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...

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.

What Would Your Ancestors Do? #1

How to Vote

With only just over 12 hours before polling booths open for the 2014 federal election, Twitter, FB and all our other social media channels are chock full of politics. Yeah, I know some people are complaining about that, but personally I think it's a good thing. There are too many countries where people are dying for the right to vote, quite literally, for me to be anything but grateful both for voting and the right to bitch and moan about the government/opposition/unicorns without having to be concerned about who will come knocking on the door.

Anyway, it's no national secret that voting often runs in families, and people often vote for the people their parents did (to begin with, at least). I'm a little curious though about the degree to which that extends to other relatives, so I did a quick canvas of the political leanings of people who appear in my family tree whose views can be established with any certainty:

Person #1 - My Grandfather, George McDermott

Grandpa on his last day of work at Holden's Woodville plant

My grandfather was ALP through and through. He always told Grandma the whole family should vote Labor, because we were working people and Labor look after the working folk. It's so imprinted on my grandmother's brain that even now she's nearly 100 and can't remember who her own great-grandchildren are, she still repeats that mantra whenever voting time rolls around. Grandpa worked in a factory as a foreman, and although he was offered many promotions to higher management positions, he always turned them down, saying he wanted to stick with the workers. Grandpa was a firebrand, and an agitator.

Person #2, My great-great grandfather, Patrick McDermott

We don't know much about Patrick. He died quite young, and for reasons I'm sure I'll blog about in future, nobody spoke about him much. One thing we do know is that he was from Derry Goolin, Galway, and that he emigrated here after the Land War had been underway for a few years. His neighbourhood was actually one of the key districts in the Land War because it was land owned by the absentee Marquis of Clanricarde, and the primary agitators in the area were young, single, Catholic, male labourers... like Patrick. One of his relations, also Patrick McDermott of Derry Goolin, later became a Nationalist MP. I know that there are conservative nationalists, but as a general rule of thumb, the Irish nationalists who emigrated to Australia have tended to be left of centre.

Person #3, My great-great-great grandfather, George Roebuck



George's Obituary

George served two decades on the Morgan Council and was plainly a man who cared about civic affairs. However, I have never been able to establish exactly what his political leanings were. Perhaps they were the same as his son's?

Person #4, Ellis Roebuck

Ellis was George's eldest son. He spent most of his adult life in the Port Pirie district. He was at one point the Councillor for Solomontown (like father, like son), and was also involved in two other organisations which still survive today:



Well, I think that's fairly conclusive, don't you?



That's it for dad's side of the family. On mum's side, I could only find out about two: my first cousin twice removed, Seymour Gough, who was a member of the Australian Communist Party, and my great-great uncle, Richard Owen Evans, embezzler of note, who was Councillor for Rosewater for several years. He owned a business, but nothing he said, did or wrote that I have clearly indicates his views one way or the other.

In fact, the only person I could find in the tree who I knew batted for the other team, so to speak, was on my husband's side, not mine. That was his grandfather, a bank manager, who stopped voting the the ALP after Chifley nationalised the banks.

So, it shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone that this handsome fellow adorns the dining room wall at our house:



Yeah, I'm getting my blog on on Friday, not Saturday. Saturday I'll be crying into a whiskey. I've never been a great one for drinking whiskey, but I think it'll be a good day to start.



Another Thing I Would Like...

For some reason when I look at my shortlist of things I would love to get hold of, lots of them seem to connect to my McDermott relations - probably because neither my grandfather or my father were at all interested in keeping anything to do with their families, and Grandma doesn't seem to have been fond of keeping anything to do with Grandpa's side.

 

Anyway... I'm probably doing this all the wrong way around, but for reasons I will elaborate another time, the McDermott siblings didn't have the world's all-time happiest home life. This impacted on them all in different ways, but the one who seemed to have the most issues was my great-grandfather's namesake, my great-uncle Patrick Francis McDermott, known to all the world as Frank. When I was growing up, the only thing I knew about Frank was that he had killed himself, and for some reason I formed the impression it was over a property deal in Port Broughton which had gone wrong. I was very young when I first heard about this and I could be wrong about the latter. He wasn't mentioned very often.

