This web site was last updated  March 22, 2011

Latest news and recent discoveries

March 2011

I have added transcripts of the birth and death certificates of James Lewis.  Thanks to John and Beryl Norton for allowing me to post these onto the website.

After discovering the mistakes relating to the Lewis family in February, I decided to recheck the birth dates of the other children of George Lewis and Sarah Frederick.  As a consequence I have made changes to the birth dates of Mary Ann Lewis and James Lewis. 

I believe the incorrect dates came from the Mutch index which is available on Microfilm in many local libraries.  Generally it is a reliable source but in this case contained three errors for this family.  I have now gone back to the primary source, the Microfilm of the original baptism records which I can access via my local library.  These church records were available for all the children of this family with the exception of Eliza Lewis.  Her details are only available from the NSW Registry of Birth Death and marriages due to some of the Microfilms never having been released for public use.  Her record has been confirmed from an authorised transcript from the original records.

I hope that there are no more errors.

February 2011

I wish to thank John Norton for kindly pointing out some errors in these web pages. They have now been  corrected.  I had a wrong birth date for Eliza Lewis and an incorrect location for her marriage to Samuel Byrnes.  I apologise for the errors and hope that there are no further inaccuracies.

January 2011

It is some time since I last made changes to these pages.  In the intervening years I have made some further discoveries.  This has lead me to making changes to the main book files and also I have added some additional documents to the supporting files.

The most exciting discovery has been finding that Sarah Lewis suffered some form of dementia in her old age.  I had been bothered by the fact that her husband George Lewis had made no provision for her when he sold his farm to his youngest son James in 1852.  In 2010 correspondence came to light that tells the story of Sarah in the latter part of her life.  However there is still a mystery which I hope will be able to be solved.  It concerns the fact that Sarah was found wandering confused on the Western Road near Parramatta in 1853.

The mystery is what was she doing at Parramatta?  She must have been living with someone, but who?  Were some of her children living in this area in 1853?  If anybody can shed light on on this mystery I would be very grateful.

I have also taken the opportunity with this updating of the book to make some other corrections.  The first concerns the name of Alfred Byrnes.  In numerous places throughout the first edition of the book I had referred to Alfred as Alfred Roy Byrnes.  It is Alfred's son, known by many as Dave, who is named Alfred Roy Byrnes.  Since Alfred senior's birth certificate has never been found there has been some uncertainty over his name.  However in every official document that I have been able to locate he does not have a middle name recorded. I have edited the second edition of the book to correct this error.

The second error refers to the Frederick surname.  Once again, in most of the official documents it is recorded as Frederick although the "Fredericks" spelling is used occasionally.  I have changed the spelling in the second edition to Frederick except when it was written as Fredericks in documents that I have transcribed.

June 2008

I have in recent weeks been fixing up my referencing for the book files and I have also been keeping my eyes open for any new information.  I have made some new discoveries relating to the family of George Lewis.  Two documents relating to land transactions involving George Lewis have come to my attention and also an incident with the law involving one of George's daughters Elizabeth (Betsey) Lewis.  I discovered the latter while I was following up on some letters written by Betsey's uncle Thomas Sims.

I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Gail Davis from the State Records of NSW for her assistance in referencing sources originating from that office.  She patiently corrected my attempts at referencing and supplied me with the correct NRS numbers for items, which in my ignorance, I had never realised I should have been recording.

Lyn Thomson from the NSW Department of Lands also provided assistance with correct referencing for the numerous Department of Lands documents that I have used in these files.

March 2008 

I have started on uploading the files to the web site. This process is a real learning curve.  I won't notify people that the site is running until I am happy with it.