife - and she came on a bounty ship from Ireland in 1841, which means we have not been able to find out anything about her before she stepped off the ship.
The records for the convict ancestors are pretty good, even down to the physical descriptions and with a newspaper article in one case which paints a vivid picture of that particular ancestor and the place he lived in.
So we're really happy to have this information, especially with the brick walls we've encountered for the other 'free' arrivals. We're pretty sure that my father-in-law's family and his parents' generation knew nothing about their convict heritage though.
Jojosam
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