My Family Research

Edmund Harrison - A Brickwall Broken

2011-10-24T02:13:00.000-07:00

One of my biggest brick walls in my family history research has been tracing my elusive great great grandfather Edmund Harrison. He didn't leave an easy trail to follow and finding information about him has taken me the last 16 years and the searching of a wide variety of records.

I had to start from hearsay from the family so all I had to start with was that Edmund Harrison was my great grandmothers father and Ellen Lonergan was her mother. Edmund was a journalist who worked on papers in Bendigo, Ballarat and Geelong and that there was some connection to James Harrison of Geelong. He had the Geelong Advertiser and was an early inventor of refrigeration. A couple of tales mentioned he died young, while another was said that he went back to England on family business never to return. I also knew my great grandmother had at least a brother, Louis and two sisters Ellen May and Jessie and in my search I found another brother, Edmund. Edmund jnr was the one who had died young.

Below is a documented list of some of the places I searched over the years in my search for Edmund and his family.

Searched BDM’s for Marriage,births and deaths of Edmund his children etc. No marriage could be found and no register of births of children. No death for Edmund.
Purchased Marriage and death certificate of MinnaGertrude McCaffrey nee Harrison. Marriage ofLouis Harrison, Jessie Harrison. Deaths of EllenHarrison nee Lonergan and Edmund Harrison Jnr. Didn’t buy Ellen Mays marriage or other deaths as didn’t think it wouldprovide any further clues.
Contacted the Geelong Advertiser as knew he was ajournalist and there was family talk of a connection to James Harrison therewho had that paper. They have no recordsbut put me onto his grandson James who I wrote to. He sent me a lot of his family history andthere seems to be no connection there as yet. The Geelong Genealogical Society found no evidence of him being in Geelong.
Wrote to BendigoGenealogical Society. They checked andfound the following: Bendigo Directories listed 1865-66. Bendigo rate records 65-66. He is mentioned in the History of Bendigo byG Mackay 1899 and Bendigoand Vicinity published about 1900. Nomention in Advertiser personals or St Paul’s and All Saints records for a marriage.
Wrote to Bendigo Advertiser and they could come withno more then already found there records are slim for that time as there was afire in the building.
Wrote to Genealogical Society of Victoria they checkedMelbournecemetery where Ellen is buried without a headstone, nos sign of Edmund snr. Was not on Vic and NSW assisted shipping index? Not on Victoria Wills and probate index.
Wrote to Herald and Weekly Times to see if they hadanything re him working on the paper in the 1850’s, they had nothing.
Checked the Electoral roll for 1851 in Victoria no one who fitshis description. Checked 1856 Electoral Roll, 1899 Victorian Referendum roll,no Edmund.
Had contact with a Patricia Lennox from Bundoora whois a descendant of Ellen’s sister Margaret, she only knew their was a sister bythe name Mrs Harrison, but gave me namesof the other sister’s which led me to finding more info on the Lonergan sisters of Tipperary.
Checked the Victoria Police Gazette for mention of himfound two instances and sent away to Police Historical unit for these and anyother mention of him. They sent copiesof these to me one of these led me to search the Ballarat area.
Wrote to St Kilian’s Church, Bendigo to see if any record of hismarriage. No luck with that.
Went to State Library of Victoria and looked through microfilm ofold newspapers in Ballarat for mention of Edmund. He was Editor of the Tribune found nothing else. Also checked for deaths in papers in Melbourne at the time of Ellen and EdmundJnr’s death and copied these from the Age.
Checked the Melbournedirectories from 1870 through to 1905. Found mention of Edmund Harrison in the early ones.
Wrote to the Ballarat Genealogical Society. They checked directories, hospital admissionsno sign of him. He is mentioned in TheHistory of Ballarat by W.B Withers who worked on papers there. They checked the Ballarat PRO Court records etc no mentionof him 2/7/1861 to 5/3/1863 or prior to that, the next unit was not availableto the public due to water damage.
Checked Immigration to Victoria from British ports 1852-59 index. Found an Edmund Harrison age23 arrived May 1853 on the Eagle also a George listed same age. Went to PRO and looked this up. It left Liverpool and he is listed as English and a merchant.Seems about the right age, but wrong profession. So may or may not be him.
Went to Melbourne General Cemetery and purchased Burial records etc.No Edmund but found other family members
Checked through defunct businesses at the PRO to seeif he had a registered business.
Checked Bendigo Goldfields Petition 1853, List ofcitizens 1877/78 and Vic Prisoner Index 1850-1900.
Checked 1891 and 1901 Census records found an Edmund Harrison about right age and occupationwith 2 daughters, one born NZ the other Victoria, Australia. Looks possibly like I am on the right track.
Checked and found death of an Edmund Harrison rightage and profession same person as above, dying Croydon, England.
Questions that I now wanted answered. Do any photos exist of any of the familyEdmund, Ellen and their children when they were young? What was he doing at the time he was livingin Fitzroy? Is there any way of checking baptism records, school records etc?Did he leave the family and go interstate or overseas, can we check outgoingshipping? Find his birth record? Need to find more on Violet and ConstanceHarrison.
Found references to the family above in many pages ofThe London Times which is digitized online. This can be accessed through the National Library of Australia in their e-Resources.
Found him in the East Ballaarat Petty SessionsRegister. 31^stJuly, 1861. Needto next look at newspapers around that date to see if anything mentioned.
In Argus Newspaper 2^nd Jan 1871, 25 Jan 1871,16 Feb 1871, 20 Apr 1877, 14 Nov. 1878. Mentions him being a member of the Yorick Club and standing as a member for the Legislative Assembly.
Need to research information on Yorick Club. There are acouple of books on its history. TheYorick Club: Its Origin and Development: May, 1868, to Dec 1910, Melbourne 1911 and A History of the Yorick Club 1868–1966 by J Johnson.
Need to research any information through hisconnection with the Legislative Assembly. He was standing for the LiberalParty.
Found him on the Argus newspaper online index and havecopies of those references. He was a candidate for the Liberal Party in theLegislative Assembly.
There are also references to him on the index to PortPhillip Herald will need to check them at State Library. This period may cover to early a time frame for my Edmund.
Researched and found him on 1851 census in London with his family.Then found that family on 1841 census. Edmund and father George were not in England at thetime. This gave me his parents so was able to use FamilySearch to findchristenings and marriages etc. Parents George Berkeley Harrison and Anna Dunant. George was a Wine Merchant so that ties up with the Passenger records of him as a Merchant.

