John Armstrong - It don't matter

When I say the name "JOHN ARMSTRONG" to you, what kind of image of the man does it conjure up? For me the name Armstrong is Scottish.  Now add in that he was born in 1800, and died in 1850 in Adelaide, South Australia.  You could surmise that he was a traveller, an adventurer, perhaps drawn to the gold rush in that area when the state was very young. His occupation was a stoker, perhaps on the very ship in which he travelled to Australia. We know that many crew members jumped ship at locations where gold was found. What is your picture of John Armstrong so far?

Adelaide ca. 1850.  Drawing by Samuel Calvert. State Library of South Australia.

Now add to your picture that he married a young Scottish widow with an infant daughter in 1842. How do you picture him now? Finally, add in your picture that he was buried in Adelaide by the government in 1850.  We could surmise that he didn't "strike it rich" if his wife couldn't afford his burial. Now add in that he was a black African man. Wait, what?

Pre-conceptions. Mine. Armstrong = Scottish = white. I had lived with my preconceptions of a Scottish John Armstrong for a long time. As you research a person in your family tree, you can live with your own preconceived ideas for years sometimes. I got the shock of my life when I was proved so unutterably wrong.  John Armstrong was a black African man, and our family had inherited his black skin.

Previous generations of our family had very dark skin, so we have always known that there was black ancestry somewhere back in the mists of time.  We knew, for example, that John Armstrong's daughter Elizabeth had married an African man, (the elusive Sims Cummis that I have written about so many times on this blog). We have a photograph of one of Elizabeth and Sim’s children, who I discovered had the nickname “Snowy” because of his beautiful chocolatey dark skin.  Their daughter was nicknamed "Blossom" for the same reason (she was my great great grandmother). We had all presumed our family’s dark skin came from their father, Sims.  But we have no absolute proof that Sims was dark-skinned. All we know about Sims for sure is that he too was born in Africa. That fact by itself doesn’t prove that our family’s dark skin was inherited from him.

Fast forward now until I discovered a John Armstrong mentioned in an Adelaide newspaper dated 1841, describing John and his mate as "two African blacks".  I was astonished. Could this be my John Armstrong? The chances of him being my John Armstrong were good, as the population of South Australia was exploding but still only about 10,000 at the time.  John Armstrong is a common name though, and there was one other John Armstrong in Adelaide at the time.  I discovered him again in another newspaper article, this time, described as "a man of colour". Further investigation proved that yes, this particular John Armstrong was indeed my 4x great grandfather. I had made a massive, incorrect, culturally stereotyped assumption about the name Armstrong.

Although I hate the racist description in the newspaper, I am in some ways grateful for it.  It is a reflection of its own time. Without that description “two African blacks” I never would have gotten the whole clear picture of John Armstrong.  Without it, I would never have understood the full implication of the harsh realities that John Armstrong encountered over his lifetime. And the newspaper descriptions are proof enough that our family’s dark skin was inherited from Snowy’s maternal grandfather, the black African John Armstrong. (Whether his father Sims had dark skin too is yet to be verified, although it does seem likely.)

But this whole incident taught me the hardest lesson any genealogist can learn.

Keep clear what are facts in your research and only work from there.  Never make the arrogant mistake of assumption. Be on the lookout for your cultural stereotypes that are so insidious, you don’t even know that they exist. Our ancestors were individuals, and they made unique choices, so every research option must be explored in order to honour their individuality. 

Next week, John Armstrong makes his choices in Adelaide in 1840.

Historically yours,

Valerius Copernicus

PS. Recent DNA evidence shows that our African roots stem from Mali, Benin/Togo, and Senegal.

 Image from State Library of South Australia: B1134

http://www.catalog.slsa.sa.gov.au:80/record=b2064839~S1

What's in a name?

If you haven't already gathered by now, my genealogical passion centres around the puzzle of one particular branch of my mother's family tree.

My great great great grandmother was born Elizabeth Armstrong in Adelaide, South Australia in 1842.  When Elizabeth was about 8, her father John Armstrong (a black African man) died. A year later, her mother Janet (a Scotswoman) married James Salter (an Englishman) and so Elizabeth's new surname was SALTER.

