1948 Trip in Western Australia and the Northern Territory

In 1948 Ray Bean went on a 10 week trip around Western Australia and parts of the Northern Territory. The map below shows some of the places he visited.

Meteorite Crater

SYDNEY, April 22.-One of the world’s largest meteorite craters had been discovered in a desolate region of Western Australia, according to the representative of a Sydney oil company. He states that the crater is 150 ft deep and more than one mile wide, at the base. Its position is given at 400 miles inland from Broome, on the edge of the desert basin.

1948 ‘Meteorite Crater’, Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton, Qld. : 1878 – 1954), 23 April, p. 4. , viewed 17 Mar 2016, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article56815223

It was first noted on June 21, 1947, during an air reconnaissance flight over the Desert Basin by Frank Reeves, Vacuum Oil Company’s geologist, and N. B. Sauve, geophysicist, in a Zinc Corporation plane piloted by Dudley Hart. Reeves said, “From the air it looked like a huge bomb crater and was thought to be of volcanic origin.”

On August 24, 1947, Reeves, Hart and Dudley Evans reached the crater after a jeep trip for 47 miles from Billiluna Station. Reeves and Evans then were of the opinion that the crater must be volcanic in origin, because they did not believe that a meteorite blast could tilt the earth’s strata so regularly. Subsequently, however, they decided it was a meteorite crater.

1948 ‘METEORITE CRATER IN W. AUSTRALIA’, Goulburn Evening Post (NSW : 1940 – 1954), 23 April, p. 5. (Daily and Evening), viewed 17 Mar 2016, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article103708166

By late July 1948, less than a year after the initial air reconnaissance flight that had located the crater and only just eleven months after the first ground crew had visited the crater for initial observations, Ray Bean and the members of the Upfield Trek visited the Wolfe Creek Crater.

Arthur Upfield based his book ‘The Will of the Tribe’ on the trip to Wolfe Creek Crater. Upfield in the Words of his detective Napoleon Bonaparte, the half caste Aboriginal Detective, described the Crater (called Lucifers Couch in the book).

The Stranger must have been of considerable size to have made such a mark on the land of lemon tinted sand and red-gold rock. He arrived, it is recalled by people who lived at Hall’s Creek, late in December 1905, to dig a pit several hundred feet deep and one mile in circumference, and to raise about it a rampart of rock and rubble some hundred feet above the surrounding plain. Such was the impact, the shock up-thrust three observable rings of rock-rubble; the inner half a mile from the pit, the middle about three quarters of a mile, and the outer a full mile from the centre.

Western Australia Trip 1948. Wolf Creek Crater. R Bean. Out of Copyright, copy from the State Library of NSW

Western Australia Trip 1948. Wolf Creek Crater. R Bean. Out of Copyright, copy from the State Library of NSW

Because one course is not enough!

I decided that I wanted to up my game with my Genealogy and learn more about one of my favourite past times. I want to make my family tree better and tell the stories of my family better. I may, also, like to go into Genealogy as a profession at some stage. So I decided to do a course.

I went searching online and one of my favourite places to go for new courses is FutureLearn. FutureLearn is a group of Universities that offer free online courses for anyone who wants to do them. I have done a few including one on Richard III and one on Empire etc. I have also done some other similar courses through some Universities in Australia as well. In this case I looked for a course on Genealogy and as usual FutureLearn did not disappoint. So I signed up for this course. Genealogy: Researching your Family Tree.

But the course didn’t start straight away so I signed up to a couple of other ones as well, that mostly have nothing to do with Genealogy. On top of that I also started listening to some Genealogy Podcasts. It is so nice to have a phone that will do that now. On listening to Genies Down Under I came across the Course at the University of Tasmania which would eventually lead to a Diploma of Family History. So I enrolled in that course as well as the FutureLearn one.

So my thoughts. So far I have actually enjoyed the FutureLearn course more. The one from UTAS spent the first two weeks teaching us how to use their online system. It isn’t very hard to use and should not have needed two weeks worth of familiarising ourselves to be able to use it effectively. After that we started to get into the meat of the course. That has been better but one week of the FutureLearn Course has pretty much covered two weeks of the information from the UTAS Course. Plus the FutureLearn information has, so far been more engaging.

