R - Richard

Richard Gibson was born in Corraderran in the parish of Killeshandra, Cavan in Ireland in about February 1841. He appears with his family on a surviving piece of the Irish census taken on the night of 6 June 1841. It was a great census, with so much more information collected than the English census which was taken that same night.

He was the 12^th and youngest child in his family. By the time of his birth four of his elder siblings had died. George aged 16 in 1839, Margaret age 13 in 1838, William aged 1 month (a visitation of God) in 1836 and William Henry in 1840 aged less than 1 year. His 2^nd eldest sister Hester had already emigrated to America and was employed there as a servant.

This census recorded the population of Ireland as being 8, 175, 124 million. By the time the next census was taken in 1851 the population had dropped over 1.5 million. This was because of the Famine which was responsible for approximately 1 million deaths and the great migration which saw about a million people leave Ireland to start new lives in England and in the colonies.

Not a lot more is known about Richard's siblings and how they fared through the Famine. A brother James emigrated to New South Wales in the late 1850’s marrying in 1860. His bride has been born in Fermanagh, Ireland and emigrated as a baby with her parents and siblings in 1839. Another brother Ephraim emigrated to New York with his wife in the early 1860s.

Richard too, packed his bags and left Ireland, arriving at Twofold Bay, (Eden) New South Wales on 21 May 1867 as a passenger on the Lighthorse Brigade. Just over a year later he married the younger sister of his brother’s wife and settled into farming in the south coast hinterland; Kiama, Berrima, Burrawang, Jamberoo, Robertson before moving to Unanderra in his later years.

Richard and Harriett raised a family of seven children. They lost their eldest grandson at Pozieres in July 1916 and saw many other grandchildren grow and marry in their lifetime. They were great grandparents by the time of their deaths.

Richard was my daughters 3 x great grandfather. She has four 3 x great grandparents born in Ireland who emigrated to Australia and New Zealand and three of them are from County Cavan - but from completely opposite sides of the county.

How’s that for a Random fact – to round out this letter of the alphabet !

I - Ireland

We all have some Irish in our families don’t we ? It certainly seems that way. The Famine was certainly a catalyst, but not the only reason. They left their native country in droves and went to every corner of the world.

My great-great-grandfather Edward Vose and at least two of his siblings were born in Ireland. His father was with the Royal Sappers and Miners and posted to Ireland to carry out the Ordinance Survey of Ireland. As was often the way then, the entire family travelled with the Army – even the families of Privates. Apparently though the topic of being born in Ireland was a touchy one, his grand-daughter in a letter to my parents said that although it was true that he was born there – he made sure everyone knew that he wasn’t actually Irish.

But there are Irish in my family on my Dad’s side.

Dad’s grandmother Sarah Hall came to New Zealand with her parents and siblings in 1877. They were from near Cootehill in Cavan. One of Sarah’s aunts, a sister of her mother Anne, also emigrated to New Zealand in the 1880s. Another of her mother’s sisters emigrated to New York in the 1850’s and a brother and some their cousins followed in the 1870’s and 1880’s. One of Sarah’s cousins founded the Californian Perfume Company which would later become Avon.

Sarah’s mother was a Hall too – coincidence ? I used to think so. Then along came DNA.

Some years ago, I had made contact with a cousin in New York and he sent me a lot of research from a fellow cousin in New Zealand. None of which I had seen before, but when a DNA match appeared in our lists of matches for the mother of the author of the research, I reasoned I could attribute our match (and shared matches) to Sarah’s mother’s family.

There were many other matches though who appeared to be in Ireland, or to have roots there. None of the names in their trees were familiar to me, but I did notice commonalities across some of their trees. I put it in the too hard basket for quite a while.

Then one day, I decided that I need to make a start to try to unravel it all and so I messaged a few of the larger matches. Some replied and were as baffled as me, but one was the key to it all. It seemed most of these people were connected through Sarah’s father William. My new DNA matched cousins had the names of a couple who turned out to be the likely great-grandparents of Sarah. They had had a large family and as with Sarah’s mother’s family, many of her father’s had also emigrated to the US and even New Zealand.

A lot of information was shared across the interweb. They had some children in their tree who they didn’t know too much about, so it seemed that Sarah’s paternal grandfather fitted in there. What a surprise to learn that Sarah had relatives on her father’s side who had also emigrated to New Zealand, this time settling in Canterbury, rather than Auckland and the Waikato. All of the common names I had seen in the trees for the mystery DNA matches fell into place amongst the descendants of siblings of Sarah’s grandfather.

Solved, I thought.

But then, my original DNA match, the one I had been using as a control for Sarah’s mother’s side of the family appeared to have shared matches to Sarah’s father’s side of the tree too.  As I see it the only way that can be, is if Sarah’s parents were related… I went back and looked at the new tree from those new Irish relatives and what did I see ? Another son in the family they had pieced together where they didn’t have information going forward – and his name ? David…the same as Sarah’s grandfather.

