Merry Christmas Everyone!!!
Sorry I haven't searched for a while. My landline has been down so no internet for a time. It's still a little in and out so my search is going to be patchy. (I guess that's what happens when you live in an isolated community).
Here is some news regarding this thread:
I have kept contact with the Ridgway side of the family in England who are descended from Sarah Ridgway, my ggggrandmother. We have spoken on Skype and sent each other parcels and photographs. So now I know what Sarah Ridgway (Pring) and Lily Ridgway looked like (There's no family resemblance with me. Oh well). Also, there are old photos of the Tanpits farm where Evelyn Ridgway my ggrandmother was born. Receiving these was emotional and awe inspiring. I thank my cousins from the bottom of my heart.
Aparently Sarah Ridgway loved to travel, thus the trips to Australia, and loved birds. She even had a blown emu egg that she brought back to England that got too old and brittle and collapsed. Luckily I'm in contact with emus fairly regularly and I sent my cousins a new one.
My grandmother's sisters in New Zealand reacted remarkably well to the news they had an adopted sister. There has been continued contact with them and I've sent parcels over. I'm hoping to keep building on this relationship.
I'm back at work and have little time to search. I find this very sad, as my search was one of the most exciting things I have going in my life. However, there is still a little bit of time to look and I was mainly concentrating on the Parsons side of the family. Unfortunately this was going nowhere. So many Parsons' and I couldn't tell one from the other. I was also paying a subscription fee for one of those large ancestory sites based in America. With all the financial strife the subscription doubled in a few short months as the Aussie dollar dived and I couldn't afford it anymore. I had to unsubscribe, which slowed me up even more. Before I left the service I found two family trees related to Flora and George Parsons, downloaded them and noted the owners of the trees. The next step was to contact these owners to see if they can help with my search. Guess what? One of them was JCSpins!!! What an amazing twist of fate to have her find me when I'd just found her!!!
So now I'm going to PM her and ask if she can help find out what happened to Ellen Ridgway (Parsons), my gggrandmother. Maybe she knows if Oliver and Ellen were able to divorce legally and if she remarried. My grandmother's sisters in NZ are also interested, as they didn't know that Ellen Ridgway was their grandmother.
Hopefully my phone line will hold up for long enough to get some speedy answers and keep everybody posted. The phone man just rang and said he'd be around in half an hour. It would be nice if it was fixed before Christmas.
Thanks everybody, Tristi
