Saturday, April 21, 2012

Important Message

Readers please note that this blog was started quite some time ago. Inevitably, some of the information posted will have been, at best, slightly erroneous or, at worst, completely wrong. Many corrections and much supporting information has been supplied by descendants or connections of the Townsend family. These have generally been left in the Comments section, with few corrections made to the original text.

However, the off-line document has been reworked may times to incorporate the new and amended information.

Descendants of Captain William Townsend and his associated families are welcome to contact me direct at geoffreydotdrewatbigponddotcom (make the necessary corrections in the email address) to obtain a copy in .pdf format. Unfortunately, the document contains details of living persons, so I cannot make it available to the casual researcher. One day, I will sift through it and remove such detail so that it can be made more widely accessible.

Many thanks to those who have followed this journey into the life and times of a very interesting man, and considerable gratitude to those who have contributed the lives of their particular branch.

Geoff

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

It just goes to show ...

... that if you persevere with something like this, there is always an interesting fact waiting to pop out at you. In the list of descendants of the Captain's third marriage, there is a Simon Townsend, born November 1946. I didn't make the connection at the time, but if you do an internet search on "Simon Townsend" you will find much about his days as the developer and host of the children's TV show "Simon Townsend's Wonderworld". However, if you search on his full name "Simon Patrick Townsend", you will find why his name should resonate with all of us who were subject to the "conscription ballot" during the Viet Nam conflict. Simon, while working as a journalist (like his father and grandfather) sought exemption from army service on the grounds of conscientious objection but this was rejected and he was incarcerated for some time in Holsworthy Military Prison.