It strikes me that there are four generations of relinquished daughters in my grandmother’s family tree, as far as I can see back. 

Mary Ann Hurford (my gggggrandmother) seems to have had a daughter out of wedlock.  Her name was Flora, and in the census records she seems to be living with a different family member every ten years until her marriage to George Parsons.  Perhaps Mary had to relinquish care of her daughter Flora until she could marry James Batten – who was recorded as Flora’s father at her christening before Mary and James were married.

Flora grew up to marry George Parsons, and have a stack of Parsons children, including my gggrandmother, Ellen Parsons.  The Parsons seem to have all contributed to the running of the West Monkton Post Office Stores and the census records are consistent with Ellen living under the care of her mother, or at least her family. 

Ellen married Oliver Ridgway and somewhere along the line had to give up care of her daughter Evelyn, my ggrandmother.  I know this is due to the break up of her marriage, but I have no idea the extent to which certain factors played in the circumstances. 

Evelyn was raised in Australia with her father, until she became pregnant with my grandmother Olwyn.  Olwyn was a few months old when Evelyn relinquished care of her and she was adopted by the Hann family.  There are photos of Evelyn with Olwyn at about 7 months and 15 months of age.  My opinion is that if Evelyn had found herself pregnant now instead of in 1929, it would have been more socially acceptable for her to keep her child. 

Olwyn was raised by the Hann family until she met my grandfather and became pregnant at 18.  She married him and had two children – my father and my aunt.  However, she doesn’t look very happy in any of the photos I’ve seen.  She left my grandfather and her two children when they were toddlers.  The daughter she left behind, my aunt, was too young to understand and was very distraught. 

My aunt was raised by her father and became pregnant out of wedlock too.  She adopted her daughter out, but now has contact with her.  My cousin is going to have a baby with her boyfriend quite soon.  I think the cycle has been broken.

Evelyn married and moved to New Zealand with her two daughters from that marriage.  Unfortunately I don’t think her life was easy or happy.  One of her daughters had a son out of wedlock, which would have brought up painful memories for her.  However, Evelyn’s daughter was able to keep caring for her son, which adds weight to my theory that the cycle of having to relinquish care of children has been broken.  Which begs the question:  when did the cycle start?

Did the cycle start with Mary Ann Hurford or earlier?  Did it start with Ellen Parsons?  I suppose I won’t know the answers to those questions unless I can find living relatives or other documentary evidence.  Unfortunately the Parsons are quite tricky to find.  I’m still using family tree methods to try to find them, but I’m running out of options.  One of my cousins in West Monkton suggested I try contacting people with the last name “Parsons” still living in the town.  Perhaps I will.

A couple of weeks ago I was listening to a national Australian radio program about books.  I only caught the end of the conversation, but one of the presenters was talking about a book she’d read called, “The Story of Forgetting” by Stefan Merrill Block.  I can’t remember exactly what she said, but she must have been something about a young man looking for members of his mother’s family after a long estrangement.  His mother had early onset Alzheimer’s and his quest was to find her genetic family, who would also have the disease.  It sounded like somebody had already written my story.

Immediately I went online and bought the book (from an Australian retailer).  It arrived in two days and I had read it by the following morning. 

Somebody had written my story – although had fictionalised it and made it sound so much more interesting.  I can’t tell you exactly how amazed I was to find how completely I could identify with the young man looking for his mother’s family.  It was the logic and methodology he used, his scientific reasoning (I have a background in science), the parallel between the methods he used with mine and the urgency with which he was propelling himself forward.  There were the highs and lows, the fits and starts in the quest and the drain of the experience.   Now I understand a little better why I am doing what I am doing.

I don’t want to spoil the book or give anything away.  I’ve also passed it on to other members of my family, so even though I want to make more reference to it, I haven’t got it to help me write about it.  I’ll do that later when I come across a situation, experience or emotion that has a parallel in the book.  It was so powerful – it really helped me make sense of my world – as all good books should.

It’s well worth the read.  www.stefanmerrillblock.com

I’ve filled in the gaps in my family tree for the period where death certificates exist in England.  You can see it below:

As you can see, I’ve been concentrating on the Ridgway side of the family and have more or less established that there’s no Alzheimer’s there.  However, Mary Parker did have ‘Senile Decay – no DM’.  I’m not quite sure what that means, but I think it means she got old and died. 

