Hi List, I would like to thank Kim for starting off the messages on the List, but do, in self-defence, have to introduce myself. :) Then, maybe, since there are still less than twenty of us, those who feel like doing so might like to tell us who they are, and where they come from. But only if you feel like it. Lurkers are quite welcome on this list. :) I am descended from James Barraclough and Hannah Carter, who married in Bradford in 1825. I cannot yet go back any further than that. Their son Luke came out to Victoria in 1853, and married Susannah Hignett in Ballarat (a booming gold town), after already having one child and telling porkies about their marriage details on all birth certificates. She was from a merchant family in Liverpool. They went from Ballarat to Kangaroo Flat (how more Australian can you get) near Bendigo, still in Victoria, where my grandfather, Major Henry Barraclough was born. After that they went by bullock dray through arid country to go up the Darling River, north of Wentworth, in New South Wales. That was really outback country. They ran a horse change for the coach there, and called the property Kapana, until Luke died in his fifties, and was buried in Pooncarie cemetery. They put the house on a huge raft of Murray Pine logs and FLOATED it about fifty miles or more (not counting bends) to Wentworth, where Susannah lived until a short time before she died. Major married Martha Walker, and my father, George, was born near Mildura in 1907. My father came to Gippsland, Victoria, and married my mother, Ailsa Johnston, from Newcastle, NSW. I spent my childhood in a rather remote area in hill country, until we moved to Briagolong, where I now live again. A typical small Australian country town, population somewhere in the four hundreds, with a pub on one corner of the crossroad and the general store on the opposite one. So, that's me. Next it will be the story of Henry, Black Sheep brother of Luke. And after that - get ready for Barraclough Trivia. :) Again, welcome to everyone who has subscribed, and thanks to Kim for getting us this far. This list is going to be fun. Linda Barraclough Briagolong, Victoria, Australia Listowner: BARRACLOUGH-L e-mail: [email protected]