Sheena Browning | Filling and Bridging Gaps in Her Family Tree

Peter Sewell - Gratitude for Knowing the Stories of Our Ancestors

Stories in Our Roots – 17 August 2021

[00:00:00] Heather Murphy: Hi, Peter. Thanks for joining me today to share your experiences researching your family history.

[00:00:07] Peter Sewell: I've been really looking forward to this interview..

[00:00:11] Heather Murphy: Well, thanks. Could you, start by introducing yourself?

[00:00:15] Peter Sewell: Yeah. So, I'm an Australian. I was born in Australia and for the last six or almost seven years, I've been living in Germany here. I have my own training and coaching business. I do a lot of travel. I've been to over 53 countries now and have plans to do a lot more exploring. So that's a little bit of my life. In a nutshell, I'm a passionate photographer as well. Love wildlife, love hiking in the forest and through the mountains of Northern Italy, which is my favorite part of the world. And yeah, photography and writing. I've written a novel called hunting season.

Which has been a great privilege to have a bit of extra time on my hands to be able to invest into that passion.

[00:01:15] Heather Murphy: Thank you. how did you first become interested in researching and learning about your ancestors?

[00:01:22] Peter Sewell: Yes. So, as I mentioned before, I've been in Germany the last seven years before that I went through quite a horrible divorce situation. And so that left me with like a real , like anyone that's been through the experience will identify when I say that you, you're kind of going through an identity reload, if you want to call it that. So, I traveled around the world for about four months with a friend after that and I ended up. Short story meeting a lovely German girl. And a couple of years later here, I was living in Germany and I'm married. I knew that one of my relatives names was Elizabeth Schultz, which is a very German sounding name. And so I started off with the question. Where did my German relatives come from what area? And so that led me into a whole discovery process. And yeah, it started from then.

[00:02:37] Heather Murphy: What is one of the first stories or the first ancestors that really got you hooked. On those initial times that made you say, I want to keep doing this?

[00:02:48] Peter Sewell: Yeah, I think it was a lady called Albertina Bartz spelled B AA, R T Z. And she had, I think around 10 children lived in what's now called modern-day Poland. But it was formerly the Prussian area and yeah, just her story of how her and her husband relocated to Australia and just wanting to track down where she came from and her way of life.

That, that was really. And what, she really got me going and eventually like the outcome was that I've tracked down this massive, the mansion in Western Poland and did a two or three there and, and visited this old house. Still standing. It was 150 years old. Very decayed inside, but the outside was pretty much. Intact. And that was one of the places where she lived with another family. They had a table that was about 14 foot long and had like 10 bedrooms in this massive house. And so just that, all of that story around this lady just intrigued.

[00:04:15] Heather Murphy: Could you give some details about her life? Like what was it specifically that drew you into her and her story?

[00:04:23] Peter Sewell: Okay. Yeah. I think just the fact that, well, I'm a father of seven children. So just a lot of those families in those times had large families. They had lots of children. And I think just from the point of view that he's his mum And yeah. Facing all of the similar challenges probably that we faced raising our children. But without the modern conveniences, of course. And just the fact that she was so adventurous and packing up alive. And I was actually able to visit the very train station that they. left. And so they went from there up to Hamburg and then caught a ship, which eventually made it to australia, but just that whole adventurous spirit with the family, like the children and everything can relocating them for what they believed was going to be a better life for them.

[00:05:28] Heather Murphy: And was it a better life?

[00:05:30] Peter Sewell: Yeah, well, australia is called the lucky country and in many ways we are, we've got a lot of space down under, so down there you can. Yeah. Well, I just did a big tour around my home state. Queensland a few months ago. And it was like, I think about 17 hours, just one way up the coast and then inland another 17 hours. So it's massive distances and yeah, it'd be amazing. Eucalyptus trees and koalas kangaroos. That would have been all new to them. So it would have been a fun world to explore for Germans.

[00:06:18] Heather Murphy: And you've, mentioned that you are a traveler and then where you're explaining your ancestors migrating and the experiences that they've had, what has it been like for you when you visit these places where your ancestors lived compared to places where you don't have a familiar connection? Is there a difference?

[00:06:39] Peter Sewell: Yeah, definitely like I just remember where, when I was at the big house and just. Your mind just wanders, like what was life like here? And you kind of like playing detective everything around and in Poland, there was this caretaker of the property and he was out the back and with a pole and a piece of wire on the top and he was. Dragging the branches down and picking the flowers of this plant. And from my understanding, because I can't speak Polish, but I understood that he was crushing the liquid out of these flowers and mixing it with some kind of alcohol and using it. It sounded like when he, cause he made motions on his elbows and knees, that it was kind of some kind like a cure for, or a help for arthritis. and so, yeah, I was thinking maybe this is like an old recipe that he's picked up from. Generations past, and maybe my relatives were doing this as well. Then yeah, just looking around and at the paddocks and thinking what type of crops they would have been growing. And, and then we passed a Fox on the way. So you're kind of thinking if foxes and they made a, might've had chickens and. Had a problem with foxes, all of the, your imagination goes wild and that kind of environment and yeah, kind of trying to piece together, the little clues that you see.

