Maragret loved her family dearly . Her love overcame obstacles that few people have had to cope with. Life in foreign countries like Australia, Hong Kong, Mexico, Jamaica and eventually New Zealand brought separations which challenged her need to maintain strong ties with her family. scattered as it was over time and place thoughout her life. She kept family ties alive through her collection of memories in the many scrap books, photo albums, letters , recollections and family legends she produced. Thankfully many of these have survived like her recollections shown elsewhere on this site, Sadly not all her legacy survived like her embroidery and works in Spansh and French.
A voracious reader she collected the books she cared for, Some are still avaible as her legacy and held by various members of her family.
But others have been lost as she shifted home from one place to another.. Fortunately one of her own efforts at writing did survive and is still extant.
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It is an imaginative even fanciful tale about a tree that grew outside the family house in Pachuca the mining town in Mexico where her husband Walter Ough worked most of his life and where she liverd for a good part of that.
The story is called "The Old Fir Tree" and is an imaginary tale about birds visiting the tree from places where family had lived or still did so. She wrote it for her grand children. She included many watercolour sketches and paintings done by her mother Anna May Dealy whose own story is to be found elsewhere on this site.. Anna was Joan Ward-Harris's aunt, one of 4 (Ellenor, Marion,Anna, and Amy) with two uncles (Sydney and Arthur). The artistic talents obviously ran very strong in the family and subsequently through to Joan and later generations. Anna's paintings were very good and she made a living as a portrait painter, one of which features in the Old Fir Tree.
The main pages of the Old Tree have been digitized and are available in sequence below. It is curious and fascinating example of her vivid imgination as well as a sort of record of her scatterd family.
Copyright of all parts of site is owned by Martin Ough Dealy
This page last modified on 7 September 2026