McAlary Family History

They Went With Songs To The Battle....          They Fell With Their Faces To The Foe... Many of my family on both my maternal and paternal sides made the decision to serve their country in times of war. It is difficult to know what it was that spurred each of them to serve- whether it was from a sense of duty, a desire to see the world, a fear of the threat of the enemy toward their families and way of life or simply that they were not given a choice but were of a certain age and so were drafted into battles unknown. Whatever the reason, there is little doubt that the experience of war would have changed the lives of each of these men and women in ways they may never have expected. For some, they paid the ultimate sacrifice and gave their life so others may have freedom. For many who returned, their lives were likely to be changed forever- for some it was from physical injuries received; for others it was from those injuries that remained invisible, and those...

  Deciding who to write about first is my present dilemma. Will it be the elusive Felix Chatel who I re-discovered by DNA 100 years after he went missing? Will it be James Fitzpatrick my 3x great granduncle, convict, who as a result of being on the Hume and Hovell expedition became a very wealthy landowner in early NSW? Will my Canadian family, the Hood's be my first subject, explaining how I discovered they had changed their name from Dubois? Will my 1st cousin twice removed, Hugh Bernard McAlary, a WW1 Military Medal recipient get the honour? Or perhaps it will be my 3x great grandfather Thomas Hanley who survived the 1852 Flood in Gundagai, only to die three weeks later? I'm still not sure who will have the honour of being first. But one thing is for sure, in time,  I will write about all of these ancestors and many more.... stay tuned!