MAWBEY ENGLISH ROOTS BLOG

The English Mawbey family pedigree can be seen on one of my other associated blogs, Mawbey Family Australia - English Roots (listed on this blog's sidebar).
The link to the pedigree is called Mawbey - UK pedigree. 

SMITH/CLARKE FAMILY AT ORANGE

Three members of the Smith/Clarke family were living at Orange in central western NSW in the early 1900s:
Sarah Ann Appledore, d.1910 - sister of Sarah Mawbey's mother, Elizabeth Clarke (nee Smith);
Betsy Perry (nee Clarke) d.1940 - Sarah Mawbey's younger sister;
Harold Clarke, d.1914 - Sarah Mawbey's younger brother.
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The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday 15 October 1910
APPLEDORE. — October 7, at Orange, suddenly, from heart failure, Sarah Ann, relict of the late Thomas Appledore, of Penrith, in her 69th year.
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The Sydney Morning Herald, Tuesday 7 October 1913
APPLEDORE.—In sad but loving memory of my dear uncle, Thomas Appledore, who departed this life on June 29, 1910, aged 73 years late of Penrith, also my dear aunt Sarah Ann Appledore, who departed this life on October 7, 1911, aged 60 years. Inserted by their loving niece, E. Clemson.
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The Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday 19 December 1940
PERRY.- At Orange. Mrs. Betsy Perry, beloved wife of Stephen Perry, mother of Hilda Ivy, Una May, Thomas Leslie, Reg Gordan, Eva Stella, Roy Stanley, aged 82 years.

My great, great, great grandmothers:

Mother of James Tucker b. England?

Mother of Mary Ann Bruce b. England?

Mother of Robert Clarke b. England?

Charlotte Smith (nee Newson) b. 1814 Wickhampton, Norfolk, England

Alice Williams (nee Jones?) b. England?

Mother of George Mawbey b.England?

It's very exciting to have found the GENUKI website with lots of free online information about Norfolk because now I have a starting point for research about my Clarke and Smith families in the UK.
I now know that from 1837, births deaths and marriages in the parts of Nofolk where my ancestors lived were registered in the Blofield Registration District.
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Interestingly, the name Mawbey is thought to have some connection with the town of Mautby on the Norfolk coast.

MY ANCESTORS' NORFOLK VILLAGES

Until today I did not know where Robert Clarke, the father of Sarah Mawbey, came from.
The State Records NSW online passenger lists reveal he came from Postwick [pron. possick], Norfolk.
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GENUKI (UK & Ireland Genealogy) has a charming description of the place from William White's History, Gazetteer and Directory of Norfolk, 1845.
In summary it says that Postwick, a parish of 241 souls, sits in a romantic glen which opens to the vale of the [River] Yare, near Yarmouth, and that most of the soil is owned by the Earl of Rosebery [Lord of the Manor].
The village is located 4 miles east of Norwich.
Some local residents of Postwick are listed in this directory, but no Clarkes.
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Cantley, Norfolk is where Robert's wife, Elizabeth's father, Samuel Smith, came from.
According to the above source, Cantley is also near the River Yare.
It has a population of 210 souls and the Lord of the Manor is William Alexander Gilbert, Esq.
The village is 10 miles east of Norwich and 9 miles west of Great Yarmouth.
Among the local residents listed in the 1845 directory is a Mary Smith, shopkeeper.
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The compiler of this information on GENUKI is Pat Newby.

ONLINE PASSENGER LISTS OF FREE SETTLERS

I have just found a new section of the State Records NSW website - Online microfilm of passenger lists of assisted and unassisted immigrants to the colony of New South Wales.
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From the passenger list for the Asiatic, I discovered that one of my great, great grandfathers, Robert Clarke, came from the village of Postwick in Norfolk.
I already knew that his wife Elizabeth was from Wickhampton, Norfolk.
He was 21 and she 18.
Their religion was given on the passenger list as Church of England.
Elizabeth's parents, Samuel and Charlotte Smith and her two younger sisters, Sarah and Mary, who were travelling with her are Methodists.
Robert an agricultural labourer.
He was illiterate but Elizabeth could read.
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Samuel Smith came from Cantley, Norfolk his wife Charlotte (nee Newson) and their two daughters, Sarah 13 and Mary 10, came from Wickhampton, Norfolk.
Samuel was 48 and Charlotte 41.
All but Mary could read and write.
Mary could only read.
Samuel was an agricultural labourer.

CALLING ALL MY CLARK(E) RELATIVES

After discovering the grave of young James Clark at Upper Castlereagh near Penrith last weekend, I've been delving into that branch of the family.
Sarah Mawbey's eight brothers and sisters bearing the surname Clark(e).
This has made me realise that I probably have lots of Clark(e) relatives.
I'm hoping I'll find some of their family trees on Ancestry because I don't think I'm going to have time to do too much digging for them.