From email discussions with a couple of others it seems that it is highly likely that Anne and William Hall were first cousins. The community they came from was a close one, they were Presbyterian and there seems to have been a lot of intermarriage between local families through the generations.

Being Presbyterian as well seems to point back to Scotland; perhaps it is true that these families were part of the Ulster Plantation settlement in Ireland in the 17^th century. They all do seem to have more Anglo sounding surnames than what are normally thought of as being typically Irish. (Bailey, Hall, Pritchard, Reilly, Moncrieff, Livingstone, Montgomery et. al.,)

There is still a lot of unravelling to do, and it still seems quite overwhelming. But I will get there in the end.

H - Hammond

Mary Hammond was my great-great-great grandmother. She was born in Andover, Hampshire on 8 June 1808 and baptised three weeks later at St Mary’s church. She was the fourth child in her family and the first daughter. Three more sons were born before another daughter, Elizabeth in 1819.

Her father John had been married before he married her mother Sarah Knight in 1800 and had two children from that marriage, a son & a daughter before his first wife had died.

Mary married George White on 24 June 1827 in Andover and they had two children Ann and Henry before George’s death on 20 April 1834. At the time of the 1841 census, Mary was living with her widowed mother and both were described as Silk Weavers. Her children were also there in New Street, Andover now aged 8 & 10 and a Confectioner named Edward Laney also lived at the address. Possibly as a lodger – the 1841 census doesn’t identify relationships in the same way that later census’ do. (A confectioner makes fancy cakes not sweets, as I always thought.)

Five months later, Mary remarried, to Edward Laney. Their first child had been born four months earlier. Just nine months later the little blended family was on board the Olympus, bound for Nelson, New Zealand.

But, Mary wasn’t the only member of her family to take the opportunity to leave England and emigrate to the colonies. I was vaguely aware that some of her brothers had emigrated to New Zealand as well, but I have never really looked at them to piece it all together. DNA matches are making me do that.

Three of her brothers came to New Zealand as well. Although one later settled in Auckland, all three emigrated to Nelson like she did, Two of them, David and James travelled with their wives and children on the Lord Auckland arriving on 23 February 1842.

Her brother Joseph followed with his family a few years later in 1852 on The Rapid arriving in Auckland and making their way to Nelson. Or did they ? The Rapid is mentioned in the obituary for Joseph’s daughter Rose which also mentions her surviving sister in Nelson. However articles reporting on the 100^th birthday of that sister in 1938 say the family arrived on the Lord William Bentinck. Some investigating to be done here I feel.

DNA matches have identified other emigrating family members too. A cousin of Sarah and her brothers who emigrated to Utah and her sister who went with her husband and children to Launceston, Tasmania in about 1853 and lived in Deloraine before moving on to Melbourne.

 

5 Generations of migration and location

Well, my feed has been full of these amazing pedigree charts from fellow genealogists, so I just had to join in. In fact I've done four - my parents, my own and my daughters, to see the differences a generation makes in both directions. 

No wonder that DNA puzzle is hard to solve.

This was all initiated by J Paul Hawthorne. What a great idea.

ME

DAD

MUM

LAUREN

There you go - not as pretty as they could be, but you get the general idea. You might need to enlarge them to read closely.

Bird Spotting

You might remember that we spent some time trying to spot birds and other wildlife while we were in Suffolk (and the UK as a whole).

There are times when Christchurch and Canterbury remind us of Suffolk - flat farmland, rolls of hay dotted across paddocks, (what are those called ? they aren't hay bales - maybe they are hay rolls) haze across the water and lots of rivers.

Yesterday evening we decided to go to Southshore to see if we could spot any Godwits. I read about an event to be held there later this week to farewell them as they leave Christchurch for the winter. Seems they are a pretty big thing here.

They spend the summer in Alaska and make the trip back here to Christchurch every year, arriving in September/October. Theirs is the longest non-stop migration route, about 11,500 km (7145 miles) over about 8 days. Around 2000 of them make their summer home on the Avon/Heathcote estuary and on other waterways like Lake Ellesmere. They "summer" in other parts of NZ as well, but Christchurch seems to make a real big deal about them arriving and leaving.Their trip back to the north takes them up through eastern Asia with the opportunity to stop and rest on the way.

While we were wandering across the reserve toward the estuary we were reminded of the day we spent at RSPB Minsmere minus the "hides" that were placed there to sit and watch and wait, and spot birds.  It occurred to me that while councils and DOC do a great job providing and maintaining open spaces and access to them for residents and visitors - we could be doing this better. Why don't we have an organisation like the Royal Society for Protection of Birds or a Woodland Trust ? A little more information about what species we might encounter would have been great too.

Turns out we didn't see any godwits - just pied oystercatchers. Oh well, maybe next time. Hope you can see them in the photos. According to NZ Birds online, they are declining - I thought there looked like there were masses of them there feeding yesterday.