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I've recently discovered a new addition to Ancestry, the New South Wales Land Grants 1788 - 1963. They are provided to Ancestry through the awesome State Records NSW. Much as I love visiting their facility, it's great to not have to trek to Kingswood, and be able to look these records up from my lounge room. I have several ancestors and their partners who received land grants, including Thomas Dixon, Richard Brownlow, Esther Spencer, James Brackenreg, and Joseph Bigge. These records are fantastic for helping me figure out exactly where these parcels of land were, and other little snippets of information. Eg, one of my ancestors (Esther's daughter and my 4x great grandmother) was born Mary Ann Spencer. Spencer was her mother's surname, and even though she had Thomas Stubbs as her partner and father of her child, because they weren't married Mary Ann was christened as a Spencer. Thomas does get a mention on the christening record, though. So Mary Ann grew up and married Charles James Brackenreg, named after his father, James Brackenreg, who was a soldier on the Second Fleet. Charles was almost always known as James, which makes it nice and confusing of course. These land grant records showed me two things that I love: one is that Mary Ann was known as Marian, and secondly, these grants were all signed by the Purchaser, so now I have actual signatures for some of my people!! By comparing the signatures on land grants to Charles James and grants to James, I could tell that the grant was to the same man, the son of the soldier, because the signature was the same on each record. I find it thrilling to see these people's names hand written on the page. It really brings them to life for me. I was happy to see Marian's name as that, to help differentiate her from her daughter-in-law who was also Mary Ann, but also to know that she had a pet name within the family, like a lot of us do.

Esther wasn't literate, as far as I can tell, and/or maybe they didn't ask for the spouse's signature on documents back in the 1830's, so I've never seen anything signed by her. I would love to have faces to put to these names, but sadly they had all died before photography took hold. Having their signatures is the next best thing!

Charles James Brackenreg 1797 - 1878

Thomas Dixon 1801 - 1847

Richard Brownlow 1794 - 1845

Joseph Bigge 1768 - 1833