Family via letters

Archival records can help people connect with their histories, trace the experiences of ancestors and learn about the times and places in which they lived.
Footprints: The journey of Lucy and Percy Pepper reveals the story of Lucy and Percy Pepper and their family. The book reveals through letters and correspondence how they were affected by laws and government policies that defined who was ‘Aboriginal’ and who was not. It chronicles their struggle to keep their extended family together, fight for Australia in World War I, make  good on a soldier settlement block in Gippsland, and survive ill health and poverty.

Lucy with her children - Gwendoline, Phillip, Alice, Sarah, Lena & Sam

This extraordinary story of the fight is told through correspondence between Percy and Lucy Pepper, government officials and Aboriginal administrators. The letters now form a part of the collections of the National Archives of Australia and Public Record Office Victoria, they were gathered together by Simon Flagg when he worked for PROV.
Through telling the story of the Peppers, the book  illustrates many of the issues that Aboriginal families faced in early twentieth-century Victoria.
This is an ebook in epub format and requires a compatible ebook reader application on a portable device (such as iPad, other tablet computer, Kindle or Kobo), or on a laptop or desktop PC, and is available for $9.95 from the Public Records Office
Don't wish to buy the book, just borrow it? then place a Hold on "Footprints"

Percy Pepper was the son of Nathaniel and Louise Pepper. Nathaniel had grown up on the Ebenezer Mission Station at Antwerp, before moving to the Ramahyuck Mission Station in Gippsland.

The headstone of Nathaniel's brother Phillip at Ebenezer