This is Part 1 of my search of Edmund Harrison and his family. Stay tuned for Part 2. Coming soon!

Orange, NSW and the Wynne/Whiteford Families

2010-01-22T20:20:00.000-08:00

On a recent holiday to Orange I decided I needed to make a visit to the Orange Cemetery where there are a number of my husbands family buried. Now, Orange Cemetery is rather large, so go prepared when doing a search. I had looked up the index for the names previously on the CD produced by the Orange Family History Group, so had the sections and grave number I was looking for. They have maps available at the cemetery, but you can also go to the Orange Council web site and download one before you go. There is also background historical information about the cemetery on this site.

It is still a very hard job finding the graves even with the map and location, but we did eventually find it, as shown above. Lucky enough it had three headstones, with plenty of information. However one was slightly damaged made of stone that had worn away and was very difficult to read.

Transcribed they read:

Sacred to the memory of
Robert Andrew
The beloved son of
Robert & Sarah Whiteford
Died Feb 22nd 1878
Aged 11 months
also
James Joseph Wynne
Born at Orange Nov ?1st 1858?
Died at Parramatta? on Nov 18? 1913
Jesus ??? have mercy on his soul.

Note: Checked the NSW Birth, Death and Marriages could not find a record of his birth, but found the death, registered in Sydney, parents Thomas & Sarah. Registration number 14968. Will get a Transcript of this certificate from Joy Murrin as it works out a lot cheaper than getting it from the Registry.

In Memory of
Thomas Wynne
Died May 10th 1859
Aged 43 Years
Also his beloved wife
Sarah Ann
Died March 24th 1860
Aged 39 Years
On their souls Jesus have mercy.

Note: Have copies of transcripts of their death certificates and according to Sarah's she died on the 22nd March and was buried on the 24th. They were Innkeepers at Molong, a town not far from Orange.

Sacred to the memory of
Elizabeth Mary
the beloved wife of
Augustus Coulson
died May 24th 1876
Aged 31 years
also of
Elizabeth Augusta Blanch
the beloved child of above
Died Dec. 20th 1868
Grant O Lord Eternal Rest and Peace to the soul of
Elizabeth Mary

Note: Have copy of transcript of death certificate of Elizabeth Mary Coulson. Elizabeth Augusta Blanch died as an infant.
According to records Augustus, Elizabeth's husband should also be buried in this grave, but there was no mention of him on the gravestones.

