Evidence Explained

Posted on by April 8, 2016
Reply

I have learned so much about Genealogy over the last few weeks. With both the start of the Diploma of Family History at UTAS and also the Future Learn Course- Researching your Family Tree there has been so much to absorb and so much amazing information. One thing that stands out is the Website- Evidence Explained. This has a bunch of Quick Lessons on it that are about different aspects of Genealogy.

One of the Quick Lessons talks about the FAN Principle- researching those around the person that you are trying to research to try and find them through those who are around. This is something that I had started to do for Mary Russell nee Gransden, who I am still unable to find much about once she moves to Bathurst and who I still can’t find death details for. So I am really hoping that this will give me some good leads. In particular her older brother Robert Gransden, who arrived in Australia later than Mary bought some property in Concord-

1857-64
A transaction from Robert GRANSDEN to John WOODS Book 78 No 743
Lot 3 Section 6 Burton St, Village of Longbottom, Parish of Concord, County Cumberland.

(Argh, the days before I kept better records. I don’t know where I found this and will have to go searching for it again).

Is it possible that Mary lived at this address? There is also something else that may be of interest in this transaction. The name Woods. Robert Stone Gransden, the Robert Gransden who bought this land, his mothers maiden name is Stone. His fathers name is Robert Wood Gransden, his mothers maiden name is Wood. So is the John Woods who Robert engaged in this land deal with, related in any way.

I need to find out exactly when this land was bought and sold and then look at whether or not a dwelling of any sort was put on the land. Then see what else I can find. There is a Mary Russell who was buried in the Camperdown Cemetery. She died in the Parish of Cumberland in 1854 at 52 years of age. No further details are known. It is possible that this Mary Russell, no further details, could be my Mary Ann Russell nee Gransden no longer living with her husband.

Camperdown Cemetery

Mary and William’s last child was born in 1854, this death is just two months later. Did Mary become ill after her last child was born and move to Sydney to be closer to medical attention? Or did something else happen to her. Mary Ann Russell nee Gransden does not seem to be mentioned in any further records. I have been unable to find any other likely death for her. But, it is not enough to say that this may be her. I need to find some information to confirm that. So I will be searching for friends and family who may be in the area. Plus I need to try and find out if there is a relevant headstone inscription for the Camperdown Cemetery.

Camperdown Cemtery

The Camperdown Cemetery was founded n 1848 and consecrated in 1849, so less than 10 years before the Mary Russell death information that I have. The Camperdown Cemetery replaced the two earlier Sydney Cemeteries and is the only one that is still partially intact. In 1868 the cemetery was closed to further purchase. There were lots of complaints about the bad air around the cemetery. This was because of the pauper graves that were left open during the day as pauper burials occurred twice a day in communal graves, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. So often the graves were left open until the afternoon burials had been completed before they were closed up. This would have been incredibly unsavoury in a hot Australian summer.

In 1946 the Camperdown Cemetery was so over grown and and the body of a murdered girl was found in the cemetery. This prompted the council into action but in many ways, this was not a good thing. The Cemetery was resumed with lots of the land turned into park land. The tomb stones were attached with iron pins to the walls of the remaining cemetery or used as pavers. Many of the tomb stones were cracked and defaced. Over years the iron pins expanded with the weather and cracked more of the tomb stones. So many of the tomb stones no longer exist or are in such bad repair that they cannot be read.

Graves stones along the walls of Camperdown Cemetery

So, will I be able to find a headstone for Mary Russell nee Gransden? Will she have even been well off enough to have had one? If not, are there any places that I can go to find copies of the old inscriptions? If not, I will have to widen my search even further to find out, if it is possible if the death transcription I have for Mary Russell died 1854 could possible be my Mary Ann Russell nee Gransden. To answer the third of those questions, and possibly the first two, will require a trip to the Society of Australian Genealogists. Apparently what Monument Inscriptions are available are there in microfiche.

One of the other bloggers from the UTAS Diploma course has posted this- Banging your head on a brick wall! about trying to research ancestors who refuse to be found.

Ray Bean’s Travels

Posted on by March 20, 2016
1

Having now gone through the NSW State Library’s catalogue of photos for Walkabout Magazine I now have a fairly good idea of where Ray Bean was when. It seems likely that he sent is first photo into Walkabout Magazine sometime in either 1940 or 1941. As there is one single photo for 1941 attributed to Ray Bean and then used in 1946 before Ray became a staff photographer for National Geographic and Walkabout Magazine.

