Genealogy and me

G’Day.  I’m John Hunter.  I’m from Brisbane in the great state of Queensland, Australia.  This is one of my blogs.

I have now officially become an elder of the tribe, reached that age where society assigns you to the scrap heap. So now I do this. Looking at things that interest me and formulating and promulgating a view. Blogs plural because we live in interesting times and there is a lot to have a view about.

At a very young age I saw a sign that said “What we eat and drink today, walks and talks tomorrow”. I recall it was an advertisement for bacon but it brought about one of those “ah-ha” moments. Being bought up in the country it has stuck with me all my life as I saw that principle at work all around me every day. Plants and animals, if they didn’t get fed properly they didn’t ever realize their potential.

I moved from the country to the city to go to university and walk the treadmill of “the career”. My first degree was in biochemistry. My first career steps were as a teaching fellow at Uni and work towards a Master’s degree. I had a fascination about what makes the system tick at a molecular level. Lehninger had started to unravel the mysteries of the mitochondrion, Watson and Crick had done the same with DNA. Every day brought a new revelation it seemed.

The Vietnam War was large on the landscape and student politics became mainstream politics. A Government was brought down and a new era dawned. Or so it seemed to all of us who were there.

Family Stories – a great source

Even as a kid, I was interested in my family history. Mainly through various legends, folklore and stories, some told in almost awed tones. I remembered them all.  Later I tracked them down to find none of them had any substance. I wonder what the story tellers would have thought of the real stories.

I also found my “real” father lived on the other side of the planet. The family closed ranks and nobody knew anything. That started a forty year search that turned up not only my elderly father but brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews and cousins and uncles and aunts. Some of them knew I was around and had started searches of their own but where do you start?

Family History – the journey

Living in Australia there was a need to know how and when my ancestors arrived in this new country. Researching that uncovered no convicts or bushrangers but instead a whole bunch of people who were caught up in the events of their time. These included soldiers who were part of the initial military occupation of the new colony, families who were “cleared” from the Scottish Highlands and shipped to Australia, Irish who sought a better life than the starvation and poverty of their homeland.

It seems that every significant battle in the English speaking world in the last several hundred years had an ancestor of mine on one side of the other. In some cases there was one on both sides. My paternal line goes back to the Norman invasion of England and includes members of the Scottish Aristocracy who stood close at hand with Kings. I am a Son of the American Revolution and ancestors fought in the American Civil War and both World Wars. It is in my blood.

In the meantime I moved around the country, State to State, climbing the ladder and added an MBA amongst other post-graduate awards. Eventually I exited the workforce after numerous years at the CEO level. Marriages, children, the usual things.

Technology and Genealogy

Being an early adopter of any technology the Internet and genetic genealogy have been essential tools. It would not have been possible to build the paper trails and other links without them. By sharing my information on the web countless others have been helped either to confirm a relationship or to close off a dead end. Sharing openly and publicly is to me an essential part of the process.

Links to most of my material appear throughout this site.

One day all of us will be a name and two numbers. Somewhere between those numbers there will have been a life. Perhaps someone sometime in the future will find them and wonder “Who was this person?” This site might go some way towards providing an answer, at least for my descendants. What about yours?

Don’t forget to look at the genealogy books, family genealogy and genealogy software pages.