Thomas Farmer, Master Mariner

 Finding the details of an ancestor's life is always exciting, and lately I have been researching my 3xGreat Grandfather Thomas Farmer.

Thomas Farmer was born in London, baptised 2 September 1781 at St Ann Blackfriars, London, son of Thomas and Mary Farmer.  He died in Sidney Square, London and was buried 28 September 1850 at St Dunstan & All Saints, Tower Hamlets, London.

Baptism records of Thomas Farmer, 1781

 
Thomas and his wife Ann has 3 children that I have currently located.  Thomas, born 7 June 1812, Ann born 13 January 1820 and Margaret born 4 January 1822.

During my research, I discovered Thomas Farmer and wife Ann in the 1841 census, where Thomas is listed as a Master Mariner living in Jubilee Street, Tower Hamlets.  Daughters Ann and Margaret are both still living at home at the time of the census.

1841 census

I also discovered that Thomas was a Mason, listed as a member of the Dundee Arms Lodge in Nightingale Lane, Wapping.

Membership Register of the Dundee Arms Lodge, 1810

Thomas Farmer Junior was also a mariner - clearly sailing was in the family's blood as Thomas Jr followed in his father's footsteps.  Sadly, Thomas Senior would die only a month before his son gained his Master's certificate on 21 November 1850.

Thomas's youngest daughter Margaret is my great great grandmother.  She married Alexander Davis on 21 November 1843, and the couple would have five children born in Kent or London before the couple decided to emigrate to Australia.  Sadly, Margaret, daughter and sister of master mariners, would die at sea on the voyage to Australia on the ship 'President Perkouberen' giving birth two twins, neither of whom survived and were buried at sea with their mother.

I'd Like to Meet...

There are so many ancestors I would just love to meet – preferably with a notebook and pencil, or recording device in hand!  I'd like the chance to chat with (read - interrogate) just about every ancestor, especially ones with blank spaces in their details in my tree, along with every one I've heard an interesting story about - mainly for some verification.   If I could choose just a couple of individuals, they would be the ones who I have found most elusive, the ones who disappeared from the family and turned up in unexpected places – or who didn’t turn up again at all.

I would start with my great grandfather, James Nicholas Clark, and his parents, John and Ann (nee McGoverin).   James Nicholas Clark was born in Bristol, England or possibly Launceston, Tasmania in 1856, just as the family emigrated to Australia.  James’s sister Annie Amelia Clark was born 31 March 1857 in Port Sorrell, Tasmania, where the family lived for at least 12 years before they crossed Bass Strait and settled in Victoria.  I would love to be able to question them about why they decided to leave England, why they chose Tasmania to settle, and then what prompted them to pack up and start all over again in Victoria.  Such moves would not have been undertaken lightly, and travel with a growing brood of young children back in the mid 1800’s would not have been easy.  I would have more questions for James’s mother Ann, whose marriage records indicate she was born in Scotland around 1830, as she have for several years been one of my brick walls.  Getting some dates, places and details from this family would be just so exciting.

Another ancestor I would like to meet, for fairly similar reasons, would be Carl Friedrich Beseler.  Known in Australia as Frederick, he was born around 1810 in Hanover, Germany.  He was a shoemaker in Germany and a farmer in Australia, arriving in Adelaide on 1 April 1848 on the ship Pauline from Bremen, Germany.  Passengers listed were Frederick Beseler, Shoemaker, Mrs Beseler and 5 children.  The family lived in South Australia for 7 years before travelling overland to Victoria, where they settled near Ercildown.  Several members of the family are buried in Learmonth Cemetery.  Again, I would like to know what prompted this family, with young children in tow, to pack up and move halfway around the world, settle in one state of Australia, then pack up and move again several years later.

Finally, I would like a chance to talk to my paternal grandfather, Frank Walter Noble Green.  Frank died when I was just 4 years old, and I have few memories of him, but I would love to know more about his life in England before he and his wife Rosa May moved to Australia (there seems to be a theme here – why did you move across the globe?).  According to family stories Frank spent two years in America prior to emigrating to Australia – what did he do in the United States and why did he then move his family to Australia instead of returning to the States?

Recording Historic Times

Over the past few years we have seen many difficult times, and I recently had a discussion with several fellow Family Historians about how we should record our memories and reactions for the future, so that generations yet to come can see how their ancestors lived through several years of crisis.

Hard on the heels of 2 years of Covid lockdowns, 2022 saw my home area suffer the worst floods in living memory.  While my home itself was not impacted, many friends saw their homes flood, roads and highways were cut, access to services cut, shops closed and like many I came under an evacuation order.  

 From the back windows of the Library where I work, we watched to Murray River flood parkland, the water creeping closer.  The photo above was taken standing at the back of the building - note the levee in the background.  Over several days the water crept higher and we prepared the building for potential flooding. 

This second photo shows the levee to the rear of the first photo as the floodwater rises over the top, flooding the land beyond.  As the water rose the community came together to frantically sandbag homes and businesses, a wonderful show of community spirit in the face of a crisis.

These are memories that need to be recorded as part of our family history.  We have all lived through a global pandemic and lived through or witnessed a number of historic times.  Recording our memories of such major events should be a part of our family history records, for the generations that come after us.

So please, get writing your memories.

#52Ancestors - Week 41 - Passed Down

If we are lucky we have at least a few special items that have been passed down from earlier generations, heirlooms that we will in time pass on to a younger generation in turn.  These items are not always valuable in a monetary sense - their value it often in their stories and history and links to our past.  Just as important as keeping those physical items, however, is keeping the stories and history that they represent and passing those details on with them.

