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!

Why is it always you, Jimmy?

So, recently I've been lucky enough to go to France and Belgium again for work. (The struggle is real, people. The struggle is real.) This time I was in charge of putting together the itinerary, and while I was the soul of restraint and did NOT stuff it full of things about my family, I did squeeze one significant one in. We visited the Passchendaele Archives/Musee de Passchendaele in Zonnebeke, which in itself is a great experience which I recommend to you. From there, we set off on foot to our next destination, Tyne Cot Cemetery, which has always been visited on our trip but usually by bus. The walk to Tyne Cot is not as pretty as many which surround the museum, but it's highly significant: the walkway used to be the railway line along which troops marched to notable skirmishes such as the Battle of Broodseinde. I know from his war record that James Arthur Pearson White spent the last day of his life marching along that exact path: the noise, the smells, the devastated landscape, the fear...

Sign at the start of the walkway to Tyne Cot

Along the walkway are plenty of remnants from the war, although there are also fields being ploughed, birds singing and other pilgrims walking back in the other direction. It's hard to imagine what it must have been like 99.5 years ago when Jim took this same route to his final resting place.

Some of the remnants of war alongside the path

As I have previously mentioned, the archivist had supplied me with a modern map showing the field (and it is literally a field) in which Jim was killed by a shell, either while nursing a wound or just suddenly. I don't know that I'll ever have the opportunity to visit that field again, but for ten minutes on a sunny but chilly afternoon in April, a descendant of Ben and Lydia White was able to stand at the spot in which their son lost his life, on behalf of all those who remembered and loved Our Jim but lived out their lives a world away in Australia.

The field in which James Arthur Pearson White was killed outright by a German shell

While Jim's remains have never been identified, it's very likely that after the war they were discovered and removed to the Tyne Cot cemetery, the Commonwealth War Cemetery in the world. However, with so many graves the experience is quite different to visiting one individual soldier from the family. This makes my second Tyne Cot visit, and I feel far more as though I have had the chance to pay my respects to Jim in the field than in the Cemetery where he probably lies, unknown but not unloved.

Tyne Cot Cemetery

Of course the day concluded with a visit to the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing and attendance at the Last Post Ceremony, and on this occasion someone was flying in a hot air balloon, high above the arch where we stood paying our respects to Jim and to all of those men missing in Flanders Fields.

Fly free, Jim xxx

For Lydia. For Ben. For Florence. For Elsie. For Diana. For all of us.

Lest we forget.

James Arthur Pearson White: An Update

One of the great delights of my family research in recent months has been discovering, via this blog, many White relations who share my interest in James Arthur Pearson White. Through the very kind sharing of many of these relations I've discovered a few things which have brought me much joy:

1) That James' daughter did know she was his daughter, and grew up hearing his stories. I'm so happy to think he wasn't forgotten by the most special person in his world.

2) That Elsie did go on and find happiness in her life after the tragedy which befell her during the war.

3) That items such as James' Dead Man's Penny survive and are cherished by relations to this very day.

Given it's other people's information I'm not sure how much I'm at liberty to share, but more letters, photos and records of his survive than I had thought possible.

Jim died, but he lives on in the memories of many, both here and in England.

Sign at the Musée de la Battaile de Fromelles

Take THAT, Brick Wall!

Firstly, apologies: I've been a bad blogger!

Some blog news. Thanks to the good people at the Australian & Local Family History Blog Group on FB, my blog is now being archived by the National Library of Australia as a future resource for researchers. Now that's some motivation to get blogging!

Hope they've got a fucking language warning on that one!

Nothing much has changed here. I am still waiting to hear from the person who has the McDermott treasures. I am still in possession of That Family Heirloom. I still can't work out who killed Nellie Cunningham.

BUT...

Some time ago I posted about Ken Taylor, International DNA Man of Mystery (IDNAMoM). His parents were Unknown Male and Liar-Liar-Pants-on-Fire Female. He then married Sheila Smith aka Sheila Stanley, daughter of Unknown Male and Miss Nellie Smith. Yeah... there's a lot to go on there...

At the time I made mention of the unwillingness of their living children to shed any helpful light on the situation. I don't even know when my mother in law's brother was born! However, I have never given up hope of finding out more, and every so often go on convoluted fishing expeditions in an attempt to trick the living relatives into disclosing even a little something I could go on. I've bribed them with chocolate. I've plied them with alcohol. I've tried catching them by surprise. I even bought one of them a "Love Actually" DVD. It's got me nowhere.

