In the beginning (or how I became obsessed with genealogy)

After my father, Eric Henry Lindsay Tissott, passed away in 2006 I was sorting out some of his papers and came across an envelope labelled "Genealogy". Now, I had no idea that he had started to pursue an interest in his family's history. Included in this slim envelope was a letter from his sister, my Aunt Ida, describing what she knew of their grandfather Henry Tissott. 

Ida's words are:
"Dad's father was born in Wolverhampton I think he said and was sent out as a boy of eight as a convict for pinching a cow and later a rabbit. Eric I forget the name of the place where convicts were sent. Evelyn and I went & saw the jail & where convicts were put in chains etc well he was there till he was 20 odd, then went to the mainland."

These few words started me climbing around the family rosebush.

My father's family grew up in Western Australia; from Tasmania, the rest of Australia is known as "the mainland" which means that my great grandfather, Henry Tissott, had been sent to the penal colony of Van Diemen's Land (now called Tasmania) sometime during the 19th century. The gaol that my aunts Ida and Evelyn had visited was Port Arthur.