The new blended family moved to Chewton, Victoria shortly after the wedding, in early response to the goldrush in the Forest Creek area.

Elizabeth Salter grew up and married a miner, named Sims CUMIS.  Sims' birthplace is listed as the Cape of Good Hope, Sth. Africa, so he is also potentially dark skinned.  The couple married in 1864 in Chewton and over a period of ten years had five children; Robert, Louisa, Ellen, James and John.

All five children were given the surname of their father, (spelled either COMES or CUMMIS as per their birth certificates). The last child was born in 1875 with that name. But as the children grew, they rejected the CUMIS name and adopted different surnames, either Armstrong or Salter, their mother's maiden surnames. And despite their marriage and five children, Elizabeth was primarily known as Salter, not her married name of Cumis until the day she died.

In fact, at her death inquest in 1896 it is noted by witness Henry Matthews that:

                      I have seen the body now lying dead and identify it as that of Elizabeth Cummis otherwise known as Elizabeth Salter.  I have known her between 5 and 6 years.

Chewton policeman Constable Luke swears:

                    That at 2.21 pm today Elizibeth Comas, otherwise known as Elizibeth Salter, aged 50 years died in her hut at Chewton.

Her death is also reported in the local newspaper, the Mount Alexander Mail:

                     An old identity of Chewton, named Elizabeth Cumas, but better known as Elizabeth Salter, died suddenly at her hut on Sunday afternoon at 2.30 o'clock.

I have written previously about Elizabeth's different surnames in the article "Elizabeth gives me a headache."

Their children all reject the CUMIS name they were born with too.

Robert Armstrong Comes dismissed the Comes and became Robert Armstrong.  He married in Chewton, moved to Charlton in Victoria, and eventually moved his family to Queensland.

Louisa used the name Louisa Salter when she married in Geelong and one of her descendants is me. Her nickname was Blossom because of her dark skin.  Her married name was Louisa Clarke.

Ellen -we are still investigating and have no definite clues as to her  (see my previous blog on this search.) At this stage we theorise that she married and changed her name. Louisa's daughter was called Ellen.

James became James Salter Armstrong, moved to Kerang and served at Gallipoli and the Western Front in World War 1.  His nickname was "Snowy" in that ironical Australian way because of his dark skin. One of Robert's sons, named James after his uncle, sadly died at the Western Front.

John used the name Armstrong but his burial details in Cobram state: also known as George Saulter. Trying to find more details in Cobram.

 No-one knows what happened to Sims after the birth of his last child in 1875. We do know he also used the name William instead of Sims. We have no death certificate for him. Nothing. The puzzle is this: WHY did the wife and children of Sims Cummis reject his name?

Historically Yours,
Valerius Copernicus

Citations:

Article identifier
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article199612211
Page identifier
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page21955428
APA citation
ITEMS OF NEWS. (1896, June 2). Mount Alexander Mail (Vic. : 1854 - 1917), p. 2. Retrieved October 10, 2015, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article199612211
MLA citation
"ITEMS OF NEWS." Mount Alexander Mail (Vic. : 1854 - 1917) 2 Jun 1896: 2. Web. 10 Oct 2015 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article199612211>.
Harvard/Australian citation
1896 'ITEMS OF NEWS.', Mount Alexander Mail (Vic. : 1854 - 1917), 2 June, p. 2, viewed 10 October, 2015, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article199612211
Wikipedia citation
{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article199612211 |title=ITEMS OF NEWS. |newspaper=[[Mount Alexander Mail |Mount Alexander Mail (Vic. : 1854 - 1917)]] |location=Vic. |date=2 June 1896 |accessdate=10 October 2015 |page=2 |publisher=National Library of Australia}}

Crying at a computer keyboard

This afternoon I spent some minutes sitting at a computer keyboard and crying. The other members of the Genealogical Society of Victoria around me were not intrusive.  They had perhaps seen this kind of reaction before from other people who research their family history. How anyone can think the subject is dry and dull is beyond me.

