Hi from down under

T

The_educated_dog

New Member
Hi,

I’m from Australia’s capital city - Canberra on Ngunnawal Country. Grew up just outside Canberra in ‘the city of Champions’ - Queanbeyan and lived in other places but have spent most of my adult life here.

I started researching family history back in the early 2000s, when most information wasn’t online and researching often meant spending a day in the bowels of the National Library poring over microfilm or microfiche. Life took over for about 15 years, but I’ve been doing (mainly online) genealogy research again (on and off) since about 2018.

My ancestry is mainly English and Irish with smatterings of Welsh and Cornish (and one Huegenot family back in the 1700s). think my earliest ancestor to come Australia was a convict with the 3rd fleet, and the most recent was in the 1930s (via New Zealand).

I’m particularly interested in genetic genealogy and also in understanding the social and historical contexts of people’s everyday lives. In researching my child’s ancestry through their other parent, I’ve also gained a new appreciation of more diverse non-Anglo/Irish heritage including Aboriginal/First Nations people and cultures and the complex heritage of people from the Caribbean with English and African ancestry.

DNA testing and the increasing diversity of available online primary and secondary sources have been a game changer!
 
Sure :)

One current ‘brick wall’
James ‘Bricky’ Gordon.
- He was born 1823 Apethorpe, Northhamptonshire UK,
- Enlisted as a private with the British 11th regiment of foot 1841 in England and Ireland.
- Came to Tasmania in 1845 with his regiment on the Mount Stuart Elphinstone.
- Pretty much constantly in trouble for drunkenness and general mayhem while with Tasmania, resulting in expended periods in the lockup with the convicts he was meant to be guarding!
- Bricky ended in Parramatta NSW, where he married Mary Nichols (from Ireland) in 1851.
- He ‘worked’ as a Carter(?) but seems to have spent most of his time accumulating drunk and disorderly charges, gatecrashing public events with his own version of celebrations, and running over his own leg with his own cart when operating it under the influence!
- He had a wooden peg for a leg like a pirate for the last few years of his life.
- The brick wall - In his (few) more sober moments Bricky apparently reckoned he was related to the ‘Gordons of riot fame’ and that ‘blue blood flowed through his veins’.
- I haven’t been able to find any concrete to back this up, and given Bricky’s thoroughly pickled brain, may not be true. The only possible link is that he apparently came from Apethorpe in Northamptonshire, which is the burial place of Susan Woodford formerly Fain Nee Gordon (1746-1814) the ‘Countess of Westmoreland’ and daughter of Cosmo George Gordon and Catherine Gordon. I think Susan Woodford/Fain nee Gordon was the sister of Lord George Gordon MP of the Gordon Riots in the 1780s.
 
The other puzzles I’ve been struggling with
- trying to verify the identity of my maternal great great grandmother’s husband Charles Samuel Sharpe (CSS) (not my biological ancestor) who appears not to have existed before he married my GG grandmother Ada Hyde in Lidcombe, NSW in June 1915. I have posted about him on other genealogy forums, not sure about the etiquette of posting the same questions here? In short, there is some evidence (not conclusive but fairly compelling) that Charles Samuel Sharpe was actually Isaiah Samuel Shanks, born 1866 in Box Hill Victoria to John Shanks and Sarah McGill, who had both migrated to Victoria from Armagh, Ireland in 1855. Isaiah married in Victoria in 1890 and had two children, but in 1905 he abandoned them and ran away to Adelaide with a woman called Rose/Rosa Symons (Nee Robinson) (b1870 Wollar, NSW). Rose already lost a number of children in infancy and her common-law husband Samuel George Symons, who died in 1903.

Rose and Isaiah had a very rocky time of it in Adelaide, including the loss of their baby, death of Rosa’s five year old son and her oldest son being arrested and sentenced to the Magill Boys Reformatory within a three month period. They were also creative with their names, with Isaiah going by Isaiah Symons or Isaac Symons.

Rose and Isaiah then vanish, but a couple suspiciously similar to them appear in Sydney around 1909. C. They had a child, Sydney/Sidney Ronald Shanks in St Peter’s in 1909 who died the same year. Charles and Rosa Shanks appear on directories in St Peters in 1910, but by 1911 they are living at ‘Ringwood’ 75 Sydenham Road, Marrickville. Charles Shanks is also using an alias ‘A. Symons’ at times during this period. Rose Shanks died on 7 Feb 1914 in Sydney, and Charles Shanks remains on directories at the Sydenham Road address until about 1916. Then he too vanishes, but Charles Samuel Sharpe appears!

