An education in life and times as well as family

There is no doubt that ancestry research is educational and not just about one's own family. In trawling through the past one ends up researching general as well as personal history. It is in fact an important part of the process in terms of understanding the material which is uncovered and gaining greater understanding of the lives our ancestors have lived.It can also be quite sobering if not depressing which is why I have chosen the image of a flower to head my post, to balance the images of death which come later. Kylie and Luke are far more seasoned researchers than I am and have a wealth of knowledge to offer to the process, but, as with many things, we see the world differently and don't always agree. And that's a good thing because it means the focus of research covers a variety of bases instead of just one or two.  Having more than one person involved in this process is absolutely invaluable and I am sure increases the chances of making progress just because there is more minds and more time involved.  Our latest discussion has been about the death notice for the Edward Atkins who died at Whyte Park. My sense, and that is sourced in common sense and gut feeling, is that the wording should be taken seriously, absolutely seriously, but Kylie is not so sure and neither is the researcher who has been doing some work for us.
Kylie writes:

.....they seemed to make up the lists including dead and alive, sometimes a rough estimate, sometimes an exaggeration, and then seemed to choose any form of wording to go with it. She  (the researcher) laughed at the idea of taking it too seriously.

Think about how it would actually happen. Someone would write up the list, most probably one of the daughters in this case. They would do a rough draft of what they wanted to say but they may not know how many words or how the words were counted. They would give it to someone to take to town when they were next there, maybe a week or two later.

This would probably have been one of the men or even a neighbour. The wording was chosen in consultation with the newspapers agent, often the owner of the local paper, or the general store, using one of a selection of currently used ‘phrases’, to fit to size allowed. The person approving the final wording may not remember the list includes dead or alive, so the wording was entirely appropriate to them. 

They may have to reduce the wording of the original they were given or have words to spare. The ‘to mourn their loss” looks like such words, as do the “Gloucestershire papers please copy” (even more so when you see the “English papers please copy”). Some people take these things seriously, some don’t.

Luke is right about how there are different conventions at the time too, and these are very hard to pin down, even today, but I also think that even in Victorian times these things varied greatly from family to family. Some families never complied with the forms of the day, others were horrified by the smallest variance.

If you read the etiquette books of the day you would get a very different view of behaviour from the actual behaviour of the day, just as if anyone followed some of the modern etiquette books today we would think them pompous and unnatural. Things change with each decade, each generation and vary from area to area, from one social set to another, from family to family, even between two people in a marriage. Some people always talk about their dead as if they are still alive and others never mention them.

The Victorians were no more homogenous that we are. I think this notice is more about being proud of taking part in and surviving the settlement of South Australia, noting the mark their father had left on such a project, his part in building the Empire.

That is the thing I find strangest about this notice, it is saying look what a difference Edward made, he was 84, a pioneer of over 50 years and “leaving one son, 5 daughters, 47 grandchildren and 3 great grandchildren” in SA, a significant contribution. 

The leaving could have merely referred to leaving that many children, grandchildren, making their mark on South Australia, even if that mark was a small grave. They were there, they were South Australian, they counted.

The real question, when advertising your contribution, is why not include all the children, your total contribution? It was when I realised that the total in this death notice was only the first family and almost certainly did not include Elizabeth’s children, that I started questioning what links we did have between the two families. Even if we find Hannah died before 1857, we are still left without a definite link. Cherrie’s comment that she has seen this sort of separate notice before is interesting, a rift is another explanation, but we are still left with a question mark.

Luke, the reason I doubt that James is the “1 son” is that his children are not included in the grandchildren, I can’t think of why they would miss them. Unless we find Henry lived past 4 or 5 years, I would assume it was Joseph, he would be remembered by the oldest girls, Henry may not have been remembered even if he lived to four or five.

I don’t think these people were of a social class who could afford too great a degree of mourning.  Anyway our rituals never reached the heights of Victorian England. 

In Australia, funerals were less extravagant and mourning rituals less strict - especially in rural areas. From the 1870s, funeral reforms in both Britain and Australia resulted in a move toward more modest and cheaper funerals, and encouraged recycling or adapting old clothing for the mourning period rather than purchasing new outfits

http://australianmuseum.net.au/Mourning-Victorian-Era

We’ll have to wait and see if (the historian) can find any mention of him. There is certainly no marriage or death in the indexes for him.

Anyway, we’ll just keep chipping away at it and we may end up with an answer, one day.

I think Kylie's position is sound in general but I still have misgivings about not taking the wording of the death notice too seriously.


I agree with Kylie that I doubt James would have been included and my guess is that Henry lived to adulthood. I do think it is a bit of a stretch to have younger sisters in adulthood, including brothers who have died as very young children, in a death notice.

As to how seriously one takes the death notice, I am not sure that differences of opinion matter too much at this stage because the only thing which needs to be pursued at this point is a death record for Hannah. Finding more children or a death record for Henry would help but at this stage of the game the Whyte Park family does not include our ancestors and the most important thing about linking our Edward to Hannah's Edward is the link to his place of origin.

