Kitty La France NISSEN (daughter of Hans Johannes Trules NISSEN and Florence Harriet SWARZES/MATTHEWS) was born 14 July 1917 Petersham, NSW. At the age of 13 she was allowed to leave school to be her mother’s helper. Eventually she began work in a local boarding house with her sister Joy. She was married twice. When she was 16 she married Albert James HUMPHRIES (QUIGLEY) on 2 March 1934 in Glebe. Kitty and Alby had eight children – John, Margaret, Fay, Ronald, Phillip, Gregory, Michael and Gail - and lived in Gosford. After seven years of fairly rough living Alby eventually found a job on the railways which he kept for the rest of his life. His first job was helping build the Hawkesbury River railway bridge. They then rented a new fibro house on the waterfront at East Gosford. Life was not real easy for Kitty and she needed to work to supplement the family income, which included working at Gosford railway refreshment room and in various hotels in the Gosford area. She was divorced in 1965.
Her second marriage was to (Henry) Allen HUGHES, on 9 September 1965 in Sydney, and she and Allen managed a range of hotels. She had thirty-one grandchildren, and was very close to her family. She was also very interested in the family tree and was a prolific poet, often using the pen-name ‘La France’. She put her family history into verse and also wrote a history of the family, which she called ‘Nothing is Forever’. In this history she changed all the people’s names but kept the place names and dates accurate. This history is the source of much of the information in this story of her father. Allen and Kitty moved back to Gosford when they retired and Allen died there in 1995. Kitty died on her 85th birthday, Bastille Day, 14 July 2002, in Berkeley Vale, NSW, and was buried in Palmdale cemetery.