Their lives were just as real as ours
William Shaw
George Shaw
Harold William Shaw
George Robert Shaw
Pearce Owen
QRA King’s Prize
This website brings together my research into the Shaw family since their immigration to Australia and their contribution to life in Brisbane and the Federation.
The project began after several people contacted me seeking information about family connections. As the research progressed, it highlighted the importance of carefully assessing the authenticity of family history and historical records. It is easy to get excited and jump to conclusions that while imaginative do not align with historical facts such as ship passenger records, dates, or marriage & death certificates.
Official records relating to the family’s retail businesses and rifle competitions, registration certificates, family photographs, handwritten notes, and stories passed down through generations provide glimpses into lives that might otherwise have been forgotten.
My primary focus has been the direct Shaw line, tracing the family from William Shaw through George Shaw, Harold William Shaw, and my father, George Robert Shaw.
As with many family histories, the records contain gaps and occasional errors. Care is also advised with genealogy sites. Information outside Australia is usually not digitised and would require visiting places in Ireland and England for hand written church records. Some stories could no longer be verified, while others conflicted with historical documents. Rather than filling these gaps with speculation, I have tried to present the available evidence as accurately as possible and acknowledge where uncertainty remains.
I hope this collection helps preserve part of our family’s story and provides a useful resource for relatives, researchers, and anyone interested in Brisbane’s social and commercial history.
Through this research, I have gained a deeper appreciation of the generations who came before us. I hope visitors find their stories as interesting as I have.
I have also provided some family stories which may have an element of truth, but no clarification or helpful details are known.
chatGPT has assisted in my research, particularly around commercial and life styles of the time, also obtaining verification through records such as Trove. There are many sources I have not researched, such as lease records. Having worked with AI for several months, I was aware of scope and limits. As an example of misinformation, AI was confident in stating George Shaw had a shop in George Street. This was not the case, and came as a suggestion on a social media Facebook page. The correct reference should have been to Carl Sholtz and the gunsmith and ammunition workshop – which I remember. When advising AI of the mistake, the correct information was accepted but termed as a “mismatch”.
The information I provide is of interest, but we have no diary content. Hence, limited understanding of what was really going on with people, which has more interest to me than genealogy, retail stores and dates. I do appreciate the photography and clarification of the information that we do have.