Help from an Unlikely Source

Fast forward to a few days ago. My husband's cousin, who through age gap and geography is not a person we really keep in touch with, prompted her mother to take pictures of some old photos on her phone. Thinking she might as well, said mother forwarded them all to my mother-in-law, who mentioned it since she's generally prone to telling you every single thing she did last week (right down to how many tomatoes she got at the supermarket) and I don't think knows how to stop herself.

"Photos?" I say. "I must see these photos."

Sheila Smith AKA Sheila Stanley

Well, she could hardly stop me! In the end I had to wrest the phone from her very reluctant but aging and arthritic hands. Muahahaha - er, I mean, I managed to see the photos after applying a little gentle persuasion. Nothing unethical HERE. As I was looking through the photos, she said one was of 'Uncle Phil.'

Possibly Sheila, pictured with Phillip Smith

"Uncle Phil?" I say. "I've never heard of him. Where does he fit in?"

"Ohhhh," she said. "He was Sheila's brother. She had lots of siblings. There was Morris and Phil, Rosie, Eileen, or was it Elaine? Some others as well."

I could hardly write it down fast enough and skipped out the door to hop on both Ancestry and Find My Past to see what I could find. Smith? Nothing to go on. Morris, Phil, Rosie Smith... Now we're talking. I eventually found a Catholic family from Hookina who had quite a number of children including Ellen, Maurice, Phillip and Rose. AND a person on Ancestry who was researching them! It seemed they were more likely to be Sheila's aunts and uncles than siblings, but it had to be them.

At 11:30 last night I received a message from an equally excited Smith researcher confirming that YES, our Smiths are his Smiths. Suddenly I've gone from no Smiths to three generations back, and have crossed the pond. Boo-yah!

So many mysteries, so little time...

A few things perplexing me of late... apart from, of course, my perennial Bridgewater Mystery.


Number One:
I was recently rummaging through Find-a-Grave, and thought I'd check my great-uncle just in case someone has been photographing his war cemetery in El Alamein. I discovered nobody had, but someone had taken the time to raid a photo I have publicly available on Ancestry, and had added this onto his profile along with a message. Now, I appreciate that Find-a-Grave attracts all sorts who like to collect memorials, as well as those who might have an interest in the military or what-have-you, but Uncle Ron's profile is the ONLY ONE this person has added anything to. It's not a relative (we have a small family - I'd know) so some random person has taken the time to look him up on Ancestry, get the picture, go back to Find-a-Grave and add it on there... but never bothered to do anything else. Weeeeiiirrrrddd.....

Not one of mine this time, but quite apt

Number Two:
I've been doing a lot of war record work lately, and one of the ones I've been looking at is a record of one of my hubby's family members. He was a naughty, naughty boy who had several bouts of VD before being discharged from the army for being too riddled with disease! There are quite a few pages relating to his medical conditions, for example one recording temperatures. One of the pages is this:

I have seriously no idea what the story is with this page. And yes I've tried Googling (it wasn't good), as has Adelaide's resident genie-detective David Combe. Any theories? Love to hear 'em!

Makes as much sense as 'WTF?' will to readers in 100 years

Murder Most Horrid - A Further Follow Up

I've been combing more recent additions to Trove to see what (if any) further information I can locate about The Bridgewater Mystery which is, for obvious reasons, my most intriguing Family History Mystery. I came across a rather unusual article titled "Crumbs" in The Observer. It appears to be random snippets intended to be either humorous or providing commentary on recent news stories, but frustratingly these are mostly one sentence at a time, all mixed in together.

I've sifted through, and extracted the following which I believe to be about Ellen Cunningham's murder:

The first Bridgewater mystery is not cleared up.
Ellen Cunningham was a slim intelligent comely girl.
Jane Cunningham is a rather prepossessing young woman.
Would a body that had been submerged for a fortnight have a skin like parchment?
It would be difficult to persuade many of the old hands at Bridgewater that the body was not planted in the creek.
According to a late English paper, an autopsy on the body of a young man, who dived into deep water and sank, showed no evidence of drowning. The only conclusion was that the shock of the water on a weak heart had been fatal.

This plainly suggests the author had his suspicions about the case: that Ellen was murdered elsewhere and the body planted at the creek, and that the story about a weak heart had been inspired by recent news paper reports rather than reality.

I wonder if I will ever find out what happened.