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Part B

Plan B - a public website.

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Before we left for Tasmania one of my sons had convinced me to adapt my new project of creating an anthology of family history stories, into creating a private group website. As I had never having done anything remotely like creating a website I was a bit frightened of the idea. However he assured me that I would be able to learn the necessary skills, and he kept stressing that a website was the ideal format in which to share the material with a younger generation.

By the time I had returned from Tasmania I had decided that I wanted to expand the project to include a very detailed section about the Peters family. My intention was to present all of my research findings on this family in a section of their own. I wanted to make the information accessible to others as it does not appear to be collated elsewhere. I realised that to achieve this, my planned website would now need to become a public one.

The chronology and details of the lives of Thomas Peters and Mary Ann Peters (nee Hews) that I have been able to construct is solely the result of researching newspaper articles, books and maps. It seemed appropriate therefore to place this additional section within the larger framework of My Research Journey. It forms Section B and it ‘stands alone’ in order to promote easy access by other researchers who may have an interest in this family.

Thomas and Mary Ann Peters had eight children:

Two of their daughters died young. 

  • • Martha died in Hobart aged 3yrs. 
  • • Anne died aged 14yrs of a spear injury sustained during the Black Wars.

Four of their daughters married men whose surnames became very well known: 

  • • Elizabeth Peters married George (Jnr) Armytage  in 1818
  • • Charlotte Peters married Francis (Jnr) Flexmore  in 1829
  • • Louisa Peters married John Hayes in 1828
  • • Sophia Peters married James Pillenger  in 1836

Their only son, Richard married Rebecca Cuffe in 1851. They had four children who carried the Peters name into another generation.

  • • Abraham Giles Peters (1865 - 1941)
  • • Richard Cornelius Peters (1866 - 1906)
  • • Martha Peters (1867 - )
  • • Florence Bunar Peters (b. abt 1869 - 1900)

The remaining child of Thomas and Mary Ann was my 3 x great-grandmother, Mary Ann Peters. She married William Holt in 1832 and her  life took a very different turn to that of her married sisters. She is the only person in her immediate family whose death and burial details remain unknown to me. Perhaps, at a future date those details will become available. Indeed you might be the very person to locate them!

…The case is never closed on a genealogical conclusion. …no decision regarding identity, parentage, origin, or other genealogical detail can be considered definitive. …Any decision we make today could be changed tomorrow by the discovery of a new record.

 - Elizabeth Shown Mills in Evidence!: citation & analysis for the family historian. 1997 page 57.

In her book Tasmania’s Convicts: How Felons Built a Free Society  Alison Alexander states “The amazing result of the forgetting process was that by the late 1920s and 1930s, the general population did not know that anyone, or hardly anyone, was descended from convicts – even though most of them were themselves.” p. 167. This was doubtless the case with the descendants of Thomas Peters. Many of them probably believed the story that he had been a soldier in the Duke of York’s Regiment. 

It is almost 200 years since Thomas’ brave wife Mary Ann died (26th May 1819). Her grave has long

 been lost amidst the beautiful lawn and trees in St David’s Park, Hobart. Thomas died twenty years later, but the inscription on his tomb at St Mary’s Anglican Church in Kempton is now nearly completely obscured by lichens. It faintly reads:

SACRED

TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS

PETERS WHO DEPARTED THIS

LIFE THE 26 DAY OF JULY 1839

AGED 62 YEARS

 I left Tasmania having decided to create what has become Research Part B on this website. It was as if I heard them whisper:

“Remember me in the family tree; my name, my days, my strife.

 Then I’ll ride upon the wings of time and live an endless life.”

                                                                                                            ~Linda Goetsch

RESEARCH Part A.