24 May 2015

Adam Carlisle Bamlett 1907-1995

adam-bamlett adam-bamlett-back2

Today’s photo is another one I found in the same shop, in Hawera, as yesterday’s photo and again there doesn’t seem to be any connection with NZ.

Adam Bamlett, the only birth registered in England for someone of that name was Adam Carlisle Bamlett, 1907 in Darlington which fits with where the photographer was based. There were two men with this name (the first one born before civil registration started), one fairly well known and one not so well known, of course this one had to be the not so well known one! The other one died in 1912 aged 76, they don’t seem to be related so I suspect this one was named after the well known one.

This Adam Carlisle Bamlett was the son of Thomas Carlisle Bamlett and Lily Maud Hughf, from his death registration we learn he was born on the 10 Nov 1907 in Aycliffe, Durham. In the 1911 census he was living with his parents and three siblings (Percy Carlisle, Elizabeth Elsie & Thomas Anthony Carlisle) at The Traveller's Rest, Great Aycliffe, Durham.

In 1939 he married Freda Rosamund Peairs, I think they must have been divorced sometime before 1966 when Adam married Joyce Picken, as Freda’s death was registered in 1984. Adam died in 1995 and Joyce in 2003, both in Darlington, Durham. I don’t think Adam had any children with either wife although I’m not sure about Joyce as the mother’s maiden name only shows up on birth registrations and she may have been married before she married Adam.

References: ancestry.com.au; FreeBMD; familysearch.org

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If anyone knows anything about or is connected to the BAMLETT family please do contact me, I would love to pass the photo onto a family member, even a distant one. Contact by email is preferable but if you are going to leave a comment please don’t forget to include your email address.

Dawn Scotting
pandora[at]kc.net.nz

23 May 2015

Joseph Anthony Gibbon 1898-1956

joe-tony-gibbon  photo-back

After researching the names on today’s photograph I still have absolutely no idea how or why it turned up in New Zealand. I found it in this antique shop in Hawera when I was on holiday a few weeks ago.

Joseph Anthony Gibbon was born in Barnard Castle in Durham, England and was baptised there on the 9 Oct antique-shop1898, his parents were Anthony Gibbon and Alice Ann Appleby who had been married in 1895.

baptism

Joseph signed up for the Coldstream Guards in 1916 and his Army Pension papers show the exact same address that is on the back of the photograph so we know he’s the right person:-

army-pension-records-sm

Joseph had three brothers as far as I can tell, Robert John 1896-?, David William 1901-1919 and George Edward 1903-1970. Their mother died in 1909 so there might have been more children between 1903 & 1909 but if there were they must have been staying with other family because they aren’t listed at home with their father in the 1911 census. I say this because it looks like Joseph sent his photo postcard to a sibling and I thought possibly to one who had emigrated to NZ. Two of his brothers died in England so that just leaves Robert John who I can’t find anywhere after the 1911 census although there are countless men named John Robert Gibbon who might be him, there doesn’t seem to be a sign of him in NZ though.

Joseph Anthony Gibbon married Maria Louisa Winter Jackson in 1920 and they are possibly the parents of three sons born between 1921 & 1933, William D, Raymond & Joseph A, all births registered in the district of Auckland in Durham to a mother whose maiden name was Jackson. Joseph Anthony died in 1956 and his wife Maria Louisa in 1976, both in Durham.

References: ancestry.com.au; FreeBMD; familysearch.org

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If anyone knows anything about or is connected to the GIBBON families please do contact me, I would love to pass the photo onto a family member, even a distant one. Contact by email is preferable but if you are going to leave a comment please don’t forget to include your email address.

Dawn Scotting
pandora[at]kc.net.nz

21 May 2015

Frederick David Miles Sheppard 1894-1951

 fred-david-miles-sheppard-c fred-david-miles-s-back

As you see today’s photo is of Frederick David Miles Sheppard and yes he is a boy! Philippa found this in an op-shop a few years ago and hadn’t had any luck in finding anything about Frederick so she asked me if I could help. What follows is what I eventually found, although I have no proof as to whether the person I found is this little boy it does seem quite likely.

birth 

After searching the BMDs in NZ & the UK and not having any luck at all I finally settled on Australia and this I think is where he was born:-

His first two names are in a different order but otherwise the date fits with the photo.