On his marriage certificate Charles Samuel Sharpe said he was a widower, and that his previous wife was called Rose. He also gave his parents as John, a contractor and Sarah McGill, of Box Hill Victoria, both deceased by the time of his marriage in 1915. Isaiah Samuel Shanks was born in Box Hill, with parents called John Shanks, a storekeeper and contractor and Sarah McGill. Sarah Shanks Nee McGill died in 1899, and John Shanks died in 1904. So both deceased before 1915 which is consistent with Charles Samuel Sharpe’s info on his marriage certificate. Isaiah Samuel Shanks had a long term relationship with a woman called Rose, who had died before his marriage to Ada Hyde.

So far it seems highly likely that Isaiah Samuel Shanks and Charles Samuel Sharpe are the same person. I have ordered copies of the estate papers for Rosa Shanks who died in 1914 from NSW archives, as well as transcriptions of her death certificate, the death of baby Sydney Ronald Shanks, and a marriage for one of Charles Samuel Sharpe and Ada Hyde’s daughters. She married before the age of 21, so hopefully Charles Samuel Sharpe signed his consent for the marriage!
 
Looks you have hit the nail on the head. Charles Samuel Sharpe death registration in 1953 at Lidcombe states his father as John and mother as Sarah. The same names as the parents of Isaiah Samuel Shanks. ;)
 
Is Arthur Isaiah Samuel Shanks another alias for this guy? Found in Victorian papers in 1934 granted probate for Louisa Kate Shanks. He living at Charles Street, East Brunswick and she at North Fitzroy.
 
No - but confusing with the repeated names!

- Arthur Isaiah Samuel Shanks was the son of Isaiah Samuel Shanks (the likely contender for Charles Samuel Shanks). His mother was Isaiah Samuel’s legal wife, Louisa Kate (nee Brown). Arthur Isaiah Samuel Shanks is all present and accounted for as being who he says he is from birth to death.

Unlike his slippery, elusive progenitor! If Isaiah Samuel Shanks (b1866) and Charles Samuel Sharpe are the same person, he had three sons or step-sons called Arthur!
1) His legitimate son Arthur Isaiah Samuel Shanks with his lawful wife Louisa Kate Shanks (nee Brown)
2) Rosa Symons/Shanks Nee Robinson’s oldest son born ~1891 (father unknown and birth doesn’t appear to be registered) who was Arthur Frederick Cyril Symons. He ended up living a long life - died in 1980 in Parkes NSW
3) Charles Samuel Sharpe and Ada Hyde had son called Arthur Kevin Sharpe.

I wonder how he kept track of them all!
 
So far I’ve come across Isaiah Samuel Shanks calling himself:
1) Isaiah Samuel Shanks - the one he was named at birth and baptised with
2) Isaac Shanks
3) Isaiah Samuel Symons
4) Isaac Symons
5) Charles Shanks
6) Charles Shankes
7) A. Symons
8) Charles S. Sharp
9) Charles Samuel Sharpe

That being said, what do you reckon about the marriage of a ‘Sydney I D Symons’ to ‘Rose E Seager’ in Sydney NSW in 1911 (NSW BDM ref 568/1911)? I am not in a position to order more BDM certificates at the moment, but I am now suspicious of any combination of the names Rose and Symons and the letter I! Rose and ‘Charles’ Shanks also had a child called Sydney who had died in. 1909. Rose Shanks also became a foster carer for two little boys in Feb 1911, Harold Hart b1907 and John Chippendall b1911. They were with her until early 1913, which may have been when Rose became sick.

Would foster parents have had to show they were married back in 1911 I wonder? I was surprised that Rose was considered a suitable foster carer, given her history of child and infant loss, that her oldest son had been in reform school, and she was ‘living in sin’ with a man who couldn’t make up what his name was!


I’ll do a bit more digging to see if this couple who married in 1911 exist in any other records.

Added: the 1911 marriage is not Isaiah Samuel/Charles Shanks and Rose Symons/Robinson. It is the marriage of Sydney T.D. Symons, a veterinary surgeon and Chief Stock Inspector for NSW, and Rose Eugenie Seager, widow of Henry F..Seager, late Chief of the Auckland Telegraph Department!
 
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