ANZAC Day 2012 – A mother’s perspective

ANZAC Day, observed on 25 April each year, is the national day of remembrance for Australians and New Zealanders who died at war.

Last year I co-hosted an ANZAC day blogging challenge with Central Auckland Research Centre, Auckland Libraries. This year I have bowed out of co-hosting, due to commitments of life in general. However, I didn’t want to miss out on participating. This is my contribution to the 2012 ANZAC Day Blog Challenge.

My great-uncle Charles George French was not yet 21 when he tried to enlist in the military. It was a little too soon for his mother’s liking:

“I have no objection to his enlistment for Home Service. I object to his enlistment for Active Service Abroad he is too young. Make any use you like of him for Home Service”

Elizabeth French, 3 June 1918

NAA: B2455, FRENCH C G

© Commonwealth of Australia (National Archives of Australia) 2012.

Without consent for Active Service Abroad, Charles’ application to enlist was cancelled.

Charles must have talked his mother around, as just a week later he provided a consent form with her signature. With her consent, his application was accepted. He embarked for France on 31 August 1918 the same year. His elder brother Walter had already seen service and returned home to Australia, discharged from duty with deafness.

As I was reading Charles’ military service file, I already knew that he had returned home alive. Having come home in October 1919 he married in 1920 and went on to raise a family. His mother Elizabeth didn’t have the reassurance of this knowledge as he set sail for France. On 31 August 1918, Charles’ fate was unknown. How hard it must have been for Elizabeth to let her young son, just 19 years of age, go off to war.

© Shelley Crawford, 2012

Elizabeth Tregonning - my favourite female ancestor (Fearless Females)

In honour of National Women’s History Month (http://www.nwhp.org/whm/history.php), Lisa Alzo of The Accidental Genealogist blog (http://www.theaccidentalgenealogist.com/) presents Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women’s History Month.

I am not going to attempt to respond to all of the topics, and I am already too late to attempt to post them on the appropriate days, but I thought they were such a great set of blogging prompts that I wanted to participate.

March 1 — Do you have a favourite female ancestor? One you are drawn to or want to learn more about? Write down some key facts you have already learned or what you would like to learn and outline your goals and potential sources you plan to check.

When I first read the question I immediately thought of my ancestor, Elizabeth Tregonning (1858-1952). I was drawn to her because her death record was so elusive for a long time. As a result I spent a lot of time looking at what I knew about her and thinking about her life – wondering what it much have been like. The more I learnt, the more I wanted to fill the gaps in my knowledge.

What I know and what I would like to know

Elizabeth was born in Avoca, Victoria, Australia on 11 September 1858. Her father was William Tregonning a copper miner from Gwennap, Cornwall, England, and her mother was Elizabeth Martin. Her parents and brother, William Henry Tregonning, had arrived in South Australia on the ship Reliance in 1851. They didn’t stay in South Australia for long – less than a year – before making their way to the Victorian goldfields where the family stayed.

In 1860 when Elizabeth was two, her mother died in childbirth. Her father married Elizabeth Hill just two months later. Two years later Elizabeth had a half-sister, Mary Ellen.

I would like to learn more about what life was like on the Victorian goldfields for women and children. I plan to do a literature survey to identify sources. I also want to look into what schooling was available and see if any records exist.

Fast forward to 1884. Elizabeth, 26, had a son Albert William Tregonning and two months later married a widower 50 years of age, Joseph Tregonning (no known relation between them) also from Gwennap, Cornwall. Albert William’s birth was registered by Elizabeth two days after her marriage to Joseph but he was not named as the father. She had a daughter to Joseph, Violet Adeline Tregonning, in 1886.

I may never know who Albert’s father was.