There are more Walkabout Magazine photographs in the Victorian Archives which I still need to go through so it is possible that I am incorrect about this and that there will be more earlier photos in that collection. In the mean time, in year order but not in place order. These are the places that Ray Bean travelled to from 1947 to 1950 and took many photographs for Walkabout Magazine that were used by the Magazine well into the 1960’s for their magazines.

1941 Fur seals- (possibly Tasmania)

1947 Queensland

  • Springvale to Wrtaluna

1947-Victoria

  • Altona
  • Rutherglen
  • Murray River
  • Snake Island
  • Mildura
  • Glen Rowan
  • Burmah Lakes
  • Towong Hill Station
  • Hume Dam

1947 NSW

  • Kosciusko
  • Howlong
  • Swampy Plains River
  • Indi River
  • Kangaroo Point
  • Hawkesbury River

1947 SA

  • Lake Harry
  • Muloorina Station
  • Mount Gason
  • Mungeranie
  • Maree
  • Kopperramanna
  • East Painter
  • Etadunna

1948 WA

  • Derby
  • Freemantle
  • Kimberly
  • Wyndham
  • Marble Bar
  • Nullagine
  • Pemberton
  • Kalgoorlie
  • Broome
  • Transcontinental Railway Line

1948 Victoria

  • Melbourne (Royal Mind, Cloisters etc)
  • Belgrave
  • Caulfield

1948 SA

  • St Peters Cathedral
  • Adelaide
  • North Terrace

1948 NSW

  • Wingecaribee
  • Bowral

1949 Queensland

  • Loan Pine

1949 Victoria

  • Geelong
  • Easley
  • South Yarra
  • Footscray
  • Fishermens Bend

1949 NSW

  • Newcaslte
  • Bowral
  • Bansktown
  • Dangar Island
  • Bathurst
  • Parkes
  • Cowra
  • Bowthorne, Hunter River

1950 Archipelago of the Recherche

1950 Victoria

  • Royal Mint
  • Yallburn
  • Melbourne

1950 NSW

  • Blue Mountains
  • Megalong Valley
  • Mosman
  • Manley

Dervish Bejah

Posted on by March 19, 2016
12

Ray Bean didn’t just travel in 1948 for Walkabout Magazine. He did some extensive travel in 1947 as well and seems to have still been working with Walkabout Magazine as late as 1951, possibly even later, with some of this photos still being used well into the 1960’s. Over all Ray has photographs that were being used by Walkabout Magazine from 1941 right through to around 1965.

Whilst travelling and photographing for Walkabout Magazine Ray met a number of amazing people who were historical figures in their own right. One of these was Dervish Bejah.

Title : South Australia, Marree - Bejah Dervish. National Archives Australia. [Photographer, R Bean.] Date : 1947 Image no. : M914, SOUTH AUSTRALIA 3510 Barcode : 834513 Location : Melbourne Find other items in this series : M914 Series accession number : M914/1

Title : South Australia, Marree – Bejah Dervish.
National Archives Australia. [Photographer, R Bean.]
Date : 1947
Image no. : M914, SOUTH AUSTRALIA 3510
Barcode : 834513
Location : Melbourne
Series accession number : M914/1

Dervish Bejah was a camel driver, was born in Baluchistan, India (now Pakistan).  Dervish Bejah served in the Indian Army at Kandahar and Karachi under Lord Roberts and eventually attained the rank of sergeant. Dervish Bejah arrived in Fremantle, Western Australia in the 1890’s.

In 1896, Lawrence Wells was appointed to lead the Calvert Scientific Exploring Expedition through the central deserts of Western Australia from Mullewa to Derby. In May he left Adelaide by sea, with Bejah as the ‘Afghan’ in charge of camels. The trip was an incredibly hard one and over the course of the journey Lawrence came to rely heavily on Dervish Bejah.

The members of the party trekked through baron desert with little water. It was Dervish Bejah’s role to gather greenery for the camels and to feed them where available. But this fails to detail just how important Dervish Bejah was to the success and well-being of all members of the party including both men and camels. When the camels were failing due to the lack of water Dervish Bejah would run beside them rather than have them carry him so as to help spell them for a while. He would also go without food when they were unable to get food for the camels. Dervish Bejah had detailed knowledge of how to care for his animals and survive in an area such as the desert.

