Sunday 12 October 2014

One Lovely Blog Award

Kerryn from Ancestor Chasing very kindly nominated me for the One Lovely Blog award. Thank you, Kerryn!

There you have it!

You can see her nomination here.

The deal is that when nominated, one is to do the following:

Thank the person that nominated you and link back to that blog.
◾Share seven things about yourself – see below.
◾Nominate 15 bloggers you admire –or as many as you can think of!
◾Contact your bloggers to let them know you’ve tagged them for the One Lovely Blog Award

So...

7 things you hate about me:

1. I swear even more in my internal monologue.
2. I am completely dependent on Pura Classic Mocha flavoured milk.
3. I watch less television than virtually every other person you know.
4. I have managed to reach middle age without ever leaving the country.
5. I've been doing serious family history research for more of my life than I haven't.
6. I really hope I started young enough to get it up to a standard and level of completion I'm happy with before I peg out, because I hate not seeing things through.
7. My idea of getting out for some exercise is going for a walk to visit relations at the cemetery.

15 bloggers:

She's been nominated previously, but I'm sure it's no shock one of my very favourite blogs is the completely awesome Clue Wagon: hitting the genealogy world with a much needed clue by four. I also enjoy hearing what Catie from Genealogically Speaking has to say. As a fellow Gen Xer (and person with few mutual relations), Alona from Lonetester always has something I find interesting and informative. Continuing on the age bracket theme, I highly recommend people go check out Carrie, DOM*, at Not Your Mother's Genealogy. Another must-see is Lynn's work on The Armchair Genealogist. They all rock! There's been a recent change of focus on the Rebel Hand blog to update those of us aiming to be 'shoestring genealogists' on bargain information sources. Of course I get all my genealogy tech tips from Thomas at Hack Genealogy and look to the good people from Geneartistry for ideas about how to incorporate more visual flair into presenting my research and displaying my heirlooms. It's been quiet on the blog front since Catherine passed away, but Saving Graves is still a must read for those with family buried in SA. Some related-to-but-not-actually-genealogy sites I follow include Victoriana Lady and The Thanatos Archive. Also along those lines I recommend Gerri Gray's Cemetery Photography. Just remember: the first rule of Cemetery Club is you don't talk about Cemetery Club. And, bending the rules because I can: the two people online whose every type written word I hang on are no doubt the good people behind literary analysis team Thug Notes and the recipe writing genii at Thug Kitchen. Love their work.

*Daughter of Myrt

Of course, being the foul-mouthed progeny of sailors you've come to know and... well, know, I'd much prefer to nominate people for the Totally Bitchin' Blog Award, or something like that. *Note to self: start Totally Bitchin' Blog Award when next have spare time*

Just Because...

Tuesday 7 October 2014

Oh my prophetic soul! (Not my uncle.)

I came across this while "Troving" the other day. It's nothing to do with my family, but it was quite interesting. I wonder what the author thinks this week's Lotto numbers are:


The Advertiser, 26 Mar 1906

Many things, indeed.

Friday 26 September 2014

Saying Sorry

Aboriginal readers are warned that this blog post contains images of deceased persons.

I've really been enjoying the most recent season of Who Do You Think You Are? There's been an interesting selection of feature celebrities, and finally, at long last, there's been some content of direct relevance to my own research. The episode on Paul McDermott has been great for clarifying which SA McDermotts are from which branch. As is typical with Irish families, they all have the same names, so that's been incredibly helpful despite the lack of Irish content (I'd always hoped Paul would be selected, although didn't think it would ever happen, and I'd be able to get help with the Irish brick-wall! Sadly beyond mentioning where the family are from they didn't go there at all.)


You can see why I never expected this to happen. Who picks this guy to be the subject of a TV show aimed at baby boomers?

The episode it turned out was the most interesting was one I didn't expect: the episode featuring Adam Goodes. It's made me ponder a number of issues about my family's role in our nation's history. I've alluded before to one of my Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Thomas Skermer. Thomas was at one stage a Trooper who was employed to "quell disturbances with the blacks" in the state's mid-north. However, it's not the only time a family member had recorded* interactions with the First Australians.

In 1896, my 3x great aunt Euphemia Dorey married William Finlayson in the Bible Christian Manse at Kadina. The couple spent the early years of their marriage at Point Pearce Mission Station, where William worked as the Chaplain. Located on Narungga land, the Mission Station had become a place where Aboriginals from different People throughout central SA were herded together and put in an environment designed to strip them of their language, heritage, culture, and assimilate them into the European community. There were positives and negatives to William's involvement. He was a deeply religious man, and I've no doubt was motivated by good intentions. However, he was part of a paternalistic system which we know had devastating long-term effects on the Aboriginal people.



These two pictures were shown during the program, and I'd love to know more about them. The white girl on the right bears a distinct resemblance to another picture I have of a niece of Euphemia's.

In 1906 William made an abrupt career change. One of the areas of my research is focusing on trying to discover what motivated this. He became a wheat buyer for Wells & Co., working with his brother-in-law Walter. Based on the Yorke Peninsula, his work took him on regular trips across to the Eyre Peninsula. It was there that he died in 1910 and he is buried in the Cowell Cemetery. The cause of death was alcohol poisoning, and it was reported at the inquest that he was alcoholic, something which poses further questions. Was this the cause of a dismissal as chaplain, was it a response to losing his job, or something else? Euphemia was left to look after her seven children, aged between 14 and 1. Unusually, not only was Euphemia able to provide for the family, the children were quite well educated. Douglas became a Pharmacist for example, as was Clem, and Robina became a teacher.


