Foreword

After my successful history of Samuel Gilbert and his wonderful wife, Mary Amanet, our first Gilbert ancestors in the Territory of New South Wales, written specially for the girls and boys of the Samuel Gilbert Public School at Castle Hill, it has been suggested that I should write a similar story for the children among the thousands of descendants of Daniel Brien and his wife, Ann Parker, our first Briens, who were our other two ancestors as well, and who intermarried when Timothy Brien married Charlotte Gilbert on 25th May, 1833, at St. John's Church of England at Parramatta.

Like the facts which came to light in the Gilbert story, the story of little Ann Parker has never been written, and the children of the latest generation will never know about Daniel and Ann Brien if I do not present their details to them.  We have four large volumes on them and their descendants.  And why should not this information be placed before the girls and boys in the form of a story written for Grade V ?

When my late wife, Linda, and I were on a world tour for ten months in 1961, we spent a few days on the island of Bermuda, out in the Atlantic Ocean, after visiting the Azores, which are the exact antipodes of Melbourne.  In Bermuda I had an opportunity of reading a History of Bermuda which had been written by Canon Tucker for the school children of Bermuda.  We had been residents of  Traralgon in Gippsland for nearly twenty years and, while I was the Clerk of Courts there, my office was full of the Court registers on the history of Traralgon.  I became the unofficial historian for that part  of Victoria.  But there was no complete or correct history already written for the school children.

When I read Canon Tucker's history, I was most impressed with his style, so I copied out the first few pages in full, and I determined to use that form for the children of Traralgon.

I talked it over with the proprietor of the local newspaper, and he was so enthusiastic that he told me that, if I did write such a history, he would print it for nothing as his gift to the local boys and girls.

It was a big job.  I had to have copies made of old plans and photographs, and I wrote it all to "Dear ****", my young reader.  We printed 1,000 copies in 1970, and they sold like wildfire, and our "River of Little Fish" became a best seller.  It is difficult to obtain a copy now, even secondhand, for all the people keep holding on to "The River of Little Fish" for their grandchildren.  People wanted a reprint, but who was to pay for the cost ?  A former Traralgon boy tried to put it on to the Internet, but his idea was not approved by the Traralgon Historical Society.  So he and I went further, and we put it on to  CDs for presentation to every primary school  in the Traralgon area, ready for use in January 2001.

Then an historian up at Grenfell in N.S.W. heard that I knew something about Mary Gilbert who had come out to Sydney in 1817 as the wife of a convict, Samuel Gilbert, and that there was a Samuel Gilbert Primary School shown on the map of the streets of Castle Hill, near Parramatta.  Could I tell him anything ?  She was only my GGG grandmother, but I had never heard of that school before.  So I wrote to the School Principal to find out why my ancestor had been so honored.  But the Principal and the 650 children at the school knew almost nothing about Samuel Gilbert and his life in Parramatta.

I had some 350 pages on him as the prosperous town baker in Parramatta and his story had never been written before, so I took the opportunity of writing the story of Samuel Gilbert, the Parramatta Baker, and his brave wife, Mary, who followed him here in a convict transport.  I decided to use Canon Tucker's method and to write the Gilbert Family History for Grade V. of the Castle Hill School.  When it was finished, some people thought that it should be printed as a book, but that was too costly, and my friend the computer man, offered to join with me and to produce another CD on the Gilberts for presentation to the Castle Hill Public School and to all of the interested Gilbert descendants, free of charge.  The School received 12 CDs and three hard copies of the history, ready for its opening in January 2002, all free of charge.

The full story of Daniel and Ann Brien is told in Volume 1 of my researches.  Volume 2 carries the history of their children Catherine and Jane, Volume 3 the stories of children Timothy, Mary Ann, Daniel, Elizabeth, Clara and John Robert, and Volume 4 completes the histories with those of children Sarah Jane, James and Eleanor Grace.  As I am now in my Nineties, I felt ashamed that all of the data which I had collected might not be made available to our children, so it is now put into an introductory form for those children when they reach the age when they are interested in their genealogy.   But I have taken them only as far as the first generation, and although they may know of their grandparents, they will have to fill in the gap by reference to the history of their own particular ancestor.  That is all to be found in my appropriate volume.  It is still not indexed, for more data is coming in all the time, but it is all there for posterity and, as we might say in Latin, "Res ipsa loquitur".

If we are successful in producing this as a CD, be my guest and read it.

William J. Cuthill
11 Fairmont Avenue,
Camberwell.  Vic.   3124.