As the trek continued the party split up with Lawrence Wells and Dervish Bejah taking a different route to others on the trip. Not all members of the trek survived and on the 27 of May 1897 the bodies of two of the party who had not continued on with Lawrence Wells and Dervish Bejah were discovered.

Later in life Dervish Bejah settled at Hergott Springs (Marree) and bought land there. He later married Amelia Jane Shaw; they had one son, Abdul Jubbar (Jack). The family continued on at Marree. The area had a large Afghan camp with thousands of camels and a corrugated iron mosque. The first mosque built in Marree was constructed as early as 1861 to service the Afghan community in Marree, many of whom were Muslim. Over the years two Mosques were built, one at either end of the town. One of these was abandoned in 1910 and the other destroyed in 1950, just three years after Ray photographed it. A new mosque was built in the area in 2003.

By 1947 when Ray Bean was in Marree Dervish Bejah had been retired for a number of years. Ray took photos of both Dervish Bejah and the Marree Mosque. Dervish Bejah passed away on the 6th of May 1957 in the Port Augusta Hospital.

South Australia, Marree - The Mosque. [Photographer, R Bean.] National Archives of Australia. Date : 1947 Image no. : M914, SOUTH AUSTRALIA 3506 Barcode : 834494 Location : Melbourne Series accession number : M914/1

South Australia, Marree – The Mosque. [Photographer, R Bean.]
National Archives of Australia.
Date : 1947
Image no. : M914, SOUTH AUSTRALIA 3506
Barcode : 834494
Location : Melbourne
Series accession number : M914/1

For anyone interested in learning more about Dervish Bejah there are some links that may be of use.

http://www.samemory.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=771&c=1996

http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bejah-dervish-5187

Ivanhoe and Argyle Stations, Western Australia

Posted on by March 18, 2016
Reply

Ray Bean’s 1948 Trip with Arthur Upfield, John K. Ewers, Michael Sharland, H. Tate and George Keen took him to the very top of Western Australia including to the Argyle and Ivanhoe Stations.

Patrick and Michael Durack, of Kings in Grass Castles fame, written by Mary Durack,  settled both Argyle and Ivanhoe Stations in 1882. They did this by trekking across the north of the continent from Thylungra Station, their property on Coopers Creek in Queensland, where they left from in 1879 along with 7250 breeding cattle and 200 horses.

Bringing Cattle to Water Troughs, Argyle Station 1948. Photo by Ray Bean, original with the State Library of NSW.

Bringing Cattle to Water Troughs, Argyle Station 1948. Photo by Ray Bean, original with the State Library of NSW.

The Argyle homestead was constructed in 1879, with the Ivanhoe Homestead build at a later date. The Argyle Homestead was dismantled in 1970 to make way for the Argyle Dam. It was later rebuilt and is now a museum to the Durack family.

Both Argyle Station and Ivanhoe Station are now part of The Consolidated Pastoral Company which was founded in 1983.

George Bridge Station Manager Ivanhoe Station 1948. Original with The State Library of NSW. Photo taken by Ray Bean

George Bridge Station Manager Ivanhoe Station 1948. Original with The State Library of NSW. Photo taken by Ray Bean

In 1948 both the Argyle and Ivanhoe Stations were being run by the Durack family with the Mary (writer) and Elizabeth Durack (painter) managing Ivanhoe Station. After trying to find buyers for his holding their father M. P. Durack sold both the Argyle and Ivanhoe Stations in 1950. M. P. Durack died just three weeks after selling the Stations and the Ivanhoe Homestead burned down on the day that he died.

Ivanhoe Station 1948 Stockman Photo by Ray Bean No longer in Copyright, original from the State Library of NSW

Ivanhoe Station 1948 Stockman Photo by Ray Bean
No longer in Copyright, original from the State Library of NSW

http://www.janesoceania.com/australia_dynasties_duracks/index1.htm

1948 Trip in Western Australia and the Northern Territory

Posted on by March 17, 2016
Reply

In 1948 Ray Bean went on a 10 week trip around Western Australia and parts of the Northern Territory. The map below shows some of the places he visited.

Meteorite Crater

SYDNEY, April 22.-One of the world’s largest meteorite craters had been discovered in a desolate region of Western Australia, according to the representative of a Sydney oil company. He states that the crater is 150 ft deep and more than one mile wide, at the base. Its position is given at 400 miles inland from Broome, on the edge of the desert basin.