I can’t find most of the Parsons side of the family.  This is for a number reasons:

• They had many children and repeated names, making it difficult to establish whether ‘George’ is really the ‘George’ I was looking for. 
• Their birth dates and ages varied on lots of different types of documents.  Sometimes by as much as 10 years.  This makes it hard to figure out whether it’s George the nephew or George the cousin or George the Uncle. 
• Many Parsons’ graves don’t have inscriptions – so these databases aren’t much help in establishing which George is which. 
• The Parsons’ households tend to be fluid and it’s hard to figure out the comings and goings and where they went. 

There are still Parsons in West Monkton.  I assume they are the same Parsons family and I’m going to try to contact them to find out about the Parsons side of the family.  Then maybe I’ll be able to figure out where they all went. 

As for the Ridgways, I reckon I shouldn’t have to worry so much about that side of the family losing their marbles.  But from my investigations and talking to the living relatives, I’ve decided I’m going to look after my heart a little better. 

My gggrandfather, Oliver Ridgway, had a sister called Lily.  Lily’s descendants still live and farm in West Monkton (not to mention hold prominent positions in the community).  I have talked on the phone to them and been in contact via email. 

It was a shock to learn about my grandmother, who was adopted out at birth by the Ridgways, but they were very interested and quite welcoming.  They answered as many of my questions as they could with patience and understanding and we promised to keep in touch.  Unfortunately they were unable to shed any light on the whereabouts of Oliver’s first wife, Ellen…but they were able to do so much more than just give dates and names.  They were able to pass on stories and breathe life into a family history that I have only been able to infer from indexes and census records. 

Here is a perfect example of a story my distant cousin wrote in one email:

As a young boy I was told by my grandmother Lily that Oliver was a very good shot with a gun and that he did some competition shooting.  On one occasion when Lily was out in the orchard with Oliver, he threw her hat up into an apple tree.  When asked to get it down he shot it out, putting a hole through her hat.  Brothers and sisters haven’t changed much have they?

Earlier in the search I found index records of a divorce between an Oliver and Ellen Ridgway in 1914 in NSW.  At the time I wasn’t convinced that it was my Oliver and Ellen (as I had found another couple by the same names), as the only evidence I had of either being in NSW was Ellen and Evelyn’s arrival in Sydney in 1914 aboard the Berrimah.  I was waiting to discover just one more piece of evidence to place them both in Sydney in 1914 before I opened the divorce file (which was costly).

However, I should have gone with my gut feeling that it was my gggrandparents – as it was.  A wonderful roots chatter by the name of Jennifer (tropicalJ) got sick of waiting for me to realise it was and hired a transcription agent to open the file (at her own expense) and all the details matched. 

Here’s what was in the file:  just two documents.

1. Oliver Ridgway’s petition to the Court to dissolve his marriage to Ellen
2. Ridgway vs Ridgway affidavit of Oliver Ridgway verifying Petition

The transcription agent noted that it was the smallest divorce file he’d ever seen and that it usually had lots more interesting items in it.  I rang him to ask him about that, and we both decided that the divorce proceedings were started but were never completed…for whatever reason (yet another mystery).  So there was no divorce in NSW in 1914…but something definitely happened.

The petition by Oliver states that he believes that Ellen committed adultery with William JJ Reader in Fort Street Sydney between May and December of 1914 and that he wishes to dissolve the marriage, be granted permanent custody of his children (Evelyn 4, Olive 5) and get compensation from the respondents.  This is consistent with divorce proceedings of the time, as essentially one spouse needed to sue the other for it to be legal.  The father usually got custody of the children and a payout, unless the mother married the man she committed adultery with. 

However, there was no divorce at this time.  There are no other documents signed by Ellen or decrees by the court.  Oliver was still married to Ellen by the end of 1914.  That’s not to say that there wasn’t a divorce later.

