My exploration of the life and thoughts of my great, great grandfather, William McCaw (1818–1902), blended what are often regarded as separate pursuits: family history and academic history.¹ In 1880 McCaw, a shepherd, writer and amateur theologian, moved from Scotland to New Zealand with his large family. Generations of my extended family have preserved the memory of McCaw, treasuring his letters and newspaper articles and passing down photographs, objects and stories relating to the McCaw family. I mined my family archive in order to build up a holistic picture of my ancestor and his views upon the world, through which I accessed and explored wider historical theories. I undertook this research on McCaw for a postgraduate degree at the University of Otago, but until I attended the 2005 public history conference at Ruskin College and began to write this chapter I had not looked into public history. The new works I read made me reflect more closely on the history I had written. Where did my research sit — and did this matter?