However, I think it is certainly highly likely at this stage that Hannah's Edward is our Edward and there was a rift between his first and second families... there are enough clues so far to make that a likely possibility. I also feel it is a bit of a stretch to make things 'fit' better by not taking the death notice seriously.


In terms of 'not taking it too seriously,'  this runs counter to every instinct and all of the knowledge that I have about human nature. Death in those times was taken very, very seriously indeed, partly for religious reasons and partly because there was so much of it.

In eras past, people were actually more homogenous because they were bound by religious and social tradition in ways we are not. This applied to everything from how they dressed, how they wrote, how they talked etc., but it applied to death more than anything.

They took death so seriously that I actually found myself trawling through photographs of the dead, many of them children, which were sourced in Victorian funeral traditions. There was and is something very, very sad, if not traumatic about looking at the face of a dead child.

In many cases these children were propped up next to a living sibling; lying on a bed or couch behind living siblings, 'sitting' on the lap of a parent or in their agonisingly small coffins. Needless to say the parents looked utterly traumatised and no doubt they were. 

I wonder if it comforted them to have an image of their dead child or baby? Somehow it seems so much worse than just a tombstone but that is a modern view of death and I am projecting my own values onto it.

Death, in Victorian England, was a grand and complicated business. There were many social rules in the classes who could afford it about mourning clothes, degrees of mourning, and the length of time for which different mourning colours were to be worn.

http://www.webhistoryofengland.com/?p=414

In fact, if anything they were obsessed with death which makes it more likely that death notices, even if they had to save words to save money, said exactly what they were meant to say. There are so many ways of writing a death notice without using the words 'leaving to mourn.'

In fact the notice would have been cheaper if it had said: One son, five daughters etc. in mourning. There is in fact no need for 'leaving' and if it was a penny a word, the less words the better. These families would also have had to count every penny and that suggests greater, not lesser attention to such things.

http://berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2000/04/05/death.html


The 'death' industry of Victorian times was massive. The death notice was one of the most serious things anyone ever did. People in the colonies travelled hundreds of miles to send letters and to register deaths and notices, when they could.The Victorians had quite rigid rules regarding death and I find it hard to believe that at this time, those living in the colonies were much different.

Ridiculous as it sounds and as it was, even my parents generation, born in Australia in the 1920's and often to parents who had also been born in Australia, would talk about England as home. Immigrants often hold more tightly to the traditions of 'home' than those they have left behind ever do. 

there is no doubt that the poorer classes  in England and Australia could not afford to take part in this commercialized notion of death, although they continuously desired to replicate the mourning etiquette of their social superiors. As such, during times of hardship they would often dye their own clothes black to create a similar effect.

In the  Victorian age, however,  death was more likely to be embraced rather than feared. No doubt there was an aspect of the, 'if you can't fight it, join it,' at work.  In comparison to today's secular society, Victorians held stronger convictions to the teachings of the Bible - the doctrine of the eternal soul and an eventual bodily resurrection. With so much death, particularly of children, no doubt they needed such comfort even more.

I suspect this is why religion tends to have a far more powerful hold in the Third World than the First. When death is ever-present you are going to be looking for answers or comfort of some kind. In these times the working classes in particular had a very short life expectancy mainly because of poor nutrition and poor sanitation. The prevelance of syphilis also caused high numbers of deaths of babies and children.

I suppose it is a given that when one is doing ancestry research you are dealing with the dead most of the time. It just makes their lives more real when one sees images such as those above.  

Sifting through the sands of time!

It is a slow process sifting through the sands of time, grain by grain, trying to establish just how much we really know about our ancestor, Edward Atkins. It is a circuitous process because at this stage we are still trying to 'put together' links which will make it possible or impossible that the Edward who married Hannah Mcleod is also our Edward. 

There is not much more to report at this stage but fellow researcher Luke has been doing some more work and it is worth posting. 

He writes:

 

 I have tried to look for the record I had of an Elizabeth Cox, but cannot seem to find it again. I do remember having a record unless I realised it was the daughter of Edward and Elizabeth Mashford who married Henry Cox in 1878 and then just left her out of the picture as a missing daughter of Edward Atkins and Hannah McLeod.

However, their first child Henry Charles Cox was born in 1880. This made me to re look at my information and my sources concerning Elizabeth Cox again this morning and I am glad that I did.

When I asked my mother about the Cox side of the family she just said she did not know a lot about them. She said for some reason when she was young, her side of the family did not have much to do with the Cox side of the family and as a result, she knew very little about them.

I have a record of an Elizabeth Cox (the daughter of Edward and Elizabeth Mashford) marriage date as 1878, but had no information as to where she got married. My source on her was from Spike Jones' website on the Atkins family. I think he may be related to you Ros and my mother. (N.B. Spike, alias Leonard Jones, is a third cousin on my paternal grandmother's side. His grandfather was my grandmother's brother - Hilda Rose Jones married Charles Vangelios Ross, second son of Mary Atkins and Charles Ross.)

