The Week 6 prompt for #52Ancestors is Earning a Living. Like many people, most of my ancestors had very predictable and ordinary professions. However, one individual stands out with a bit of a different occupation. Daniel Child was my 4x … Continue reading
The prompt for Week 5 was ‘Influencer’ and for this prompt I’ve decided to write about my Great-Uncle Ted who was a strong influence on my family history journey. As my mother grew up without a Father, Uncles were very important to her and she was very close with her mother’s family. Although Ted lived in Adelaide, South Australia and my mum grew up in Western Sydney the strong connection was still there and he was the person who gave my mum away at her wedding.
The photo of Ted and Jean (my grandmother) that sparked my interest)
I can remember visiting Ted for the first time as a young teenager, and I was fascinated by all his knowledge of the family. I had seen photos of my grandmother as a young child aged around 3 years old in Penrith, New South Wales (which in the 1920s was still a very country area) as well as a photo of my great grandparents wedding day and they had sparked my interest enough to ask my grandmother about them. So you can imagine I was even more fascinated to see the many other photos that Ted had in his possession, including one of himself and my grandmother, when he was a small boy and she a toddler. This visit was to be the start of years of back and forth correspondence about the family history.
Ted (standing) and Jean
Ted had started doing family history research during the 1980s, when Australia experienced a surge of popularity in family history research in line with the Bicentenary of the landing of the First Fleet in 1788. Unlike the rest of his family, who worked in more traditional ‘working class’ professions, Ted had trained as a journalist and ended up working in Sports Journalism. As a boy, Ted had suffered from polio and as a result spent much more time on academic pursuits. Through the charity organisation The House With No Steps Ted was taught typing which was a great help to him eventually getting a cadetship in journalism and eventually working as a sports journalist. During his career, Ted had opportunities to travel overseas and I have not doubt that the research skills he learnt in his journalism career came in handy for tracing his family history. Once retired, Ted continued to travel with his wife Ruth and he visited many of the areas out ancestors came form including Norway.
Many of the family photos that I have copies of came from Ted’s family album which he was happy to share with me. And not only did he have photos of ancestors, they were all meticulously labelled. Ted had also painstakingly typed up on his typewriter everything he knew about the family from what he had been told by his mother and other relatives as well as what he had gleaned form his research. I remember quite well a conversation about our Norwegian ancestor Charles John Thompson who had come from the Norwegian city of Bergen out to Australia. I can remember him telling me about when he visited Norway and attempted to find some information about Charles to no avail. Everyone they spoke to said that there would be no Norwegian with that kind of name! Ted was very interested years later once I had started my family history journey in earnest to hear that I had found Charles in Norway!! Turns out, he had Anglicized his name to Charles John Thompson from Karl Johan Thomassen.
Ted during his time at Canonbury hospital
Continuing the 52 Ancestors challenge with Week 4. The prompt for this week is ‘Witness to History’. This could be interpreted in so many different ways, after all most people have been witness to a variety of events that could be classed as historically significant. But who to write about? I decided on my paternal great grandmother Jean, who lived to the age of 93 and witnessed a lot during her life.
Jean was born 20 March 1917 in Lismore, NSW to parents Thomas William Thompson and Hannah Maria Darch Mallett. At the time, the world was in the midst of World War I but as a baby this isn’t something Jean would have been aware of. Her father did not go away to fight, instead remaining to work on the home front.
Over her life, Jean would have witnessed any number of changes. Lismore itself was quite a small
town at the time of Jean’s birth and throughout her growing up years. I have in my possession a photo of the Lismore house that Jean was born in and grew up in. Looking at the photos below, you can see how the house was originally surrounded by land. The photo on the right is the house as it appears today. Accounting for different camera angels, you can see how the house has changed very little over the decades. Descendants of Jean’s siblings reside next door, but the original house has long passed out of family hands. The area surrounding the house is now the built up suburb of South Lismore.
The house when Jean was a child
The same house today
Jean’s older sister penned an article for The Australian Women’s Weekly in 1972, which provides some insight into how rural the Lismore area was during the time Jean was growing up. Over the time that she lived there, Jean would have witnessed the slow and steady transformation of the Lismore area into the bustling city it is today.
As a young mother, Jean was a witness to everyday life at home in Australia during World War II. I can remember interviewing her for a school assignment about Australia during that period, and I recall how she spoke of the struggles under rationing to feed her small family. She also spoke of the fear she had as a mother of the war coming to Australian shores and the relief she felt at the end of the war.
Jean (seated with bow) and some of her siblings
Jean as a young mother in the early 1940s
Jean later in life
And just like that, it’s time for Week 3 of the 52 Ancestors challenge. The prompt for this week is ‘Favourite Photo’. I am very fortunate to have quite a few photos of various ancestors, so it was hard to nail down just one to blog about for this week.
