Category Archives: Starr

52 Ancestors – Origins

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Week 2 of 52 Ancestors comes with the prompt of ‘Origins’. I thought long and hard about what I would focus on for this prompt, as it encompasses such a broad topic. Ultimately, I decided to focus on something I haven’t examined before: the English origins of the Starr surname.

The Parish Church, Whatlington, East Sussex

The most ancient Starr ancestor that has been verified is one Comfort Starr, born circa 1550-1560 in East Sussex. Researchers have been unable to narrow down when he might have been born, as his first appearance is at the baptism of his son James in 1580 at Whatlington, East Sussex. We don’t know how old Comfort was at the time of his son’s birth, or whether James was his first and only child. So Comfort may well have been born earlier than the 1550-1560 timeframe. Perhaps one day through the answers to these questions can be verified.

Easier to answer are questions about the County of East Sussex. East Sussex is located in the south east of England, and it’s souther border faces the English Channel. Unsurprisingly, East Sussex has historically been an important entry point for those wishing to invade the English continent. Indeed, it was through this area of England that William the Conqueror commenced his invasion. Looking at maps of the ares, you can see how close France and the European Continent is to Sussex and you can see why it would have been a favoured entry point. East Sussex also features the historically significant town of Hastings, where the famous 1066 Battle of Hastings took place.

Location of East Sussex

Given these facts about Sussex, it would be interesting to know the origin of the Starr family in Sussex. They could have been in the area prior to the arrival of William the Conqueror or they could just as easily have come with William’s armies from the European continent. Perhaps one day we will know more about the origins of the Starr family in England.

 

NB: I would like to acknowledge

Min Tamsitt who dedicated many years to researching the Starr family and made her information available to fellow researchers of the family. She also published the first volume of “A Galaxy of Starrs: A Starr Family History”.

W is for William

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W is for William Starr, my fourth great grandfather. William was born 8 December 1807 in Sedlescombe, Sussex, England to Philadelphia Starr and Richard Milham. At the time of William’s birth, his mother was aged only 14 years of age and his parents were not married. As a result, William’s was registered as a ‘baseborn’ child and his father’s name doesn’t appear on his baptism record. However, we know that Richard Milham was his father as parish records exist that detail Richard’s obligations to provide monetary support to Philadelphia for the raising of William.

It’s not known exactly how William was raised, if he was raised believing his grandparents were his parents and his mother his sister or if he always knew that Philadelphia was his mother. However, by the time he was of age William well an truly knew who his biological parents were as there names are provided on the parish record for his marriage. This marriage was to Sophia Gibbs and took place 26 March 1826 in Sedlescombe, Sussex. William and Sophia settled down in Sedlescombe and had four children between 1826 and 1834. Of these four, one child died shortly after birth.

William’s life would have undoubtedly followed a humdrum course in rural England, with William working as an agricultural labourer. But they were soon to have an exciting fresh start when they emigrated to Australia as part of the Assisted Immigrants scheme. This scheme specifically looked for couples and families with skills that would benefit the young colony. William, Sophia and their three children arrived in Sydney on 4 April 1839. William and his family settled close to the harbour at Botany and added four more children to the family. William spent the rest of his life in the suburb of Botany and raise this family. He lived to see his children marry and give him grandchildren, most of whom continued to live in the same area of Sydney.

William died a month short of his 67th birthday on 8 November 1874 in Botany, where he had lived since arriving from England. A funeral notice appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on 10 November, inviting friends and relatives to his funeral which was to leave his Botany residence (close to the Captain Cook hotel) for a graveside service at the Necropolis. For those unfamiliar with Sydney history, the Necropolis as it was known is now called the Rookwood Cemetery and is a suburb all on its own. It was literally a suburb just for deceased persons. Rookwood is the largest necropolis in the Southern Hemisphere and is the world’s largest, continuously operating Victorian era cemetery. As of 2014, there have been 915,000 burials and cremations at Rookwood.

William Starr was buried in the Church of England portion of the Necropolis on 10 November 1874. When his wife Sophia died three years later, she was interred in the same grave although she doesn’t have an inscription on the headstone, Presumably there was many to be an inscription, as blank space has been left but for whatever reason an inscription for Sophia was never added to the headstone.

P is for Philadelphia

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P is for Philadelphia Starr was my 5th great grandmother. I’ve always loved the sound of her name as it’s so different from your regular names like Ann or Jane or Sarah. Not that they aren’t good names, but Philadelphia just seems such an interesting name to have. When I first found Philadelphia, I was surprised and it seemed such an uncommon name to me. After all, the only time I’d heard it before was in reference to the city in the USA. Upon digging further though, the name Philadelphia was apparently wildly popular across the entire East Sussex area starting in the mid 1500s right through to the mid 1800s. My relatives apparently enjoyed this popular name as there are many, many Philadelphia Starr’s in the region of East Sussex in which my Philadelphia lived.