I did a search on Ancestry.com this morning and cannot find a marriage for a Henry Charles Cox and an Elizabeth Atkins. There is an Elizabeth Atkins on the site, but no spouse. I do not know where Spike Jones got his information from on the marriage date of Elizabeth Cox nee Atkins and Henry Charles Cox as 1878. When I do a search on TROVE nothing comes up for a Henry Coches or an Elizabeth Coches. However, there is a listing for COX

“Cox. On May 17th, at the residence of her daughter. Terowie. Elizabeth, relict of Henry Cox. Late of Gladstone. Aged 85 years.”[1]

“Cox on the 18^th June at Wirrabara Henry Charles dearly-beloved husband of Elizabeth Cox aged 81 years late of Gladstone, leaving a wife, two sons, and 2 daughters to mourn their loss. English papers please copy”[2]

“Medlin- COX.-On the 11th April, at St. Alban's Church, Gladstone, by Rev. De Chs, Leonard R, second son of Charles Medlin, Esq, of Perth, Western Australia, to Edith S, second daughter of Mrs. E. Cox of Gladstone. Western Australian papers please copy”[3].

Photo: Elizabeth Mashford Atkins and her son James Haynes Atkins.

Spike Jones date of 1878 as a marriage date of Elizabeth Cox nee Atkins is only 2 years out of the marriage date of Elizabeth Coches nee Atkins of 9/2/1880. Both Elizabeth Cox and Elizabeth Coches father was called Edward Atkins. 

N.B. Writing can be difficult to read on records and  numerals can be difficult to distinguish accurately. It is easy to make mistakes on dates and names.

After looking at my sources again I now think that Elizabeth Coches nee Atkins is the same person as Elizabeth Cox nee Atkins. So as a result, I take back that I think Elizabeth Coches may be a possible missing daughter of Edward Atkins.

I have recently noticed when I was doing some research on my father's side of the family that the computer system that digitised the original English census does not always get the spelling correct. Most of my father’s family came from Highworth in Wiltshire, but the records on Ancestry.com shows the spelling of Highworth as Highwood.  I have been trying to find a death record of my GGGfather Cornelius Clavin, but on Ancestry.com the spelling of “Clavin” is shown as “Clarin” Maybe Henry Cox’s middle name Charles and his last name “Cox” has got mixed up by the computer is shown as “Coches.”

N.B. I have found the name Mashford spelled as Matherford and Chrysantheous, the name of Charlie and Mary Ross's son, spelled as Clesanthows. Cox to Coches is no more of a stretch than either of these mistakes.

As result, Elizabeth Coches could not be one of the missing daughters of Edward Atkins because she is really Edward Atkins’ and Elizabeth Mashfords’ daughter and not the daughter of Hannah McLeod. 

Elizabeth Coches and Elizabeth Cox birthdates are the same.  Elizabeth Cox nee Atkins was born c1858 if you look at the first obituary. Elizabeth Coches was also born in c1858.

Elizabeth Atkins:-  Henry Coches was 31 years of age at the time of his marriage. His father was called Charles Coches. Henry Coches married on the 9/2/1880 to Elizabeth Atkins. She was aged 22 years and her father was called Edward Atkins. The couple married at St John Church at Laura. If Elizabeth Atkins was married at the age of 22 in the year 1880 then she was born in the year 1858.

I cannot find a death record for an Elizabeth Coches on Ancestry.com, but there is one for Elizabeth Cox

Elizabeth Cox
Death Date:	17 May 1943
Death Place:	South Australia
Registration Year:	1941-1945
Registration Place:	South Australia
Page Number:	2658
Volume Number:	664

As a result, I do not think there was ever a person called Elizabeth Coches.

Photo: Edward Atkins with Mary (left) and Elizabeth (right) circa 1870.

I think I agree with Kylie that there are no more daughters of Edward Atkins, who died at Whyte Park, Wirrabarra, to be found.

Ros” maybe you and Beryl at SAGHS are both right about the obituary of Edward Atkins. In your email Ros you said “to mourn their loss is just so specific” but Beryl at the SAGHS said “She thought that the “mourn their loss” would often include the living and the dead regardless of the phrases” Maybe people living in the 1800s did not consider a dead member of the family “as dead” in the sense you and I would understand “dead” today. 

(N.B. I still find it a stretch to believe that the line 'leaving to mourn their loss' could include the dead as well as the living. My instinct, if indeed the two Edwards are one, is that Henry did survive to adulthood and was the one son mentioned. )

People in the 1800s believed that people did not die, but were alive with Jesus in heaven so the obituary was “specific” and Ann Pole who had died before Edward Atkins is listed as one of the people to “mourn their Loss” even though she was no longer alive. May be it was a sign of the respect of the dead that they were still alive in the memory of the living and hence were included in an obituary.