Some other useful site I found other gravestones for other Cemeteries local to Orange relating to these familes were on Australian Cemeteries Index. They had Molong and O'Connell Catholic Cemeteries which had photos of gravestones of families I am after.

Kiniry Family - Twig on the Family Tree

2010-01-13T15:39:00.000-08:00

It's amazing how much time you can get caught up on researching twigs in your family tree. I recently was contacted through Ancestry about the Kiniry family. I really only had a small amount of information about them. My grandma Irene Veronica O'Neill, a staunch Catholic, when I was younger, told me about cousins Rev. Father Tom Kiniry and Rev. Father John Kiniry. That was about the extent of my knowledge. My uncle Paul Pearce another mad fellow family historian had given me the information that Brigid Hurley cousin of my grandmother's through the McMahon family married Peter William Kiniry and they had a daughter Agnes Kiniry.

My contact through Ancestry wanted to know more and when, where and who came out to Australia from Ireland. I then had to go to work doing more research, starting with the Victorian Birth, Death and Marriage indexes. I am luck enought to have access to these on CD, but for a fee you can access the Registry of VIC BDMs online. This gave me a wealth of information that I spent several hours sifting through. The number of * wildcard searches on the surname Kiniry I had to do as they were very creative in their spelling of this name.

Peter William Kiniry I found had been born in Maldon, Victoria in 1874 and died at Korong Vale, Victoria in 1922. The Kiniry's and many of my other relatives including O'Neills, Hogans, McMahons and Ryans farmed in the Boort, Korong Vale and Whychitella surrounds in Victoria.

Peter married Brigid Hurley in 1908 at Wychitella. She was the daughter of Patrick Hurley and Jane McMahon. and was born in 1879 probably at Wychitella and died 24 December 1917 at Korong Vale. She is buried at Wedderburn Cemetery.

Peter farmed the Koprong Vale area and was a member of local council for many years. Furhter information was found on newspapers on the National Library of Australia's newspaper website.

Peter was the son of John Kiniry born 1835, died 1918 at Korong Vale and Mary Morrisey born about 1835 and died 1922 at Korong Vale. Now I know they came from Ireland, but when and where from. That was the next test on which I spent a long time searching and again the many ways of spelling their surname made it difficult. This meant searching on the PROV Online Assisted British and Unassisted indexes. So far I have had no luck. I even tried the Passenger indexes from NSW State Records with no luck. One to keep working on!!

Next problem where they came from. I tried looking for all the children of John Kiniry and Mary Morrisey. The first one born in Victoria was Margaret in 1863 in Melbourne. With further searching on found a Thomas Bartholomew Kiniry dying in 1916 age 58 in Brighton, Victoria and working backwards I found he married in 1883 in Victoria to Jane O'Neill stating that his birthplace was Cork, Ireland.

Well I now have a lot more information to send to the contact in USA, but it has now given me more work in trying to track down the immigration of John and Brigid Kiniry and son Thomas from Cork, Ireland in Victoria, Australia. I do know from John's death register that his parents were John Kiniry and Mary O'Connor, so a little more to go on.

Back at it Again!!

2010-01-10T03:10:00.000-08:00

Well I am finally over Christmas and New Year and have been away on hols for a week down at Phillip Island and Inverloch in Victoria. Thought it was about time to get back to work. Finally have fixed all the place names on the Close Family Tree, so I am now in the processes of sorting the filing cabinet out and re-organising all my bits of paper and certificates into folders that will be easy to find.

Particularly working on the Kimber and Simcock families today. I had collected Inquests on several deaths of these families years ago. A good place to get some extra information now is via Newspapers online. I found and fixed some interesting information on my inquests for Timothy Simcock, Arthur Foster Kimber and William David Simcock in the Melbourne Argus.

I also found it useful to do a search for Wills and Probates that have been digitised that are now available at the Victorian Public Records Office.

If you are a member of the GSV (Genealogical Society of Victoria), of which I am, it is a good idea to have a look at the members section. They have a database that you can search of online resources. I was able to find a number of the Kimbers and Simcocks mentioned in Hospital records such as Ballarat and Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital (they have images of these) and a number of other miscellaneous records. Anyway it's worth utilising it if you are a member and I should do this more often.

Fixing Family Tree Maker

2009-12-01T00:01:00.000-08:00

Since I have been upgrading Family Tree Maker every year I have found some of my facts and places have become mixed up and very untidy. Luckily Family Tree Maker has built in maps and has a facility to resolve place names.

