Connecting Dots. Connecting Branches.

Last Wednesday was a fantastic day for me. I went to Melbourne to meet someone special - Christine Wilton. We connected through Facebook genealogy groups - I checked her profile because my Mum's maiden name is Wilton, and I quickly realised she's married to one of the very many second cousins I've never met. We just clicked, and we've had a great time researching together over chat. I confess, I have ordered takeaway for my kids on at least one occasion because I was too carried away with hunting ancestors with Christine and lost track of time.

So what do two crazy girls do in the big city with a whole empty day to do as they please and no kids or spouses around to worry about?

They hit the State Library, of course. Hard.

Christine (left) and Carol party hearty, genealogist-style.

Such a fun and fruitful way to spend the day. I want to share one of my little discoveries.

I checked the Electoral Rolls for some of my Ancestors and I found my pet obsession, my great grandmother Harlettee Louisa Groombridge. She and her final husband, William Henry Rothery, were registered at an address in Hobart East: 49 Hampden Road. The record says it's from 1903. That same year she and her husband are also both registered at an address in Victoria: 11 Hopetoun Road, Northcote. I'm familiar with this address already as I've seen it on other records. Have I identified the year she moved back to Tasmania? Or was she maintaining two addresses at this time? Something to look into.

Anyway, I always love to Google Street View the addresses I find, and try to estimate if the houses that are there now are the same ones that were there when my relatives lived there. For instance, one of the addresses Harlettee lived at in the 1890s was 20 Barry Street Carlton. This is what that street looks like today:


Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's not how it looked in 1890.

In contrast, time may have largely stood still in Hampden Road, Hobart East

I would not be at all surprised if at least some of these buildings were already here when Harlettee was a resident in 1903.

Finally, I took the address and ran it through Trove, and to my big surprise (given that Harlettee was a Rothery at this point) a Groombridge record popped up:

Family Notices (1903, November 10). The Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 - 1954), , p. 1. Retrieved July 3, 2016, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article12259568


Wow! I already had this record in my tree - this is Harlettee's nephew's son. I knew he had died as a nine month old, and I knew he had died at an aunt's house, but I did not know it was his great aunt Harlettee's house. Why there? No idea. Maybe the family were staying in the house while Harlettee and her husband were at their residence in Victoria? Maybe they came to Harlettee for help when their baby took ill? Whatever the case, this tragic little record shows that Harlettee remained in contact with her extended family, even after living in Victoria for more than 20 years.

I'm glad I was able to take those little nuggets of information and connect the dots to make a larger picture. And I'm even more glad to have finally met this lovely lady in person and spent the day with her. Connecting the dots, connecting the branches.

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DNA, Yay Yay Yay

Ahem... I'm very bad at this blogging gig. I said I'd be back to post and then I just sort of wandered off...

My main gift for Christmas 2015 was an Ancestry DNA test kit, and I got that sucker into the mail just as quickly as I could. The 6-8 week processing time threatened to drag forever, but in time my results came through.

It has been amazing. I wanted to get my DNA into as many of the big databases as possible, so I downloaded my raw DNA data and uploaded it to Gedmatch and FTDNA. I opted to pay for FTNDA's features to get access as quickly as possible.

The first person I reached out to got back to me swiftly. We're connected through my mother's father. She is researching an apparent genetic illness in her branch and asked if we have any instances of it in our branch. Well, we're quite a sizeable branch so I reached out to my great aunt to see if she'd ever heard of anyone with the condition in our family, but it seems to have skipped us. In the course of the conversation, she told me the family was having a reunion that very weekend, and thanks to that fortuitous phone call, I was able to go. I loved spending the day with my Wilton cousins. They're great people.

Other DNA matches were also on Mum's side - cousins also descended from her Robertson/McGhee ancestors. It's a great feeling to check off those branches as confirmed by DNA.

Then I found some matches on my Dad's side. My pet project is my great great grandmother Harlettee Louisa Groombridge, and I connected with a cousin descended from one of her brothers. That was awesome in its own right, but then we had a mutual match, and I connected with a descendant of Harlettee's son Frederick. I was thrilled. It's a dream to be able to trace Harlettee's descendants and fill out her tree.

The last of my grandparents lines to get a match was my grandmother, Jessie Rose Hanniver, but that finally came about five months after my test was done, and a second match popped up within the same week.