Report of William's Death in The Register, focusing on his very recent work history

In 1929 the youngest daughter, Mary, married Martin Chemnitz Kriewaldt, a lawyer who had been educated in the US and in Adelaide. His father was a Lutheran minister, a man who had an interest in Aboriginal missions which may have lead to the two meeting. The couple lived in the leafy eastern suburbs, and frequently appeared in the society pages. Their lifestyles couldn't have been further apart from that of the Wanganeens, Sansburies, O'Loughlins and other families among whom Mary was born. However, this didn't bring them lasting happiness. Their marriage ended in 1947, and Kriewaldt moved to the Northern Territory. "Big Feller Judge" is described as having unusually enlightened perspectives on Aboriginal issues in records of his career such as that at the University of Queensland, and is regarded as having set a new benchmark for fairness in legal decisions affecting Aboriginal people at the time. Despite this he ended up becoming most remembered for being the judge who sentenced Albert Namatjira. Records suggest this case devastated Kriewaldt, and he died shortly afterwards, as did Namatjira (whose artwork had always adorned Kriewaldt's office). Kriewaldt was also a supporter of assimilation policies.


Mary and her daughter Rosemary in the newspaper in 1939

The story of this part of my family is extremely sad. While Thomas Skermer may have participated in literal genocide, this branch of my family were engaged in cultural genocide. They were people who wanted good outcomes, and I think it would have broken their hearts if they had realised the terrible consequences of the systems in which they participated, outcomes so clearly illustrated in the story about Adam Goodes and his family.

Nearly two years ago, while on holiday on the Yorke Peninsula, I thought that I should travel to Point Pearce and take a good look at some of the consequences of actions carried out not only by European settlers and the systems we introduced as a whole, but by my family quite directly. This is what I saw:


The Chapel


One of the Original Buildings

Point Pearce is not a pleasant place to be. There are bars over all the windows. There is nothing growing, and a lot of evidence of vandalism. Aside from the school, which is beautifully maintained but set behind 7 foot fences, most of the buildings are quite spartan. There are no shops or offices providing employment or quality of life. I spoke to one of the residents, who said that it can be truly terrifying at night. My children and I watched children play in facilities I'd associate more with a developing country than a Yorke Peninsula coastal town, and my heart ached for them.


The Park

Although they never, ever intended this, the current situation in Point Pearce is the outcome of those policies of protectionism and assimilation pursued by members of my family. Their actions disconnected Aboriginal people from their lands and culture, leading to loss of identity and inner-brokeness which are still making their presence very much felt in Point Pearce in 2014. I am certain my family were good people. I'm certain they did what they did because they wanted the best. However, we know that's not the effect it had, and for that, I am sure they would want to apologise.

In his Refern Speech, Paul Keating very famously said that  "the starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us non-Aboriginal Australians. It begins, I think, with the act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the disasters. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to us. With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds. We failed to ask – how would I feel if this were done to me? As a consequence, we failed to see that what we were doing degraded all of us." When I hear that speech, I know that 'we' refers not just to a culture of which I am a part, but of my very own family, and I am sorry for the actions of both.




I think those of us in the genealogy community could be perceived as focusing on only one side of the pioneering stories, celebrating their triumphs and being responsible for perpetuating an image of the 'good old days' which white-washes over Aboriginal experience of these events. However, I don't think it needs to be that way. Just as researchers have made huge progress in how they report illegitimacy, criminality, homosexuality or other formerly taboo topics in their family histories, I think we can make progress here too. In fact, I think we have a number of interests in common with Aboriginal people. We have a shared belief in the importance of connecting to heritage and culture. We know the impact this connection has on our sense of identity and community. When we travel through the city or country we connect the landscape in which we find ourselves with the stories of our ancestors, and we're most likely to be leading the charge to preserve graves, buildings and features which we see as integral to our history. I think it's fair to suggest we are well placed to have better than average insight into the importance of Aboriginal connections to the land, the Dreaming stories and sacred sites. 


Keating described the test of how seriously we believed in a fair go for everyone as a test of 'self-knowledge' and 'how well we know the land, how we know our history'. Surely there's nobody better equipped to pass that test than us genealogists.

* I say recorded, because as a person who has SA pioneers in my ancestry. I'm guessing at least some would have taken an active role in Frontier Wars.

Sunday 8 June 2014

Friday Funny

I've had a bit of a hiatus lately dealing with some living relative issues (What? We have to pay attention to them before they are dead now?) In the meantime, here's a Friday funny. Although it's not Friday.

http://whereyoucamefrom.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/top-ten-genealogical-pick-up-lines.html

Saturday 3 May 2014

Missing Wives Part Two

Or missing "wives", anyway...

My great-great Uncle Hubert Clive McPherson was a born in Walkerville in 1886. In 1912, he married Rachel Jane Hunt in St. John's Church in Glebe, NSW. 

Nothing eventful so far... right?

When he enlisted for the war in 1915 he gave his wife's details (New Farm, Brisbane), however, his own residential address was that of his parents in Adelaide and he set up his pay allotment as going to his mother. Seems a little rocky to me. Hubert returned from the war with a hearing impairment from the mortar bombs but otherwise OK. Hubert and Rachel were still referred to as married in 1927 (The Advertiser) but were most definitely separated at the time of a dispute over his pay in 1933 during which time Rachel was back in Sydney. 

In 1938 Bert took a young woman named Maude Howsen with him to Rabaul, PNG. He worked for the Australian Government in the Lands Department, and Maude worked as a dressmaker. The couple were there as the Japanese were sweeping their way to Port Moresby, and they were evacuated from PNG. Maude was evacuated on the MV Neptuna in Dec 1941, arriving in Townsville on Boxing Day. Hubert travelled shortly after aboard the MV Malaita, arriving in Cairns on 18 Feb 1942. Two weeks later, Bert's wife Rachel died of breast cancer at the Home of Peace in Marrickville. She was only 55.

Maude and Bert lived separately for a short time, Bert establishing a home in Bowen Terrace, New Farm, Brisbane, only a few streets from Rachel's war-time residence.

