Breaking Brick Walls - Finding Dennis Clarke's real birth certificate

 Hi Guys!

            It has been a couple of years since I posted on my blog, but things have been so exciting that I had to let everyone know.  Our family brick wall has tumbled down. I found DENNIS CLARKE's birth certificate!

            Dennis Clarke had 10 children, and therefore has many descendants, and we of the Clarke family have been bugged by not being able to find his birth certificate for many years now. The Clarke  parents were JOHN CLARKE and MARY McNAMARA.

            My search for answers started in about 2014. I was intrigued when I searched Trove and found a notice in the Geelong Advertiser in the Missing Friends column from a John Clarke to a James Edmonds, saying :

                                        "JAMES EDMONDS, of Bellerine, is earnestly requested to return and take charge of his two children, as the undersigned is not in a position to maintain them any longer. If he does not do so, they will be handed over to the authorities.  JOHN CLARKE  April 28th 1859."

            I wondered if this was my John Clarke, and so I researched as widely as I could at the time, but due to multiple JOHN CLARKEs and JAMES EDMONDS in Geelong, I abandoned the search. 

            Then in 2016, another family historian Lynette emailed me, telling me a family story that I did not know.  Apparently Dennis Clarke had spent time in an orphanage, along with another boy. There were two. This didn't seem to make sense. Again I chased the Edmonds angle. I researched for hours and couldn't pin anything down.

            In 2017 I contacted someone on Ancestry at that time who I thought was likely to be another Edmonds descendant. Again my research was stymied by the commonality of the name James Edmonds. I resolved that I needed clarifying information, something I could pin down as definite. Occasionally over the years, I looked again and found nothing.

            That brings me to a month ago. With the virus shutting me down and leaving me bored, I decided to revisit Trove and search the Edmonds angle another time. Bingo! I found a similar notice to John Clarke's in the Geelong Advertiser in the Missing friends column later that same year. This time it was to James EDMUNDS (different spelling) from his wife:

                                    "JAMES EDMUNDS.- You are earnestly requested to communicate with your wife, who has returned home quite well."

            The new and more accurate spelling gave me something to go on. From that I found a James Edmunds marrying a MARY HILLARY. Mary was from Co. Clare in Ireland, which is also where Mary McNamara hailed from. I found the couple had three children at Indented Head near Geelong:

• Thomas EDMUNDS b. 1856 d. 1857 - 5 months old.
• John EDMUNDS  b. 5th August 1857
• James EDMUNDS Jnr. b. 1858.

              This means that when John and Mary Clarke put the notice in the Geelong Advertiser in 1859, John was 2 1/2 years old and James was about one. Their own daughter was only 14 months old, so they had three under three.

         

                 Sadly, I discovered that James Jnr. died in St. Augustine's Orphanage in Geelong in 1865, aged only 7 years old. So two of the Edmunds children had died, which left JOHN EDMUNDS as the potential Dennis Clarke. I contacted Mac Killop Family Services and they responded the next day by phone. Their brief look at their records confirmed the two Edmunds boys, staying multiple times at St. Augustine's. But I would have to wait my turn to get details and copies of the documents. 

                Weeks dragged by and I filled my time by researching more about the Edmunds family. I found that Mary Edmunds had a warrant out for James for abandoning her and the children.  Mary obviously had a breakdown after the death of her baby only 5 months old and being abandoned by her husband.  She struggled with mental illness which seemed to spiral increasingly. She had been in and out of care. It explained her "returned home quite well" notice.  Eventually I found her records in PROV - she had been taken to Yarra Bend Asylum, spent 30 years there, and died there in 1900, aged 73. I've found no further trace of James Edmunds Snr.

           Yesterday, McKillop Family Services contacted me back, and sent me their records of the two boys. Unfortunately the admittance papers have been lost in time, but their registry records remain. Only two weeks after his brother James' death in 1865, JOHN EDMUNDS was discharged. The terse registry entry only says "Returned to his friends."

            Indeed, John and Mary Clarke were his friends.  John Edmunds became an integral part of the Clarke family. As the Clarkes already had a son called John Clarke, John Edmunds changed his name to Dennis, who was his biological maternal grandfather's name. I think this is a story of love. Dennis embraces John and Mary as his parents absolutely, and they in turn embrace him.  Dennis was a pillar of the Terang community where he settled as DENNIS CLARKE, and he achieved innumerable good deeds for his community.

            So now all the Clarke family historians need to adjust their records. Dennis Clarke, birth name John EDMUNDS, born 5th August 1857 at Indented Head, Victoria. Father: James EDMUNDS. Mother: Mary HILLARY (or HILLERY).  Adoptive Parents: John and Mary Clarke. Lots of work to do now!

1857 - James Edmunds' signature from John Edmunds/Dennis Clarke's birth certificate.

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Eureka Stockade and my family

Historical context of the Eureka Stockade

My family moved from South Australia to Victoria in the period 1851 to 1855.  We know they had definitely arrived and settled in Chewton, Victoria by August 1855.  They seem to have definitely left Adelaide by 1853.  This happens to cover the period of the Eureka Stockade.

