New Hints and Family

A few weeks ago I received an email from someone who thought I may have been related distantly to his wife. Yes I did have her grandfather listed in my tree so another family link. I phoned him as my computer was in the shop and I was anxious to make the connection.
Yesterday I got a small parcel of photos in the mail. They were mainly postcards but had John Woodhead's shop seen in a few of them. There was one of his house, his grave, his son's house in Beechworth and even one of John playing the piano and his daughter with a violin.
Even better was there were notes on these postcards and Peter has kindly transcribed these.
Now I have more research to do. Who are some of the people mentioned in the postcards and who lived in Bendigo, and "Thistlebank".
There was a mention of going to the Theatre Royal to see "Revenge" Thanks to Trove there is a mention of the opening of this play so able to put an approximate date to it. Unfortunately most of these do no appear to be signed so not sure who these are from when they mention Aunts, cousins etc.
I am sure this will be sorted in time and I am hoping that maybe they will be able to name some of my mystery photos.

Found Lena

Well after all of these years I have finally found Lena! The daughter of Emma, as per my previous story, and my grandfather's sister who just seem to vanish.

Turns out she lead a parallel life to her older sister Mabel, whom she probably never even knew existed. Because of these parallels I followed Mabel's life for some time wondering why Mabel was known as Lena.

Both married x2 and both had  husband's were known as Les! Only Mabel's first husband was Les and Lena's second was Les.
Both never had children
Both died in a nursing home
Uncle Jim had told me stories about Lena, saying her first husband was a "cad". Not sure about Lena's husband but Mabel's was a small time criminal who died in Jail, serving almost 25 years for housebreaking because as soon as he was released he reoffended. Uncle Jim did tell me Lena's husband divorced her because she could not have children, but I did find that Mabel did not remarry until her first husband died.
It turned out that Lena had married in Cecil Fowler then in 1938 she married Albert William Leslie Adams (Les Adams) in New South Wales.
Les Adams was a popular musician at the time, another thing Uncle Jim had stated. He was the first person to bring out an electric Hawaiian Guitar to Australia.

The last thing was Mabel's death, Les had already passed away and Mabel was in a nursing home. She was apparently crippled with arthritis and in a wheel chair. Uncle Jim said that he went to visit her there before she died after he found out she was there. When she died she has been registered that her mother was Mande Mary Conroy, maiden name Royal rather than Royle, however this was not in the index so I had overlooked it. If the index showed Royal I would have picked this up.

These findings have put together a number of family stories I had heard.

Where do they get the names?

I have had my searches blocked because someone has given a wrong name on an official document of some kind. This leads me to wonder why and broadening searches so far still have not answered the question.

First off Benjamin Woodhead and his brother John, both came and settled in Melbourne and did quite all for themselves. Both were well educated and knew how to make money. So why is it that on John's marriage and death certificates he has named his mother Fanny Hobson? I can understand the discrepancies on Death Certificates, depending on who gives the information also depends on what they know of the person they are giving the information for. But on a marriage certificate?

I have spent years trying to find Fanny Hobson but gave up. Then I realised that John Woodhead (Snr) had married a Fanny Mellor about that time. Then there are a number of children to John and Fanny (no maiden name). There was a christening of a John Woodhead about the same time as our John (Jr) in Pennistone, just up the road from Almondbury, the mother is listed as Fanny Mellor. Then I got John's marriage certificate and found that he was born in Pennistone. The 1851 census for my John and Fanny and children then confirms that Mary and John were born in Pennistone. There are too many co-incidences between John and Fanny Hobson and John and Fanny Mellor not to believe the two are one and the same person. Also there is only ever one John and Fanny that can be found in the census.
My guess is that maybe Fanny's Mother may have married a Hobson along the way somewhere, and the boys realising their grandmother was a Hobson assumed their mother was too? The search on this one goes on.

Then the next generation. Alfred Woodhead (Benjamin's son) was born 22 July 1848. On His marriage certificate he names his mother as Sarah Taylor. Years of looking for Sarah was found to be rather elusive. I did find a marriage for Sarah and Benjamin and sent for the certificate, certain this was them, in the hope of finding Sarah's Father and maybe getting a lead on the family. However when the certificate came I found that Benjamin's occupation was incorrect, his father's name was Joseph and not John, and his occupation was also different, to top it off I found that Ben was illiterate and signed with an X.
After Ben's first wife died he remarried Sarah Clarke. I sent for this certificate which had all the correct details as I knew them, Benjamin Woodhead, joiner, his father John, Dyer and he signed his name.

Recently Family Search has updated a number of details found in their records. Among these was the marriage of Benjamin Woodhead to Isabella Jenkinson. It lists his father as John. I had a look for Isabella's death and found she had died in Kendal, where Benjamin married Sarah Clarke a few months later, the only discrepancy was that she appeared to have died a few months before the date of birth we had for her son Alfred. We have never been able to find a birth registration for Alfred and the date we had came from his daughter's birthday book.