I've been looking at a fan chart to see where my gaps are. I hope to get some matches to the Wilton line beyond Thomas Wilton/Sarah Constable to confirm those lines, and to the Patersons beyond Robert Paterson and Eleanor Dunwoodie, and to the Lowery line beyond George Edward Lowery and Isobella Johanna Park, and with that all my great grandparents will be confirmed too.

It's so exciting!

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Reflections and New Discoveries on the 133rd Anniversary of my Great Great Grandparents Marriage.

My Great Great Grandparents' marriage has always seemed a little sketchy. They were William Turner and Harlettee Louisa Smith, nee Groombridge. He was 70. She was 36. They married on the 30th of June, 1883 at the office of the Registrar of Marriages for the District of Collingwood, at Hoddle Street. For years I've wondered what the deal really was. Most especially, I've questioned whether he was really the father of her child, my Great Grandfather, Sydney Turner.
Recently Ian, a known descendant of William Turner via his first marriage, did AncestryDNA testing. We do not match. This is not a slam-dunk for us being unrelated by blood as there is a chance that, through the random nature of DNA inheritance, we just didn't happen to get matching segments of William Turner's DNA. However, in this case where paternity was already questionable, it's a strong argument in the case against. More test results from more family members are in the pipeline and will hopefully tell us more.
In the meantime, I'm running with the assumption that Ian's results have answered the question "Did William Turner really father Sydney Groombridge Turner?" with a "No".
It's funny, I felt really excited by Ian's results. Not just because there's a new puzzle to work out, but really, very strongly, because it rehabilitates William Turner's reputation. He was always considered a good, moral man. He resigned his commission with the Army on humanitarian grounds, protesting over harsh punishments being meted out for minor infractions. He lived peacefully amongst the Indigenous people of the Dandenong ranges and was known to trade with them in an age of atrocities being committed against our First People. History considers him an all-round good guy.

Then along came proof that he remarried when his first wife had only been dead six months, and had a baby just two weeks after that, and it was a kind of jarring note.
But so far the DNA suggests that, while he did remarry quickly, and to a woman who was heavily pregnant, he wasn't the father.
I am sure that he knew that. I strongly suspect that either Harlettee, or her first husband William Smith worked for him at his tailor's shop, and that's how they met. I think her husband died suddenly, leaving her with small children to raise and then she was pregnant again with no husband. I feel that my great aunt is right that "he married her so she could get his Army pension", and to give her son a name. All of this fits in with what is known of his character.
William Turner made out a will the year after he married Harlettee, leaving everything to his oldest son from his first marriage. I didn't understand this when I first saw it, because his infant son, Sydney, and his wife would have received nothing while his oldest son - a man in his 40s, an established man with the ability to support himself - would get everything. Now it makes perfect sense in the context of helping Harlettee out with her "problem" - he might have given her child a name, but that doesn't mean he wanted to give her son everything he'd worked for all his life.
I wonder if that's how it came to be that he was destitute in 1891? If his remarriage caused tension with his sons, if they insisted he sign all his possessions over to them because they feared he was being taken advantage of. I wonder if he thought they were only looking out for themselves and if he didn't realise they saw him being manipulated and were trying to protect his assets from being seized by his second wife.
And then there's Clarabell and Myrtle, the two younger children born during the marriage. Who fathered them? Are they William's children? Yesterday, I found proof that Harlettee had charged William with desertion in 1889, when their youngest daughter Myrtle was just about 3 months old. What triggered that? Was the arrival of another child that he had nothing to do with the last straw?

And the next puzzle: who was the biological father of Sydney Groombridge Turner?
Every answer spawns new questions. Right now, I'm just happy and proud to be a Turner. William Turner bestowed his good name on our branch as a gift, and it is a gift that continues and keeps on giving, even 133 years later. I hope he'd be proud of the people who bear his name, and that someday history remembers us the way that William Turner is remembered: as good, kind and decent people.

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Myrtle Elsie Adelaide Turner 1889-1963

Myrtle Elsie Adelaide Turner was born in 1889. The youngest of the three children of Harlettee Louisa Groombridge and William Turner, she was only 4 when her father passed away.

Undated photo of Myrtle

Though she was born in Victoria, as an adult she lived in Tasmania. She married Francis Henry Rush and they had three children - Harlettee (Margo), Ivy and Francis William.

Letters from her mother in the early 1920s mention she had unspecified health problems, and in 1932 The Mercury (Hobart) reported on an apparent suicide attempt following "a serious operation".

