Greetings!
Just waking up on Sunday morning in a downtown TravelLodge in Perth, Australia. We've got a day until we pick up our RV, and head off north. Pat's reading the Press Democrat online, and I'm beginning to remember our visit to New Zealand.
As readers know, our travels have always contained a healthy component of family history. Pat and I come from adventurers who seem to have taken risks to explore new paths for their families. Following their travels makes the places we visit more real, and their experiences more imaginable.
My grandfather on my father's side, William Walker Fearon, left Cumbria in 1909 with his older sister (Marian McArthur Fearon), and her husband (Gordon Clark Stronach). My grandfather departed the group in Arizona, where Gordon took a job in the copper mining industry. After a four-year enlistment in the Army in the Southwest, my grandfather ended up in Ray, North Dakota, where he eventually rose to be the Police Chief.
But this is the story of the travels of the Fearon family to New Zealand. Gordon and Marian were cremated in a cemetery I visited on Friday about ten miles southwest of Auckland, New Zealand. The cemetery also contains the grave of Marian's younger sister, Rebecca. Nearby are the graves of Charles and Roger Fearon, who died in 1921 and 1929, almost fifty years earlier. With that information, I have begun to explore online records. I'll report back when I have more of their stories.
On Friday afternoon, we visited Fearon Park, the last home of my great aunt, and a local cemetery, and you can view them online (Looking for Dead Relatives). The cemetery is huge (200 acres), and I appreciate the Auckland Council staff for their assistance in locating the information on my family.
On Saturday morning, before our flight to Australia, we drove to a nearby Maori and European settlement which has been occupied for over 800 years. The architectural and botanical expertise exhibited by Maori landscape designs is overwhelming, and deserves a more detailed explanation in a later post. You can see the photos I took in an album titled (Aotearoa - the original Maori name for New Zealand).
Just waking up on Sunday morning in a downtown TravelLodge in Perth, Australia. We've got a day until we pick up our RV, and head off north. Pat's reading the Press Democrat online, and I'm beginning to remember our visit to New Zealand.
As readers know, our travels have always contained a healthy component of family history. Pat and I come from adventurers who seem to have taken risks to explore new paths for their families. Following their travels makes the places we visit more real, and their experiences more imaginable.
My grandfather on my father's side, William Walker Fearon, left Cumbria in 1909 with his older sister (Marian McArthur Fearon), and her husband (Gordon Clark Stronach). My grandfather departed the group in Arizona, where Gordon took a job in the copper mining industry. After a four-year enlistment in the Army in the Southwest, my grandfather ended up in Ray, North Dakota, where he eventually rose to be the Police Chief.
But this is the story of the travels of the Fearon family to New Zealand. Gordon and Marian were cremated in a cemetery I visited on Friday about ten miles southwest of Auckland, New Zealand. The cemetery also contains the grave of Marian's younger sister, Rebecca. Nearby are the graves of Charles and Roger Fearon, who died in 1921 and 1929, almost fifty years earlier. With that information, I have begun to explore online records. I'll report back when I have more of their stories.
No comments:
Post a Comment