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Research into
the Harvey Family Ray Harvey
has done most of the work in researching the history of the Harvey family,
a considerable feat because Ray lives in Australia, at a place called
Underwood near Brisbane, Queensland. In Sept 2002, Ray wrote this about
his researches: ' When my
father was very ill in 1980, I spent a lot of time with him. Granny
and Grandfather Harvey's picture hung in the hall. I knew Granny
and the stories she told of the Kelly (bushrangers) family and
her riding the horse with the golden horse shoes at the goldfields of
Victoria. Their daughter Jean Harvey married Martin Farrell, whose
mother was Ned Kelly's mother's sister. Dad knew very
little of his father's family except that one family member was a Sir John
Harvey who had invited the Harvey boys in W.W. 1 from Australia to visit.
Dad's nephew visited and reported that Sir John Harvey was very posh (hob
nob), so dad and his brother did not visit. Other than that, the
Harvey family was a total mystery to me. That started
my research and just wanting to know was a long hard struggle.
False family trees. Trees done by other Harvey members as far back as 1925 were
totally misleading. No one seemed to know anything about Robert
Harvey (Thomas Harvey's (ship builder) father and my great, great
grandfather). I wrote
hundreds of letters and visited Wivenhoe many times from 1986. I
haunted the Chelmsford Record office, and the one in Colchester, while I
was there. I even hired two top brass researchers to find Robert
Harvey (b. 1763) in a twenty mile radius of Wivenhoe. They were a
total waste of money. It seems they read every church record but the record
of Robert's birth was just too hard for them to read so they did not
bother to look at the Brightlingsea Church Register. I found it
myself. Robert's
marriage was at West Mersea, the very last church that I wanted in the
twenty mile radius. These records were then still with the Church
and unavailable. I had arranged for a researcher to go there to
search when the registers were given to the Colchester Record
Office.' Ray's researches produced a wealth of information, much of which is published on his own web site www.harveyhistory.info or published in collaboration with his distant cousin, Chris Goddard, on www.webrarian.co.uk/harvey Peter
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