Anna Amanda Knowlton, known as Annie, was born on 9 March 1824 in rural Quebec. She was the only child of Samuel Willard Knowlton, a farmer, and his wife, Amanda Lewis. Life in Shefford County during Annie’s childhood would have been simple and work-focused, centred around family and farming. When her mother died in 1840, Annie was just sixteen, and it’s likely she took on adult responsibilities early.

Substack is attracting a small but growing number of genealogists and family history enthusiasts, all eager to share tips, resources, family biographies, and more. So, is Substack the new hotspot for making meaningful genealogical connections?

I recently took a trip to Brisbane to visit my Grandmother, and while I was there, I scanned her photographs. One piece I was most excited for was the battered and bruised photo album my great-grandfather, Walton Hooper, kept from 1939 until his tragic, premature death in 1948. With all the pages scanned and digitised, I’m taking a trip through the photographs he took over the span of a decade — including many taken during his time at war. This is photograph #2 in the album.

Yesterday, I attended a virtual conference hosted by the Society of Australian Genealogists on professional genealogy — and wow, did I learn a lot! I had no idea there were so many different career paths where genealogical skills come into play. I heard from people working in asset recovery, intestate estates, and even those helping children born through international prostitution trace their fathers. The diversity of stories and specialisations absolutely blew me away. One o

In the late 1800s, my Great-Great-Grandmother, Trijntje Jans Boumans, endured a series of heartbreaking losses that are all too common for families of that time. Trijntje had eight children, but only four would survive into adulthood. In 1885, her baby boy, Wiebe Gerrits Haringsma, passed away at just five months old. He was her first child. A tragedy, yes, but she wouldn’t see losses for a decade after that. Perhaps she thought herself lucky, she had escaped a fate many wome

A few months ago I purchased a bundle of old photographs from a lady having a garage sale here in Perth, Western Australia. Some had no labels. Some were address to “Kath” or “Aunty Kath” and some had names. One of the key clues came from the stamps on the photos. Several bore the names of photo studios, one of which led me to Innisfail in Far North Queensland. The first person I had identified solo and researched most extensively was Jo Couche . Originally from Tipperary, Ir

I first heard the phrase “hatching, matching and dispatching” during a Society of Australian Genealogists course, and it stuck with me. I think it captures what so many of us feel, that genealogy isn’t just a hobby, but a kind of duty. A call to preserve stories and bring light to the forgotten corners of history. Family history is not just a list of names, dates, and burial plots. Or at least, it shouldn’t be. If all we ever do is record the “hatching, matching and dispatchi

Jo Couche was an Irish-born Australian Nursing Sister who served with distinction in the Middle East during the Second World War. When she was just eight years old, her Protestant loyalist family fled their home in Tipperary as refugees after Republicans burned not one, but two of their houses to the ground. This article traces her early life, leading up to the Couche family’s emigration from Ireland to Australia. The photograph of Jo Couche I purchased at a garage sale that

My Great-Grandfather, Jakob Roskam, moved to the United Kingdom from a small, rural farming community in the Netherlands in the Post-War years. He learned many skills during his upbringing—one of which was land reclamation, sorely needed in those tender years after the war. Within a year, he met my Great-Grandmother, Violet Higgins, and they married, had my Nana-Nieske, and then had four more children. A long, happy life, and many wonderful years of marriage. But Grandad Rosk

Australia's oldest still existing, most intact, purpose-built female convict site. I had the fantastic opportunity to visit the Parramatta Female Factory with my 7-year-old last week. It's the earliest and most intact purpose-built female convict site in Australia. My daughter sitting on one of the "ha-ha walls" It operated between 1821 and 1848. It's estimated that 15,000 female convicts passed through the factory during its operation. In 1821, it housed the colony's first d