My research on my family member James Salter Armstrong has led me in recent days to his brother Robert, who is also my great great uncle.  Robert Armstrong named his son after his brother and so James Ernest Armstrong was born in 1894.

This unfortunately made James Ernest Armstrong the perfect age to enlist in the First World War.

James enlisted in Queensland at the age of 21 years and 9 months, and was allocated to the 42nd battalion.

The Colour patch of the 42nd Battalion,
primarily men who enlisted in Queensland.

Looking at his military papers is just so personal.  You get a physical description of the person (5ft. 10 in., medium complexion, brown eyes, black hair)  and you see their signature committing themselves to their fate with the AIF. You see their nominated next of kin's name and know how hard they must have hoped that they would never need to be contacted. In James' case, he nominated his father Robert.

My inexpert reading of his military papers shows that James spent time in England training.  He caught the flu in October and got sick with Mumps in December 1916, spending two weeks in hospital on that occasion.  He eventually got to France on 23 February 1917, and was killed three days later. 

I suddenly realise that his Uncle James was in the same part of France at exactly the same time. The elder James had reduced his actual age of 43 to be admitted to the AIF

and had by this stage already survived his ship being torpedoed and Gallipoli. Eventually, he would be gassed at Ypres and repatriated to Australia.  How would he have felt when he was told his nephew and namesake had been killed?

The volunteer researchers at the GSV advise me to go to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website and I found the younger James, buried not in Belgium as I had been told but in France near Armentiers.

James Ernest Armstrong was killed in action on 26 February 1917. He is buried at Cite Bon-Jean Military Cemetery : Armentiers. His death reported by Rev. A. J. Davidson.

On the website, amongst the photographs of the cemetery are papers about grave locations and matters of bureaucracy for the cemetery.  Dry stuff, until I see the page that shows the wording on his grave stone as chosen by his father Robert.

"But a boy who died for his country"

This is when I wept.

monument australia website:

http://monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/conflict/ww1/display/90682-42nd-battalion-roll-of-honour

42nd Battalion Roll of Honour is located at:

Ann Street, ANZAC Square, Shrine of Remembrance Crypt, Brisbane, 4000

Find My Past is free until 9pm tonight (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia time)

If you enjoy family history research, then now is a good time to jump onto Find My Past.  They are holding a free weekend so you can sample what they offer. Find My Past is somewhat like Ancestry that most Australians know. 

I logged on to Find My Past yesterday to look for the wedding certificate of Janet Row and Robert Sloan from the 1820's in Scotland. And a deluge happened. That marriage certificate led back via the Find My Past hints for another four generations over three family tree branches. I suddenly had ancestors in the late 1600s!

The Find My Past hint function is fabulous for finding information quickly.  Don't make the mistake though, of thinking that's all you need to do, end of story,  No. Due diligence is required to follow through with proof that the information you obtained so easily is absolutely correct.  

So here's what I found on Find My Past, especially for Bob and Sandra. Boring to everyone else so fee free to skip over. 

These are Janet Row's parents.

Robert Row b. 1762 married 

Margaret Wands b. 1763 

on 5 Sep 1790.

It looks like this Robert Row might have married his own cousin.  Robert Row's parents were:

 Robert Row b. 1730

and Elizabeth Wands b. 1721  They married 11 Nov 1752.

Margaret Wands' parents were:

William Wands and Euphan Berrie. No hints there.

OK so now back to Janet's grandfather Robert Row born in 1730.

His mother was Janet Carrick.

His father is listed both as Andrew Rue and Robert Row.

Janet Carrick's father was John Carrick.

OK now back to Elizabeth Wands b. 1721.

Her father was Archibald Wands b. 1683.

Her mother was Anne Fergusson.  They married 10 Feb 1705.

Archibald Wands' father was John Wand (no 'S')

Anne Fergusson's parents were Donald Fergusson and Bettie Haward.

