Living in 1926: Scattered Lives

Our children's Galvin and Stirling ancestors

Each August, National Family History Month in Australia and New Zealand invites us to pause and look back So who was alive one hundred years ago, 1926, how old were they, what were their circumstances? 

These are my children's Paternal ancestors who lived in that year. The relationship given before the name is the relationship to my son and daughter. I wrote about their maternal ancestors living in 1926 in the post Mundane to Magnificent.

All of these paternal ancestors were living in Australia in 1926, one born in Ireland, one in England and two in New Zealand.

4x gt grandmother Bridget Crotty (Galvin)

Bridget was 86 in 1926. Bridget had migrated from County Clare in Ireland.  She married in Sydney but her husband Michael Galvin had died in 1894. From 1901 after her son also named Michael, and his wife died, she had cared for three young granddaughters. A photo of Bridget at her 100th birthday in 1940 was supplied by a Galvin cousin. Bridget died in 1940 at the Little Sisters of the Poor home in Randwick, perhaps she was living there in 1926.

Bridget Galvin - 100th birthday party

3x gt grandfather John Patrick Galvin

John Patrick was 59 and in 1925, two years after his wife Catherine died, he married a widow, Margaret O'Loughlin. In January of 1926 he would have celebrated the engagement of his second son Frank to Clarice Tonkin followed by the arrival of a fourth grandchild to John Michael and Grace in February.  He was very committed to his charitable works with the Catholic Hibernian Society being mentioned in the newspapers of the day more than twenty times during 1926.  A Hibernian Grand president

2x gt grandfather John Michael Galvin

John Michael was 30 living in Randolph Street, Henley Park in Adelaide with his wife Grace Payne. By 1926 they had four children. John was already advocating for increased wages as a member of the union. In 1926 the Commonwealth basic wage was £4/6s/6d per week.(1)  Railway Worker to Union Secretary to Public Service Administrator

Gt grandfather John Dominic Galvin

John Dominic was just 8 years old and attending primary school. He had two younger brothers, Des and Kevin for playmates and the new baby girl, Kathleen had just joined the family. 

2x gt grandmother Grace Walmsley Payne (Galvin)

Grace was 32 when she had child number four in February of 1926 so her life in Adelaide was busy with household duties. A Courtship of the times

3x gt grandfather Edward John William (Paynter) Payne

Edward, born in Victoria was now 67 and and by 1926 was back in England with his second family having lived and worked across several countries. A Life of reinvention and restlessness

3x gt grandmother Mary Agnes Walmsley (Payne)

Mary was 64 and living in Adelaide. She had been born in Lancashire and migrated with her parents and family when she was 12.  After marriage to Edward Payne and a child born in New Zealand, she followed him around Australia bearing children in four Australian states before he left for South Africa. 

From Bolton to the Antipodes

Gt grandmother Phyllis Yvonne Stirling (Galvin)

Phyllis was just 6 years old and had started school at Maroubra Bay Primary in 1925. She had her younger sister, just a toddler to entertain.  It would be another 14 years before she married John Dominic Galvin.

Phyllis Stirling - third from the left in the front row
Maroubra Bay Primary School 1925

2x gt grandfather Gordon Wallace Stirling

Gordon age 32, married  to Louisa was working as a gardener at Randwick racecourse in Sydney. By 1926 they had two children and life on a laborer's wage, limited their options. A gardener at Randwick Racecourse 

2x gt grandmother Louisa May Lawson

Louisa was 28. She and Gordon had married in 1919 with two girls borne, Phyllis Yvonne in 1920 and Gwenda Norma in January 1925. With a young baby and her elder sister, Louisa's days would have been taken up with household chores.

3x gt grandfather Charles Edward Stirling

Charles was 61. He was born in New Zealand the eldest of three sons born to William Stirling and Agnes Crosbie. He had moved to Australia sometime before his marriage to Maud in 1891. They had lived in Glebe for many years where Charles worked as a foreman in a timber yard. We can assume he continued to work there during 1926 as that is his listed occupation on the electoral role of 1930.(2)

3x gt grandmother Maud Gothard

Maud was 55. She was born in Hokitika, New Zealand to Cornelius Gothard and Lucy Eliza James. Charles and she married in Glebe in Sydney in 1891. By 1926 all three of their children were married. Maud does not appear on electoral roles with Charles around this time but by 1930 her son Gordon and his children had moved in with her. Phyllis Stirling and her sister Gwenda Norma were brought up by their grandmother Maud, as Louisa had left Gordon sometime after 1929.