I decided that seeing I want to put a number of my files in order and make sure I have added all the data and information I have collected I needed to fix all the problems in my Trees up before I add any more information. Considering I have thousands of names this is taking me some time. The ability of FTM to resolve all place names of the same name is a great feature, but unfortunately it will not resolve all place names. I will have to find out if there is a way around this. Also after I had upgraded to edition 17 a number of my facts are in the wrong place, so that will take me several hours rearranging.

Then I am going to work on Gordon's family tree on his mothers side. The surnames are Burrell, Chaston, Whitford or Whiteford, Walker, Wynne, Boothroyde, Gold or Gould, Finney. A number of them came out as convicts, many to Tasmania. Years after I have already got most of their records, many of them are now being digitised. There is a lot more information now on the Tasmanian Archives website and it is well worth going back to regularly to see what else they have available http://www.archives.tas.gov.au/ and also State Records NSW have information on NSW convicts http://www.records.nsw.gov.au/state-archives/indexes-online

Researching VIC Government Gazettes

2009-11-25T01:10:00.000-08:00

I have been having a good search through the Government gazettes available online http://gazette.slv.vic.gov.au/ for Victoria and NSW. Found a number of references to Thomas Flint my gggrandfather who was a Mounted Constable as was his son Theodore. Also found quite a bit on Arthur Loftus Flint who was also Thomas' son and was a Post Master.

Have also been finding a lot of good information on the National Library of Australia's Australian Newspaper site. http://newspapers.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/home They are constantly adding to it and they plan to do some of the major regional newspapers in the next few years. I find the Argus a valuable research tool for finding information on ancestors that were in Victoria. I was able to find the missing girl who is the flower girl in my grandparents Arthur and Jessie Flint's wedding. Her name is Yvonne Lang and she became a nurse. She was the daughter of William Baker Lang and Nora Kennedy from the Bass, Gippsland area. Also found more information on her in the Electoral rolls on Ancestry.

Arthur Stothers Flint Born 1901 Died 1977

Jessie Catherine McCaffrey Born 1902 Died 1980

Married 1924 St Patrick's East Melbourne

Flowergirl Yvonne Lang daughter of William Baker Lang and Edith Nora Kennedy

GMAGS Expo

2009-11-23T22:15:00.000-08:00

The GMAGS expo last Saturday was a great day for the 10th and final year. I was able to get an upgrade for Family Tree Maker so am on 2010 now. I also bought the book Google Your Family Tree by Daniel M Lynch. It has some really useful ideas to help with doing searches on the internet. I also bought a copy of Dave Evans Victorian Mining Accident Index that has over 12000 names of people associated with Mining Accidents in Victoria. This is a valuable resource to check if you had family living in areas around the goldfields of Victoria. Dave also had some interesting stories to tell about his experiences at the BBQ on Friday night.

I was doing free lookups for people as Brad Argent from Ancestry.com.au kindly allowed us access to a world wide account for the day. If you would like more information about their service go to http://www.ancestry.com.au I have been using this resource for about 18 months now and have found such a lot of information particularly now I have the UK heritage plus which has given me access to a number of London records and I have been able to continue my search for more information on Edmund Harrison my gggrandfather and his family. With access to Worldwide I was able to find Francis Shudall on the New York Passengers List arriving from Ireland on the Majestic from Liverpool in 1907 aged 53 occupation Rubber Merchant headed for Chicago with $40 in his possession and I also found him in the Chicago Voters List of 1892 at 20 N. Center Ave his term of residence 5 years and he was naturalised. I was trying to find some distant relatives that went to America from Ireland at the end of the 19th century Katherine O'Neil and she married a John Carey but it is very hard with little information to go on.

On the Sunday I went to a great workshop on Photoshop and restoring old photos this was presented by Carol Heath http://www.pixelbypixel.com.au I was able to start restoring the wedding photo of my grandparents wedding Arthur Stothers Flint and Jessie Catherine McCaffrey with Yvonne Lang as the flower girl in the photo.

Beginning

2009-11-17T23:05:00.000-08:00

"This photo contains my grandfather as a boy and the rest of the Flint Family. The couple are Arthur Loftus Flint and Margaret Stothers and the boys are Theo, Chris, Tom, Claude, Arthur and Jack"

This is going to be a blog about Family History research. I want to be able to share some of the great sites or resources I have found or others could recommend. I also want to share some of my breakthroughs and brickwalls.