N.B.  Except it just does not make sense. And that is because of the word 'leaving.' He is dead and those who are mourning have been 'left.' If they wanted  to acknowledge living and dead there are other ways of phrasing it but from my understanding of history, amateur that I am, but well read, the Victorians were as pragmatic as anyone and I simply don't believe this death notice refers to dead and living children.

Henry Edward Atkins and Joseph Atkins were long dead and hence no longer  alive in the memory of the living. As a result, the one remaining son just may be James Atkins and Elizabeth Cox, Mary Ross and Elizabeth Mashford were cut out of the obituary due to a split in the family.

N.B. Possible but not likely. Again, social courtesies being what they were I don't believe a son from a second marriage would be mentioned while two daughters from the same marriage are excluded. It does not make sense. 

Ros: Just as a thought about church records and when a church was built. When I was a young boy growing up in Tea Tree Gully the Catholics priest moved into a house across the road from us there was no church built. For many years we use to have mass in the priest’s garage, but records were still kept showing that somebody was baptized etc at St David’s even thought there was no church  built. So I think you are right Ros that even though there was no church built, Priests were around to undertake their functions.

 N.B. Yes, I think tracing church records is a good way to go because priests were on the spot pretty much from the beginning and keeping records long before churches were built. 

I also think you are right Ros if we can find a death record of Hannah Atkins nee McLeod then it would really throw a lot of light upon if there was one or two Edward Atkins.

If a Hannah Atkins died before Edward Atkins marriage to Elizabeth Mashford then it would indicate only one Edward Atkins. However, if there is a listing for a death of a Hannah Atkins nee McLeod after the marriage of Edward Atkins to Elizabeth Mashford then it indicated two Edward Atkins.

At this stage, I am still leaning on the side that there is only one Edward Atkins and not two, but to get that finial bit of evidence would just be fantastic.

And yes it would. Finding some conclusive fact which would establish once and for all whether or not our Edward is the Edward who died at Whyte Park would either make much which has been posted on this blog valuable family history or useless digression.

 

One more piece of information as we try to find Edward Atkins.

As of today we have one more piece of information which helps to cross the t's and dot the i's as we try to establish if there is only one Edward Atkins or two.

I have had a response from the Anglican minister for Clare, the Reverend Joan Reed, regarding my query and  she says:

I have checked the church burial records and have found a record of the death of a Joseph Atkins who died on November 28^th 1855 aged 3 ? years who is buried at Bundaleer.? I didn’t find any record of the death of Hannah McLeod Atkins or Henry.

So now we know that young Joseph did not live to adulthood, marry and have children but Henry may have done. It does not take us far but it does take us further because we have one more piece of information about the family of Hannah and Edward Atkins.Little Joseph, born in 1851 must have been four when he died and was buried at Bundaleer. His sister Emily, born 1854 in Bundaleer, means the family moved to Bundaleer from the Clare Valley sometime between 1851 and 1854.

It is pretty clear at this point that Hannah and Edward moved to Bundaleer and it looks likely that Henry lived to adulthood and could well be the 'one son' mentioned in the death notice for the Edward Atkins who died at Whyte's Park, Wirrabarra Forest. 

The Reverend Reed has passed my query on to the Reverend in charge of the Ministry District of Southern Flinders which includes Wirrabarra so fingers are crossed that there might be some further information which comes to light. A death notice for Hannah Atkins would help enormously or a second death notice for another Edward Atkins would solve the mystery once and for all.

Taking advantage of tangents and turns

PHOTO: Charleston in the Adelaide Hills.


Going off on a tangent is part and parcel of ancestry research. If the direct approach does not work then try taking a turn toward something less direct.

In this case I have decided it might be useful to do some research on the one Joseph Atkins we have found in South Australia.

He is too young to be the father of our Edward but there is always the possibility that he could be the brother. I came across some information on this Joseph and have sent off emails to those who were posting the information. In the meantime here is what we have on Joseph Atkins, possible brother of Edward Atkins.

This Joseph Atkins lived in the tiny hamlet of Charleston in the Adelaide Hills and he was born in 1816, just three years before the birth of our Edward Atkins, if the age on his marriage certificate with Elizabeth is correct. Even if not, it is close enough for them to be brothers.

Joseph Atkins, his wife Leah, nee Clarke and their two children, William and Harriet are listed as passengers on the David Malcolm which arrived from London, via Plymouth on December 21, 1847.


If it was our Edward who arrived with Hannah and Daniel McLeod, on the Eliza, May 14, 1840 then this is seven years later and certainly could fit with family emigrant reunion.If it is not our Edward then it is possible that our Edward followed his older brother and family out to the colonies because we have a record of him for 1849.

Joseph's wife, Leah Clark(e) was born in Aston Abbotts, Buckinghamshire, in 1820 and she married Joseph Atkins on June 2, 1844 in Cublington, Buckinghamshire. This is not to say he was from Buckinghamshire but there is a good chance that he was. Buckinghamshire is an 42 miles north-west of London, from where Joseph Atkins and his family and the E. Atkins who travelled with Hannah McLeod, took ship to Australia.

