A New Branch Full of Surprises

The Malvern Hills (photo courtesy of visitmalverns.org, no copyright violation intended).

Every time I assume that by now I have located and traced entirely all the collateral branches of my family tree, I am (happily) proven wrong. A couple of days ago I logged on Ancestry.co.uk where a pop-up message informed me that they have updated and uploaded thousands of new probate records. I immediately typed in my paternal grandmother’s maiden name and the place she came from, the small village of Colwall, in the Herefordshire side of the Malvern Hills. The first result that came up eventually led me down a whole new path with details I had never expected to find in my seemingly rural family tree.

Joseph Allen was the younger brother of my 3x great-grandfather. His existence wasn’t news to me, for I had already traced his presence on several census returns. In 1851 he was living at The Knell, Colwall, with his widowed mother Sarah, his wife Hannah and their first child, a girl called Ann, who is 7 at the time. In 1861 Joseph is listed once again with his widowed mother -who died later that same year-, his wife and 10 year-old son Herbert. But daughter Ann seems to have vanished! I remember trying to find out months ago whether Ann had died in Colwall by looking at burial registrations, in that parish, to no avail. Going through the Free Birth, Marriage and Death Database was inconclusive when I triedto find Ann’s hypothetical marriage, but the results were too ambiguous to pinpoint a correct match. I finally gave up the search, imagining that Ann would remain, like so many others in the family tree, an anonymous name on the missing persons list.

The joy of discovering new relatives thanks to the England & Wales Census!

The probate records made accessible on Ancestry recently showed me how wrong I can be (sometimes!). The administration of the widowed Joseph Allen, of Colwall, was granted to Ann Webb, wife of Joseph Webb, of West Bromwich, “the Daughter and Next of Kin”. Well well! Ann did survive infancy and was married by the time her parents passed away. Too exciting to resist. So I started going through the records.

Tracing Ann’s marriage to Joseph Webb was easy enough; it took place in 1863 across the border from Ann’s home, in the registration district of Worcester, which explains why I never found their marriage record in the county of Hereford. Wrong once again. By 1871 the couple were living in Leigh, on the road linking the cities of Hereford and Worcester. The census reveals several other details about them as well; for instance, husband Joseph is recorded as… a Police Constable! Ah, that’s why they’re living at the County Police Station! Makes a nice change from all those farmers and labourers I seem destined to dig up with my research My, my! Joseph and Ann seem to be the proud parents of three children by then: Alice J. and Albert H. born in Malvern, and little Edith, born in Ripple, further south of the county, near the Gloucestershire border. I can only assumed that it was Joseph Webb’s job which took the family from Malvern to Ripple and then back up to Leigh.

Ten years on and the family keeps on growing: Ann and Joseph have had six children by now, but oddly enough Joseph is no longer a Police Constable, but a simple labourer. Could he have retired early, or is there a darker mystery surrounding the demise of his professional career? Teenage daughter Alice is still at home, without any particular occupation mentioned; son Albert now works as an errand boy, while siblings Edith and Reuben are schoolchildren. Three year-old Esther and baby Rosa are still under Ann’s care. Both girls, as well as young Reuben, were born in West Bromwich, Staffordshire, so I assume the family moved there after leaving Leigh. As all subsequent census returns were taken there, I can surmise they made their definite home in West Bromwich.

Recreation of a 19th-century post office (courtesy of richmondshiremuseum.org.uk, no copyright violation intended!)

The 1881 census is the last one showing the whole family together. Joseph seems to have passed away in 1882, but I cannot find any further trace of his very elusive wife Ann. Has she died, or has she married someone else instead? I trace their children individually to see if she is living with them; although I reach no conclusion about Ann’s eventual fate, I do find some rather interesting facts about their six children. I cannot find eldest daughter Alice for love nor money, in 1891, but I so see her in the 1901 and 1911 census living with some of her father’s relatives; she is still a spinster and eventually moves back to her native Malvern to as a stationer along with her paternal cousin Ada, who worked as a sub-postmistress in Malvern.