St John the Baptist Parish Church, Westfield

My Philadelphia Starr was born sometime in late 1793 in Westfield, East Sussex to parents WilliamStarr and Ann Crisford. Philadelphia was then promptly baptised on 27 October of the same year at the local Church of England parish church, St. John the Baptist. Philadelphia was part of a fairly standard sized family, being one of nine children. Not much is known of Philadelphia’s early life, but she grew up in the Westfield and Maresfield areas of East Sussex. However, by 1807 Philadelphia was living in Sedlescombe which was where her first child William Starr was born. Philadelphia was just 14 years old at the time. Surprisingly, Philadelphia did not marry the father of her child though he was known to her.

It is recorded in parish documents that William’s father was a Richard Milham, a 20 year old bricklayer.  The baptism records at the time record William as being Baseborn, that is illegitimate, but further records reveal that Richard Milham acknowledged that he was the father and made continued payments for the support of his child. Despite the financial support, it must have been a hard time for Philadelphia as she was so young.

Philadelphia did eventually marry, but it wasn’t until 1821 that she married Edward Stevenson at St. Nicholas’ Church in Brighton, Sussex. After their marriage, Philadelphia settled with her husband in the Maresfield area of Sussex where the couple had three sons. Philadelphia’s three sons were still residing with her and her husband on the 1841 Census at Fletching, which is part of the Maresfield district. On the 1851 Census, Philadelphia and Edward are still living at the same address this time with only their eldest son at home along with a three year old granddaughter. I have bene working hard to figure which child of Philadelphia’s this granddaughter belonged to, but haven’t succeeded yet. As the child bears the Stevenson surname, she obviously was the child of one of Philadelphia’s sons.

Sadly, in 1854 Philadelphia’s husband Edward died at the age of 65 years old leaving Philadelphia a widow. Philadelphia may have continued to live in Fletching, or she may not have. That is something we really just don’t know. On the 1861 Census, Philadelphia appears at Staplehurst, Kent where she is listed as a visitor in the household. However, on the 1871 Census Philadelphia is found living in the same household in Staplehurst, Kent. This time she is not listed as just a visitor, but is indicated as a relative. The household was that of Philadelphia’s sister Harriet.

The workhouse at Uckfield, Sussex which has since been demolished

Unfortunately, when Philadelphia died in 1877 she was a resident of the Uckfield Workhouse in Sussex. The Workhouses were places reserved for paupers and those who were too old to look after themselves. Based on everything I have ever read about the living conditions in the Workhouses, I can just imaging how horrible it would have been to live in such a place. At the time of her death Philadelphia was aged 83 years old.

B is for Betsey

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Mrs. S. Starr, Senr.                                                                                                                           “The residence of Mrs. S. Starr, senr., of West Molong, was the scene of a happy gathering on Wednesday, the 12th instant, when the members of her family attended to celebrate her 83rd birthday. Needless to say, all the family were pleased to see the old lady looking so well and hearty and as active as one many years her junior. Amongst the members present were — Richard (Copper Hill), William and David (Molong), Mrs. Pearsall (Sydney), and Mrs. W. Crook (Exchange Hotel, Orange), who each presented Mrs. Starr with a memento of the occasion, which was heartily appreciated by the venerable recipient Mrs. Starr, who has resided in the Molong district for upward of 60 years, is highly respected. She has living seven children, 27 grandchildren, and 20 great grandchildren. Amongst the grandchildren, seven are doing their duty for their country at the front and one, Gordon Starr, has made the supreme sacrifice.”                                                                                                                                          – Molong Argus (NSW, 1896-1921), Friday 21 June 1918, Page 1.

The article above relates to my great, great, great grandmother Betsey Starr nee Edwards and Betsey is the subject of my ‘B’ post. On the surface, Betsey led a fairly regular life but she also led quite a long life and saw a lot of changes in that lifetime.

Betsey was born 12 June 1835 in St. Ives, Cambridgeshire, England to parents Richard Edwards and Elisabeth Catley. Her father Richard was a shepherd and the family consisted of five children, of which Betsey was the youngest. By the time Betsey was 6 year old, her mother Elizabeth had died. To date, I have not managed to pinpoint the death of Betsey’s mother but she is absent from both the 184 and 1851 census. Betsey’s father, Richard, never remarried so one can presume that Betsey was left to be raised by her elder sister Edith who was ten years older than Betsey. By 1844, Edith had married and left the family home to start her own family.

