UKRAINE READING ME

In the last week, there have been 33 views of my Mawbey Family Australia blog by people living in the Ukraine, at a time of conflict with its neighbour, Russia.
The highest number of views are from the USA with 6 from China, 4 from Romania and 2 from Hungary.
 

DESCENDANTS OF FRANK ALLAN, VICTORIAN CRICKETER

Anyone with information about turn of the 19th century champion Victorian bowler, FRANCIS "FRANK" ERSKINE ALLAN (1849-1917), is invited to contact me, particularly any of his descendants.
Allan was the husband of MARY EMMA MAWBEY (1857-1927), the 7th of 10 children of Henry Mawbey 1, a Victorian pioneer settler, and horse-racing fan.
According to Wikipedia, Allan made his first class debut for Victoria in an inter-colonial match against New South Wales in 1869. In 1878 he went on the Australians tour to England where he became regarded as a fine cricketer, both at home and abroad.
The following year he played in the third Test cricket match, having declined selection for the first two Tests because he wanted to attend the Warrnambool Show.
Allan was also a leading Aussie Rules footballer for the South Melbourne Football Club in the Victorian Football Association.
For where he sits on the Victorian Mawbey family tree, see my associated blog, MAWBEY FAMILY AUSTRALIA - VICTORIA, page HENRY MAWBEY FAMILY TREE

EDMUND MAWBEY, BRITISH NAVY SEAMAN AKA EDWARD MORBY

Empire, Sydney, Monday 17 April 1865
WATER POLICE COURT. - Saturday.
(Before the Water Police Magistrate.)
Jane Wilkinson, aged 29, described as a domestic servant, was brought up for protection.
From the evidence it appeared that the prisoner, on Thursday night last, threw herself into the water from the pier near the battery at Fort Macquarie and but for the timely aid of Edmund Mawbey, ship's corporal, of H.M.S. Curacoa, she  would inevitably have lost her life.
The woman had been carried into the stream fully 30 yards when Mawbey plunged in to her rescue.
She was slightly under the influence of liquor when she was given into custody. The Water Police Magistrate complimented Mawbey for his gallant conduct. The prisoner was remanded for a week for medical treatment.
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Seven months later, in November 1865, Edmund Mawbey was in Darlinghurst Gaol.  Why?  He'd been awarded medals for his involvement in the Maori Wars in New Zealand, so what went wrong?

21-02-2016
The Sydney Morning Herald Thursday 16 November 1865
Well, I've just discovered that this once gallant seaman was back in the news in November 1865 as "Edward Morby" and as a deserter from his ship, the HMS Curacao.
The police were tipped off to his whereabouts by an informer and he was found in a bed in a pub owned by a Camperdown publican, John Woodford, and his wife who were hiding him.
The publican was fined 30 pounds in default three months in prison.
Morby aka Mawbey must have been given a gaol sentence for jumping ship. 
This all happened exactly 3 years after my ancestor, George Mawbey's death in nearby Newtown.

JOHN EVAN MAWBEY FOUND & REUNITED

A very interesting story has developed as a result of now being able to link two Mawbeys who have been dealt with separately on this blog.
They are John Evan Mawbey and Ann Clifford (nee Mawbey) who came to Australia as a couple in 1857.
According to a small piece in The Sydney Morning Herald of 13 August 1859, the former (known as 'Evan') had died at Parramatta River the previous month.
It claimed he had been a compositor, formerly of the Times office, London, and was aged 42.
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There were several settlements along the Parramatta River, and one of them was Tarban Creek, near today's Gladesville.
It was the site of Sydney's lunatic asylum.
That was where Evan Mawbey [Mowberry] died, as a 'lunatic',on 21 July 1859.
*
Some four years later, in September 1862 (two months before my GG grandfather, George Mawbey died in Sydney), a widow, Ann Mawbey, remarried at Camden, south of Sydney.
At the time she was the housekeeper at the country estate of Charles Cowper, a son of Rev William Cowper, and several times premier of New South Wales.
The name of the estate was Wivenhoe.
*
Evan and Ann Mawbey had arrived together in Sydney from London on the Alnwick Castle on 12 January 1857.
At first, I could not find a death record for John Evan, nor a coroner's report, which seemed strange.
Then around midnight a couple of weeks ago, I did a BDM search, typing in just the word 'Evan' and his year of death.
Lo and behold his entry appeared, as 'Evan Mowbery' with his surname misspelt.
*
Meantime, I had joined forces with another member of the Mawbey family in Canberra, part of Evan's wider family, and she obtained his death certificate.
Lo and behold yet another surprise!
That he had died in a lunatic asylum.
His death death certificate gave his age as 30, but he was older, around 35.
*
Evan Mawbey came from a family of males who worked in various capacities at The Times.
So far my GGG does not appear to have any direct connection with this branch of the family.
Three generations of its males emigrated to Australia. 