The home Maude and Bert lived in, New Farm

Maude joined him, and they later moved to Bundaberg. Hubert died there in 1962, and Maude 10 years later. For some reason Hubert was cremated in Brisbane, but Maude is buried in Bundaberg. Hubert's death certificate says they married in 1942, the year of Rachel's death, but I can't find any record of a marriage between the two. The couple never had any children.

The family legends about Maude were very unhelpful. My grandmother told me her she was a Vaudeville dancer, for example, which she wasn't. It's obvious the McPhersons didn't approve of Bert's domestic situation.

So, the big mystery was, who was Maude Howsen? She had just appeared on the boat to Rabaul. Where had she come from? Maude Howsen or informants indicated she was born in 1888 in Kiama (Cemetery Index, Bundaberg) to Peter Howsen and Fanny Chester, and it was searching for that, and Ancestry's terrific matching capabilities, which lead me to the family of Elizabeth Maude Ettingshausen, of Kiama, and Maude's ancestry was discovered. It also helped me fill in a little of her life before Bert. The Sydney Morning Herald and electoral rolls indicate that between 1923 and 1933 Maude was a music teacher. She lived in Bankstown, then Victoria Road in Punchbowl. No doubt he met her in Sydney, just as he had his first wife. I've recently been in touch with members of the Ettingshausen family, and look forward to finding out more about Maude.

Hubert and an unknown woman, possibly Maude

Thanks to the good folks at Gasworks Hotel for spotting the error in the first line!

Saturday 26 April 2014

Missing Wives Part One

The past few months I've been continuing the enormous task of digital filing of my records... putting all those pesky Trove articles into FTM and linking them to the right people. Of course, if you're like me and suffer terribly from Genea-ADD, this takes a looooong time, because it's a case of file, file, email some cousins with updates, file, chase up a missing birth record, file, file, discover a whole new branch, file, file, blog, file. It's the level of self-discipline which has seen me have a FindMyPast subscription since August and still hardly touch it. That and their ridonkulously crap search engine. *sigh*

One of the tangential paths I've been taking has been trying new strategies for tracking down elusive people - ancestors who just up and disappeared, but who I keep on looking for. Amazingly, I've had a little success on that front lately. The first of these is Mildred Cranston.

Mildred Cranston was born to W and L Cranston, later of Wertago Station, in about 1920. In 1941, amid much local media fanfare, she married Harold Gregory Keith Taylor at St. Peter's Church in Broken Hill. However, in 07 Dec 1951, Harold married again: this time to Elva Cain nee Moysey, a divorcee who lived up the road from him.

The Barrier Miner, 29 Dec 1941

I'd known this for quite some time, but had no luck tracking down what happened to Mildred. I'd suspected divorce, but was having trouble finding the records. All I'd found was this:

The Barrier Miner, 02 Mar 1950

It seemed too close to my couple to ignore, but I didn't have any evidence it was them. However, recently Trove added "The Barrier Daily Truth", and whaddya know:

Barrier Daily Truth, 03 Mar 1950

So, I'd established Mildred and Harold had divorced after she left him for Samuel John Alfred Thomas. Naturally I started searching for him, and for items relating to Mildred Thomas, which was when I found this:

Barrier Miner, 25 Oct 1950

Buuuut.... it's the Barrier Miner, so of course the names were wrong!

Barrier Daily Truth, 26 Oct 1950... no doubt use the extra day to get the names right!!

I still haven't found any marriage record between the two, given how recently this took place, but at least I was quite sure I should keep looking for Mildred Thomas. And... (another whaddya know), found her dying in Terowie on 24 Aug 1995. The reason that's a whaddya know, is because her son is buried in Terowie even though he died in Adelaide, and I'd never understood exactly how it was he came to be there! Two mysteries solved at once!

I'll blog about the more complex break-through, Maude Howsen, next time.

Saturday 5 April 2014

Which ancestor are you going out for a drink/latte with?

Things have been a little hectic on the home front of late, but there's something genealogical which I have continued to ponder during this time: which ancestors you would just love to sit down and have a chat to. Not for information gathering purposes, but because you would really love to have them share the wisdom gathered over their lifetime.

I have a number of ancestors I think it would be particularly fun or interesting to have met, but there's one person above all others who I would most like to go out for a coffee or a champers with, to have a chat to her about her life and what she learned from it. That's my 2x great grandmother, Eliza Jane Duffield.



Eliza was born in 1838 in Kennett, Cambridge, to a family of labourers (not landed gentry as the family legend often tells!) At the age of about 17 she came to Australia. At this point she had either met and married or was about to meet and marry Edwin Francis Gough, believed to be a native of County Meath in Ireland.

The couple moved about a variety of places because of Edwin's work. Initially they were in Burra where he worked as the turnkey for Redruth Gaol, but he lost his job after an allegation was made that he had assaulted a prisoner. Edwin took his appeals against this all the way to State Parliament, but to no avail. For a while he was a clerk/overseer and then ran a store in Moonta, but then the couple came to Adelaide where Edwin later ran a boarding house. According to her death certificate and burial order, Elizabeth had 7 sons and 6 daughters, and only two of the boys and four of the girls were living when she died. We have so far only traced 9 of the children, so suspect a number of still births, particularly as 7 predeceased her.

There appears to have been some serious friction in the Gough household. At least two of the daughters married using assumed names, despite being of legal age etc. and with no obvious impediments (aside from their Catholic faith when marrying Protestants) to marriage. Most descendants are only aware of some parts of the family, and very few are recorded in the family Bible. At least one of Eliza's sons was regularly before the courts, in one instance for failing to pay his widowed mother her support payments. At least one of the daughters had a messy divorce and an affair with a man who was convicted of sexually assaulting women in the Parklands (plus ca change!) Another daughter got divorced after deserting her alcoholic husband, and then totally disappears from the record books. Something had obviously gone very wrong.

