OK, this is a little long winded….bare with me…

Pierre LE POIDEVIN was born in 1801 (approx.) in France.
He was transported to Sydney on 28 September 1835 from England.  (he dropped the ‘Le’ and just went by Pierre Poidevin)
He was convicted at the Royal Court in Guernsey on the 13th December, 1834 for base coin forgery and sentenced for seven years transportation to the colony of NSW. (for those that don’t know, Australia started out as a penal colony and all the riff-raff started out here) Pierre was a single man, a cabinet maker and he could read and write. He was also a Roman Catholic. His physical description was described as – 5 foot 4 inches tall, very dark complexion, dark brown hair, greenish eyes. Once he had served his time, he became licensee of the Old Collector Inn, in Collector NSW, until he died in his sixties

He was married to a lady named Rebecca, and they had 7 children, 5 sons and 2 daughters

One of their sons was Francis Poidevin
He married Catherine Turner and they went on to have 12 children, 7 girls and 5 boys

One of their daughters’ name was Beatrice May Poidevin
Beatrice married Henry Bryant, and they produced 4 children, 3 daughters and 1 son

Their only son, Cecil Bryant, married a lady named Hazel
They went on to have 7 children – 5 boys, 2 girls

One of THEIR sons went to the town of Collector today
(You might recognise him)

And visited this quaint place, full of landmarks named for the Poidevin family

The pub’s still there

The general store’s still there

Today, we got to visit a place where part of our family started
Dad’s Great-great Grandfather, Pierre Le Poidevin, started out as a criminal
And seems like he turned out just fine
I’m grateful for that!

There’s SO much more to the story, with new stuff we’re learning all the time
We always wondered just where us ‘Bloody Wilsons’ came from
Now we know
We’re from FRENCH ancestry, ooh la fucking la!

For today, it was pretty incredible to stand in that town, visit our ancestors graves

And be proud of where we came from

Wonder if they’d be proud of us?
Don’t answer that.