[00:08:26] Heather Murphy: you mentioned that your ancestors were adventurous leaving Europe and going to Australia. How have you related to them in that way?

[00:08:39] Peter Sewell: Yeah, the adventurous spirit, I think because, they went over, it was brand new. The whole landscape was different. There was probably not that many people around at the time in Australia, not as many as we have now, which is still quite small, but here they were in Australia. And that there was the Snoo land, there was the native Aboriginal people that they would have been, they would have come across Ross as well. So there was a lot of, a lot of new experiences in the world. And, and for me, like, Coming to Germany here. I I had so many different experiences as well. The whole language thing they would have had it, well learning english because Australia was an English settlement. So they would have had that whole language learning experience as well. For me, I like. To get out into the forest here and learn the names of the different birds and animals and so forth, which are all very different to what I'm used to in Australia. So I kind of kind of look at the world through my eyes a little bit, like, and think, yeah seeing the kangaroos And, coils and so forth. And, and yeah, I've been really curious about these new new animals.

[00:10:09] Heather Murphy: You mentioned before about thinking about these first-generation migrants coming to a new land and what their experiences would have been like compared to future generations. Could you talk a little bit about that?

[00:10:24] Peter Sewell: Yes. So for example, like when you, when you track back through your family tree and, and a lot of the stories are missing, but the numbers tell a story and you see like the dates when they arrived in Australia and then. How long they were actually alive before they died. And some of these relatives they were in Australia, maybe any, I think there was one that arrived and was dead seven years later. So back in that first generation, they were just sort of clearing the land and didn't realize it. Where they weren't able to enjoy the profits from that until the like maybe the third generation could kind of sit back, the land was developed for them. They, they had property that they could farm and actually enjoy the prosperity. So that, that kind of hardship and just looking at the numbers and. Working out well, life was really tough. Like they had whatever 12 children, three died before the age of five. And yeah, all of those kinds of stories. I'm sure you're familiar with, as you're doing a research as well, the numbers do tell us a story and sometimes it's really sad and sometimes inspiring as well.

[00:11:56] Heather Murphy: Yeah. I like how you say that the numbers tell a story because sometimes it's easy to say, well, I don't have a written history. My ancestors didn't leave a journal or they didn't write about their lives, but even if we don't have that, we can take out the story. Even just, if all we have is data.

[00:12:14] Peter Sewell: Mm. Yeah, definitely. Yeah,that's right, births deaths. The number of times they got married as well as just an amazing story. My first ancestor to come out to Australia and my father's side was English. He came out as a convict. We do know quite a bit of his story. Apparently he stole some bread and wine. One of my relatives has The his name was Joseph sill. One of my relatives has a Bible has original Bible that apparently has the ship's captain signature in the front of it. And then his first wife died and he remarried. I think two more times, I think he was like in his nineties when he died, but I think his third wife married when he was like 86 or something. And then it's interesting to compare that to my grandfather. Who also went through three marriages. He died at the age of 96. So it's sometimes like you can see the history repeats itself. And but it's really fascinating that as well.

[00:13:38] Heather Murphy: I've seen that part of the work that you do is focused around gratitude. How has family history and knowing the stories of your ancestors affected or contributed to gratitude, or how can you put those two together?

[00:13:54] Peter Sewell: Yeah, very good question. I've been keeping a gratitude journal for the last over 15 years now. So it's basically just a bullet point list and. I have lots of things on that list over the years. And it was interesting. The, I think it was 2020. I read someone's status on LinkedIn and they just said, oh, I've done a decade review.

And I thought gee, what an interesting idea. So I thought, well, I've got all these, these gratitude lists. It will be very easy for me and interesting to go through them and just kind of look at what were the highlights out of the last 10 years. And one of those. I would say the top five highlights was researching my family tree.

And I think the gratitude that comes out of that on the top of my mind is the living relatives that I've been able to come into contact with. And just through like asking around different cousins, like what information they had on the family tree. And kind of one person led to the next. And then I had both sides of the family and my mothers and my fathers actually organized some small family reunions so that I could get when I was in australia that I was able to meet all of these people sometimes for the first. And I've lost my, both my parents over the last decade as well. So it's kind of opened up or left a bit of a void in my life. And some of those people that I've met at reunions, have been almost like adopted parents to me now. Not from I'm just so extremely grateful for the opportunity and not none of it would have happened if I had not just sit down and, and research my tree. Now I have this whole. Rich relationship with these, relatives that I never had previously.

[00:16:12] Heather Murphy: In our earlier correspondence. You said something to the effect that you traveled, the world, you hiked Kilimanjaro written a novel, but family history has been more impactful than those things.

[00:16:26] Peter Sewell: Yeah. I think it's just the fact that. Like I mentioned earlier that just that whole self-discovery journey was a big thing. Like 10 years ago, when I was thinking, well, who am I. A big part of your life is around your marriage and children and yeah. Family. And when that's that whole situation changes overnight, then you can be left feeling quite undone and reconnecting to family history, kind of. Made me feel more comfortable. Then new identity that I was creating and I realized, look, my whole family history was migrants. They lift their countries and family. Traveling over the other side of the world in, in a time there was no internet and letters maybe took three months to arrive.

