...or Mackers' Ancestors!

By David McMillan.

A work in progress...last updated on the 19 June 2025.

This website is the result of my family tree research.  While I'd been collecting data for some years, it wasn't until I began using Trove that the secret family scandal surrounding my great-grandfather, Thomas McMillan, was revealed (regrettably, after my father had died). 

Correspondence with Peter Taylor (the son of my mother's cousin) laid bare the impact that WW1 and WW2 had on the Ball family.  Dave McIntyre, an amateur family and military historian, sent me the information on Lloyd Ball at Arnhem.

Amazingly, an ancestor from each side of the family fought at Gallipoli - one with the ANZACs  and one with the British at Suvla Bay.  And a third was imprisoned for sedition in Australia for opposing the War.

Ancestry.com.au became indispensable, connecting me with other family researchers with whom I traded photographs of distant relatives.

Dedicated to my parents, Laurie McMillan (1934-2006), Billie (nee Pearl Madden 1934-2010), and my sister Vanessa (1957-2011).

With help from

• various relatives, especially Peter Taylor, son of Mum's cousin, Fred Taylor DFM, who researched the Madden family, and Syd Pearce, (1941-2011), Dad's cousin, who researched the Oborne family.  Also siblings Deborah and David Veness, descendants of Agnes McMillan;

• various state BD&M indexes; 

• Google; 

• Wikepedia;

• Trove (http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper);

• NSW State Records Authority (www.records.nsw.gov.au);

• The AIF Project (http://www.aif.adfa.edu.au:8080/index.html);

• National Archives of Australia.  (http://www.naa.gov.au/index.aspx);

• Annalies Nuttley at http://www.familyhistory.net.au/;

• Julianne Morris at Family Origins Research;

• the Griffith Genealogical and Historical Society;

• Lance Stevens at the Yilgarn History Museum in Southern Cross, W.A., and

• the Armidale Family History Group Inc. in N.S.W.

Send comments and corrections to:

motoguzzimackers <at> yahoo.com

or visit http://motoguzzimackers.com/

or contact me on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/Motoguzzimackers