The luck of the genealogist

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks | Week 11 - Lucky

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Inside cover

All the magazine articles and ‘how to’ books stress to family historians the importance of thorough, logical research, checking and re-checking facts, and not making assumptions. But sometimes the breakthroughs or greatest moments come through plain and simple good luck. 

As a heritage librarian, it’s not uncommon for me to receive calls from individuals wanting to know if I am interested in their family heirlooms. However, it was somewhat different recently when the call was from someone wishing to return an heirloom from our own family.

Recipe page

A recipe book belonging to my great-great-aunt Eva Dow had been purchased by the caller in an op shop in Tweed Heads. After trying out a few of the recipes, she decided it should be reunited with family members and set about to see if she could locate a descendant. A quick bit of googling led her to me via an article I wrote some years ago about Eva and helped her track me to my workplace.

Eva Dow, who I’ve written about before, was born in1886 and, until her death in 1969, was a much-loved central figure in the extended Dow family. She never married, having lost a beau in World War I, and had no children, but played an active role in the lives of her siblings, cousins, and nieces and nephews as well as being involved in community life in her home town of Maryborough.

Eva Dow ca 1960s

I was naturally very excited to learn of this family treasure but not overly surprised having had similar serendipitous ‘finds’ previously. But this does not make each and every such lucky happenstance any less special. My focus, of course, was on getting the book into my hands. Fortunately, the purchaser only lived a few hours’ drive away and I set off the next day to meet up with her.

The recipe book is not a published work but rather a blank notebook in which to write (or paste) favourite recipes. Sure enough Eva’s name was clearly written inside the front cover as well as the details of who gave it to her and when. It is filled with recipes handwritten by Eva, which include not only the ingredients but the name of the person from whom she got the recipe and a rating of how good it is. The book is in very fragile condition, with some of the pages brown and crumbling, but the recipes can be clearly read. There is also the occasional handy hint for things like how to kill rats and the etiquette of serving Yorkshire puddings.

We had no idea this book existed or that it had survived so we certainly weren’t looking for it. Where it’s been since Eva’s death in 1969 or how it got to the op shop in 2018 is not known. In a bittersweet twist, the purchaser told us that there were actually two books but she could only afford to buy one. We have a public call out currently hoping to hear from anyone who has more information or who might have purchased the other book.

In family history, thorough research is a necessity but sometimes nothing other than sheer good luck will reveal a hidden gem, particularly if there were no clues to its existence in the first place. But you can improve the chances of luck finding you by getting your family history stories out there (such as by blogging) where they can be found by other researchers who might contact you.

A royal connection??

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks | Week 10 - Strong

Ellen Boyne ca 1900

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Writing about a strong woman on International Women’s Day seems very apt. I started this piece about my 3xgr-grandmother Ellen Boyne for the Week 1 challenge and didn’t get it finished, so I’ll recycle it for this week’s post as there is no doubt she was a woman of great fortitude. She was also the ancestor that first sparked my interest in family history.

Family folklore told to me by my great-great aunt Else (Ellen’s grand-daughter) states that ‘Ellen was from a house of royalty of Boyne Castle, Scotland’ and purportedly the illegitimate child of Lord Boyne and the Countess of Skyfield, who subsequently married, thereby legitimizing Ellen’s birth.

Ellen allegedly emigrated to Australia on the ship ‘Bride’ to defy her family and escape her illegitimacy. In an alternate version she was shipped to Australia to rid the family of an embarrassment. Else also recalled the local postmaster in Ararat trying to get Ellen to accept registered mail from Lloyds of London. The presumption was that this had to do with an inheritance, however, according to Else’s memory, Ellen flatly refused to accept the correspondence. Other than her emigration to Australia, none of the above has been able to be proved or disproved.

What we do know is that Ellen arrived in Australia in 1852 as a 27 year old domestic servant. The ‘Bride’ had departed Plymouth in 1851 under the seamanship of Captain Natrass and docked in Hobson’s Bay (Victoria) 77 days later on 31 January 1852 (quite a fast trip for the times). The ship delivered a cargo of much needed emigrant workers to the Port Phillip colony, all of whom were apparently quickly hired. Ellen was hired two weeks after her arrival by O. Brown, Esq., of St. Kilda for the sum of £20 plus rations for three months. Her employer was quite possibly Octavius Browne, who is described as a ‘highly-esteemed merchant’. In 1852, he had five children under the age of 7 years and it appears that his wife Martha was pregnant so some domestic help would appear to have been much needed.

On June 11, 1852, four months after her arrival, Ellen married Charles Plant at Scots Church in Melbourne. Else believed that Ellen and Charles met aboard ship, however, no trace of Charles on board the ‘Bride’ could be found. Not surprising, as it turned out he came to Australia as a convict (something Auntie Else vehemently denied). However, witnesses to the marriage, Richard Wedge and Sarah Maria (nee Gordon) Melhuish, were aboard the ‘Bride’ with Ellen and married upon their arrival in the colony (whether they met on board or knew each other beforehand has not been established). Another element of the story of Ellen’s emigration is that because she was a lady she had to be chaperoned on the voyage to Australia as anything else would have been inappropriate. It is suggested that Richard and Sarah may have been these chaperones.

Not quite 10 months after the wedding, Ellen and Charles’ first son James was born in June 1853. At the time the couple were living in a tent at the top end of Collins Street (Melbourne). They then moved to the Victorian goldfields where they had six more children. Of their seven children, four died in infancy from fairly common (and today easily treatable) illnesses. The family lived in various goldfields locations before purchasing land at Crowlands/Eversley. During this time, Ellen was to bear another six children. Of the seven children, only two lived to adulthood, the others dying as infants or toddlers from fairly common (and now easily treatable) illnesses. Ellen was purportedly well-known as a midwife in the district, although no evidence of this has been found to date.