The next period of Elizabeth’s life seems to have been difficult. It appears that her husband Joseph was insolvent in 1887, and possibly went to gaol. While these events are yet to be proved I do know he died in 1891. Even before I saw references to an insolvent fitting Joseph’s description, I had wondered how strong this family unit was. The details given for his first wife on the death certificate are complete with names and ages for each of their five children; the details of his second marriage to Elizabeth were sketchy with the children described as “1 boy and 1 girl” “ages unknown”.

I am in the process of trying to obtain the insolvency and prison records to confirm it is the same person. Perhaps they will shed more light on the family circumstances.

Elizabeth remained in Avoca and married again – a widower called James Henry French. It was a family of ‘yours, mine and ours’ with young children from two previous marriages and their own five children, the youngest being my grandfather. Elizabeth’s daughter Violet (by her marriage to Joseph) died at age 11 from tuberculosis. All five of Elizabeth and James’ children survived to adulthood.

After her second husband, James, died in 1915, Elizabeth stayed in the Avoca area until around 1924. Elizabeth seems to have lived with her daughter Bessie Ada French, and moved as Bessie moved, even after Bessie’s marriage to Bruin Farquhar Bernard.

I have limited success tracing Elizabeth, Bessie and Bruin through the electoral rolls. I may have more luck as more rolls are included on Ancestry.com. I have some other ideas about how I might trace Bruin, but they are a lower priority for now.

Finally, Elizabeth moved with Bessie and Bruin to Brisbane, Queensland, where Elizabeth passed away at age 94 on 11 November 1952.

Further details and source references for Elizabeth are available on my research data website. Please contact me if you are researching Elizabeth, I would love to hear from you.

Surname Saturday: Tregoning - Gwennap, Cornwall to Victoria

Surname Saturday is a daily blogging theme suggested on the geneabloggers site. I intend to use my Surname Saturday posts to highlight, briefly, each of my male great-great-grandparents and their families. All information presented should be considered a work in progress, requiring further research and verification.

William Tregoning

The surname Tregoning (or sometimes, Tregonning) is strongly associated with Cornwall. In 1841, 384 of the 400+ Tregonings in the England census were enumerated in Cornwall. Of these, 92 were in the civil parish of Gwennap.*

William Tregoning was among them. In 1841 he was 15 years old and like so many others living in Gwennap he was working as a copper miner. He lived in a household with his parents, John and Mary, and twelve other young Tregonings. I'm still in the process of confirming that they were all his siblings, but so far it appears the family had a remarkable infant survival rate.

William married Elizabeth Martin, the daughter of a stonemason, in May 1848 and later that year they had a son, William Henry Tregoning.

William, Elizabeth and their son remained in Gwennap long enough to be enumerated in the 1851 census, but only by a few months. In September they arrived in South Australia. I only recently found a transcription of the shipping record, and have yet to look up the original passenger list myself, or to try and learn more about their time in South Australia.

What I do know is that their stay in South Australia was not long. By 1855 they were living in Amherst, Victoria, looking for gold. Life could not have been easy. Three of their five children died young, and Elizabeth herself died in childbirth in 1860. My great-grandmother, also named Elizabeth, was just two years old when her mother passed away.

William remarried quickly. His new wife was another Elizabeth - Elizabeth Hill. The couple had one daughter, Mary Ellen Tregoning. The family remained in the Victorian goldfields area (Avoca), taking up farming. Elizabeth passed away in 1878, and William in 1887.

* Total census counts were taken from FindMyPast on 30 April 2010. Cornwall and Gwennap census counts were taken from FreeCEN. FreeCEN claims 100% coverage for Cornwall in 1841.

Please get in touch with me if you are connected to this family!

If you don't ask...

Back in November I declared that I was going to focus my research on Elizabeth Tregonning (1858-1952). Since then, I have hardly mentioned her here, but I have been doing some work in the meantime.

Elizabeth Tregonning's mother, Elizabeth Martin, died in Avoca, Victoria, Australia, 1860 after a difficult labour. The younger Elizabeth was just two years old. I obtained a copy of Elizabeth Martin's death certificate way back in 2000. Australian death certificates can provide a lot of information, including details of marriages and any children.