Betsey continued to love at home with her father and brothers, with just one brother remaining at home in the 1851 census. The rest of the family also appear in the 1851 census, at different addresses. However, in 1852 Betsey’s sister Edith and her family emigrated to Australia as Assisted Immigrants. Perhaps it was the fact that her sister, who had presumably been a mother figure to Betsey, was a prompt for more  of the family to emigrate to Australia in 1856.

In August of 1856, Betsey arrived in Australia with her father Richard and her brother David. After arriving in Sydney, the family travelled to the township of Molong in central western NSW. For a long time, I wondered why Molong? Why did they choose the town of Molong to settle in? Molong was and still is a farming area and Richard was a shepherd so I figured that was a major reason behind the decision to settle in Molong. Maybe this was part of the reason, however I recently discovered that Betsey’s elder sister and her family had settled in Molong so this was probably the deciding factor behind the move to Molong.

The next 13 years of Betsey’s life saw her give birth to her first child, Phoebe, in 1858; marry Samuel Starr (my 3x great grandfather) in 1860; and give birth to a further six children between 1860 and 1872. Over this time, Betsey settled into the small community of Molong and raised her family with her sister Edith also raising her family in Molong over the same period. The two families were close, with Betsey’s son William marrying Edith’s daughter Hannah Whitley. It seems strange to us in modern times to even consider marrying our first cousins, but in small rural communities it happened quite often in the past.

Now, all of this is very ordinary for a woman of Betsey’s time but Betsey was to live a long life and major world events were just around the corner. First, Betsey was to witness the birth of a new century: the 19th Century. Now, I don’t know what people would have been feeling in 1899 as they thought about the start of a new century but I do know that when we were approaching the start of the 21st Century there were all kinds of conspiracy theories floating around and people just didn’t know what a new century would bring. I have ton assume that perhaps people back in the late 1800s are feeling some similar feelings as they contemplated the start of a new century. And not far into the new century, a major world event was to occur with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901.

For much of the British Empire, this was a major shock and many people could remember no other monarch before Queen Victoria as she had been on the throne for so long. Betsey would have been one of these, as she was born well into Queen Victoria’s reign. But the changes didn’t end there for Betsey. In 1914, World War I broke out and it’s effects would be felt worldwide. At the time of the war breaking out, Betsey had a total of 27 grandchildren living. Of these 27, nine were within the age range to serve their country and seven of these grandchildren enlisted and served overseas. As mentioned in the newspaper article at the start of the post, one of these grandchildren paid the ultimate price: Private (William) Gordon Starr was killed in action 20 July 1916 on the battlefields of France.

I can only imagine what Betsey would have felt at the loss of her grandson, and the continued worry of the other 6 grandchildren that she had serving overseas during WWI. I can only imagine the relief she felt when the remaining 6 grandchildren returned home to Australia with end of the war. Betsey was to have only a few more years with her family, dying in 1923 at the advanced age of 87 years.

In her long life, Betsey had gone from living in rural England to travelling to the other side of the world to a new country. She celebrated the expected events for a woman of her era, marrying and raising a family; but she also witnessed tremendous change in the latter part of her life with the death of a monarch and the outbreak of the First World War. She would have also been around to witness the beginnings of the Roaring Twenties. As her legacy, Betsey left behind a family of six children; twenty-six grandchildren; and 20 great-grandchildren.

 

 

 

K is for . . .

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K is for King. No, I don’t have an ancestor or relative called King, but the latin for King is Rex and Rex will be the subject of my post today.

My grandfather was officially named Edward Rex Starr but everyone knew him by the name of Rex. Rex was born 8 April 1931 at the Royal Hospital for Women, Paddington NSW. When he was just eleven days old, his mother Doris died from childbed fever. I never had the chance to know Rex as he died nearly a decade before I was born but people who knew him well relate stories of a hard childhood.

Rex’s father remarried not long after his wife’s death in order to give Rex and his two elder brothers a mother figure, but apparently she wasn’t very mothering towards the three boys. I don’t know the truth of this, but the same source relate how Rex’s father was a very hard, military man who ruled his home with rigid discipline.

Now, I know it is true that Rex’s father was a military man who was involved with the Citizen Military Forces as early as the 1920s and also served in WWII. I also have had hints of his rigidness in a letter contained in a divorce packet. so perhaps this was why Rex’s stepmother didn’t feel very mothering towards him and his brothers.

Another family story is that around the age of eight (give or take a year or two) Rex was fostered out through Barnados Australia. According to the family member who told me this rumour, Rex himself told them this story but gave no reason as to why he was fostered out. This is something which I have yet to confirm, but will have to look into Barnados and what records they keep from previous decades and how accessible they are.