The marriage was apparently not an easy one with Charles being described by Else as ‘a worthless drunk’, which is probably something she heard Else or her mother say. However, Else also described Ellen as ‘pigheaded’. She purportedly worked as a midwife, however, her son James took responsibility for a large amount of the care and support of his mother and sister while they were growing up. In her later years, Ellen lived in the homes of her daughters in the Nhill district of Western Victoria. By this time, Ellen was receiving a pension and gave financial help to the family of her daughter Margaret (who was the mother of Else and my great-grandmother Ellen). Margaret’s husband Jack had a tendency to ‘fritter money away on gambling and drink’ and it is likely that Margaret relied upon Ellen’s assistance to provide for her family.

Ellen died in Nhill at the home of her daughter Mary Sanders in 1920 at the age of 91 years. Else remembers Ellen being bedridden in her later years and having very wrinkled, loose skin (Else said she used to pinch the skin on the back of Ellen’s hands to see how far up she could stretch it). Charles had long since vanished and his movements and whereabouts during this time have been hard to trace. It appears that he was admitted to the Rookwood Asylum in 1897 under the name Charles Crinks (possibly his mother’s maiden name) where he died in 1904.

Based on the ages listed in shipping, marriage and death records, her date of birth is in the range of 1825-1829. Neither Ellen’s marriage or death certificate provide any clues to her parentage. The birth records of her children provide the best clues to her birthplace, with four listing Inverness-shire, Scotland and two including a town (Nairn and Forres, which are about 10 miles apart). These towns are also only about 40 miles from Boyne Castle, which was the seat of the Earls of Seafield. A Helen Boyne appears in the 1841 census as a 15 year old female servant with the Chalmers family in Grants Close, High Street, Forres. In the 1851 census an Ellen Boyne appears as a 26 year old house servant in the home of Army Captain William McDonald in Lomond Street, Helensburgh, County of Dumbarton. This is a 150 miles south from Forres, however, her birthplace is listed as Forres, Morayshire which suggests this might be the same person listed in 1841. Perhaps she had already determined to emigrate and was making her south to embark.

While these pieces add up and have some parallels to the family folklore, there’s still not substantial enough evidence to prove or disprove the theories or establish her origins. Regardless of the circumstances of her start in life, I think it is safe to say that Ellen was clearly capable and resilient, travelling as a single woman halfway around the world to forge a new life, then enduring the hardships of life on the goldfields. Her marriage was not a successful or happy one and she suffered the loss of so many of her babies. But she also successfully raised three children to adulthood who married and had children, lived into her 90s, and is survived by many descendants around Australia. This took great courage and endurance and there’s no doubt that she, like so many others who lived similar lives in this era, was a very strong woman. But, alas, probably not a royal connection in our family tree.

Where there's a will

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks | Week 9

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Catherine Elizabeth Simpson
mother of Eva Dow

This week’s theme is ‘Where there’s a will’. The natural end to this sentence is ‘…there’s a way’. And this rings very true for family historians who are well known for their determined pursuit of their ancestors, believing that if they want it badly enough and work hard enough, they will find the answer. And sometimes the will is the way to the answer and was definitely the document that helped me progress two challenges in my research, one with spectacular results. This is not so much the story of a particular ancestor, but the story of how I found the faces to go with the names of numerous ancestors.

I have two spinster great-aunts in my family tree (on different branches). Both had purportedly not married due to having lost their beaus in World War I. Both cared for their aging parents and continued to live in the respective family homes for an extended period of time after the deaths of their parents. It seemed to me that there must have been a treasure trove of valuable family memorabilia in those homes and I was determined to try to track it down by identifying who had inherited their estates. This information would be contained in their wills. However, despite thorough searching of the wills and intestacies at the Queensland State Archives, I could not locate a will. Inquiries to the Public Trustee similarly yielded no results. The dates of death for the aunts was within the privacy period so I could not request their death certificates and, even if I could have, these documents were unlikely to give the information I was seeking.

John Simpson, father of
Catherine Elizabeth Simpson

I did know the addresses of the homes, and believed that the transfer of ownership and subsequent owner’s name would be listed on the title to the property. Titles for both properties were quickly and easily retrieved by Titles Office staff. Both indicated transmission by death and provided the details of the documents associated with those transactions. I requested copies of those records and, after several weeks of not so patient waiting, was rewarded with a full copy of the will and death certificate for both ladies. I now knew who inherited the estates

Knowing the names of the inheritors I was able to pursue the chain of inheritance. In the case of Auntie Eva, the estate was inherited by a relative to whom I have been extremely close throughout my life and upon asking, she told me that she did have a large box of old photos ‘somewhere in the garage’. This box, when retrieved, was the bonanza of which all family historians dream. It contained over 300 photos dating back to the 1880s and included images of ancestors never seen before. Miraculously, nearly all of them had names written on the back; many of the others were identifiable based on knowledge of the family and by comparison to other photos. In this case, my will combined with Auntie Eva’s will, proved to most definitely be the way to not only solve a research challenge, but to ‘meet’ myriad ancestors face-to-face.

POSTSCRIPT: Sadly, I was not so successful in tracking down Aunt Annie’s estate. She left “her all” to her “dear friend … in appreciation and grateful thanks for all the kindness and help she has bestowed upon me during our years of happy friendship”. It was lovely to know that this family member with whom contact had been lost had someone caring for her but sad to know that her treasures had passed out of the family. Unfortunately, the friend had also passed away by the time I found the information and despite very willful efforts, no relatives have been able to be located and alas that potential lode of family memorabilia may be lost for all time.