Sarah Edwards (nee Ward) (whose partner was Edward Edwards) was born in Windsor and was said to be the sister of Fred Ward (Most authors say that his date of birth is not known as his birth was not registered, he was said to have been born in the mid 1830's - Most authors claim 1835 or 1836.). However according to his daughter Marina Emily's birth certificate in 1861, her mother, Mary Ann, was 27 and her father, Fred, was 28 at that time, making his birth year 1833. As a "sister" was born 6 weeks earlier, Sophia, his normally accepted mother could not be his mother. After Sarah's "marriage" to Edward Sackville Edwards the family moved first to the Warialda area then to the New England area near Ebor (Guy Fawkes) at Warialpa, where they lived for a time, before Edwards selected a property in the Bostobrick area near Dorrigo. Their daughter, Esther, met & married William James Sinclair (my great grandfather), one of the stockmen on her fathers property. Family tradition has it that when Thunderbolt was being chased by the police he would go to his mother's home on a property near Ebor called Warialpa, where he was hidden in a hole in the dirt floor of the family kitchen, and he was then covered by a wood box. Sarah and Edwards had parted by this time. Family stories told how Grandma Sarah would invite the police to sit on the woodbox while she served them a cup of tea, with Thunderbolt lying underneath. In the late 1980's the old homestead was pulled down. Over the years a floor had been built in the kitchen. To the amazement of the owners a large man size hole was discovered confirming the family stories of Thunderbolt being hidden beneath the woodbox.

I have been told Thunderbolt Family Stories, by my parents and grandparents, for the past 60 years and have been researching "The Legend of Thunderbolt" dilligently for the past 15 years. Over the last 8 years I have had access to, and have read, all of the base police and other material gathered and used in the writing of their books by the authors, Stephan Williams for his book "A Ghost called Thunderbolt"and Bob Cummins for his book "Thunderbolt". I have also searched the material at the State Archives in Kingswood and all of the material at the Newling Research Centre in Armidale, and have met with many families whose ancestors were involved with Thunderbolt.

As part of my working career I was, for 6 years, Assistant Director (3 years) and then Director of one of the largest Primitive Art Museums in the world, New Guinea Primitive Arts in Sydney. During that time I learned the necessity to check all "facts" on any topic thoroughly and to not accept other peoples research, until I had proved it to my own satisfaction.

This training has served me well in my research into the "Legend of Thunderbolt", as much of the material recorded in books and even in Museums and Historical Society, including the Uralla Historical Society, their records do not stand up as being accurate, if checked thoroughly. These articles below are a result of that research. I have much more material that I am fairly sure is correct but will not add to this site until it is proven correct.

What is often interesting is the information the authors like Bob Cummins had on record, but for some reason left out of the books that they have writen, and can now be proven to be more correct than what was used.