I've written before about cleaning out the family home after the deaths of my parents, and how my sister and I simply did not keep things we didn't know the story of.  So many items we looked at with no idea of whether they were family heirlooms or trinkets our mother had purchased from the local opp shop. Why had this china cup been kept?  Whose was it and how long had it been in the family?  There were so many bits and pieces put away that we had no idea of the history of, and so generally didn't keep.  If my sister and I didn't know, there was no one left to ask.  Other items at least one of us knew the stories of and we divided them up and carefully stored them away.

During the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, I decided to take a look at the various family treasures I have at home, gave the camera a workout and photographed all the family items I have in my possession.  Things like a few items of jewellery, the figurines that belonged to my grandparents, the painting my father was given when he retired, and the little shell turtles I gave my grandmother after my first solo holiday when I was 16.  Treasures that I cannot copy like I have photographs and documents, but should disaster strike I would at least have photos of the items to keep.  Once this was done, I decided to write down the stories of each item.  Hopefully in the future the significance of these treasures will be remembered and they will be passed down and treasured as part of our family history.

Another item to treasure and pass down is the family recipe book, primarily created by my sister.  One of the more fun jobs while we were cleaning out the family home was emptying out Mum's recipe drawer.  While the drawer contained a few proper cooking books, and some complete magazines, it was primarily a combination of loose snippets torn or photocopied from old magazines and books, and hand-written recipes from who-knows-where.  Many had notes written on them - things like substitutions of ingredients and notes on who particularly liked the dish.  There were also a number of recipes written out by others and given to Mum - by several different friends and relatives, judging by the assorted handwriting.  She even had a little A5 folder with hand-written favourites stored inside.  When creating the book my sister and I kept all these notes and added our own - our memories of these dishes and when/how they were served.  We both occasionally dip into these recipes and recreate one.

These are all things I hope will be passed down through future generations and treasured as I have treasured them, but the important thing is to keep the stories with each item so their significance will not be lost in the future.

Preserving Our History

Over the past few days the destructive fire are the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris has been much in the news, and the courage shown by firefighters, police and the general public in saving so many of the treasures inside has been widely reported.  The loss of such a historic landmark is tragic, especially considering it survived the French Revolution, both world wars and numerous other natural and man-made disasters.  It prompts me to consider, on the smaller and more personal scale, the preservation of my own family treasures.  While I have electronic backups of my data in place, what about the family treasures, paintings and ephemera, stories and general knowledge?  What can I do to preserve it all?

Firstly, over the next few weeks I plan to give the camera a workout and photograph all the family items I have in my possession.  Things like the figurines that belonged to my grandparents and great grandparents, the painting my father was given when he retired, and the little shell turtles I gave my grandmother after my first solo holiday when I was 17.  Treasures that I cannot copy but should disaster strike I would at least have photos of the items to keep.

Secondly, I need to write down the stories of each item.  I've written before about cleaning out the family home after the deaths of my parents, and how my sister and I simply did not keep things we didn't know the story of.  So many items we looked at with no idea of whether they were family heirlooms or trinkets our mother had purchased from the local opp shop, and several times we found ourselves wishing so much that our parents were still with us so we could ask all the questions the items we found created for us.  Why had this china cup been kept?  Whose was it and how long had it been in the family?  There were so many bits and pieces put away that we had no idea of the history of, and so generally didn't keep.  If my sister and I didn't know, there was no one left to ask.

I have spent months digitising photos, letters, diaries and even a few journals, like the ones my mother kept of long ago holidays.  My sister has created a wonderful little recipe book made of all the dishes our mother and grandmother used to make, with notes of why each dish was special.  Now it is time to do the same for more physical items - to photograph them and record their stories.  Because if no one in my family knows the story behind Great Aunt Mary's tea set - or even that the tea set in the shed was Great Aunt Mary's and not something picked up on a whim at a jumble sale - then they will have no reason to keep it, value it, and ultimately pass it on to another generation.  And that would be a sad loss of my family history.

Moving House and finding (more) Treasures

Well, its done.  I have sold the old family home and moved to my new house.  There are boxes everywhere and I feel like it will take me MONTHS to unpack and settle in, but I haved moved house.  Closing the door on the old family home for the last time was quite an emotional experience - I was only 2.5 years old when my family moved in, and after several years away I moved back to care for my parents in their last years, so there are a lot of memories in that house.
I've posted a few times about finding treasures in the cleanout, many hidden amongst piles of rubbish and the final packup was no different.  It was amazing finding things that had fallen behind wardrobes and bookcases years ago or were stashed in the back of a drawer or under a bed and never recovered.  Given that I have been researching the family history since I was 16 years old, and have always been interested in my parents stories of their childhood, how some of these things were never mentioned, much less produced, escapes me.  I think my parents had forgotten about many of these treasures themselves.

A couple of examples.  The first was found in a pile of other papers - many equally fascinating and unseen before by me  - hidden in the linen cupboard behind some old sheets. Apparently my dad did some running while he was a lad at school - this certificate below dates from 1935, and dad would have been 9 years old at the time.

The second was an even more unlikely find.  It was only discovered when the removalists were loading up my furniture to take it to the new house.  This colored print of my father was taken from a photograph from when he enlisted in the Air Force, during World War 2.  It is hand colored on cardboard - and has spent who-knows-how-long lying behind a wardrobe in my parents bedroom.  Neither my sister or I can recall ever seeing it, although we are both familiar with the photo from which it is taken, and how or when it was created I have no idea.

While I am grateful I have these treasures now, I would have loved to have seen them when my parents were alive.  There are so many questions I have - and obviously stories I missed out on.