Genealife in Lockdown in Australia
Autumn in my Southern Highland, NSW garden
This is week two of Alex Daw's Genealife in Lockdown Blogging challenge for National Family History Month. You can read about Alex's challenge here and if you would like to read my blog post from last week you can find it here.
Playing with phone Apps we would not have thought using of prior to Covid.
After travelling home from Chicago via LA I had to isolate in my Southern Highland home for fourteen days mandatory quarantine. I discovered just how vigilant NSW Health was being when I put my bins out on the footpath. Noticing a piece of rubbish nearby, I walked a few feet past my driveway to pick it up, only to have my phone ping and tell me "You are leaving your house. Please go home." I was quite happy however, that strict measures were being taken to keep myself and everyone else safe.
My middle daughter Siobhan and her husband Charlie had kindly driven two hours to the Southern Highlands from Sydney the day before I arrived home to fill my refrigerator with fresh food. They also left a beautiful bunch of flowers in the entry of my home which was a lovely welcome especially as I couldn't see any family for a fortnight.
My vegetable garden was completely overgrown after my long visit to the USA but it yielded a delicious supply of home grown vegetables during my two weeks of isolation.
Home grown veggies!
Having to isolate for two weeks did not seem difficult for this genealogist since it meant I had unlimited time for family history research and I had much to follow up on from my visit to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. While researching in Salt Lake City, one of my exciting discoveries was tracing a branch of Nottinghamshire ancestors back in time into the county of Leicestershire. Having never known I had ancestors in Leicestershire before, this is where I began my lockdown isolation research.
© Copyright Tim Heaton and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
While looking at baptism records on Findmypast for Shepshed in Leicestershire, I noticed that the name of my 12th great grandfather Peter Ollerensha was mentioned frequently in the church records. This led to the discovery that he was the vicar of St Botolph Church in Shepshed. His name was recorded on each page because it was he who married, baptised and buried the people of Shepshed. Finding an occupation for an ancestor in the 16th century is not easy and so this was an exciting find.
Peter Ollerensha, Vicar of Shepshede, Parish records Whenever I hit a brick wall I find it best to research another branch of family. Often it is better to come back and look with fresh eyes at a later time so as soon as I hit a dead end in Leicestershire I decided to research another branch of my English ancestors. On my visit to, and drive around, England in 2019 before attending RootsTech London, my husband David and I had visited the tiny village of Polstead in Suffolk where I had traced my Stowe family back to the early 17th century. I found it very moving to see the church and baptismal font that ancestors were baptised in so long ago.
Baptismal Font in the Medieval St Mary's Church, Polstead, Suffolk, Image Sharn White ©
As part of researching my family history I always look at newspapers. Often the most interesting family stories can be found in newspapers and fortunately for us many newspapers are digitised and online now. I searched the British Newspaper Archive for 'Stowe in Polstead', expecting to find little about my very ordinary farming Stowe ancestors of Polstead, Suffolk. I was in for a surprise!
The Cock Inn, Polstead, Suffolk 2019, Image Sharn White ©My Stowe family of Polstead seemed to be unable to stay out of the news. I discovered a wealth of news items about Stowe family members and the wide range of misdemeanors they committed in and around Polstead in the 1800's. Several were charged with being drunk and disorderly at the Cock Inn, one was repeatedly charged with poaching and another stabbed his brother by the pond in Polstead. Often it is our felonious ancestors who made the most headlines in newspapers and I find that sometimes our worst behaved forebears can be the most interesting ancestors.
The Pond at Polstead, © Paul Farmer, Licensed for reuse under Creative Commons License
One crime which particularly intrigued me was the burning of a red barn in Polstead in 1843, by Samuel Stowe, the son of Francis and Pheobe Stowe. These names were familiar to me because they were on my family tree. What puzzled me, though, was why the burning of a barn was news that made headlines all around England. As I continued reading news articles I discovered a shocking story about the Red Barn in Polstead, Suffolk.
The Red barn Murder, The Suffolk Chronicle, 3 May 1828, p3., British Newspaper Archives
As I reached page eight of my newspaper search I saw the title of a news item which read "The Red Barn Murder". This murder was notorious in England however, living in Australia I had not heard of it. The mention of my relatives Phoebe and Francis Stowe in the news item immediately caught my attention.
The Marten Cottage, Polstead, Postcard in author's possession.
In 1827, in the sleepy village of Polstead, Maria Marten, daughter of Mole Catcher, Thomas Marten mysteriously disappeared after telling her family she was meeting her lover and father of her late baby, William Corder at the Red barn on his father's farm. Maria told her family that she and William were to meet in the Red Barn situated on his father's farm and then they would travel to Ipswich to marry. Maria was never seen again and despite William offering Maria's family a number of excuses as to why Maria had not written to them. a whole year went by with no one hearing from the young woman.