A Joseph Atkins was recorded as being destitute in the mid 1850's with four children. Records posted show Frederick baptised 21 Jun 1844  just 19 days after his parents married; Harriet born 12 Oct 1846 both born in England before the family emigrated; Thomas born 19 May 1849 Kensington,  Adelaide;William 1851; Leah/Eliza 17 Nov 1853 and Mary Ann (25 Sep 1855 - 15th mar 1856) Charleston.

Joseph's wife Leah, baptised 18 Feb 1821 died August 30, 1858 Charleston. Within four years it looks like the children were orphans.

The obituary for Harriet nee ATKINS says both her parents were deceased by Harriet's sixteenth year, meaning Joseph ATKINS died c1862 and this fits with a death record:

South Australian Deaths Registrations 1842 to 1915
Joseph ADKINS (incorrect spelling but par for the course with this research)
Date: 1862-12-06
Age: 46y
Status: N
Relative: (not recorded)
Residence: Marryatville
Death Place: Marryatville
District Code: Ade / Book: 15 / Page: 13


There is also a record of a William Atkins marrying in South Australia, father Joseph Atkins, in 1861, aged 24 years to Sophia Staples and again, seven years later, presumably following the death of his first wife, to Emma King (nee Palin).


This means the Wm. on the ship's record was ten when the family arrived in South Australia and the Hr. which is Harriet was one or two. Frederick would have been two or three but he appears not to be listed on the ship's record. None of this is exceptional and such records are as variable and unreliable as ages.

Or this William is not the son of Joseph and Leah given the fact that the death notice for Samuel Frederick states that he was the eldest son. Not that it matters. Establishing facts for this family is not what it is about. The goal is putting information out into the ether which might bring facts to hand which link our Edward to this family and therefore make their ancestry of use to us.

Harriet married 1866 aged 21years and Eliza married 1876 aged 27years. William died at the age of 42 and his death notice states that he is the youngest son of the late Joseph and Leah Atkins.
'Brother of Mrs. D. Guidi (Harriet),Mrs. J. P. Edgecombe (Eliza-Leah),and Thomas. Atkins, Victoria.'


Samuel Frederick Atkins moved to Victoria and went on to have a large family:

Pioneer Index. Victoria 1836-1888
Samuel ATKINS,
Birth Place: ADELAIDE
Event: M
Year: 1871
Spouse: Rosanna MCKENNA
Reg Number: 353

CHILDREN

Leah Harriet ATKINS
Father: Samuel Frederic
Mother: Rosan MCKENNA
Birth Place: MORTLAKE
Year: 1873
Reg Number: 18694

Isabella ATKINS
Father: Samuel
Mother: Rosanna MCKENNA
Birth Place: STAR
Year: 1875
Reg Number: 12596

William Frederick ATKINS
Father: Samuel
Mother: Rosannah MCKENNA
Birth Place: STAR
Year: 1876
Reg Number: 19448

Sarah Jane ATKINS
Father: Samuel
Mother: Rose Ann MCKENNA
Birth Place: STAR
Year: 1881
Reg Number: 12633

Catherine ATKINS
Father: Samuel
Mother: Rosanna MCKENNA
Birth Place: STAR
Year: 1883
Reg Number: 12662

Joseph Samuel ATKINS
Father: Samuel
Mother: Rosanna MCKENNA
Birth Place: STAR
Year: 1885
Reg Number: 29065

Pioneer Index. Victoria 1836-1888
Samuel Frederick ATKINS
Event: D
Father: Joseph
Mother: Leah CLARK
Age: 41
Birth Place:
Death Place: ST ARNAUD
Year: 1886
Reg Number: 14636

ATKINS -On the 10th November 1886, at St. Arnaud. Victoria, of typhoid, Frederick. beloved husband of Rose Atkins, eldest son of the late Joseph Atkins, of Charleston, and beloved brother of T.W. Atkins, Mrs. D. Guidi. and Mrs. J. P. Edgecombe, of this city, aged 41 years. Blessed are they who die in the Lord.

There may be absolutely no connection between this family and ours but it is worth putting the information out on the internet to see if something comes up. If there is a connection then it raises the chances of finding out, circuitously where our Edward is from.

It is a flimsy link but with nowhere else to go for the moment it is worth a try.

I also finally heard back from the Anglican Church Archive and have sent them some questions which may or may not bring results.

N.B. And a note from Luke suggesting an Atkins connection which may mean I am on a better track than I thought. Given the tendency of early settlers to emigrate where family members were living and to remain close to family members and if we are 'related' to most of the Atkin's in South Australia, I would not be surprised to find that Hannah's Edward is our Edward. But we are not there yet.

