A New Tapestry: Australian Huguenot Families

The Huguenot Society of Australia has a new book. 

A New Tapestry: Australian Huguenot Families adds new families to those included in the Society's first book, The Hidden Thread, Huguenot Families in Australia, published in 2009.

The new title cleverly picks up the theme of the first title. Although many Huguenot families (such as my own Pierssené forebears) did not congregate in London as the weavers of Spitalfields, enough did so to make this an obvious overarching theme for the book's editor Robert Nash, the energetic Secretary of the Society. 

Families covered in the new book are André, Arabin, Azire, Beuzeville, Bosanquet, Cazaly, Chamier, Chauvel, De Boos, Dède, Delahoy, Delamere, Desbois, Des Reaux, D'Esterre, Duchesne, Duterrau, Fourmy, Fontaine, Guilletmot, Juchau, Le Sage, L'Oste, Niquet, Perdriau, Petitjean, Pierssené, Rivière, Teulon, Vatas, & Vautier.

For all of you Pierssenés out there, the new book contains a chapter on Herbert Pierssene (nee Herbert Pierssené Fatt) who founded the Australian branch after his arrival in Western Australia in the late 1880s, his wife Angela Elizabeth Piferrer and their descendants. It updates, expands and enhances the chapter in my book Pierssené, a Huguenot Family of London, published in 2007, a few copies of which are still available online through BookPOD. My book also contains a great deal of information about the Fatt family descended from Thomas Fatt, 1745-1773, who married Ann Pierssené in London in 1766.

Books like these make a great Christmas gift for someone special.

Fatt Family

The internet is a wonderful way to find family members - recently some of the Schmaeck descendants have found my book via Google. But no-one yet has contacted me from the families of Brownlow Fatt and Ann Amelia Clayfield, or John Fatt and Harriet Greenfield. Does this mean that the Fatt family has not yet caught the bug of family history research?

In particular, I'm surprised that the descendants of Brownlow Fatt's son Edward Cuell Fatt, who arrived in Victoria in 1856 aboard Goldfinger, have not made contact. Only one descendant of John Fatt's son Frederick Helling Fatt, ordained as a minister in Ontario, Canada in 1888, seems to be aware of the Pierssené book. If only these Fatts knew, there is a goldmine of information about their Fatt forebears in my book Pierssené, a Huguenot Family of London (available through BookPOD).