After that he was mainly referred to in the various sources as Frederick M Sheppard and when he joined the Army he used only Frederick Sheppard, the address he gave when he joined in 1915 turned out to be the same address as his father was living at marriagewhen he died in 1911.

Frederick’s parents were David Arthur Sheppard and Matilda Brazier Kippin who were married in Bathurst, NSW in 1872. After finding that Matilda's mother's maiden name was Miles I'm even more convinced we have the right person to go with the photo.

Frederick married Mary Alice Kiss in 1914 at the R.C Church in Petersham, NSW.  On the 28 May 1915 he was a drover aged 22 yrs 4 mths when he joined the Australian Imperial Forces, 13th Battalion, he gave his birthplace as Picton and his wife as Mary Sheppard of 28 Sloane St, Summer Hill. During WWI he fought in France and was on duty in England before being demobilized in March 1919 and arriving home on board the ‘Cluny Castle’. Apparently after the Army verified his birth certificate he was 1 yr 1 mth older than he thought he was! Which all doesn’t seem to quite match up with his birth registration of 1894. During the war he was promoted to Sergeant and was awarded the DCM in 1918.

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After the war things didn’t seem to go too well for Frederick & Mary Alice and they were granted a divorce decree nisi on 22 Oct 1932 and the decree absolute on the 3 May 1933.

divorce Perhaps that was when his DCM medal was lost because in 1937 he applied for a replacement:-

replace-dcm

Finally, after he died in 1951, a letter to the Army to see if he had left a will with them during the war:-

wasthereawill-1952

There is no copy of a will in the Army papers, if there was one, and no reply to this letter.

One last note: one of Frederick’s six siblings was Alice Minna Sheppard (married to Abijah Murray) who on the 23 Mar 1911 was lost at sea with her four children when the vessel Yongala disappeared never to be seen again. Their other siblings were:- Arthur William 1872-1876; Charles Sydney 1874-1913; Lillie Matilda 1879-1941; Violet Blanche 1885-1940; Amelia A 1887-1920.

References: ancestry.com.au; Trove Newspapers.

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If anyone knows anything about or is connected to the SHEPPARD family please do contact me. Contact by email is preferable but if you are going to leave a comment please don’t forget to include your email address.

Dawn Scotting
pandora[at]kc.net.nz

20 May 2015

Carl Hermann Hustedt a.k.a Charles Henry Howard

Further to my post back on the 30 Jan 2009 I’ve recently turned up more information on Carl Hustedt.

carl-hustedt-small

 

Written on the back of the photograph is ‘Carl Hustedt’ and as it was taken in Nottingham I had thought he could be the Carl Hermann Hustedt who was born in Nottingham in 1891.

Previously I hadn’t been able to find him or his family in the 1911 census but yesterday I had better luck and found him still living with his mother, Zillah Thirza (née Voce), aged 19, single & listed as a student.

I also came across this little snippet in the London Gazette dated the 13 Feb 1925, he had changed his name in 1918 and was now known as Charles Henry Howard:-

change-of-2

 

On further investigation it seems by changing his name he becomes just one of many men named Charles Henry Howard! Therefore I’m unable to ascertain whether he ever married, had children or even when he died, I’ve checked all the wills for a Charles Henry Howard but none of them give any clues as to whether it might be his will. However, I did find a will for his brother Leopold Edmund Hustedt:-

leopold-hustedt-will

From that one would think that Greta was Leopold’s daughter, but, Greta’s mother’s maiden name was Turner according to her birth registration in 1932, and Leopold had married Alice Shawcroft in 1921. There are no births registered to a Hustedt with the mother’s maiden name of Shawcroft and there’s no second marriage for either Leopold or Alice, in fact Alice seems to just disappear, no death or remarriage for her. However, I did find the following information which seems to point to Greta being Leopold’s daughter by Nina Halley née Turner:-

nina-turner-divorce

Marriages Dec 1906
HALLEY     Douglas  Islington     1b 665
TURNER    Nina       Islington     1b 665

1911-census

Births Sep 1932
Halley  Greta    Turner (mother's maiden name)  Nottingham  7b  486

I wasn’t able to find a decree absolute divorce for Nina and there doesn’t seem to be a marriage for her to Leopold Hustedt, that doesn’t mean to say there wasn’t one though. Although the newspaper divorce report doesn’t give Leopold’s given name I think it most likely was him rather than his brother Charles, although leaving everything in your will to a niece is not unheard of either. I have searched all over but cannot come up with the final proof of either one being Greta’s father, I did find this last little snippet that points to Greta also having used both Hustedt and Howard as her surname, so either Charles was her father or Leopold did change his name at some stage although his death was registered as Hustedt but Nina’s death was registed as Howard:-

greta-death2

It looks like Greta never married before she died on 23 Aug 2003 and so the Hustedt name on this branch dies out.