Now in case your schoolgirl/schoolboy history is as forgotten as mine, the Eureka Stockade was in Ballarat, Victoria on 3 December 1854.  You will probably remember from Primary school the descriptive visuals of the Eureka flag, burning Gold Licenses and the early morning raid on a disorganised  and comparatively defenceless group of miners. Gold Mining Licences in Victoria were incredibly expensive, and paid on a monthly basis. The local miners were subjected to "Digger Hunts" by the Police which virtually amounted to harassment.  The State government powers that be struggled with the administration of the licences which were too much, too often and implacably administered.  At the Eureka Rebellion, 27 men were killed, mostly rebels.

The other night I couldn't sleep and fluked onto a late night television program showing an historical recreation of the Eureka trials.  It was fascinating.  Basically 13 of the Eureka rebels were brought to trial for high treason. Eventually all cases were dismissed. The Eureka Stockade was Australia's first and only civil rebellion. It was a protest about the rights of miners and mining fees, not any grand political statement against the government.  My family, including two generations of miners, living in another mining town a short distance from where the incident happened, had to be impacted directly.  

Historically yours,

Valerius Copernicus

For an interesting refresher, see Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_Rebellion

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Unclaimed letters in Adelaide, South Australia in 1853

Adelaide newspaper article in 1853

Janet Salter's name in a list for Unclaimed Letters
 in Adelaide in 1853.

Just for a change, I searched Trove for an ancestor, this time Janet Salter.

Janet was a Scottish woman who came to Adelaide with her husband, arriving in 1839. South Australia was a fledgling state at that point, and I've read stories of how people had to wade through swampland with their possessions on their backs once they reached Adelaide.  Colonial times sure were a hoot.  Anyway, Janet buried two husbands in Adelaide poor thing, and married a third, called James Salter, in August 1851.  Hope springs eternal.

Around this same time, gold was discovered in the Forest Creek area of Victoria (that is around Castlemaine).  James and Janet Salter must have decided to try their luck in that area, and were settled in Chewton by 1855.  They must have travelled overland as there are no records I can find of them sailing. The journey wouldn't have been much shorter anyway from any Victorian port out to the goldfields.  To sail would have been expensive and I seriously doubt whether they could have afforded to sail. I shudder to think what travelling from Adelaide to Chewton overland would have been like with children in tow. I imagine wooden wagons and bullocks, not many possessions and lots of walking, but I don't know for sure.

So the two definite dates we have for James and Janet are:  August 1851 in Adelaide when they married AND August 1855 in Chewton.  So they travelled some time during that four year period.

Trawling through Trove yesterday, I discovered an unclaimed letter for Mrs. Janet Salter, published in two different South Australian newspapers for a total of 5 times.  Although there are Salters in Adelaide at this time, there are no other Janet Salters, so I know it is her letter. The notices appeared in these newspapers:

• 7 May 1853 - Adelaide Observer
• same day - South Australian Register
• 14 January 1854 - Adelaide Observer
• 16 January 1854 - South Australian Register
• 20  February 1854 - South Australian Register

So, with these dates in mind, if Janet did not collect her letter in May 1853, she had likely already left Adelaide by that date.

We have narrowed the date of their leaving Adelaide down to less than 2 years now, between August 1851 when they married in Adelaide and May 1853. Of course, nothing is set in stone with genealogy.

The next question is, who wrote to her and how did they know she was by then Mrs. Salter?

Historically yours,
Valerius Copernicus

If anyone out there knows of a book or any further information as to how people travelled from Adelaide to Victoria in the early 1850s,  please let me know.

Trove Citation:

23 South Australian Register (Adelaide, SA : 1839 - 1900) 3 1853 7 May 1853 Adelaide, SA http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article38463379 22 August 2015

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Chewton, Victoria, Australia. gold-mining town

Recently I went to Chewton in Victoria to visit the town where a branch of my family lived in the mid 1800's.

Chewton is a gorgeous little gold-mining town located close to the outskirts of Castlemaine. It doesn't take too much imagination to see how it was for my great, great, great, great grandmother Janet in raising her children there.  The tiny white-washed law court. A 20 foot square hot box that is optimistically called a "gaol" which sports narrow louvres near the roof line in lieu of windows. It would have been pitch black and oven like especially during the heat of the day.  A grandiose church complete with flying buttresses.  And in those days, many, many pubs.

This whole area was called  Forest Creek.  Gold was discovered there in the mid 1800's and my family settled there very shortly afterwards, in search of work.   I can't imagine how the Scottish born Janet felt coming over from Adelaide to a place completely unknown to her, but it probably seemed like less of a gamble than the one she had already taken in coming to Australia.  Janet  had already buried two husbands and had just married her third when gold was discovered in the Forest Creek area. Her third husband James was a labourer, not a miner, although Janet's son-in-law tried his hand at mining.

Janet's husband bought property in the first big land release in 1860 in Chewton, and the property was valued at 15 pounds, land and bark hut included. The rates were five pounds a year. Imagine if your annual land rates were calculated on the basis of a third of your property value!

Janet is buried in Chewton cemetery with her daughter and her baby grandson.  They have no headstone, so sadly, we can only conclude our miner never struck it rich.