Mrs. Myrtle Rush, 42 years, of 175 Elizabeth Street, Hobart, was admitted to the Hobart Public Hospital about 11.30 last night, suffering from the effects of an irritant poison. She is alleged to have taken a quantity of disinfectant.  
It is stated that Mrs. Rush underwent a serious operation about four months ago. An emetic was administered, and her condition was afterwards satisfac-tory.

Her only son, Francis, was killed in the Second World War, and in 1950 she travelled to his final resting place, in Stompetoren, Holland. Shipping manifests reveal her travelling companion was I. C. Kendall - Ivy?

Myrtle's daughter Margo married a Mr Denehey and had five daughters and a son. When her marriage failed she took her son with her and moved to Alice Springs. Myrtle joined her there. Margo changed her surname and that of her son Alfred to Turner, her mother's maiden name.

Undated photo of Myrtle with her half sister, Linda

Undated photo of Linda, Myrtle and their friend Bill Nash, NSW.

Undated photo of Linda (standing) and Myrtle

Undated photo of Linda, Myrtle and Ivy

Undated photo of Ivy

Undated photo of Ivy

Myrtle in later years with friends

A letter to Linda telling her of Myrtle's failing health. 3rd of July 1963

Myrtle's grave, Alice Springs. 1963

An undated photo of some of Myrtle's descendants - Tommy, Daryl, Alf, Tracy

Many years ago I tracked down Tracey Grey, daughter of Alf. She was living in the Northern Territory. Her brother, Michael Turner, was a licenced crocodile hunter in Darwin and traded under the name The Crocodile Man. Tracey was due to visit Victoria later in the year and we made promised to catch up with each other, but we never did. Then there was a big disruption in my life and it took a back burner while I sorted everything out. Now I don't know how to reach her or where to find her. I post these photos in the hope that someone she (or someone who knows her) will stumble across my blog. I would love to rekindle contact with the NT branch of our family.

Also, Margo's daughters who remained in Tasmania must have descendants, and I would dearly love to catch up with them. I look at these photos of Linda and Myrtle together, and I know that Linda lived across the road from her brother, my great grandfather Syd, and I feel like there must have been a closeness in the family once upon a time that was lost through time and moving and divorce and death. How wonderful it would be if we could find each other again, and know each other, and share what we remember and know of those that came before us before those memories are lost forever. Tracey Grey, Michael Turner, Alf Turner, and of the Denehey girls... if you're ever reading this, please please please reach out and contact me :)

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Three Postcards

Tonight I want to talk about the Three Postcards. They came in the box of treasure from Linda Grumont that I've mentioned previously, and two of them are perfectly charming pieces of family history. The third is (EDIT: No longer) a head-scratching mystery.

The earliest of the three postcards is from 1921, and was sent from Hobart, Tasmania. Harlettee Louisa Groombridge signed the back of it, wishing her granddaughter Lottie a Happy New Year. Harlettee wouldn't actually see in the New Year, passing away in Kingston Tasmania on the 1st of October, 1921. Perhaps that is why this particular postcard was not thrown away - Lottie may not have even received it until after her Grandmother's death.

To my dear Grand Daughter Lottie wishing you and yours a happy new year from Grannie Rothery. Tasmania, 1921.

There are other letters in the box of treasure from around the same time, and they suggest there was ongoing correspondence between Harlettee and Lottie. Lottie was born Harlettee Margo Rush, daughter of Myrtle Turner and Francis Rush. She married a Mr Denehey. I believe at some point she took her son Alfred, changed their surnames to Turner, and moved to Alice Springs. I would love to hear from Alfred's descendants, or those of Lottie's 5 daughters who remained in Tasmania. Hopefully one day they may stumble across this blog.

The second ever-so-understandable postcard is a lovely thing to have. It is from Myrtle Rush (nee Turner), and she mailed it from Stompertoren, Holland, in 1950. My previous post, A Fortuitous Discovery, has the shipping record that shows her departing London on 6 September 1950 on her way home from that voyage. She had gone to see the final resting place of her only son, Francis William Rush, who was killed during the war. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission record his burial at the Oterleek (Stompertoren) Churchyard cemetery. I came across this wonderful site that gives an account of Francis's final mission and has pictures of his headstone, and of the memorial plaque installed in 1994.