Brother Albert Henry Webb seems to have followed in his father’s footsteps and became an Inspector of the Railway Police in West Bromwich, where he lived with his young wife Clara, three children and Detective Charles Brown, of Potton, Bedfordshire. But still no trace of Albert’s mother Ann.

Edith and Reuben, listed as scholars in the 1881 census, seem to have stuck together until 1901 at least, when they were recorded still living in West Bromwich; Reuben eventually became a brewery warehouseman. Yet another surprising profession! In 1901 he married Harriet Riley and by 1911 they had already had and lost their only child; by then Reuben’s profession also changed to caretaker in “iron merchant’s”.

West Bromwich Union board room (left) and main entrance, circa 1904. Union workhouses were grim institutions (photo courtesy of workhouses.org.uk, no copyright violation intended!).

But what of his two little sisters, Esther and Rosa. If their mother Ann did indeed die around that time, what happened to the girls? I fear something terrible has happened to them once I seem unable to find their mother in any further records. Being so young, I can only hope they are living with relatives, perhaps other cousins on their father’s side. Sadly, I am again proven wrong. Rosa died aged 3 in 1883, shortly after her father’s passing and possibly shortly before the (presumed) death of her mother. Her sister Esther lived for a few more years, but in wretched conditions, at the Union District Workhouse in West Bromwich, where she was classified aged 12 among dozens of other female pauper inmates… as an idiot! The workhouse seems to have been nothing short of a lunatic-assylum-kind-of institution, full of idiots and imbeciles. I wonder what the difference is between these terms, so I turn to Wikipedia:

“In 19th and early 20th century medicine and psychology, an “idiot” was a person with a very severe mental retardation. In the early 1900s, Dr. Henry H. Goddard proposed a classification system for mental retardation based on the Binet-Simon concept of mental age. Individuals with the lowest mental age level (less than three years) were identified as idiots; imbeciles had a mental age of three to seven years, and morons had a mental age of seven to ten years.The term “idiot” was used to refer to people having an IQ below 30. IQ, or intelligence quotient, was originally determined by dividing a person’s mental age, as determined by standardized tests, by their actual age. The concept of mental age has fallen into disfavor, though, and IQ is now determined on the basis of statistical distributions.In current medical classification, these people are now said to have “profound mental retardation.”

So poor little Esther was born severely mentally handicapped. It seems hard that even after the death of her parents, none of her siblings took her on into their care to nurse her, but perhaps they were going through difficult times themselves, having to cope with the loss of their father and mother at a relatively young age. I feel very sorry for poor Esther, who probably never left the loony bin; she died in 1894 aged 15. Still no trace of her mother Ann, but what do I care. This branch of the family has proven very surprising , and surprisingly sad. I think I’m done with researching genealogy for a day.

The 1854 Cholera Epidemic

Every genealogist and historian knows the basic facts about the so-called Spanish Flu epidemic and its devastating effects on post-First World War Europe and America. However, through my own family history I have encountered several deaths all directly caused by another terrible pandemic disease which became rife throughout the world in the mid 1850’s: the 1854 cholera epidemic.

I must admit I knew very little about this disease before I started reading about it today. I knew it is a highly contagious disease which basically causes watery diarrhoea and intense vomiting, leading to severe dehydration and ultimate death in untreated or extreme cases. People can contract cholera by drinking contaminated water or else eating food which has come into contact with animal faeces –I’ll leave the more graphic details for another time. One can only guess at the terrible consequences cholera may have brought on the world’s population in the 1850’s, when antibiotics and other useful drugs were simply non-existent.

The 1853-54 pandemic apparently began somewhere in the Asian subcontinent around 1845. It was probably through the trade route connecting Asia with Europe that the disease had found its way through to Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) by 1847, and less than six years later it had already manifested itself in the port-city of Vigo, in the Spanish region of Galicia. And that is how my relatives began to fall like nine-pins.

The area of Galicia had always been much poorer and underdeveloped than many other regions of Spain. Even today it is a highly agricultural area, dominated by the cool, rainy weather which inadvertently reminds native Galicians of our remote Celtic roots. The months prior to the epidemic had been particularly harsh, and a famine similar to that which struck Ireland a few years before had already taken its toll on the population. Nothing would have prepared the locals for what was to come next.