It all seems pretty right from the hints I chose but as I said, it needs to be proven meticulously. Bob and Sandra, I know you probably already have most if not all of that information. How does that sit with your research, does it agree? Let me know. 

For our branch of the Armstrong clan in Queensland via Robert, these are also your ancestors.  Now you can see where Robert's name came from. His grandmother Janet's father, grandfather, great grandfather and husband all had the name Robert.

Historically yours,

Valerius Copernicus.

Ancestors in the Newspaper - digitised newspaper search in Trove

Ancestors in the newspaper

It is amazing to me how often our ancestors appear in the newspaper.  A simple search can give you so many little gems of information.

The greatest trouble with the search for me though is sifting through all the false positives for my ancestor's name.

For example, my ancestor's surname is SALTER.  When you search through Trove's digitised newspaper collection using the word Salter, you get all sorts of hits.  These are the examples I have found for Salter:

• Other families with the name Salter
• Salt cellars being listed as wedding gifts
• Gold mining claims being "salted"
• A member of the local constabulary named "Salt"
• Salt mining
• Government officials misspellings eg. "Sault"
• The digitisation process misreading words due to the age and deterioration of the newspaper being scanned. 

For the name ARMSTRONG,  there are other issues:

• The sheer quantity of people whose name is Armstrong
• Different unrelated groups of families called Armstrong living in the same area.
• Local Armstrong families using the same first names for their children of similar ages
• Judges, MP's, JP's, Police and defendants all with the name Armstrong 

Each surname that you search has its own set of challenges.  If you are lucky enough to have a surname that is unusual, you need to be lucky that people have spelled the name correctly in their documentation, and the newspaper is a clear copy so the digitisation process works well, as it mostly does.  If your surname is common, you will need to use filters to narrow your search from the tens of thousands the name search will find for you.  The filters in the digitised newspaper section include:

• the State the newspaper was printed in
• the decade and year it was printed in
• the name of the newspaper
• the Category of newspaper item you are looking for broken into subheadings:
• Advertising
• Articles
• Detailed Lists, Results and Guides
• Family Notices
• whether the item is Illustrated
• Word count

Using the filters will narrow the search surprisingly quickly down to a manageable size.  Once you have those results, you  can use the Sort function drop down box to sort the results by relevance (the articles considered to be most relevant to your search), or date (earliest to latest or vice versa.)

You can also utilise the Lists and Tags functions to find if other people have collated items for that name already.  Look for the tabs at the top of the Digitised Newspapers section.

As always, the more you know, the better your results. But it's always worth taking a punt.

Historically yours,

Valerius Copernicus

Elizabeth gives me a headache

The Trouble with Elizabeth Cumis nee Armstrong

Elizabeth's stays at Castlemaine Hospital for the years 1891 to 1896
highlighted in pink. The circle on 31 May 1896 shows when she died.

My ancestor Elizabeth gives me a headache.

She has so many spellings to her names, I've had to write a list so I remember them all. 

Elizabeth was born in Adelaide in 1842 with the surname ARMSTRONG.  That's all fine. Not many people spell Armstrong wrong.

  

Then her mother remarried in 1851 so she adopted her step-father's surname SALTER. That's fine as well, but I have found the name spelled SAULTER.

Then in 1864 she got married to Sims CUMIS, an african man. They were both illiterate, so we find as many spellings of their surname as there are bureaucrats that filled out their paperwork.

Since joining the Genealogical Society of Victoria (GSV),  I had searched CUMIS and CUMMIS in their Library.  I had found a couple of entries of Elizabeth being hospitalised at Castlemaine Mt. Alexander Hospital in the early 1890's. 

Yesterday I searched the name "Elizabeth" in conjunction with the place "Chewton", and Bingo! Eight new hospital records popped up under another spelling, COMAS.  I took a punt at another spelling, COMMAS.  Bingo! again another five hospital records. It was great.

So now we know our poor Elizabeth was in hospital for a total of 18 times over a period of six years. The names she was registered under were Elizabeth, Lizzie, Lizzy and Eliza.  Her surnames were the ones I've mentioned plus one under the name Salter.  Not to mention the couple of entries where there has been a transcription error and she is CUMINS and CUMMINS.

