Exploring ancestral memories and 'lost family histories'

This book is a treasure trove of particular 'recovered' ancestral memories and family histories. Others can also access the 'treasure troves' of their own ancestral histories. Therefore, the practical examples of this book (and the methods used in it) can help inspire similar explorations. Ancestral trees are always more interesting and relevant when grounded both in family histories and also wider (i.e. local, national or even global) historical contexts. This is especially so when investigating specific mysteries of 'lost, forgotten or simply omitted' ancestral memories. The essays here are those explorations by the author Cameron Richards of his own ancestral tree that were particularly fascinating, and yet also addressed specific mysteries of wider general interest. Each one provides some 'window' into not just early Colonial Australian history (and beyond) but the backgrounds of the diverse influx of migrants coming to Australia and leaving Europe (in particular) for 'the new world' in the 19th Century. In this way they are exemplary of the typical challenges, search options, and potential rewards in these kinds of genealogical and related family history investigations, adventures, and explorations of the gaps in our existing knowledge.