Meury73 on Family Tree Circles
Journals and Posts
I am trying to find how Grace Smith, 70 fitted into the family of Michael Moffitt in the U.K. 1841 Census NBL. Michael's mother, Isabella 68 also there. I wonder if Grace is Isabella's sister, or a married relation of Michael. M named a dau Grace.
My problem is that I do not know where Grace was born, or whether Smith is her maiden name or her married name. I do not know Isabella's maiden name either. Michael's father died in 1894 just after Michael was born in 1893, and so far I have found no siblings. Isabella would have been in her early twenties when Michael was born, so it is possible that she could have had other babies before Michael - not found so far. Margaret Moffitt was born Blackhall, and perhaps Grace is a married relative of hers.
The family was of a non-conformist dissenting religion, from places around Alnwick, so I am searching there, although it is difficult and I don't know if Isabella's family was Presbyterian or not either.
I am currently looking in the Hexham area, Northumberland.
Any ideas are welcome.
Peter Jamieson, 2523, 21st Regiment of Foot, Royal North British Fusiliers
Peter Jamieson died in an Assault on the Redan in the Battle of Sebastopol in 1855. He was a Private but I think he was listed to become sergeant. He was described as Killed in Action or Did Not Return. There were two assaults. The first on 18 June failed, and the second on 28 June was more successful, but it was the French Army which attacked the Malakov nearby which won the battle. The enemy retreated.
Peter was entitled to all four of the medals for Crimea. We do not know much more about him, or where to find out about his service, medal, and personal details.
We do know that he was staying with someone on Hanover Street, Edinburgh, at the time of his wedding in 1844. This person could have been the John Jamieson who ran a school there. Peter was described as a servant. John was of an age to be a generation older than Peter.
Peter married Sarah Campbell MacDonald, and a child, Mary Sarah, was born to them the following year. Her name suggests that Peter's mother could have been Mary, but Sarah's grandmother was also Mary. That is all that we know about PeterJamieson. It would seem that Sarah and Mary remained in Edinburgh. Mary described her childhood in George Street near Edinburgh Castle, and the way she talked indicated that her father was stationed there. His regiment WAS stationed there but I cannot find records which are actually about him.
We have no age for him so it is hard to locate his birth or family. There is another man of this name, born in Musselburgh at a viable time, but he lived on after Crimea, and was in the wrong regiment. This regiment was also out of the country at the time of the life details that we do know.
No further children were born, and we have wondered if Peter got into trouble and chose the army option as punishment like many did at that time. We just don't know very much about him. Sarah Campbell Macdonald had very wealthy forbears and family members in Edinburgh.
Moffitt, Ernest James, details after mid 1925 please Australia only
Ernest James Moffitt was born in NZ in 1897. We have all life details up to mid 1925, but after that there is a complete blank, with one or two people believing that he must have drowned, but there are no details of a drowning or of a death in this country.
Recently we have been told that there was a marriage in Australia in 1944 between an Ernest James Moffitt and a Spooner. There is no son of that name born to his Australian uncles, James and John who both appear in these journals. It is possible though that one of John Moffitt's sons could have had a son of that name who would be old enough to marry in 1944.
Ernest was known to his siblings as Pete, but he may have dropped that name. It was a family thing. His mother was dead, and his siblings had scattered, away form his home town of Waikaia, in Southland. He belonged to the George Moffitt line in New Zealand. Any information would be greatly appreciated.
Damico, John - how did he get to New Zealand
John Damico married my great grandmother in Dunedin, New Zealand. The marriage took place in a Roman Catholic Chapel 29 December 1863. He was 24 years old, and a miner. She was Mary Sarah Jamieson, aged 18 years. They travelled from Dunedin to the goldfields of Central Otago by dray. They slept under it at night. That is the last record of him until Mary Sarah married again in the eighties. There was a statement on her marriage certificate that she was a widow, as from 7 April 1877. I do not know why this would appear on a certificate, especially so exactly, unless perhaps there was a wait of seven years, or something, for him to be declared dead. Has anyone else ever seen that on a marriage document? Mary Sarah ended up in Waikaia, Southland, New Zealand. My grandmother appears to have been her first child. Edited 2016 to say that a child, Joseph, was born in 1864 to Mary and John Domico. (Note different spelling) The baby died a few weeks later. The marriage broke down quite soon afterwards.
I would like to know how John Damico got to New Zealand or if he left here. The name Damico could be Italian, where, I am told that it is as common as 'Smith'. Or this name could be Portuguese. I say this because there is a vague connection with Portugal.
The witnesses to John Damico's wedding in 1863 were Joseph P. Cesere, and Ann/Tom Kemp (I cannot read the name clearly) Edited 2016 to say the name is probably Tom Kemp. There was a Thomas Kemp aboard the Aldinga from Australia in 1862/63.