References: ancestry.com.au; FreeBMD; FindMyPast; London Gazette. 

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If anyone knows anything about or is connected to the HUSTEDT (HOWARD) family please do contact me, I would love to pass the photo onto a family member. Contact by email is preferable but if you are going to leave a comment please don’t forget to include your email address.

Dawn Scotting
pandora[at]kc.net.nz

06 May 2015

Ian & Mona McKinnon of Napier

Today’s postcard photograph has written on the back:-

ian-mona-mckinnon-back ian-mona-mckinnon-1907

After a little bit of research on the NZ BMD website and Ancestry I was able to ascertain they are the two eldest children of Donald McKinnon & Mary (or May) nee Miller of Glengarry Station in Napier, NZ.

1900/12359  McKinnon    Ian Miller           May      Donald
1902/2024    McKinnon    Isabella Mona    Mary    Donald
1904/9981    McKinnon    Katrina Mary    Mary    Donald
1905/16521  McKinnon    Rita Heather    Mary    Donald

Ian married Mabel Florence Triggs in 1927 and Mona married James Stewart Don in 1933.

In the course of looking on Ancestry I came across some interesting information about their younger sister Rita Heather and also a photo of her:-

rita-heather-mckinnon2

rita's-flying-cert

It turns out she was an aviatrix and had earned her flying colours in a de Havilland Moth in 1935, similar to this one I’m guessing:-

moth

References: ancestry.com.au; NZBDM Online; Papers Past

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If anyone knows anything about or is connected to the McKINNON family please do contact me, I would love to pass the photo onto a family member. Contact by email is preferable but if you are going to leave a comment please don’t forget to include your email address.

Dawn Scotting
pandora[at]kc.net.nz

Hugh Ross – from Scotland to New Zealand – 1857-1933

I found this lovely old bible last year at an Antiques Fair at the Avondale Race Course in Auckland. I was devastated to see that the ‘Family Register’ page on the inside of the bible was blank even though it came from the era when people would fill in their family details in their Bibles.

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Licenced to be printed in Scotland in 1874 I was sure there would be a lovely family tale to tell, and I was right, because tucked inside the pages of the bible were a lot of newspaper cuttings and a few small photographs. I was able to piece together a story about a NZ pioneer family who first settled here in 1877, and so starts the story of the ROSS family from Elgin in Scotland.

We first find Hugh Ross aged 20 and a farm labourer arriving on board the ship ‘Waipa’ which landed at Port Chalmers in Dunedin, Otago on the 21 Nov 1877, he was an assisted immigrant and the NZ government had paid £11.13.6d for his passage. The ‘Waipa’ had left Plymouth, England on the 26 August, Hugh was listed as coming from Perth and he seemed to be alone although he may have been with other friends also from Scotland.

waipa-1877-1500w waipa-1877-highlighted

Quoting from Hugh’s Obituary in the Te Aroha News 2 Aug 1933:-

“There passed away on Saturday one of Waihou’s oldest and most respected residents in the person of Mr Hugh Ross, who at the age of 75 years, had spent most of his life in the district. Mr Ross was born at Elgin, Scotland, in 1857, and came to New Zealand when 20 years of age, with the intention of following his profession as a nurseryman in this country.”

advert

”He landed at Port Chalmers in 1877, and arrived at Waihou after an extensive trip round the North Island. During that period he experimented with land at Hawke’s Bay and at Cambridge, but decided to place his faith in the vast waste of scrubby swamp which was then the Thames Valley. He bought up several sections on the dry ridge of which the struggling settlement of Waihou was situated. At that time there was only the hotel, a few cottages and a store, while the mining town of Te Aroha had not been thought of. A Maori pah occupied the site of the present Hot Springs Hotel. Mr Ross lost no time in establishing the first nursery on the plains, and to get his stock he was forced to make periodic trips to Cambridge, then a long, tedious journey occupying several days. He married in 1883 and reared a large family.”

 ross-leith-marriage “Since then he has been most active in all movements for the betterment of the district, and gave liberally of his time and substance in the causes of education and religion. To him is due the credit of the artistically laid out grounds of the Waihou school, and also the area round the Waihou Memorial Church, a building which he presented to the residents of Waihou in memory of his son, who was killed in action in the Great War.