1.1926 'FEDERAL ARBITRATION COURT', Observer (Adelaide, SA : 1905 - 1931), 2 January, p. 46. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16632937

2. 1930 Australian Electoral Commission. [Electoral roll] Leichhardt, Dalley, New South Wales, Australia

This post first appeared on earlieryears.blogspot.com by CRGalvin

Ancestors: Mundane to Magnificent, 100 Years Ago

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Each August, National Family History Month in Australia and New Zealand invites us to pause and look back. This year's theme, Ancestors: Mundane to Magnificent, may be interpreted with a simple question: what did our people's ordinary days actually look like and where, within the routine, did something like magnificence quietly live?

I've taken this idea to look one hundred years back at the ancestors who were living and working and   they were all in South Australia in 1926. The mundane is easy enough to imagine: the sifting of flour, the harnessing of horses, the walk home from a Friday-night shop shift. The magnificent is there too though, in the sheer persistence of lives fully lived, and in the small joys people managed to find inside the everyday. Gatherings on Sundays, rain falling on roofs, wheat ripening in the paddocks, wood smoke curling from a farmhouse chimney at dusk, this was the world they inhabited.

So who was alive in 1926, how old were they, what were their circumstances? These are my ancestors who lived in that year.

Paternal Line in 1926

Honora O'Leary (Horgan) - great-grandmother, aged a magnificent 86. A widow, Honora was living with four of her six surviving children on the family farm at Linwood. 1926 brought grief as well as age, during the year she lost her daughter Johanna, after a long illness. Honora died in 1927. The Family Rally around 

Andrew Horgan - grandfather, 56. Andrew was married and farming his wife's inherited Smyth family land at Alma. His days would have been largely consumed by the horses that pulled his farm implements, and by the long, seasonal rhythm of tilling, sowing and reaping, daylight to dusk. There was equipment to be maintained, saddles and harnesses to polish and weather patterns to take into consideration. Andrew died in 1951. A Legacy of Resilience: Andrew's story

Elizabeth Smyth (Horgan) - grandmother, 56. Elizabeth's work supplemented her husband's, and extended well beyond it: cooking for three males, her husband and their two sons still living at home. Days were spent cleaning, washing, mending, gathering eggs, sifting flour for weevils and baking cakes and biscuits in the heat of a wood-fired stove.  Elizabeth died in 1934. The Grandmother who never was.

Edward Horgan - my father, 18. At eighteen, Edward was an essential hand on the family farm. His days would likely have begun before dawn with milking, and ended late doing it again.  There was a constant list of farm tasks in between. Apart from the busy harvest season there was wood to gather and chop, horse and cow manure to move, fowls to be killed for the table. My lovely gentle father died in 1992. He was the only person I knew on my paternal line. Eddie Horgan

The Horgan family living at Alma, participated in a wide range of community events, but Sunday was their most important day: the horses harnessed once more, this time to carry them to Mass at Tarlee or Hamley Bridge. Their participation in and contributions to both community and church life were recorded in the newspapers of the day. The Horgan family on the Linwood farm had their first car by 1926. 

Maternal Line in 1926

Maria Crowley (O'Dea) - great-grandmother, turned 84 in August 1926. Family stories have that she had taken to her bed after the death of her husband John in 1922. The widow Maria was cared for by her daughters Hannah and Margaret in their home, "Clare Villa," in Hamley Bridge. Also under that roof was her son Michael, his wife Ethel, and Ethel's nine-year-old son, Jackie Bennett. Another thirteen grandchildren all lived close by, she had much to be thankful for. She died in 1929. Maria from County Tipperary

Bridget Kelly (Bennett) - great-grandmother, 64. Bridget had been living in Goodwood with her youngest son, Albert (Ron), until his marriage in 1926. Sometime afterwards she moved to Hamley Bridge, where three of her children. Mary Olive, Georgina and John Raymond, and their families were living. Bridget died in 1934. A Goldfields Romance 

George Bennett - great-grandfather, 67. George had separated from Bridget back in 1915. At that time he was working as an electrician for the Post Office; but where he was living by 1926, I haven't yet been able to determine. George had remarried and died aged 83 in 1942. Finding George and Rosa

Georgina Bennett  (O'Dea) - grandmother, 36. A widow, Georgina was raising six children alone on Albert Street, Hamley Bridge; three teenage daughters, and three younger sons. Life would have been hard: she kept chickens and milked a cow, selling the milk around town to help make ends meet. The support of her deceased husband's single sisters and her own married sister and brother all of whom lived in Hamley Bridge may have helped along the way. Grandma died in 1965 when I was a teenager. A Fine Day for a Spring Wedding

Hannah O'Dea (Horgan) - my mother turned 14 in April 1926. Hannah began work that year as a shop assistant at Finey's General Store in Hamley Bridge. She recalled in her memoir that her hours ran from 9am to 5pm Monday to Thursday, 9am to 9pm on Fridays, and 9am to 1pm on Saturdays. She was allowed two weeks of unpaid holiday each year, and any sick days were docked straight from her wage. Alongside all this, she learned to play the organ at the Catholic church, and played for the children's choir. Dear Mum died in 2013 aged 101.  Hannah O'Dea

Looking back at their lives, I find I have a great deal to be grateful for. At fourteen, I was in my second year of high school, boarding with other country girls. I had a breadth of opportunity that was simply unavailable to any of my ancestors.