Here’s what I think (and it’s all pure speculation):

• Oliver and Ellen never got a divorce.  It was ‘too hard’ at the time.  Therefore, Oliver either had a defacto relationship with his second ‘wife’ Louise or was a bigamist.  I haven’t been able to find a record of their marriage so I’m guessing defacto.
• Oliver and Ellen knew their marriage was on the way out before Ellen came to Australia.  Ellen arrived with Evelyn and not Olive, therefore it’s possible that they already had a pre-existing arrangement that Oliver would have custody of Evelyn and Ellen would have custody of Olive when the divorce went through.  Even though the divorce wasn’t completed, Evelyn stayed in Australia with Oliver, whilst Ellen went back to England to Olive. 
• Ellen came to Australia to complete the divorce, even though it didn’t happen.  Oliver had travelled to Australia separately, perhaps to evade debts (more on that later) and perhaps because his marriage wasn’t working.  Maybe Oliver had even already met his second ‘wife’ Louise and that was a factor. 
• Ellen did not marry William JJ Reader, the co-respondent and person she was supposed to have committed adultery with.  I have spent a fair bit of time looking at census, indexes and war records and have decided that there’s been some amazing coincidences.  William JJ Reader did marry an Ellen – but not my gggrandmother.  He married Ellen Lambert, daughter of Jesse, who did actually exist and wasn’t just an alias of Ellen Ridgway (unless she assumed her entire identity – but now that really is over the top).  Maybe the fact that William JJ Reader was with an ‘Ellen’ was important when the divorce petition was filed by Oliver…but it was proved to be erroneous and that’s what put a stop to the divorce.  I just don’t know about that one.
• There is some suggestion that Ellen ended up in a mental institution.  I had thought that perhaps there was some early-onset dementia involved.  However, a family member has suggested to me that institutionalising your wife was a great way to end a marriage back in the early 1900’s.  I’m still undecided on this one, and I suppose I won’t know until I can find out whatever happened to Ellen. 

Whatever did happen to Ellen?  I think I’ve exhausted all the standard family history records I have at my disposal and I won’t be able to find her using the methods I used to find my cousins in West Monkton and my great-aunts in NZ.  I know it’s time to try and contact the living descendants of George and Flora Parsons, my ggggrandparents who ran the Post Office Stores in West Monkton.  Perhaps somebody will know whatever happened to Ellen, but it will have to wait until I have a little more time.

I’ve had very little time to blog over recent days and weeks.  Sorry about that.  Instead of great long (well thought out) posts, I’m going to try to post a little snippet each day in order to keep everyone updated.  I have a great long list of things I desperately need to write about and I’ll never get through it all unless I do a little bit at a time. 

I have also been using the regular post rather than the internet lately.  This is nostalgic and it’s quite nice to receive letters and items you can hold in your hand…but unfortunately it doesn’t encourage you to use the computer.  I’ve both sent parcels & letters, as well as receiving them from family and friends…but I’ll talk some more about those later (especially about the letter from my great-aunt in NZ).

Stay tuned.  Love and Wishes to SB.  Hope you get better soon.

Sarah Pring, my great-great-great-grandmother is said to have liked travel.  She must have if she was prepared to travel half-way across the world with a young family a number of times, making a home in several Tasmanian and Victorian towns.

This is a trait shared by her great-great-granddaughter, who I have been talking to in England and who is also said to be very like Sarah.  She also recently travelled half-way around the world to Australia in order to farewell her father.  They had always talked about travelling in Australia, visiting beaches and seeing all the different birds.  She took a little bit of him with her on the trip.  It is a very touching story and I can’t write about it and do it justice.  What a shame we didn’t know about each other before she came – I live near one of the best surf beaches in Victoria, where Kookaburras will come and take food from your hand (or from your mouth if you’re not careful, cheeky sods). 

Oliver Ridgway, Sarah’s son, seems to have travelled the most, mainly between England, Australia and New Zealand.  However, this may turn out to be due to necessity rather than pleasure (more to come…)

Olwyn Ridgway, my grandmother, as I have written about previously, had a preoccupation with cruise ships.  Her three passports are littered with visas and stamps.  I’m sure that’s where I got my itchy feet from.  My passport doesn’t have such a wide variety of stamps, but I’m working on it.  It’s such a shame that travelling costs money.

