I think I solved a mystery !

[marquette]

Today, I think I have resolved a small niggling problem in OH's tree that has bothered me for a fair while.

Part of OH's family came out to NSW in 1839 - two brothers and scads of children all on the Royal George. One of the earliest researchers into the family, and associated families on the ship, named one young man as Thomas Williams, the son of Mary Milham and step son of James Sheather.

I could never identify the reason he was called Thomas Williams and tried to locate what happened to Thomas Milham after the family settled at Camden.

Some of the young generation of Sheathers ended up living around Wagga Wagga and Gundagai, married their cousins and generally created a shambles of their family tree.

No Thomas Milham (or even Thomas Williams, or even Thomas Sheather) however, appeared in the marriages or deaths indexes.

When I was able to access the Sussex Family History database, I found a baptism for Thomas William Milham son of Mary Milham, in Ewhurst Sussex in 1821 (also Mary's baptism in 1800). Her marriage to James Sheather gave her names as Milham, no sign anywhere of any Williams.

So I decided that the first researcher had possibly misinterpreted his name on the original handwritten passenger and immigrant lists.

Today, I was revisiting some Sheather information and looking for news of them in the Trove newspaper database. Imagine my surprise, delight, satisfaction, to find a Coroner's Inquest into the death of Thomas Milham alias Sheather !

Poor Thomas fell off his horse on the way home from the pub, late one night in January 1879, banged his head on the ground and died several days later.

For some reason, at that time, not all the coroner's inquests had separate death registrations in the index. But the inquest was reported practically verbatim in the two local newspapers.

Now, I can feel justified that I have spent nearly all day, the last day of my holidays, sitting on my computer, crawling through TROVE !

Do I tell all those Sheather reseachers out there, or keep it to myself ?? Shall I add it to my ancestry tree and see if anyone ever asks me about it ?

Di

[kiterunner]

Add him to your ancestry tree, Di.

[marquette]

Well, I did and I found that ancestry has him the Index to Coroners Inquest from NSW State Records.

Now to wait for someone to notice !

[Shona]

That must have been very satisfying, Di.

[marquette]

Yes, Shona, it is.

I could never understand why some the more experienced and more closely connected Sheather researchers had never looked into this man. They just seemed to accept the original transcription and because he was not a Sheather not bothered to follow him up.

I like all my little twigs neat and tidy (and dead !)

Di

[Nell]

Woo hoo!