Saturday, July 29, 2006

Some dreams come true -- Henry Green

Ione Evans writes from New Zealand:
Amanda our daughter in England has found the book Some Dreams Come True for me and is posting it. Will be interesting to read for the history apart from it having a picture of Henry Green in it. Will scan pic and send when it arrives. Exciting! Hope you are with transport again. How do you fare insurance wise in SA? Having lovely sunny days even if am temperatures are COLD!

The great mystery with Henry Green is the identity of his wife's parents, or at least his wife's mother -- we know her father was Capt Carl Arthur von Lilienstein, who was a border gaurd between Prussia and Denmark before coming to South Africa with the 1858 German military settlers. These were part of the British German Legion, who were recruited to fight in the Crimean War, but the war ended before they could go there, so they came to settle in British Kaffraria (now part of the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, around East London) instead, and act as border guards there. Cattle rustling across the border was common, and it was hoped that military settlers would be able to prevent it, and thus save the British taxpayers some money. It didn't work.

At about that time Henry Green's brother Edward was in the Cape Mounted Rifles, but transferred to a regiment stationed in India, sending his wife Emily and children to England, and eventually the family ended up in New Zealand. Edward was the ancestor of the Nation, Mocine, and Blum branches of the family.

Back to Henry: his wife was sometimes referred to as "Countess", and some have inferred from this that her father was a Count, but this is apparently not so. So there is also the mystery of where the "Countess" came from. Maybe the book Some dreams coem true will throw some light on the mystery!

Oh, and for the last couple of weeks out night time temperatures have been around 8 degrees C, and the daytime ones about 25, which hardly seems like winter at all! The insurance assessor visited lately, so we hope they will pay out for our stolen car.

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Saturday, July 22, 2006

Bits and pieces

Just a few notes to update. Our puppy Mardigan didn't make it after being poisoned by thieves -- details and picture at my personal blog.

Last Thursday I spent a few hours at the Family History Centre in Johannesburg, looking at the marriage registers for St John the Baptist Church, Bedminster, from 1900-1944. The church was bombed during the second world war, so that is perhaps as far as the records go. I found some Hayes and Purnell marriages, some of them related, though most that were related we already knew of from other sources.

I recorded these in the Inmagic database program, and the last couple of days I've been preparing to transfer other marriage records I've recorded over the years from the askSam program to Inmagic, so we can have an index of them all in one place.

Monday, July 10, 2006

Car stolen, dogs poisoned

Last night our Toyota Venture was stolen

Tthieves broke in the back gate, poisoned our puppy Mardigan, and took the car out. They were apparently able to disable the alarm and the gearlock. Now our other dog, Ariel, has been looking ill, so our sons Simon and Jethro have taken her to the vet as well.

The loss of the Venture will cause problems for our mission work, as we used it to take people to church and to church gatherings.

We have a few family history messages to reply to and things we've promised to check for people, but these problems may cause delays.

Earlier in the year we lost two dogs to biliary. First our little bonsai Alsatian Alexa (the one you can see me holding in the photo) started coughing and hyperventilating at about 3:00 in the morning, and died within an hour when we were still trying to find an after hours vet. We had no idea what had caused it. The other dog, Ariel, was very unhappy, so we got Ralf, an Alsatian puppy who ate his way into our hearts, but died within 12 days. We got him to the vet, where he died on the examination table, and the vet said it was biliary. There seem to have been a lot more ticks around last summer, because there was hardly any winter last year.

Ariel moped again, and so we got yet another Alasatian puppy, Mardigan, and we are not sure whether he will make it.

Friday, July 07, 2006

Green family in England, and Gray family in Canada

I've recentl;y had e-mails from Dennis and Penny Allen in England, who live in a house formerly owned by William Green, photographer, of Northumberland, son of William George Green. William George Green was the eldest son of William Goodall Green and Margaret Gray.

In the house are some photographs, and a book that William Green wrote to try to prove the alleged royal descent of William Goodall Green -- that he was the son of Edward, Duke of Kent, Queen Victoria's father.

Dennis and Penny are not related, but have very kindly sent copies of some of the material they have. We hope that it may help us to add some missing links to the Green family tree.

One of the things they sent was a reproduction of a picture of Alexander Gray, described as Attorney General. All we know of him is that his daughters changed their surname to Hamilton when their mother remarried after his death.

Does anyone know anything about the Hamilyon connection? If you do, please click on one of the places where it says "Comments" below, and enter your comments there.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Hayes, Allen, Williams, Purnell

Today I spent quite a lot of time making use of the OriginsNet free offer for 4 July, and seeing what I could find. The most useful things were the 1841 and 1871 censuses, though they are not fully indexed, and some of the images did not display properly.

But they seemed to have Bristol and Somerset fairly well covered, and I looked up my great great great grandparents, Simon and Rachel Hayes, in the 1841 census, and think I may have found a clue to a long-standing mystery.

Ages ago one of the first censuses we found (Bedminster 1851) showed John Hayes (son of Simon and Rachel) and a cousin staying with him, Elena Purnell, aged 17.

Ever since then we've looked for a Purnell connection, but have never found it in more than 20 years of searching.

But in 1841 Simon and Rachel were staying in a household that included Ann Purnell, aged 45, and two younger Purnells, and an Emily Tripp aged 4. This was in Paul Street, Bedminster, Bristol. It seems possible, then, that Ann was Rachel's sister. We know what happened to her other two sisters -- one married Giles Williams, and the other married George Hill, but what happened to Ann was a mystery. So now we have to find her marriage to a Purnell, to confirm this, and also that she had a daughter Elena, and another loose end will be tied up.

Sunday, July 02, 2006

Free access to records

Read about it here

For 4 July only.

The Origins Network is offering free access to both British and
Irish Origins on the 4th July to celebrate US Independence Day.
Free access will begin at 00.00GMT and will run until 08.00GMT on
the 5th July 2006.

The Origins Network services include subscription access to
exclusive genealogy related collections on British Origins and
Irish Origins, plus expert Scottish Old Parish records research on
Scots Origins.