The card says (in grey pencil)

Dear Linda & Hughie
Holland is lovely with all its lovely windmills & waterways.
(in black pen)
Went to Amsterdam yesterday & it was lovely. We are leaving here tomorrow hope we have a good trip across & hope that you & Hughie is much better love Myrtle xxx

I wonder who she was travelling with?

The third card is another of those crazy mysteries that this family love to keep throwing at me. It is a photo of a beautiful and new looking house The postcard has been cut along the left edge, but only a small sliver seems to be missing - less than a centimetre, I'd guess.

The inscription seems to be in Harlettee's handwriting, if you compare it to the first card, and it says

To Linda from her mother.

and then in larger writing

Our new home. 

Linda Grumont has added the words "Harlette" and "Nana's mother's home in Canada".

The address is filled out in Harlettee's handwriting

Mrs Captain Collister
Craigflower
Victoria
British Columbia 

Linda Grumont insisted that Harlettee had lived in Canada for a time with her husband, Captain Collister. That would have been a sixth husband hitherto unknown. It's possible that she married someone else overseas after William Rothery died in 1912, but she was still using the Rothery surname right up until her death in 1921.  Besides, this card looks like it was addressed to Mrs Captain Collister, Craigflower, Victoria, British Columbia - not from. As it is also addressed to "Dear Linda" from "her mother"; that would make Linda the addressee. Linda Collister? Also, is that an "s" next to Collister? Mrs Captain Collister's _what_?

Given that this postcard is in my possession, it either was never mailed to Canada, or it travelled back to Australia with its owner. Unlike the other cards, it hasn't been dated - I can only say that it must be from no later than the 1st of October, 1921, because that's when Harlettee died. Perhaps someday, someone will recognise the house, or will stumble across this entry while researching the Collisters of Craigflower, Victoria, BC, and we'll be able to compare notes to solve this little puzzle once and for all.

UPDATE! (already! it has only been 20 minutes!)
Google turned up this:

02/08/37 Collister, Rich, m, head, m, 12 Dec 1838, 63, ENG, to Can: 1876, Meth, Steam boat inspector.
……Rems: HOW3, p.827: In shipbuilding in Liverpool, ENG & Brisbane, AUS, to Victoria 1875, d.Victoria, 1908.
02/08/38 Collister, Elizabeth, f, wife, m, 12 Aug 1831, 60, ENG, to Can: 1877, CE.
……Rems: Age & yr. born as entered. RBCR: Collister, Elizabeth, 89 y, 26 Jan 1923 at Victoria, b.ENG. DN, Times, 27 Jan 1923, p.9: Mrs Elizabeth Collister, wid of Capt. R. Collister, former inspector of hulls, b.LAN, ENG, 12 Aug 1833, d. at res. Craigflower Rd, leaves sons: John R. Collister (d.A1, p.18, l.41), Victoria & Wm. H.R. Collister (d.17, p.6, l.44), Vancouver; daus: Mrs John Barnsley (d.18, p.10, l.11), Vancouver; Mrs N.G. Douner, Victoria & Mrs H.O. (Harry Oxenborough) Miles, Long Beach, CA, USA.

On a hunch I searched Ancestry.com for "collister" and "rothery", and lo and behold, I found this:

Rothery was the surname of Harlettee's fifth and final husband. Judging by these dates, this could well be his sister. It even says that she died at her home on Craigflower Rd (I guess "Rd" was what was written in that missing centimetre of card). Perhaps Linda Grumont was right about Harlettee going to Canada - but rather than living there, perhaps she just visited her sister in law?

This all makes sense now! Mrs Captain Collister, nee Rothery, the sister in law of Harlettee Rothery, nee Groombridge must have sent the photo of her new house to Harlettee, who then forwarded it on to her daughter Linda and wrote Mrs Collister's address on it. This must be the house in Craigflower Road, Victoria, British Columbia that Mrs Collister lived in until her death in 1923. Case: Closed!

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The Ladies in the Photos

I wish I knew more about this photo!

It came from Linda Grumont and she's the one who has written (and scribbled out) names on it. Eventually she settled on the left one being Auntie Annie (Marianne Smith, who married Thomas Talbot), and the right one being Auntie Ettie (Henrietta Smith, who married William Gavin). I don't put a lot of stock in that because one of the names she initially wrote (and crossed out) is Auntie Clara. That would be Clarabell Turner, who died at the age of 3, and is therefore absolutely not the subject of the photos.

