#52ancestors

New Year, new set of #52ancestors challenges

Miss W. General info

Well I didn’t do too well in this challenge last year. Think I only wrote about 10 posts on my blog, but I did link the challenge weekly to a Facebook group I am in that has finished their Diploma of Family History at UTAS. Many people who didn’t have blogs left comments on the posts so I feel they also took part in the 2018 challenge.

Here is a link to the new 2019 #52ancestors challenge in case you want to join. Or click on the image widget on my sidebar.

Here are the 5 challenge topics for January (just in case you want to get ahead in your blogging and schedule your posts).

Valentine

Miss W. Smith , ,

This week for #52ancestors, I decided to check my database to find someone born in the 1800s on Valentine’s Day 14 February. I could only find one person born on Valentine’s Day but that was in 1981 which is too recent for me to write about and research.

But I did find William Demingo SMITH born 16 February 1883 and only surviving till 16 September 1885.

William was the fourth child born to Captain William SMITH and Sarah Ann TEDMAN. He had an older brother Thomas Alexander (Albert) Smith born in 1880. These two young chaps did not survive infancy. William and Sarah had 10 children in total and 7 surviving till adulthood.

At this time, Captain William Smith was master of the whaling ship Marie Laure, based in Hobart and often calling in to Recherche Bay where his family lived near Cockle Creek. This is one of the most southern towns in Tasmania and in the 1870s and 1880s would have been a wild area to live in. There had been a convict station nearby at Southport and the main occupations were sawyers and whalers.

In September 1885, the two young brothers went down suddenly with diarrhoea. Their deaths on the 15th and 16th September were registered by Henry John Daldy, the coroner at Franklin on 20 September. But an interested person naming himself Recherche, wrote to the local Hobart paper The Mercury and had a piece printed on 29 September 1885.

 

 

 

 

 

Favourite name

Miss W. Bryant, Chandler , , , , ,

I don’t really have any favourite names among my ancestors because many of them are William, John, George, Hannah, Martha etc.

But I have always wanted to know where my great grandmother got her name from.

Julia Charlotte Chandler

Julia was born in Tasmania on 1 October 1860 to parents William CHANDLER and Caroline BRYANT. She married Henry Lewis ENGLAND

Naming patterns were often used so who were the mothers of William and Caroline?

I have no idea of William’s mother – need to do more research on this. But Caroline’s mother is Charlotte BRYANT. OK we have part of Julia’s name accounted for. Now to find out who the Julia comes from.

Possibly someone important in Caroline’s life – perhaps a sister or friend from back in England?

Looking on the marriage certificate for Caroline, the witnesses are RG Winter and Emma Mains? Who could these people be? They weren’t mentioned on the other marriages so would have to be friends rather than church clerks etc.

I decided to check any Tasmanian wills for an RG Winter or any Winter with the name Julia included to see if there was any reference to my Caroline.

There it was.

Robert George Winter had a wife Esther Julia Winter and some of the witnesses to his will had the surname Chandler. I could be getting close. Could Esther Julia be Caroline’s sister?

Esther Julia WINTER was bequeathing her worldly goods and chattels to her sister Caroline Chandler. She also mentioned the names of nieces who she gave particular workboxes and vases to – these were all relatives of my Julia Charlotte England nee Chandler.

I now know where her name came from:

Julia after Caroline’s sister who also arrived in Tasmania as a married woman in the 1850s

Charlotte after Caroline’s mother