1948 ‘Meteorite Crater’, Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton, Qld. : 1878 – 1954), 23 April, p. 4. , viewed 17 Mar 2016, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article56815223

It was first noted on June 21, 1947, during an air reconnaissance flight over the Desert Basin by Frank Reeves, Vacuum Oil Company’s geologist, and N. B. Sauve, geophysicist, in a Zinc Corporation plane piloted by Dudley Hart. Reeves said, “From the air it looked like a huge bomb crater and was thought to be of volcanic origin.”

On August 24, 1947, Reeves, Hart and Dudley Evans reached the crater after a jeep trip for 47 miles from Billiluna Station. Reeves and Evans then were of the opinion that the crater must be volcanic in origin, because they did not believe that a meteorite blast could tilt the earth’s strata so regularly. Subsequently, however, they decided it was a meteorite crater.

1948 ‘METEORITE CRATER IN W. AUSTRALIA’, Goulburn Evening Post (NSW : 1940 – 1954), 23 April, p. 5. (Daily and Evening), viewed 17 Mar 2016, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article103708166

By late July 1948, less than a year after the initial air reconnaissance flight that had located the crater and only just eleven months after the first ground crew had visited the crater for initial observations, Ray Bean and the members of the Upfield Trek visited the Wolfe Creek Crater.

Arthur Upfield based his book ‘The Will of the Tribe’ on the trip to Wolfe Creek Crater. Upfield in the Words of his detective Napoleon Bonaparte, the half caste Aboriginal Detective, described the Crater (called Lucifers Couch in the book).

The Stranger must have been of considerable size to have made such a mark on the land of lemon tinted sand and red-gold rock. He arrived, it is recalled by people who lived at Hall’s Creek, late in December 1905, to dig a pit several hundred feet deep and one mile in circumference, and to raise about it a rampart of rock and rubble some hundred feet above the surrounding plain. Such was the impact, the shock up-thrust three observable rings of rock-rubble; the inner half a mile from the pit, the middle about three quarters of a mile, and the outer a full mile from the centre.

Western Australia Trip 1948. Wolf Creek Crater. R Bean. Out of Copyright, copy from the State Library of NSW

Western Australia Trip 1948. Wolf Creek Crater. R Bean. Out of Copyright, copy from the State Library of NSW

Because one course is not enough!

Posted on by March 16, 2016
2

I decided that I wanted to up my game with my Genealogy and learn more about one of my favourite past times. I want to make my family tree better and tell the stories of my family better. I may, also, like to go into Genealogy as a profession at some stage. So I decided to do a course.

I went searching online and one of my favourite places to go for new courses is FutureLearn. FutureLearn is a group of Universities that offer free online courses for anyone who wants to do them. I have done a few including one on Richard III and one on Empire etc. I have also done some other similar courses through some Universities in Australia as well. In this case I looked for a course on Genealogy and as usual FutureLearn did not disappoint. So I signed up for this course. Genealogy: Researching your Family Tree.

But the course didn’t start straight away so I signed up to a couple of other ones as well, that mostly have nothing to do with Genealogy. On top of that I also started listening to some Genealogy Podcasts. It is so nice to have a phone that will do that now. On listening to Genies Down Under I came across the Course at the University of Tasmania which would eventually lead to a Diploma of Family History. So I enrolled in that course as well as the FutureLearn one.

So my thoughts. So far I have actually enjoyed the FutureLearn course more. The one from UTAS spent the first two weeks teaching us how to use their online system. It isn’t very hard to use and should not have needed two weeks worth of familiarising ourselves to be able to use it effectively. After that we started to get into the meat of the course. That has been better but one week of the FutureLearn Course has pretty much covered two weeks of the information from the UTAS Course. Plus the FutureLearn information has, so far been more engaging.

I have always enjoyed taking these free courses from FutureLearn but this time around it has really struck me just how amazing these courses are. The fact that I am able to take a course from Strathclyde University in Scotland, for free and that that course can be a really good quality course is just amazing. I can’t thank FutureLearn and the Universities that support it enough for the wonderful work that they do.

Learning how to search better on Ancestry

Posted on by March 16, 2016
Reply

I was directed to this video for better searching on Ancestry. It is brilliant. Ancestry is one of those things that I dip into and out of. I usually go as far as I can go with my research doing some searches on Ancestry and but not actually looking at the records, just knowing what search terms will pull up records that I am probably interested in. Then I go to a Library or pay for just one month and pull up all of my searches. So having access to Ancestry while I do my Diploma is quite a luxury.