Eliza's final residence, No 6 Jerningham Street, North Adelaide

Eliza must have been a strong woman, She survived so much in her lifetime. If I could, she's the ancestor I would most like to sit down with on a lazy sunny Sunday afternoon, to talk to her about her life and hear what she made of it all. I bet she'd be a granny with some amazing advice.

In Memoriam Notices

Monday 10 March 2014

Enlisted on the Other Front

So, sensational news during the week. Yours truly is being sent by work to the French battlefields for the Villers-Bretonneux dawn service, ANZAC Day '15. Naturally this is terribly exciting for all sorts of reasons, but part of the excitement is definitely because of the genealogy potential. Before I go I will be checking the locations of service for all my relatives who served in WW1, especially those who never returned.

It will be almost 100 years since, in September 1915, my great-grandfather Francis enlisted for the war. He left his wife, toddler and four month old baby and travelled to France, no doubt spending time in Paris as I will, before heading to the Front where he was a Driver in the Field Artillery. Francis was shot in the jaw in August 1917. It was a near thing for him, but Francis and his brothers (all three of whom served) were lucky: they all came home at the war's conclusion. His son would not be so lucky when the next war rolled around.

Like most, I have my share of family World War 1 stories that didn't end very well at all, like William Matthew Colbert who entered the war underage using an assumed name, confessing on his death bed to his real details so his mother would be told what had happened. He was 17. However, the person I'm going to write about today had quite a different situation:

In 1915, Victorian Blacksmith James Arthur Pearson White enlisted to serve in the Australian Imperial Force. The Darby book tells us that Jim enlisted in the 27th Battalian of the AIF. He was been sent home to recuperate from a knee injury, but he re-embarked and joined the 43rd Battalian. He was killed only eleven days after arriving back at the front, on 10 Oct 1917. Family legend has it that Walter (Jim's brother who was also at the Front)  had spoken to Jim late in 1917 and they had arranged to meet the day he was killed. It also says he married while away and that his wife and daughter came out to Australia after the war.

James Arthur Pearson White, from The Darby Book

Most of you will have realised I'm not one to take things at face value, so of course I revisited everything to see what I could find out about James myself.  In his war record, there is a conflict alluded to between my great-great-grandmother, Lydia White nee Pearson, and James' English wife, Elsie, over whether Lydia or Elsie's daughter Diana (also referred to as Dinnia) were entitled to James' war medals etc. There is a date of marriage given (Registrar's Office, Cardiff Street Oxford, on 12 May 1917), and an address for Diana, 5 Bath Place, Holywell, which is turns out is a tiny lane off a road which passes through Oxford University, now the site of a hotel.


Bath Place off Holywell Street, Oxford

After extensive digging, I have been unable to locate any marriage between the two. Elsewhere in Jim's war record Elsie is referred to as his "unmarried wife", so I have formed the view they were never actually legally married but only said they were to meet some army administrative requirement. I did, however, find an Elsie at 5 Bath Place, Holywell, in the 1911 census: Elsie Walklett, daughter of John and Mary. While there are two other Elsie Walkletts who married in the 1920s, the only marriage I could find in Oxford, or during WW1, for an Elsie Walklett was to Albert E Drewett in 1915. I also found a birth entry for Diana Drewett in Oxford in the first quarter 1917. Naturally the correlation of names meant that I wanted to find out more about the Drewetts to see if there was a connection. 

The BBC's Remembrance Page says that Albert E Drewett enlisted in the 1/4 Bn, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, previously residing in Oxford, Oxfordshire. The author of this post also wrote on Genforum that Albert married Elsie Walklett. He died on active service on 21 May 1917 and was laid to rest at Hermes British Cemetery in Pas de Calais. He was 24. 
The entry is from a niece of Elsie's. I suspect were we to compare notes, we would find that Elsie and Albert married when she was expecting Ivy, her first child. Albert then enlisted, and Elsie met a young Australian soldier who became her lover. When she fell pregnant, she and the soldier deemed it expedient to claim they had married.

The whole story is tragic. Jim's mother (my 2x great grandmother) had separated from her husband and was reliant on her sons for income. In addition to her grief, his death had serious financial implications for her. She was very shocked about his relationship and the probability he had fathered a child. Meanwhile, Elsie suffered the loss of her husband and her lover, and was left to raise a baby and toddler alone. The daughters were left without their father, and who knows what the Drewetts thought about the whole situation!

Letter from Elsie Walklett to the Red Cross

I have not been able to discover exactly what happened to Elsie and Diana after the war. There is a Diana Drewett who married a Mr. Nutt in the 30s in Oxford, who may be our Diana, but with three different surnames and two different countries to look in it has proved quite difficult. I wonder what Elsie and Diana's relations know about Diana's paternity, given the documents relating to it are probably only in Australian records which they may never have thought to look at (and why would you?)

Most blog entries about War service very rightly focus on the lives and deaths of those men who enlisted for active duty, but whenever I become aware of a story like this I am reminded of the truth of Milton's words, that truly "They also serve who only stand and wait".

Timeline of Events:
Jan 1915 Albert and Elsie marry
Jun 1915 (quarter) Their daughter Ivy is born
August 1915 Jim enlists for the war
Mar 1916 Jim is in France
Mar 1916 Jim injures his knee, three days after arriving at the Front
May 1916 He is sent to the UK to recuperate
Diana is conceived
Jun 1916 Jim is sent back to Australia for three months
Jan – Mar 1917 Diana is born
Feb 1917 Jim arrives back in the UK
May 1917 Jim allegedly marries Elsie
Albert dies
Sep 1917 Jim is sent back to France
Oct 1917 Jim is killed, only a couple of weeks after arriving back at the Front


Saturday 22 February 2014

Murder Most Horrid - A Follow Up

I blogged recently about the very tragic death of my ancestor's cousin, Ellen "Nellie" Cunningham, found dead in the Bridgewater Creek in 1890. I still have to fully develop my response, but here's the basic follow up:

Despite Dr. Henderson's later assertions about possible heart disease, I believe Ellen was murdered. Her body was found in a place which had already been searched. There were no initial claims about illnesses from either Dr. Henderson or Jane Sr. Too many people were obviously lying about what they knew. That begs many questions:

- Why was the knife deemed so significant, and what was Ellen doing with it?

