FHACT Monthly Meeting (Register)

The FHACT April Monthly meeting has a guest speaker Dr Richard Reid. This is a hybrid meeting. Members and guests interested in attending should register for this event via Zoom or in-person.

*** Note: In person tickets have sold out. Contact us  for more information.

After registering to attend via Zoom, you will receive an email with a link to the external Zoom website to complete the registration.

The topic for this meeting is:

"The Inaugural Father Brian Maher Lecture"

Dr Richard Reid,  Irish born and educated, worked for more than 40 years as a high school teacher, museum educator, historian and museum curator. Thirty of those years were spent in Canberra, in institutions such as the Australian War Memorial, the National Museum of Australia, the Senate and the Department of Veterans Affairs. In 2011, he was the Senior Curator for the National Museum's exhibition on the Irish in Australia, 'Not just Ned'.

Among Richard's publications are "A Decent Set of Girls": The Irish Famine Orphans of the Thomas Arbuthnot, 1849-1850 (with Cheryl Mongan), Farewell My Children: Irish Assisted Emigration to Australia, 1848-1870, Bomber Command: Australians in World War II and Sinners, Saints and Settlers: A Journey through Irish Australia (with Brendon Kelson).

Donated to our library by Father Brian Maher is a  unique and valuable manuscript collection, gathered over more than four decades. It consists of written papers and files detailing the lives of over 400 Catholic families and their descendants. Many of these families are linked to the early settlers in the ACT and southern New South Wales, including Irish immigrants, convicts, and free settlers.

The files of 27 local pioneering families and their descendants have been indexed and digitized as part of a pilot project made possible by funding made available from the ACT Government under the ACT Heritage Grants Program. For each family line, the source documents are wide-ranging. They may include details from parish registers, birth, death and marriage certificates, books, newspaper and journal extracts, immigration and convict records, wills, maps, photographs, and private letters.