Probably the first victim of the disease accounted for in my family tree was a distant relative called Juliana de Agra, who passed away aged 82 on 1^st September 1854. Exactly ten days later, her son Manuel García, aged 55, certainly died of cholera, according to the medical report. Two weeks elapsed before the family was struck again by cholera, causing the death of Manuel’s first cousin Juana Gudín on 26^th September and her daughter María Ramona Ronquete the previous day. Today I found out that my 5x great-grandfather’s younger brother Joaquín Martínez died at the age of 83 on 3^rd October 1854 of cholera. So ill was he that the local priest was not even able to minister him with the sacrament of Eucharist, before the patient’s inevitable demise. Tragically, his 24 year-old son Segundo Martínez died himself only two days later, having recently completed his University studies. It was so dangerous to leave the bodies unburied that the local vicar was compelled to bury them straight away.

Naturally, my family was not the only one affected in the area. The books containing burial records at the time are full of notes about the deaths caused by cholera. The consequences of such an agonizing disease on a small, poor region like Galicia are unimaginable. In fact, the effects were so devastating, that even the Spanish press begged the government to quarantine the whole area of Galicia. Their efforts were to no avail.

Even as cholera stopped claiming its many victims in Galicia, it somehow managed to penetrate Spain through another channel. Later that same year the disease entered Barcelona via Marseille, thus becoming rife all along the Mediterranean coastline. Meanwhile, military manoeuvres in Andalucía helped to spread cholera across the south of the Iberian Peninsula. In growing cities like Malaga over 300 people died in less than a month. They say that underneath La Coruña’s cemetery of San Amaro there are thousands of people buried after being killed in the 1854 pandemic. Heaven knows how many stories have been left untold because of the cholera epidemic.

Understanding Passenger Lists

Genealogy can provide us a lot more than a mere list of names and dates plunging back endlessly into History. In an interview I recently read, a professional genealogist expressed her opinion that she prefers to investigate personal details about a handful of her ancestors rather than trace her ancestry so remotely that those names and dates eventually come to mean absolutely nothing to her. I suppose she does have a point. So yesterday, making good use of my first day on holiday, I spent the entire day hunchbacked over my computer tirelessly trying to recover data about my Italian-American side of the family.

The second Ellis Island Immigration Station, in 1905. A previous building was destroyed by fire in 1897.

Most of the documents I checked were passenger lists available on Ancestry-co.uk, though you may be able to find certain facts for free on Ellisisland.org. All the documents I checked were post-1900; his gave me a unique chance to peruse through fairly modern data and obtain several interesting pieces of information which only the key players in this story would have been able to tell me. As they are no longer around, I felt as if they were almost talking to me through these simple passenger lists.

Passenger lists for travellers who entered the United States via Ellis Island (NY) up to approximately the late 1920′s offer several interesting details about those who emigrated to the New World at the turn of the century. Obviously details like name, age, profession and place of origin are the starting point for any genealogist tracing a migrant ancestor, but what is even more revealing about them is, on the one hand, their physical appearance, thus giving us details that no birth or death record would provide us with, and secondly, the address where that person in particular was going to stay after reaching his destination. This gave me many more clues than I had imagined.

A passenger list can offer interesting details about your migrant ancestors.

Knowing that my great-grandmother had two, possibly more siblings, I immediately keyed in her maiden name and place of origin. Coming from a tiny village in the North of Italy, I suspected I would be able to narrow down my findings if I saw someone with the same name and an approximate year of birth. Bingo! In 1909 a man with her same surname and naming her father as his father and next of kin (thus confirming that they were brother and sister) gave me an interesting clue: my great-grandmother’s older brother emigrated to New York City three years before she crossed the Atlantic for the first -and last- time. He gave a temporary New York address, which in itself told me nothing, but later moved to another apartment on 9th Avenue, Manhattan. Not exactly Little Italy, but further research showed that the building must have been roaming in Italians, eager to start a new life in the United States. The 1910 census, taken in the month of April, confirmed this.