After much thought and examining of my photo files, I came across this photo and knew it was the one. It’s one I haven’t done a blog pot on before, but it’s also a really great photo that shows a moment in time. It also shows three generations of the one family.
Jean, Edith and Baby John
The photo depicts the proud, smiling faces of my grandmother Jean Levy (nee Thompson) with her mother Edith Thompson who is holding Jean’s first child John. Baby John was also the first grandchild for Edith, which I can imagine was a very happy moment for her. Given that John is still a very young baby in the photo I believe it was taken in 1945, perhaps to commemorate this happy moment for the family. It is obviously a studio photo, given the formal poses of the women, but my copy of the photo bears no clues to who the photographer was.
For me, it’s interesting to see my grandmother as a young 22 year old mother. Unfortunately, the happiness was not to last. After a few years of marriage, Jean’s husband fell into alcoholism. After the birth of her second son in 1951, Jean left her husband and filed for divorce. The divorce was successful, and I was able to obtain a copy of the records a several years ago. They tell a sad story of a mother being left with no means to buy food or clothing for her children.
Some years after her divorce, Jean remarried and had three more children (including my mother) with her second husband. Unfortunately, Jean ended up separating from her second husband after she discovered that he too was an alcoholic.
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”.
Over the last few years, my blog has been dormant because sometimes life just happens. But this year, I am going to get back into my blogging and have decided to join this years 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks. The prompt for Week 1 is “Family Lore”.
Mary Ann during her time as a Salvation Army member
Many of us family historians start out journey with family stories that have been passed on by family members. In my own family, I had a Great Uncle who had traced his family tree (which is my maternal line) during the 1980s and handed me a lot of his research when I became interested in doing family history. One ancestor which intrigued me was a woman called Mary Ann Green who was my 3x great grandmother. She was also one of the few ancestors that I had seen a picture of when I first started family history.
The family lore was that she had been born on the Hawkesbury River in 1830 to unknown parents who had ‘come free’ from England. The story was that her parents were unknown as when Mary Ann was 3 years old, both her parents had drowned in the Hawkesbury River Floods of 1833. Perhaps the thought of Mary Ann losing her parents at such a young age also piqued my interest, so I did some digging to find out more about Mary Ann.
Firstly, I searched for information about the 1833 flood of the Hawkesbury River. If people had drowned, surely there would have been a mention somewhere? Lo and behold, after many hours of internet searching and consulting with the Hawkesbury Library Service I found that there was no flood of the Hawkesbury recorded that year. I puzzled over this, but thought perhaps the date had been remembered wrong. However, when looking at Mary Ann’s marriage and death records I found no clues as to who her parents were.
Looking on NSW births, deaths and marriages I found a number of Mary Ann Green’s born either in 1830 or the few years before and after. I diligently ordered transcripts of likely looking records, only to find none of the Mary Ann’s were born anywhere near the right area. I was confident that she had indeed been born in the Hawkesbury area as every other certificate I had that related to Mary Ann confirmed that she had been born in the Hawkesbury area.
After many years of on and off research, I connected with a distant family member on Ancestry who was related to Mary Ann via her second marriage. I had noticed that this person had a birth date and parents for Mary Ann, so I reached out to them to see where they had got their information from. Well, that proved to be an excellent decision as it turned out she had got this information from a mix of family lore and a very well researched family history book.
Mary Ann’s Baptism Record
It turns out the elusive father of Mary Ann that I had been searching for any evidence of was not in fact her father and her surname was not Green. Rather, Mary Ann had been born to Dorothy Pickett and William Parsons. Not much is know about William Parson but Dorothy was the daughter of two convicts, with her father arriving on the First Fleet and her mother on the Second Fleet. After that, finding a record of her Baptism was a piece of cake. So, in that case the family lore was proved incorrect. Perhaps it started as a way of covering up the ‘convict stain’ as I have found in other areas of my family.
However, all was not lost with Mary Ann. Another piece of lore passed on about Mary Ann’s funeral was proved correct. Mary Ann died in 1914, and my Great Uncle wrote that Mary Ann’s funeral cortege proceeded down the main street of Penrith, NSW (where she had been living with her daughter) and was accompanied by the local Salvation Army band on its journey to the cemetery. This was proved to be accurate through Mary Ann’s obituary, which was published in the local newspaper. A notice about the funeral was also published in the Salvation Army publication The War Cry, which described how her funeral cortege was accompanied up the main street of Penrith by the band and a contingent of the local Corps Soldiers (church members).
Account of Mary Ann’s funeral in The War Cry