What were your ancestors' circumstances 100 years ago? Join in and post about your ancestors this Family History Month. 

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My Family History Month activities

Tuesday 4th - Digital skills for the local genealogy group via Zoom

Saturday 8th - Remarkable Stories - presented by six members of local group

Monday 17th - Publishing online in person and via Zoom (email for link)

 

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Monday 31st AFFHO closing Ceremony

This post first appeared on earlieryears.blogspot.com by CRGalvin

The Confusion in the Crosbie records

Carved in Stone 

An old stone in the Symonds Street Cemetery, Auckland has several errors carved into its face. Those who paid for and placed it would no doubt have had the best of intentions, but their knowledge of the exact death dates was not always correct.

These errors were then added in to indexes by those who carefully transcribed what they saw on the stone. The errors in the death dates have multiplied across the databases.

The Crosbie Memorial stone in Symonds St, Cemetery, Auckland

Transcriptions in the Auckland Cemetery lists

The truth lies in the death announcements that appeared in the newspapers of the day.

David Crosbie a three times great grandfather of my husband had migrated to New Zealand shortly after his marriage to Barbara Clarke in 1840. There he had established a tailor’s business with his wife working alongside him as a milliner. He advertised fine coats for gentlemen, so one might suppose that he would be well dressed to promote his business.

In 1859 David Crosbie set off from Auckland on the Easter weekend with three friends. The first indication in the papers of the day, was a report on the 14th May reporting that one of the missing men had been found dead.

About a fortnight ago four men, named Messrs. Crosbie, Bartlet, Fisher, and Captain McLean, left here in a small boat for the purpose of going to Wangaproa and other places on the coast. Fisher, we believe, has since been found by the natives at Waiheki described as an elderly man, rather bald, and having a watch in his pocket. No news has been heard of the other three, we fear have suffered the same fate as Fisher. (1)

Just three days later another report appeared.

Body Found. — Information arrived in town yesterday that a body, supposed from the description of the dress to be that of Mr. D. Crosbie, had been picked up at Brown's Island. It was carried into the house erected on the island. (2)

These notices were posted in 1859 but the inscription on the stone is 1860. The stone commemorates his death, but has the wrong year. David’s death is not recorded in the official New Zealand Historical death records. The inquest into the deaths is detailed in this report.

The Tombstone erected by his daughters clearly has the date as 1860, hence the transcription into the Cemetery Records is a correct transcription but the year of death is 1859. 

It is likely that this stone was commissioned and erected after the death of the son-in-law Charles F Helander in 1893. His is the last death recorded on the stone before the words:

Erected by the Loving Daughters of the above David & Barbara Crosbie

Time may have erased the exact year of their father's death from their memories. 1893 when Charles died was 44 years after David's death and there was no official record to check. Their mother Barbara, had died in 1878 so she was no longer there to correct any misconceptions.

David and Barbara Crosbie had six children, five girls and just one boy. 

The second name on the stone is that of the eldest daughter Elizabeth. Here the stone clearly reads 24th October 1861.

The death record shows that also is incorrect. 

Elizabeth Crosbie in Auckland death register 24th October 1860

The son was given the name John Clarke Crosbie, his mother’s maiden name as his second name. His birth is recorded in 1853. His death is not recorded in the official New Zealand Historical death records either. Like his father, the son also drowned.

The carving on the stone clearly states July 1877.  His sisters all those years later must have been unsure of the year. Again the errors have spread across multiple databases. 

The record is here in the newspaper of the time, published on 26 July in 1871.

DEATH. Crosbie. -Drowned on 7th July, off Rangitoto Island, John Clarke, aged 18, only son of the late David Crosbie, of Auckland. (3)

The tombstones are not always correct, hence databases such as FindaGrave and Billion Graves records may help spread erroneous death dates.

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1. Auckland Examiner, Volume III, Issue 159, 14 May 1859, Page 2

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AKEXAM18590514.2.13

2. Daily Southern Cross, Volume XVI, Issue 1221, 17 May 1859, Page 3

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/DSC18590517.2.15

3. Auckland Star, Volume II, Issue 481, 26 July 1871, Page 2

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS18710726.2.8

This post first appeared on earlieryears.blogspot.com by CRGalvin