Someone once told me the outfits are not inconsistent with the 1880s. Ettie died at the age of 20 in that decade, so this wouldn't rule her out.

I think the photos may both be of the same woman, although it could be sisters with a very strong resemblance. It could be one (or two) of Linda Grumont's grandmother's sisters (another daughter of Harlettee Groombridge), as she said, but I don't see how we'll ever know.

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A Letter From 1920

The Turner/Groombridge line was tricky to get anywhere with, and I felt that finding out more about the daughter who was born Melinda Elvina Smith would help me get further with it. I began looking into her descendants.

I found her granddaughter, Linda Ettie Walsh, in the Digger birth records in 1999, and I put out feelers on the internet, hoping to track her down. Of course I got no response.

My message searching for her is still viewable online.

Linda Ettie Walsh was born in 1916, so of course I was looking for a very old woman, if she was even still alive. I had nothing further to go on, no married name, or any idea where she would have ended up living after being born in Carlton. I shelved that idea.

I looked up Melinda Elvina Smith's death and discovered that she was known as Linda Stapleton Simmons by that point in her life. She died in 1970, so I visited the State Library in Melbourne and went through old newspapers there.

In the death notices, I found one that was signed The Grumont Family, and was clearly placed by close relatives. I took note of their name because it was an unusual surname that I hadn't seen before. A quick look at the phone directory, and I realise there were only about a dozen families in Melbourne by that surname so I took a punt and dialed a number at random. The lady I spoke to told me she had no clue about family history, but that her grandmother knew everything and I should try her instead. I dialled the number she gave me... and Linda Ettie Walsh answered the phone.

Of course, I didn't know that immediately, but as we talked it became evident that she was the lady I'd hoped to find and given up on as dead, untraceable or both. She was a very animated soul, and she loved to talk family history. I was invited to visit.

She lived in an outer eastern suburb of Melbourne, so I made my way there just as soon as I could. My, what a character! She was a vibrant, sharp 84 year old, living with her husband Frank. They were quite a pair! I remember her ordering him out to make tea with the "dingle dangles" - she seemed to have her own language for everything. I think computers were click-clacks. She made me laugh.

Linda gave me the box of treasure I talked about in this post, and I posted images of some of the certificates it contained in this post. There were certificates, photos, letters, postcards... an unimaginable resource to have. Linda said she didn't have another member in her family interested in the family's history so she asked me to take it and look after it. I think it's too precious to keep entirely boxed up, so I want to share some of it here.

I've picked this letter to share today because it talks about the Groombridge family history. It appears to be directed to Doris, her granddaughter, by Harlettee Louisa Groombridge.

First page

Kingston

October 31st '20

My Dear Granddaughter,

With pleasure I am answering your welcome letter, and thanks for the photos. She is like your mother when she was her age, but not a bit like my little Rosebud. I will be thankful if you can get me a Card of the Cottage in the Village of Groombridge, Kent. That is where my Father was born at a place named East (or West) Farleigh, and the village was named after the family.
Your G Great Grandfather was a Giant in Strength and your Great Grandfather Richard Smart Groombridge, my father, was a very strong man and was born in 1805, and died in 1858, so he has departed 62 years.
They were a well respected family. Till lately, my Father's offspring were the only Groombridges in the Colonies, and I was the only Miss Groombridge till my Brother John Smart G. married and now there are dozens of them but all have sprung from my Father, your G G.father.

Second Page
I believe there was not a poor Groombridge in Kent. My Grandmother was a Jewess. Her name was Rachael Stephens before she married and had five sons and two daughters. The sons were named:
John
William
Richard Smart, my father who named his sons after his brothers
George
Samuel
All Blacksmiths
Daughters Amy and Henrietta married two Brothers named Adams.
I believe William went to America.

Well, dear Lottie, I am returning your Card of Cottages and would be pleased if you could get your friend if he ever goes to Kent to make Enquiries of any of the old Groombridges concerning our family. Kent is not far from London. I had a letter from Sydney telling me he had a very bad poisend (?) hand, and have answered it. Poor fellow. I am very sorry for him. I hope he has work by this for I know what it means to be out of work in Melbourne with a family dependant on one's earnings.