My great-grandfather himself emigrated to New York from his home town in 1910, only months after his future brother-in-law had gone to America. Up to that point I doubt the two young men, of similar age, would have known each other before emigrating, coming as they did from different, albeit nearby villages in Italy. However the presence of the same address on 9th Avenue and the fact that they were both staying with the same person indicates that they met through a common friend, perhaps a common relative even.

Mulberry Street, the heart of Little Italy, Manhattan, around 1900.

What is even more revealing is that by 1912 my great-grandmother went to New York and stayed, of course, at the same address. I do not have proof that her future husband was still living there at that time, but surely the two would have easily met if they shared friends and acquaintances. I can picture my 17 year-old great-grandmother feeling besotted by the attentions of her fellow countryman, my great-grandfather, who was almost ten years her senior.

Further research has proven that my great-grandfather left the United States once, but returned to New York in 1915. The passenger list for this trip shows a small, scribbled date which indicates when my great-grandfather exited the US in order to return to Italy. Was he engaged to my great-grandmother by then? If so, it must have been a long engagement, for it took him two years to go back to New York. But finally, five months after his arrival, the couple married, presumably in the presence of many of those people mentioned in the passenger lists I browsed. My great-grandfather was the immediate result of their union.

My great-grandfather left the US at least once again in September 1923, three years after the untimely death of his young wife, who passed away aged just 24. He returned to America in 1924 but left again shortly afterwards to marry in Italy for a second time. He became a naturalised American citizen in 1927 (the passenger list for this trip re-entering the US after his second wedding is missing) and a few months after, his wife joined him in New York. His son, my grandfather, had been sent back to Italy in 1920, the same year his mother died, in all probability to be raised by the child’s paternal grandmother. He too joined his father and step-mother in 1928, when he was already aged 12; the passenger list confirms the year when he left America. To a young boy like him, leaving the provincial village in Italy to resume his life in America with his father must have been an overwhelming experience. But that’s another story…

Tracing your ancestors… on the RMS Titanic

The RMS Titanic, just a few days before she sank.

100 years ago today, the RMS Titanic set sail from the English port of Southampton, completing the first leg of a journey which would never be completed. Less than five days later, the largest ship in the world at the time went down in the icy waters of the Atlantic, causing the death of over 1,500 men, women and children, the largest maritime disaster up till then. Only a handful of shivering survivors were left bobbing in their lifeboats, awaiting the all-too-late arrival of help.

John Jacob Astor and his second, pregnant wife Madeline were the richest people on the ship. He perished; she survived, and ultimately remarried.

The Titanic was carrying mostly British and American citizens, but there were many other nationalities to be found among the ship’s exclusive settings -for even the 3rd class passengers enjoyed the latest craze in creature comforts, like running water, freshly pressed bedsheets and electricity, which would not available in their households. There were Irishmen, Spaniards, Scandinavians, East Europeans, Lebanese, Frenchmen and even Chinese and Argentines on board, among many others. To their attending crew, it must have seen like a true tower of Babel.

But have you ever wondered whether you had an ancestor on the Titanic? Are there any stories in your family about anyone related to you who may have been on the ill-fated ship? Perhaps you need to start digging…

A rather sensationalist and inaccurate portrayal of the sinking shortly after the sinking, depicting the ship directly ramming an iceberg. Note that the exact death toll was still unknown.