These are the trials of every family historian.

Welcome to Bendigo.  I visited
 the Bendigo Library, part of the
 Goldfields Libraries Group.

Part Two - Bendigo Library and Bendigo Family History Group AIGS

On Wednesday last, I travelled to Bendigo to research my great great Uncle James Armstrong. I had a terrific day, spending the morning in the BRAC, which you have already read about in a previous blog post.  In the afternoon, I stayed in the same building but spent time with the local family history group.

The Bendigo Library is one of the Goldfields Library Group, and is a real community centre in my opinion. A lot of thought has obviously gone into the design of the building. It has wonderful spaces for meetings of community groups.  Some spaces were like an open sunken auditorium, some were glassed off rooms with a large round meeting table and some were glass partitioned on three sides.  They also had food and drink available downstairs.  It all seemed very spacious and functional and user friendly to me, and I enjoyed being in their space.

I believe the people helping me were members of  the Australian Institute of Genealogical Studies or AIGS, Bendigo chapter.  They were wonderful, and really asked questions to understand exactly what I wanted.  They also offered local knowledge, which answered questions for me that would only have occurred to me much later on, thus saving me time and research.

They accessed local funeral director's records for me which are not available on-line.  They quickly found out specific things about my ancestor, which was heartening after a morning of fruitless searching in BRAC.

For example, I found out that my ancestor James had his funeral paid by an Insurance firm and a Repatriation fund.  The notes from the undertaker say "Polished coffin, Hearse, 2 Limousines, cemetery fee and press notices."  For his wife Lily, who died two months previous to him and is buried in the same plot: "Polished coffin, Glass Hearse, 1 Limo, Cemetery Fee." From these small details I imagine James consumed with grief as we know he was, following Lily's Glass Hearse to Kangaroo Flat Cemetery, where he would shortly follow.

Historically yours,
Valerius Copernicus

AIGS Bendigo volunteers are available at the Bendigo Library to assist researchers on Wednesdays 10am to 4pm and Saturdays 10am to 1 pm.

Webpage:  www.bendigofamilyhistory.org
Email:  bendigogen@gmail.com
Contact:
Research Officer
AIGS Inc. Bendigo Branch
PO Box 145
Bendigo 3552.

Searching in Bendigo - a visit to the Bendigo Regional Archives Centre

The photo I took yesterday morning of
Bendigo Magistrates' Court,
 a short walk away from the
 Bendigo Library in Hargreaves Street.

Yesterday was full of the highs and lows that make up the life of a passionate genealogist.

Off I went to Bendigo, only a couple of hours drive from Melbourne.  I had booked into a course at the Bendigo Regional Archives Centre (BRAC) for a brief run down of their resources.

 BRAC is located on the first floor of the Bendigo Library, located in Hargreaves Street.  It is a regional branch of the Public Records Office, (PROV) which is located in North Melbourne.  If you are a family historian in Victoria,  Australia, you will, or probably already have, visited PROV in North Melbourne.  I went there a few months ago and got some copies of inquests for my family. I was super impressed with PROV's professionalism and wondered how BRAC would compare.

Very well as it happens.  The course was interesting and informative, and we were presented with information packs that would assist us later,  As each available record was described, we got shown an example of that record, which was passed around the table. Some of the volumes were enormous and some of us were unable to lift them at all.

It was so exciting to see these documents, often leather-bound with colourful marbled endpapers.  Some of the handwriting was so fine and meticulous, I don't think I have ever seen its equal.  Books varied in size depending on age and what it contained.  As I said before, the Land Title volumes were so large that they were easily the length of my arm, and three inches thick including the heavy leather bindings.  Some of the Bendigo City Council pay books I went through were only 20cm square, but they contained each employee's signature, information about their occupation, even sometimes the area they worked in during that pay period. Gold for someone with that ancestor! Other pay books contained stamp duty stamps attached to the page and cancelled out.  Others contained handwritten notes such as "Please pay Mrs. X my wages as I am too sick with influenza. Kind and oblige, Mr. X."  Another note gave me pause: "Please pay Mrs. X my wages until such and such a date. (Months in advance).  I imagined the man owed back rent to his landlady.  Or something like that. Just think, I handled those books and papers and they were at least 80 years old.

