Book review. “Meet the Pioneers: Early Families of the Milton/Ulladulla District”

I purchased “Meet the Pioneers: early families of the Milton/Ulladulla District with photographs” a few months ago after a recommendation from a newly discovered cousin.

Meet the Pioneers grew out of a local exhibition of pioneering families photographs that the author Joanne Ewin was organising. Joanne gathered such a unique collection of photographs and family stories from descendants of pioneer families that she decided to publish them so they could be shared.

The book has proven to be a valuable edition to my library because it contains numerous anecdotes and photographs of my SIMMONS  and TUCKERMAN families I haven’t seen before. It is also an extremely well-presented pictorial history of the pioneering families of the Milton/Ulladulla district. The quality of the paper, printing, cover and binding are very high, and although the cost of $35 plus postage might seem a little steep, I was very impressed when it arrived. It also has a lovely index that so far has proven to be very accurate. (I love indexes – is that a librarian or family historian ‘thing’? Maybe both.)

I would highly recommend this book to anyone with pioneering ancestors from the Milton/Ulladulla district.

If you would like the index checked for your ancestor’s name, please send me an email. I’d be happy to look for you.

Australia Day 2012 – Wealth for Toil

Shelley at Twigs of Yore has invited geneabloggers to participate in an Australia Day blog event: Australia Day 2012 – Wealth for Toil.

The requirements are:

To participate, choose someone who lived in Australia (preferably one of your ancestors) and tell us how they toiled. Your post should include:

1. What was their occupation? 
2. What information do you have about the individual’s work, or about the occupation in general?
3. The story of the person, focussing on their occupation; or
   The story of the occupation, using the person as an example.

Responses may be as long or short as you like, and as narrow or broad as you wish.

My great grandfather George Thomas SMEDE was born on 26 July 1878 in Rylstone NSW, the 6th of David John SMEDE and Catherine PICKETT’s 11 children.

GT’s first occupation was as a soldier for the Boer War. He enlisted in 1900 and trained for the war but it ended before he left Australia.

GT continued to be employed by the military forces of the NSW State Government, before it was taken over by the Commonwealth Government, until he was transferred to the NSW Police Force in 1906. His first appointment as a policeman was to Taralga, near Goulburn, where he was for around 2 years, and was where he met my great grandmother Edith GOODHEW. (Edith’s father was the local police sergeant, coincidentally also called George Thomas!)

He left Taralga for Broken Hill where he spent 6 months during the Broken Hill strike of 1909 and on his return was posted to Crookwell. GT remained at Crookwell for over 6 years, his longest time at any posts and was then appointed to Berridale. Whilst in Berridale in 1917 GT was declared bankrupt. I have not obtained a copy of his bankruptcy papers yet so do not know anything other than that. (I hope to have a copy of these papers soon as a friend has offered to get a copy when she goes to State Records of NSW.) Maybe a policeman’s salary was not sufficient to bring up 3 or 4 children.

Next he moved to Bungonia, Ariah Park and Grafton, (where I grew up). In Grafton he was promoted to the rank of sergeant third-class. During these years, 1909-1924, GT and Edith had 5 children: George Athol, Nola Ruth, Vida Jean, Edna Blanche (my grandmother) and Ivor Gregory.

GT, Edith and their first 4 children. My grandmother is the baby sitting on her mother’s lap.

Two years later GT moved to Byron Bay, (very close to where I now live), and stayed here for 5 years. During this time he was promoted to the rank of sergeant second-class. It was also here where an event, about dynamiting fish, occurred which was reported in The Brisbane Courier and is one of my favourite articles about any of my ancestors.

1929 ‘DYNAMITING FISH. PICNICKERS FINED.’, The Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 – 1933), 25 February, p. 14, viewed 25 January, 2012, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article21379510

In the remaining years of GT’s 31-year career with the police force, the family moved twice more to Kempsey and finally to Taree where he was promoted to the rank of sergeant first class in 1935.

George Thomas retired in Taree in 1938 and was highly praised in the local press for “carrying out his duties with fine diplomacy and courtesy.” He was also presented with a clock that I am extremely proud to now own.

The Manning River Times (date unknown)

The clock occupies pride of place in our living room, a reminder of a hard-working and well-respected police officer.

George Thomas and Edith in 1959, a few years before he passed away.

