Henrietta was born on the 18 Jan 1877 in Nairne, South Australia. She was the only child of her mother Ellen's second marriage to Edward John Rogers, but she had five older half siblings. Sadly she didn't really get to know her father as he died 3 months short of her third birthday.
At the age of seventeen and half, despite the marriage certificate saying she was eighteen, Henrietta married William Walmsley who was twelve years her senior. She misspelt her name as Heneritta when she signed. Her older half sister Annie and her husband, Samuel Short were the witnesses to the marriage which took place in the Adelaide Registry Office. Eight months later and only eleven days after her eighteenth birthday, Henrietta gave birth to my grandmother, Annie Edith. It is possible she named her after her older half sister. Four years later she gave birth to a son, John Henry. Everything seemed rosy, but that was when the trail went cold.
A few years ago, I happened to stumble on this notice that appeared in the Evening Journal, Adelaide:
Annie was nearly seven and her brother John only 20 months old. Now I understand why my grandmother never mentioned her mother and was possibly brought up by her grandmother, Ellen, but what happened to Henrietta? I will probably never know the full story but at least today I finally found where she died. I had a Queensland burial transcription for a Henrietta Walmsley alias Stokes and also a similar probate notice in the newspaper, but until today I had been unable to find a death certificate for either name. I thought I would check to see if Queensland Registry had updated their index and found you can now purchase an historical certificate as a PDF and finally I hit the jackpot with this:
Many questions still remain, but now I at least know where she died.
No comments:
Post a Comment