FIrcks

An ancestor from the 1600s plus a duel equals a story

As a family historian and writer, I am always keen to discover stories about my ancestors. So when I stumbled upon the story of one of my ancestors fighting a duel, I just had to find out more! It was not the easiest task, as the original story was in

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Unidentified Fircks photograph

The frustrations of old unidentified family photographs

Is there anything more frustrating than inheriting a lot of family photographs which are not identifiable? I almost think it is worse to have photographs which only have one word on the back – and especially when that word is illegible. Such is the case with the photograph above. On

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What is the connection between horses and cryptic captions?

I am not sure which is more frustrating – old photographs which are not identified at all, or written on in any way, or old photographs which are not identified but have cryptic captions written on them. Especially when those captions are written in almost undecipherable handwriting! Even more especially

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The Ship Called Him More Than The Ocean

My father loved ships. Twice in his life his dream of crossing the rolling seas on an ocean liner was realised. Once when he left Europe and immigrated to America and the last time when our family left America and immigrated to Australia. My father’s first voyage was from Cherbourg,

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They said, “Go West young man” and he listened

Once upon a time – let’s say seventy years ago – there was a handsome young man and a beautiful young woman. They had only been married for around four months and were beginning to build a life together in a big city. They were not wealthy but they were

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Round and Round the Circular Family Tree

Every now and again I dive into the large plastic tub which holds the many letters my father kept. Most of them were written by his two sisters but there is also a rather large stack of letters from my cousin Wolf Lackschewitz, who I have written about previously. Wolf,

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