How it all started…

In 1983 my beloved mother-in-law, Rene Sutton, passed away.

Few people attended her funeral; close family, some of her friends and neighbours that we knew well, and some we knew by sight. However, there were one or two quite elderly people, probably in their 80s. Neither Robert, his brother, his cousins nor I knew them. Our sons asked, “Who’s that?” and we couldn’t tell them. Later, we found out they were Lovett and Sutton family from Sydney. It was that inability to be able to tell our children their paternal family story that started me on this journey.

I had been so lucky in my childhood. I grew up knowing all my grandparents, my uncles, aunts and cousins. They told Ted and I their stories and we lived some of them. My parents and I passed them on to the boys. Robert’s family was different. He was 8 when his father passed away. The Sutton family had little to do with Rene and the two boys. Her family, the Lovetts were a close family, but they lived an hour or more away by car. Rene didn’t have a car, nor could she drive, besides which, her brothers and sisters were so much older than she.

Rene was the youngest of a family of 12 children, born in 1904. Aunty Ada, the eldest was born in 1884. There was a gap of 20 years between their ages, which meant that in 1944 when Robert was born Aunty Ada was in her 60s. When I first met her , she was 83. Roberts first cousin’s were all in their fifties and sixties. Our children were the same age as the Aunty Ada’s Great Grandchildren. We had skipped a generation.

Over the years, Mum passed on some of the Lovett story, but much remained a mystery. It was after her funeral that I made a promise to the boys that I would find more of their Sutton and Lovett stories. Over the years the search has expanded to all the branches of their heritage, through me to their Ambler extended family and through their father to the Sutton extended family.

Our Extended Families

The Ambler Clans

The Sutton Clans