WALTER & CHARLES MAWBEY

Two brothers from Crick, Northamptonshire, England, Walter Gilbert (1884-1945) and Charles A Mawbey, were living at Hurstville, Sydney in 1945.
on 27 February that year, Walter died at age 61, a machinist and invalid pensioner.
He appears to have arrived in Melbourne on the Miltiades on 26 June 1909 aged 26.
His parents were George Mawbey, wheelwright, and Ellen Mawse.

ENGLISH MAWBEYS

I am currently posting new information about different branches of the Mawbey family in England on my subpost, MFA-English Roots (see link right side bar).

INTERESTING FAMILY HISTORIES

Last night I attended a free two-hour workshop by family historian and author of popular histories, Carol Baxter, on how to write interesting family histories.
I was pleased to learn that I had already incorporated one of her techniques, placing my ancestors in their social, political and economic historical context.
The highlight for me was winning the door prize, a copy of her book, Writing Interesting Family Histories.

MAKING PROGRESS

As the new  year begins, I can see my finished Mawbey family history book looming over the horizon.
When I thought I had finished it some six months ago, I was really just at the beginning of the next stage of the research process.
This second stage, linking my first paternal ancestor, George Mawbey, with other people and events, has proved a most fascinating and rewarding exercise.
After finding all the surface 'gold', nuggets of information, I'm finding much more buried beneath the surface.
It's taken almost 50 years for me to appreciate having studied Archaeology as an undergraduate, and the understanding this gave me of the importance of the need to dig deeper.
I still have more digging to do, but I know where to look now and just have to keep shovelling.
As Steve Jobs, founder of Apple computers, so rightly said: 'The journey is the reward.'

MY MOST POPULAR POSTS

Here are my 15 most popular posts on this blog, each with over 100 hits, and the number of times each has been viewed.
The Mawbey Family Australia blog began just after Australia Day in January 2010.
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The Mawbey massacre 598
The Mawbey children 389
Mawbey court cases 360
Thomas Keneally & Jimmie Blacksmith aka Jimmy Governor 287
Australian Royalty Genealogy Website 260
Mrs Sarah Mawbey 187
Sarah and John Thomas Mawbey 162
Mawbey/Mawby convicts 138
George Mawbey III - Breelong survivor 130
My Mawbey great grandparents 127
Convict ancestry plot thickens 124
Painting of first St Philip's church 122
Mawbey military service 120
My first convict 116
Online passenger lists of free settlers 106
 

MAORI PRINCESS

THIS INFORMATION ABOUT THE TUCKER FAMILY CONNECTION MAY NOT BE CORRECT. FURTHER RESEARCH IS BEING DONE.

Saturday 30 June 2018

I am sorry to say i am not a descendant of a Maori princess after all.  There was a mistake in reading the handwriting of a NSW BDM record which means the name was wrong.

I have not looked at this story for a long time as you can see, four years. When i have time i will revisit it and provide more specific information.

16 July 2013

Received astounding news from New Zealand last Saturday.
My paternal grandmother's great grandmother was a Maori princess.
She died in Sydney around 1810 and her baby daughter was placed in the Orphan School at Parramatta.
When the child grew up she became a servant and married another one, a former convict.
One of their daughters was the mother of my grandmother.
It is truly amazing to be finding out such things at the age of 65.
I had been trying to trace my grandmother's ancestry earlier in this blog, but had lost the trail.
This was because I could not find the birth record of the baby girl.
Everything comes to those who wait - and those who have a blog so other people can find them!

