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.

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: Kylie, Helen, 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!

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!



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.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Sorry it's been so quiet!

Every November, I dedicate my genealogy time to an ongoing project: researching World War 1 servicemen from my area for the local RSL. I get through about five per year, so it's going to take a long time to finish them, but it's helping to flesh out details of the lives of some very courageous men and their families. The research is put up in the local library each year as part of a Remembrance Day display.

So, apologies for the deafening silence, but I'll be back!

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels #2: John Rendall Cave

So, a while ago I posted about the fact I had relatives in SA whose surname was Cave. At the time I made quite a joke about famous Caves, possible connections, yada yada. Anyway, after a little further investigating, it turns out that in their day they WERE famous Caves, and not the ones in Naracoorte either.

Susanna Darby, my ancestor George's sister, married Charles Cave. He had formerly been a yeoman farmer at Stoke Parsonage, these days known as The Priory. Her own father was also a yeoman farmer, in Pitney. I remember reading the excellent book about the Darbys in South Australia written by Basil Darby, who found it unusual that George and Mary could afford their own passage to SA (I believe he even used the words 'scraped together their passage'), and I had always shared the assumption they would not have been well off. Since reading about the Caves I've realised that a yeoman farmer owned upwards of 100 acres of his own land and was considered part of the middle class, which explains a lot about what happened when they got to Australia.

Stoke Priory. Not bad, hey?

 

George set up farming in Coromandel Valley, while his sister Susanna and brother-in-law Charles owned a farm at Sturt and a property on King William Street. Several female members of the family married prominent businessmen, one married the former aide-de-camp of Governor Macquarie, and some married regular joes (that would be my branch of the family. Typical.) Several male members of the family became prominent businessmen and public officials, including William Rendall Cave, explorer, merchant, ship owner, composer, Consul to Chile,  and all-round over achiever. Hell, he even started a wheat buying scandal decades before the AWB got in on the act! South Australian readers will see the genealogy on his Wikipedia page contains some of the most eminent names in our state. Nobody else I'm related to has ever aspired to the lofty (pun-intended) heights of owning not one but TWO mansions.

While every family has its shining light, they also have their black sheep, and it just happens in this particular branch of the family they are father and son. Yeah, that's him... near the bottom of the Wikipedia article. John Rendall Cave.

John was without a doubt educated at one of Adelaide's finest schools (*note to self - find out which schools the kids went to. Bet it's something with its own archive*), possibly succeeded his father as Consul to Chile, and would have been set up to be successful in business. He would have been given every possible advantage in life. But for what did he appear in the papers? His enormous profit margins? Civic service? Philanthropy? Being a stalwart of the Church? No: he appeared most regularly for getting sentenced to 12 months in gaol (and then avoiding serving the term) for pressuring a domestic servant to abort his child, a move which resulted in the death of the unborn baby and Antonie Hedwig Klemich, the young woman in question.

Grave of Antonie "Tonie" Klemich

 

The flowers were from me. I felt so bad when I read about her yesterday that I headed off to see her straight away. One thing which was something of a relief was that it seems someone has really looked after her plot. It is in pristine condition, despite being 105 years old. Antonie was not from a family of means. She 'got into trouble', and tried to remedy the situation by taking some very drastic measures. There's many a family that would have pretended not to know her on her deathbed, much less interred her with due respect. While she said that she was "very bad", it's obvious that those who knew and loved her did not feel the same way. Kudos to them for ensuring their poor darling girl received a decent burial. If this whole story reveals the despicable, exploiting behaviour of John Rendall Cave, it also shows the absolute decency of Alwyn (pronounced 'Alvin' I would presume) Klemich and his family.

 

To follow up, in 1930 Cave was written up in the Police Gazette for failing to provide maintenance to his wife and children. The newspaper trail clearly indicates a marriage break-down, the children staying with their mother who tragically died only seven years later.

 

Most of his family are buried together, but there is no sign of him. Perhaps he went to Chile? Perhaps he changed his name and moved away? Naturally I'm curious to find out what happened. I have contact details for someone I am certain would know, but what elderly person wants a phone call about their father when he's a guy like that?

 

Yeah... so not going to be dialling that number any time soon.

 

Edited to add: have heard from a relative who informs me that John formed a succession of somewhat dodgy relationships before dying in 1957 at the home of his last love interest, the woman who ran the Royal Admiral Hotel and farmed pigs at Port Adelaide. It seems somehow appropriate.

 





Stop! Collaborate and Listen!

You know you're GenX if you 'got' that one!

 

Every so often in genea-circles there are discussions about collaboration. Some people seem to think it is some solo endeavour, of old biddy pitted against the fiendish microfilm in a bid to read every document and visit every archive. Not me! I find it hilarious that as a student at school and uni, and in the workplace, I loathe group work, but when it comes to my genealogy I am a total convert to collaboration.

 

Firstly, there's all the wonderful collaboration with genealogists via Twitter, blogs and FB groups, to assist each other on the journey of collecting, analysing, recording and sharing our research. Then there's the mailing lists, helping out with specific areas of interest, particularly look-ups. I live very close by a particular cemetery, other people own particular CDs or subscribe to various websites.

 

The most important collaboration though would definitely be with relatives who are also researchers.

I am fortunate to have quite a few researchers on various lines, and in each instance there's been a different form of collaboration which has evolved.

 

Type 1: The one-off exchange

I copy all my stuff and send it off, the other person copies all his/her stuff and sends it to me, and then we both have the benefit of our collected research findings. Great for discovering odd, missed tid-bits, acquiring new photos and confirming previous avenues of research.

 

Type 2: The staged exchange

This has been the most common one I've found. We do the initial swap, then update each other should there be any major new breakthrough. My husband's relatives are good at this one.

 

Type 3: The round-table discussion

Rather like the above, but in person with biscuits. Far more fun!! My Evans relatives are fond of this approach.

 

Type 4: Full collaboration

I have a Dorey relative and a Sykes relative who are especially good at this. Not only do we update each other on our findings, but we vet each other's theories, double-check each other's conclusions, and strategically acquire resources so we don't double-up. It's terrific. We get the best possible bang for our buck and our time.

 

The only alternative is doing it all yourself, and there is just not enough time or money in the world for doing all the things that need to be done in our research!!

 



 

I'm hoping one day, when I have more time, to set up a Wiki to help facilitate family research. For example, I have about five Dawson researchers I keep in touch with. It would be so much simpler if we got a group share on the go, especially when it comes to files etc.

 

Anyone got any interesting experiences to share about how they manage their collaboration?

 

When I have time... Good one!!