For the past 25 years, Paul Maguire, a successful semi-retired Australian businessman and award-winning Junior Chamber International member, has been researching his family roots which, as the name implies, reach back, in his case, four generations to his great grandfather, James Maguire whose birthplace is tantalisingly listed as simply, 'Enniskillen'.
This week, Paul and his wife, Lyn called into the 'Herald' office armed with some detail about is elusive ancestor, James, namely that he was born in Fermanagh in 1830, a son of Michael (a farmer) and Margaret McManus and how he landed in Australia having sailed from Ireland, circa 1849, to California with his cousin, John Sharkey.
James, and his cousin, seemingly, settled in Ballarat where he worked in the mines.
Then, on 24th October, 1861 he married Agnes Rourke in the local St Alipius Church. Her father was a timber merchant in Cork. The two witnesses were Sarah Daly and a 'Pat', no surname given on the marriage certificate.
However, there are no gaps in the subsequent birth certificate details of their daughter, Amelia Margaret and two sons, William John, Paul's grandfather and William John Maguire.
"I had been working on my family history for five years before that. What I'm really trying to find out is where James was born, details of siblings and where his parents, Michael and Margaret McManus were born.
"So, while I'm here I'm trying to locate any living relatives in Fermanagh of either James or Margaret McManus and, also, of his cousin, John Sharkey. I only got the information about John and also about my grandfather when we went to Adelaide, but that was the most we got".
That researched gave the names, John Sharkey and W. Sharkey as witnesses to the baptism of Paul's grandfather, William Edward John, who was born on 23rd July 1869 and baptised on 19th September that same year.
However, help was on the way from another source, Paul's elderly cousins, Mary Agnes and Dorothy C. Maguire, the daughters of Paul's grand uncle, James Thomas Maguire.
In 1978, these two ladies wrote to their cousin, reporting on their results of their quest for information about the offspring of a family member, William Maguire.
They are able to tell their cousin, the addressee of the letter, that she is the only surviving member of William's first marriage.
The rest of the letter flows freely, the sisters recounting how their own father, who was William James Thomas left home at 19 and did not communicate with his family, married in 1899 and lived in Brisbane. However, he did start writing thereafter, briefly, and made contact with his sisters in Melbourne and with their cousin's father.
"We heard no more from Willie after 1920, but we continued to write to aunts Annie, Lizzie and Mary (quoting the dates of their deaths and, also, their own father's). I continued to write until 1941. In my retirement, I decided in 1975 to try to locate Mary's daughter, Geraldine and have been in touch ever since".
Out of that correspondence, the sisters discovered that a grandnephew held the Duffield Chair in Surgery at Oxford, and that he had made contact with them.
That letter got an immediate response from their cousin, confirming among other things that Paul Maguire's grandfather lived in New Zealand and that their cousin was born there ('I got the impression that Uncle Willie lived in NZ, and I am so glad in my retirement years I took the time to locate our long-lost relatives').
Obviously enthused by her cousin's interest in the family tree, cousin Connie asked about her uncle James Thomas. This is where genealogy becomes fascinating.
Firstly, the sisters explain in their letter that their grandfather, the elusive James, having sailed from Ireland, joined the Californian Gold Rush in 1849, then headed to Australia two years later.
He and his wife, Mary Agnes O'Rourke, who was about 18 when she married him, went on to have 11 children.
The family at the start lived in Ballarat but grandfather James didn't like farming and sold his 180 acres to his cousin, John Sharkey before moving to Melbourne where he pursued various business interests.
The sisters' own father, James Thomas graduated from a Jesuit school and would have been pursued a university education, 'but there was no money to send him there, so he became a reporter on the 'Melbourne Argus'.
It's new ground that Paul Maguire would like readers' help with. For the record, he is a son of Eugene Ignatius and Kathleen (Wood) Maguire, one in a family of nine. He and Lyn reside at - PO Box 402, Mackay 4740, Australia, or they can be contacted by e-mail: maguire@easynet.net.au.