While most of the copy was clear, the details of Elizabeth Martin's children were near enough to unreadable. The left hand column below gives the detail of her marriage - in Gwennap, Cornwall, at age 20 years, to William Tregonning. The right column gives the details of her children.

I did have some other information to go on. According to the records I had (mostly birth certificates):

• the eldest son, William Henry, was born around 1849. He was still alive in 1860 as he was the informant for his father's death in 1887.
• when twins, Rosina Jane and John, were born in 1855 the family had 3 living children. Rosina died in 1863, so was still alive in 1860.
• when Elizabeth was born in 1858 the family had one boy and two girls living, one boy and one girl dead. Obviously Elizabeth survived beyond 1860, or I wouldn't be here today.

I also had information that when William Tregonning re-married, two months after Elizabeth Martin's death, the family still had one boy and two girls living, one boy and one girl dead. William Henry, Rosina Jane and Elizabeth were alive in 1860 and they would account for the "one boy and two girls living". John may have been the "one boy dead". There was one deceased girl unaccounted for.

I could make out the known names on the certificate but the other lines had me puzzled. It looked to me like it could list as many seven children. The words "living" and "dead" were not distinct. I couldn't find any other birth records for the family in the indexes.

I decided to do something that I thought was a bit cheeky of me 10 years after obtaining Elizabeth Martin's death certificate... ask for a clearer copy. A little under two weeks ago I sent off an email explaining my situation. To my surprise and delight I received a message back saying that they had made a new copy and would post it to me. I received it in the mail today!

Here are the same columns from the new copy:

Much better! Now I can read:

William Henry, eleven & a half, living
A female, stillborn
Rosa Jane, living
John, dead   [Rosa and John marked as twins]
Five years
Elizabeth, living, two years

All my information fits in nicely. One boy and two girls living, one boy and one girl dead. Plus the child resulting from the difficult labour, which I assume didn't survive.

I'm not sure why I didn't do this when I first got the certificate. I think over time I've become less timid about asking for things! I'm so glad I did ask. The worst they could do is say no.

Now, on to the next puzzle...

Baby steps

I survived my first week back at work, and my daughter's first birthday party! My time for genealogy  is more limited now, but I think I have made some progress (however small) in the past week. I have written out a list of questions I would like to answer about my great-grandmother, Elizabeth TREGONNING and I have a loose plan in mind for how I will answer them.

I have also made progress in gathering information about her (in line with my plan!). I have confirmed that neither of her two children born before she married my great-grandfather had any children themselves. Both these children died of tuberculosis during her lifetime, although many years apart. Her daughter, Violet Adeline TREGONNING, passed away a month short of her 12th birthday in 1898 while her son, Albert William TREGONNING, died at age 54 in 1939. They both died in hospital - I wonder if there are any hospital records?

This leaves the five children she had with my great-grandfather James Henry FRENCH. I know that three of these had children, and I am reasonably sure that one didn't have children. The other, I don't know. There are potentially quite a few cousins out there who may have information or photos that I couldn't get from anywhere else. If you are one of them, please get in touch!

Why choose Elizabeth?

I said in my last post that I was going to concentrate my research on Elizabeth TREGONNING. Out of the 97 ancestors currently entered in my database, why choose her?

• She was born in Australia, and I want to concentrate on Australian research before doing too much overseas.
• Finding her death certificate was a challenge. Thinking about her through the years that I looked for it made me curious to know more about her.
• I know enough about her to think her life may be interesting.
• I know enough about the parent-child connections from her to me to be sure she is my ancestor.
  
• I have not yet found any other researchers with a direct interest in her. If I don't research her, who else will?
• I know she has other descendants (aside from my first cousins), but I've never contacted them. Who knows what letters, photos or other treasure they may have?!
• She lived to 94 years of age, dying in 1952. There is a chance that some of her other descendents may have met her and could tell me some of the personal things that you can't find in documents.

