Nola Ford (right) visits her great-grandmother’s Cooktown grave with new-found relative Brenda Svendsen. Photo: Supplied.
A Mackay-raised New Yorker looking for answers on her family history has been able to visit her great-grandmother’s grave in Cooktown.
Knowing her father’s side had a connection to Coen, Norwegian descendant Nola Ford reached out to the Cooktown History Centre (CHC) to fill in the blanks for her family tree write-up.
With the help of CHC secretary Marjorie Scully, Ms Ford found her great-grandmother was buried in Cooktown after travelling to Australia, settling on the Bloomfield River, and marrying another Norwegian man at Ayton.
Ms Ford said she acquired letters her great-grandmother and other girls on her vessel had written.
“I’ve got three of those letters in the write-up, and I called it Lonely Letters Across the Sea, because they didn’t know English, everything was strange, and I think they were very lonely for a long time,” she said.
“It sort of makes you appreciative of what the heck they went through.
“I appreciate coming to Cooktown now when the sun gets darn hot, and you think of how they all must have been in their long dresses.”
At the CHC, Ms Ford also found and connected with Brenda Svendsen, a descendant of their great-grandmother’s second marriage.
“She gave me some of the Svendsen wedding photos, so that was wonderful, because I didn’t have anything on the Svendsen side of the family, which was important because great-grandmother had remarried,” Ms Ford said.
“Both Marj and Brenda have just been amazing and provided me with an incredible amount of information I didn’t have.
“You don’t get much from your family, because they say they can’t remember, so all I had was snippets of information, but it’s amazing what you can find out when you go to a source like a local.”
Ms Scully said the reconnection was a “true Cape York tale”.
“Sometimes it can get quite emotional, especially when you discover something new or you trip over something or families meet,” she said.
“It’s fantastic to be involved in reconnecting people with their families and I think everyone gets a big buzz out of it.”
