The Voysey and Foran branches of our family tree span so many generations it loses meaning.
While amateur genealogists shrewdly choose a lineage that connects to the most famous person upstream, their honest appraisal must be that people more than a few generations back (or forth) have little more bearing on who we are than any stranger in the street.
Sadly, or perhaps fortuitously, the Voysey name and genes of this particular line are, due to a medical error, about to vanish with me, the final twig of this particular Voysey branch. So I thought it fitting to close it out with a potted history of those I knew, those who made us, and, yes, me.
Our story cover a small section of the Foran and Voysey timelines in 20th century Australia on the coast of NSW, where most of those lives were spent. It wanders northward at times with a foray into New Guinea.
My mother’s side starts with Stanley Searle Grace Foran (1897-1968) and my father’s with William David Annesley Voysey (1882-1951).
My mother’s maiden name roams via some eminent folk and a bushranger or two, back to Tipperary, Ireland, and not Scotland as expected. Apparently a Scot managed to plant his name indelibly upon them all. Chasing my father’s line into the past finds a famous architect C.F.A. Voysey and an infamous heretic Rev. Charles Voysey. It ends (or starts) with Henry Voysey (1753-1829), whose wife’s ancestry produces earls, barons, and viscounts. Honour is satisfied.
My personal story follows vague memories, facts, and scraps of conversation from forgotten years. So scant and scrappy in fact that I have no clear idea who I was and what I was thinking now so long ago. And sparse to the extent a memoir seemed impossible.
Born shortly after World War 2 ended, I have lived one of those brief moments in history when prosperity, opportunity, and relative peace reigned. By pure chance I have never known hardship, never been unemployed, never wanted for anything (except a lottery win), and somehow managed to avoid tragedy and injury.
It has been my pleasure and privilege to be raised in a loving and (shall we say, conditionally) normal household - despite its flaws, which this story will reveal.
As I write, and the year 2022 ends, my three sisters and I hover around our eightieth years and are in reasonable health, thankful for long lives lived.
For which I am ever so grateful.