I have always enjoyed taking these free courses from FutureLearn but this time around it has really struck me just how amazing these courses are. The fact that I am able to take a course from Strathclyde University in Scotland, for free and that that course can be a really good quality course is just amazing. I can’t thank FutureLearn and the Universities that support it enough for the wonderful work that they do.

Learning how to search better on Ancestry

I was directed to this video for better searching on Ancestry. It is brilliant. Ancestry is one of those things that I dip into and out of. I usually go as far as I can go with my research doing some searches on Ancestry and but not actually looking at the records, just knowing what search terms will pull up records that I am probably interested in. Then I go to a Library or pay for just one month and pull up all of my searches. So having access to Ancestry while I do my Diploma is quite a luxury.

So, it was worth having a look at some of their video’s to check and see if I am doing the best I can with my searches. I don’t put my tree up on Ancestry at all, after all it is right here and I don’t need to have it on Ancestry as well. But, even though I can’t make use of the hints section of this video because I don’t have my tree up, I think the general advice on how to search Ancestry is well worth watching.

The Warnecke Family

Warnecke died 28 February 2016

Warnecke died 28 February 2016

One of the Warnecke relatives passed away two weeks ago. He was in Germany and had been there for a number of years but all of his living descendants and his ex-wife still live in Australia. So we had a memorial for him this weekend to celebrate his life and the time that he was with us.

One of the things that I had done about a decade ago was ask him to write up for me some memories of his experiences in Germany as a child and then again in Australia when he arrived here just after WW2. We hear so many stories about how the English and the Australian’s saw and felt about the War but we hear so little about the German experience other than the Nazi experience and the ‘evil’. So I was really interested to see if I could get some information about those experiences from someone who had been in Nazi Germany and yet had not been part of the Hitler Youth and had not experienced the War as one of the ‘nasty’ Germans. He had in fact experienced the War as someone who survived depredations and loss and all of the negatives of War and none of the rallying cry and build up that we see in all of the movies.

Imagine my surprise then, when just before moving back to Germany in his 70’s, this relative turned up with over 100 pages of hand written notes detailing his experiences in his early life including his time in Germany as a child and teenager and his move to Australia in his early 20’s. They were his present to me before he left to go to Germany. I was unbelievably stoked that he had written so much information and was happy to give it to me.

I really appreciated the pages and devoured them straight away with the intention of transcribing them when I could. I then leant them to another family member and promptly forgot about those pages for a number of years. Just a week ago I was woken up early to a phone call letting us know that this ancestor had died unexpectedly in his sleep. All of a sudden I realised that I hadn’t seen the pages he had given me for a decade or more and that I didn’t know if we still had them. What a tragedy if they were lost.

So I contacted the person who had last had them. He still had them and had in fact seen them just a week before. Not only that, he was happy to scan them and put them up on Google Drive so that myself and other family members could transcribe them over time.

So, I have completed the first 10 pages of 106. Eventually I think they will need some editing and some additional information but it is possible that they may make a good book. In the mean time I am just so relieved to have the pages made available to the whole family again.

This post is done without tagging the individual and without giving a name, other than a surname. The death of this person is too recent and too raw for more details to be added at this stage. Eventually this person will be another story on this website and I hope that people enjoy his story as much as they enjoy other stories. In the mean time the work of transcribing his work and life in his hand, is ongoing. I look forward to what the finish will bring.

The Female Factory at Parramatta

The Ryde District Family History Society have a meeting once a month on the second Saturday of the month. Every year they ask a bunch of people to speak at these meetings about things that will be of interest to Genealogist and to Local Historians alike. This month they had a representative of the Female Factory at Parramatta to come and talk to them.

It appears that the Female Factory is once again in danger of being built upon or being damaged in some way and so the ‘Friends of the Parramatta Female Factory’ are doing their best to get people to fight for its survival. As a result of this fight the ‘Friends of the Parramatta Female Factory’ have set up a petition to have the Female Factory declared a National and World Heritage site in the hopes that this will stop the repeated attempts by the Parramatta City Council to build on the site, build smack up next to the site, drill holes through the walls to turn the buildings into IT storage area’s, and stop access to the site by people who are interested in the very meagre offerings Australia has in the way of historic buildings, because the buildings are used in some way by the Government. So for anyone who is interested in signing that petition it can be accessed here at Friends of the Parramatta Female Factory Petition.