I took a punt and send for the marriage certificate. It was the right one, all the details matched those on Benjamin's second marriage certificate. Apparently Alfred was born a year before, and when I checked his certificates and the ages on them this all worked out to be correct.

This still poses the question why did Benjamin and John believe their mother to be Fanny Hobson when she was Fanny Mellor, and why did Alfred believe his mother was Sarah Taylor?  Guess these are ones we may never really know the answers to.

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Further to the above, I have just found Alfred's birth and Christening. He was in fact Alfred Townley Woodhead. It is the first I have heard of the Townley name and no idea where it has come from. It sounds like he has been named after someone.
Also on his christening his grandparents are named as his parents. My thoughts on this? His father has taken him to be christened and has been asked what the parents names are and he has given his parents. I know it is the right person as the address is correct and father's occupation and I did have Alfred's birth date which is also listed on the christening certificate.
Why is it that when I knock down a brick wall 10 more jump up? No wonder genealogy keeps one interested.

What is in a Name

How many family historians have gone looking for an ancestor and refuses to acknowledge that because the name is incorrect the record is ignored. I know I have often found that a name has been used in reverse of a registration, such as Mary Jane becomes Jane Mary.
My mother named me Carmel Maree, however when I sent for my birth certificate it had Carmel Marie. I use this as it makes life easier. Not only that my daughter's mother in law's name is Marie so when my granddaughter was born she was named with Marie as a middle name to cover both grandmothers, so very convenient for my daughter, not only that my mother and Marie's mother both had the same name so the next granddaughter will be covered as well?

Vera with daughter Monica

However my grandmother really had her name confused. Her grandmother was the daughter of Bridget and named her own daughter after her mother. Young Bridget died as a teen from consumption so when her niece was born her grandmother insisted that the baby needed to be named Bridget. Her father went into town to register the baby. She was to be named Veronica Mary Bridget Murphy.
Nana told me this was her name and that she was registered as being born on the 6th of December instead of the 5th. When my brother was born on 6 December Nana was thrilled, he was born on her legal birthday.
Nana went to vote once and the fellow had trouble finding her and suggested maybe her name was Mary Veronica! Nana was most upset saying "I think I would know my name!"
She sent for her birth certificate once and was quite surprised to find that Bridget was not in her name at all, she would have been in her 70s at this time.
After Nana died aged 86 years her son came across the birth certificate, yes Nana had picked up that the Bridget had been left out of her name but failed to notice that her name was in fact Mary Veronica and not Veronica Mary as we had known her.
When her son died his wife has registered his mother as Mary Veronica however when my mother passed away I put the name known to us, Veronica Mary.
Interestingly I had a copy of the page from the family Bible sent to me. An entry in that says that on 5 December 1899 Veronica Annie was born! Veronica Annie, Veronica Mary Bridget, Mary Veronica?  So what exactly was Nana's name? What do we put on official records?

I have this story in my family tree  for future generations but it does prove that when looking at records we all need to be open to discrepancies and misspellings etc. Remember that what is written on a death certificate is what who ever gives the information, thinks they know. Also many were illiterate many years ago, I found a family who had about 10 children and none had the surname spelled the same.
Literacy was not an issue in Nana's family so it is very confusing that she has so many variations, oh and by the by, she was always referred to as Vera!

Finding Margaret

I have never had any luck with Irish Research even after all the years of studying my family history. My G G grandmother, Bridget Hagan (or O'Hagan) came to Australia with her older sister from Ireland on board the White Star in 1867. Three years later she married Alfred Woodhead who had been in Melbourne since he was a toddler. Her older sister May married Julius Vierth, a twice time widower with 3 surviving children ten years after.
I had the names of their parents but had no idea who else they may have left behind in Ireland. Then I found the headstone for the Vierth Family at Melbourne Cemetery. It is a large grave and has Julius' second wife and the baby born at the time of her mother's death. Then there is a mention of Julius himself and his sister-in-law Margaret O'Hagan.
It was this one that had me stumped. There was no mention of her being May's sister, so I wondered then if there was maybe a brother and his wife who may have come out. I looked for her death to find out who was listed as her parents, but these were recorded as unknown. So I sent for the death certificate and found she was single, she had only been in Australia 2 years and died in hospital from TB.
How sad she may have been missed because her parents were not listed on her death certificate. I wonder if the family thought the Australian climate would have helped her. If only there were some letters from Ireland around.
If it was not for the headstone, I would never have found her, which I find a bit sad and have to wonder how many family members came to Australia and never noticed because they have died and parents unknown and never married to have descendants to remember them.
I also have a photograph of a young lady, I cannot be sure but I get the feeling it is Margaret. Wish I had a way to find out for sure.