Rex (front left) on his wedding day in 1957

Whatever the case, by 1954 Rex was living with his father and stepmother number 2 in North Sydney. Although his father died in May 1956, Rex continued to live at the same residence with his stepmother until his marriage in January 1957. After his marriage, Rex and his wife lived in North Sydney before moving to Western Sydney in the early 1960s where they rented and eventually bought a 3 bedroom Department of Housing house in Mount Druitt.

During this time, Rex had a successful career as a shop salesman at a mens clothing store in Sydney. However, Rex’s health began to decline when he was still relatively young and he was forced to retire early from work when his health declined even further. On 30 September 1979, Rex died at the age of 48 years old from Diffuse Scleroderma. Scleroderma is an autoimmune disease which affects the connective tissue of the body. Over time, the skin hardens and circulation becomes increasingly poor leading to cold fingers and toes that turn red white or blue. In later stages of the disease, the internal organs are affected as the arteries harden.

 

Knowing what he was suffering from, it is little wonder that he was forced to retire from work as he would no doubt have been suffering from a great deal of pain. I have to wonder in the circumstances, it would have been somewhat of a relief to no longer be in constant pain.I think it would have been sad knowing that he was leaving a wife and four children behind, in a way I am glad that he eventually had a release from his pain.

Rex Starr holding his first born child in 1958

Rex later in life

B is for . . .

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B is for Blanche. Blanche Harriet Trueman was my great, great grandmother on my father’s side of the family. She always intrigued me with a name such as Blanche. To me, it seems such a sophisticated name which makes me wonder where she got it from as her life seems to be far from sophisticated.

Blanche was born 3 April 1880 in Bathurst, NSW. As soon as I learned of her birth place, I felt a connection with Blanch straight away. For most of my life I have lived in Bathurst and I loved growing up in a place with such a rich history. The fact that Blanche was born in Bathurst really piqued my interest and I spent a lot of time researching her and her time in Bathurst.

I knew that by 1897, she was residing in Molong NSW (about an hour west of Bathurst) with her family. Molong is listed as her residence on her marriage certificate and as she was only 17 years old at the time (and therefore under the legal age for marriage) she needed permission from her father and it was given. So what happened in the intervening years and how long was the family living in Bathurst?

Blanche Harriet Trueman with her husband Joseph Starr.

To figure this out, I had to backtrack to Blanche’s parents and locate the births of her elder siblings. I found that after their marriage in 1869, Blanche’s parents had lived in Young, NSW until at least 1875 which was where the sibling before Blanche was born. I have bene unable to pinpoint exactly when the family arrived either after the birth of their third child in 1875, or in the intervening years until the birth of Blanch in 1880. However, I have been able to learn some things about their life in Bathurst.

Blanche’s father Henry Flear Trueman appears in the 1886-1887 Bathurst and Western District Directory as residing in Kepple (sic) Street, Bathurst so that confirmed for me that the family was still living there 6-7 years after Blanche’s birth. The entry in the above publication is a simple name and address listing, similar to what we would find in a phone directory (with the omission of a phone number, of course) and doesn’t really tell you anything about the family aside form the street where they lived.

What I found next did flesh out the continuing story of Blanch and her family, and not in a pleasant way. Like any self-respecting family historian, I turned to Trove to see what I could find.  Now, I didn’t expect to find a lot based on my previous experiences with other ancestors. Much to my surprise, I found four whole articles relating to Blanche’s parents. The first article appeared in the Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal on Saturday 30 April 1887 and revealed a very unstable family. Appearing on page 2, the article accounts the attempted suicide of Henry Flear Trueman of Bathurst. An article in May of the same year goes into more detail, relating how Henry took an entire bottle of laudanum in order to scare his wife. Later in the article, he admits that he took it due to being so heavily in debt. Whilst Henry didn’t succeed at taking his life, he was charged with attempted suicide. However, the article doesn’t disclose what his sentence was.

As if the attempted suicide of her father wasn’t bad enough, Blanche’s home life was evidently not a particularly happy one as her father is described as being inclined to fits of anger and physical violence towards his wife. In the same edition of the paper as the first article, and article also appears in the legal proceedings section of the paper in which Blanche’s mother Jane presents a claim to the court to preserve her property from her husband’s creditors. The article relates how Jane had been left to support herself and her children after her husband had deserted her. During this time Blanche was still a fairly young child and these articles don’t paint a pretty picture of Blanche’s childhood.

