Draper, businessman, builder, financier. Queensland was his land of opportunity. William Hemmant is one of those surprising people half-hidden behind the career of a notable historical figure, in this case Robert Travers Atkin. Hemmant is an outstanding example of a self-made man. From relatively humble [...]
On the 15th August Lizzie Atkin received the news that her son and brother had both been killed on the 14th. Addressed to Atkin Esq, the telegram to her husband was opened by her youngest son. Lieutenant Maurice Hemmant was her younger brother. Educated at [...]
In 1587 all settlers from the first English colony in the new world, Roanoke, had disappeared - probably from starvation. It would be 20 years before Jamestown was founded in 1617, the first English colony to survive in the New World. The Spanish Empire dominates [...]
The majority of surnames in England gradually came into being in the centuries following the Norman invasion in 1066, and initially only a few prominent families would have used them. People were instead known by a personal name together with a description of, for example, [...]
Who are we? We all have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, and so on. Go back two hundred years, and you'll find 64 ancestors; another hundred years will give you 512. Go back to the year 1000AD, and you have about a million ancestors [...]
