On Fri, 30 Dec 2005 12:49:56 +1100, "Farm1" <please@askifyouwannaknow> wrote: >"Steve Hayes" <hayesmstw@hotmail.com> wrote in message > >> Thanks very much - he seems to have been a fairly prolific novelist. >Novels >> sometimes say things in the blurb like "He lives in X with his wife, two >> children and a cat". Actually I've now discovered that he was born and >died in >> Sydney. > >He lived at Moss Vale in the Southern Highlands of NSW for many years - near >Bong Bong Church. There is a street named after him there. Thanks for that too. I've also discovered in the last couple of days that his son Roger was a folk singer in the 1960s and 1970s, and wrote a history of Araluen with his first wife, which is still sold by the Braidwood Historical Society. So now I'm anxious to get contact info for Roger Thwaites, as if he is both related and clued up about local history he might be the best person to discuss some of the queries with. I learnt of Roger's existence and name from someone who read my original query here, and found the info in the intro to one of FJ Thwaites's books -- he had dedicated the book to his new-born granddaughter, and so named her, and gave her date of birth. But that's one of the interesting things about family history. We knew that there was some relation who had married a Thwaites, because there was a record of the Bank of Montreal sending a sum of money to a Mrs Thwaites in Australia, granddaughter of its founder and first President, John Gray. We had a letter from a granddaughter of this Mrs Thwaites, about 18 years ago, telling us who she was and how she fitted in to the family (we knew of her first two husbands, not of Thwaites, who was her 3rd and 4th). We corresponded for a while, asking about Thwaites descendants, but this cousin wrote a couple of times, seemed clearly interested in the family history, and then stopped writing. So for 18 years we've been trying on and off to find out about the children of F.J. Thwaites and those of his siblings. It turns out that the cousin we had written to know him, had copies of all his books, and could have told us all this 18 years ago, but didn't. As a friend of mine said, when he introduced us to ancestor hunting, and came with me to see an aunt, "They always know more than they think they do." So sometimes it is necessary to pester relatives for the information that they either think they don't know, or think you must already know and don't bother to tell you. -- Steve Hayes E-mail: hayesmstw@hotmail.com (see web page if it doesn't work) Web: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7783/

Steve Hayes wrote: > > > As a friend of mine said, when he introduced us to ancestor hunting, and came > with me to see an aunt, "They always know more than they think they do." > > So sometimes it is necessary to pester relatives for the information that they > either think they don't know, or think you must already know and don't bother > to tell you. Or, they could be like my grandmother, who was confused as to why anyone would care where her grandparents and great-grandparents came from and what they did and all of that. The 'old days' were times that nobody cared about, or bothered with, not when getting by day-by-day was nearly all consuming. I've noticed with my aunts and uncles that if I rephrase questions, I'll get better and more thorough answers, and sometimes reminding them of a particular incident will trigger other memories about their older relatives. When I was google searching for you, I saw Roger Thwaites and wondered if he was a relation. I didn't realize that Roger Thwaites the writer was the same as the singer -- very interesting <g>. Cathy