Researchers at the South East Family History Group have uncovered the story behind a parcel which was sent from Tasmania to the Mount Burr United Football Club in 2022.

It contained an engraved, single-handled and silver-plated mug and a letter.

It explained the mug was found on the mantelpiece in a newly-purchased house in the Apple Isle.

The message engraved on the mug stated it was given to Mount Burr district forester M.A. Rankin from the workers as a token of esteem on January 9, 1938.

The mug’s new owner decided to send it to the football club at Mount Burr as there is no history group in that town.

In turn, football club stalwart Wayne Busbridge passed it on to the SEFHG.

Its final resting place will be among other Mount Burr memorabilia such as the mill’s time clock in the Millicent National Trust Museum.

A statement explaining the mug’s background will be placed alongside it along with information about M.A.Rankin.

It was sourced by SEFHG secretary Virginia Pawsey and research coordinator Colleen Hammat.

They shared their findings at a recent monthly meeting in Millicent of the SEFHG.

The matter had piqued the interest of Ms Pawsey as she had spent her childhood at Mount Burr where her late father Charles Pawsey was a forestry research scientist.

Their only starting point was the name “M.A.Rankin”.

A search of online army records showed that a Mervyn Alexander Rankin had been born in Broken Hill in 1891 but this proved to be a red herring.

The correct soldier was Mervyn Andrew Rankin who was born in Brisbane in 1905 and enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in 1941.

Newspaper reports later that year indicated he was commissioned with the rank of Major and passed through Millicent on a recruiting drive.

Once his name was known, other material about M.A. Rankin came to light.

His early life had been marred by the death of his soldier/father on active service in Palestine in 1917 during World War I.

He had joined the forest service in his home state as a graduate in 1926 and later earned the degree of Master of Science.

His time as Mount Burr district forester between 1933 and 1938 coincided with a period of great expansion of the forest estate.

His departure from Mount Burr in 1938 was also marked by a farewell reception at the Millicent hotel now called The George.

After the war, he moved to Tasmania and worked as a papermill manager, in bushfire control and as a pastoralist.

Ms Pawsey and Ms Hammat were able to examine his will made a few years before his death in 1985.

M.A.Rankin divorced his first wife and remarried a woman with two sons whom he adopted.

During the talk, some insights were provided by retired Mount Burr district forester Mike Bleby.

A number of photographs of the Rankin family were shown as well as 1930s-era images of Mount Burr Mill and the nearby forests.