our family’s blog

Tonight I added information for Edward and Catherine Murphy, in the Murphy collection. See both their individual photo captions, as well as the caption for the opening of the Bauple catholic church.

Tonight I added several photos to the Unknown collection. A few of these had notes and/or dates but leave us none the wiser as to where the people fitted in. Some are no doubt family, and others simply friends of family. Some may be just postcard pictures of total strangers. I hope that visitors to this site will look through the collection to see if they recognise any of the people or other items pictured.

These photos are almost all digitals I took myself, from the originals we had. So the quality is very poor compared to those I had done professionally. With all of the photos however, it is possible to pick up smaller detail by viewing the large version of the photo and clicking to magnify. It is amazing what you can pick up in the professional copies.

These did not take long. There are only six photos at the moment, though I hope to add more later.

Ursula Mitchell was a descendant of the Murphy's and the Bailey's but I thought I would create a separate collection for the Mitchell's. A lot of the old photos we have of the Murphy's and Bailey's came from Ursula. Her eldest son, Edwin, entrusted them to my Dad after she died in April, 1985. Thanks to her, all Mitchell descendants can now have access to these historic family photos. The other Mitchell children were Pam, Raymond and Kevin.

Our two families were close, even when separated by distance. Christmas at the Mitchell's was a fixture for our extended family for many years.

These captions are taking a lot more time than I imagined! But the Bailey family captions are complete at last.

This photo collection records the descendants of Hugh Bailey Jr, and his wife Ellen Mary Jane (n.Workman). As far as I know, they had at least ten children. The ten my Dad could name were Charles, George, Mary Ellen ("Polly", our grandmother), Clement ("Clem"), May, Sarah Jennette ("Janet"), Edmund ("Eddie"), Emma Jessie ("Aunt Emmy"), Archie and Adeline. We have photos, we think, for "Grandma Bailey" but none of her husband, Hugh Jr. We have no photos of George, May, Jennette, Eddie or Archie, but we do have a lot of George's family and one or two children of May and Eddie. George married Phoebe and they had three daughters, Evelyn ("Effie"), Neta and Laurel. At one time they lived in Texas, Queensland and we know that our Dad (Reg Murphy) lived with relatives there when he was very young. Evelyn ("Effie") married Frank Bissett and we met up with the Bissett family a few times when we were young. Clem and Clarrie Bailey had four children, Alan, Lucy, Coralie and Gwen and we have several photos of them. Our grandmother was close to her sister, Emma, possibly because they both settled in Sydney. Our two families often got together when we were kids. Emma ("Aunty Emmy") married Bob Valler and she had two sons, Eric and Ross. Several of our family members may be seen in Eric's 1949 wedding photo. We never knew Archie but I attended his funeral with my Dad in February, 1983. Adeline was the youngest and was a good friend of my Aunt Ursula (n.Murphy), who was actually her niece.

Dad named other Bailey family members, a few of whom we have photos of, but we do not know where they fitted in. They include Nessa and Imelda. Dad says Imelda Bailey married a Maloney and they had two children, Jim and Mea. They lived at Applethorpe, Queensland and Mea Maloney's daughter, Leila, was my Aunt Ursula's godchild. We have a child photo of Leila taken with Eric Valler. Four of the photos in the collection were addressed to "Aunt Polly" and were probably Bailey descendants. Arthur, we believe, was the child of Jennette. The other two were "Frankie" and Marg (or Meg). All four photos have also been placed in the Unknown collection.

Please note that the oldest photos are towards the end of the collection. From the photos most family members seem to have lived in the New England region of New South Wales (including Emmaville), or southern Queensland.

These photos are of Edward and Catherine Murphy, and their descendants. The six children of Edward and Catherine were Ursula, Thomas ("Tom"), Eileen, Joseph ("Joe", our grandfather), Richard ("Uncle Dick") and Francis ("Bon"). Ursula married Jim McKey and had four girls, Ursula, Eileen, Kathleen and Mary. Eileen married Fred Diener and had two children, Reg and Eileen. Thomas, Joseph and Richard also married and had children. Francis ("Bon") died as a prisoner of war in 1918 and had no wife or child. I have no photos of Richard ("Uncle Dick") but do have photos of two of his children and two of his grandchildren. There is one photo of Thomas and two photos of his children. Edward Murphy died in 1891. Four years later his widow, Catherine, married William Cook. She had two more children, Reginald and Harold, making eight children in all (ie, six Murphy's and two Cook's).

The oldest photos are at the end.

Amazingly, I got the rest of the professional digitals uploaded in one night. In between cooking, laundry and a few glasses of red ("Woop Woop" cab sav, very nice!). Now for the captions.....

This is exciting. I have finally set up an archival site for recording our shared family history. Tonight I uploaded 40 digital photos I had professionally taken from old family originals. There are over 200 altogether, plus a lot of others I took myself. I will progressively upload the rest, over the next week I hope. I will also work through captions.

I wish I could have done this thirty years ago, when we could have learned more about the people in the photos. But we never realised the importance then, and only now do we have the technology. Amazing that posting these photos costs us nothing. Thank you Vox!