- Were the wild flowers just growing along the river, or had they been placed there?

- Whose was the carpet bag, and what was in it? Where was it in relation to Ellen's body?

- What happened to Ellen's clothes? Were they ever found?

- Was Evan Jenkins the same Evan Jenkins who killed himself in 1923, and if so was there a connection between the events? There are two Evan Jenkinses with brothers named William in SA, one of whom has Hills connections (his father died in Crafers and he married in Glen Osmond). That would be the one who shot himself on Glenelg beach 33 years later. His wife had died shortly before, which no doubt was the primary cause, but you have to wonder all the same.

- Why was the coroner so focused on when Hart threatened Jane, and the colour of the dress having been reported incorrectly, rather than issues like the inconsistencies in the 'last sightings' and Jane Sr's weirdness about Evan lodging at the Cunningham residence (face it, the family had precious little reputation to ruin)?

- Why were Hart and Jane fighting? Was it really about the cows, and if so, why did she do that to begin with?

Some of these could have been answered by more thorough reporting. While the existing reports are often verbatim, they lack the contextual details needed to make sense of the lines of questioning. My theory is that either there was some manner of love triangle operating between Ellen, Jane Jr and Evan, or Jane Jr and Evan were involved and Ellen found out. Either way, it sounds like the news reporters felt there was something fishy going on and it lead to her violent and untimely death, and without having any further facts I am inclined to agree.

So, what happened next?

Jane Sr. died age 66 in 1912. The newspapers indicate she is buried at Stirling, but she has no gravestone and there aren't any other records of her burial.

After the trial, two of the sisters moved to Western Australia - Agnes (Mrs. Bartsch) and Margaret, who married in Boulder in 1898. Possibly they were trying to avoid further scandal, or it may just have been job opportunities coming up with the mining industry's development. I believe my great-grandmother Margaret was sent to stay with them at one point (why, I'm not sure) and met my great-grandfather there.

Jane Jr. sadly did not live much longer, dying age 17 in 1892. I am curious to order her death certificate to see how she died, although I'm sure it will be a common, garden variety illness. I hope.

Annie, the sister after Margaret, does not appear to have been mentioned at her sister's trial, nor does she appear in any other records I can find aside from her birth. I assume she died young and her death was not registered, as the family often skipped registrations.

Marion remained unmarried and died in 1957. Elizabeth, the youngest, married William Dalton and remained living in the Aldgate area. Of all the family, she was the only one still there when Jane Sr. died.

Ellen has no known memorial. I assume she was probably buried with her grandfather, Archibald, who died during the course of the inquest. I've never been able to find either Archibald or his wife, Euphemia, in any local cemetery and neither has a local researcher who holds all the burial registers for the Mount Barker district. Ellen is entirely forgotten, apart from here on this blog, and by me, especially whenever I read Tracey Chevalier's "Falling Angels". The novel contains a fatal (and probably sexual) attack on Ivy May, the introverted younger sister of one of the main characters. Ivy May's only line in the novel (which is told from a variety of perspectives) is this:

Over his shoulder I saw a star fall. It was me.




Rest in peace, Ellen.





Update: June 2015 - According to her death certificate, Jane jr died of enteric fever.

Saturday 8 February 2014

Murder Most Horrid - Text Heavy!

So, this weekend I got to go to the totally awesome Unlock the Past Seminar with Chris Paton, Thomas McEntee of course some fellow geneabloggers: KylieHelen, and the very thoughtful Alona. I had planned a topic for this weekend's blog, but then Chris mentioned something which caught my attention: just how excited genealogists get when they find out an ancestor was murdered.

Another lady who gets excited about a good murder

Now, it has been my serious misfortune in life to actually know two people who were murdered (in quite separate incidents) so I get it's very serious yada yada, but I knew exactly what he meant, because I have had one of my long-dead relations prematurely assisted to the grave, and I know what a gold-mine the resulting documentation can be. So no lectures about bad taste, please!

This story relates to one of my SA pioneer families. I find it hilariously ironic that they are one of the families which would entitle me to join the SA Pioneers Society, a thoroughly respectable institution, when actually they were very disreputable. The father, Archibald Gall, was a serial petty criminal and drunkard. He had a pronounced dislike for authority, which manifested itself (among other things) in a tendency not to register his children's births. His wife tried to get him committed to an asylum in 1870, his neighbours were always dobbing him into the council, and he was a notorious flouter of licensing laws and disrespecter of property boundaries - notorious, even though he lived in an area full of such people.

One of his daughters, Jane, was very deaf, and as a young lass alleged she was a victim of sexual assault along a road in a nearby area and that the alleged perpetrator threatened to cut her throat. It turned into a he-said-she-said case as both confirmed intercourse had taken place, but couldn't agree on the issue of consent. The judge was very unsympathetic, particularly when it emerged in the trial that Jane had, shall we say, been around the block a time or two with several of the local lads. She later married someone who was sometimes known as Andrew Cunningham and sometimes known as Andrew Sharkey. The couple were quite poor and at some point, Jane was left a widow (possibly 1881, meaning her last child had a different father). It was their daughter who was murdered in what became known as The Bridgewater Mystery. As an aside, this story also perfectly illustrates why newspapers are so useful. We had no idea about this family story, much less knowledge of all the family details contained in the report, until the newspaper records became searchable.

On 3rd October, 1890, 13 year old Ellen Cunningham (known as Nellie) disappeared after being seen walking from her home in Aldgate Valley towards Aldgate. By the 14th, the papers were starting to report this with increasing concern and a full scale search was conducted by about 60 local residents. The family had placed advertisements in the paper seeking information to help them find Ellen.