MY BOOK ALMOST FINISHED

I have almost completed the book I have been working on for the last six months about the extended NSW Mawbey family.
Its subject is the nine siblings of John Thomas Mawbey whose wife and three of his nine children were murdered at the instigation of Aboriginal man, Jimmy Governor, in July 1900.
The book looks at these siblings and the partners and families of those who married, and at the parents and siblings of the murdered woman, Sarah Mawbey.
It provides a clearer picture of who the NSW Mawbey family were, and a social history backdrop to the family tragedy that received international newspaper coverage.

AUSTRALIA DAY

Today Saturday 26 January Australia's national day,Australia Day, is celebrated.
Our history is summed up in a song called I am Australian and this version is on You Tube.
Click on the link to listen and enjoy!

MAWBEY SPRUCE & LEMON BEER

There is an advertisement in Australia's first newspaper, The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, Wednesday 11 October 1826 for 'Mawbey Spruce and Lemon Beer'.
According to Wikipedia, spruce beer, as the name suggests, is made from spruce trees and is not alcoholic.
It's a soft drink like ginger beer and was thought to be healthy, providing Vitamin C.
Captain Cook brewed it in New Zealand in 1773 to protect his crew from scurvey, a condition resulting from lack of vitamin C.

CHRISTMAS BLESSINGS

 

I have decided to write a book about the first two generations of the NSW Mawbeys containing new information not published on this blog.
Here is a summary of the story so far.
George Mawbey, the forbear of NSW Mawbey family arrived in the colony of New South Wales c.1832.
His first appearance on the public record is as an actor/singer in newspaper advertisements for performances at Sydney's first professional theatre, the Theatre Royal.
The next is as a witness in support of his former employer at a case in the Supreme Court of Sydney.
Prior to his actual testimony, he had a letter to the editor of the Australian newspaper published about the matter.
After leaving this employer, an ex-convict wealthy ironmonger, for whom he had worked as a clerk prior to the trial, George Mawbey had set up his own business as a tin man.
He then obtained a publican's licence which he held for a year, and married Ann Williams at St Phillip's Church of England in Sydney.
His next career move was to go to the newly established province of South Australia and set up a Refreshment Rooms business in the heart of the main town of Adelaide.
After about a year, he and his wife moved back to Sydney.
George then appears to have taken a job as a clerk for a bookseller, and to have started a family.
After his two eldest sons died at a young age, he moved his family about 50 km north-west of Sydney to the farming and orcharding district of Dural.
There he worked as the schoolmaster in the local Church of England diocesan school for around eight years.
Four of his children were baptised in the neighbouring St Jude's Church of England.
George Mawbey, his wife and their seven surviving children then moved back to Sydney.
His last child was born three months before he died of a stroke in November 1862.
George's widow was left to raise eight children, the eldest being 17.
She lived in various places in Newtown, now an inner suburb of Sydney, and at one stage appears to have had a fruit shop in the main street there.
Her eldest surviving son, John Thomas, also had a fruit shop, in Mudgee where his wife's family lived.
Her eldest surviving daughter, Alice, married a young London-born fruiterer.
Only four of George and Ann Mawbey's children had children of their own.
The NSW Mawbey's extended family will be the subject of my book.

PLEASE PRAY FOR YOUR ANCESTORS

The greatest insight I have had as a result of doing this family history blog is the need to pray for the souls of my ancestors.
As a Catholic, I have understood this in a general sense, but not in the particular one in regard to my own family.
This insight came to me a couple of months ago when I attended a Catholic prayer weekend about healing your family tree.
We were told to write down all the names of our departed relatives for whom we wished to pray, and then these pieces of paper were placed in a basket beneath the altar before Mass.
When the consecration of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ took place, I was suddenly overcome by deep, gut-wrenching grief.
I began crying unconsolably without knowing why.
Then I was given to understand that most of the souls I was praying for had never had anyone to pray for them.
Once they had died, they had been forgotten.
One of the people I prayed for, a woman, was from the early convict era of the penal colony of New South Wales.
I was so moved by what happened - it was as if the lights had suddenly been turned on in my heart and head - that I have vowed to keep praying for my ancestors.
I have written all their names down in a small leather-covered notebook with a cross and the words 'Pray for Souls' written on the front.
At each Mass I attend I open it at a particular page and, at the consecration, pray for the names written there.
When I did that this morning, I was close to tears again.
Very few of my Mawbey ancestors were Catholics as far as I am aware.
They were mainly of the Church of England or Wesleyan Methodists.
My father's mother, Mary Edwards, was a Catholic and so were all the children she had with John Mawbey (2), the eldest son of Sarah Mawbey, murdered by Jimmy Governor.
 

