Both my father and my mother were Catholics. I clearly remember the uncomfortable shock of stumbling onto the fact that there was a minefield of sectarian differences within the family members that I had contact with. As a child who was living on a remote property, far from churches of any kind, I had assumed that ‘we’, (the Frazers), were all Catholics. I was quite unprepared for the glowering responses of my great aunts when I innocently made a comment that inferred that they too were Catholics.  They, along with many other Frazers, were in fact members of the Church of England - as I quickly found out. My grandfather “Sonny” Frazer had married Bernadine Grant who was “very Catholic” and so my father was baptised Catholic. However many of the older members of the Frazer clan were staunchly Anglican. 

Upon further (more careful), investigation I learnt that my mother’s parents were both Catholic, but her father had only converted to Catholicism many years after his marriage. My mother told me that her father’s family were Anglican, and they were quite upset about him marrying a Catholic. I also clearly remember the visceral repugnance evidenced by one of my great aunts when she blurted out that “one of those old Frazer men was supposed to have married a Jewess”. I was to remember that fragment of conversation over the decades for no reason other than the odd strength of her emotions as she spoke. This snippet of information ‘led me up the garden path’ several times in my research. I finally found its likely place of origin: the story of my great, great-grandfather, Alexander (Jnr) Frazer marrying Martha Marks. I slowly began to realise that Religion was not only “a topic to be avoided in polite company”, it was also an issue that could sometimes forge deep emotional rifts in family relationships. These kinds of ‘fractures’ in relationships, from whatever cause, can in turn result in an ‘editing’ or suppression of some family stories, and the promoting of other stories in their place.

It has been one of the great joys of my family tree research to have identified paternal and maternal ancestors from a great variety of religious affiliations, and some with none at all.