Pure genealogical gold!


Some time before the 17th (and I'm sure Chris will tell me I should browse through the papers for the intervening days to find the exact specifics, and he's right) her badly decomposed body was found by Dr. A E Wigg at Cox's Creek in a fairly heavily frequented place which had been searched several times already. The body was partly in the water, with the legs drawn up in a pose the paper said had lead locals to "draw inferences". A post-mortem was carried out by Dr. J H Henderson.

The general area: the red stars indicate Aldgate and Cox's Creek

The body had marks and bruises on the face and abdomen. Her head showed no signs of injury, and there was no proof that she had swallowed water as was expected at the time in cases of drowning. The initial report said that there was a gush of blood from her liver, but Dr. Henderson later wrote to the paper to make some corrections to their report, including stating that the blood was from "another part of the body altogether" (gotta be a euphemism for something deemed too explicit for the papers, surely). She was estimated to have been dead about two weeks. Dr. Henderson felt quite strongly that she was not drowned. She was not pregnant, but her body was too decomposed for Dr. Henderson to ascertain if she had "been tampered with".

Ellen's sister, Agnes, identified the body and the nightgown and ring being worn as Ellen's. Agnes said there was no reason for Ellen to have left home, and that when she last visited the family on 24th September (Agnes was married and in Stirling East) there was no evidence of any quarrels. The earliest news report then states that "the carpet bag and its contents weren't hers" and she hadn't seen Ellen's clothes since she left home.

Jane, Ellen's mother, said that she'd last seen her daughter at 7:30 am on the 3rd. She was fully dressed and in good spirits. She left Ellen with two of the youngest in the family and an older daughter, also Jane. The clothes had not been seen since. Jane returned at 4:30 to find Ellen gone. The previous day Ellen had asked to go and bathe and permission had been refused. Ellen was in the habit of bathing, but Jane did not know whereabouts.

Jane Cunningham testified that she had been milking the cow at about 11:00 when her sister left to get the other cows on the 3rd. At 5:00 the dog came home, wet, uneasy and tired. It had not rained that day and was quite warm. Jane had last seen her sister fully dressed and talking to Tommy Mullins, a schoolboy. She was using her nightdress as a bustle. Jane believed Ellen was in the habit of bathing at the creek by Mr. Rudd's. Jane identified a pocket knife which seems to have been found either with or near her sister as belonging to W Jenkins. She said she last saw the knife when her sister passed it to her at the table the week before Ellen disappeared, and Jane had given the knife back to Jenkins. Jane said that Ellen was rarely away from home alone, but would often go to the Salvation Army Chapel with Jane. She did not know if Ellen and Jenkins were on good terms, but Ellen was not in any quarrels, and when Jane realised Ellen was gone she and her brother in law, Paul Bartsch, went looking. They saw a man's footprints by the creek, and there were wild-flowers on the other side. They ran into a young boy who said he'd heard someone scream, but Jane Sr. had written it off as just being a jackass. Yeah, that same Jane we know was at least partially deaf.

Thomas Mullins said he was at the home that morning, and saw Ellen heading off around 8 without the dog, saying something about taking Jenkins his knife. Mullins ended up with the knife, and Ellen went to the Galls (obviously one of the family) which was where Jenkins lived. Mullins was able to accurately describe the knife.

Andrew Hart, a neighbour, said he'd seen Ellen and Jane at about 11am out on the road. They had their hats on and were headed to the waterhole. There was no dog with them. He felt the need to point out, at this juncture, that he did not tell Jennie (Jane's nickname) he would get her in trouble or smash her head under the wheel.

Euphemia, one of the youngest of the girls, agreed with Jane's story, with the addition that she had seen Ellen go off with Tommy on her hunt for the cows. Margaret, the youngest (she was 5 at the time), also confirmed the story, but said that Jane had accompanied Ellen on the walk.

Part of Cox's Creek (Picture by Paul Scott, author of the Adelaide Hills Walking blog)

While none of the news reports stated there were any concerns, it's plain someone was very suspicious about what was going on. The inquest was adjourned to enable further investigation to be carried out. It was at this point that some additional work was undertaken by a Professor of Chemistry at Adelaide University. He stated there was no evidence of any kind of poison, but that she had just eaten a number of native berries a very short time before her death. Dr. Henderson suddenly came forward with the notion that perhaps Ellen had fluid on the heart and had dropped dead of shock on falling in the water. Jane presented a description of  Ellen being prone to rheumatic fever, struggling with mysterious pains and suffering a cold which had hung on for several months. Jane vehemently denied having a boarder in the house at that time or any other.

Evan Jenkins said that he had known the family about five years, and that he often used to bring his food to the house where they would cook it. He didn't pay for board or lodging, but worked occasionally. On the Monday night, he saw Jane Sr. at the Aldgate Hotel Monday night and paid her 12 shillings for board, but then forgot all about it. As you do. He had meals with them and slept in the house, but that Mrs. Cunningham wasn't there then. He denied having said that "the police would get nothing out of me tonight" and that he left the Cunninghams because Ellen locked him out one night. He denied the Cunninghams had instructed him on what to say. It was at this point the Foreman of the jury suggested Mr. Jenkins knew more than he was telling. Jenkins denied having a quarrel with Ellen, and said she probably locked him out because he was taking too long over his dinner. Again he denied committing perjury, or that Jane had ever said "policemen will never get anything out of me". Jane Sr interjected to say she'd never received any board money, and Jenkins responded by saying she hadn't, because he was behind in paying. He said he slept on the couch at the old place and now at the new, while the family (Jane Sr. and her four unmarried daughters) slept in the other room. Jane responded by saying this was only when it rained. Jenkins further elaborated that he had thought Ellen would be at the Hancocks, hence his claims he could find her in two hours, but she had not been there.

