RESEARCH Part A.
- 1. RESEARCH - Questions and Inspiration.
- 2. RESEARCH - My curiosity & my many collections.
- 3. RESEARCH - Religion, Politics and the Great Pumpkin
- 4. RESEARCH - The Orange and The Green.
- 5. RESEARCH - Why did they leave? Where did they go?
- 6. RESEARCH - Acknowledgement of Traditional Owners.
- 7. RESEARCH - Stewart and Doody - a puzzling pair.
- 8. RESEARCH - Maps Charts and Trees.
- 9. RESEARCH - Snippets from here and there, and a red herring Z.
- 10. RESEARCH -The 1990 Frazer Reunion, and how we got our Z.
- 11. RESEARCH - Searching for Ships.
- 12. RESEARCH - It’s time to forget about it, or to ‘go it alone’.
- 13. RESEARCH - What, no Glenfiddich or Tullamore Dew?
- 14. RESEARCH - Questions remain: Why did they leave? Was Holt his name?
- 15. RESEARCH TRIP 2016 - They struck out from Sydney.
- 16. RESEARCH TRIP 2016 - He married a Marks.
- 17. RESEARCH TRIP 2016 - They moved on again.
- 18. RESEARCH TRIP 2016 - The Grant/Gorman family of Harden-Murrumburrah
- 19. RESEARCH - Acknowledgement of Traditional Owners.
- 20. RESEARCH TRIP 2016 - An 1874 Tall Ship - The James Craig
- 21. RESEARCH - Could I be right? What do you think?
- 22. RESEARCH TRIP 2017 - The Maritime Museum of Tasmania and the Lady Nelson
- 23. RESEARCH TRIP 2017 - Hobart: A Monument, Land Grants, and Maps.
- 24. RESEARCH TRIP 2017 - Hobart: St David’s Park
- 25. RESEARCH TRIP 2017 - Hobart to York Plains, Home to the Holt and Peters families
- 26. RESEARCH TRIP 2017 - Heading home with questions and a task or two.
- 27. RESEARCH - Plan B - A public website.
- 28. RESEARCH - Choose your own adventure
With the generous assistance of: the researcher and author Rhonda Brownlow; members of the Crookwell & District Historical Society; and the Local Studies Officer of the Goulburn Mulwaree Library, my questions about the Fraser’s trip to Queensland were answered in detail.
I had wanted to know WHY, after living in Binda for decades, my great x3 grandparents, Alexander (Snr) and Margaret Fraser, packed their belongings into bullock wagons and began a long trek to Queensland.
An article that was published in the Goulburn Herald on 5 August 1877 supplied the answer. The Fraser and Marks families moved to Queensland because they believed the price, quality and availability of land was better there.
An evocative description of the day of their departure was published in the Goulburn Herald on 19 September 1877. (via TROVE) When I read the article for the first time it was moment of extraordinary poignancy. I was struck by the similarity between the Fraser’s departure from Markdale in 1877, and an account I had read of their departure from Kingussie in 1838, almost forty years earlier.
When I returned home I created an image of the newspaper report and framed it to honour the Hope, Strength, and Courage of Alexander and Margaret Fraser. - It was the end of a very long quest to find out where the Frazer family had come from. I now had answers in detail that was beyond my wildest dreams.
“The Highland Clearances were to result in a great deal of emigration from the Highlands - with large numbers of people frequently leaving together for North America, Australia and other destinations. One such emigration from Badenoch occurred in the summer of 1838. Those involved gathered in Kingussie on the day of St Columba's Fair, Latha Feill Chaluim Chille, when practically everyone from Badenoch met there.
Amid scenes - it was afterwards recalled - of 'heart-rending grief', the intending emigrants climbed to the summit of Creag Bheag, the little hill that stands just to the west of Kingussie. From there, they could see the whole of Badenoch: this place where they had been born and grown up; this place where their families, in most instance, had lived for generations; this place which none of them would ever so much as visit again.
Later that day, the emigrant party began their journey. Their belongings packed into carts, they walked, by way of Newtonmore, Laggan and Spean Bridge, to Fort William. From there they travelled by steamer - still something of a novelty at this point - to Oban where they joined the St George, the full-rigged sailing ship which, on July 4, 1838, and with a total of 326 emigrants on board, left for the far side of the world.
More than four months later, on November 15, the St George dropped anchor off Sydney. Five babies had been born on board since the ship had left Oban. And ten emigrants had died.” [2 year old Henrietta Fraser was one of those who died.]
‘Emigration from the Highlands’ from a previous website of the Highland Folk Museum (Viewed Sat, 4 Dec 2010)