About
This site is essentially about me!
My name is Martin Utian. I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. I have lived in three different countries, South Africa, Australia and Canada. The sojourn in each of these countries is really a story in itself. This website describes the books I have written and how they reflect my "legacy".
My short bio is as follows:
I was conceived on New Years Eve 1944 - optimistic expectation of war ending or just plain folly!
Grew up under the disfunctional policy of Apartheid
Had visions of being an actor, an artist, a plastic surgeon, a mechanical engineer or a lawyer
Ended up as a non-practising chartered accountant running my own large wholesaling business
Decided to strive for retirement at the age of 37. Suceeded!
Became an artist for a few years
Immigrated to Australia and became poor again!
what followed ....
The long and the short of it was that I became an employee again, then an employer and slowly regained financially
Became interested in IT and got burned when the dotcom bubble burst. Oy!
Became involved with genealogy research and created a website that should have become Ancestry.com but didn't
Got older and became a grandfather
My wife and I decided that we wanted to be active grandparents so... packed up again and immigrated to Canada!
I'll get back to the books I wrote in more detail
My genealogical research
There are many sources of genealogical data that are available on the internet now. When I began my research, I relied on old photographs, word of mouth and heresay. These days there are dedicated genealogy websites, archived ship manifests, state birth and deaths registries, religious institutional archives, archived newspapers etc. I have used all.
Browse my albumn of discoveries which I gathered over the years. This is the background to my book The Travels of my Forefathers. Feel free to comment on my contact page or in the album.
Click here to browse the album. RESEARCHERS ALBUM
Click here for Genealogy Resources. GENEALOGY