Family history across the seas

My East Clare Emigrants blog has been neglected since the cruise but today I was determined to add a story, and the one I’d selected was about Mary Ann Morton, nee Massy. One thing led to another, as it does, and eventually I also followed up her husband, James Morton. An Irishman born in Ballymena, County Antrim he didn’t fit on the other blog so his story makes a good one for Trove Tuesday, despite the less pleasant aspects of his history on Australia’s frontier. Perhaps he was pre-conditioned by his service with the New York Rifles in the Mexican War of 1847. Which goes to show how Trove can help our American cousins as well as the Aussies. I did like that he had known Fred Ward, aka the bushranger Thunderbolt. Apart from the confronting aspects, wouldn’t you like a family obituary with this much detail, though yet again, puzzlingly, there is no detailed mention of family.

But this obituary is incredibly complex and talks of the conflict between the Aborigines and white settlers on the frontiers of Australia in those early days. The language, and more so, the behaviours are confronting but are a part of our history.