Hi everyone!
It's time to meet another one of our Wonderful WikiTreers. This week's member is Rosalie Neve.
Rosalie became a Wiki Genealogist earlier this year. She is active in our Australia and England projects.
What are some of the surnames you are researching?
I am still researching (or probably more aptly searching for) my Martin line that immigrated to Australia potentially from Scotland, the Kelly ancestors in Scotland, my Quin, Quigley, Behan and Sheridan ancestors in Ireland, my children’s Richards, Sloggett, Jarvis, Simpson, Neve, Neilson, Boyd and Hoad ancestors and my grandchildren’s Dyer, Sims, Phillips, Crawford and Miller families (to name a few).
What are some of the locations you are researching?
As well as my Australian research focused mainly on the east coast of New South Wales, I have a lot of research I would like to do on family line ancestors in Ireland, Scotland, and England. I have had a lot of oral history passed on to me from any family historians in the lines I am interested in but a lot of the information needs fact-checking and evidence provided to support it. I am hoping the skills and knowledge I gain from working through the Orphan Trail and the Tartan Trail will help me on my quest.
When and how did you get interested in genealogy and family history?
I do not remember a time when I was not interested in family history. My earliest memories are of my father teaching me to recite the family tree as it was given to him by his grandmother with the additions of people and events he had witnessed in his life time to date. As I got older he would tell me that one day the members of my family who had been ‘taken away’ would come looking for their family and someone had to be ready to tell them where they belonged. Six months to the day after he died this actually happened and one of the family was looking for their family and had placed an advertisement in the Indigenous Times Newspaper. I knew they were family because I already had the names of those we expected to want to know who they were one day. However, it was not one of my father’s cousins as he had expected. It was their child. It was an exceptionally emotional experience for my father’s living siblings and the broader family who met their new relative and shared photos and stories of their grandparents they had never met and their father in his childhood with them personally.
Who's your favorite ancestor and why?
To choose a favourite is hard and probably would almost change daily, but as I think about it tonight my favourite ancestor is my maternal grandmother. Nana Kelly was the head of our household for a large part of my younger years. She was an avid family historian and introduced me to written family history carefully scribed in Bibles, and a bookshelf full of pressed flower memoirs and precious gifted book inscriptions. The oldest one I remember finding was on her husband’s side of the family and it was given to Pop’s grandfather in 1828. The brown inked lettering always fascinated me. I bought my Nana Kelly’s home that I grew up in as a child and some of my children and grandchildren still live there and mind it for me when I am in Queensland.
Tell us about a brick wall you were able to break down or one you hope to bust through.
I have many brick walls that I hope one day to break through and not many success stories I could share. The brick wall story that I have tried hard to break through this week is William Behan -https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Behan-293
Every time I have checked my ‘suggestions’ since the Connect-a-Thon William has been taunting me *sigh*. His almost empty profile remains almost empty. Many years ago I remember reading the transcript of the trial for manslaughter of his sons but I no longer have access to those hard copy sources and trying to find anything to confirm that William Behan was the father of Denis and William who were transported on the Elphinstone in 1838 is proving to be a little elusive.
What are some of your interests outside of genealogy?
I enjoy wildlife photography and Questagame has helped me identify many of the amazing animals and plants around me so I can share that information with my children and grandchildren.
[Interview continues in comments.]
