Dear Listers You have broken the record for the least number of messages posted to the Hunter Valley list ....to date there have been just 7 for March There are near to 450 members of this list ............. 99.9 % are sitting on the fence again waiting for something to happen ........... What ? Have been some new people subscribe and they have just joined the fence sitters club too ! A mailing list is what is subscribers make of it . At the moment this one is out of sight and mind and got the yawns and is in the doldrums Maybe 'old age' is getting to it ?? It will be 9 years old this coming November Check out http://www.rootsweb.com/~ausmfhc/index2.html http://members.ozemail.com.au/~ahgw/nfhs/ http://www.huntervalleygenealogy.com/ http://www.jenwilletts.com/ http://www.nla.gov.au/ferg/issn/14403676.html Apart from the Maitland Mercury the NLA also have the Shipping Gazette digitised Happy hunting Bye MargM Hunter Valley List Admin

Another site regarding the Hunter Valley to check out is Tocal Homestead http://www.tocal.com/homestead/vandv/index.html lists of the convicts assigned to Tocal with the period of time they were there, along with the history and the lifestyle. My research interest, convicts Michael and Thomas Magner. Regards, Shirley

Hello Marg and list members. I have long been a fence-sitter on all of my lists, for this reason: I want to read all messages on the list, just in case there might be something there to assist me with my research in general, or for one of my surnames. However I do not wish to post about any of my surnames because at the moment, and for the forseeable future I do not and will not have the time to follow up on any personal leads which might come in, and I do not want to extend my reputation for being someone who never gets around to doing what he has said in the past that he will do. LOL. Therefore, I am purely here on all of these lists with a personal "watching" brief. Additionally, I expect that new subscribers to the lists will search the archives for each such list, as a necessary part of their own research, either by browsing through it in its entirety, or using the rootsweb search facilities, and so my own surnames being researched will be there for them to find. (But I hope that I haven't changed ISPs in the meantime. More LOLs. Looking however Marg at your plaintive call to the list, perhaps it might be invigorated if we took a page from say the Tyrone list in Ireland, which long ago started asking people to post about a different Parish each week, with the list administrator outlining the parishes in advance. Perhaps here we might do something similar, but basing it on Hunter Valley towns. Another way is the easy option of calling for a "roll-call" of surnames being researched. Another way might be to ask for postings on separate topics. Some which spring to mind might be: farming and farmers, mining and miners, innkeeping and innkeepers, military, police, mounted police, magistrates, convicts, public servants, etc. -- of course I mean for each of these to be for their Hunter Valley connections. Any thoughts on this from others? If so, please share them with the list. Marg: I hope that some of this or the later hoped-for input from others might give a few ideas. Meanwhile I thank everyone who does post something, as each post has the potential to assist at least one other researcher sooner or later. Best wishes to all: Ray ----- Original Message ----- From: "MargM" <genknut@optusnet.com.au> To: <AUS-NSW-Hunter-Valley@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 9:57 PM Subject: [HV] Has everyone given genealogy the flick ? > Dear Listers > > You have broken the record for the least number of > messages posted to the Hunter Valley list ....to date > there have been just 7 for March ...

Dear MargM I think Ray has summed up what we all feel at the moment, too worn out from brickwalls, but I shall try to be of help whenever possible. Maybe we can start with the cemeteries, or I could post some of the Lake Macquarie History for those interested. MargaretB Lake Macquarie NSW Australia

Listers I have not posted for quite some time but have had breakthroughs on other lines away from the Hunter. This week I confirmed a link to Hamilton Hume as in Hume and Hovell (Hume Highway Hume Weir explorer historical chap) and that has certainly taken me away from the Hunter... BUT I still read all the osts hoping to see the names Mullins Burke or Godfrey appear >From County Limerick MULLINS Biddy 20 Mangerton MULLINS Ellen 19 family Mangerton MULLINS Honora 44 family Mangerton MULLINS Julia 22 family Mangerton MULLINS Mary 17 family Mangerton MULLINS Michael 16 family Mangerton MULLINS Patrick 43 family Mangerton Young Michael married Julia Godfrey in 1868 in Maitland and had 4 children Honorah Patrick Mary and Michael Patrick went to WA (Albany Freemantle) married and came back with 4 daughters 1 being my gran Vera Patrick is buried 1941 at Pt Clare and 1 day I will get there hoing to get a pic of the headstone Honorah was a Burke Christene

