Kathco on Family Tree Circles

All this time I have been looking for Ann Glenn (born Thomson) when I think I should have been looking for Ann Genn of Winnipeg. She graduated as a nurse in 1957 and has a brother William Thomson. Michael MURRAY married Jane HYDER in Australia in 1868. Eventually I found them in Ontario,Canada. No male children survived to carry on the Murray surname but the girls did their best by popping the Murray name in wherever they could. I cannot find a marriage for the oldest daughter Catherine, or Kate, who did not survive early adulthood. Next born Edith Mary married a James Andrew Dow. I wondered how her name appeared as a witness to so many marriages in Canada until I discovered she had married a minister of the Presbyterian church and was doing her duty as his wife. In 1900 she was calling herself Edith Murray Dow. Her daughter Helen died in horrific circumstances in Enderby, BC and she also lost her son to illness at age 32, and her husband at about the same time. When she died at the age of 91 there was no-one close enough to give all the correct details on her death certificate.

The next child born to Michael and Jane Murray was a son, Thomas William, but he and next born son Richard Michael both tragically died young on the same day in 1878 of scarlet fever. Richard had a twin sister Ellen Maud who was brought up in England by Jane's sister, Ellen Maddison. Eventually Ellen and her husband George adopted Ellen. At the time of her marriage she was called Ellen Maud Murray Maddison.
Susan Elizabeth was next in line. She kept me guessing about her identity as her name varied from Elizabeth to Lizabeth and then Lizbeth and I think she too slipped Murray into the middle of her name. She married Harry G Thompson who was a customs officer for T Eaton and Co. They had twins Marjorie Jean and William Murray (just keeping the name alive). William Murray Thompson married a lady called Helen and there my trail stops except for the fact that the person responsible for their funeral arrangements was Ann Genn. So where are you Ann Genn? I have so much to ask and I hope a little to tell.

Michael and Jane Murray next had a son named Howard Ayling but I can only find a birth record and nothing else. Mildred Edna was their last child. She remained with her father into adulthood. Her mother had died in 1902 and maybe it was then that she and her father moved from Whitby to Toronto and lived with her sister Lisbeth and her family. Mildred's father Michael Murray died in 1914 and at the age of 41 she married John Alexander Copland, a widow, one time owner of the Harrison Tribune. I cannot find a record of their deaths.

The Murray family's roots lie in Ireland but Mildred had an uncle Thomas John Hyder in Australia, a minister in the Anglican Church. He was prolific with his pen and left his mark wherever he went. I imagine that he would have corresponded with family in Canada and I am hoping that someone with a sense of history has retained some fragments of the past. Is it you Ann Genn?

I am a little nervous about this whole thing but I need to share my discoveries so that they are not lost to the world, especially not to those who one day may start searching. Jane HYDER came to Australia in 1867 as one of Miss Rye's immigrants. You can read about Maria Susan Rye here http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra/lists/GB-800819-Rye.htm
as well as on many other sites. Jane Hyder was about 22 years old when she arrived in Melbourne (Port Phillip) and was employed by a local person in Sandridge, the original name for Port Melbourne. She would have been well educated as she grew up in the Royal Hibernian Military School in Dublin where her father was Quartermaster Sergeant.
At some stage she found herself in New South Wales where she married Michael Murray in 1868. Here is a link to a notice of the marriage in a Limerick newspaper of the time.
http://www.limerickcity.ie/media/04%2002%201868%20wormleighton.pdf
My discoveries follow a pattern of accidental surprises mainly from everyone's good friend Mr Google and this was one of many.
Michael and Jane had three children in New South Wales, Catherine J born 1869 in Patrick Plains, Mary Edith born in 1871 in Musswellbrook, and Thomas William born in 1873 Murrurundi.

Thomas John Hyder was one of Jane's younger brothers. He topped the class in his final year at the Royal Hibernian Military School which won him a handsome prize and training as a monitor to teach in the school. He gave up this appointment when he was just seventeen to join his sister and her family in Australia in October 1874. He had further training here as a teacher and was sent to a village called Stroud where he came face to face with his future wife, Amelia Laman.
For some reason though, Michael and Jane saw a different future for themselves and their children. They were on their way back to Ireland by April 1876 but not before Jane, being the legal guardian of Thomas, inserted a notice in the newspaper cautioning ministers and registrars not to marry her brother, as he was under age. Thomas remained and found his calling in the Anglican Church. He married Amelia and they had seven children but it was not a fairytale ending.

Strength and resilience seem to have blessed the Hyder women. Jane was nearly six months pregnant when she began the journey home to Dublin, pregnant with twins. The twins, Richard Michael and Ellen Maud, were born in Dublin only a few weeks after the family arrived back in their homeland. There was no rest for Jane as soon the family was on the move again, either by the end of 1876 or early in 1877.
They settled in Whitby, Ontario but Jane was without her new little daughter who remained in England with one of Jane's sisters. More children were born in Canada but leaving behind her newborn daughter can only have been slightly less heart wrenching that losing her two sons to scarlet fever in 1878.