FAMILY HISTORY EXPENSIVE PASTTIME

I'm now reaching the stage where I need to spend quite a lot of money purchasing births, deaths and marriage certificates.
Being on a pension and struggling to make ends meet, this is not possible unless I manage to get some paid work.
I would be very grateful to anyone caring to donate to this blog.
Only registered charities and not-for-profit organisations are able to do this, accept donations, through Paypal on their webpages.
Could anyone wishing to donate to my family history blogs please email me on mawbeyfamilyaustralia@gmail.com.
It's amazing to think that I have obtained all the existing information for free, not counting all my unpaid time and effort, which I have made available to everyone.

Interestingly, the parents of my paternal grandmother, also named Mary Ann Ewards, were living in Gundagai in 1880, the same year Herbert Thowhaldsen Edwards was born.
His parents were Charles and Mary Ann Edwards (nee Clemson nee Smith) my grandmother's parents were James and Sarah Jane Edwards (nee Tucker).
Coincidentally, James and Sarah gave birth to a son in 1880, also called Herbert.
In both cases, the boys were second children.
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I am wondering if there was any familial link between these two Edwards families.
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When my grandmother, Mary Ann Edwards (daughter of Charles and Sarah), turned up at Breelong West as the schoolteacher in 1899, Sarah Mawbey would have been struck by the fact that she bore the same name as her younger, twice married sister.
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But Mary Ann did not board with Sarah Mawbey while she was there, unlike the two previous schoolteachers at Breelong, and the subsequent one murdered by Aborigines.

TWO MARY ANN EDWARDS

A rootsweb.ancestry.com WorldConnect website has a detailed family tree for Samuel Smith and Charlotte Newson, the maternal grandparents of Sarah Mawbey (nee Clark).
She and three of her children were murdered by part-Aboriginal man, Jimmy Governor, in her home late one winter's night at Breelong in 1901.
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According to this rootsweb website, the youngest of her mother's two sisters, Mary Ann Smith, married George Thomas Clemson at Penrith on 9 March 1860.
She was only 15 at the time.
The Clemsons had seven children, all born in the Penrith district, the last in 1872.
The family then appears to have moved to Gundagai in south-western NSW where George Clemson died on 17 October 1872.
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Two years later, the widowed Mary Ann Clemson, 29, married Charles George (known as "George") Edwards at Gundagai.
Three sons were born to Charles and Mary Ann Edwards there: Victor (George) Emmanuel, 1875, Herbert Thowhaldsen, 1879 and Ernest Charles, 1880.
Another son, Frederick Adolphus Edwards was born in 1882.
He was the father of a distant cousin of mine currently living in Melbourne.
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Using the unusual Scandinavian-sounding name 'Thowhaldsen' as a guide in my Ancestry search for Charles Edwards, I found one from Finland.
He departed from Glasgow, Scotland on the Tamerlane and arrived in Sydney on 18 July 1873 aged 27 (b.1846).
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My distant cousin says his grandfather Charles "George" Edwards was born on 29 March 1835 at Stepney, London and baptised on 26 April 1835 at Saint George in the East Parish Church Stepney.
His parents, and my cousin's great grandparents, were Charles Edwards (b.1810) and Lucy Maria Sennel, married 1834.
My cousin tells me his grandfather was a mariner.
Also that the Thorwaldsen was a migrant ship, bringing his wife's grandfather to Melbourne in 1851, but that his grandfather was not a passenger or crewman on it.
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He says Charles George Edwards arrived in the colony of NSW in 1854 when he was 19.

THE SMITHS & CLARKS AT CASTLEREAGH

Yesterday I found the grave of Sarah Mawbey's older brother, James Clark, in the old Methodist cemetery on the Old Castlereagh Road near Penrith.
When I lived in the Hawkesbury in 2000-01, I drove past that cemetery many times, but did not see it because the tombstones are hidden by a fence.
Even if I had seen it, I had no idea some of my ancestors might be buried there.
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James Clark died in 1882.
He was born in England and came here on the Asiatic in 1855 with his parents, Robert and Elizabeth Clark (nee Smith).
With them were his mother's two younger sisters, Sarah Ann and Mary Ann Smith, and the girls' parents, Arthur Samuel and Charlotte Smith (nee Newson).
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Sarah Ann Smith, b.1840, married Thomas Appledore Jnr, an English-born son of a convict, Thomas Appledore (1) [aka George Kane] who arrived in the British penal colony of NSW in 1801 and died at Penrith in 1841.
Thomas Appledore (2) arrived in 1842, settling at Castlereagh in 1854, the year before the Smith family arrived in the district.
He was baptised in England on 6 December 1795 and had an older brother, Richard, and younger sister, Mary Ann.
His father had married Anne Jagolfe in at St Andrew's church, East Stonehouse, Devon, England in 1792.
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Mary Ann Smith, b.1843, married twice, first to George Thomas Clemson and then, after being widowed, to Charles George Edwards.
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This is yet another offshoot of the family I now have to investigate.