So it was very long time at times interludes between. For communication to get back and forth. Now I have the convenience of zoom and different communications, so that allows me to contact. But to answer a question reconnecting to the history like that gave me a bigger sense of who I was similar in the world. Also an understanding of the large context of history and kind of those surprising stories too, like. One of the family stories that got passed down on my dad's side was that there was a relative that for whatever reason was poisoning the aboriginals with porridge that he would make and leave.

And. The down , the bottom of the petty. And I was always, I always carried the shame of that story. Like how could that be? What, I didn't understand what drove him to, to do that. But nevertheless, like it's really said after research, my family history of fan, that there was a guy on my mom's side.

Again, on the German line, his name was Charlie Schultz and he was an amazing legend. He had a big cattle farm in the Northern territory, which is where most of the listeners, if you're from around the world and the Northern territory is where Oola Ru is, or Ayers rock So he had a large property there. Thousands of acres and his treatment of the aboriginals was very good. He paid the Aboriginal workers. He was one of the only ones that paid Aboriginal workers, the same salary as the white people. And he stood up against the government and stopped them, removing the Aboriginal kids from his property. Instead his wife Hessie volunteered to teach the children how to read and write. And under those conditions, the government allowed him to keep the children with their parents. So from that point of view, I was really happy that on one part of my, family history story is pretty sad. And especially like in the last year we've had the whole black black lives.

Thing happened. And then on the other side of my family history, here's this very redemptive story of, Hey, here's this immigrant from Germany who reaches out and offers to love and care and even had adopted some of the Aboriginal children into his family.

[00:20:24] Heather Murphy: I think that's important that we. Look throughout our whole family history, for all those stories, because yes, we're going to find positive stories and negative stories, but we get to choose how we're going to move forward. and we get to pick the parts of our legacy that we want to pass on to future generations.

[00:20:45] Peter Sewell: Mm. Yeah. I love that. I love that. And that's what I've found about gratitude is that even in my worst year, I was able to look back through my gratitude list and things. Whoa. If I, if I just looked at the bad things, it was my worst year ever. If I looked at my gratitude list for exactly the same year, it was my best year ever. I, because I graduated from from some studies that I was doing and yeah, he, of the different opportunities that I had at the same time. So it was both dark and light. In an unusual mixture. And I realized it's what you focus on in life that carries you through. You can deal with the life's challenges, as long as you focus on. The bright moments and think, you know, life is not just all gloomy. If you've got a roof over your head, food and water and like sanitation you're way ahead of a lot of people in this world. I could talk to about gratitude all day and I do have my own podcast Goals and Gratitude . Peter Sewell say, I would love to have anyone who's interested to join me on that as well.

[00:22:14] Heather Murphy: Yeah. And we'll have a link to your webpage in the show notes and. Right at the top says podcast so they can find it pretty easily. But I think , that's one of the ways family history helps us as it helps us shift our perspective. And we can see these people that we are related to who lived in circumstances that we wouldn't want to live in ourselves, or we see the struggles and things that they went through. And that helps us have more gratitude for the things that we have. And it opens up our minds. Too, like you're saying not focus on that negative, but focus on the positive. And I think that's one of the best things we can get out of researching our families.

[00:22:57] Peter Sewell: Yeah. And like I said on my father's side, they came out as convicts and that didn't have to be a narrative for all generations. There was amazing people that came out of the Sewell family And really helped society. So the story of one thief doesn't have to define even though it was a small crime in today's standards. But his story didn't have to define the whole tree.

[00:23:30] Heather Murphy: That's right. And the stories in our lives, those moments that are, not what we'd want them to be. They don't have to define our life. We can choose to, do something more, just like our ancestors, even if it took a generation or two, we're able to make something better.

[00:23:46] Peter Sewell: Yeah, that's right. I grew up with a beautiful mum and dad and not everyone has that. There's all types of stories that people have. And I'm sure some some of the stories of those listening would be really tragic. But those stories don't have to define how you live. And I think that's a good takeaway message.

[00:24:10] Heather Murphy: For someone who is thinking about looking into their family history, what would. You tell them about why they should do it.

[00:24:22] Peter Sewell: Just straight off the top of my head. I'm thinking of the living relatives that I've met and some just amazing people. And for example, I have a son, my youngest son is autistic. And while researching my family tree, I found a woman on my father's side who was also autistic, but had written several books on the topic. So she was very self-aware and able to communicate through writing in a way that helped hundreds of people. And she even, and I came across their website and just thought, well, what an amazing woman? And yeah, it's from a branch of the tree that I wouldn't have even known about except I sat down and yeah.

[00:25:20] Heather Murphy: Well, thank you. It has been great to hear your stories and I'm sure our listeners will appreciate them as well.

[00:25:29] Peter Sewell: Hey, it's been fun. Chatting Heather and , look forward to listening to more of your shows. So I've listened to a few and they're very interesting.

[00:25:40] Heather Murphy: Oh, well, thank you.