Email 05221

Dear Ric,

My interest is mostly in the Shannons one of whom (Mary Ann 1843-1887)

married a John Williams. Her brother John Jacob Shannon, married Esther

Hines (1852-1919). Two of Esther's great granddaughters are my Aunties Pam

and Marsha Horton (actually my third cousins). Kieran  is also  Marsha's

third cousin, but no relation of mine.

I am helping Marsha with our shared Hines family tree, but I also became

very interested in the Shannons because of their stories. I thought they

would be another family of Irish immigrants, but they turned out to be a

pair of Jewish convict brothers who were sent out to Australia for petty

theft. They were of Portugese origin and the family left there for England

during the Inquisition. Their descendants were great contributors to the

commercial life of Cooma and Monaro.

Family history can be pretty sensitive. I had a great great grandfather who

was the "greatest horse breaker in Australia" and joined the mounted police

to track down the Clark gang of bushrangers, but later deserted his wife and

four children to run off to Tasmania with a 15 year old pregnant girl and

ended up in prison for running a brothel "frequented by chinamen",

specialising in underage girls. Nobody in the family ever mentioned the

second part of his life ( he was supposed to be a remittance man related to

the Duke of Norfolk- a claim never substantiated). When I write that part of

the story I'll put in the dates and leave the reader to figure out the rest

and put it down to a "mid-life crisis". I have been reading the guest book

on Kierans website. I do think your view on the Williams Nash family is

important, and needs to be recorded in a way which does not distort the

facts, but allows the reader to make their own moral judgements.

I just used Spyhunter to  identify the registry entries for "Adrotator",

which has been driving me nuts for a couple of days. I didn't want to pay

for the software, so I just  manualy deleted the entries, and it seems to

have improved things no end. Getting rid of Backweb seems to have improved

by response times and reliability a lot. I wonder how long it will be before

the spammers catch up with my new email address.

Nice to hear from you again

Regards

John