So what is the Parramatta Female Factory?-It was the first purpose built Female Factory in Australia. It was designed along the lines of the Poor Houses in England and it was both gaol and home to many of Australia’s convict women and to some of our free settler women as well when they first arrived in Australia. If that wasn’t enough the Female Factory had other functions as well. It was a place where Free Settler men and Convict or ex-Convict men who were able to get married, would go to find a bride. It was a public laundry, it was a home, a work house in particular for spinning, weaving, the breaking of rocks etc and finally it was sort of a day care centre as children under the ages of three were allowed to stay with their mothers until they reached three years old at which stage they were sent to one of the orphanages around.

It is estimated that one in seven Australians are descendent from the convict women who were housed in the Female Factory. To my knowledge I am not one of them as my convict women all arrived too early. The Parramatta Female Factory was commissioned in 1816 with the foundations stone being laid in 1818 by Governor Macquarie.

The Female Factory built in 1821 was designed to take over from a previous building that had done the role of housing women for a number of years. This building was known as the “Factory above the gaol”. The first Female Factory was tiny with room for only 30 women. Considering the number of women convicts who needed a space to live and work and also protection for both themselves and their children, this very small building was soon woefully inadequate for the job. Thus the new building was built to address the need of the female convicts of New South Wales.

The convicts in my family all arrived prior to the 1820’s in the second fleet and in 1801 on the Cornwalis. Both of these were well before the Factory was built. So unfortunately I do not have a link to the Female Factory at Parramatta, but it is important that this structure be saved.

For more information about the Parramatta Female Factory here is a link that describes the life of the Factory and the other uses that the Factory buildings have been put to over the years, including as an asylum for the insane and as an orphanage.

Parramatta Female Factory

And for those who are interested in the the Female Factory in Tasmania-

Cascade Female Factory, Tasmania

 

 

Research Project for Diploma of Family History

For the Diploma of Family History I have to put together an outline of some family history research that I am going to do. So this seemed like a good time to re-visit my old bug bear ‘What happened to Mary Ann Russell nee Gransden’?

So the aim of my research project is ‘To find what happened to Mary Ann Gransden, did she really marry the convict William Russell per Asia or did she marry another William Russell? Where and when did both William and Mary Ann die?

I have already written up a story of what I know, or think I know, about Mary Ann Gransden here In Search of a New Life. But, there is a fair bit of discrepancy with William Russell. All of his details while he was a Convict are in the Maitland area. He doesn’t marry Mary Ann until he gets his conditional pardon, so that makes sense, even though he was having children with her prior to that time, but all of his convict details are in Maitland not in Bathurst where Mary Ann was having children to a William Russell. So is the William Russell that Mary Ann married and the William Russell convict per Asia, one and the same?

Marriage William Russell and Mary Ann Russell nee Gransden

Marriage William Russell and Mary Ann Russell nee Gransden

Then of course there is the question, where did they both die. A William Russell arrived in Bathurst from Rocklea in 1882, see below.

VAGRANCY. – William Russell, 70 years of age, was charged with vagrancy. He had come into town from Rockley and applied at the lock-up for relief, seeking admission into the Benevolent Asylum. He said he was without friends and was suffering from rheumatism. The Bench gave him an order for admission into the Bathurst Hospital, from which place he could be forwarded to the Benevolent Asylum if proved to be a fit subject.

1882 ‘POLICE COURT.’, Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal (NSW : 1851 – 1904), 18 November, p. 2. , viewed 09 Mar 2016, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article65078388.

This William Russell is the right age for my William Russell and he was in Rocklea where other members of Mary Ann’s family were known to live. So this is a possibility. In which case, as he is alone and friendless Mary must have died well and truly before this date.

In 1862 there was the flood and a very harsh winter, it is possible that Mary Ann died at this time as there are records of William after this date but so far I have not found any further record of Mary Ann post this date. A death at this time may even go relatively unnoticed at a time when so many other people were missing. If William was away he may not have every known what happened to Mary himself. Alternatively, other members of this family have, on occasion, just up and left their partners and started a new life elsewhere. This is not outside the realms of possibilities.

