Tag Archives: Trueman

J is for Jane

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Jane Child was born 29 May 1841 in Southwark, London and was my 3rd great grandmother and despite some challenges in life, she managed to live to the ripe old age of 93. I am quite lucky in having found quite a bit of information about Jane, and I’d like to share it here with you.

Jane’s parents were Daniel Child (who was the subject of my D post) and Susannah Gandell. Jane was the seventh child to be born into family, who lived on Old Kent Road in the London borough of Southwark. Those who read my post about Jane’s father, Daniel Child, may remember that his professions was a pianoforte maker. Based on the UK Census records, Daniel remained in this profession for the erst of his life. Jane appears in the 1841, 1851, and 1861 UK censuses with her family, continuing to live in Old Kent Road in Southwark. No profession is mentioned for Jane on these records, not even Domestic Service which is often listed for women who keep the home.

In 1869, Jane’s life was to undergo a drastic change as she departed England for Australia. Jane arrived on 25 October 1869 aboard the “Landsborough” which docked in Sydney, NSW. Based on her arrival date, Jane probably departed England sometime in May or June of 1869 as the voyage from England to Australia took around four months depending on weather conditions. Interestingly, Jane arrived as an unassisted immigrant in the Steerage class of the few passengers aboard. Based on all I’ve seen and heard about travelling Steerage on board a ship, it can’t have been a pleasant journey. However, it seems there may have been a different highlight to the voyage for Jane: it was where she met the man who would be her husband.

Just three days after arriving in Australia, Jane was married to Henry Flear Trueman at the Scots Church in Sydney, NSW. It seems like they became very close on the voyage, as their first child was born six months later. This would explain the hasty marriage three days after docking in Sydney. The couple had a further three children together, moving around the state of NSW. However, the marriage was not to be a happy one.

The first indication that the marriage was a troubled on was the appearance of an article in the Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal newspaper on Saturday 30 April 1887. The article is brief, but accounts how Henry had attempted to commit suicide in his own home by taking poison. The doctor applied the necessary remedy, and Henry survived. At the time, suicide and attempted suicide was a criminal offence so a further article appeared in the same paper on Tuesday 3 May, recounting the case in the local Police Court. Apparently, Henry had taken an ounce bottle’s worth of laudanum to “ease his mind” as he was heavily in debt. Henry had then promptly laid down to sleep and when he was unable to be woken his wife had summoned the doctor. However, it appears this was not the full story. Henry’s wife, Jane, was the next to be deposed in court and she tells a bit more of a story to the incident. According to Jane Henry had frequently threatened to take his own life and on this occasion had drunk the bottle of laudanum before taking off his boots and laying down, proclaiming his wish to die.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, to tell your wife your wish to die, Henry later admits that he only wanted to “scare” his wife. I can’t imagine how that must feel, to hear your husband say such things, no matter how unhappy the marriage had been. Henry was not charged with anything in the end, as the laudanum was so diluted that it was apparent he didn’t actually wish to kill himself. But the marriage had obviously been unhappy even before this, as an article appeared in the same paper on the same day as the initial report of the suicide attempt charging Henry with desertion.

This second article details how Henry had left Jane and their three children without means of support since April 1st. Jane had been supporting the family since then by teaching music to local children, and the article reports how Henry had visited the house in search of money and when Jane refused to supply him with any he had beaten her. Despite these troubles, divorce was extremely uncommon in those days and it seems the couple reconciled as the family moved to Molong, NSW as a single family unit. The local newspaper is filled with accounts of Mrs. Trueman’s prowess on the pianoforte and the singing and dancing skills of her three daughters.

All three of Jane’s daughters were married in Molong to men local to the community, and it was in Molong in 1897 that Henry died at the age of 61. The death notice in the paper indicates that he was well known in the community, as a “goodly number” of residents attended the funeral and internment. So, Jane was now a widow but with all her children settle din their own homes she only had herself to support and at least she had a skill with which to support herself.

Jane continued to live in the Molong area after her husband’s death, perhaps as this was where her three daughters lived with their families. She appears on the electoral rolls for the Molong district in 1903-1904 and again in 1913 but not thereafter. It appears she continued to live in the area for some time after this, as in 1930 an article appeared in the Molong Express newspaper detailing Jane’s recovery in Molong Hospital following a broken leg. In the same year, Jane also suffered a broken hip following a sudden fall at home.

By 1935, Jane was living in the Sydney suburb of Belmore which was where she passed away at the age of 93 from senile decay. Jane’s remains were cremated and interred at Rookwood cemetery in Sydney. It just goes to show, that despite challenges thrown up people can overcome and live a long and full life like Jane.

I is for Isaac

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For the letter I, I have chosen to write about an individual called Isaac Trueman. Now, Isaac is only very tenuously related to me as the husband of my 5th great aunt. So why would I choose to write about him? Well, this is the story.

