“Everywhere I went I had a little notebook. My aunts and great aunts got sick of me asking all these questions,” she says.

The 89-year-old now writes from a desk in her room at Bupa’s Bendigo aged care centre and her passion for history is as strong as ever.

Mrs Stone has just published her fourth book, Gibsons: County Cavan, Ireland to Australia. 

Nearly 100 copies have sold already and the book is attracting interest from many who can chart their own history back to descendants of four sons from the 19th century.

As a child, Mrs Stone would hear her father’s stories about uncles and aunts. 

In those days families often had a lot of children and she often found it difficult to understand which relations her father was describing. So she decided to keep track of everyone by writing down names and details.

“I was interested in where people came from, when they came (to Australia) and all that. I found out what ships they came from and what dates they arrived,” Mrs Stone said.

Her latest book draws on decades of research, including drives around Ireland with her grandmother’s cousin in 1986.

“All the people we met, I was trying to write down as much as I could remember,” she said.

Mrs Stone’s first book marked the 1973 centenary of Eastville Primary School, where her children attended.

That was followed by an award-winning 1991 publication coinciding with the centenary of grandparents Frederick Smith and Ruth Mears wedding.

She also wrote a 1992 book on the Australian Institute of Genealogical Study’s Bendigo branch.

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Mrs Stone was part of the local history movement as it gained the popularity it enjoys today. She was part of the AIGS from its inception and helped compile booklets on church records and cemetery listings still used today.

Local history has come a long way from the days when Mrs Stone would visit the basement “dungeons” of Melbourne’s public record office.

She remembers storage areas like the one where Eastville Primary School’s records were kept. It was no bigger than a room.

“Now all of that is kept in the big archives centre they’ve got. It’s a very big building,” Mrs Stone said.

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