ANOTHER DETOUR

 

After months of procrastination and struggling to get into the heads of my Allan, Darby, and Murray ancestors, and hence not getting much written, it dawned on me quite suddenly, that I should write a creative non-fiction, not an historical fiction. Since that decision, I’ve been rattling along quite nicely. Until the other day.

Looking through a folder for information, I rediscovered two letters written to me from my great uncle Roland Werrett, who met a young French woman during the First World War and eventually settled in France. He came home to Australia in 1966 for a much heralded visit, and we corresponded after that. He helped me with the French I was learning at school. I remember the French teacher at Waverley High School, Mrs Papazy, she hated me. It’s hard to imagine these days how awful she must have been for me, at thirteen, to know she had it in for me. It rattled her cage terribly when she was forced to give me an “A” for French at the end of the year. Thanks to Uncle Rolie’s help.

Back to the two letters: one was written in 1969, and the other in 1971. He had a beautiful hand, and the text was easy to read, so I transcribed his words and emailed a copy off to his granddaughter, my second cousin Catherine, in France.

That should have been the end of it, but of course it wasn’t.

Retracing earlier steps of that family tree I reignited the coals that had been smouldering on one of the branches. My 2x great grandmother, Mary Jane Williams who married Richard Werrett in Gloucestershire in England and emigrated with him to Melbourne in 1858, threw up a curve ball. Her mother’s name was Mary Werrett. Another maze to navigate: how were Richard and Mary related apart from marriage?

The picture of the church is relevant – it’s St Barnabas in Balwyn – Richard Werrett was one of the founders of the church and Uncle Rolie wanted to get back to Australia in 1972 for the 100 year anniversary of the first service. That wasn’t possible for him. 

 

Down the rabbit hole AGAIN

 

Sometimes I find researching the family history very frustrating. One of my 3x great aunts married a man by the name of John Foy, in Lancefield in 1871, she was 16, and he 35. That in itself isn’t the frustrating part, it’s the birth places of two of their children.

Unless you pay for a full historical birth certificate from Victorian BDM (which can be downloaded as a PDF immediately) you are stuck with the barest of details of births, marriages, and deaths. Two of Margaret Allan and John Foy’s children – Letitia and John Joseph - have their birth places listed as LAKE on the summarised certificate. The other children’s certificates have various short forms of Lancefield.

So, a bright spark who is researching the family from his line (on Ancestry), assumed Letitia’s birthplace was Lake Boga – and dozens of other people have copied his guess. I checked the map, and Lake Boga is a 2 ½ drive from Lancefield in 2020. It is highly unlikely that the family picked up, went to Lake Boga for the birth and then returned to Lancefield. The last child, John Joseph who was born a year before Margaret died, is listed as being born in Lake Nowra on the same intrepid researcher’s family tree. Again dozens have copied. These details matter to me because I am writing the family history “Empty Beds” and like to be as accurate as possible.

The frustration got the better of me, so I bought Letitia Foy’s birth certificate. She was born in Lancefield. The heading on the birth certificate record indicates “District of Lake Nowra”. Black hole filled in 😊

Two other notes of interest on Letitia’s birth certificate are her father’s age – he says he was 30, when he was closer to 40. He arrived in Melbourne in 1844 from County Cavan in Northern Ireland, his age shown as 8 years on the shipping list which would indicate a birth year of about 1836. The other interesting note is the birthplace of Letitia’s mother, Margaret Allan, at Fryers Creek in 1855. Margaret’s birth wasn’t registered until 1856 in Lancefield, when her brother Robert was born. I assumed she too was born in Lancefield, now that part of the story is up for a rewrite.

You think the research is over, and another little interesting fact pops up to slow down the writing. Well that’s the excuse anyway.

The best laid plans. Isn’t that what “they” say?

 

Family history research has a way of lulling one into a false sense of achievement. I’ve been researching the Allans, Darbys, and Murrays for years and years and years and years. The book I’m working on now focuses on the Allan and Darby families. So certain of the accuracy of my research, the words quickly transferred from my mind to the screen, via the keyboard. NOT SO FAST!!!!

I’ve made some educated guesses in my storytelling that I’ve since discovered through more research, are probably incorrect. So, the chapters around the birth of the first child of James and Mary Allan on the goldfields at Fryers Creek (Jean Witherspoon) are, I fear, in need of a rewrite.

Mary’s name was Mary Hamilton Murray. She and James (Allan) travelled to Port Phillip with her father, stepmother, and her siblings arriving in December 1852 (from Scotland). Two older brothers, Peter and Thomas, were already in Victoria, and settled on a farm at Macedon. Mary’s father and the rest of her family stayed to farm in Macedon while she and James went to the goldfields. BUT, the Murrays didn’t leave Victoria for Rockhampton (Qld) until 1864, so I now have twelve years of Murray history to explore.

I’ll rewrite. ☹

BACKSTORY FEATURE

 A short story I wrote about the death of my 3x great grandfather, James Allan and how it affected his wife, Mary, has been accepted into the tenth edition of BACKSTORY. I am very excited and happy that Mary and James's story will be read by many more.

What is Backstory?

Backstory is a Swinburne University journal open to all writers of history. We are interested in telling stories from the past, and in particular voices that may have been overlooked. We publish fiction, poetry, non-fiction, interviews, reviews, essays and academic articles. Stories do not have to centre around people, they can also be focused on object, time or place. We have aimed to create an online and print-on-demand publication that is modern, diverse and open-minded at the same time as featuring content that is richly rooted in the past. We are a historical journal with an eye on the future.

 

(Photo is Andrew Allan - James's grandfather.)