In this blog, I have been using multi-disciplinary research methods and reconstructing the past from multiple perspectives to place the Olive family of Cooktown in the context of colonial Australia. Today, genetic genealogy is a tool that complements historical research in rediscovering and reinterpreting the past. At the beginning of 2021, I decided to explore … Continue reading Seeking Grace through DNA
Tag: Mumma OLIVE
Grace Neil: the move to Queensland
This map of the new colony of Queensland supplemented J. D. Lang's Queensland, Australia: A highly eligible field for emigration and the future cotton-field of Great Britain published in London in 1861 by Edward Stanford, a prolific publisher of maps, books and atlases. Queensland is represented as a terra nullius waiting to be made productive … Continue reading Grace Neil: the move to Queensland
Grace Connolly: early childhood (1854-1858)
Grace CONNOLLY / NEIL / OLIVE Mumma Olive, the matriarch of Mount Olive, had three distinct names during her lifetime: Grace CONNOLLY, Grace NEIL and Mrs E.A.C. OLIVE. Although in real life she transitioned fluidly (messily!) from one name to the next, the identities correspond to three distinct periods, locations, family groupings and personal identities. … Continue reading Grace Connolly: early childhood (1854-1858)
Evoking Grace
Grace CONNOLLY / NEIL / OLIVE (1854-1919) From my early childhood my grandmother Dorothy NORBURY / OLIVE (1902-1987) told me stories about her grandmother Grace CONNOLLY / NEIL / OLIVE (1854-1919) which were so vivid that in my mind's eye I could see Grace walking through the grounds of Mount Olive. I could hear her … Continue reading Evoking Grace
Thinking about ‘Mount Olive’
Garnet Agnew, The View from Mt Olive Some years have passed since I last reflected in print on the branch of the Olive family that lived at Mount Olive in Cooktown, and in the intervening period I’ve made many new discoveries that I’d like to disseminate through this blog. In two academic papers on the … Continue reading Thinking about ‘Mount Olive’