Mr Ross was a Justice of the Peace & an elder in the Te Aroha Presbyterian church for a great number of years. He was also chairman of the Waihou School Committee for a considerable period, and served for many years on the Waihou Domain Board. A past Master of Lodge Te Aroha No 52, he was well-known amongst the Masonic fraternity, and enjoyed membership in the Royal Arch Chapter, Ohinemuri, Paeroa. He was a prominent figure when the Waihou school held its fiftieth jubilee in June, 1930. Mr Ross worked practically up to the time of his death, having been ill in hospital only for a brief period of a few days.

He is survived by his widow, who lives at Waihou, and seven children. These are Mrs Elizabeth Woodhead (Auckland), Mrs Muriel Muir (Hamilton), Mrs Nellie Hawke (Napier), Miss Margaret Ross (Waihou), Miss Gertrude Ross (Auckland), and Miss Connie Ross (Sydney). Mr Douglas Ross, the only surviving son, is a solicitor practising at Whangarei, while Mr Hugh Ross junr. another son, was killed in the Great War. There were seven grandchildren.”

Hugh & Elizabeth had a total of ten children, they were :-

1884/4161    Ross    Elizabeth Jane    Elizabeth        Hugh
1886/18356  Ross    Mary Ann            Elizabeth        Hugh
1886/5898    Ross    Margaret Brodie  Elizabeth        Hugh
1887/5518    Ross    Gertrude Ethel    Elizabeth        Hugh
1889/10523  Ross    James                Elizabeth        Hugh
1891/16744  Ross    Muriel Bruce       Elizabeth Allen    Hugh
1893/16930  Ross    Nellie                 Elizabeth Allen    Hugh
1896/16090  Ross    Hugh Leslie        Elizabeth Allen    Hugh
1898/6998    Ross    Constance Mary  Elizabeth Allen    Hugh
1903/2464    Ross    Mabel Irene        Elizabeth Allen    Hugh

As well as son Hugh Ross Jnr two of their daughters predeceased their father, Mabel Irene in 1915 and Constance Mary who seems to just disappear after her birth, I’ve found no death or marriage for her. Another sister, Margaret Brodie joined them in 1941 and mother Elizabeth Allen Ross in 1943.

mabel-irene-deathmargaret-brodie-ross-deathelizabeth-allen-ross-death elizabeth-allen-ross-death2

About six months after Mrs Ross’ death the Waihou Memorial Undenominational Church had a special service to farewell the survivors of the Ross Family from Waihou:

farewell Of the six children that were left one daughter, Gertrude Ethel, didn’t marry and I haven’t been able to find a marriage for son James Ross, there are just too many of them for me to be certain which one might be him, if indeed any are. The other four children did marry into the following families:- Woodhead, Muir, Hawke & Kelly. Inside the bible were also many cuttings from the lives of these families, one day I might post another story on them if no-one claims the Ross Family Bible before then.

Included inside the bible were these few photographs, people unidentified unfortunately apart from the newspaper cutting in which son Douglas Leith Ross was the winner of a Scholarship at Auckland Grammar School in 1907.

douglas-leith-ross

ross-family-perhaps

This may very well be Hugh & Elizabeth Ross and their grandson, Donald Bruce Woodhead (born 1914 who later died in WWII), with his mother, Elizabeth known as Bessie holding the flowers, she seems to have been the first child to produce a grandchild, but this is a complete guess on my part. This photo was printed in Pukekohe and has written on the back ‘For Margaret’. The next photo of a woman looks very much like the one with the young boy on her knee, so may also be Elizabeth Ross. The last photo could be Bessie at an older age, but nothing written on them to say who any of them are.

who-this1

 who-this2

References: ancestry.com.au; NZBDM Online; Papers Past

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If anyone knows anything about or is connected to the ROSS family please do contact me, I would love to pass the Bible etc onto a family member. Contact by email is preferable but if you are going to leave a comment please don’t forget to include your email address.

Dawn Scotting
pandora[at]kc.net.nz