Yesterday when I was at the Mitchell Library in Sydney, a repository of material about Australia's early history, I looked at microfiche of records of burials at Camperdown Cemetery.
I was searching for the name of my great great grandfather, George Mawbey, but he was not there!
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Then I saw that the list compiled by the Society of Australian Genealogists (SAG) was of inscriptions taken from monuments.
The ommission of George Mawbey suggests either that his monument was missing or unreadable when the transcriptions were done, or that his family was too poor to afford a monument for him.
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When he died, his wife Ann, 43, had eight children to care for on her own.
The eldest, Alice, was 17 followed by Ann Jane, 15, John Thomas, 13, James, 11, Grace, 9, Elizabeth, 7, George, 4, and baby Mary, just months old.
How on earth did they manage?
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I have just found some interesting information in Wikipedia webpage on Newtown.
It says that of the 15,000 burials in Camperdown Cemetery, approximatelyt half were paupers in unmarked graves, and often communal graves in cases of epidemics like measles.
Perhaps my great great grandfather died a pauper!
His occupation on his death certificate is 'dealer', a buyer and seller of goods.
I was searching for the name of my great great grandfather, George Mawbey, but he was not there!
*
Then I saw that the list compiled by the Society of Australian Genealogists (SAG) was of inscriptions taken from monuments.
The ommission of George Mawbey suggests either that his monument was missing or unreadable when the transcriptions were done, or that his family was too poor to afford a monument for him.
*
When he died, his wife Ann, 43, had eight children to care for on her own.
The eldest, Alice, was 17 followed by Ann Jane, 15, John Thomas, 13, James, 11, Grace, 9, Elizabeth, 7, George, 4, and baby Mary, just months old.
How on earth did they manage?
*
I have just found some interesting information in Wikipedia webpage on Newtown.
It says that of the 15,000 burials in Camperdown Cemetery, approximatelyt half were paupers in unmarked graves, and often communal graves in cases of epidemics like measles.
Perhaps my great great grandfather died a pauper!
His occupation on his death certificate is 'dealer', a buyer and seller of goods.