 

George Russell

Then, there is George Russell, the eldest son of William and Mary Russell nee Gransden. George Russell was or maybe was not, married to Margaret Beattie who may also have been called Margret Bullough. On the day before George was supposed to be in Court defending against an accusation of ‘making a false declaration’ because he put Margaret down as his wife on the birth certificate of their son George Loftus Russell, George accidentally over dosed on morphine while trying to get to sleep before the Court Case. Instead of attending Court to defend herself, Georges titular wife ended up attending a Coroners Court. On Georges death certificate his mother is down as unknown. 

There is still so much to find out about this family. I had thought that I had a fair handle on this particular family but going back and looking over my database in detail and having to explain to someone else what was happening has made me realise just how much information I have still to go before this family truly starts to make sense.

The full article on Georges death can be read here-

Death from an Overdose of Morphia

1867 Flood

Over the years I have been searching for the death of Mary Ann Russell nee Gransden and her husband William Russell. To date I have not been able to find them. The records that I do have for them seem to end in the mid to late 1860’s for both parents, although I still have some records to get which may shed some light on how long William Russell at least lived.

In the death records of their children, that I have, William is named as father but often Mary Ann is not named or known. This may indicate that the person who was giving information simply did not know it or it may indicate a bunch of other possibilities including desertion of her husband by Mary Ann, an early death etc.

One of the possibilities was an early death for whatever reason. In particular 1867 is a possibility. In this year there was a large flood across the majority of NSW, plus an extremely cold winter. A lot of people lost their lives and not all of those would have been recorded.

One eye witness account of the loss of life in those floods is included below as it was in the Bathurst Newspaper of the day. Mary and William were known to live around the Bathurst area. The family in this story were closer to Dubbo than Bathurst but deaths and problems with the rising river were happening all over NSW at this time with some quite significant flood events happening at Bathurst and the immediate surrounds.

