Greetings and Best Wishes for 2011 to all, My families are: Maryborough area: Pascoe - from Helston, Sithney and Breage, in Cornwall Shugg - from Cornwall (worldwide One-name study) Bursill - from Cambridge and Lancashire Robinson - from Manchester, England Hooker - from Kent Ballarat area: Gough - Forest of Dean, Monmouthshire, Wales Edes - South Bristol, Avon, Gloucestershire Ararat area: Smart - Compton Pauncefoot, Somerset, England Scherger - Harz Mountains, Hannover, Germany Kind regards, Rowena

On 5/01/2011 10:01 AM, Rowena Gough wrote: > Greetings and Best Wishes for 2011 to all, > Ararat area: > > Smart - Compton Pauncefoot, Somerset, England > > Scherger - Harz Mountains, Hannover, Germany Hello Rowena, My grandparents George and Edith TAYLOR of "Hillside" Norval, lived just up the hill from Norval (Ararat) state school. They had the post office there. My mother was a pupil teacher at the school, and they, of course knew all the locals. I remember mention of the SMART family and the finding of a "cocoa tin" containing tiny nuggets left behind in the goldrush days. The dog that located it should have lived in luxury thereafter, don't you think? And the SCHERGER family.. now there's fame. WW2 Air Chief Marshal SCHERGER helped my brother, who had been working as foreman welder on the "Wirraway" plane, to join the air-force as an aicraftsman, though he was in an "essential service" With the end of construction of the Wirraway, my brother thought he would be more useful maintaining airplanes in war zones. My brother's wife had deserted their two infant children and went to live in Sydney, and ACM Scherger arranged for his sister, Miss Scherger, living in Ararat, to take care of the boys for the duration of the war. They went to the Church of England school, I think. I was only six when war broke out, so my memory is that of a child, and with brothers and sisters 20 and 10 years older than myself, I heard little of the Ararat days, except that my uncle, George HANSFORD as Secretary of the Mechanics Institute and Library, daily drew up a cumulative index on the local paper. I can remember, age 5, having to wait to look at a big book in a glass case that had taken my eye, whilst he completed the newspaper page he was working on. Though my mother explained the importance of the newspaper work, it was lost on an impatient child, who, even at 5 had read every book in our household, including my brother's wrestling and aviation books. I thought, then, that newspapers were unimportant: didn't we wrap potatoes in them at the shops? My, didn't I change my mind as I did family tree research! Regards Ada Ackerly