Finding the father of Emma's Daughters

Emma pos on her 90th Birthday

Emma Royle born 29 May 1870 in Sale Victoria, the 7th child of 14 born to Roger Royle and Maria Nicol (or any variation to Nichols).
Described as 4 foot nothing and strong as an Ox, her granddaughter once said "you daren't offer to help carry a suitcase or push a wheelbarrow full of wood for her or you would get what for!"
When I first started my family history I was told that Emma had 3 daughters to her first husband and when he died she had 3 sons to my great grandfather. My mother was surprised as she had only met 2 daughters and then we were told that one separated herself from the family and never seen again. No one seemed to know where she went.
The girls were the daughters of Robert Conroy who was a merchant seaman who went back to England to gain an engineering certificate and died on the way. However after years of research I was never able to find this marriage, nor the birth of the girls. I also was not able to find the marriage of Emma to Peter Johnson (My great grandfather) but I did find the birth of her youngest son. When I purchased this certificate I found that he was registered to Peter Johnson and Emma Royle (Known as Johnson). Peter was the youngest of Emma's children and yet no other children were mentioned on this certificate.
I mentioned this to Uncle Jim (James Johnson and Emma's second son) and made the comment that I don't think they were ever married, to which he replied "I don't thing they were either." (now why didn't he tell me that years earlier, did he think I would just give up and never find out?)
This upset Jim's daughter at his funeral with her saying "well I have their marriage certificate!" She never did send it to me.
Later I was to find the birth certificate of my grandfather, he was registered John Royle, no father listed and no other siblings, but the son of Emma.
As for Lena (the daughter that disappeared) she was supposed to have married a musician, but they divorced when she failed to have children. Uncle Jim told me he had found her just before he died living at a nursing home near him and he attended her funeral. People there were surprised to learn she had siblings.
I later found a death for a Mabel Stella Kerridge, mother listed as Emma Royle. She had died in a nursing home and her death certificate mentioned 2 husbands. I could not work out how people got Lena from Mabel but then this was not uncommon. Everything except her age pointed at her being Lena, she died before Uncle Jim in a nursing home, had married twice and of course her mother was Emma.
 I stopped looking for Lena.
Not long ago I had contact with two of the granddaughters of one of Lena's daughters. This was exciting as it was the first contact I had from any of Emma's other descendants that were interested in the family history. And Cassie had in fact used a lot of my material handed to her by one of her aunts, whom I had sent it to years earlier.  I am always happy for family to pass this on to other members and this is one that had paid off.
She had Lena as the youngest child and had her name as Eileen, which would make sense given her name. One thing I had failed to do was look under Emma Royle in the New South Wales Register. I had done in Victoria hence finding my grandfather. But Cassie had and had found Doris and Eileen both registered, she could not find Sylvia.
One thing that stood out was that Doris Manay was in fact registered Doris McGeagh Royle. No father for either girls, so once again Emma had not married the father of her daughters. It was also noted that there was a Sylvia McGeagh registered the right year, to Robert McGeagh and Mary.
Robert McGeagh was a baker, and had married Mary Phoebe Collins. They had 2 daughters, one died as a baby, and after a gap had Sylvia all in NSW. I then went to the Victorian Registers and found that Robert and Mary had moved to Sale in Gippsland Victoria, where Emma lived, and Mary gave birth to a son Alfred. I sent for his birth certificate and found that the midwife was Maria Royle, Emma's mother. Also this was the year before Emma had given birth to Mabel. So now we had 4 daughters for Emma, and it seemed no one knew of Mabel before I found her.
I also found that Robert had done his baker's apprenticeship on a ship (Merchant Seaman). There were a number of puzzle pieces starting to fall into place. I then found that Alfred McGeagh served in the WW1 and he died a few years after returning to Melbourne. Looking at his war records I noticed his mother had written asking if he was entitled to a scroll for his grave. The War department had written back asking for the name and address of Alfred's father, I turned the page to find that she had written back, "I have not seen nor heard of his father in 32 years! " This took us back to the birth of Mabel.
Further search found that Lena had been born at Sydney Benevolent Asylum. Further when records were obtained, Emma named the father, Robert McGeagh. 
We may have gone the long way about finding these facts, as they were on the Asylum Records anyway but we had all gone in the right direction and came up with the right details. It was a combined effort from Cassie and Julie and myself but we got there and found the illegitimate father. It appears he disappeared before Lena was born and we do not know where he went but at least now we know who we are looking for and have a name for the Conroy? Girls. 
Emma died at Cockatoo in 1960 just after celebrating her 90th Birthday.

Saving an Ancestral Grave

Yesterday I recieved some photos of an Ancestral grave at Arthurs Creek. It is the grave of Thomas Murphy and his wife Mary (nee Nolan) and thier 22yo daughter Bridget.

Along with it I recieved a request from the Cemetery Trust asking if the family were interested in having all fixed up. The headstone is in good condition but it needs to be strengthened and the sides are caving in.

Now I need to contact as many descendants as possible to ask if they would be interested in putting toward the $3000.00 needed for repairs.

My thinking is to find at least 100 descendants to each contribute $30 and it can be done. My grandmother, the granddaughter of this couple, has well over 100 decendants on her own, of course many of those are too young to contribute but Nana was only one of about 12 Grandchildren.

I have posted an event on Facebook and getting responses but will also have to write a few letters I think.