Third page (not pictured)
Myrtle has not been well lately. The Doctor ordered her away to the Country and she stopped a month. The Baby boy got Bronchitis and Hooping (sic) Cough but is better now. He is a fine little chap. He weighed 17 1/2 pounds when he was two months old and is so good, in fact he has not cried since he was born. He is over three months now and just like his mother. Lottie is a nice girl and will be 13 years on the 24 of Dec and Ivy is over 10 years. They have opened a Beautiful shop at 337 Elizabeth Street N. Hobart everything up to date and it takes all her time to mind the shop and the Baby while Frank serves his Customers. Outside school (ex?)cluded, his is the best Ice Cream in Tas. and that is saying something. He makes all his own Icecream and Cordials of all sorts, and keeps Fruit & Confectionary of the best. Well dearie I will close this scribble with best love to all from your loving Grandmother

H. L. Rothery.

What has been the matter with your mother is she well again, don't be long in replying. All revvir x

Fourth page (not pictured)
Dear Lottie

I wish you very many happy returns of your Birthday and am pleased to hear that you are getting on so well. From your Grandma Rothery.

Love to little Linda. I may (obscured) some day but am getting to (sic) old to (obscured) much now. I will be 74 yrs on the 24th of November.

There is a lot of information about the Groombridges relayed in this letter, but it is hard to know what is accurate. "Rachael Stephens" the Jewish grandmother referred to seems to have actually been named Sarah Stephens, however it could be that her name was Sarah Rachael Stephens, or Rachael Sarah... or perhaps a good 62 years after the death of her father, Harlettee's memories of what he told her about a grandmother she never met had faded a little. There is a village named Groombridge in Kent, not far from her father's birthplace of West Farleigh, but it seems more likely that the family took the name of the village for their surname than the other way around. The names of the brothers and sisters is correct, and Amy and Henrietta did both marry men with the surname Adams, but I can't confirm if they were brothers yet. They were not the only Groombridges in the Colonies, and others by the surname Groombridge arrived from early the previous century but she may not have known about them.

How I wish she had known this letter would survive nearly 100 years, and that she could have written more about her memories of what her father told her about Kent, and his family, and her ancestry! But at least I have this, and others, that give some insight into her personality and snippets about the family.

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A Man of Mystery

Robert David Stapleton, who were you? You are an enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in incomplete and/ or inaccurate documentation.

The births of Marianne (Annie), Henrietta (Ettie or Hettie), William, Frederick (Freddie), and Melinda (Linda, or Linnie) Smith were all registered in Tasmania, and all recorded as the children of William Henry Smith and Harlettee Louisa Groombridge. When Harlettee married William Turner in 1883, she was using the surname Smith and she had recorded on the marriage certificate that she had been widowed in July 1882.

Yet somehow, in adulthood, the children of William Smith began leaving his name out and instead listing their father as Robert David Stapleton.

It hadn't started yet when Henrietta died in 1889. On the death certificate for Hettie Gavin, nee Henrietta Smith, her father's name is given as William Smith, and his profession as tailor.

It hadn't started in 1891 when Linda Smith married her first husband, William Henry Gavin. That marriage certificate records that her father was William Henry Smith.

Yet later certificates, including her death certificate, say Robert David Stapleton.

This is her second marriage certificate:

This is the certificate from Linda's third marriage, to Hugh Simmons. Father: Robert David Stapleton, Gentleman (deceased).

Two of Linda's children appear to have been named in memory of Robert Stapleton - her son's middle name was Robert, and her daughter's was Roberta.

When Marianne married Thomas Talbot in 1913, it was as Marianne Stapleton Smith. Her death certificate is another document where the elusive Mr Stapleton is named as father, after she died in Victoria in 1917.

Frederick married Jane Magner and they had a son in 1890 named Frederick Stapleton Smith, yet Fred Snr's death certificate in 1919 says his father was William Smith.

Stapleton didn't entirely appear out of the blue when his children were adults. William Smith is recorded as William Henry Smith's son, but his name in the birth records is William G. Stapleton Smith. There is also a record of the death of a 5 year old boy in Tasmania in 1877 named Robert Stapleton Smith, but no information is given about his parents and I can't find a corresponding birth record.

I was given a box of old documents, and it contains this:

It is a completed application for a birth certificate for Robert David Stapleton, dated 1950, and it has been stamped Paid. The corresponding certificate was not in the box, and I don't know if it was found or not. I can't find a birth record that matches those details in the records that available to me. The really curious thing about this is that the applicant is M. Rush. That is Myrtle Rush, daughter of Harlettee Groombridge... and William Turner. She was born in 1889, long after Harlettee's previous husband died.