What else defines us?  At the moment I can only speak for my immediate family, but I’m sure there will be some correlations with our long-lost relatives:

• We are creative and artistic.  We enjoy music and art.  Some of us are even talented in the creation of both. 
• Humour is important to us.  We will choose comedy before all other genres and use it in almost all situations
• We love the water.  Our children are all water babies and gravitate towards the sea.  You couldn’t sink us if you tried and we only grow out of it when it the water gets too cold for our old bones. 

I realize that Sarah Pring, my gggggrandmother, is so far removed from me that finding a matching trait in us both would be quite rare.  But I’d like to think that I can see a little bit of all my ancestors in me if I just look hard enough.  Perhaps by having enough contact with the living descendants of my ancestors, I’ll be able to cobble together a picture of them – and find it reflected in me. 

Since talking to my long-lost relatives in England and New Zealand, I’ve been thinking about the sorts of family traits that may surface…other than physical attributes.  For example, what types of behaviours could not possibly be attributed to upbringing (since the families grew up apart), and to what extent could they be explained by coincidence? 

One thing that stands out for me is birds.

Sarah Pring, my great-great-great-grandmother liked birds.  Apparently she had an emu egg that she treasured from her time in Australia.  Unfortunately it became too fragile and didn’t survive to this day. 

Evelyn Ridgway, my great-grandmother also liked birds and would feed them everyday.  This trait is also shared by at least one of her daughters, a couple of cousins and my father. 

It seems that everyone I talked to mentioned birds as something that defined them or other family members.  In particular, it was the enjoyment of wild birds; not pet birds, not bird watching, but being in the company of wild birds. 

As a child, birds were a part of our life.  On a number of occasions Dad would appear with a little naked chick for us to hand-rear.  My sister once kept a newly hatched Starling alive with squashed worms until the cat bettered her security measures.  I myself woke up every couple of hours to feed a fluffy black swan Dad brought home from work, until it disappeared into the night almost fully grown.  Then there’s Gregory Peck.

Gregory was a tiny stripy emu chick that Dad gave to my sister to look after.  He used to run around inside the house until we got sick of cleaning up his business, which was right about the time he was knee-high and running into things too often.  Emus aren’t exactly the smartest animals alive.  Gregory even came on holidays to the caravan park with us at Christmas time and became a local celebrity, with cars pulling up to meet him in our house paddock.  As Gregory got older, his neck went blue and he started to make drumming noises.  Then the eggs were a dead give away – Gregory was a Greggette.  She still lives in the house paddock to this day, 15 years on.  I wonder how long emus live for. 

Last year Dad went around Australia in a caravan with my mother.  There’s a regular industry in this type of trip for ‘Grey Nomads’.  Mum & Dad called it their ‘Dementia Adventure’.  Mum wrote a newsletter as they travelled and in every one it mentions the type of bird Dad happened to be feeding where they were staying.  It was usually some multicoloured tropical parrots or flightless kookaburras or something that would take food straight out of his hand. 

So, why birds?  Personally I can’t see the attraction.  I don’t like birds that much.  Too pecky.  Scratchy claws.  Nice to look at though.  Is there really a family trait, or is it just coincidence? 

I think an attraction to birds is in my family’s nature, otherwise it wouldn’t have been mentioned as a defining feature of some of the key family members, particularly direct line ancestors.  The incidence seems to be higher than could be explained by the general distribution of bird lovers in the community.  However, I think that it just might be in my family’s nature to be attracted to small, fuzzy things.  We’ve always had a menagerie of animals at our house and found ourselves in occupations involving animals, including farming.  In short, I think we’re a bunch of big softies for cute and cuddly. 

But I can’t help but wonder what else I’ve inherited can’t be explained by my upbringing.   

This will be just a quick post to say that ‘All’s well’.

Over the Australian long weekend I have been in contact with a few living family members. 

First, I talked to my cousin using Skype on Thursday night.  We share both gggrandparents, Sarah and William Ridgway, as he is descended from Lily Ridgway.  He shared lovely anecdotes and told me a little about his family before we both had to attend to more pressing problems.  (me: sleep, him: livelihood).  I hope to speak to him soon about some of the questions I have (he still lives in West Monkton), and I’d love to hear about the photographs he has. 