So, it was worth having a look at some of their video’s to check and see if I am doing the best I can with my searches. I don’t put my tree up on Ancestry at all, after all it is right here and I don’t need to have it on Ancestry as well. But, even though I can’t make use of the hints section of this video because I don’t have my tree up, I think the general advice on how to search Ancestry is well worth watching.

The Warnecke Family

Posted on by March 13, 2016
Reply
Warnecke died 28 February 2016

Warnecke died 28 February 2016

One of the Warnecke relatives passed away two weeks ago. He was in Germany and had been there for a number of years but all of his living descendants and his ex-wife still live in Australia. So we had a memorial for him this weekend to celebrate his life and the time that he was with us.

One of the things that I had done about a decade ago was ask him to write up for me some memories of his experiences in Germany as a child and then again in Australia when he arrived here just after WW2. We hear so many stories about how the English and the Australian’s saw and felt about the War but we hear so little about the German experience other than the Nazi experience and the ‘evil’. So I was really interested to see if I could get some information about those experiences from someone who had been in Nazi Germany and yet had not been part of the Hitler Youth and had not experienced the War as one of the ‘nasty’ Germans. He had in fact experienced the War as someone who survived depredations and loss and all of the negatives of War and none of the rallying cry and build up that we see in all of the movies.

Imagine my surprise then, when just before moving back to Germany in his 70’s, this relative turned up with over 100 pages of hand written notes detailing his experiences in his early life including his time in Germany as a child and teenager and his move to Australia in his early 20’s. They were his present to me before he left to go to Germany. I was unbelievably stoked that he had written so much information and was happy to give it to me.

I really appreciated the pages and devoured them straight away with the intention of transcribing them when I could. I then leant them to another family member and promptly forgot about those pages for a number of years. Just a week ago I was woken up early to a phone call letting us know that this ancestor had died unexpectedly in his sleep. All of a sudden I realised that I hadn’t seen the pages he had given me for a decade or more and that I didn’t know if we still had them. What a tragedy if they were lost.

So I contacted the person who had last had them. He still had them and had in fact seen them just a week before. Not only that, he was happy to scan them and put them up on Google Drive so that myself and other family members could transcribe them over time.

So, I have completed the first 10 pages of 106. Eventually I think they will need some editing and some additional information but it is possible that they may make a good book. In the mean time I am just so relieved to have the pages made available to the whole family again.

This post is done without tagging the individual and without giving a name, other than a surname. The death of this person is too recent and too raw for more details to be added at this stage. Eventually this person will be another story on this website and I hope that people enjoy his story as much as they enjoy other stories. In the mean time the work of transcribing his work and life in his hand, is ongoing. I look forward to what the finish will bring.

The Female Factory at Parramatta

Posted on by March 12, 2016
Reply

The Ryde District Family History Society have a meeting once a month on the second Saturday of the month. Every year they ask a bunch of people to speak at these meetings about things that will be of interest to Genealogist and to Local Historians alike. This month they had a representative of the Female Factory at Parramatta to come and talk to them.

It appears that the Female Factory is once again in danger of being built upon or being damaged in some way and so the ‘Friends of the Parramatta Female Factory’ are doing their best to get people to fight for its survival. As a result of this fight the ‘Friends of the Parramatta Female Factory’ have set up a petition to have the Female Factory declared a National and World Heritage site in the hopes that this will stop the repeated attempts by the Parramatta City Council to build on the site, build smack up next to the site, drill holes through the walls to turn the buildings into IT storage area’s, and stop access to the site by people who are interested in the very meagre offerings Australia has in the way of historic buildings, because the buildings are used in some way by the Government. So for anyone who is interested in signing that petition it can be accessed here at Friends of the Parramatta Female Factory Petition.

So what is the Parramatta Female Factory?-It was the first purpose built Female Factory in Australia. It was designed along the lines of the Poor Houses in England and it was both gaol and home to many of Australia’s convict women and to some of our free settler women as well when they first arrived in Australia. If that wasn’t enough the Female Factory had other functions as well. It was a place where Free Settler men and Convict or ex-Convict men who were able to get married, would go to find a bride. It was a public laundry, it was a home, a work house in particular for spinning, weaving, the breaking of rocks etc and finally it was sort of a day care centre as children under the ages of three were allowed to stay with their mothers until they reached three years old at which stage they were sent to one of the orphanages around.

