Now that I have successfully placed online information concerning the families of both of my grandfathers and my maternal grandmother, I feel it is time to turn my attention to my paternal grandmother, the gloriously named Mafra Pearl Bruce.
Known to her 28 grandchildren simply as "Nanna Sherry" and to many others as just "Sherry", Mafra was a typical Australian blend of Scots, English and Irish, and one of the most beautiful souls ever to grace the earth.
That's her in the photo above, posing in a family snap with her husband Patrick 'Bob' Sheridan, their first-born child Bill and Bob's grandmother, Margaret Bourke. It was taken c. 1928-29 in Ascot Vale, Victoria, where Mafra's in-laws, Paddy and Bridget Sheridan, lived.
Mafra's parents were William Robert Bruce and Sarahann Everard, both of whom were born in Victoria. Her paternal grandparents were David Bruce, of Collessie, Fifeshire in Scotland, and Jessie Gunn, who was born in Belfast (Port Fairy), Victoria of recently emigrated Scots parents. Her maternal grandparents were John David Everard, the Victorian-born son of an Irish carpenter and his English wife, and Sarah Mary Joyce, the English-born daughter of a stonemason and his wife who had emigrated with their young family to Victoria in 1855.
Still no sign of the Draper and Sanders families, you may be thinking...well,the Irish carpenter's English wife was Jane Sanders, and her mother back in Enfield, England, was Jane Draper.
The history of these two families back in Enfield has been fascinating as their stories touched on an unsolved murder and early Quakerism. There is still much to be learnt about my Draper and Sanders lines, but by putting what information I have online, hopefully fellow researchers will contact me and we can attack the unknown together!
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