Wordless Wednesday–A life in pictures–Marjorie Lloyd Stannus

Marjorie Lloyd Stannus (1911-1984)

Perhaps just a few words...

Marjorie Lloyd Stannus was my Nanna. She was warm and fun – Nanna and Pa were the grandparents who could be counted on to spoil us!

I think it fascinating to see a person represented across their life span. I have often thought about putting together a collage like the one above for some of my ancestors – but it seemed like too much work. Then I revisited Picasa and was impressed with how well the facial recognition did. All but the youngest baby photo were correctly identified by Picasa as belonging to the same person. I created the collage above using Picasa’s collage function – it took about a minute. I would like to do more “Life in Pictures” posts, but there will only be a few. In most cases I’m glad if I even have one photo of my relatives and ancestors.

Research update May 2011

“Sketch on the Cornish coast” oil on canvas - Arthur Carey Stannus

Slowly but surely, I’m making headway in my research. Last weekend I managed a quick research outing. I only had two item to look up, but the complication was that they were at different locations.

Bennett death
One of the annoying missing details in my tree is the death of my gg-grandfather James Bennett 1831-???. I recently confirmed that James Bennett was the son of Michael Job Bennett and Mary Ann Barnes but I still don’t know when or where he died.

The first item on my to-do list last weekend was to check The Avoca Mail newspaper to see if I could find a death notice for James’ wife, who died in 1896. Not all editions of the newspaper are filmed and the paper didn’t have birth, death and marriage columns with entries neatly listed by bolded surname. I was in luck - I found a mention of her death a few days after the event halfway down a dense column of text.

“Another old resident of the district passed away on Friday evening in the person of Mrs Bennett, wife of Mr Jas. Bennett, of Avoca. The deceased lady had been ailing for some time, so that her end was not altogether unexpected. The remains were interred in the Avoca cemetery on Saturday afternoon.”

The Avoca Mail [microform], 11 February 1896, evening edition, no page number, col 4.

This sounds to me as though James Bennett was still alive when his wife died. That being the case, it cuts 13 years off the time period I need to search for his death as I last have him alive in 1883. This gave me the confidence to later download a Victorian death certificate I’d had my eye on, but unfortunately it was not him. Goodbye $17.50. I’ll look for more clues before I try again.

Stannus marriage
The second item on my very short to-do list was to view the marriage certificate of my ggg-grandparents William Ephraim Stannus and Catherine Mack. I had previously seen their marriage information in an unpublished research manuscript that has circulated around the family. More recently, I had seen the information transcribed in the FamilySearch historical records. The film had been waiting for me for a few weeks so I had to get in to see it before it was sent back again.

I confirmed William and Catherine’s marriage details (Belfast, 22 August 1848) and also learned that Catherine’s father, Robert Mack, was a Merchant Taylor. I know very little about the Mack family – no doubt Robert’s occupation will be a big help when I decide to look for more.

I also learned that the witnesses to the marriage were Anthony Stannus and Eliza Mack. Anthony Stannus was most probably Anthony Carey Stannus, brother of the groom and a well-known artist. An example of his work is above. Eliza Mack was most probably Catherine’s sister Eliza.

All in all, a very satisfactory afternoon!

Treasure Chest Thursday: My grandmother’s autograph book

 

I am lucky enough to have access to a real family history treasure chest.
I will share its contents with you as I rediscover what's inside.

 

It’s been a while since my last “treasure chest” post, but I still have more items coming. This time, the item wasn’t literally in the chest pictured, but is a treasured item – my grandmother’s autograph book.

There aren’t many signatures inside and all have dates in July 1927, so I think the novelty of the book must have worn off fairly quickly for her.

Most interesting for me are two pictures, which appear to have been drawn on lined writing paper, cut out and stuck in the book. I don’t know if they were traced, copied, or are original pictures. At any rate, they are rather sweet.

 

Have a closer look at the signatures:

     

I think the one on the left looks like a stylised AS and the one on the right is DS. I suspect that one picture was contributed by her father, Arthur Stannus, and the other by her sister. Although her father was always described as a painter or builder in the documents I’ve found (so far), the family story about him is that he was more like an interior designer and would paint elaborate murals in the ‘grand houses’. Further, the story goes, he painted my grandmother’s room in such elaborate style.

Finally, a few words from my great-grandmother May Black:

Exploring the PRONI wills online - what I found and how I found it

I love it when a routine genealogy search suddenly takes me into new territory.

A little under two weeks ago, Shauna Hicks tweeted about the launch of Northern Irish wills online. The information was free, and the will copy books were digitised. Although I have done little with the Irish portions of my family tree, I had to have a look.

I tried my Irish family names in the surname field, with some success. I then turned my attention to the other search options. I typed the surname "Stannus" into the "Full Abstract" field and was rewarded with twenty records. Most were cases of people who lived in "Stannus place", but a few had a Stannus family member appointed as executor.