Myrtle and I clearly weren't the only ones wanting to find Mr Stapleton. This was also in the box:

It's dated 1973 so it is a response to an application made after Myrtle had passed away. I think perhaps the lady who gave me the documents, Linda Grumont, had been trying to track him down. She was the granddaughter of Melinda Smith, or Linda Stapleton, or Gavin, or Walsh, or Simmons. No record of his death between 1881 and 1885 was found in the Victorian Registry Office as a result of this enquiry. I haven't found it either.

So... was Robert Stapleton a real person? Was it an alias? Was he the real father of Harlettee's children with William Smith? Was he also the father of Myrtle Rush (nee Turner), and is that why she was trying to find his birth record? Was he an invention of someone to serve some purpose? Was he the real father of all the children from Harlettee's relationship with William Turner? After all, William was a man aged in his 70s at the time of their marriage, and around 76 years of age when the youngest child, Myrtle, was born. WHO WAS ROBERT DAVID STAPLETON?

I don't think I'll ever have the answers to these questions. The people who knew have all gone on ahead, and those who are left just have these odd, elusive clues that don't add up to a whole story.

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Illegitimacy, illiteracy and all that.

I had a really hard time with the Turner family tree. Turners are a dime a dozen and it's a hard to narrow down allllll the "William Turners" in the records to be certain you have the right one. You'd think my Great Great Grandmother Turner would be the antidote to that with her very uncommon name - Harlettee Louisa Groombridge. But no.

For one thing, the spelling drifted. A cousin in Tasmania had a letter written by her brother in childhood that calls her "Arlette". Various different documents call her "Harlette", "Harlettie", "Harlettee" and even "Charlotte". Some Tasmania records have her down as "Louisa". Her birth certificate was no help - Unnamed Female Groombridge. I finally eventually saw her name in her own handwriting and it said "Harlettee" so that's the spelling I have eventually adopted.

Another problem. She just kept marrying! It took me years to find the certificate of marriage for William Turner and Harlettee Groombridge, because her name was transcribed on the microfiche as "Haslette Smith". Yes, Smith was a previous husband that I hadn't know about until that point. In fact, she was Harlettee Louisa Groombridge Williams Smith Turner Haward Rothery by the end. Even then, consistency would have helped, but no. She married Smith, then Turner, so when she married Turner she was a Smith BUT she married Haward, then Rothery, but when she married Rothery she was still going by Turner. Actually, there might be a reason for that. I notice that she shaved eight years off her age and about seven children out of her history when she married Robertson and then three years later she married someone else... without apparently pausing to divorce in between. Probably best for her to not mention that marriage at all.

Somehow I eventually pinned down Haslette Smith as Harlettee Groombridge and got the certificate, and I was very pleased to have it. Up until that point I had come to suspect that Harlettee and William Turner were never legally married. I even said as much to my Grandfather one day. Well, you see, they were his father's parents. I cautiously told him one day "Grandfather, I think your father may have been illegitimate." Grandfather bristled, and snapped "He didn't go to school all that long, but he could read and write!".

Grandfather actually wasn't all that worried once I managed to clear that little misunderstanding up. It was his opinion that a man couldn't be held responsible for the circumstances of his birth. Anyway, once that marriage certificate turned up it all became a moot point. He was clearly born within the bonds of holy matrimony - fresh ones too! Barely two weeks before he was born. I guess he was a little prem.

Actually, that marriage certificate may have answered one question, but it raised several others. After all, his first wife had been dead less than six months. So... shenanigans? I spoke to Grandfather's sister, my Great Aunt Joyce, a year or so back to see if she knew anything. Of course she knew very little. William Turner had been dead more than 30 years before she was even born, and by and large there doesn't seem to have been a huge amount of interest among my Grandfather's siblings in their family history. Joyce said that all she knew was that her Grandfather (William) had married his washerwoman (Harlettee) so she could get his Army pension. That's intriguing. So... are we actuallly descended from William Turner? Or was he just a kindly widower helping out his washer woman when she had gotten herself into a spot of trouble? We may never know.

Well, unless I get around to doing one of those family history DNA testing thingies that I keep seeing around the web. I find them fascinating! I would love to give it a go, and I'm sure I eventually will.

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