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Thank you, "CuriousDiana", for your suggestions. There were many Hickey people in the Braidwood region at the time of my great-great-grandmother Anne Hickey, and much of my work up until now has consisted of trying to sort them out. The following chart concerns Anne's brother, my Tipperary-born Billy Hickey the bushranger:
I have often wondered whether one of the three sons of Billy Hickey and Kate Brunton might have descendants living today, enabling me to find out what became of my great-great-grandmother's brother.

I can't believe that a reputed bandit such as Billy Hickey would have disappeared into thin air, because many of his mates were notorious: the Clarke brothers, the Connells, William Berriman, etc.

These Braidwood bushrangers are the subject of an excellent book:
Everybody is mentioned there by name except my Billy Hickey. Now, I think I know why O'Sullivan doesn't mention Hickey, who is nevertheless mentioned explicitly by the policeman Superintendent Martin Brennan, who was the source of much of the material used by O'Sullivan. You see, we're right in the middle of one of those typical situations in which historians refrain deliberately from being too explicit for fear of hurting certain readers. In his preface, O'Sullivan states:

I have not thought it necessary to mention a number of surnames when the family is still in the district and where the omission is not significant.

Personally, I am more offended by people hiding facts from me than if they were to tell me everything they knew.

William Skyvington

Jonathan,

I would be most grateful if you were to do a will lookup concerning the press cutting you sent me:



Here's the data concerning this man, who was my great-great-grandfather:

Individual’s name: Frank Skyvington

Death date: 3 May 1916

Age at death: 71

Place of death: Charlton Nursing Home, Plymouth (Devonshire)

Marital status: widower (Belgian wife Marie-Thérèse died in 1906)

Occupation: retired caretaker

Likely beneficiaries: Maybe his son William Skyvington was still alive somewhere, but I have no information on his whereabouts. Frank's grandson Ernest Skyvington (my grandfather) was out in Australia, and he was possibly a beneficiary. Maybe there was a female beneficiary named Mepham.

Other identification info: Frank Skyvington's residence, before entering the nursing home, was Yealmpton (Devonshire).

I thank you, Jonathan, for your precious help.

William Skyvington

I apologize for the volume of this message, but the subject is most important for me in the context of my maternal family-history activities.

After lengthy research in Australia, I recently learnt that my g-g-g-grandfather was a convict from Tipperary named Patrick Hickey, who didn't get his urge for cattle-stealing and house robbery knocked out of him by being transported. On the contrary, he even earned himself, through an additional crime committed in New South Wales, a taste of the hell of Norfolk Island. Patrick must have been a good talker, because he persuaded the authorities to send his wife and kids out to Braidwood. His daughter, Ann, married Charles Walker from Cork (steward on the Caroline, the vessel that had brought the Henty brothers to Western Australia), and they were my g-g-grandparents.

I am searching for information on one of Ann's brothers, William Hickey, born around 1823 in the Tipperary townland of Borris (now called Two Mile Borris). It was said in the following mysterious police document (about which I know little, except that it was apparently written just before the execution of the Clarke brothers in 1867) that this Billy Hickey was a Braidwood bushranger who rode with the Clarke gang:
 
WILLIAM HICKEY age about 45 years, farmer, residing at Reidsdale. Has been an associate of  the bushrangers and is still suspected of harbouring and assisting them. Was arrested in 1863 for highway robbery, acquitted by the Bench. His father, an Imperial Convict, was tried for house robbery about the year 1852 and sentenced to 14 years roads, which sentence was afterwards mitigated on memorial. William Hickey was present when the outlaw Clarke and William Berriman assaulted, with intent to rob, a number of Chinamen at Majors Creek in November 1864 and for which offence Clarke was under committal for trial when he effected his escape from Braidwood Gaol.
 
We know a lot about the Clarke brothers, photographed here in Braidwood shortly before they were taken to Darlinghurst to be hung:
On the other hand, I know almost nothing about their Braidwood friend, my ancestor Billy Hickey. Any assistance in this domain would be greatly appreciated.

William

Mike speaks of


Yes, this is one of the most frequent mortal afflictions you discover, along with relatively mild things such as plagues, when browsing through transcriptions of the UK census that appear to have been produced by Bombay typists. 

I agree with Mike that paper has a good future in front of it. That's why I prefer to use the Internet as a vector for distributing family-history stuff in a form that can be printed out on paper rather than simply looked at on the screen. Here's an example of this approach, based upon the use of Flash and downloadable PDF files, which I'm working on at present:

     http://grafton.nsw.free.fr/mother

This kind of website is not very sexy to see on the screen, because it doesn't tell you anything at all, but it provides you with a lot of nice stuff to download, print out and read in bed. And that, to my way of thinking, is a better place to delve into genealogy than in front of a computer screen.

William

The hybrid approach outlined by "glenidol" for her friend's birthday, combining several kinds of documents (text, photos and video), could be used to present results of everyday family-history research.

With free webspace becoming more and more readily available, we can think about storing high-resolution photos (capable of being transformed into images on paper) in this way. But we must not forget that only people with rapid Internet access and an excellent printer will be able to take advantage of such photos. A friend of mine has helped me do this (since I'm stuck with old-fashioned Internet access) for a few personal portraits at the following Flash site:

   http://grafton.nsw.free.fr/portraits

A common challenge when using old photos is to call upon other researchers in an attempt to identify individuals. Here again, a website can prove useful, since it lets you enlarge parts of the photo, to help in the identification process. Here's an example of a Flash site of this kind:

   http://grafton.nsw.free.fr/atalanta

(I hope I'm using tags correctly in this message. If not, please forgive me. I would have egg on my face if I made a blunder that displayed the entire RootsChat forum in green italics!)

William