Theoretically, it should be easy to find a complete and definite list of all those who were on board the Titanic during her maiden voyage. The truth, however, is far less pleasing. Confusion exists over the real number of people on the Titanic during her maiden voyage,  fact reflected on the contradictory numbers of those who perished. This is explained by the fact that the US Senate enquiry used the white Star passenger list which recorded the names of those who bought tickets, but not of those who necessarily boarded the ship at Belfast, Southampton, Cherbourg or Queenstown (Cobh). On the other hand, the British Board of Trade lists were based on the list signed by Captain E.J. Smith himself. The trouble is that Captain Smith signed the list on April 9th 1912, before the passengers had even got on the ship, and besides, it only recorded the names of those who boarded at Southampton and Queenstown; no official lists exist of the people who actually boarded the Titanic at Cherbourg or Belfast. These small yet important details make stories like that Elias Johannesen Engesaeter possible. Ensegaeter was a Norwegian who bought a ticket to travel to New York, but had to cancel his crossing due to a case of appendicitis. White Star Line was unaware of why he had missed his ship, and consequently assumed he had drowned on April 15th, as he was not among the survivors picked up by the Carpathia. Engesaeter’s bewildered family were astonished to receive the news that their son had drowned, while he was actually recovering from his operation. But anyway, the differences in sources might lead you down the wrong trail, so make sure you double check your sources before making any definite statements.

The Goodwins from Wiltshire were among those families whose members all perished in the sinking.

Shockingly, there isn’t even a definite figure as to how many people died on that terrible night, one century ago, but you can always turn to other sources to check whether your relative was among the dead. Thus far, the list (and annexed biographies, photos and sources) available on Encyclopedia Titanica has proven the best unique source of definite passengers who boarded Titanic on her maiden voyage, but you may wish to consult the book Who sailed on the Titanic? The definitive Passenger List, by Debbie Beavis (2002), for more information.

A handful of Titanic survivors remained on little lifeboats for several hours, until they were picked up by the Carpathia.

If checking a list does not help, you might want to check the Titanic relief fund, which granted weekly stipends to dependants of victims of the disaster. You may also consult the Minute Book of the Titanic Disaster Fund Committee, which are held at the London Metropolitan Archives. If your relative was a crew member, he probably resided in Southampton at the time of the sinking; it may be worth checking the local Relief Fund Committee documents, guarded at the Southampton City Archives.

Memorials are also a way of confirming if someone in your family died on the Titanic. Ironically, until very recently there was no single memorial which was dedicated to all those who perished. Instead, most memorials at the time across the world and particularly on both sides of the Atlantic were put up in memory of a small group of the deceased, whether they were the band players, or members of a particular village, for example. It wasn’t until 1993 that the British Titanic Society unveiled a memorial to all Titanic passengers and crew who perished. It is located at Dock Gate 4, only feet away from the spot where Titanic sailed, one hundred years ago today.

For more details, I recommend the very interesting article published this month on Family Tree magazine, The disaster that shook the world, by Catherine Green. Happy reading!

The Titanic, as it looks today.

Unearthing a tyrant in the family

We genealogists have an inevitable tendency to visualize all our ancestors through the lens of romanticism and redemption. In most cases we may well be very near the mark, as I am sure many of our forebears were generally nice people. But unfortunately (and somewhat excitingly) every now and then you find yourself unearthing quite the reverse. And this is exactly what has happened to me while researching the life of my 5x great-grandfather Alonso.

Puerto del Son (or Porto do Son), where my ancestors lived and quarrelled.

Alonso was born in Puerto del Son, in the north-west of Spain, in 1765, his parents’ first son and child. His father was a local notary, and therefore would have enjoyed a certain social standing among the local community. Alonso’s mother came from an old, prestigious family connected to some of the oldest families in the region, which undoubtedly helped her husband in his long professional career. The family was certainly comfortable thanks to the fact that neither Alonso’s mother or father had any surviving siblings, and thus their respective families’ entire property would have eventually been passed on to them.

Alonso was the eldest of eight children, one of whom died in childhood. At least one of his brothers became a notary as well, and another one had a rocketing career in economics and liberal politics which led him to actively participate in the drafting of the 1812 Spanish Constitution and eventually become, albeit briefly, the President of the Congress of Deputies of Spain.

But Alonso was not a liberal; far from it, as we shall see. Being the eldest son, he probably developed an arrogant personality early on in his life. He was also a philanderer. In 1786, when he was just 21 years old, he jumped the guns and left a local girl pregnant (and not just any girl, but the daughter of a notary from a neighbouring village). It took months for the families to decide whether the match would be an appropriate one, but eventually they went ahead, and Alonso married his intended in early 1787, only two months before the birth of their child, who died shortly thereafter.