Looking ahead – my goals for 2012

I have been reading the goals of a number of other geneabloggers over the last few days and it seems like a good idea to put them down in writing – then I might remember what they were!

I only have 3 goals and think it may be a small miracle if I achieve all of them because I am also going to start studying again this year. Anyhow, here they are:

1. Spend more time with my Nan, who at 92 is doing well to still be here in such good health. I would like to be able to record more of her stories and ancedotes so I can save and share them with the rest of the family. I would also like to find out more details about the people in her photos because many of the names, stories of those people will be lost once she is gone.

2.  I would love to be better organised. I have played around with many different forms and ways of saving my research progress but until recently had not found anything that worked efficiently for me. After reading a post by Aillin at Australian Genelogy Journeys blog on Research logs I think I have put together 2 forms and a system using Google docs that will work for me – I hope. It needs testing!

3. I have one great great grandparent who is missing a surname and I would like to discover what that is. I have many other brick walls, however I feel that this is one that I might be able to break down more easily than the others. (You know the type: did they swim here??, died somewhere but can’t find out where etc.)

Hopefully I will be able to report positively on these goals this time next year.

Happy Goal Achieving!

Finding Frances P

Recently I have focused much of my family history research on my paternal grandmother’s SIMMONS line. Primarily because my she is the only grandparent I have who is still living and I like to show her the things I find. It is from the Simmons line that I have also managed to solve something that has long been a mystery to me – what happened to Frances P SIMMONS, the first born child of James SIMMONS and Eliza WENTWORTH?

When I started putting a family tree together a couple of years ago, I spent some time talking to Nan about the families of her father, Victor Rex SIMMONS and mother, Eliza EVANS. She had more details and memories of her father’s family, simply because her mother was English and so most of her family lived in England.

Nan told me that her father had had 4 brothers and 3 sisters. I still have the first list I jotted down of the names she could remember and this is where the mystery of Frances P began, and also where I can see my note-taking can improve!The note above actually includes 3 instances of trying to piece together who Victor’s brothers and sisters were. I had done a NSW BDM index search and found the following children as most likely being born to ‘my’ James and Eliza SIMMONS:

• Frances P
• Frank W
• Ruby
• James
• Mary B
• Raymond
• Rupert
• Victor R

Those then are the names on the left hand side with years next to them. This information however did not match with what Nan remembered, and this was probably my biggest mistake – I did not place a great deal of weight on Nan’s memory. Nan remembered their being Frank, Ruby who married Alf TROUGHTON, Raymond who married Gertie BRUCE, Beryl who married Len EVANS, Rupert, Milton and Pearlie. You can see from my scratchings above I tried to piece it all together. Eventually I matched most of the names, primarily using a letter in Milton SIMMON’s war record written by his eldest brother Frank which named all the siblings and their ages, in 1917 – this was were I made my second mistake. This information can be seen listed on the right hand side of the above, and below in the letter.

At this stage I was fairly confident, (without having purchased birth certificates for all the siblings which I will do one day when I win lotto), that Victor had had the following siblings:

• Frank Wentworth (Frank W in NSW BDM index)
• Ruby May (Ruby in NSW BDM index)
• Milton (or James as he was named on his birth certificate and is listed as such in NSW BDM index)
• Beryl May (Mary B in NSW BDM index)
• Raymond (Raymond in NSW BDM index)
• Rupert (Rupert SUMMONS in NSW BDM index)
• Victor Rex (Victor R in NSW BDM index)

So I had a match for everyone except for Pearlie who Nan insisted on a number of occasions was one of her aunts and had married a man with the surname RANKIN. As these conversations and pieces of research all occured over a period of time and I had pretty much discounted Nan’s memory of an aunt called Pearlie, I did not connect Pearlie with the first-born child of James and Eliza who is listed on the NSW BDM index as Frances P. The P really should have been a hint shouldn’t it, especially considering 2 of the other siblings were known by names other than the ones on their birth certs. Sadly it did not twig with me and I decided that Frances must have died very young and I still had to find her death records.

All that changed when I was doing a search about a month ago on some newly-added articles to Trove from the local newspaper of relevance to the SIMMONS family, the Northern Star. I was trying to locate some articles about the death of my gg grandfather James SIMMONS and wasn’t having much luck so I widened the search to look for (SIMMONS or SIMMONDS or SYMONS) and (newrybar or brooklet or binna burra) to try to cover all potential spellings of the surname and the areas I knew they had lived in.

