About five years ago, Delegate’s Sandra O’Hagan started researching her family history, in particular her grandfather’s brother John Squire Armstrong who fought in World War 1.
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Ms O’Hagan said researching her grand-uncle was so interesting that it started her researching all the soldiers in the area.
“At the time research was being done about the Men from Snowy River for a book, so I started to do my own research,” Ms O’Hagan said.
“I downloaded their records, went on the digitised newspaper Trove and looked for newspaper articles about them.
“I found letters that were written home and published in the Delegate Argus and with all the information that I had gathered I started writing biographies of their war service,” Ms O’Hagan said.
Over the last five years, Ms O’Hagan has gathered information about all the WW1 veterans from Delegate, Bombala, Cathcart, Bibbenluke, Craigie and over the border at Bendoc, Bonang, Tubbut and Delegate River.
“I was after any information I could get about other soldiers.
“I got in touch with the soldiers descendants and people started sending me information, photos and letters from their families,” she said.
Ms O’Hagan also helped the Bombala High students with a book that they produced about all the WW1 men whose names are Bombala Cenotaph.
“I shared with them all the tricks that I had learnt researching the veterans, helped them with photos and mentored them putting the book together.
Last year was the first time that Delegate held an Anzac Dawn Service, which was extremely well attended.
“For Anzac Day last year I produced a booklet about the 17 men from the area who went to Gallipoli.
“On behalf of the Delegate War Museum committee we produced 30 printed booklets.
“We sold 30 copies on Anzac Day and took orders for more,” Ms O’Hagan said.
“I was very pleased with that, just a simple book with biographies, letters, newspaper articles and photos and now we have sold over 80.”