Then very early Friday morning I phoned another cousin in England, who shares a gggrandmother, Sarah Ridgway/Pring.  We talked for over an hour and I asked quite a few questions, with some surprising answers.  I don’t want to go into too much detail here, as these conversations will form the basis for some posts later on that will be much better thought out.

Lastly, after some persistent badgering by my father, I phoned my great-aunt in New Zealand – just to see if she got my letter.  She had received it and passed the information on to my other great-aunt, her sister.  She told me that both her and her sister would write me a letter soon and that she needed to finish the film in her camera so she could send me photos. 

I was expecting some sort of negativity, confrontation or denial.  Instead I was pleasantly surprised.  Everyone I talked to was genuine, welcoming and more than happy to help me.  It was quite humbling, not to mention exciting.  All of them stated that it was a bit of a ‘jolt’ to find out about my grandmother (especially my great-aunt, who gained a half-sister), but they didn’t find it as upsetting as I’d imagined and fretted about. 

It seems there is no history of dementia in the Ridgway branch of the family, something that I suspected from death certificates anyway.  However, there is some evidence for a family history of diseases of the heart.  I must go back and see if there is more of a connection.  I also suspect if there is a history of dementia, it comes from the Parsons side.

Speaking of Ellen Parsons, none of the living relatives can shed any light on the Parsons side just yet.  However, there is some hope.  Today I received an email from the current Post Master at the West Monkton Post Office to say they will look out for family documents and artifacts as they close down the West Monkton Post Office (so sad).  Also, a wonderful person using RootsChat.com discovered that the 1914 divorce of an Oliver & Ellen Ridgeway in Sydney I had written about previously was in fact my Oliver and Ellen.  TropicalJ aka Jenn spent her own hard-earned cash to open the divorce file and look at the details, confirming that Oliver and Ellen did divorce and Oliver asked for the custody of Evelyn, my ggrandmother and her sister Olive.  I thank her from the bottom of my heart. 

So now I have a number of leads to follow in order to find Ellen Parsons, my gggrandmother, and perhaps discover the answers to my remaining questions:  is there Alzheimer’s in the Parsons side of the family & who is my ggrandfather?  I have already been able to trace the family tree past Evelyn Ridgway, but would like to trace it on my grandmother’s father’s side, if we can ever discover who he was.  In the meantime, I have plenty of things to write about on the post.  The living relatives I’ve talked to and things I’ve been able to discover with help have been most enlightening. 

Sitting here on a long, dark Australian winter’s night, I am imagining that a lovely spring dawn is breaking over the West Monkton graveyard.  I am heartened to know that the graves of my ancestors are being visited by their living English descendants. 

How do I know this?  Because I have been contacted by them, and they told me so. 

Today Sarah Pring’s great-granddaughter sent me a message to let me know that Sarah had one child with her second husband, a boy who was her grandfather.  She also told me that she visits the graves with her children and her grandchildren, because she feels it is important for them to know where they come from. 

I couldn’t agree more. 

I love the idea that our family history is important to somebody other than me – especially somebody sentimental enough to visit the graves and courageous enough to contact me using the internet, a very public medium, about such private family matters. 

I am a little embarrassed that I thought there wouldn’t be any living descendants of my ggggrandparents or gggggrandparents to visit their graves.  When I don’t find evidence in my research, I tend to assume it mustn’t exist.  I forget that due to privacy laws and incomplete databases that it’s highly probable that I there are relatives out there that I don’t know about because I don’t have access to all the information. 

My long-lost cousin and I share a gggrandmother, Sarah Pring, who is evidently the gggrandmother of other descendants, as she phoned one of them, and he also posted a message to me.  He and I share both great-grandparents, Sarah and William Ridgway, and I may be able to shed some light on William’s death in Australia for him.  I replied to both in personal emails and I can’t wait for them to contact me again.  All the census records and death certificates in the world can’t compare with the information and feelings you get from talking directly to a long-lost family member.

At the moment, I feel a little like I’m in a famous Steven Spielberg movie, stepping into the light to meet somebody I’ve always known was there, but was always slightly out of reach.  I feel nothing but wonderment, awe and respect.