'I do not think you are going out on a tangent at all. exploring ever angle is important I think. It would not surprise me if Edward Atkins had brothers and sister in South Australia it is just finding the link. It reminds me of something my grandmother use to tell my mother "nearly all the Atkins you met we are related to somehow" that is a good clue that maybe Edward Atkins had an extended family in South Australia.'

Some new family photos and some thoughts

 Fellow family researcher, Luke Scane Atkins, the grandson of Roy Atkins and great-grandson of James Atkins and Annie Clavin Atkins, has come up with a few new family photos which are worth posting  and some tidbits of information to add to our collection.

Luke writes: I have come across just few bits of interest. Below is an article from the South Australian Register Wednesday 13th July 1853, I am pretty sure it is a reference to our Edward Atkins especially as the matter was heard at the Clare Local Court and of the Bundaleer connection.

“Dipkosey V Atkins. Action for £8 12s. 2d, for spirits…The plaintiff made an application to the Court to allow the case to stand over for a month, for the production of a material witness on his behalf. The defendant objected to this, as he said he had to come from Bundaleer. The Court consented to an adjournment; plaintiff to pay the costs, and also to allow the defendant mileage according to the rules of Court from Bundaleer.”

I think Edward Atkins did live at Bundaleer somewhere. I have tried to look at cemeteries in the area to see if any cemetery had a burial listing for Hannah Atkins, but no such luck. Both Edward and her had to have been buried somewhere. I know it is a long shot, but may be Hannah Atkins did not die in South Australia. What if she had to go back to England for some reason and died while there or had family member’s living interstate. She could have travelled there and died interstate. All Cemeteries have a listing of who is buried within the grounds. I just cannot understand why we cannot find a record of her death or burial. But at the same time we cannot find one for Edward as well. May be they were buried on private land and hence there is no public record.

NB: There was an Edward Atkins at Bundaleer and he was married to Hannah McLeod. What we do not yet know is if this Edward is our Edward.

I did find a reference to Sarah Stacey nee Atkins at the Nariddy Cemetery. (See below)

 
Nariddy Cemetery Notes

Compiled by Russell and Liz Smart

“Renshaw Desmond James  -- Infant Desmond died 27-8-1922 at Narridy, where he was born 3-6-1922 -- the son of Arthur Edward Renshaw and Mabel Rose Stacey.
Arthur Edward Renshaw was born 30-3-1877, the Hundred of Willochra -- the son of George Renshaw and Mary Ann nee Heaver.
Mabel Rose Stacey was the daughter of Walter James Stacey and Sarah nee Atkinson, born 30-7-1883 at Bundaleer Springs. Arthur and Mable married on 30-11-1902 at the home of Mrs. J. T. Blood of Narridy.
Arthur died 16-8-1963, Mabel died 1-7-1967 they are buried Dublin Cemetery.

Arthur and Mabel had a large family, but a very sad life, their first four children did not survive longer than 3 months. Baby Desmond was no.12 child, the remaining siblings surviving to adults. The other infants were interred at Yacka and Jamestown Cemeteries.) Baby Desmond Renshaw does not have a headstone.”

Not a lot of information is here, but it is just that I find it interesting that Sarah is listed as nee Atkinson and not Atkins. It just shows the different types of name you have to look under to find anything sometimes.

I have noticed that you have been talking about Rocky River in some of your emails. Below is a photo of my grandfather Roy Atkins aged 11 years. He is shown with the Rocky River which runs through Booyoolie Station. I just thought it is easy sometime to see the things that we are talking about. Rocky River is not a big river and the tern river is misleading. I think it is more of a creek. However, I think during the winter with a lot of rain it could flood to a large size.

 
I also thought it might be interesting for you to see what Booyoolie Station looks like. These photos were taken a few years ago when my Aunty Blanche went up there for an Atkins reunion.

 The photo below is of Annie Atkins nee Clavin, James Atkins wife. She is shown outside the house that both she and James Atkins lived in. The house was on Booyoolie Station itself. The house is now gone and the second photo shows where it originally stood on Booyoolie Station.

 There must have been a lot of workers on Booyoolie Station if the station owners had separate homes on their land for the workers and families to live in. After James Atkins died, the owners allowed Annie Atkins and her 10 children to live there for free although she must have worked around the station to earn a living.

I did not know that George Lewis also worked on Booyoolie Station. And yes the story of George Lewis dying of an accident came from the oral history handed down in my family. As we all know it is wrong and they may have being referring to John Lewis.


Luke also came across this photo, of Georgina Anastasia Ross Hillard and her family. She is far right and her husband Eli is far left with the children in the middle and what looks like one grand-child.

 This photograph was taken outside Auntie Teenie's house in Hamley Bridge where we frequently visited during my childhood. By that stage her husband Eli was dead and so was her daughter Betty, leaving Auntie Teenie to raise her two grandchildren, Aileen and Wayne, who were eleven when their mother, who was divorced from their father, was killed in a car accident in the Barossa Valley. It was a tragic time for the Hillard family coming just days after the death of Teenie's daughter-in-law who died after giving birth to her tenth child. The baby also died.