TERALBA CEMETERY By C Read Lake Macquarie and District Historical Society When I heard the Council is considering heritage listing for the old Teralba Cemetery at Billygoat Hill my mind went back to earlier times. Teralba was a little different then, dust from the gravel roads permeated right through the houses, people swimming in Cockle Creek, an occasional prickly pear stood sulking around the paddocks and Quigley's ghost was supposed to be about late at night. A curse called Bathurst burr was growing everywhere around the town. The stock couldn't eat it and their legs and tails were covered with burrs. Dogs and cats were always trying to scratch and bite them off. Sometimes they even got into girl's hair at school. I wonder how. Black faced miners with hobnail boots went by, swagmen were often seen. Occasionally a man riding a camel was seen passing the school and a poor crippled man with a bullock instead of a horse in his cart went slowly by. The children all laughed and said he had made a mistake. One time in the early 1930's there were only three motor cars in Teralba, my father having one of them, a black one. One of the miner's families living nearby had a little child die. The depression was lingering on in the town and they decided to conduct their own burial. They got help and advice from the Clerk of Petty Sessions who had his office in Teralba in those days and asked my father to use his car as a hearse. The coffin was made of rough sawn but new looking timber. It was placed on the back seat with the mother riding in the front with dad and set off in low gear with the family and many friends and relatives trudging along behind. As they passed the hotel a number of miners came out and joined the procession slowly walking to the Teralba Cemetery. There were railway gates on the northern side of Booragul Railway Station for access to the cemetery. By 1960 the railway gates had gone, I happened to be nearby when the last funeral was held at Teralba Cemetery, Mr Chris Thornton's. I witnessed the spectacle of the pallbearers carefully carrying the coffin all the way up the steep railway steps and down the other side to get to the cemetery. Now the Bathurst burrs and occasional prickly pear have long gone, as have the swagman and the man with the camel, Quigley's ghost seems to rest better. And what of crippled Bill with the bullock and cart, he went to Sydney and became a newspaper seller in the City. Many years later I was watching a documentary on television about freedom of the press and concerning an incident where a Sydney newspaper was ordered by the Government to cease publication, something about censorship. They refused and dropped the newspapers out of the upstairs windows of their building onto the street below. I nearly jumped out of my lounge chair when I saw our Bill handing out these free papers. Apparently he was filmed by a newsreel camera man at the time. Just imagine our Bill from Teralba immortalised forever in the film and TV archives. Recollections are becoming wispy, a bit like past dreams. Oh well, I wonder what's in Saturday's paper; perhaps I'll remember some more another day. MargaretB Lake Macquarie NSW Australia

THE STORY OF TERALBA The birth of Teralba may be traced to the building of the northern railway from Sydney to Newcastle in the years 1884 to 1889. The construction of this railway line radically changed the patterns of settlement within the Lake Macquarie region, and it was directly responsible for the formation of a number of townships, including Morisset, Awaba and Cardiff. Among these new townships, Teralba had the distinction of being located both on the railway line and the lakeshore. Yet the history of Teralba district commenced nearly sixty years before the building of the railway, for it was in 1829 that a free settler by the names of Ranclaud selected a large grant that extended from the mouth of Cockle Creek westward almost to the foot of the Sugarloaf Range. James St. John Ranclaud was born in or about the year 1786.' His mother was Irish, and his father a Frenchman who was taken prisoner during a war between England and France. The name Ranclaud is a corruption of the French 'Reineclaude', meaning queen's plum, or greengage. James Ranclaud married Susannah Boscowen, a daughter of the Hon. Hugh Boscowen and grand-daughter of the Earl of Falmouth. He served in the British Army for more than twenty years, which included a period in India, and achieved the rank of a captain before deciding to settle with his family in New South Wales. On 14th July, 1828, R. W. Hay of the Colonial Office in London addressed a letter to Governor Ralph Darling of New South Wales, in which he recommended Captain Ranclaud as a free settler.2 This suggests that the Ranclauds sailed for the colony soon after that date, and the time of their arrival m Sydney would be about the middle of 1829. As was customary under the circumstances, the Governor of New South Wales promised Captain Ranclaud a substantial land grant, and on 13th August, 1829, an order for 2560 acres was recorded/ This grant could be selected in any part of the settled districts of the Colony. By this time, however, all of the valuable grazing country of the western slopes, the southern highlands and the Hunter River Valley had been taken up by earlier settlers and this fact, in addition to the attraction of a tempered coastal climate, may have influenced James St. John Ranclaud to select his 2560 acres at Lake Macquarie. The settler was authorised on 4th September, 1829, to take possession of the estate, which was officially described by the Surveyor-General's Department in this way4: - 'Bounded on the South by a line bearing West 229 chains, commencing at a small creek adjoining Cockle Creek; on the West by a line bearing North 80 chains; on the North by a line bearing East 70 chains to Cockle Creek, and by that creek; and also on the east by that Creek.' MargaretB Lake Macquarie NSW Australia

Hi MargM Have we now broken the record for the most posts in two days? lol MargaretB Lake Macquarie NSW Australia You have broken the record for the least number of messages posted to the Hunter Valley list ....to date there have been just 7 for March