Jacoba, Alonso’s wife and senior by eight years, belonged to an even wealthier and respectable family than his who I am sure would have feared for their lives when inexperienced Jacoba, their only surviving daughter, was made pregnant by the local waster (Alonso had no job at the time). It seems that the match was a good one, despite their rather unconventional start, and they went on to have a further eleven children within just thirteen years of marriage. In fact, Jacoba was constantly pregnant during her marital life, enjoying short intervals of three or four months between giving birth to one child and becoming pregnant once again. But having Jacoba as his wife must have been a good prospect for Alonso, who five years into his advantageous marriage became a notary himself, clearly following the steps of his father and grandfather.

Jacoba's death coincided with the proclamation of the first Spanish Constitution, in 1812.

All seems well until 1812 when Jacoba died aged just 54 years, and left Alonso to raise their nine surviving children. Jacoba, being an only child herself, was the heiress of a family house built by her grandparents shortly before she was born. The property, which could only be passed on from father to eldest son, went to Jacoba’s father and from him to her without causing much trouble. But the problems started as soon as Jacoba was dead and buried. Her eldest surviving son Miguel (my 4x great-grandfather) was only a young man of 16 at the time of his mother’s death, and thus was nine years short of being legally considered an adult, according to Spanish law at the time. His father, therefore, was sworn in as the protector of his wife’s house until young Miguel came of age.

In 1820, as soon as he turned 25, Miguel received what was owing to him from his father, but by then relations between Alonso and most of his motherless children had become painfully sour. Alonso does not seem to have much time for his six grown-up and single daughters, whom he probably regarded as more of a nuisance than a blessing. I do not know if they ever did anything to annoy their stern father, or if they were themselves irritated by his second marriage to a wealthy spinster in 1821, but at any rate by the early 1820′s they had all been thrown out of the house and went to live in different places, scattered all over the region.

The Absolute monarch Ferdinand VII, whom my ancestor Alonso heartily supported.

Following his father’s example (perhaps unwillingly), Miguel had a dalliance with a girl from a neighbouring village, and she became pregnant. Honour-bound Miguel was resolved to make her his wife, but his father clearly had other plans for him. Legally Alonso may not have been able of stopping his son’s marital plans now that Miguel was an adult, but perhaps owing to the young woman’s pregnancy, he certainly raised enough impediments which effectively forced Miguel to turn to the Governor-General of Galicia for an authorisation which allowed them to marry. Alonso swiftly kicked Miguel and his pregnant daughter-in-law out of the house Miguel had inherited from his own mother a few years before. At this point, Alonso only had his youngest son at his side; in fact, so convinced he was in the Absolutist cause led by the tyrannical King Ferdinand VII that he even offered the boy as a soldier to take up arms against the Liberals who threatened the Ancien Régime that the untrustworthy monarch had instituted after abolishing the 1812 Constitution.

Miguel understandably denounced his father’s actions against him and turned to the law to get back what was historically and legally his own property. I do not know if he was successful, but the fact that by 1838 he was already living in another town suggests to me that he did not get what he wanted. His father Alonso died a year before, probably shortly after his son’s move. Miguel, on the other hand, had nine children and enjoyed a long married life until a severe attack of gastroenteritis led him to his grave. What became of most of his sisters is also a mystery, although we know one of them turned to her father’s liberal brother for help and consolation: she eventually married him, but had no children together.

Alonso coldly expelled all of his children from his home.

The break in relations between Alonso and most, if not eventually all of his children, would explain the loss of the family property. By 1826 the family house Miguel had inherited was already in disrepair and no longer suited as a dwelling. Whether it still stands today or not is a mystery in itself. But I do hope that at least through this sad and inexplicable family rift Alonso’s descendants understood how important it is for families to stick together, no matter what.

Henry W. Sherry: the lover and killer of Mrs Waldock

This is for my friend Belinda, whose interesting ancestor I have been very happy to research.

