C is for Charlotte. Charlotte Maude Nichols was my great grandmother, the mother of my maternal grandfather who I never knew.

I first came across Charlotte’s name on the marriage certificate of my grandparents and then on the death and birth certificates of my grandfather. From there, I was able to find out a bit about Charlotte beyond just a name on a piece of paper.

Charlotte was born 3 May 1894 in Katoomba, New South Wales to parents Robert George Nichols and May Henderson. She was the couple’s first child, and spent much of her childhood in the shale oil mining town of Joadja Creek in the Southern Highlands of NSW. Her parents marriage had also occurred at Joadja Creek in 1893. So how did she end up being born in Katoomba?

Well, after much research into the to town of Joadja Creek and the mining operation there I discovered a reference to a shale oil operation at Katoomba and thought ‘perhaps that’s it’. As they were both shale oil operations and they were also both located in mountainous terrain. So perhaps it was some sort of worker exchange? Whatever the reason, it was only a brief visit as Charlotte’s both was registered a month later on Joadja Creek.

But the most interesting event, at least from a family history point of view, was yet to come.  By the time Charlotte was ten years old, the family had relocated to the Newcastle area and certificates for Charlotte’s siblings indicate that they were still living there in 1910 when Charlotte was 16 years old.

But for a period in the year of 1910, Charlotte wasn’t living with her family. On 19 November 1910, at sixteen years old

and unmarried, Charlotte gave birth to a baby boy at South Sydney’s Womens Hospital. This baby boy was to become my grandfather. Later in life, Charlotte went on to marry and have other children all of whom are listed on her death certificate. Sadly, her first child is not listed on her death certificate presumably due to the fact that he was illegitimate.

This is where one of my major brick walls comes into play: discovering just who was the biological father of my grandfather. To date, I have gone as far as I can with the Nichols family line and have scoured newspapers but to date have found no clues from this line fo research as to who my biological great-grandfather might be. I even had my DNA done a few years ago when it first started getting big but still have had no hints. Here’s hoping that one day I’ll smash through this brick wall.