Thank You for buying this book. Along with countless thousands of other Australians you may now find out more about your ancestors. I warmly welcome you to a hobby that will open up new avenues of rewarding interest. You will develop the wonderful gift of conversation and through the postal service will establish friendships that will endure for many years. You will activate unused brain cells and because of this interest you will get more out of life.
One of the great things about family research is that you can put it away at any time, and when you feel like doing it again, you can pick up your records and resume your research. There are many books now being written on this subject. By writing in my own personal style I shall endeavour to pass on to you what I have learned over many years.
James McClelland, OAM

IMPORTANT: Please note, that due to the natural sequence of life, some of the addresses in this book may alter. Always mark your envelope "PLEASE FORWARD".

Book 14 - 45 Pages

This book is designed to assist you in two ways.
To assist you with addresses to whom you can write to for information.
To assist you to understand Census Records and other old records.

Please remember that no one book can ever hope to contain every single bit of information that a Family History Searcher needs; but as most of the entries in this work have stumped me at one time or another, I am sure the book will be of immense assistance.

Please remember, also, that because of the normal evolution of life, an address may change, office bearers pass on and others take their place, pastoral runs become villages, the village grows into a town, the town becomes a city. Then again some towns start off as boom towns, then simply become ghost towns. Soon the only thing to mark their existence is a little deserted cemetery.

Allow for change in your thinking. Mark all envelopes "Please Forward"; for although the address may have changed, the bond of fellowship and goodwill that exists between all Family and Historical Searchers never changes, and somehow the letters always find their correct destination. It is my privilege to have walked my allotted life's steps, the same time span as yours.

James McClelland O.A.M

Book 49 - 112 Pages

Teach your children the importance of their name. It is important for them to know how tremendous an asset a name can be to them. It not only identifies us as individuals, but we can, by simply signing our name, make ourselves responsible for a mountain of debt, and the years of unhappiness that debts can cause. By signing our name, we can chart our lives into many years of a happy rewarding marriage, or again, by signing our name to divorce documents, we can end years of an unhappy marriage.
The importance of our name can never be adequately described.
So, write down your name and look at it. What do you see? Just a few, or eight, or more letters? But what a wealth of history, joy, happiness, sadness and heartbreak those few letters hold locked into the fabric of your name. Where also could you find a record of history stretching back eight hundred years of which, you yourself, are a part of? And it is all contained within your name, and because it is such a valuable, precious thing, a great responsibility is entrusted to you to pass it on to future generations.
Now, although men and women have existed on this earth for more than 50,000 years, our surnames only become hereditary names about the year 1350 AD. So in all truthfulness we can only really trace our ancestors back to about the year 1400 AD. The only exception to this would be the royal blood lines.
To properly understand Family History, it is important for us to understand how Christian names came about, and how they evolved into Surnames, and how our names became more important as we progressed from cave dwellers to people living in Clans, Tribes, to people living in fortified villages, then to villages living in the shadows of great castles into which we went for shelter when danger threatened, then the castle complex gave way to fortified towns, then the fortified towns grew into cities, and the cities grew into sprawling suburbs as we know them today.
When we were people living in a tribe, small in members, it was easy to identify people by giving us only one name, but as our numbers grew, we started to travel and visit other villages, and things started to get a bit confused, so we started to give people two names. The second name came to be known as a Surname. For a long while we did not attach much importance to Surnames and we often took the Surnames of our Clan leaders, but when it became necessary for us to pay taxes, laws were passed by the Kings insisting the people choose a Surname and retain it. For a while we added an "O", or a "Mc" or a "Mac" to the front of a name to distinguish a father from a son, or an "S" to the end of a name to distinguish a son from his father. But as our population grew, even this became too confusing and we adopted the simple custom of each family member taking the surname of the father, and when a girl married, she took the surname of her husband........

James McClelland, OAM

Book 56 - 45 Pages