Henry Walter Sherry was born in the first half of the year 1839 in the parish of Stourmouth, near Dover, in the English county of Kent. His father John Sherry (b. 1812), the son of John and Harriet Sherry, was a prosperous local farmer who owned a large chunk of land totalling 12 to 13 acres. John’s wife Eliza has no job listed in the 1841 and 1851 census returns, signifying she was unemployed or more probably a home-maker by modern standards.

John and Eliza had two children, a daughter who was also called Eliza (b.1837) and Henry Sherry himself.  John passed away in early 1880, seventeen years after his son was deported to Australia. It is highly unlikely they ever met again after Henry’s conviction.

In his youth, and until he committed his crime, Henry Sherry worked as a fruit salesman. On the ship manifesto dating back to the year he was deported to Australia, he was described as being single and childless; he was 5 feet and 10 ½ inches tall, had brown hair, black eyes and an oval-shaped face, had a “fresh” complexion and middling stout build; among his distinguishing marks he had “cupping marks” on his chest, an alternative remedy amply used during the 19^th century to allegedly mobilize the flow of blood and promote healing.

For unknown reasons, in 1861 Henry set fire to his father’s stockyard, which was described during his trial as a “dwelling house”. On 24^th July 1861 the trial at Maidstone (Kent) ended with a verdict of life in prison, with Sherry being sentenced to be deported to Australia. Australia had been a penal colony for several decades, but often the men and women who were sent over managed to take away their families (if they had any), and consequently the population on the island grew as new convicts arrived each year. There is no record that Henry Sherry was accompanied out to Australia by anyone.

Lord Dalhouise, the ship which took Henry Sherry from England to Australia in 1863.

Henry Sherry boarded the Lord Dalhouise on 25^th September 1863, some two years after his trial. The Lord Dalhouise was a 912-ton convict ship which had been built in Sunderland (England) in 1847. On that trip she carried the 29^th of 37 shipments of male convicts which were to be resettled in Western Australia. The voyage took a total of 90 days and reached Fremantle on 28^th December 1863 with a total of 89 passengers and 270 convicts. Among the latter was a man called Langley Southerden, who had already been deported to Australia once before on a ship called the Palmerston; in 1861 he escaped from Albany, Western Australia, but was later re-captured and put on the Lord Dalhouise to be taken back to Australia.

A group of convicts.

According to a newspaper clipping shortly after his death, Henry Sherry’s behaviour in Australia was “exemplary”. He later received his “ticket” (i.e. was released) and he began to work as a foreman for Captain Fawcett of Pinjarrah, Australia.

In 1870 Henry married Hannah Elizabeth Haynes, whom he called Annie. Annie was a domestic servant barely 19 years old at the time – Henry was about 31- who had actually been working under the employment of Captain Fawcett himself. Annie’s father was, like Henry, an ex convict. The couple settled in the Williams District, where Henry became a farmer, like his father before him.

The couple were blessed with the births of at least five children; a sixth child was stillborn in 1878. Their names were Amy Eliza (1871), Cecilia Elizabeth (1874), Walter (1876), Ada (1879), Alice Malinda (1883).

At some stage in the 1880’s, Henry Sherry became romantically involved with Catherine Waldock (née Fletcher), the young wife of a local farmer, John Waldock. Catherine, herself the daughter of an English convict, was then a young and probably attractive woman of 35 years, with three young children of her own. It seems the romance between she and Henry went too far when he offered to leave Australia with Catherine, leaving everyone else behind. Catherine made it clear to Henry that she would not elope with him, making him red with anger.

On 16^th September 1885 Henry Sherry went to a neighbour called Hoghton and asked him if he could borrow a gun and some strychnine, telling Hoghton that he wanted to shoot a hawk. He had other plans in mind. That same evening Catherine left her house accompanied by her two sons William and Thomas, who were aged 12 and 10 respectively. Their purpose was to shoot opossums, but as they shot their last round they realized they had no more bullets to spare, so they decided to return home. On the way, Catherine and her children met Henry Sherry, who later claimed that he had actually arranged to have a rendezvous with her. If this were true, she may have taken her children as a sort of protection against her would-be eloper.