Tidbits of information continue to come in but no real facts

 

  PHOTO: The old Bundaleer Railway Station.


The trouble with ancestry research is that names are often spelled incorrectly and dates are wrong. It is a complex enough process without such complications.

One spelling of Mashford came up as Matheford and we have varying ages for Elizabeth and her mother Mary on different records. How to make the challenging even more challenging.


Unless some new information comes up on Trove it is death notices which will be required for any further progress I suspect. Hannah's would be great or a second obituary for Edward Atkins either put in by Elizabeth and their children for the same date of death which would tie the two together, for for a different date which would solve the riddle once and for all.

It would also help to find the sons of Edward Atkins and Hannah McLeod, either Henry or Joseph, for further clues toward proving whether there are two Edwards or one. A Henry Atkins died in Clare on March 2, 1887, aged 52 which would have him born in 1835 which is much too young for parent's marrying in 1843 and does not fit the birth record of Henry Edward Atkins in 1843 to Edward and Hannah.
But could the age at death be wrong and this Henry Atkins is ours dying at 44 not 52. It is unlikely but it is possible. This Henry  had a son called George Atkins. George had three daughters all born in Clare. 


We now have birth records showing Edward and Hannah were living in the Clare Valley from 1845 when daughter Jane was born. She was followed by Margaret in 1847, Sarah in 1850 and Joseph in 1851. Emily was born at Bundaleer in 1854.


The key to the mystery is a death record for Hannah McLeod. Anything prior to the date of Edward's marriage to Elizabeth Mashford Lewis makes her possible as a first wife. This would fit with the oral history heard by Luke from his side of the family about an unknown first wife.

But nothing has come up in the Clare region and it was the main regional centre until the beginning of the 20th century. A researcher has come up empty handed after checking newspapers, most of which started much later than our original search time-frame: The Port Pirie Gazette in 1876, The Northern Argus in Clare from 1869 and the Jamestown Agricultural Review from 1878.


Another researcher has been in touch after reading the blog and Holly found a death registered for the death of an Edward Atkins in 1884.


She also found an Edward Atkins, convict, who absconded in 1851 but with an age of twenty he is too young to fit our Edward or Hannah's Edward and was a New South Wales convict for quite some time after 1851. 


Holly also made an important point in regard to the Whyte Park obituary listing five daughters and we know that Hannah and Edward had at least four daughters, Emily, Margaret, Jane and Sarah and probably a fifth, Ann, who was dead by 1891, leaving only four daughters. However, there is every possibility that there was another daughter born to the couple for whom we do not have a birth record and she was alive at the time of her father's death.


Anyway, Holly's point was that if there were two families for our one Edward, the obituary was probably placed in the paper from the first family and sometimes they do not include half-siblings in obits. Given that Hannah and Edward had two sons, George and Joseph, it is also likely that one of them had died by this time and this would account for the one son. 


So, either there is another obituary somewhere put in by Elizabeth and her two daughters and son, or there is not. If this did exist and could be found and the dates matched then we would have our Edward. However, if he was living with one of the daughters from his first marriage while Elizabeth was alive there is the good chance that he was estranged from his second family.


Another point Holly made, which she found interesting, and it is just that, albeit a flimsy link but Jane, Ann, Margaret and Mary were all married around Christmas Day. It could be chance or it could be something else.... therein lies the mystery. Whatever the answer this is a fragile link between two families, whether there be one father or two.


Other fragile links include:
Sometime between 1851 and 1854 Edward and Hannah moved from Clare to Bundaleer. This would have been Bundaleer Station owned by J.B. Hughes who also owned Booyoolie where James Haynes Atkins later worked.  Bundaleer later became Jamestown in 1871 and is 75km from Clare. Wirrabarra is about 35km from Clare. 

So in 1854 we have Edward Atkins, previously listed as a labourer for the Clare Valley records of his children's births, living at Bundaleer, occupation blacksmith and by 1857 we have Edward Atkins living in Wirrabarra, occupation blacksmith, married to Elizabeth Mashford Lewis.


Another fragile link is that Emily and Margaret Atkins, whom we know were the daughters of Hannah and Edward were married at the same place, the residence of John Pole, a shepherd at Booleroo Station (35kms north of Wirrabarra and also owned by J.B. Hughes.) Our Edward is recorded as a shepherd on the birth notice for his son James Haynes Atkins.

 

Shreds of connection but no real progress

 PHOTO: Old Shepherd's hut.

I have not had time to do any research for the past couple of months and we have in that time gathered only shreds of connection but it seemed time for an update.

Attempts to find records of deaths for Henry,Edward, Joseph, Hannah or Anne Atkins have brought us no closer to establishing a connection between our Edward Atkins and the Edward Atkins who married Hannah McLeod and who died at Whyte Park, Wirrabarra.  Kylie's search through Clare records came up empty.

