A chance for Australian Research

 

                                 My Grandad's sketchy family tree that started off my research into my Australian family

It's very hard to stay the course with one area of research. This time my distraction was a post on Genealogy à la Carte advising that Australian records on MyHeritage were free to access for a short time. So I decided to concentrate on my Australian connections for the time the records were available. 

I previously wrote a series of posts about the McKay family who started out from Dorset and ended up in Australia after detouring through Malta and India. Such was the life of the British forces and their families at the time. William McKay, his wife Henrietta and their children ended up in New South Wales, Australia after he retired from the military in 1888.

                       The birthplaces of William and Henrietta McKay's children reflect the moves of his military career

There are no census records to help place the family together in Australia. I've been trawling through electoral rolls and death notices. But, while looking through the binders of information I already have, I found a printed family tree for the family that Margaret McKay married into. She was the McKay daughter my grandfather was closest to. It looks like this might be more of a distraction than I first thought but then I can always expand this part of my family tree as well. Maybe that will help me identify the families on my Ancestry Community labelled: New South Wales, Australia, European & British Settlers 1775-1975. I know that the McKays would be some of those connections but there were descendants of some of my other related families too. My people weren't very good at staying in one place.