But in the midst of this misery, I did find something interesting. During the period of her husband’s desertion, Jane had managed to support herself and her three daughters by teaching music. Now, this was the first instance i had come across of one of my female ancestors having a skill beyond the traditional ones of mother and homemaker and it intrigued me.

By doing a bit of digging, I found that Jane’s father had been a pianoforte maker in London and presumably this is where Jane learned music or her father made a good enough living that he could pay for lessons. Perhaps it was this background of her mother’s that led to the name of Blanche. I like to think so.

 

 

#52ancestors Week 6 – Surprise

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Doing ones family history is an exercise which constantly presents you with surprises and you come to expect the unexpected. This week I’ve decided to write about a pleasant surprise fairly early in my family history journey, and one that was close to home in a very real sense.

In the early days of my family history research I was so enthusiastic about my findings and shared them far and wide with my family. I was especially proud of my research on my paternal line, the Starr’s, as we knew only very basic information about my grandfather as he died when my father was still a teenager. In those days, everyone else was excited about my findings as well and my father had been in conversation with a friend of his at our church who was intrigued. The next time I saw the friend, he expressed interest in my family history research and mentioned that his grandmother had the surname Starr and he was pretty sure she was from Molong, NSW which was the same place my Starr family was from.

Well, after that little tidbit I just had to investigate this possible Starr connection. Luckily, I had in my possession a book on the history of our church and I knew his family had been going there for at least two generations and I found his parents names in it. From there I found a record of the marriage of his parents and looking on the Australian Cemeteries Index I found the headstone of his father at Molong cemetery. This was exciting as this was where my ancestor were as well. One thing led to another and I confirmed that the friend’s grandmother was indeed a Starr.

The surprise part was not just that someone I had known for years was in fact related to me, but that it was a fairly close relationship: he and my father were in fact 3rd cousins. We all found this rather hilarious as both men share the same slapstick sense of humour, and we joked that they must have gotten it from the Starr family!! Now, this friend had an older brother who had two sons one of whom was dating my sister at the time. Turned out, they were fourth cousins. Now this was a surprise, because in our church (The Salvation Army) it’s a bit of a standing joke when two young people start dating that you’d better check how closely you’re related to the other person!!

Now, we had always said we were sure we weren’t related to anyone because we were only relative newcomers to the Salvation Army as opposed to being a part of the church for generations unending. So this was a bit of a surprise to us!! I thought it was absolutely hilarious at the time and took great glee in telling my sister that she was related to her boyfriend. Of course, she was mortified and forbade me to tell him. I never did tell him, but perhaps he found out as his uncle and his father both knew.

The power of the internet

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This is just a small post to share a wonderful experience I had a few months ago in finding some estranged relatives. I was researching my father’s family, the Starr’s. In particular, I was looking to find out a bit more about the more recent members of the family. To give a bit of background, my father grew up having very little contact with his father’s family. To this day, I have been given a wide variety of reasons as to why this was the case. My father wasn’t even aware that his father had younger half siblings. My father also never knew his Starr grandfather, as he died before my father was born. By all accounts, my grandfather didn’t have a great upbringing with a military father. Anyway, I set out to trace the lives and loves of my grandfather’s siblings to the best of my ability. I managed to locate marriage records for both my grandfather’s older brothers through NSW BDM and electoral rolls had provided me with some insight into the children of one of the brothers but of course I could get no birth years from an electoral roll and as it was more recent than 100 years ago, NSW BDM was no use either.

After racking my brain as to how I could find more information, I remembered the Starr family Facebook group that I was a part of. I had been a very passive member up to this point, not asking for anything from the group and to be honest i didn’t have much hope as it seems that my line of the family isn’t widely researched. Anyway, I figured it couldn’t hurt so I posted the names on the site asking for any information that people could give me. Well, considering I didn’t have much hope I was completely bowled over by the positive response and the amount of information people were willing to share with me. Turned out that the site administrator, who has been researching the larger Starr family for decades, had a complete dossier on my line of the family that she was willing to share with me!! So, I was now armed with names and dates of birth of my father’s first cousins, who he didn’t even know existed. So, my tree was expanded once again. Ever the investigator, I wanted to see if I could find out more about these people as they are currently living so I started doing google searches to see what turned up.

Most of these people had common names or were females who had changed their names upon marrying or simply had very little of an online presence. Then I hit pay dirt, someone had an unusual name and I got a hit for his Linked In page which led me to find him on Facebook. It was such a shock, in a good way, to see the accompanying photo: it was the spitting image of my dad!! I plucked up the courage to send him a message via Linked In and not only did I get a reply, but he was interested in learning more about the family!! So, he ended up sending me a friend request on Facebook and we started an email relationship sharing information about our family.