 

Growing up, Frank had to take on a much larger responsibility for the family than ought to fall on a child's shoulders. His first appearance in public record was when he was 11. His father had died the previous year, and he is listed in the Directory as working as a blocker (my grandfather would also be removed from school at a similar age, several years down the track). When his mother moved to Adelaide he went with the rest of the family and by his marriage in 1940 he was working as an antiques dealer and living in Brompton. Money must have been tight, and within a few years he was working at the local Gasworks, where he was charged for a minor theft in 1945. Thankfully he did not lose his job though - different times!

 

Apparently he never lost his eye for antiques, and used to take his step-grand-children rummaging around the numerous local pugholes for beautiful old furniture which presumably he would restore given he was notoriously tight with money yet had a house full of lovely antiques. He loved to fish, and maintained a shack at Fisherman's Bay. Again, different times. Shacks really were shacks, not mansions, and many families seemed to have them. He continued to work at the Gasworks.

 

Frank was apparently "a troubled man", and on 22 Mar 1961 he shot himself in the head. My grandmother has since virtually refused to talk about him. When absolutely pressed, she said that she didn't know where he was buried but that it was in the eastern suburbs somewhere and that he was married to a woman named Roberta, known as Boldy. Neither of these things are true, but do indicate that Grandma (who otherwise, pre-senility, had an excellent memory) still views his death as shameful and him as a person who Should Not Be Discussed. Sadly, she also threw away all photos of him, and his step-family don't seem to have any either, probably for the same reason.

 

Out of the many things I would love to get, to see or to own, a photograph of my great-uncle Frank is right up near the top of the list. I would like him to know that someone still remembers him and his story, and that he mattered.

 

 

The closest you are currently going to get to a picture of great-uncle Frank



Things I'd Love to Locate

Like every genealogist, I have a hit list of people I'd like to locate. More about them later. The thing which has been troubling me the most of late is a THING I'd love to locate.

Likelihood of you getting through the post without thinking of this Simpsons episode: 0%



John Clifford McDermott, my great-uncle, died in 1993. Prior to his death he lived in a series of nursing homes, first in the Fullarton/Glen Osmond area and then in at the Seventh Day Adventist Home in Christies Beach. Once as a young kid I went to visit him at one of the Fullarton/Glen Osmond homes, along with my dad, and Uncle John got out his photo album to help me pass the visit. I remember there were a lot of black and white photos, but nothing more.

Grandma was already 80 when John died, so not able to help 'clean out' Uncle John's stuff, and since my family were living in the country and my aunt's family were interstate none of them helped either. I can only assume the task fell to his widow or her children. His widow died only a matter of months after him (no, not from missing him - they hadn't lived together for quite some time before his death and had married quite late in life) so may not have been well enough to help. I can only conclude it fell to her children to go through his small collection of things and deal with them.

Fast forward to now. My grandmother either never had or has thrown out every picture bar two of my grandfather's relatives. None of his siblings had any children, so there are no cousins on that side of the family with any pictures. Grandma is also quite senile and doesn't remember who anyone is most of the time, much less anything about them, so I don't like my chances of tracking down that elusive photo album.

So, if you are out there somewhere, Lee, Margaret and Joy, Scott (Scott Stephen Mason?), Michelle, Lisa, Alysha, Rohan and Dylan, children and grand-children of Stella Veronica McDermott (d. 16 Mar 1994) possibly nee Mason, and you have a stray photo album you aren't quite sure about, I'd love to take a look. Sure the pictures aren't labelled and I might not be able to work out who everyone is, but all the same it's still my number one most wanted ITEM in the genealogical context.

Not quite a million dollars and a red Porsche, but it'd be very valuable to me.