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Tamar Seed is a recounting of the histories of the Goodson family. Brimming with full-colour photographs, this book contains over 350 pages of detailed records and stories meticulously researched and recoded by Jo Callaghan.

Two hundred years ago, or thereabouts, an illiterate convict ploughman named James Goodson began sowing the seeds of a dynasty; first in poverty-stricken despair in Essex, and then in the rich and fertile north of Van Diemen’s Land, at Windermere on the banks of the River Tamar.

Tamar Seed is a collection of family stories and memories, written by descendants of James Goodson’s two marriages; descendants of his ten children and 47 grandchildren. Their stories will lead you along the banks of the River Tamar and beyond. From Native Point to nearby Mount Direction; Beaconsfield to the islands in the Bass Strait; Launceston across the Bass Strait to mainland Victoria; Gravelly Beach across the Tasman Sea to Waimate and Oamaru in New Zealand’s south.

Come with the family on a journey through Tamar Seed – from one man’s 19th century convict beginnings, to the 21st century, where countless Goodson descendants span the globe.

Cover illustration:
View on the River Tamar and part of the Asbestos Hills, Van Diemen’s Land.
Joseph Lycett, 1825.