FOI, not FFS.

As a hobby genealogist, I probably spend as much time developing my three key networks as I do actually researching. They are:

1) The wider family and local history community,

2) The cousins, especially those who research our family,

3) My online genealogy networks (eg Twitter).

Yes, this takes away a lot of research time, but it leads to much better research.

Exhibit A:

Recently of course it was May, and in South Australia that means one magnificent thing: History Month and the History Festival. It's hard to juggle the events with the little twigs and work, but I get to as much as I can. One of the things I did this year was go to the Open Day at State Records, an experience I highly recommend. I got to tour the Archives, hear about some of the items, and get some research assistance. It was also a chance to mourn the decision made by the Chief Archivist during one of the wars to pulp most of the inquest records to retrieve paper... Why... why...

Or in this case, I don't always pulp records, but when I do they're the most interesting ones...

Only a few weeks before I'd done some research with State Records on my Lavis History Mystery. Using the indexes available online, I had discovered that Albert Sydney Lavis, Louisa Ellen Lavis and Lucy Jane Lavis had been boarded out and had ordered the records detailing this. These records told me four really important things:

1) That they'd been turned in by their only-slightly-older sister Amelia*. Amelia had escaped the family dysfunction by marrying at 14. She gave birth to her first child just before her 16th birthday, took on the care of her three younger siblings who had been abandoned by their mother Ellen, and then had her first child die. I can well understand it got a bit much.

2) That the children were fostered out to their childless aunt, Asenath Bacon.

3) That a few years later they had been removed from Asenath and sent to Solomon Wiseman.

4) That State Records' copying service is really, really cheap.

Says it all, really

The records referred to item #3 as being referenced in a set of Minutes, the problem being the Minutes are part of a government record series which is sealed as it contains details of adoptions which took place less than 100 years ago.

The lovely people from State Records helped me get all the information I needed to lodge a Freedom of Information request for the minutes. They tell me that, given the age of the records I'm after, I'll certainly be granted permission to access that section of the record series, and while there's no telling what I'll find, it's probably the only possibility of a definitive answer to the Family History Mystery of how the children of Walter Lavis (impoverished bigamist at large and former inmate of Adelaide Gaol) ended up inheriting thousands of pounds from Solomon Wiseman when there was no apparent connection between the families at all.

Meanwhile...

I emailed my relatives on that side of the family to update them with my findings. All of us have been working on cracking this one for years. We have notes from 30 odd years ago where family are pondering over theories on what happened. One of my relatives said she also had an update for me, and let me know that Ellen had remarried (possibly bigamously) to James Pitt in Jamestown in 1884. However, and more interestingly, in between her second and third marriages she had a child named Edith May Norbury. Poor Edith was not blessed with long life, and passed away in Yancowinna Station, Silverton, in 1885.

What's interesting about that?

A little google of my DLF Solomon Wiseman once lead me to the piece of information that, before becoming a grazier and even before becoming one of the original BHP share-holders he was, of all the unexpected things, a rabbit inspector.

You have to start somewhere, even if your grandfather is King of the Hawkesbury

Armed with that information I consulted the ever-reliable and constantly surprising Trove, where I found out that...

I see you, you wascally wabbits

In 1885, Solomon Wiseman was in Silverton on at least two occasions.

Now, I know that's not evidence of anything, but by working with some of the fantastic networks out there I have placed Ellen Pitt nee Clifford nee Lavis nee Maynard and Solomon Wiseman in the same town in the same year, not two years before her children were moved to his care. Coinkydink? Possibly not! At the time the population of Silverton was at its peak, roughly 3000, which is still quite small enough for them to have met, especially since Ellen was at a Station and Wiseman is described as visiting Stations.

Now to wait for the results of the FOI request! Hopefully they add more detail than Nellie Smith's death certificate which turned out to be a dead-end of 'unknowns'. Watch this space!!

*Amelia went on to ditch her own family of 8. She fled to WA, had another 7 to someone else, and lived to the grand old age of 94.

Heirloom Hand-over

A while back I alluded to the fact I'd received a mysterious comment on Ancestry. Someone had commented on the image of my great-grandparent's marriage certificate that they had the original. That line of my family is very small, so I was pretty surprised to say the least. After quite a few delays, I met up with the lovely woman who commented and she handed me over two items she found while cleaning out her shed. It turns out her husband's grandfather married my great-grandmother, which goes to show that you never know who will still have items of interest to your family!

1) A picture of my great-aunt Annie

This is quite unusual. It's made almost like a badge is, with the back pressed into the picture. It's a photo I already had, but it's very special to own the one which actually belonged to my great-grandmother and was probably on display in her house.

2) The marriage certificate

Obviously I had applied quite some time ago to get a copy of this, and so had all the relevant information already. You'll see it points out things like the occupation of the participants' fathers, their current residence, age at marriage etc.

One of the things this shows is that Margaret said she was 21, the legal age to marry without her parents' consent. A year later when Annie was born she was recorded as being 19. On the original you may notice a teeny tiny difference...

You can actually see where someone (lookin' at YOU here, Margaret) has changed the year so that it shows how old she really was. And this people, is why you want to get original certificates where-ever possible.

A slightly old meme, I know, but I couldn't resist...

The Benefit of Re-Visiting Sources

I know it's generally an impossible challenge to get through your genealogy to-do list (and by 'yours' I mean 'mine'). I look on with envy at people who have dipped into land records, published their book, made their scrapbook or whatever. Somehow between work and the little twigs I never seem to get that far! However, there's one thing I always make time for: regularly revisiting sources I've already looked at to see if there's anything new which can help with my brick walls. In the past month or so I've had a couple of great successes.

1) You may recall me bemoaning that MIL claimed she didn't know where her grandmother (the infamous Nellie Smith) was buried. Well, after searching for years, I've made the discovery in some updated tombstones available via Gravesecrets. Faithe was very excited for me that the headstone included names of children and grandchildren, but I knew those already. What I was excited about was that it gave me a date of death! I've now been able to order her death certificate, just in case it contains any details about her mysterious past.

It's in SA though, so this could take a while...

2) I've been regularly checking Ancestry for clues on all my brick walls, and was delighted recently to discover a descendant of Susanne Lotz had posted her tree. She's quite a distant cousin, descended from the branch of the family who emigrated to the US. However, she had done a great deal of research, including into Susanne's French ancestry which was absolutely fascinating. It appears as though the family were part of the French upper classes who fled to Germany during the Revolution... the second French Revolution connection in that branch of the family.

This also helped clear up a question I've always had: given Harriet Meyer's parents had emigrated from Germany, had her four sons been shooting at their cousins on the Western Front? Well, I still don't know if any of Franz Meyer's nephews fought for Germany, but it appears the closest relatives in the Lotz family had all emigrated to the US prior to the outbreak of the war, so the McPhersons' cousins on the Lotz side joined the US army.

So, it's going to take me forever, but at least it will be really thorough!