A New Discovery–Brodie Cousins

 

Discovering a whole new branch of my family tree rates among one of my bigger discoveries in my family history research journey.
The find came about with a chance search of the entire passenger list of the Merope, the ship in which Elizabeth Lennie( nee Brodie) and her family sailed on to New Zealand from their previous home in the Orkney Islands. I was surprised to see another passenger with the name Brodie. Jessie Brodie, aged 19, Dairy Maid travelled as a single woman on the same ship. I suspected there must be a connection between the two women , but how to prove it?
I started by researching the name Jessie Brodie in the Scottish Census records and quickly discovered Jessie's story.
Jessie Brodie , born in 1851 was the daughter of Andrew Brodie and Eliza Sandison .
At the time of the 1851 census she was 7 months old and was living in Rothiesholm, Stronsay with her parents and her half brother James Petrie, aged 3. However by 1861, Jessie and James are no longer living with their parents, but are working for the Stevenson family at Kirbist Farm ,on the tiny island of Elgisay as servants, aged just 13 and 10 .
Some hours of research and many emails later I made contact with Eddie Sinclair, who turned out to be a 4th cousin. Still living in the Orkneys he had a family tree with links yet unknown to me.
He confirmed the relationship between Elizabeth and Jessie as first cousins.
Andrew Brodie was the youngest son of William and Betsy ( Miller) Brodie and Elizabeth's father , John, Elizabeths father was the first son of the same couple.
Eddies family tree had much detail on Jessie's family right down to current generations the same age as my children, and through the names on that tree I was able to make contact with another “new to me ” cousin Ian, who is a Great Great Grandson of Jessie Brodie and lives here in New Zealand.
I learned from the new information I received that Elizabeth and Jessie were not the only Brodies to make the long journey from the Orkneys to New Zealand , William, Jessie's younger brother also joined them in New Zealand. He worked as a blacksmith , married but had no children. He returned three times to the Ornkey Islands during his lifetime. It was perhaps on one of those visits he convinced his brother Andrew to emigrate. Andrew arrived around 1881 . Andrew didn't marry and died at Sunnyside in 1906 of Pneumonia.
Jessie's half brother James Petrie also emigrated on the Merope with Jessie and Elizabeth . I'm yet to research his life in New Zealand.
There are many other Brodies who settled in the South Island and I suspect some of these may be other relatives of Elizabeth and Jessie who followed them to a new life at the bottom of the world.
What struck me immediately was how alike Jessie and Elizabeth were in their looks. What we discovered was a definite Brodie “look” - with many of the Brodie descendants having the same heavy brow and deep set eyes.
So far Ive found no evidence that Jessie and Elizabeth had much contact after their arrival in New Zealand. Elizabeth and her husband John Lennie settled in Pleasant Point, near Timaru and Jessie initially worked for the Hay family in their home Annadale in Pigeon Bay , Canterbury before marrying George McKay and joining him on the family farm also at Pigeon Bay Canterbury.
Elizabeth suffered several tragedies during her life in New Zealand. with her first husband John Lennie dying prematurely in 1876.
She remarried William McClellan in 1877, and moved at some point in the 1890s to Woodville where her second husband also passed away in 1894.
She spent her latter years living with her daughter
Lizzie in Wellington. Elizabeth died in 1924 aged 86.Jessie died 2 years later aged 75.

Some Detective Work

Recently a cousin got hold of the photo album which had belonged to our McClellan Great Grandparents. She set to work scanning the photographs which turned out to be a real treasure trove.

There has been a lot of detective work done and close comparisons of the photos to find people who appear in more than one photo, of which there are many, but some were complete mysteries

 

One such mystery was this wedding photo

 

Between the two of us and our parents we couldnt identify anyone in the photo at all.  We named it the Mystery Wedding photo and it intrigued us.

As part of the research Ive been doing in regards to the McClellan/Brodie/Lennie family, I made contact with another couple of new to me relatives, and on a totally unrelated note I asked one if he knew who it was who my G Grandfather lived with after his wife died.

We knew it was a relative and we thought perhaps a cousin and the name bandied about was Jean Lennie, but I couldnt find a Jean Lennie anywhere in my tree who fit. It was suggested that perhaps it was Lucretia Jeanette Lennie and maybe she went by the name Jean which is certainly less of a mouthful.

 

Lucretia has a bit of a sad story and I need to fill you in on that to explain further.Her father was David Lennie , ( 1865-1949) . He was the eldest son of John and Elizabeth Lennie ( who became a McClellan on remarrying after Johns death)

David married Lucretia Peake

April 1887 Marriage LENNIE - PEAKE - On April 27th, at St. Mary's Church, by the Ven,. Archdeacon Harper, David Lennie, of Pleasant Point, to Lucretia, only daughter of Samuel Peake, Timaru (Timaru Herald )

Lucretia and David had 5 children. Lucretia Jeanette was the eldest, then followed Francis David, Eric Cecil ( who died aged 7) Samuel Joh ( who died aged 5 months

LENNIE. At Wellington, on July 13th, 1898, Samuel John, the beloved son of David and Lucretia Lennie, aged 5 months. Deeply regretted.

And finally Lucretia died from complications of childbirth giving birth to the last unnamed child with whom she is buried. It appears that Francis, aged less than 12 at the time, ran away from home, perhaps stowed away on a ship because next he his heard of he is in Tasmania .David left his daughter in the care of her maternal Grandparents, Samuel and Lucretia Peake, and followed Francis to Australia, remarrying there in 1903

 

So back to my detective work, when I realised that there might be even more of a connection with Lucretia Jeanette, I wondered if this in fact could be her wedding photo, after all there appears to be only one set of parents, the other set much older and possibly grandparent age. I learned her wedding was in 1913 which fit the fashions in the photographs quite well.

