About Photogenealogy 

This site was developed as a means of recording the history of my family and as a way of preserving and  sharing those family photographs  that used to reside inside a shoebox in the cupboard. I hope that my children, other members of my family and future generations will benefit from this information. I also hope that other people will visit this site and be inspired by my efforts, before their family history is forgotten.

Another reason that I have created this site is because I know that my images will be safe from disaster, such as fire, flood or loss. Additionally, by electronically storing these images, I know that they  are preserved for all time against further degradation caused by fading, deterioration of the media and over handling.

I have always been interested in photographs and photography; years ago when I worked in the photographic industry, I set about gathering (with the help of my parents) and copying numerous photographs of my ancestors. Since then, I have continued to gather images and digitise them, in order to create an electronic archive. I have been careful to accurately label all of the photographs in my archive and provide as much information as possible about the people in the pictures. Through Photogenealogy I hope to share this information with anyone who is interested.

If you have a family photograph or some data that you think should be  published on this website, please email it to me for possible inclusion.

Who am I?  and where did I come from?  These are questions that everyone asks themselves.  As a child I asked these questions and was quite content with the answers I received from my parents.   My mother who has always been interested in genealogy would frequently try to give me more information than I wanted as a child, but I simply wasn’t interested.  As I  grew older and my interest increased, I was no longer content just to know who my grandparents were, I wanted to know more about them and more about their ancestors too. 

I can remember when my father developed a similar urge to find out about his ancestors. For most of his life, he knew nothing at all about them.  The driving force within him prompted him to write letters to every FEW he could find.  It paid off, when lost members of the family provided him with the answers he was looking for. My father discovered a lot about his ancestry and I think in turn he felt that he knew  a lot more about himself.

Thanks to the efforts of my mother’s continual genealogical research and my father’s efforts in discovering his past.  I now have a wealth of information on my maternal and paternal ancestors. In compiling their statistical facts and biographical data I feel I almost know some of them.  I certainly know more about myself.  I am a FEW and I now know what it means to say that!

The surname Few is well-known in Cambridgeshire, England, particularly in the village of Willingham. Outside Cambridgeshire, however, the name is rare.

It would appear that I am descended from one Roger Few, who was almost certainly the first Few in Willingham , He may have come from Swavesey or Haddenham and he was granted a lease of chantry land in Willingham in 1534.  From Roger I appear to be descended from a long line of Willingham Farmers and Shoemakers. There was a Tailor and also a Beerhousekeeper, however the Few’s were a pretty unremarkable lot.  A.J. Gautrey, in his book, “The Few’s of Cambridgeshire” said that they were a “very undistinguished family, the members of which lived out their uneventful lives in this rural part of England. We can be sure that they loved, feared, worried about their crops and their animals, and sorrowed when their loved ones died. They were, in fact, typical English country folk”.

My father and grandfather, Eli, were both born in Willingham.  Eli – a Bootmaker by trade – brought his family to Australia in 1928, after 26 years service in the Royal Navy. My Father was barely four years old. 

My Mother’s side of the family can be traced on various lines and considerably further than my Father’s. Some lines can be traced to medieval times.

My great great great grandfather on my mother’s side, Marshall Waller Clifton  was  one of the earliest settlers in Western Australia. Marshall Waller Clifton was Commissioner of the Western Australian Company at Australind. The Western Australian Company was formed in London in 1840, the result of some five years planning to promote a large land settlement scheme in Western Australia.  The Company had purchased 165 000 acres of land from Latour and Stirling, an area that stretched from a few miles north east of Bunbury to three miles north of Harvey and from Leschenault Inlet to about 23 miles inland, into the Darling Ranges.  1000 acres were set aside to build a township and the rural lands were to be sold in 100 acre lots.  The name Australind was chosen for the settlement, a contraction of Australia and India, the two countries between which it was hoped to establish considerable trade.  It was expected that at least 1,000 settlers and labourers per year would go out over the next few years.

The descendants of Marshall Waller Clifton, who helped to settle the great state of Western Australia are but some of the characters who are my ancestors that have their information recorded on my website. Some of the characters are interesting, some not so interesting. Recorded in these pages are stories of tragedy and heartbreak, courage and perserverance, hardship and deprivation. They are stories of people who I am proud to call my ancestors.

I hope you enjoy my website.

Peter

Remember — 'Life is lived forwards but understood backwards'