William Jenkins, Evan's brother, said that he had received his knife Friday night from Jane while he was helping search for Ellen. He had not seen Ellen since Wednesday. He had heard the girls having words, but never a quarrel, and he had no quarrel with them either.

Andrew Hart spoke again, alleging that William and Jane in fact did have a quarrel. Two years before, Jane had claimed Jenkins' cow was in the pound and had obtained money from him to organised the cow's release (the Galls and Doreys, her family, were involved in pound-keeping at various times, so it may have been a relation of hers in charge of the process). As it turned out this was a lie and the cow was never impounded.

Charles Garbie, aged 7, said he saw Ellen near the Aldgate Post Office between 8 and 9, reading a letter. She did not have the dog with her. Mary Johns, aged 11, said she saw Ellen at about 8:50, with two cows but no dog. Another local said she'd seen Agnes with a sister, possibly Ellen, at 8:30, and another local described the search. The inquest was again adjourned.

Jane Sr. was called to testify again. She revealed that on October 7th she found Ellen's stays in her room, and that it was very unusual for Ellen to go out without them on. She also said that both Ellen and her own father, Archibald, were prone to fits.

Paul Bartsch talked about the advertisements the family placed, and was questioned about a mistake in the colour of the dress they had said Ellen was wearing. Agnes talked about Jane telling her of conflict with Hart over cows, and the threats he made to the girls when they were out on the road. Agnes said her mother was prone to fits and that her grand-father had just died only days before of a heart problem (Archibald died on 29 Nov 1890). Her uncle had chronic pain and two aunts had fits. Jane confirmed she had told Agnes, but said she had done so after the funeral. This was immediately identified as untrue as apparently the threats had not been used until later. The Coroner went to town on her, telling her she was telling falsehoods and acting like this cast doubt on everything she had said. I don't know if he was suspicious for other reasons, or just being a dick to an 15 year old girl (reported as being 18) whose family were completely dysfunctional and who had just lost her sister in bizarre circumstances. Of course the family's extensive reputation for serial dishonesty (even my great-grandmother is described as "handling the truth a bit carelessly") would hardly have helped!!

Local woman Jemima Harris said that Jane had come to her home on the evening of that fateful day, and that Jane claimed their dog had blood on it. Others testified to hearing her say the same thing. James Gall, Jane Sr's youngest brother, got up and suggested if anyone was lying it was Evan Jenkins. In response Evan's brother William implied James had been attempting to intimidate both Evan and Andrew Hart. The new focus became the brown skirt which the family had said Ellen was wearing but which many people had seen around their home after Ellen's death, and it is clear the jury thought that was a critical piece of evidence.

By this time the case had made national papers, and it is in those that it is recorded that the jury censured Jane Cunningham Sr and the Bartshes for their approach to giving evidence, and suggested the authorities should further investigate the evidence given by James Gall, Jane Jr. and Evan Jenkins. The jury made clear their avowed belief that some key facts were being suppressed by the family, but could only conclude from the evidence at hand that Ellen Cunningham met her death in some way unknown. The remaining articles on the issue focus on criticism of the selection of a local GP as the pathologist in the case rather than an expert in the field, leaving poor Ellen's mystery unsolved.

Murder in seemingly idyllic village... Intrigue at every turn... Where's Miss Marple when you need her?


Got a theory? I'd love to hear it!

Saturday 1 February 2014

I bet you can relate to this!

So, today I was at the supermarket when this completely random woman in her 40s wandered up to me and said something to the effect of "I know this sounds really weird, but I like doing nice things for strangers, and I thought you might like these flowers", and then presented me with a bunch of roses!

They were very lovely, but my first thought... actually, no, my first thought was "Sounds weird? Damn straight!" My second thought was "I can't take these home. What ever will my husband think?" So, I decided I'd have to move those roses on pronto!

Of course I spent a couple of minutes thinking of who is living near me that might appreciate having some impromptu flowers, but there wasn't really anyone who sprang to mind. Being a genealogist, my next thought was of course of who is non-living near me who might appreciate them. Within five minutes I was on the road to the nearest cemetery with plot numbers in hand, courtesy of Family Bee which lets me keep my family history file on my phone.

I decided to pick two people (it was 42 today, so I kept it limited!) to share the roses, both mums who had lost babies. Half the bunch went to Winifred McArthur, who is buried with her daughter, Dorothy, who died at 2 days old in 1904. Winifred followed her baby to the grave five days later. I notice since I last visited the metal part of her flower holder has disappeared.

Winifred's Headstone, taken last time I visited. Her husband was a Scotsman and there is a beautiful Gaelic inscription.

I left the other half of the bunch with Winifred Evans, who had a baby in 1920 while she was unmarried and gave the baby (also a girl) up for adoption, no doubt in response to considerable pressure from her family and probably hospital staff as well.

Both of them are buried in expired plots surrounded by other expired plots... they've had the Black Spot on them for ages. :( I know one day I'll go to them and they'll be engulfed in the black marble sea, but unless I win the Lotto there's not going to be much I can do about that

Anyway. The whole exercise took only about an extra ten minutes, and the flowers are now safely moved on to a more appropriate place. *phew* Crisis averted! Family history saves the day again!

If only Bad Luck Brian had installed Family Bee!





Thursday 23 January 2014

5 things doing Genealogy has shown me are bullshit

As a regular newspaper reader (both print and online), I find there are distinct perceptions some people seem to have of the past, which get trotted out every so often in public debate. However, after just under 20 years of genealogy research, I call SHENANIGANS on the following notions:

#1 People never used to be fat.

