History Notes commence for 2025
History Notes
The markets are taking a holiday in February, due mainly to the heat. Please save up your goodies for March which happens to be Show Day this year. We still have a few calendars left for sale and there is always someone at the museum on Friday mornings if anyone wants to visit.
Over the last few weeks I have been catching up on book work and reading the various History magazines. Recently I read the story of a Tasmanian family who had traced their convict ancestor back to the incorrect family in the U.K. There were two young chaps, born about the same time, given the same name.
The one that grew up and was sent to Tasmania happened to be born in a nearby village rather than the village named in the records they had found and used. How easy it is to make mistakes, especially in early family history.
Then there are those who did their best to keep their descendants 'in the dark'. Being a descendant of Doctor Williams, a long- time resident of Barraba in the 1880's, I am well aware of the problems especially if the subject went to extreme lengths to keep his early life in England a secret.
Henry Edward Williams was supposed to have been born in London on 5th December, 1822, son of Henry Edwin Williams and his wife, Margaret, nee Hall. There is no record of birth in London - these details came from Henry himself on various other documents. To go with this information there is the story that Henry's mother, Margaret, was a first cousin to the Earl of Warwick and that he stayed at Warwick Castle. The Earls of Warwick have been searched with no sign of cousin Margaret!
Henry's father is said to have died in a horse accident at Warwick Castle and there is no record of the accident or of Henry’s death. After quite a bit of research and finding a number of other possible Williams’ family it seems that Henry and his mother lived in the Reading area near London; Some of the Berkshire records in the 1840s show possible Williams families. It is likely that his mother died about 1843 at Reading in Berkshire but this has not been followed up.
Henry kept a diary from 1844 and it seems that he started his medical training about then. He cut the year date out of these three diaries and it was years before we were able to put a date on them - he reported helping at a bridge accident which killed a lot of people and we eventually found the record of the accident in a newspaper. He was a difficult person to research and there is more next week including the voyage to Australia. He signed on as medical officer and landed in Melbourne, sailed on to New Zealand, left the ship and returned to Australia.