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.)

 

National Family History Month - second presentation

Yesterday afternoon, through Nicole from Melton Libraries, I presented a talk on James McAra Mitchel. Mitchel married my 3x great aunt, Mary Hamilton Allan in Lancefield in 1881. Mitchel managed the Rockbank Sheep Station (which covered 54,000 acres from Sunbury to the Werribee River, to William Taylor's Land in Keilor. 

It was a privilege to share some of Mitchel's story with people interested in the history of the district. Mitchel started a fire brigade for the property, organised cricket teams for the workers, arranged for the repair and construction of dry stone walls (50% of the dry stone walls still standing in the district, were built under his watch), improved the drainage of Rockbank swamp, and was well respected by employees and others in the district.

One of the attendees at the Zoom event was a lady who lives on land that was part of the original Rockbank Sheep Station. She had photos of Mary and James McAra Mitchel, and very kindly forwarded them to me.

This is exciting.

 

National Family History Month

 

Presenting in front of others is often a bit nerve-wracking, and today was no exception. You’d think having been a secondary teacher would put me in good stead, but before the Zoom cameras came on, I was feeling a little anxious. No need. The people who joined the Zoom meeting organised by the Family History Librarian at Melton Libraries, Nicole Hilder, were relaxed, friendly and engaged.

The attendees were interested in the subject: Starting your family history research, and we covered some useful tips.

The usual suspects in family history research popped in to say hello:

• ·         Trove (the National Library of Australia’s digitised newspapers)
• ·         Births, Deaths and Marriages,
• ·         The British Newspaper Archive,
• ·         Ancestry
• ·         Find My Past
• ·         The Public Records Office Victoria

·          The hour passed quickly; I hope it’s a good sign and means some will join in the next on-line family history adventures.