It is estimated that one in seven Australians are descendent from the convict women who were housed in the Female Factory. To my knowledge I am not one of them as my convict women all arrived too early. The Parramatta Female Factory was commissioned in 1816 with the foundations stone being laid in 1818 by Governor Macquarie.

The Female Factory built in 1821 was designed to take over from a previous building that had done the role of housing women for a number of years. This building was known as the “Factory above the gaol”. The first Female Factory was tiny with room for only 30 women. Considering the number of women convicts who needed a space to live and work and also protection for both themselves and their children, this very small building was soon woefully inadequate for the job. Thus the new building was built to address the need of the female convicts of New South Wales.

The convicts in my family all arrived prior to the 1820’s in the second fleet and in 1801 on the Cornwalis. Both of these were well before the Factory was built. So unfortunately I do not have a link to the Female Factory at Parramatta, but it is important that this structure be saved.

For more information about the Parramatta Female Factory here is a link that describes the life of the Factory and the other uses that the Factory buildings have been put to over the years, including as an asylum for the insane and as an orphanage.

Parramatta Female Factory

And for those who are interested in the the Female Factory in Tasmania-

Cascade Female Factory, Tasmania

 

 

Research Project for Diploma of Family History

Posted on by March 9, 2016
Reply

For the Diploma of Family History I have to put together an outline of some family history research that I am going to do. So this seemed like a good time to re-visit my old bug bear ‘What happened to Mary Ann Russell nee Gransden’?

So the aim of my research project is ‘To find what happened to Mary Ann Gransden, did she really marry the convict William Russell per Asia or did she marry another William Russell? Where and when did both William and Mary Ann die?

I have already written up a story of what I know, or think I know, about Mary Ann Gransden here In Search of a New Life. But, there is a fair bit of discrepancy with William Russell. All of his details while he was a Convict are in the Maitland area. He doesn’t marry Mary Ann until he gets his conditional pardon, so that makes sense, even though he was having children with her prior to that time, but all of his convict details are in Maitland not in Bathurst where Mary Ann was having children to a William Russell. So is the William Russell that Mary Ann married and the William Russell convict per Asia, one and the same?

Marriage William Russell and Mary Ann Russell nee Gransden

Marriage William Russell and Mary Ann Russell nee Gransden

Then of course there is the question, where did they both die. A William Russell arrived in Bathurst from Rocklea in 1882, see below.

VAGRANCY. – William Russell, 70 years of age, was charged with vagrancy. He had come into town from Rockley and applied at the lock-up for relief, seeking admission into the Benevolent Asylum. He said he was without friends and was suffering from rheumatism. The Bench gave him an order for admission into the Bathurst Hospital, from which place he could be forwarded to the Benevolent Asylum if proved to be a fit subject.

1882 ‘POLICE COURT.’, Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal (NSW : 1851 – 1904), 18 November, p. 2. , viewed 09 Mar 2016, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article65078388.

This William Russell is the right age for my William Russell and he was in Rocklea where other members of Mary Ann’s family were known to live. So this is a possibility. In which case, as he is alone and friendless Mary must have died well and truly before this date.

In 1862 there was the flood and a very harsh winter, it is possible that Mary Ann died at this time as there are records of William after this date but so far I have not found any further record of Mary Ann post this date. A death at this time may even go relatively unnoticed at a time when so many other people were missing. If William was away he may not have every known what happened to Mary himself. Alternatively, other members of this family have, on occasion, just up and left their partners and started a new life elsewhere. This is not outside the realms of possibilities.

 

George Russell

Then, there is George Russell, the eldest son of William and Mary Russell nee Gransden. George Russell was or maybe was not, married to Margaret Beattie who may also have been called Margret Bullough. On the day before George was supposed to be in Court defending against an accusation of ‘making a false declaration’ because he put Margaret down as his wife on the birth certificate of their son George Loftus Russell, George accidentally over dosed on morphine while trying to get to sleep before the Court Case. Instead of attending Court to defend herself, Georges titular wife ended up attending a Coroners Court. On Georges death certificate his mother is down as unknown. 

There is still so much to find out about this family. I had thought that I had a fair handle on this particular family but going back and looking over my database in detail and having to explain to someone else what was happening has made me realise just how much information I have still to go before this family truly starts to make sense.

The full article on Georges death can be read here-

Death from an Overdose of Morphia