Genealogy is one of the worlds most popular pastimes now with millions of people taking up the challenge of finding out just where they come from. Each person has a family tree and that tree has hundreds of thousands of branches.

I began my own ancestry research about 18 years ago and for a large part of that was almost a fulltime job. Luckily a cousin of mine had already made some inroads and thoughtfully passed on information to me. It is always a good idea to do this if you have a relative also doing family history as it is a form of ‘back up’. I know of some people who treat the information they build up as ‘theirs’ in a way and resent the idea of sharing what they find. This is silly. The fun of the family history project is working with other people, even those you know.

A stroke of luck in my case was that a line of my mother’s side of the family wound it’s way back through Ireland in an unbroken line back through early England to William the Conqueror and beyond. It certainly makes things easier when you can find your ancestors are written up in the books of history!. Here I will write, for now, a little bit about that side.

My Great Great Grandfather was Augustus James Hamilton Courbarron, son of Frederick Courbarron a farmer of French parentage from Jersey in the Channel Islands; and Mary Hamilton, daughter of landowner John Hamilton of Brownhall Demesne in Ballintra Co. Donegal. The Hamiltons founded the seat of Brownhall in 1690 and built an imposing house on acres of land. The family were descendants of the Ist Duke of Hamilton.

Come forward to the late 19th century and Mary’s son Augustus is a sea captain who arrives in Sydney Australia and marries a young Irish girl from Killarney – Mary Morrissey.
He was a captain in the merchant navy and sailed to many places such as India, South Africa and the West Indies. On one occasion he returned to his mothers birthplace at Brownhall and took wife Mary with him to visit. She only visited once and on leaving, by horse and carriage, turned and looked back as the large old house disappeared behind the trees.
I had always wondered how she felt, and how her husbands mother Mary had felt, on catching their last glimpse of the ancestral home.

I was lucky to be able to find out. In 2002, while living in Belfast, Arnold took me across the country to Co. Donegal to visit my cousin, the present John Hamilton.
I had been writing to them for a long time and, for a long time, it seemed the chance to actually visit this piece of history – both family and Irish – would be beyond my reach. But Arnold made it happen for me and helped me realise a long held wish.

As we approached the estate with it’s tall weathered wrought iron gates, the house well hidden beyond the forest of trees, I felt I was in a way retracing steps. Travelling down the winding drive the house revealed itself timidly until there it was…where it had been since 1690. I felt I was seeing it from the same place where old John Hamilton had stood and decided that that spot in the distance would do just fine.

This is an extremely condensed account of my Hamilton and Courbarron side. Soon I will add a category just pertaining to family history with links etc.

I know not everyone can turn up an ‘ancestral home’ in their searches but whatever is found is important. I have branches on my tree that lead to people and places that never figured in the annals of history at all. What you do find, write it down. Our history is a huge jigsaw that we will never find all the pieces for no matter how hard we try. When you find a piece, record it, no matter how small. Because it is yours.

Above: That’s my Great-Great-Great Grandmother, Mary Hamilton, aged 13, in a portrait taken in Dresden in 1839.

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