The land of the long weekend

 We do love a long weekend, and thanks to Bonnie King Charlie we got one.

Mind you, I still give kudos to his Mum. I always do that with birthday greetings since motherhood arrived upon me - it's the anniversary of them being your parent - the birthday person had very limited control over the matter, whereas the giver of birth had time ahead to anticipate the occasion.

We had a lovely one to, with a few unspoken milestones reached, a successful social outing and a wonderful genealogical breakthrough or two.

I awoke this morning and contemplated my paternal great-great-grandmother, who has long been a bit of a brick wall. She was a Jane - I have a few - and her surname is relatively common. I had her father's name - a John - and very little detail regarding the mother apart from her first name.

I did not even know if she were a colonial, a migrant or a convict. Just that she married my great-great-grandfather and they had 3 sons - 1 who died in childhood and the other 2 who were migrating north as she entered old age.

I googled the parent names and the area that she married and a very peculiar and Australian name appeared. VERY peculiar and Australian.

Apparently not that far from where my great-great-grandparents lived. And they had a Facebook page for history.

So I asked the question. "I was wondering" I said, and "would you know".

Not only was a local historical receptacle of information able to answer my query, she was a direct descendant of the sister.

The same 13 year old sister my great-great-grandmother had brought out with her when she was an old maid of 26 from a pretty dire economic situation in Northern Ireland.

And apparently the same sister who had married at not too great a distance from where my Jane had found wedded bliss with her equally geriatric 27yo Cambridgeshire fellow that had swept her off her feet (I mean, isn't that what 19th century marriage was all about?)

And another poster piped up that at least 2 other sisters had migrated there either with Irish husband in tow or finding one pronto on landing.

In the space of less than one hour I had not just found a whole family for her, I had found a story and a tribe of sisters around.

And I love that she was a laundress. I wonder if she was a pegger?

She had a photo of their great-great-grandmother and, although a different age than my photo of ours, there was absolutely no doubt about their genetic link.