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DIGBY STORIES - FROM IRELAND TO AUSTRALIA
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INTRODUCTION |
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INDEX
THE BIG HOUSE The Digby Family Recollections of Lizzie Smyth Education, work, play & death Sale of the Digby lands LIFE OF THE WORKERS Staff & work Shearing & sheep Mythology and superstition The life of children Lizzie's life after Drumdaff LANDLORDS & TENANTS The plight of the poor Hardship & rent LEAVING IRELAND The decision to leave Life on the high seas Life in Sydney FINDING LOVE Edie Joy and sorrow The trip "home" The written word WAR A family at war Four lives divided Life and death at the Front Coming home A DREADFUL TIME FOR MOTHERS 1915 1916 1917 1918 GALLERY |
For many years I have been collecting and collating information and stories from my family's past. It has been like creating a huge jigsaw, gathering the pieces and finding a place for them between and connected to others. Little pieces of a story that seem to have no relevance can unexpectedly become a gem that links seemingly unconnected parts of a story, or to another person out there who also shares your story.
I come from a long line of hoarders. Handed down through the generations are documents going back to Ireland that are over 300 years old, all sorts of written history of my mother's family. But the things that interest me most are the stories, the personal and human side of the lives of people whose procreations have led to me and my wide and wonderful family, or whose lives have been intertwined with those ascendants of mine, through choice or circumstance. All of these stories come from primary sources, memories saved in the form of letters, poems, diaries, postcards and photographs. There are also the official documents - wills, rent records, marriage agreements, hand drawn maps and many more that provide verification of stories told. Many of them travelled from Ireland to Neutral Bay, a northern Sydney suburb, where they lived in the cottage seen above in its early days, Suramma, in the care of my great grandparents, Everard and Edith Digby. Consequently they passed through two generations and lived for some time inside a tin trunk at the back of a farm shed in northern New South Wales, before travelling to rural Victoria and the care of Edith and Everard's oldest great-grand-daughter, me. The stories that emerge are much more than a personal journey, for they reflect the experiences of many others from generations past. In amongst the more formal evidence of lives lived, are letters from the outside looking in, letters from a woman who lived on the Digby estate as a child, recalling the life of workers like her parents and of the gentry, the Digby family who lived in the Big House in County Roscommon. This is only the beginning of what I hope will become a fuller story in the future, a jigsaw of thousands of pieces that connect a King of France to landholders in Canada, sons and a husband to their wife and mother for the duration of the first world war and workers to their landlords . As I write I am at the beginning, embarking on a project I have long dreamed of, so I can share these stories not only with family, but to others whose stories bear some resemblance to any of these, to those who have their own unique stories to tell and to anyone interested in social history. I hope you enjoy reading about the lives of these people, and that it may encourage you to write down your stories. Penny Bristol-Jones July 2015 Continue... |