The Travels of my Forefathers

My personal journey through the eyes of my ancestors

I became interested in genealogy many years ago. My initial research was simply looking for ancestors and a skeleton of begets. Occasionally I discovered family members from places that seemed impossible to be true.

Having a name such as Utian allowed me to discover my Lithuanian heritage with research engines such as JewishGen and other databases on the internet. Ship manifests, births and deaths and archived news reports led me to find additional information.

The other name I knew was my maternal grandmother's maiden name of Doitsh. I had some idea of an English connection. When I came across a news item on an Auckland New Zealand newspaper archive it was strange none of my relatives talked about an Australian or New Zealand history.

From this I discovered that my great-great-grandfather Maurice Magnusson had immigrated with his family to Australia in the mid-1800's where he died in 1853. His daughter Julia had married a Prussian Jew named Isaac who had lived in New Zealand.

History is well documented so placing historical events behind the individual ancestors I came across was an obvious way to try bringing names, dates of birth and death, and geographical areas,together to become personalities. Census data, news items, ship manifests, and church and civic records as well as stories we had heard from our parents all combined to the development an accurate portrayal of the people who are my ancestors.

Armed with this information has made the writing of my book The Travels of my Forefathers easy and I believe realistic.

I have decided to attach a body of visual information in an album which I invite viewers to peruse and perhaps comment on.

Click here to browse the album. RESEARCHERS ALBUM

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