Others were even older and some were in downright bad condition.  One particular volume from 1877 had very thick linen covered cardboard covers, with two perfect shoe shapes cut out of them.  The shoe lining thief stole them a long long time ago, perhaps during the depression. The front page has dark patches in perfect shoe shapes where the cover is missing.

The BRAC volunteers work hard and are friendly too.  I gleaned lots of local knowledge without which I would have been truly stuck.  Local knowledge is gold, and highly undervalued in this day of "everything's on computer" because that's not true.

You should go to BRAC if your ancestor lived in the area. If you, like me, are from out of town and plan to visit the Bendigo Library and BRAC for longer than an hour, park in the multi-storey carpark directly across the road.  It only costs $7 for the whole day, and saves moving your car periodically. The Bendigo Library also has food and drink available downstairs. More about Bendigo Library tomorrow.

Historically yours,
Valerius Copernicus.

An insight into the gold-mining town of Chewton, Victoria, Australia in 1865

Robert Armstrong Comes

Recently I obtained the birth certificate for Robert Armstrong Comes aka Robert CUMMIS, aka Robert ARMSTRONG.

As usual, Births Deaths and Marriages Victoria sent the whole page from the Chewton records at the time.  So I get five birth registrations for the price of one.

Robert was born on 3 July 1865 at Wattle Flat in Chewton, and was present at the time of his registration in September.  His father was listed as Simes Comes (who our family usually refer to as Sims Cummis) and he was a miner aged 28.  For some reason his birth place is listed as South America but our family knows he was from South Africa.  His birth in South Africa is confirmed as per his own statement on his wedding certificate, as being born at the Cape of Good Hope.

Robert's mother (and my 3x great grandmother) is listed as Elizabeth Comes, formerly Elizabeth Armstrong, born Adelaide, South Australia, aged 23.  Robert's birth registration also states that  Elizabeth and Sims married in 1864 in Chewton, and we can confirm this from their wedding certificate that they married on 10 October 1864.

The informant was Elizabeth herself, and she dutifully made her mark on the register (see the photo), as she had also done at her wedding.  It is interesting that Elizabeth and Sims were both illiterate, and yet one of their later sons became what amounted to an unofficial journalist, commenting in the newspapers about his experiences at Gallipoli and the Western Front during the First World War.

In the Witnesses column, it states there was 'No Medical attendant', however 'Other Witnesses' names Mrs. Salter.  

Now we know who that witness is.  Mrs. Salter is Elizabeth's mother and my 4x great grandmother, Janet Row who was born in Scotland.  She travelled to Adelaide, South Australia in 1839 with her Scottish husband, who died that same year.  Janet married again, this time to Elizabeth's father, an African man called John Armstrong.  After John Armstrong died, Janet married yet again in Adelaide, South Australia to an Englishman called James Salter.  James brought the whole family to Chewton in Victoria shortly after gold was discovered, a distance of 650 km (over 400 miles).

What is interesting on this birth registration page is that Mrs. Salter is named as witness to two births.

Janet also helped deliver another boy born four days after her grandson Robert. That boy's name was William John Archer, and his father was a 32 year old baker from Liverpool, England. His mother was 22 year old Agnes Longstaff, from Brooklyn, Long Island in America.

Four out of the five births listed on the page state 'no medical attendant'. Two of the other informants have definitely signed in their own hand.  The other two listed as informants seem to be consistent with the handwriting of Registrar Hardy. So Elizabeth was the only one who 'made her mark' on the page.

I like to think Elizabeth's mother Janet helped others as a midwife in their community. Janet lived in Chewton until she died in 1896. If I'd travelled from Scotland to Australia, from Adelaide to Chewton, I would refuse to move any more too.

.