Mary Sarah Jamieson (born c1845) came to New Zealand in her teens with her mother Sarah Jamieson, nee Macdonald, so it could have been as late as 1863 that they travelled to NZ, possibly through Australia. I have wondered if they were all on the same ship. Joseph Cesere was listed as the Master of the Aldinga (or a word like that) and then there is the word 'Restaurant', but I wonder if that is related to the other witness. Mary could write and so could Joseph, but Tom could barely manage, and John used a cross for his siganture.
I have wondered if John Damico was a member of the crew of a ship. Where can I get information about that?
I know that there was a ship named Aldinga, one of two, that plied the waters beteen Australia and New Zealand frequently, with our post. Edited 2016 to state there was a place in Australia called Aldinga about 45 miles from Adelaide. In New Zealand there is a place called Aldinga in the Old Man Range.
One aunt, born in the 1880s, said, 'Oh that'll be the Jamaican.' Nothing else. Subsequent research shows that that connection probably applied somewhere else though.
The name Damico is quite common in the USA, but the entries that I have seen are all too late for our John.
Any suggestions welcome. I've been in front of this brick wall for forty years.
Lammas, Martha - Looking for marriage of Martha Lammas to T Griffin
Martha Lammas!
I am trying to find out how my great grandmother, Martha, made her way to New Zealand from Australia between 1857 and 1865. This is proving difficult because Martha could have been known by any one of three surnames by this time. Her father, Leonard, was born to Harriet Lummis (Lammas) and his official records show his surname to have been LAMMAS, even though he appears to have adopted the surname BROCK for family life when his mother married later on. Leonard LAMMAS married Phoebe PUNCHARD.
Martha LAMMAS, born in 1844 in Norfolk, emigrated to Sandhurst (Bendigo) Australia with her family on the Grand Trianon in 1857, aged 14. They were all listed in the passenger list as LAMMAS, but upon reaching Australia they adopted the surname BROCK or LAMMAS-BROCK.
Most family members stayed in Australia, but Martha, and probably another Lammas relative, came on to New Zealand some time later. I have not been able to find what ship or ships brought them here. They were in Hokitika in the early 1860s before the gold rush began in earnest in 1865 (and BEFORE the imaginary nasties populating Eleanor Catton?s novel ?The Luminaries? arrived, naturally!!)
?People had a confused notion that a goldfield meant a sink of iniquity? . . . ?But on the West Coast, at any rate, there was a remarkable absence of crime and lawlessness. A miner on being asked if he did not think that the Coast was unlike the fields in California in the orderly nature of the Population, replied, ?I?ve got the matter of 25 ounces of gold on me and if I was in California I?d have a couple of revolvers too; you won?t see a weapon here on any miner, and I?ve never yet heard of any case of ?sticking up? or robbery except those Australian bushrangers, who didn?t belong to the place . . . it?s something in the country, and the people somehow. Law rules here, and it don?t there?
(Source The Greymouth Borough Council Centennial Book ? O H Jackson?)
In looking closely at their lives, it is clear that emigrants from Britain left a country where they could see no future. A very large proportion came to New Zealand simply for a better life. They took what work they could get, and that generally included hard work like mining and menial work. All of our ancestors knew the meaning of hard work.
Martha appears to have married either before leaving Australia or shortly after arriving in New Zealand but I can find no record of this. In 1865, she was legally recorded as Martha, wife of T GRIFFIN, formerly Lammas. No mention of the surname Brock in New Zealand.
Martha LAMMAS, after working as a barmaid and singer in Hokitika, moved on to Southland, but her relative remained on the Coast. This relative?s life and family are well documented in Nelson, but I have no actual proof of relationship as yet. It was in discussion with a ninety year old member of this Lammas branch of the family, thirty years ago, that I first found out about a name change. She told me about it, and remembered a cabin trunk that had one name inside and another name on the outside, even though that trunk had only ever belonged to the Lammas family. Unfortunately she could not remember the new name, thinking only that it could have been Randall. Our minds ran riot!
That name-change convinces me of a definite link between the two branches of the Lammas family in New Zealand.
An old Hokitika newspaper clipping revealed that Martha LAMMAS was requested to communicate with her mother, Mrs BROCK, Sandhurse (sic) urgently, in 1868. Eventually we discovered that Sandhurst was an old name for Bendigo, and then we found the rest of Martha?s family there. What this indicates to us is that Phoebe Brock did not know that her daughter had married. Must we therefore assume that the marriage occurred in New Zealand? I can?t find it. Phoebe obviously did not know that Martha had already left Hokitika at least three to four years previously.
So, Martha married firstly T GRIFFIN, secondly(?) James JOYCE (father of her first child William James), and thirdly George MOFFITT in 1868. Our grandfather was raised as William James MOFFITT, and was, according to family legend, the first European child born in Nokomai, Southland, New Zealand, in 1865.
Martha intrigues me. Her early life was clearly varied and colourful, but she was a strong woman who went from strength to strength. Widowed in 1879, she raised her children alone, making sure that they all ?married well?; she ran a farm; she bought and sold property; she managed a shop, and later on a boarding house; all the while fulfilling singing engagements. What a woman!
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