I found something, but it wasn’t at all what I was expecting. The headline that caught my eye was ‘TERRIBLE TRAGEDY. HUSBAND’S HORRIFYING DISCOVERY. WIFE AND CHILD FOUND DEAD.’ The article, (which you can read in your own time if you wish but I  have not included it here because it is very graphic), tells in great detail how Pearl RANKIN nee SIMMONS and her 18 month old daughter Enid Pearl RANKIN had been found deceased in their home by their husband and father Mr John RANKIN in October 1913. At the inquest it was determined that Mrs Pearl RANKIN had taken her own life and that of her child’s for unknown reasons.

I had finally found Nan’s aunt Pearlie, (and Frances P because she is named in a SMH Family Notice for Deaths as Pearl Frances). I have spoken to my father who is Nan’s son, about this and he only has a vague memory of Nan mentioning that Pearlie was one of her aunts – nothing else. Nan has also never mentioned to me anything about this tragedy and for this reason my father and I have decided not to speak to her about it. Some things are better left alone.

I actually found this discovery to be quite distressing eventhough it solved a mystery for me. It has however also provided me with a number of lessons: don’t discount what elderly relatives tell you – they may forget some things but you need to disprove them before you can discard them; and always be flexible with names – I thought I was quite good at this, but had obviously shut my mind on this one.

Pearl (Frances P SIMMONS) and her daughter Enid Pearl RANKIN are buried in Bangalow cemetery with a very simple and I think sad, gravestone.

Do as I say, not as I do

As a reference librarian in a University library one of my main responsibilities is to teach students how to conduct research and correctly cite what they find.

Well I think I should listen to myself a little more often! Two weeks ago I fell into the trap of getting excited about finding a piece of information and not recording the citation details. And guess what?? I couldn’t find it again!

I blogged about a discovery I made on Trove in The Northern Star that has been recently added to the digitised newspapers database. In my excitement I failed to tag and correct the article within Trove, which I am usually careful to do, or make a note of the citation details. A few days later when I discovered what I had done I went searching for it again and of course I couldn’t find it, no matter how I looked for it. (I asked one of my colleagues at work to have a try at looking for it and she found it quickly, using the age-old technique of “not getting too complicated with your search keywords” – another piece of advice I like to give but apparently don’t listen to myself!!)

Anyway, my lesson for today is to record your citations no matter how excited you are, otherwise that excitement will quickly turn to disappointment and dismay.

BTW, I have tagged and corrected the article on Trove and added the citation to my original blog entry.

Beyond the Internet Geneameme

I have enjoyed participating in some of the Geneamemes lately and although relatively new ot family history research wanted to join in with this one too from Pauline over at Family history across the seas.

As I only stared researching my family a few years ago and basically live in the sticks – or certainly not close to any major archives, I have probably done about 90% of my research via the Internet. This will be interesting.

As usual the process is as follows:

Beyond the Internet Geneameme

Things you have already done or found: bold face type
Things you would like to do or find: italicize (colour optional)
Things you haven’t done or found and don’t care to: plain type
You are encouraged to add extra comments in brackets after each item

