For over 20 years there has been mystery surrounding my 3rd great grandparents, due to their common name they have not been easy to find. My Grandmother 20+ years ago paid to have a search done for my 3rd Great Grandmother as we knew her name and knew she had been married here - the search turned up empty.
So we skip to Australia Day 2012 and Ancestry.com allowing Convict Record views for free. Imagine my delight and surprise when I found the Convict Request to marry my Free settler 3rd Great Grandmother EUREKA!But that was not where the discovery ended...I knew now where the two of there were in a moment in time and was then able to link my 3rd Great Grandfather back with the information in the application to his crime and am pretty sure I am hot on his trail of his tickets of leave...I saved to my shoebox all possibilities! The bonus, there were 5 public trees containing these people and a little more information (that of course I will need to source) but I am off on another line! Woohoo!The mystery is not completely solved but it is now no longer totally in the dark either!
In other discoveries with these records, I have been saved a visit to State Records as the Special Bundles and Colonial Secretary's papers were also viewable for free and I know that another Grandfather of mine was eventually granted an Absolute pardon! Not bad for someone whose original sentence was Death, this also explained how he got to be a licensee for 3+ pubs in Sydney.
So 2012 looks like the year I may just get stuck back into all these lines...I really would like them polished a bit more for next year and my son's 21st..after all that was the plan originally - but somehow 20yrs back then seemed such a long way away!