I'm excited about this. I feel like I'm doing proper research again, and I haven't even begun!

This is not a farewell post!

I have to go to work on Monday, for the first time in over a year. I've been on unpaid maternity leave. Although my return to work helps our household income, it will cut the already limited time I have for genealogy.

I've been thinking about how I spend my time, and what I would like to achieve. There's a mismatch between the two. I know I spend too much time flitting from thing to thing. I've blogged about that before, but not actually done anything about it. Yes, I've kept occupied, and it's been interesting, but it has not moved me towards a family history on even a branch of my tree.

Knowing how much more limited my time will be has helped me to make a decision... I am going to concentrate on Elizabeth TREGONNING (1858-1952).

What's more, I am going to plan both my research, and how I spend my time. When I get - no, make - time for genealogy, I will follow my plan. I'll allow myself a little 'unstructured' genealogy time as well. After all, I do this for fun! But I will not change my mind about where my main focus is, or how most of my time should be spent.

Next time - Why I picked Elizabeth TREGONNING.

Filling in the blanks - Elizabeth TREGONNING's death

I feel a little unsettled if I don't have a death record for each of my ancestors - my deceased ancestors, that is! Who knows what the might have got up to?

One death record that took me quite some time to track down was that for Elizabeth TREGONNING. This story starts in pre-digitisation days... Yes, I have been tracing my tree for that long... No, I am not that old!

Elizabeth was born in Avoca, Victoria, Australia in 1858. The Victorian birth, death and marriage records are pretty good. Even before they were available on CD and online you could look at the well-organised microfiche yourself, and there was enough detail in the index to be confident of having the right person before you sent your money off for a copy of the certificate. Not that I don't have one or two certificates for entirely unrelated people with similar names to my ancestors... But with hours of careful searching, I couldn't find a record for her death.

When CD indexes became available, the search possibilities expanded. I tried again. I tried spelling variations. I tried wildcards. What if she went by Liz, or Beth, or Bessie? I tried both her maiden and married (FRENCH) surnames. I tried leaving off her surname and putting her maiden name in the father's name field, in case she had married again. I tried every search I could think of. Still no luck!

Time went by, this thing called the Internet appeared, and I made connections with other researchers. There seemed to be a consensus that Elizabeth had died in Queensland, Australia in 1930, having moved there with her daughter Bessie and her husband. "Great! Could you point me to your sources?", I asked... Apparently not. The information had been compiled by an individual I never managed to contact (seemed to have a defunct email address) and then picked up by others without verification. The information going around also had one of Elizabeth's sons dying in Queensland in the same year - which I knew to be false - and had my grandfather married to the wrong woman, albeit a woman with a similar name to my grandmother.

With doubt in my mind, I tried the Queensland records. I only had access to the index on microfiche, so I pulled out fiche after fiche, trying all the surname variations. Still no luck. I left it again. Where had Elizabeth gone?

At some point, I determined yet again to find her. Still following the Queensland theory, I asked for help from one of the mailing lists. Someone directed me to a searchable cemetery database for Brisbane, Queensland where I found an Elizabeth FRENCH who had died in 1952 at the age of 95. That fitted nicely with my Elizabeth's birth year, but wait, 95! For a minute there I felt silly. Had I left off looking through those Queensland microfiche too soon, assuming she wouldn't be THAT old? I didn't think I would have... but I had been very tired of hunting fruitlessly through the fiche... it was possible.

My self respect as a researcher was restored when I went back to the fiche to get the index details and saw that when I was looking, the fiche for the year of her death had not yet been released! I couldn't have found it myself! I got the details, ordered the certificate and confirmed that this was indeed the Elizabeth I had been seeking for so long.

S0, that is the story of the long search for Elizabeth's death, which ended in a different State and 20 years later than I expected. Her very long life is an even longer story that has left me with more puzzles, but I will save that for another time.