Contact 

Hi! I am Callum Vittali-Smith, a great-great-great-grandson of Robert and Mercy. My key passion is the rave and bush doof scene, but in the cold light of day, I am a keen genealogist. I took the opportunity to create this website to document our rich heritage and ensure it is available to family members spread across the world. It is an inherently dynamic project, and will continue to evolve as new records become available and as new stories come to light.

I am indebted to the generous assistance and support of many, including Dr Phil Betts, Malcolm Cheape, Richard Hodgson, Alan Martin, Janine Dubke, Dr David Rankin, Sarah Wardale, Jared Leckie, Tessa Blatchford, Adrian Wildish, Lela Weavers, Jane Belle, Rosemary Rayner-Laver, Louise Bedford, Fiona Leggott, Rebecca Davey, Jens Martin, John Whitebread, Jenny Whitebread, and Nigel Heriz-Smith. 

​If you are a relative, or otherwise interested in this family, please do ensure you get in touch using the form below.

Callum Vittali-Smith
Oyster Bay (Sydney, Australia)

John Dixon MA Camb (1857-1951), one of the earliest solicitors in the family, and by his retirement the oldest practitioner in Kent

The Family Lore

Family history is always full of surprises. One of the most rewarding discoveries I have made is that one of my old law school classmates Olivia is also a descendant of the Mercer hop growers! My grandfather Patrick (93) and her grandfather Christopher (97) are second cousins, a fact we were entirely incognizant of when we met in tort class at Sydney University.

This coincidence - together with the fact that both Olivia and myself have other lawyers in our families - drew to my attention just how many members of our extended clan have followed a legal education and/or career. A cursory calculation, based on a comparison to the number of registered solicitors in England & Wales vis-à-vis general population, suggests that members of our family are almost 6 times more likely to be in law than the general population. See my calculations here.

We could speculate on why this is - perhaps some genetic predisposition to profiting from argumentativeness? My friends would probably back this theory.

Cousins down south

My Mercer research has also provided me with the opportunity to get to know another branch of cousins based in Melbourne. My grandfather's first cousin, Lionel Cuthbert Filmer JP, was a tea and rubber planter in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) for many years, before settling in Patterson Lakes.

​In April 2023, whilst on a long weekend rave trip to Melbourne with a mate, I took the chance to meet Louise, one of Lionel's granddaughters (and one of our closest matches on AncestryDNA). Louise wore a special ring which had belonged to her great-grandmother Jessie (the granddaughter of Robert & Mercy) to our lunch of sushi & champagne in Camberwell.

I learnt a great deal about psychology & interoception from Louise, and we talked travel (including our respective bureaucratic frustrations with our double-barrelled surnames, and the coincidence that Louise was heading to the small Dutch town of my birth later in the year), and of course family history - including a lead that Lionel held a family tree tracing Mercy's paternal line to the French du Carpentier family, which clearly warrants further research.

Lionel Cuthbert Filmer, whose records hold the link to our French heritage

Louise & Callum in Camberwell, 2023

Last updated 29 January 2025