As I scanned the surnames, and hovered over the descriptions for more detail, one entry on the front page jumped out at me. The name was Margaretta Mercer Mack, and she had appointed Catharine Stannus of Belfast, widow, as her executrix. Catharine Stannus, nee Mack, was my GGG grandmother and I know little about her. An index entry for Irish marriages on the FamilySearch beta site gives her father's name as Robert (having a look at that film is on my ever growing to-do list) but that's the limit of my knowledge.

Genealogy happy dance! Margaretta was Catharine's unmarried sister, previously unknown to me! Not only that, the will named several other siblings as beneficiaries. Well, sort of beneficiaries, but I think I will save that for another post.

Now I am left with more leads to follow up, pages and pages of wills to transcribe, and a useful tip to share: Don't limit yourself to entering surnames only in the surname field. You never know what new territory you may get to explore.

Treasure Chest Thursday: Marriage Certificates

I am lucky enough to have access to a real family history treasure chest. Over coming weeks I plan on sharing its contents with you as I rediscover what's inside.

Although I was not experienced in genealogy when I first explored the box, I could definately appreciate the genealogical value of the original marriage certificates inside. As well as my grandparent's own marriage certificate, the box contained marriage certificates for two sets of my great-grandparents. I'm sure there are plenty of people who wish they could have that sort of head start! Don't worry, information on my other branches was much more sparse!

I think that what I didn't appreciate, until now, is the feeling of holding in your own hands an original document that your long-gone ancestors had held before you. Although I love the ability to download digital images of all sorts of things, it's not quite the same as seeing the documents 'in person'.

I've scanned these before, but at a time when computer storage space was at a premium. Now that storage is a bit cheaper, I'm rescanning them in colour to try to capture some of the feeling of the originals, for any family members who want to see them.

Here is the marriage certificate of Arthur Stannus and May Black, in 1908. 

Marriage certificate of Arthur Stannus and May Black, Victoria, Australia, 1908

And the other for Arthur Milne Lee and Jessie Isabella Couper, a little earlier, in 1904.

Marriage certificate of Arthur Milne Lee and Jessie Isabella Couper, Victoria, Australia, 1904

Are you related to these families?  
Sure, you could grab the images and run, but it would be much nicer if you got in touch. Please contact me at the email address on the about page, or leave a comment!

Maintaining contact with other researchers

In the course of genealogy research, we (hopefully!) get in touch with other people interested in our families.

Once the initial exchange of information has occurred, maintaining that contact can be hard. Like any relationship, you have to work at it. If neither of you are actively researching that family at the time, there's not much to write about. Weeks become months, months become years, and email addresses change. Fortunately I have not yet written to someone after a break only to discover that they have passed away.

The other complexity when several people are interested in the same family is that some are in touch with each other, others aren't, and what with half-siblings their interests don't overlap by much. Writing to every one of them separately when you find some new information, or there is something you want to ask, is time consuming and could bother people whose interest isn't quite as strong as yours.

Then, there are the people that you can't give your full attention to at the time when they contact you. Guess what - if you put information on the Internet, it doesn't automatically drop to the bottom of search results when you are busy. People just keep on finding it!

A few years ago I had a steady trickle of contacts from other researchers interested in my Stannus family. At the same time, I was starting my own family. I didn't have the time to communicate with them as I would have liked. I felt bad that my shifting priorities meant that someone could be missing out on information I had, and just as worried that I might miss out on getting a copy of something fabulous!


My solution was to create a Yahoo! Group. If you are not familiar with such creatures, they function like a mailing list with an archive, but also have space for file uploads (a pitiful 100MB) and photos (a plentiful 100GB) and a few other features, and they're free. I set the group up so that it's listed in the Yahoo! Groups directory, but the contents can be viewed only by group members. Any new members must have my approval to join. Messages and file uploads are not moderated, but they could be if there was any problem.


I invited my Stannus family contacts (they refer to themselves collectively as Stannii) to join the group and was pleased when most of them accepted. The group currently has eight members located in four(?) different countries.

It may be an old-fashioned solution compared to some of the possibilities on the web today - there are no genealogy specific features - but I'm very pleased with how it has worked.

It's not a busy group. New messages and posted material are infrequent. But, every so often, someone has a spurt of activity... and then someone else will think to contribute one or two more items... and over time the resources we have shared are building up. There are now 55 images of family photos, headstones, paintings, and locations that most of us may otherwise have never seen. One member of the group has been particularly fortunate in the material passed down to her through the generations, and generous in sharing, so special thanks to her if she happens to read this!

How do you maintain contact with other researchers?

Are you a Stannus family researcher? Please contact me at the email address on the about page so we can work out if we're connected!