Costa, Emilia. Crowns of glory, tears of blood : the Demerara Slave Rebellion of 1823. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. As a teenager old family letters about the Van Cooten family in Australia triggered my interest in family history. … Continue reading →
Kathleen May Thomas progressed through the examination syllabus of the Trinity College London, and ultimately was awarded an Associate Diploma of the Trinity College of Music, London, in Piano, which qualified her to become a recognised piano teacher. An article … Continue reading →
My paternal grandmother (Nana Van) Kathleen May Thomas was born in 1900, and was raised by her grandparents in Maryborough, Queensland, owing to the death of her mother (and baby) following childbirth in 1902. Young Katie was supported and encouraged … Continue reading →
If you walk from Alexandra Fountain in Bendigo today, and head down Pall Mall towards the Law Courts, its a little hard to see where J. B. Edwards Jewellery shop at 3 Pall Mall was. The picture below shows the … Continue reading →
James Benjamin Edwards, jeweller of Bendigo, was a well connected and well respected citizen. He was also my wife’s great-grandfather. He was a stalwart of the Forest Street Methodist Church, including being a trustee, chairman of the Bendigo Chamber of … Continue reading →
Hendrik Van Cooten was a plantation and slave owner. In Britain, in August 1833, the Slave Emancipation Act was passed, giving all slaves in the British empire their freedom, albeit after a set period of years. Plantation owners received compensation … Continue reading →
Looking closely at the the letters written by Theodore we can infer: He has a father named Walter Barrell, alive in 1799 He has sisters Abby, Polly and Charlotte He has an uncle Theodore His mother is deceased in 1799 … Continue reading →
In 2015, Bram Hoonhout, then a PhD student working on the 18th century history of Essequibo and Demerara, alerted me to the existence of references to Hendrik, Jan and Nicolaas van Cooten in the letterbooks of Theodore Barrell, a merchant … Continue reading →
Great great grandfather William Thomas, in his handwritten autobiography of 1926, refers to his time on the railways in Wales in the early 1870s, and using the “Spagoletti speaking instrument.” This turns out to be a form of the Single … Continue reading →
The will of Hendrik Van Cooten (transcript) in 1825 implies that Hendrik had two sons, Cornelis and Hendrik, born out of wedlock, prior to his marriage to Dorothea Nicols. The will says that Hendrik junior has “absented himself from Holland … Continue reading →