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 →
In searching the 19th Century English Newspapers for Maggie’s Gormans, we came across the following intriguing item in the Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle for July 13 1861: William Taylor a respectably dressed young man, was charged with stealing a … Continue reading →
In a previous item I referred to the Australian Newspapers on line project. There are a number of other resources that I have encountered in my research. The first I would like to mention is the transcription of Guyana colonial … Continue reading →
The National Library of Australia released in December 2008 the first stage of their project to digitise out of copyright newspapers. They are creating a free online service that will enable full-text searching of newspaper articles. This is a really fantastic project, … Continue reading →
I know its been quiet here for a while, but that doesn’t mean that nothing has been happening on the family history research front. Over the next little while I’ll catch up with some of the progress that I’ve made … Continue reading →