She said:  I could also go through all the surnames in a list and could find no alternatives that matched.  I also searched the exact date of Edwards death according to the paper and nothing even close came up.  If you think of it, there is the marriage only for this family until the girls got married.  No births or deaths were registered.

So the next step may be the burials from SAGHS next time you’re there Ros.  They might also have some ideas as to other sources for deaths.  I know there is a CD of unregistered SA BMD’s that have been discovered by other means. 

I have the “Register’s family notice” books that go up to 1870, and I have gone through the Register, in Trove, through to 1878.  I am just doing all the family notices, correcting just the surnames as I go.  I have found nothing for this family yet, but quite a few for other lines, so a worthwhile exercise.  It takes me a day or two to do a year.  Some years are worse than others. 

 I  have also got a copy of “Balliere’s SA Gazetteer and road guide”.  It gives the following populations for the area, for 1866:

Victoria County – Booyoolie area  889  up by 351 from 1861.

Stanley County – including Clare, Auburn Penwortham and Watervale  6935 up by 2101 since 1861.   Clare council area, included Penwortham but not Watervale,  had 2593. 

Burra County  - 4221, a decrease of 1262 since 1861.

Penwortham is said to have a hundred occupants but the surrounding district is thickly populated for a farming district.

 The runs are mostly described by the population of sheep, with most having about the 40,000 mark.  I wonder how many  sheep a shepherd looked after.  Also, how many people lived on the Runs.  Booyoolie had about 40 people just at the meat processing plant in the late 1860’s.  I would be surprised if they had less than 50 people to manage the runs. 

 Some other indications of population over the period.  Estimated 2000 living in the northern area in the 1842 census.  Watervale had a population of at least a hundred people in 1856. 

 At this point in time the only link is the name Edward Atkins, the area and the profession of blacksmith. The time-line is also possible. There is a vague connection in terms of employer in that the Hughes family which owned Booyoolie Run, near Jamestown and Gladstone-Rocky River, Wirrabarra, also owned Booleroo Station, further north of Wirrabarra, formerly Charlton.

The Booyoolie Run ran from Gladstone to Laura and the small Clare Valley town was named after H.B. Hughes's wife, when the land at that section of the Run was released. There is also a report that refers to Ten Mile Hut, one of the shepherd's huts situated ten miles from the homestead. The Run was huge, listed as 194 square miles. Booyoolie also spelled Booyooloo Run was about fifteen miles long and incorporating Wirrabarra would be 300 square miles- more than enough space for two Edwards.

The run is situated on the N road via Clare, 20 miles E of Port Peri (Pirie) (24m) 45 NW of Clare (45.7) and 130 m N of Adelaide.Both James and George Lewis worked on the Booyoolie Station.  George lived in Gladstone at one time while working at Booyoolie.  He gave his address as Hundreds of Booyoolie, Laura later in life.  

Fellow researcher, Cherrie Sherriff, connected to the Pole family came up with the following:

Edward Atkins    1830  Florentia    (on convict muster record but not transcribed to ship record)  24 yo Gloucester

compared to

Edwin Atkins      1830  Florentia  (transcribed to ship record)  19 yo  from Yas Plains.

But Kylie's research makes it unlikely there are two people involved. She said: 

One reason I think there is only one person here is that there are no conflicting records, no conviction for Edward Atkins, no ship record etc, and there is no Edwin Atkins in the 1837 muster.  If you check the muster record the ancestry.com year of birth is worked off the arrival date not the current year.  I think the age is the current age, 24 (and he should have been at least 25 if he was 19 in 1830), take that from 1837, not 1830 and you end up with a close enough year of birth to be the same person.  It is also possible that this is our Edward, and that he started out as Edwin.  Interestingly the comment I have for Yas Plains in 1835 is that there is only a few scoundrelly convict shepherds there.

PHOTO: Challenging conditions existed for convict shepherds in the area around the South Australian and New South Wales border.

But this information also provides another shaky link because Yas Plains is just inside the New South Wales border with South Australia, some 300 kilometres from Gladstone and clearly somewhere that ex-convicts, working as shepherds were living.  There is every chance, our Edward or one or both of the Edwards if there are indeed two, did begin life as convicts and did travel into South Australia following their release.

This takes us back again to an earlier line of research; was Edward Atkins a convict?  There is no easy answer to that question but at this point in time I think we have to assume there are two Edwards and proceed accordingly. We know our Edward married in 1857 and was living in the Wirrabarra area working first as a blacksmith and then as a shepherd. We also know his family moved later to Gladstone, South Australia but we do not know if he moved with them. 

Beyond that we cannot be sure of anything let alone where he was born or when and how he came to Australia. Two steps forward and three steps back seems to be the order of the day.

However the number of family researchers has grown with Cherrie's involvement and with a few of us dabbling in facts I have high hopes that ultimately the mystery will be revealed. Until that time however there is little point in getting research done in the United Kingdom. We need a place of birth before that can happen.