Monthly Archives: March 2019

#52ancestors – Family photo

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So Week 8 of #52ancestors was ‘Family photo’. Well, I have decided to share one of my favourite family photos of my great grandmother Jean and some of her siblings.

Left to Right: Adeline, Jean, Eddie, Neville, Trevor (seated front)

I was lucky enough to have my great grandmother around when I was growing up, and she lived to the grand old age of 93. I was always interested to hear about her stories of growing up as her life was so different than the one I knew. She was born Jean Thompson on 20 March 1917 in Lismore, NSW to parents Thomas William Thompson and Hannah Maria Darch Mallett. Jean was the fourth child in the family and another five children were to join the family in the years to come.

I remember hearing when I was a child that Jean had grown up in a poor family where there wasn’t much of anything, which was something I could relate to as my own family wasn’t at all well off when I was growing up. But as a twelve year old, I felt sad at the fact that when Jean was twelve years old, she had the unimaginable loss of her mother and as the eldest girl at home was forced to grow up quickly and take care of the family.

Knowing that Jean and her siblings had grown up poor, I never thought anything of the fact that I didn’t see any photos of her as a child. When I started doing family history, however, I began to be more interested in her growing up and I began to search out photos. I plucked up my courage and got in contact with my great uncle, Jean’s son. Well, lo and behold he volunteered to scan and email me whatever he had as he had all of Jean’s collection of photos at his house.

At first it was candid photos of her as a young woman before she was married and as young mother. And don’t get me wrong, these photos were great and as a family historian I appreciate any and all photos of my ancestors. But then the most exciting photograph appeared in my inbox. Not only was it a photo of Jean as a young girl along with some of her siblings but it was a professional photo in which they all had their best clothes on and were posed so cutely. I was completely amazed. To this day it is one of my favourite photos, perhaps because I was fairly close to Jean and maybe also because I felt sorry for the children in the photo knowing that it was only a few years after the photo was taken that they would lose their mother.

#52ancestors – At the Courthouse

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For the prompt of ‘at the courthouse’ I have decided to write about my great-grandfather Herbert Samuel Starr. Now, Herbert spent what I would consider a decent amount of time in the courthouse for someone not employed at the courthouse.

Herbert was born in 1903 in the central west town of Molong in NSW. However, his father worked on the railways and the family was soon on the move to Young, NSW where the youngest child of the family was born and where Herbert’s parents remained for some years. However, by the time of his marriage in 1922 Herbert was residing at Paddington in Sydney NSW and was employed in the Citizens Military Forces (CMF). Now, this all seems very humdrum so far and his life was very much unremarkable for nearly a decade, beyond the birth of two children to the marriage.

But in 1931, Herbert Samuel Starr makes his first appearance in the courthouse. The Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate (Parramatta, NSW) reported that on March 6 1931 Herbert’s house was searched and a large quantity of groceries was found in his possession. He claimed he had bought the groceries at a local store, explaining that he was frequently away from home with his work and as a result bought groceries in bulk so as not to cause his wife too much trouble.

The newspaper article reports that the constable conducting the search was very suspicious, stating that it still seemed like an awful lot of groceries to have on hand. The constable also states that none of the staff at the local grocer, where Herbert had claimed to buy the groceries, remember him coming into the shop at all let alone purchasing anything. Herbert tries to bluster and maintain that he bought the groceries at the local grocer.

However, the story soon unravelled and it was found that Herbert had stolen the groceries from the military store. Fortunately for him, his case was dismissed under the circumstances that his wife was ill at the time of the theft and had since died leaving him with three small children.

But this was not the last time Herbert would appear in the courthouse. Having three small children, one a newborn, it is perhaps not surprising that Herbert quickly remarried following his wife’s death. Unfortunately, it seems that this was not a happy marriage and when he was posted in Western Australia during WWII he had an affair with another woman and apparently fell in love.

But the other woman was also married and when her husband discovered the affair upon returning home from overseas he sued for divorce. As one of the arties implicated in the adultery, Herbert would have been required to appear in court. So that was a second appearance in court. But wait, there was a third appearance in court when his second wife sued him for divorce on the grounds of adultery.

So Herbert Samuel Starr led a bit more of a colourful life than other ancestors of mine who were his contemporaries, but it is fortunate for me as court appearances mean an article in the papers and it means I get to flesh out his story a bit more.

Anonymous, The Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate, 6 March 1931

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/106847085?searchTerm=herbert%20samuel%20starr&searchLimits=

Anonymous, The West Australian, 12 March 1947

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/46269138?searchTerm=herbert%20samuel%20starr&searchLimits=l-state=Western+Australia