ANOTHER ANNIE MAWBEY

I have just discovered another Annie Mawbey who was living in NSW in 1862.
This was the same year as the death of the forbear of the NSW Mawbeys, George Mawbey, whose wife was Ann.
In September that year Annie Mawbey was the housekeeper at Wivenhoe, an estate near Camden owned by a five-time premier of NSW, Sir Charles Cowper.
Coincidentally, her employer was a son of Rev William Cowper who had married George and Ann Mawbey in Sydney in 1838.
In 1862 Annie Mawbey (nee Maxtead), a widow, married Wivenhoe's carpenter, [Henry] Norman George De Vere Clifford, a widower.
The ceremony took place in the home of a minister in Camden under the Primitive Methodist rite.
Shortly afterwards they appear to have moved to Binalong near Yass where a daughter, Adah, was born in 1863 and a son, Charles, the following year.
Henry Clifford's occupation was then a surgeon.
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The land on which Wivenhoe stood was originally granted to Charles's father, Reverend William Cowper.
Governor Lachlan Macquarie had granted Rev Cowper 600 acres near Camden on 23 August 1812.
In 1836, his third son Charles began building a house there named Wivenhoe after the village in Essex, England where he wife Eliza Sutton had come from.
The house, along with its vineyard that produced celebrated wines, was placed on the market in 1866.
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Wivenhoe, which is now owned by the Catholic Church, is open on the first Sunday of each month, except January, with guided tours from 10am-3pm.
The 200th anniversary of the land grant was celebrated on 23 August 2012 and a memorial plaque placed inside the house.
 

The Australian electoral rolls list 130 adults with the surname 'Mawbey' registered to vote in 2012.
NSW 81, Vic 15, Tas 14, Qld 11, SA 4, WA 3, ACT 2, NT none.

DEATH OF ELSIE CLARKE, BREELONG SURVIVOR

The Sydney Morning Herald, Wednesday 6 January 1937
LEE. - The Friends of Mr. PERCY LEE, Mr. and Mrs. A. INGALL, and of Mr. and Mrs. D. DUMMET are kindly invited to attend the Funeral of his beloved WIFE and their MOTHER, Elsie Charlo[t]te Lee, which will leave her late residence, 9 Irvine-street, Kingsford, THIS MORNING, at 10.30, for the Waverley Cemetery.
JOSEPH MEDCALF, Funeral Director,
172 Redfern-street, Redfern. Phones, M2785 (2 lines).
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LEE. - The Friends of Mr. and Mrs. S. PERRY, of Orange, Mr. and Mrs. G. CLARKE, of Mudgee, Mr. and Mrs. S. CLARKE, of Bankstown, Mr. J. CLARKE, of Gilgandra, Mr. and Mrs. P. H. BUSSELL, and of Mr. and Mrs. A. RICHARDSON, kindly invited to attend the Funeral of their loved SISTER and NIECE, Elsie Charlo[t]te Lee, which will leave her late residence, 9 Irvine-street, Kingsford, THIS MORNING, at 10.30, for the Wavley Cemetery.
JOSEPH MEDCALF. Funeral Director.
[Source: NLA17304864] 

'MAWBEY' PUB & STREETS IN LONDON

In London, England, there are pubs and streets named 'Mawbey'.

The pub below is at 7 Mawbey Street, Stockwell, London.
It's located between Stockwell and Vauxhall, in the vicinity of the Tate Art Gallery and Westminster Cathedral.
A comment on its website says it's in the middle of an 'estate', presumably a public housing one, and is an 'unreconstructed, old time boozer ... a True Blue Chelsea pub'.
Other comments by neighbours are not so complimentary.

'Mawbey Arms' Hotel London

Here's a Google map showing where it is MAWBEY ARMS HOTEL LONDON

According to A Complete Listing of the Streets of London in 1891, there were at that time four streets named 'Mawbey':
Mawbey Road, Old Kent Road, Camberwell
Mawbey Road, St Anne, St Olave
Mawbey Road, St George, Camberwell
Mawbey Street, Kennington, Lambeth