1. Looked at microfiche for BDM indexes which go beyond the online search dates.
2. Talked to elderly relatives about your family history.
3. Obtained old family photos from relatives.
4. Have at least one certificate (birth/death/marr) for each great-grandparent.
5. Have at least one certificate (birth/death/marr) for each great-great-grandparent.
6. Seen/held a baptism or marriage document in a church, church archive or microfilm.
7. Seen your ancestor’s name in some other form of church record eg kirk session, communion rolls.
8. Used any microfilm from an LDS family history centre for your research.
9. Researched using a microfilm other than a parish register (LDS family history centre/other).
10. Used cemetery burial records to learn more about your relative’s burial.
11. Used funeral director’s registers to learn more about your relative’s burial.
12. Visited all your great-grandparents’ grave sites.
13. Visited all your great-great-grandparents’ grave sites.
14. Recorded the details on your ancestors’ gravestones and photographed them.
15. Obtained a great-grandparent’s will/probate documents.
16. Obtained a great-great grandparent’s will/probate documents. (Was actually a 3x great grandfather)
17. Found a death certificate among will documents.
18. Followed up in the official records, something found on the internet.
19. Obtained a copy of your immigrant ancestors’ original shipping records.
20. Found an immigration nomination record for your immigrant ancestor.
21. Found old images of your ancestor’s place of origin (online or other).
22. Read all/part of a local history for your ancestor’s place of residence.
23. Read all/part of a local history for your ancestor’s place of origin.
24. Read your ancestor’s school admission records.
25. Researched the school history for your grandparents.
26. Read a court case involving an ancestor (online newspapers don’t count for this).
27. Read about an ancestor’s divorce case in the archives.
28. Have seen an ancestor’s war medals.
29. Have an ancestor’s military record (not a digitised copy eg WWII).
30. Read a war diary or equivalent for an ancestor’s battle.
31. Seen an ancestor’s/relative’s war grave.
32. Read all/part of the history of an ancestor’s military unit (battalion/ship etc).
33. Seen your ancestor’s name on an original land map.
34. Found land selection documents for your immigrant ancestor/s.
35. Found other land documents for your ancestor (home/abroad)
36. Located land maps or equivalent for your ancestor’s place of origin.
37. Used contemporaneous gazetteers or directories to learn about your ancestors’ places.
38. Found your ancestor’s name in a Post Office directory of the time.
39. Used local government sewerage maps (yes, seriously!) for an ancestor’s street.
40. Read an inquest report for an ancestor/relative (online/archives).
41. Read an ancestor’s/relative’s hospital admission.
42. Researched a company file if your family owned a business.
43. Looked up any of your ancestor’s local government rate books or valuation records.
44. Researched occupation records for your ancestor/s (railway, police, teacher etc).
45. Researched an ancestor’s adoption.
46. Researched an ancestor’s insolvency. (I have started to, need to complete this at SRNSW at Kingswood for 2 ancestors)
47. Found a convict ancestor’s passport or certificate of freedom.
48. Found a convict ancestor’s shipping record.
49. Found an ancestor’s gaol admission register.
50. Found a licencing record for an ancestor (brands, publican, etc).
51. Found an ancestor’s mining lease/licence.
52. Found an ancestor’s name on a petition to government.
53. Read your ancestor’s citizenship document.
54. Read about your ancestor in an undigitised regional newspaper.
55. Visited a local history library/museum relevant to your family. (The wonderful Richmond River Historical Society in Lismore)
56. Looked up your ancestor’s name in the Old Age Pension records.
57. Researched your ancestor or relative in Benevolent Asylum/Workhouse records.
58. Researched an ancestor’s/relative’s mental health records.
59. Looked for your family in a genealogical publication of any sort (but not online remember). (Does a history of NORCO the dairy coop in Northern NSW count? It is a book.)
60. Contributed family information to a genealogical publication.

The treasure in Trove

I discovered two nights ago that Trove had started to load digitised versions of my local newspaper The Northern Star onto its website. I am very excited to see this because many of my father’s ancestors have lived in the area covered by this newspaper since the 1870s and 1880s when they moved from Kangaloon and Marshall Mount in Southern NSW.

I have inherited a few copies of marriage notices and the like from my Nan who either collected them herself or inherited them over the years, but there are many events that I have to discover for myself and this task has now become so much easier.

To be honest, I was so excited to see The Northern Star appear that I really didn’t know where to start and just threw names in almost randomly to see what results appeared. (Not really what an efficient reference librarian should do). Tonight I have been trying to be more efficient and have already found something unexpected.

I did a search for my 2x great grandfather Hugh KIRKLAND and found an article from 1911 regarding the death of someone described as one of his employees.

SUDDEN DEATH. (1911, September 11). Northern Star
(Lismore, NSW : 1876 – 1954), p. 4. Retrieved November
9, 2011, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article72431616

The employee unfortunately passed away very quickly one day over just a couple of hours. I am particularly interested in this article because the employee is described as “an Indian”.My husband’s parents are both from India, (we tend to describe him as Anglo-Indian with quite a bit of Portugeuse ancestry), and although we have neighbours who are of Indian descent and have been here for many years, I did not expect to find my farming 2x great grandfather employing men from India. I obviously have a lot to learn!

The article is very brief and warrants further research to discover the results of the autopsy. I would also like to find out more about Maffra and where he came from if possible. As this newspaper has not been completely uploaded to Trove yet I may have to be patient for a little longer. I will be though, because a great deal of it is already there.