Catherine and Henry talked together in plain sight of the two young boys, who later claimed that Henry drew out his gun, pointing it at her. Catherine turned her back to him, at which point he was heard to say “Here goes” and shot her. He calmly departed the scene, while little William and Thomas rushed home to get help. Catherine lay bleeding, her lungs and heart being fatally wounded by Henry’s bullet.

Henry’s plan allegedly had been to take the poisonous strychnine after committing the murder, but it seems that the quantity he took was not enough to kill a man of his size and proportions. He then tried to shoot himself, but the gun would not discharge the contents of the other barrel into his head. A third, fruitless effort to drown himself also failed miserably. Henry told all this to a local called Guthrie, who later brought it against Sherry during his trial.

Henry Sherry was apprehended without difficulty and taken to court. He claimed that he did not hate Catherine Waldock, but rather “doted on the ground which she walked upon”. To a constable he told that both he and Catherine had planned to meet on that fateful night and that he would kill Catherine before killing himself, but had failed to fulfil his part of the bargain. At no point did he express any hope of pardon, nor did he claim insanity nor any other motive which would potentially spare him “the rope”.

Perth Gaol, where Henry Sherry was hanged in 1885. The building closed down three years later.

Henry Sherry was found guilty of the murder of Catherine Fletcher Waldock and sentenced to death by hanging. His verdict was carried out on 27^th October 1885. He was almost 47 years old.

The aftermath of this story offers several interesting twists. A few months after Henry was hanged, his widow Annie gave birth to a girl, Henry’s posthumous daughter, whom she called Emily.

Annie Sherry was left to bring up six children by herself; being 34 years old, it is little wonder she chose to remarry. Ironically, her choice of husband was none other than John Waldock, the widower of unfortunate Catherine Waldock herself! The couple had three children together: John Edward (1888), Herbert Harding (1891) and Charles Aubrey (1893).

Annie died in Subiaco, Western Australia, on May 3^rd 1900. Her second husband John Waldock had died nine years before. Henry Sherry’s eldest daughter, Amy Eliza Sherry, married Richard Thomas Fletcher, Catherine’s younger brother; thus, not only did the murderer’s widow marry the victim’s widower, but the murderer’s daughter married the victim’s brother as well. The Sherries are no ordinary family!

 

The Best Father’s Day Gift Ever: Seeing Your Father For The First Time

You will all remember the exciting piece of news last Christmas when, thanks to my distant cousin Anne, in England, and her cousin Michele in America, we discovered my grandfather had a younger half-sister who still lives in New York state? Well, after my dad personally rang his newly-discovered aunt, he sent her a short letter giving her a few details about our side and “our history” (which is so long and unusual I’m not sure if my Internet connection would crash if I told you); he also enclosed several photocopied documents relating to her father, my Italian-born American great-grandfather, and a few photos of my immediate family, so at least our new cousins can actually put a face to the names.

Yesterday my dad's gift came through the post...

Our great-aunt must have written her reply almost immediately, for yesterday we received a letter from her, and would you believe it, it was actually Father’s Day (in Spain anyway), so my dad was in for a treat, perhaps one of the best gifts he has received in many years. His aunt Rita kindly enclosed a short note, answering some of his questions and also asking some herself, and (wait for it) three sepia photos of my grandfather. Yes, it was the very first time my dad has seen what his own father looked like. We were all understandably gob-smacked, as we had visualised this moment in our minds for many years (my father obviously for a few more years than me) but I never really believed the moment would actually come. And yet here we were, on Father’s Day, staring at my grandfather’s jovial, somewhat carefree and mischievous look beyond the grave through three simple snapshots. We were also able to put a face to my great-grandfather, who actually looks a bit like my dad (sorry dad!) and his second wife, my great-aunt’s mother.

I don’t think you can come up with a better, more touching or poignant ending to this saga. Well, it’s not an ending really. In May my parents are going to New York, only this time they are not going to visit the site where my grandfather’s house once stood, nor a demure, apparently silent grave; they are also going to visit Rita, who has kindly signed her letter “Aunt Rita”, and join her in what will be her 81st birthday. Then the circle will be complete – I suppose!