Smith

Diaries and letters

Miss W. #52ancestors, Davey, Smith, Wyatt , , , , , , ,
OpenClipart-Vectors / Pixabay

In my family, my mother’s side were the letter writers, while dad must have got his love of diaries from his birth mother.

The earliest letter I’ve found is a postcard with a photo of my maternal grandmother on the front and on the back she sent a short message to her future husband. This would have been in the early 1920’s as they married in 1922.

My mother and her sister always kept in touch with their cousins via letters. They lived in Hobart in southern Tasmania, but many of the relatives lived around Evandale and Longford in northern Tasmania.

Dad’s birth mother, Irene, wrote a diary about her trip on horseback along the track to Adamsfield to visit Ernie Bond in his home in the Rasselas Valley. It was while working at Heathorns Hotel that Irene met Ernie. Dad kept the diary and it is now in my possession.

Whenever mum and dad went off on a holiday together they would keep a diary. Then when they got home, dad would put together a folder of their holiday for them to remember what they did and where.

In 1965, our family and my mum’s sister’s family (8 of us) went on holiday together around Australia for three months. Dad kept a diary of this trip and whenever I have visited places mentioned in the diary, he would send me a photo of that page so I could compare what we saw 60 years ago on that long trip.

When mum passed away in September 2021, dad used his diary to write about what happened each day. There were always special mentions on mum’s birthday but also on their wedding anniversary date of 8 September.

On 8 September 2024, dad wrote the following:

Phyl and Bob’s Wedding 70

Today will be a day of wonderful memories

of our life time together.  A perfect marriage and

two children, two grandchildren and one great grandchild.

Hymn: O Perfect Love

On 9 September, dad mentioned he was having trouble breathing, worse than normal, but decided he would go to bed early rather than get some medical help. He was 91 years old. The next day I found dad had passed away after he didn’t reply to any of my messages that morning.

Today we scattered mum and dad’s ashes down in the Hartz Mountains area as per their wishes in their wills, their final letter to us.

Readers: Who were the letter or diary writers in your family?

What a challenge!

Miss W. #52ancestors, Allen, Dawson, Smith, Wyatt , ,
Mohamed_hassan / Pixabay

My parents and I had often spoken about our family history. Three of my grandparents were alive when I was born but none of my great grandparents. In fact four of my grandparents were alive but I didn’t know that until my parents, my brother and I did DNA tests.

Mum’s DNA matches were lots of her cousins that she knew or who we knew of from family reunions I had helped run back in the 1980’s and were on my database. But there were a few unknown names in Dad’s DNA matches.

Now came the challenge – how were they related to my dad?

Dad’s paternal line should have been the surname WYATT and his maternal line should have been SMITH.

From what I knew of dad’s paternal side, his father had deserted him and his mother when dad was two and there were no other children from the marriage. But his father had been married before and had two children from that marriage. I could find no matches relating to them. Another person with the surname Wyatt but living in New South Wales had been in contact with me and thought her grandfather and my grandfather were the same person. So we had her dad test DNA as well – another half brother for dad. But all my research on the Wyatt name from the paper work we had was getting us nowhere for 20 years until suddenly another DNA match with the surname ALLEN came up as a close match. We worked out he was a half nephew to my dad. His father had the surname Allen and he was older than my dad.  Over 20 years research to work out dad’s father was actually William Elvis Allen and not William Allen Wyatt.

Now Dad’s other challenge was the surname Smith. I had done a lot of research on dad’s supposed grandfather and his father who was a half Samoan whaling captain. But dad’s DNA had no Samoan ethnicity.  So I asked a few of the Smith relatives to test. They all had Samoan and they all matched each other. But Dorothy, who I had met on a bus tour and while chatting worked out we were related through Captain Smith, did not match my dad at all. She matched the other Smith cousins. From this we worked out dad’s grandfather was not the son of the whaling captain but someone else.

The close unknown matches on dad’s DNA came back to the surname DAWSON. After more researching, I worked out dad’s grandfather had been a miner on the west coast of Tasmania at the same time as the Smiths were there woodcutting and whaling.

Below are links to posts I’ve already written about these families.

William Elvis Allen

Alexander Dawson

Captain William Smith

Readers: Have you had both a bigamist and a NPE (non parental event) in your family tree?

Overlooked

Miss W. #52ancestors, Chandler, Davey, Dawson, Smith , ,
RitaE / Pixabay

This past weekend I took part in the WikiTree Connect-a-thon. Adding new profiles to the tree, I noticed there were many cases of infant or child mortality. In some families, 5 out of 10 children died before age three. Then when I searched newspapers for the death of parents, I found many of these infants were not mentioned as deceased children in the family.

These children had been overlooked by their siblings who wrote the death notice in the newspaper. Maybe they didn’t know they had more siblings who had died young. Some of these infants didn’t even get a formal name.

Looking in my direct family tree:

  • Mum had an older sister Iris who died aged 9, just a month after mum was born. She is remembered on the family gravestone and in photos I have inherited.
  • Dad was an only child but ended up having 7 half siblings who all survived to adulthood. But one was in a mental hospital from a young age and I can’t find his death.
  • My paternal grandfather William Elvis Allen had 2 siblings and three half siblings. His older sister Ethel Maud Allen only survived two years and I have not yet found any headstone for her.
  • My paternal grandmother Irene Smith had 14 siblings (DNA they are half maternal siblings) and another 3 siblings (DNA they are half paternal siblings). Only one of those half siblings died less than one year old.
  • My maternal grandfather Henry Lewis England had 3 sisters. The youngest Lucy died aged 20.
  • My maternal grandmother Hannah Davey had 11 siblings. Her younger sisters Elsie died aged 11 and Lila died aged 8. Both are remembered on the same headstone as their parents in Evandale, Tasmania. They were always mentioned in newspaper reports as well.

Hannah had 44 nieces and nephews and only one of them died young aged 14.

If I were to go further back in my tree and look at nieces and nephews of my direct ancestors, I know there are a lot more families with infants or children who have died young.

So to make sure these youngsters are not overlooked, I am making sure I write a profile for them in WikiTree. Here are some of them: