Book Prizes - What can they tell us?

Books awarded as prizes to Norah & Eileen Myers

The above books have sat on my bookcase for over thirty-five years and although I have looked at and handled them numerous times, I had never actually read them until recently. The one on the left was awarded to my great, great Aunt Honorah Myers, known as Norah, as a twelve year old. It was first prize for Poetry when in 2nd Class at St Mary's Convent, Rutherglen, Xmas 1906. The other book was awarded to her younger sister, Eileen, as a nine year old. It was 1st prize for English when in fourth grade at St. Mary's School, Rutherglen, Xmas, 1911. The two girls were the youngest of a family of 10 children of John Myers and Margaret McAuliffe. All four grandparents were Irish Catholics who had come to Victoria in the 1850's. Sadly both girls died in their twenties and neither married, although Norah had a son Cecil supposedly fathered by a famous tennis player. Another married sister also died in her twenties. On reading the books I was very surprised at the stories they told, which prompted me to research more about the books and their authors to try to understand why they were chosen as prizes.

Inscriptions in each book

Many of us have items passed down to us and it can be a valuable exercise to record what you know of these items and who they belonged to, so their history is not lost to future generations. If you also do some research on these items, it can add extra context to the original owner's story. Having finally read these books, I wanted to know more about them. They were both supplied by William P Linehan, 309 Little Collins Street, Melbourne. William Lineham's obituary in The Advocate, Dec 1945, described him as "Founder and Principal of Well-known Catholic Bookshop". He had set up his own bookshop in 1895 and had a hand in setting up two well known Catholic publications, the Austral Light and the Tribune, the latter being published for several years on his premises. Requiem Mass was held at St Patrick's Cathedral with the Archbishop presiding. Books from this supplier would, therefore, have been considered suitable prizes to their students by the Nuns, who had only recently come from Melbourne to Rutherglen. St Mary's School and Convent had only been established in March 1901 after a request by the Parish Priest, Fr. Micheal O'Connor, to the Presentation Nuns in Melbourne to sends some Nuns to educate the children of the Parish. Did the Nuns actually know what the stories were about or am I surprised at their content because I am viewing them with a 21st century perspective?

The Adventures of a Casket, An Episode of the Invasion of 1814, by Theophile Menard, translated from French is of superior quality and was awarded to Norah Myers. The flowery section of the cover is textured, while the grey section is embossed in silver and wraps around to a similar depth on the back. The spine has only one word on it "Casket", a hint to the story. It appears to have been read many times and greatly treasured. It has no publishing date, but a copyright of 1876 by Benziger Brothers. Benziger Brothers were a Catholic book publishing company founded in 1792 in Switzerland by Joseph Charles Benziger and later run and expanded by his sons and grandsons. They were bestowed the title of Printers to the Holy Apostolic See in 1867. The Holy See being the government of the Catholic Church based in the Vatican.

The story is told from the perspective of a young man's experiences of the Austrian invasion of France in 1814, when it was necessary for the French to hide their valuables from the invading Austrians. Set in the village of Baume les Dames, many took advantage of hiding their valuables in a vault under the local chapel. The young man had been given the duty of looking after a lady and her niece, whilst the husband was away on business. The valuables belonging to the niece were placed in a casket, and together with several other cases packed with family valuables, the young man was charged with taking them to the Chapel for safe keeping. There is a great deal of detail about the over running of the village and the battles nearby, as well as the entertaining of officers and billeting of invading troops. The casket, a plain wooden box, never made it to the vault and was inadvertently left in the kitchen area of the Abbey where soldiers stayed, some cleaning their boots on it, but it was never opened. When the army finally left and the valuables of the villagers were reclaimed, there was great dismay that the casket with its valuables was not there. The young man, who was responsible for hiding it was mortified and offered to pay for it when he could. Weeks passed before the casket was found and the moral of the story was "What God guards is well guarded."  Although an interesting historical story it wasn't one I thought appropriate for a Poetry prize for a 12 year old girl.

The Opening Pages of each Book

The Old Gray Rosary, by Mrs Anna H. Dorsey, is in a slightly more tattered condition, possibly because of its lesser quality, with thicker paper and some pages printed on a slant. There is no publisher or publication date, only a small Irish Trade Mark stamped on the last page that I can find nothing about. The spelling of "gray" in the title indicates its American origin. Anna was born in Washington D C in 1816, the daughter of a minister. Both Anna and her husband were converts to Catholicism and she is remembered as a pioneer of Catholic literature in America. She was the author of numerous short stories and novels, the majority of which concentrated on the melodramatic and religious conversion.  In 1889, Anna was awarded the Laetare Medal, by Notre Dame University, Indiana, in recognition of outstanding service to the Catholic Church and society, the most prestigious award given to American Catholics. Another well known recipient of this medal was President John F Kennedy. She lived through a time of great upheaval in America with her only son killed fighting for the Union side in the American Civil War.

The Irish Trade Mark

The story begins with a girl asking questions about her mother's collection of rosary beads among which are the old gray rosary beads, described as ugly and forlorn. They were made of beans and brass wire and belonged to a slave. This led to the girl being given a manuscript written by her grandmother which told the story of those beads described as:

     "a true narrative of the struggles of a poor negro slave, with the infirmities of her nature and the sins of her life; who, disheartened by frequent failure and the evil consequences of the great sin of  her life, abandoned the sacraments of the church and everything connected with her religion, except devotion to the Blessed Mother of Jesus Christ."

It is a story told from a Protestant point of view and wasn't very flattering to Catholics. The girl's grandfather was a slave owner, who treated his slaves better than most, with ill-treated slaves coming to ask him to buy them. He often did, but only bonded them for a certain number of years and then granted them their freedom. Mary, the owner of the beads, was one of these slaves who had been brutally treated by a drunken owner and had herself resorted to drink in the mistaken idea it would drown her sorrows. Mary was now treated well, cooked for the family and looked after the children. Everyday she prayed using those gray rosary beads. The daughter of the family, was curious about both this habit and Mary's religion. She was allowed to accompany Mary to her Church, where she was captivated by the paintings, statues and rituals which were much more interesting than the austere Protestant church her parents went to. Mary had lapses to her old ways and was given many chances. One night looking after the children, she left them alone for a few minutes and an accident with a candle occurred, with one of the younger children dying of burns. The grandfather immediately emancipated his slaves and the family moved North. Mary's Catholic influence was forgotten. The family returned after many years and the daughter married a Catholic and converted. By chance she reconnected with Mary, who had had a sad life, but still clung to her old gray rosary beads and recited the rosary three times daily. Again I found it a strange book to give to a 9 year old, Catholic girl, as the majority of the book is focused on the Protestant religion.

By reading and researching these books I have learnt about the type of books my great, great Aunts were given to read and although they were being educated here in Australia, the books were published overseas about historic stories there. Australia was still finding its identity, as was seen when WW1 broke out a few years later and Australian men enlisted to help Britain, the mother country. An interesting side note to this story is in December 1906 when Norah received her prize, her older brother, Patrick applied for a special licence to marry Mary Louisa Williams, a protestant. Patrick and Mary were my great grandparents. On the same bookshelf as the above books I have three books awarded to Mary Louisa Williams, for Good Conduct, when she attended Sunday School at St Stephen's, Church of England, Rutherglen. 

2020 - The First Six Months

Now that we are in the last week of June, I felt it important to record my thoughts on the year so far. Many times when researching my ancestors have I wished that they had done that very thing. There was an ominous start to the year with bushfires raging around the state of Victoria. Living in Warburton, surrounded by beautiful, lush bushland and trees for most of the year, summer is a time to be prepared and alert for fires and this year was no different. We were lucky, despite being blanketed by smoke, we didn't have any local fires, but sadly a vast area of the state wasn't so lucky. Lives were lost, properties burnt and businesses, in areas that usually boomed in the holiday season, suffered. Vast amounts of money was raised for people affected and even Katy Perry gave a free performance, to raise spirits, in Bright, one of the towns that suffered during this time.

With the bushfire disaster still fresh in our minds, another disaster was spreading across the world, the Covid-19 Pandemic, this would and still is changing our way of life as we knew it. It had begun in Wuhan, China and spread rapidly throughout the world. Initially, I don't think any of us realized how bad this virus was, but then the numbers of people dying in other countries and the inability of the hospitals in these countries, especially Italy, to cope scared us all. Cases started appearing here and luckily for all Australians, our government and expert health advisors acted quickly to close our borders to the Chinese and then all international visitors. Australians rushed to return home, with some of these bringing the virus with them. Numbers of cases rose, deaths occurred, quarantine of arrivals in the country became necessary and we were all forced into to lockdown.

The fear of lockdown caused another problem, consumers panic buying, supermarkets were cleared very quickly of basic supplies. The most hard to get item for weeks was toilet paper! Limits were put on many items, like flour, pasta, frozen vegetables and mince for weeks. Despite government reassurance we could leave our houses for essential items, health needs, exercise and to go to work if you unable to work from home, people continued to buy up big causing shortages for people that didn't panic. The lockdown worked and cases of the virus dropped, but with the relaxing of restrictions cases have again begun to rise. People have become complacent.

As with everyone else my normal routine came to a stop. First and foremost I was confined to my own house for an extended time. For nearly ten years, I had been doing lots of housesitting and spending nearly half the year in other peoples' houses. Initially I saw it as a chance to do all the things I had put off, the pantry got cleaned, the kitchen drawers and a cupboard were sorted, but the novelty soon wore off. I did finish hand quilting a quilt I had made for my daughter's twenty-first birthday and gave it to her for her forty-first!

Many other habits changed as well. My regular cappuccino and reading the paper at the local cafe stopped and I had to resort to making a milk coffee at home and reading the paper online. I regularly went to genealogy discussion groups in Melbourne at least six time a month, these abruptly halted with a couple resuming on Zoom. I had never heard of Zoom before this pandemic but now I have attended a book launch, a webinar and meetings via this medium. Stuck at home, I realized I needed to go for a walk just to break the monotony of the four walls, so this has now become part of my regular routine. I feel better for it and have managed to loose a couple of kilos as well. Another change, from staying at home more, has been the increase in my power bill, but at least the petrol consumption in my car has gone down. All this extra time has allowed me to do more genealogy. Most afternoons I now spend on my computer researching or sorting DNA matches, which has more than kept me occupied. I must admit I am very happy that the football has recommenced, as that has always been a constant in my life during winter. Nothing I like better than to settle down with my knitting or crocheting and watch a game of football or two or more! Watching football without crowds wasn't quite the same, but now they have added crowd noises to the broadcast it is much better.

I have always been an avid reader of the newspaper and I watch the news on TV most evenings. I have been continuing to do this, as well as watching government press conferences, to keep up to date with latest information on the pandemic.  Although aware of media bias and shortfalls in the past, it has become more obvious to me during this pandemic how selective and manipulative the media can be. Social media has also had a major influence on issues during this pandemic and not always in a good way. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but when that opinion is based on selective facts and given a lot of media coverage, it is a recipe for things to get blown out of proportion.

Unfortunately during this pandemic, a lot of emphasis has been placed on the negative aspects of it and the deprivation of freedom, rather than the numerous positive aspects that have occurred as well. Conspiracy theories by a small minority have been spread on social media, such as the government are on a power trip to control us or have an alternative agenda. The devastation and loss of life around the world is a clear example to me, the government's priority is about keeping us safe. Some people will accuse me of looking through rose coloured glasses and I admit it hasn't affected me like others that lost their jobs or had to home school. Being restricted in movement has allowed many people to take stock of their lives, realize what is important to them and spend more time with their immediate family. Home cooking, jigsaws, board games, reading, home maintenance and working from home have increased during this time and many believe a lot of these things will continue long past this isolation time. Some old habits will not return. Online shopping and the use of card rather than cash are seen as lasting changes caused by this pandemic. Hopefully health etiquette and staying home when unwell will be other habits that continue. On the whole I think there has been a greater appreciation and awareness of the work done by our service industries, teachers and health workers during this time.

The things I missed the most during this time were my regular cappuccino and conversing with other people. However the lack of routine allowed me to do a lot more of the things I enjoy, genealogy, jigsaws, crafts and reading whenever I felt like it. The most annoying aspect of this time has been the selfishness and whinging of some people, the lack of adherence by some to the rules set, when the vast majority were doing the right thing, and the attitude of a minority that the government were over- reacting.

In this last week of June, there has been increased anxiety, with virus numbers increasing again in Victoria and a relaxing of restrictions curtailed. Hopefully measures now in place will be enough to stop this second wave before it gets out of hand and serve as a reminder to all that we still need to take precautions and social distance. Hopefully the second half of 2020 will be better than the first.

The Search for the Elusive Slowbohms

My great, great grandfather and his father had the middle name 'Slobourn', but where had this name come from? In 1994 I purchased the marriage certificate of my 3 x great grandparents, Joseph Slobourn Williams and Harriett Barnett who were married in Beechworth in 1860. On this certificate Joseph stated his mother was Ann Slobourn. Joseph, it appeared, had been given this middle name as it was his mother's maiden name, a quite common tradition and he had then carried it on to his son. Joseph signed his full name on his marriage certificate, with his middle name spelt 'Slobourn' and this was one of many spelling variations I have come across.

It is often assumed the less common the surname the easier it will be to trace the family. Even Ancestry advertisements imply all you need to do is type in a name and all will be revealed! This certainly didn't happen in this case. Joseph had also stated that he was born in Wales. A Williams in Wales is going to the other extreme, but at least his father had married a Slobourn, so I thought I might have some hope of finding their marriage. No such luck! Census records drew a blank, I just had too little information with such a common name as Williams. Then one day in 2009 as a last resort I typed Slobourn in Google and up came the name Mabel Sloburn Williams in a family group sheet on the Ballarat Genealogy site. She was a daughter of a Thomas Williams, a carpenter, born in London. It was a reasonable assumption to think that Thomas and Joseph were brothers. I now had that little extra information to try the census records again and finally found the family living in St Pancras in 1841. It also showed Ann and the children had not been born in the county, so perhaps Joseph had been born in Wales.

Another few years passed until I received an email from a second cousin, who after much patience had found the marriage of Ann Slowbohm and Joseph Williams in St Pancras in 1821 on Pallot's Marriage Index. Ann's surname had been written and transcribed as 'Horobohm' despite the index having (?Slowbohm) next to the name. Finally the marriage and the first appearance of this spelling of the name. I then went searching for Slowbohms and found a few living in Whitechapel and although I could not link them to the family I felt there must be a connection. A few years later I did eventually find Ann's baptism in St Pancras in 1824 (three years after her marriage) which gave both her year of birth and her parents names, Ann and John. That is where I had left the research until this week.

 Pallot's Marriage Index Entry

A trip to England in late 2018 made me determined to find as much as I could before I went. Several long afternoons trawling Ancestry, Find My Past and Family Search as well as rereading collected information proved a worthwhile exercise. However it was not before learning that Ancestry gave a few names that matched and then proceeded to throw up the name Sullivan as the next best variation. Very unhelpful! It was a long list, however when using various wildcards, the lists were a manageable number around 2000! What amazed me was the variation on both how the name was spelt and how differently it was transcribed. A few of the variations included: Slowbohn, Slobohm, Slowboahm, Slowbome, Slowbottom. Slowbhom, Slowthbom, Slobin, Slogan, Slobourn, Sloburn, and Horobohm.

Now after all these years through perseverance and the availability of more online records, I have linked most of the Slowbohms in London to my family back to John Henry and Susannah Slowbohm, my 7 x great grandparents, born in 1726 and 1732. John Henry died in 1790 and left a will, which now provides a challenge to try to decipher it. Slowbohm seems the most common spelling of the name in England, but once the brothers came to Australia, the name became more anglicized. It has been a great research journey that hasn't finished yet.

DNA, Ethnicity, Matches & More.

Pocahontas
Credit: Three Lions/Getty Images

Much history can be learnt by exploring your DNA results, like the story of Pocahontas! When I first receive my DNA results, like everyone else, I looked at the ethnicity to see if there were any surprises and then onto the thousands of matches I had. DNA can open up a whole new world to explore, learn, verify and add details to your family history story, but it can also be quite overwhelming. You have to work hard to understand and interpret these results meaningfully. I am at the stage now after lots of reading, attending talks, watching YouTube, uploading to other sites and using other tools like Genetic Affairs, Gedmatch & DNA Painter, that I have managed to break several brick walls and work out a lot of matches, but there are a lot more matches that I will probably never work out. That is okay too, as you can learn from these unknown matches too. They can give you an insight to where some of your ancestors lived, where some may have migrated too and other valuable context to your family history story.

I have broken the majority of my matches above 15 cMs at Ancestry into maternal and paternal matches, giving them an appropriate pink or blue dot. Now it starts to get tricky and requires a lot more research. Firstly I have just over a hundred matches that I can't allocate to either maternal or paternal. DNA is only one tool used to help you discover your ancestry and unless you have an extensive tree to start with, you will find it quite difficult to recognize names in other trees and place your match in your own tree. Your matches themselves are never wrong, but their trees or your own may be wrong, so you need to be prepared to uncover surprises. For many reasons you may not have been able to extend certain lines of your family. I am 77% Irish and  Irish records are very limited. With some family members going to America and other coming to Australia and very few remaining in Ireland, DNA may help link these families again. My paternal grandfather was the only member of his family to come to Australia and his line links back firstly, to Ulster Scots, a lot of whom went to America and secondly to Wales, with the common surnames of Jones and Powell, so DNA is an invaluable tool to try to sort this out too. Once you have worked out the easier matches, it is necessary to take the analysis up a notch.

With plenty of time on my hands at the moment, I have decided to make a concerted effort on my paternal line. My paternal grandfather, John William Graham was born in North Yorkshire, his father, James and grandfather, John were both born in Glasgow, Scotland. When the elder John Graham married Mary McMullan in Glasgow in 1862, both sets of parents were deceased. John's parents were John, a hand loom weaver and Elizabeth Graham ( Elizabeth's maiden was given as Graham) and Mary's parents were James, a gamekeeper and Mary Stewart. James and Mary were married in Ballymoney in County Antrim in 1834, suggesting they were Ulster Scots. That is the extent of the information I know about my great grandfather's parents.

The key to sorting DNA matches, is to be systematic, using what you do know to help sort the unknown. Clustering tools are an invaluable step, whether it is the Leeds method, Genetic Affairs, My Heritage or just using pink, blue and other dots at Ancestry. By knowing where one person in a cluster fits into your family this enables you to to know where others in this cluster must fit, although  a little more research may be necessary to work out where exactly. By only using my paternal matches from Ancestry on Genetic Affairs I was able to work out the clusters related to three out of four of my paternal lines, my paternal grandfather's father and mother and my paternal grandmother's mother, but nothing related to my grandmother's father.

My paternal grandmother, Annie Edith Walmsley, was born in Adelaide and I was hoping DNA would verify the work I had done on researching her ancestry. It did on her maternal line with numerous matches, however, her father, William Walmsley from Lancashire, for whom I have an extensive tree, nothing and for her mother's father Edward John Rodgers, born to Northern
Ireland parents in Hampshire, nothing. It is possible that no one on these lines have survived or taken DNA test, but it is possible that the paternity in each case is different to what was put on the certificates. Are the 117 matches that don't match either side of the family the answer to this conundrum? Something I will have to look at more deeply.

At the moment I have started building trees for the matches in the largest cluster, which I believe are related to my paternal great grandfather and that line, I know least about. This cluster has 48 matches (16.1 - 35.5 cM). About 20 of these have no trees, 8 have large trees and the rest have trees that need expanding to be of any use. I have expanded 6 of these trees further, but as yet have been unable to find the connection. However I have learnt a lot from this exercise about my ancestors who ever they were! All the ancestors of my matches in this cluster are concentrated to three areas of early settlement in Canada and America, namely Nova Scotia, Virginia and North Carolina. While expanding trees I learnt about the isolation in the early days of these settlements, slavery, the pride of being a descendant of a revolutionary soldier and the intermarrying within these small early communities, which may skew some of the DNA results. I read wills, family stories and histories of small communities. Many of these early settlers came from Northern Ireland and Scotland where my great grandfather's ancestors came from.

Emblem for Sons of the Revolution Organization.

One of my matches is a coloured lady and on expanding her tree I found that several of her ancestors were classed by the now derogatory term "Mulatto" of mixed race. One match tells of a story handed down, that an ancestor had changed his name in order to marry a coloured woman, as mixed marriages were frowned upon, whilst in another, a family line could be traced back to Pocahontas, an Indian woman, the daughter of an Indian chieftain, in the very early days of settlement. Pocahontas supposedly had a relationship with John Smith, one of the first settlers. It bought back memories of watching the TV shows like Rin Tin Tin and Daniel Boone as a child.

The message I want to send from this blog is that DNA matches take a lot time to unravel, but can lead you to a lot of stories and information that will add meaning and context to your family history stories even if you don't know the name of your ancestor. An added benefit is that you get to correspond with people in other parts of the world that you are related to, so enjoy the adventure and if you find the connection to that elusive ancestor it is a bonus!