A theory developed in my head that perhaps this was her wedding and so I did a bit of googling of the name of her husband Charles Stanley Hawkey, and with some research I found his father Tom Hawkey had in fact been Mayor of Timaru in 1913 .

Today I emailed the Timaru Council asking if they could perhaps identify Tom Hawkey from my wedding photo and the passed the request on to the South Canterbury Museum.

I was elated to find that indeed this was Tom Hawkey – who appears as Father of the Groom in our mystery wedding photo

 

So the mystery wedding is no more a mystery. The Old couple on the left must be Samuel and Lucretia Peake, I suspect the best man is a brother of Charles, and the woman to his right , his mother Priscilla Hawkey

We may never know the identity of the bridesmaid however this doesnt deter me from continuing to pore over these photos until  more of our mysteries are solved

The Wedding

 

I did this quick arty style layout using a gorgeous wedding photo that I’ve had for years.

The photo ( hand coloured ) is of my Great Grand Aunt who i knew of all my life as Aunty Ede. She was a Salvation Army member as were many of the Grant /Abbott families she is descended from.

I know very little about the wedding except that the flower girl on the far left is my Grandmother, and the one on the far right with the gorgeous red hair is my grandmothers sister Mollie.  The girl in the middle is Pauline Grant who was the daughter of Ediths brother James ( Jim) Grant .

Edith Emily Marion Grant was the youngest daughter of William Grant and Louisa Mary Abbott, and one of 7 Grant children.  She would not have known her father very well at all as he died in 1906 when she was less than 7 years old .

My Great Great Grandmother Annie Elizabeth Grant was Edith’s eldest sister, there being 22 years between them in age .

Edith married John Alexander Montgomery ( known as Jack) on September 26 1923, but sadly Jack died in an accident in 1933 aged only 35.

They had only one daughter – Wendy, who Edith bought up as a single mother.
Edith lived till the age of 85, dying in 1984.

Gertrude Goodwin

I dont know much about Gertrude Goodwin yet, but this photo is so pretty I just had to use it in a layout.
What I do know about Gertrude is that she was the fourth child, and eldest daughter of James and Mary Ann ( Nee Gleeson) Goodwin and was born in 1885 . She was the sister of my Great Grandfather Phillip. 
Gertrude married Robert Job Maisey jr , son of a farmer ,who in 1917 was a labourer and later became a farmer in Morrinsville –
Gertrude and Robert had 2 children, Mervyn Claude, born 1910 and Ivy Beatrice born 1912 who at the time of writing is still alive.

William Henry Goodwin 1881-1918

Its been a while since I made a post on this blog due to real life taking priority over genealogy, but today I managed to do a layout which features the elder brother of my Great Grandfather.

Journalling on this layout reads:
William Henry Goodwin, my Great Grandfathers eldest brother. Named for his grandfather, and a man I knew nothing of until recently. and how sad. How easily these lives that were given so frequently in the name of the freedom  are forgotten.
In researching his Military file I could find little information. on his death. It simply lists that he died in the field in France, ( like so many thousands of other young men) - It makes me  wonder if his family at home ever knew any more details. If this were my son and he had given his life for his country, I would want to know at least where he died and what battle was being fought. It reeks of how little the lives of these men were worth at the time.
William Henry is buried at Anneux British Cemetery, one of 37 New Zealand men buried there who died on the same day.

The photo on this layout is one from the Auckland Museum Cenotaph Database. Im not 100% convinced it is the right photo as the text under the photo says Corp. W Goodwin from Morrinsville. - 
My William was a Private and was from Ngaruawahia before his signed up , however it appears there is only one other William Goodwin who died in WW1 and he has the correct photo so Im hopeful that the photo above is in fact my William Goodwin.

Ellen Hardy–Commonly known as Mrs Miller–and Daughter Ethel

 

 

I have very long and involved stories to tell about Ellen Hardy, but for this photo, which is so different from the usual family photos taken during Victorian times,I just wanted to display it in a pretty fashion.

Ellen Hardy’s photograph was the subject of biscuit tin lids. Apparently back in the early years of the 20th Century the biscuit companies used to put photos of beautiful girls and women on the lids of their biscuit tins. I’ve never seen one like it myself but I wonder if perhaps this photo was for one of those tins.

Obituary Mrs Margaret Rea

 

The Rea family are still quite a mystery to me. I have very little information on them and I understand from the few people who have attempted to research them that its a difficult family to trace.

Mary Jane Rea was my Great Great Grandmother. I would love to know more about her. She left my GG Grandfather in Katikati and came to live in Ponsonby in Auckland at least as early as the beginning of the 20th century , though they remained married all her life.

Her Mother was Margaret Rea, the rather imposing woman in the photo below.

 

The journalling is from her obituary in the Auckland Star February 6 1925

One of the links with the early pioneering days of Katikati was severed by the passing away on Tuesday last of Mrs Margaret Rea at the residence of her daughter Mrs Stanaway. The late Mrs Rae with her husbandand four children came out to New Zealand in 1875 with the first batch of settlers under the late Mr G Vesey Stewart, founder of the Katikati settlement. Throught the fifty years since arrival in the country the deceased lady resided at Katikati, and it is believed she was the last of the band of original adults who took part in the building of the settlement. The late Mrs Rea by her sterling qualities, kindly disposition and readiness to tender help and advice, endeared herself to all who knew her. her Husband predeceased her 12 years ago. She leaves four daughters and 2 sons.