William Corder, an original 1828 news clipping purchased on ebay.Researching the murder further I discovered that Maria's body had been found in the Red Barn on the 19th of April 1828, a year after her disappearance and following a dream that her step mother had. My ancestor Pheobe Stowe had been suspicious of William Corder ever since he had borrowed a spade from her cottage on the very night that Maria went missing. The Stowe cottage was quite near the red barn and Pheobe regularly saw and spoke with William Corder. Pheobe, cited in newspapers as being the village gossip, questioned William each time she saw him and his strange replies made her increasingly suspicious that foul play was involved in Maria's disappearance. She became a crucial witness in the Red Barn Murder trial along with her husband Francis.
As sure as I am that you would like to hear more about The Red Barn murder and my ancestors part in the event and trial but I am not going to give away any more of this story as I it deserves a blog post of its own. Blog post to come!
Launching the #ANZAncestryTime Twitter Chat, October 2020
Spring arrived in the Southern Highlands and I came up with the idea to start an Australian and New Zealand Twitter Chat. Along with my wonderful genea-friends Fran Kitto, author of the TravelGenee blog and Pauleen Cass of Family History Across the Seas blog we formed the admin team of what is now a successful weekly family history Twitter Chat. After setting up a website (a huge thankyou to Fran for her technology wonders!), Twitter accounts, a Facebook page, a number of entertaining zoom calls and following lots of publicity, we launched the first ever #ANZAncestryTime Twitter Chat in October 2020. Every Tuesday night since, we have posted questions or prompts about different genealogy topics and along with our wonderful team of hosts which has included Alex Daw, Maggie Gaffney (NZ), Jennifer Jones, Shauna Hicks and Seonaid Harvey Lewis (NZ) we have enjoyed interesting, informative and very enjoyable discussions. The amazing Sue Wyatt from Tasmania is our official #ANZAncestryTime blogger. Sue writes a blog called O'er The Seas We Go and she kindly writes a weekly summary of our twitter chats which makes catching up and keeping up much easier.
We have all had to learn to type at a miraculously fast speed to keep up with the lively chat. We are thrilled to have had people from England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland join us each week along with those from Australia and New Zealand. The chat has proved to be a wonderful way to stay connected with genea-friends and we all learn something new from each other every week!
Peelwood Cemetery where my husband's ancestors are buried.Towards the end of 2020 in Australia we were very fortunate to live relatively freely while the rest of the world struggled with large numbers of people with Covid. My weekends consisted of drives around country NSW enjoying the wonderful views in National Forests, navigating off road tracks and deciding whether or not to cross flooded remote dirt roads. Being a family historian, of course, country drives always involve stopping at cemeteries and finding the graves of ancestors.
A view of Bungonia Gorge on a weekend drives
In 2020 I prepared a number of family history presentations which included two for the first Australian online Family History conference which had been originally planned to be held in Queensland on the beautiful Sunshine Coast. The Family History Downunder Conference was moved to 2021 and one of my presentations was on Using Google Earth Tours and Movie Maker for Telling Family History Stories and the other was about House History Research. Online presentations became a new way of life for family historians and presenters.
A Screenshot from one of my Google Earth Powerpoint Presentations
Among the events cancelled throughout 2020 was the annual Southern Highlands Tulip Festival which is held each year in Corbett Gardens in Bowral. As a local to the area I quite enjoyed strolling through the gardens without the huge crowds the tulips attract each year although I couldn't help but be concerned for how local businesses must have missed the tourists.
A photo I took in Corbett Gardens in October 2020
A splendid display of Waratahs in the town of Roberston also added colour to The Southern Highland. 2020 was a strange year as grand-childrens' birthdays went by celebrated with zoom calls and posted gifts instead of birthday parties. Facetime calls became a much more important part of my family life and a wonderful way to read books, sing songs with and talk with my grandchildren.
Banksias near the Railway Station in Robertson, Spring 2020, Image Sharn White
One of the highlights of 2020 was that our family tree was added to with the birth of two new beautiful granddaughters, born three months apart, to my middle and youngest daughters. Covid lockdown was a difficult time for birthing babies with no visitors permitted at hospitals and few visitors allowed in homes. Possibly the hardest part of this Covid pandemic for myself has been seeing my family and grandchildren far less than I would normally do. Sydney, where they live, is in a strict lockdown as I write this blog post and living in a regional area, I cannot travel to see them nor can they visit me.
Title Deeds and Probate records I found in an Antique Store in Mittagong, NSW
Between writing presentations, researching family history, writing a book and exploring the NSW countryside in 2020, I made an exciting discovery in an antique store in Mittagong in the Southern Highlands. I found a rather large bundle of Title Deeds and Probate Records and of course I purchased them. I am sure there will be a blog to come about these wonderful old documents. I find it sad when valuable family documents end up in a store for sale and I hope I can track down some of the families and return these to them to.
My Family Christmas
2020 came to a close with a family Christmas celebration for which I am very grateful. There were no travel restrictions at the time and we were all able to enjoy a wonderful day few days of fun family time together in the Southern Highlands. A planned annual holiday to the Sunshine Coast in January had to be cancelled however and this marked the beginning of a new year of Covid Lockdowns.
Next Week: 2021 - a year of online family history conferences and lockdowns.