THE FLOODS.
DISASTROUS FLOOD AT BURRANDONG
Loss of Life
(The Bathurst Times)
Mr. W. H. Suttor has handed us the following letter,
written by his son Mr F.B. Suttor, from Burrandong,
dated 23rd June. The tale it tells adds another appalling
incident in the many gloomy disasters which have attended
the recent inundation and the appeal it makes to benevo-
lence, we are sure, it will not be addressed in vain. Mr
Suttor says: –
I am writing a few lines hoping that the river will be
low enough in the morning for the boats to work, so that
I may send this to the post. We had a most disastrous
flood, though we have not lost much-a hut and some fenc-
ing being all. The water was in some of the outbuild-
ings, but fortunately, did not reach the house. Three feet
more would have turned us out. We had everything ready
to move, and remained up all Friday night and a most
anxious night it was. The river, however began to fall
about daylight.
I have now to tell of a most heartrending calamity.
The hut of a shepherd of Mr Blunden, named Baker,
who lived near the junction of the Mudgee River got sur-
rounded before he and his family could move (the water
rising six feet in ten minutes, and out of eleven persons
all were drowned but three. Those saved are the oldest boy
and girl and father. Those drowned are the mother, five
boys, a baby (girl), and a married man named Smith, who
came to help them about dusk, just before the sudden rise
of water. At the first rush of the flood, they all got on to
the tables, then onto a loft, and then had to cut a hole in
the back and get on to the top of the roof . Here they re-
mained until the water reached their mouths, when the four
left alive swam to a tree. Smith not being able to swim,
sank as soon as he left the hut. The poor old father
(Baker) gives a most distressing account of the scene- how
he held his children in his arms, dropping them as they
died (of the cold he says) to take up others that were alive
until none were left. He says the dogs, cats, and fowls
kept swimming round them and jumping on them all the
time they were on the hut.
“The survivors were rescued about daylight by the brave
wife of the man Smith who pulled a boat about a mile to
the hut, and then took them to the shore. She heard
them cooeying for a long time, and started to try and save
them, which she had great trouble to effect, the current was
so strong”‘
The following particulars of the melancholy catastrophe
have been kindly furnished by Mr F. B. Suttor, who held
a magisterial inquiry into the matter –
Isaac Daniel Baker recognised the bodies as those of his
wife Mary Ann, aged about 43 years; of his seven children,
varying in age from 8 months to 13 years; and of Frede-
rick Smith. He deposed; “I am a shepherd in the employ
of Messrs Blunden, and live near the junction of the
Mudgee and Macquarie Rivers; on the 21st, when the
sheep came home, about 5 o’clock p.m., I went to the bank
of the Macquarie, to see how the river was, I saw it was
rising; there was some high ground at the back of the
sheepyard, where I had made a gateway to let the sheep
out in case of a flood, this was between my hut and the
river; we put in the sheep and I went in to supper with
all my family; I told my eldest son Moses we would have
to remain up all night to watch the flood, after we had
supper my two children who are now alive, went to see
the flood and returned and told me that the water was
coming very fast down the gully, and was within two or
three hundred yards from the hut; when I went out,
the deceased, Frederick Smith, was coming towards
the hut to render me assistance, he said the water
had risen six feet in the Mudgee River while he
was at supper, and asked me what I was going to do; I
said we shall get the children out; we went to the hut,
and I told my wife to get the] children ready, as the water
was coming round us fast but there was still dry ground;
in about ten minutes from that time when I went out again
I found that the water had entirely surrounded us, and
there was no possibility of escape; we then all went into
the hut, I fastened the door and about twenty minutes
afterwards the water began to come in; I then put my wife
and children on the loft over the bedroom, and
stood on the table; I was not afraid, as I had
hopes that the water would not rise much higher;
at this time Frederick Smith was sitting on one of the
beams of the loft; when the water reached the
table I got off and sat on another beam, in about three
quarters of an hour the water rose to the top of the wall
plate, I then got a tomahawk and cut a hole in the bark
of the roof, the deceased Frederick Smith got out first,
I handed the children out to him, and the rest followed,
when I got out the moon had just risen, and there was no
land to be seen; I then cooeyd for the first time, it being
then about 9p.m.; we were all cooeying, and in about
three quarters of an hour heard a voice in the distance and
thought it was from Mrs Smith, wife of the deceased F.
Smith, they lived on the Mudgee River, about a third of a
mile from my hut; the water at this time about ten feet
above the floor of the hut, a short time after this, I heard
Mrs Smith call out and ask if Fred (her husband) was
all right; I called loudly for help, and told her to go to Mr
Blunden’s for the boat; we thought she understood us, and
her husband told us not to shout any more as it might
bother her; some time after, as the water still rose fast, I
cooeyed again, and she anwered. I then felt sure she had
not gone to Blunden’s; when the water reached the
ridge pole on which we were sitting, seeing
no possibility of escape I told the children
to pray; we all joined in prayer; we were all
composed but one ltttle boy, who was crying; the water
continued to rise, and we had to stand on the ridge-pole,
about half-past 3 in the morning the first of the children
died-Fredenck, seven years old the water then being up
to my middle, he was not drowned but died of cold, just
after this my boy Daniel, aged 13 years, said “God
Almighty bless you all, I cannot stand it any
longer”‘ I held him till he was dead, the next to die
were John Isaac, aged 5, and Thomas Edwin, aged 3
years, they were in the arms of my son Moses, who said
“Father, these two children are dead-what shall I do
now?” I said, “Go to the tree while you have strength
so that someone may live to tell the tale”, he said,
“Father, I believe I shall be the only one saved”, he
then kissed me, and swam safely to the tree, which was
about twenty yards from the hut; I called to him that
his mother was still alive, and that I would hold her as long
as there was life in her; Some time after this my
wife died, and I let her go; I then went to take the baby
from my daughter Cecilia, but she said, ” No, father, you
cannot hold her better than me, and I cannot hold her
much longer;” I then kissed her telling her to hold the
baby as long as she could, and then to swim to where her
brother was; I swam to the tree and with the assistance
of my son Moses, got on the limbs; a very short time after
I heard a splash, and Cecilia calling for help, I heartened
her to strike out, and she came within arm’s length of us;
my son Moses leaned over, caught her, and pulled her up
the tree; the water was up to her chin when she was
washed off the hut, and she dropped the baby; Andrew
William, aged 9 years, died just before I left the hut, about
that time, also, the deceased F. Smith, who was holding
Henry Shadrach, aged 11 years, told me the boy was dead;
I said, “You have done all you can, you must try
to shift for yourself – can you swim?” he said,
“No, give me what directions you can-I may
have a chance;” I did so, and he started for the
tree, but sank at a short distance; about sunrise, Mrs.
Smith, wife of the deceased F. Smith, came in a boat by
herself, and released my son Moses (17 years), mydaughter
Cecilia (15), and myself-the only survivors of our family-.
and brought us to dry land.
Mary Anne Smith deposed to the difficulties she met in
bringing the station boat to the rescue, without assistance,
as soon as daylight permitted, and the exhausted state of the
unfortunate survivors.
It is to be hoped that charitable persons will forward
subscriptions to the aid of Mrs. Smith, now left a widow
with five young children. This brave woman has great
claims on her fellow-creatures, not only on account of her
destitution, but for the noble way in which she put off in
her log canoe into the roaring flood in the hopes of saving
the lives of others at the risk of her own, the water at the
time being fully fifty foot above its usual level.
The bodies of Mrs. Baker and her seven childron were all
found near the hut when the water subsided, and presented
a heartrending spectacle. They will be taken to Welling-
ton for interment.
1867 ”E FLOODS.’, The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), 2 July, p. 2. , viewed 08 Mar 2016, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13149675