Yes, we all get it. There's an obesity epidemic. Electronic devices, small yards, fears of predators stealing our kiddies, processed foods etc. etc. And yes, it's certainly not how it used to be. However, one of the hilarious lines which gets paraded almost every freaking time someone writes an article about obesity is that "You fatties are just making excuses. Nobody ever used to be fat, therefore there are no fat genes/thyroid problems/whatever else and you would all look like Michelle Bridges if you weren't so damn lazy and addicted to hamburgers". Essentially, there are a pile of people who seem to think inside of every single big person is a skinny person who has been stifled, suppressed and Cadbury family-blocked to death, quite deliberately in some kind of act of self-sabotage.

HA!

I present a small selection from my extensive collection of exhibits for the defence.

My great-great grandma, Elizabeth Jane Duffield (1838-1911). In a corset. Squeezing her in to her teensiest tiniest possible size. No wonder she looks a bit tense.

3x Great-Grandma Elizabeth Jane Williams (1851-1909).

My grandmother (front) and her some of her family show why they aren't being used as promotions for Ashy Bines' Bikini Body.


And there they are again, this time fully dressed and with a  few more cousins along.

Now, I intend no disrespect to any of these lovely ladies. They are/were all beautiful people, and great-great grandma Duffield is a particular source of inspiration to me in my daily life. I don't hold with fat-shaming and don't mean to imply any one of these women should have felt bad about how they looked. In fact, I positively love that women the size of my grandma's family were so confident and secure they were ok with being photographed rocking their bathers, and keeping those photos for decades afterwards.
However, I think we can all agree that they are plus-size. "People never used to be fat", hey? Myth busted!

#2 People never used to live very long.

Every time there's talk of raising the pension eligibility age or something similar, some ill-informed twat writes in to the paper saying that the average age of people in generation b was 13 and therefore nobody lived long enough to pro-create, let alone retire.  (Ok, so I exaggerate just a little there.) I'm fairly notoriously not mathematically minded, but even I know an average is not the right figure to look at when considering the economic problem of retirement funding. Every genealogist with more than 30 seconds experience knows that, very sadly, a large number of our relatives were taken from us before they started school or, in so many cases, could even walk. Infant mortality was terrible (especially if you're like me and have a lot of family from Moonta). However, if you got through that, there were plenty of people who went on to quite a ripe old age.
My genealogy program of choice doesn't seem to be able to generate a report on Age at Death (wouldn't that be an interesting feature!), but here's a random sampling one some of its contents:
Samuel Skermer, died age 88 in 1806.
Eli Roebuck, died age 81 in 1860.
William Dawson, died age 80 in 1891.
Mary Robinson, died age 82 in 1892.
Charlotte Langdown, died age 82 in 1898.
Honora Curren/Curreen, died age 87 in 1908.
Edward Fudge, died age 92 in 1911.
Elizabeth Harvey, died age 83 in 1916.
Hannah Sykes, died age 82 in 1927 (after having 13 children in 26 years during her life-time!)
Jean Cargill, died age 102 in 1925
And that was just the fruits of a quick 5 minute skim! Apart from the last one, none of them were especially remarked upon as having reached an uncommonly old age in their obituaries, and if my grandma's recent birthday was anything to go by, 100 is still a big deal. Only William Dawson was even described as 'old'.*
Yes, average life expectancy was tragically short in Ireland, the UK and Australia. However, if you made it to adulthood, you weren't automatically going to die in a work-place accident, catch something dreadful or pass on trying to give birth. You were a fighting chance to make it through all of those dangers and spend quite some time sitting by the fire, watching your great (or great-great) grandchildren play.

*Updated to add: Since joining PASA, I've discovered this description of him as an 'old colonist' was probably intended more to convey the fact he settled in the first decade of the colony rather than his age.

#3 There's such a thing as a traditional family.

Maybe it's just that I live in Tony Abbott's Australia, but I get the regular impression that a certain segment of our society firmly believes that, until those dreadful and decadent 60s (or 70s in Australia... we always are that bit behind) every family had mum, dad, and 2.3 kids with a  puppy and a parrot. Or something like that. Yes, the myth of the nuclear family. Er... I mean the nuclear family.

Well, if that was ever true, it certainly wasn't in my family!! Again, just a random and small sampling of the many non-nuclear families in my tree:

Great grandma Margaret Dorey. Married 3 times. Raised two step-children (neither of whom had the same father) plus five of her own.

Great great uncle Hubert McPherson. Married before World War 1. Ran off with a Vaudeville dancer and went to live in Papua New Guinea. Remained with her for the rest of his life but never married her, even after his wife's death. Childless.

Thomas Skermer Evans: Married his first wife because she was 6 months pregnant, with what turned out to be someone else's baby. Enlisted in ww1 and discovered on his return the affair had continued. Divorced and remarried but remained childless. Did better than his younger brother Reginald who discovered in the divorce courts that his wife had frequented hotels and regularly 'misconducted herself'. Had two older sisters who had children prior to their marriages. In one instance the child was adopted out and the woman went on to marry a widower with children, while in the other the woman went on to marry the baby's father.

And that's before I even get started on William Drage, who had 11 children with his first wife before she left him and the state, then went on to have 17 children with another woman who he never married. The last one was born in 1894 when he was 68. Or before I get started on someone like Matilda Dawson, who was fostered out as a child because her widowed father couldn't look after all the children. Or Violet Tieste whose mother was widowed in the war and ran a boarding house (of questionable repute), lost most of her family to TB, had a brother made a ward of the state and became a Communist who we believe was 'barren by choice'.
Yep, reckon the whole mum, dad and two kids thing is pretty busted!


#4 Nobody ever used to commit adultery, or steal stuff, or get drunk, or...

Do I even need to go there on this one? There are so many stories I wouldn't know where to start! It's probably been partially addressed above anyway!

#5 There will always be a Redden.

In every country town across Australia there will always be at least one member of the Redden family buried in the local cemetery.

Actually, this last one is true.

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Y'know, some time I must get around to writing about what doing genealogy has shown me is the case on nature vs nurture.