The Killion, Quinn and Hand Families of Port Macquarie and Kempsey and their Feeney Family

💡Help unlock our shared family history with your DNA matches Have you tested at AncestryDNA? Your match list might contain the missing links I'm searching for. As an enthusiastic genetic genealogist, I'm working to reunite our ancestors with the families they were separated from—by time, distance, or circumstance. After 40 years of research, everything changed in 2017 thanks to DNA testing. We were finally able to reconnect—on paper—our many-times-great-grandmother  Jane Feeney  with her birth family. It was a breakthrough I’ll never forget.  (You can read the full story  HERE .) Now, I’m continuing that work—and your DNA matches could help solve the next chapter. 🧬 Why DNA matches matter Each of us inherits  50% of our DNA from each parent , but the specific segments we receive are randomly selected. That means you and your siblings—or cousins—can inherit  d ifferent parts of your shared ancestors’ DNA . Because of this,  you might match cousins tha...

My Ancestors Meet AI: What Could Possibly Go Wrong? My family history research is full of learning, discovery and, yes, frustration. Interpreting DNA results, chasing elusive ancestors or transcribing spidery old handwriting can be slow, fiddly work. And as another birthday rolled around, I found myself wondering how to keep up with my ever-growing list of research projects. Should Artificial Intelligence (AI) join my research toolkit? Image produced using ChatGPT Back in January, I was  “volunteered”  to give a short presentation on using AI in my DNA research. That unexpected nudge sent me down a fascinating rabbit hole—and the deep dive began!  The first thing I learned? There’s a  lot  of choice out there. Several AI platforms are popular in the family history community. ChatGPT  and  Claude  seem to lead the pack. I decided to start with the free version of ChatGPT. Before long, I’d upgraded to a paid subscription.  As I said in my talk,...

On 25 July 2024, it will be one hundred and forty years since the death of Thomas Seward. It's taken our family historian, Martyn, over forty years to resolve the mystery of Thomas's death.  So even with all the breakthroughs that I made using DNA evidence in 2023, I've awarded this discovery the accolade of the most significant find in my ancestral lines over the past twelve months. Thomas Seward was the second husband of our great-great-grandmother, Jane Feeney. We are descended from her first husband, John Killion.     It's almost six years since this post was published about Thomas Seward- More "Australian Royalty" - Thomas Seward from England to Australia via India We couldn't find any trace of Thomas after he was released from Darlinghurst Goal on 20 August 1881. We knew he'd died by the time Jane sold the "Killion farm" in April 1885 as she's recorded as a widow on the sale documents. The breakthrough came through searching for var...

Family history reunites extended family to share their stories and, if we're lucky, old photographs. Sharing is so much easier with digital images. Multiple copies can be distributed electronically anywhere in the world without the cost of duplicating or the need for the custodian to part with their treasures.  The top digital image was shared with me by my Killion third cousin who'd received it from his Killion second cousin once removed, my third cousin once removed. It's among a group of unidentified photos thought to be Killion family in the possession of cousin Helen. When I shared digital images of photos in my possession, the connection was made with the second image which is a  "carte de visite"  of my great-grandfather, Francis (Frank) Gersbach. So we started looking more closely. Frank married Margaret Killion on 26 May 1885 at the Catholic Church in Kempsey. Frank was twenty four and Margaret was twenty three when they married. We thought that their pos...

Amy Halliday (nee Killion) was born on this day 125 years ago - 2 February 1897 at Smithtown, NSW. Amy married Herbert Halliday in 1922 in Sydney. They had five children. Amy died in 1949 in Marrickville. Amy was my grandmother's first cousin. Being such a big family, I often wonder what contact the cousins had. What I do know is that Amy's granddaughter, Helen, has this photo in her collection as well as a photo of my great-grandparents, Margaret Killion and Francis Gersbach, inscribed "Aunty Maggie and Uncle Frank". While the photo was taken about 1885, the years evaporate when see you read those inscriptions. So it makes me wonder about this photo. Was it a photo taken by a street photographer, perhaps during the war? Where was it taken? We have a clue as it was in front of a Bank of New South Wales and the street number was 155. Is there an inscription? This photo was shared on Ancestry.com by Amy's great-granddaughter.

Ida Killion is the daughter of Thomas Killion and Mary Jane Wood and granddaughter of John Killion and Jane Feeney. She was born in Smithtown on the Macleay River on 16 July 1893; the fifth of Thomas and Mary Jane's nine children.  Her parents moved to Sydney with their younger children between 1913 and the time of Thomas's death on 19 December 1917. They were living at 10 Church Street Paddington when Thomas died.  Ida has two entrees in the 1930 Electoral Roll. One is at 3 Hopewell Ave, East Sydney with her  mother and brother Albert. Her older sister, Annie Lyons was also living there with her three children, Doris, Monica and Kathleen. Annie  moved to Sydney after the death of her husband, Absolom, in 1923 and their son, Absolom, in 1921. The other shows Ida living at 48 Jersey Road Woollahra and working as a postal assistant.  The photo at the right has been taken from ancestry.com. It's held in the collecti...

Today's one hundred and eighty years since the arrival in Sydney of our many times great-grandmother, Jane Feeney (nee Baker or Bourke), and her older daughters, Eliza and Ann, on board the Columbine.   They where three of the two hundred and sixty three "bounty immigrant" who'd left Liverpool, England on 20 August 1841.  The bounty reward scheme ran from 1835 to 1841. Immigrants were selected by colonists who paid their passage. When the immigrant arrived, the same or another colonist would employ them. Colonist were then reimbursed by the government for all or part of the cost of the passage.  Jane and her girls were bought out by Messrs Aspinall, Brown and Company who it appear were heavily involved in bringing immigrants to New South Wales. Their immigration records are attached but the task remains to transcribe their details and find out more about their lives and employment in Sydney. The three are shown as "unmarried female immigrants" but Jane was a...