Aside

In Honour of Women’s History Month

As I wrote two blog posts yesterday and I haven’t put a new family story up for some time I decided to put up a new family story today. So instead of writing up a new blog post I have written Mary Ann Gransden nee Stones story and put it up under family stories.

Schoolmistress

For all the courageous women who make up our Families and our Family Trees.

Linda Bean nee Pratt

I have put up my Eulogy to Linda Bean a number of posts back. It was a post more about how I felt about her life and death than the actual details of her life and death. However, it is now Women’s History Month so I am going to put up the Eulogy that was said at her service. That Eulogy recognises the ups and downs of her life including the fact that Linda had a terribly debilitating mental health disorder. Despite this, Linda had an eventful life and unlike many of the women of her time she worked before she was married and then when her marriage started to fall apart she went back to work to support both herself and her children.

Linda Dorothy (nee Pratt) Bean 28-12-1918

Linda Dorothy (nee Pratt) Bean

Linda Bean nee Pratt

Linda was born on 28 December 1918 at Ariah Park in NSW. She was the third daughter of Emily and William Pratt.

Linda was educated at San Souci Primary School and later at Crown Street Girl’s School.

After leaving school, Linda worked in a variety of jobs including a position as a stock clerk with David Jones.

On 4th April 1942, Linda married Raymond Percy Bean. After the birth of her three children, Linda trained as a nursing sister at the Concord Repatriation General Hospital and also at the Rachel Forster Hospital at Redfern. In 1967, Linda took on post graduate training at the St George District Hospital at Kogarah, where she obtained her Geriatric Nursing Certificate, after which she spent six years in District Nursing.

When Linda divorced, she became involved in a series of staff nursing appointments, with the British Motor Company, David Jones production Unit and with Pye Industries where she looked after the health of some 1,000 workers.

In her more senior years, Linda displayed characteristics of paranoia which had the affect of alienating family members, friends and associates. This caused her to become increasingly isolated and withdrawn. She spent her last years in the Presbyterian Aged Care facilities at Paddington and Ashfield.

Linda’s family was not aware until recent years that she was suffering from mental illness including schizophrenia. They felt regret that if they had known earlier about her condition, they may have been prompted to find better health care for her. Lind’s experience shows that there needs to be a better understanding of mental illness in the wider community and how it can affect families and carers. Also there needs to be improved communication between health professionals and close family members when a loved one is suffering from mental illness.

Prior to her battle with mental illness, Linda was very caring towards her family and to those whom she nursed in the wider community. She was artistic and had a great love of art, music and politics. She will be greatly missed by all who knew her.

Linda Bean nee Pratt

Linda Bean nee Pratt

Women’s History Month.

March is National Women’s History Month. So here is a very good article to celebrate Women’s History Month.

It is important to realise that women are often not heard in history. They were there and they participated in history but history mainly focusses on men. This is because men were the ones who were allowed to participate and also because how women participated and what happens to them is often missed out entirely. Men write the history or have in the past, thus men are the ones who are focussed on in history. This is changing but we have centuries of women’s history to make up and we will never have more knowledge of Women in History than we do of men in History.

Women’s history if often called ‘Little history’ because it is the history of day to day life and not of great events. But that does not make it any less valuable. I hope you enjoy some of the many stories about women in history below.

Some interesting articles about women and their role in history can be found below;