Many years ago, I was researching 3rd great grandfather, who at the time was going by the surname of Trueman. Turns out, that wasn’t the surname he was born with but that’s another story. It was in the course of researching the parents that were recorded on the marriage certificate of my 3rd great grandfather that I cam across Isaac. According to the certificates, I was looking for a Romeo Trueman who was married to a Harriet Flear. Well, it turned out eventually that Romeo didn’t exist but Harriet did. Like any good researcher, having hit a brick wall I did some research on collateral relatives to try and find a way around the wall.

I started by researching Harriet and her life but found no traces of a Trueman. So, I researched all of her siblings and when researching her younger sister Elizabeth Harrison Flear I hit pay dirt: she had married an Isaac Trueman. Perhaps a relative of Isaac’s had married Harriet? So, I enthusiastically researched the life of Isaac Trueman.

Isaac was born around 1805 is Ilkeston, Derbyshire. Not much has been found about his early

Newark-on-Trent in the 1850s

life and his parents remain unnamed at this point in time, but by 1831 he was living in Newark on Trent in the neighbouring county of Nottinghamshire. It was here on 2 May 1831 that Isaac married Elizabeth Harrison Flear. The couple had three children: Michael Flear Trueman; Frederick William Trueman; and Thomas Flear Trueman. Isaac and his wife along with their three children appear on the 1841 and 1851 English Censuses, with Isaac’s occupation listed as a corn factor.

Still, I found no relatives of Isaac’s and no link to Harriet Flear beyond that of sister-in-law. But out of curiosity, and perhaps just for something to do, I started doing some basic research on Isaac’s sons and this is where it started to get interesting. All three of Isaac’s sons ended up in Australia. Now, this might not sound unusual but Thomas Flear Trueman caused a bit of a wild goose chase for me as this was a name that my 3rd great grandfather had been using. I managed to trace the arrival of Thomas and Frederick in Australia in 1886, but it soon became obvious that they had been in Australia prior to that.

So back to Isaac, who by all guesses had been living a routine life working as a corn merchant up until his death in 1876 at the age of 71. According to his obituary, none of his sons were in England at that time and it indicates that they are living in Australia. So, it’s obvious that it was known that Isaac’s sons had related to Australia but what happens next is somewhat sad. After Isaac’s death, numerous advertisements were placed in a wide variety of Australian newspapers  which identified his sons as missing persons.

For a period of two years, the advertisements appeared in Australian newspapers. As time went on, there was more detail added to the advertisements; like the information that they hadn’t been heard from since 1872. It seems inconceivable to us nowadays, with modern technology making possible to contact people all but instantly no matter their location, but it wasn’t unusual in those days for individuals to leave for far flung countries and lose contact with family left behind. Letters were the only form of communication, and not only was it a long process to get a letter form Australia to england it was also costly.

Perhaps Isaac’s sons did write letters and they got lost in the mail or maybe they simply got caught up in their new lives in Australia. Whatever the case, they did lose contact with their father in England and he died before making contact with them again. It’s sad to think that Isaac built himself a career as a corn merchant, married and had a family only to die alone with no family around him.

F is for . . .

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F is for Francis Rippingale. Francis Rippingale was my 4th great grandfather and for many years he represented one of my biggest brick walls, although I didn’t know his name at the time. In fact, this was one of the first times iI had seen what was blatantly false information on a certificate.

Francis’s son Henry Flear Rippingale (aka Trueman) emigrated to Australia and married literally days after his arrival under the surname Trueman. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he provided a false father’s name when registering the marriage. As soon as I saw the father’s name I began to have suspicions about the likelihood of their being a Romeo Trueman floating around back in England.

However, I was able to verify that his mother was the person who was listed on his marriage record. So by researching the mother Harriet Flear I persisted and persisted looking for a marriage between her and anyone with the surname Trueman to no avail. However, I did find that she had married a Francis Rippingale. I thought that was rather curious and out it to one side. Then I had the though that perhaps Romeo Trueman and Harriet Flear weren’t married. So I searched ancestry for any reference to a Romeo Trueman and returned with zero good matches.

Francis’s signature from his marriage record

So I dutifully returned to examine Mr Francis Rippingale and his wife Harriet Flear. I traced them after their marriage through English census records and left it at that for a while. Then one day, I was going back through the information I had on the couple and noticed that they had a son called Henry Flear Rippingale. I cross checked the age against the census year to get an approximate year of birth and it was a match with my Trueman in Australia.

Many sources later, I confirmed that these two individuals were in fact the one person and that Francis Rippingale was indeed my 4th great grandfather. As a result, one huge brick wall came crumbling down after many years of research.

 

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.