Cooper - My Mother's Family
As a child, having association with Grandparents is a wonderful thing! My Nanna Cooper - Gertrude Emma Parrott, and daughter - Aunty Dot, lived at Tugun, on the Gold Coast and we would often go to visit or they would come and visit us. My Grandpa Cooper - George William Harbour Cooper, died when I was about 6 years old and I don't have many recollections of him. Nanna Cooper was small in statue, barely 5 feet tall. A real proper English Lady. I wouldn't dare ask her any personal questions. Children were seen but not heard in her company, you only spoke when spoken to. What a contrast to my other Nanna!
My mother told me that her parents, with her elder brother Frank, emigrated to Sydney Australia around 1916 from Nelson, Kootenay, British Columbia, Canada. Her Father worked in the shipyards there as a pay-master and store-keeper. They were originally from London, England.
I'm not even sure if my own mother had any knowledge of her English heritage, she certainly didn't tell me any, and the disheartening thing was, when I came across a very old 19th century family album - after my Aunty Dot died - full of unnamed photos.....I could have cried.....here was an album full of family members and I couldn't identify even one of them and there was no one left alive to ask!
With this family I have had to do the footwork on my own and follow the footprints that they had left behind. At this stage I joined ancestry.com.au to help me in my quest and it wasn't long before I made contact with a distant cousin in America, who was a descendant of Grandfather's - George Cooper - youngest sister - Alice Amelia. How exciting that was!
My mother told me that her parents, with her elder brother Frank, emigrated to Sydney Australia around 1916 from Nelson, Kootenay, British Columbia, Canada. Her Father worked in the shipyards there as a pay-master and store-keeper. They were originally from London, England.
I'm not even sure if my own mother had any knowledge of her English heritage, she certainly didn't tell me any, and the disheartening thing was, when I came across a very old 19th century family album - after my Aunty Dot died - full of unnamed photos.....I could have cried.....here was an album full of family members and I couldn't identify even one of them and there was no one left alive to ask!
With this family I have had to do the footwork on my own and follow the footprints that they had left behind. At this stage I joined ancestry.com.au to help me in my quest and it wasn't long before I made contact with a distant cousin in America, who was a descendant of Grandfather's - George Cooper - youngest sister - Alice Amelia. How exciting that was!