G is for Graignemanach

Some of my Cavenagh forebears are buried in a family vault at the Abbey Graignemanach or Graiguenamangh County Kilkenny. Wentworth Odiarne Cavenagh (1856 – 1935), one of my first cousins three times removed, transcribed the gravestone in 1891. In his family history notes WOC stated the stone was in the pathway leading to the north transept door and was moved 3 feet nearer to the church in 1906.

Underneath are interred the bodies of Wentworth Cavanagh of Ballynomona in the County of Kildare, who died November 1752, James Cavanagh of Graig, who departed this life May 4th, 1769, also the bodies of Elizabeth Lindsay (said James’ first wife) who died April 7th, 1734, Anne Lane, his second wife who died 9th June 1742, and of Elizabeth Archdeacon his third wife, who died 18th March 1787. Underneath are likewise interred several of his children by Elizabeth his third wife, viz Mary, wife of Robert Carpenter of Ross who died April 16th 1787, of Arthur Cavanagh who died the 19th December 1797, and of Wentworth Cavanagh of Ross, who died the 20th August 1793 : also Harriet wife of said Wentworth Cavanagh who died in June 1786.

Later, a footpath was made over it, and in 2002 several Cavenagh cousins arranged for a stone with the same inscription to be placed at the Abbey.

Graiguenamanagh  tombstone 2002 – photograph from Diana Beckett

Wentworth Cavenagh (1675 – 1752) was one of my sixth great grandfathers. He was born at Athy, County Kildare and baptised 22 August 1675 at St Michael’s Athy as Wenford Cavenor, son to Mr James Cavenor of Grangemellon.

The following christenings are recorded at Athy parish:

• Wentworth Kavanagh, baptized Athy 23 Sept 1704, died an infant. Son of Wentworth Kavanagh of Ballynomona.
• Kennedy Kavanagh 16 September 1706, parent Wentworth Kavanagh
• Isabella Cavenagh 22 April 1707, parent Wentworth Cavenagh. She was buried 22 April 1709, infant daughter of Wentworth Kavanagh of Ballynomona

Wentworth Cavenagh was active in the parish:

• Signature of Went. Kavanagh amongst other names of parishioners at Vestry held in St Michael’s Athy Oct ye 27^th 1703.
• Wentworth Cavenagh elected sidesman 1706.
• The Minister and churchwardens and Parishioners have confirmed the grant made by Wentworth Cavanagh of half his seat to James Ross. Witnessed by Fran Moore Minister, April 25^th 1707

Map showing Athy, Ballynamony, Kilkea castle and Grangemellon from Google maps

Ballynamony is about 12 kilometers south-east of Athy. From the glossary of words commonly found in Irish place names: baile townland, town, homestead; móin(also: mónaidh) bogland. Wentworth Odiarne Cavenagh wrote in the late 1920s:

a portion of the Kilkea castle estate and was held by George, Earl of Kildare, a Protestant, in 1654.  A lease for 3 lives was granted Wentworth Cavenagh of Ballynamony gent by Robert Earl of Kildare in Jany 1724. The lives not being renewed by Mathew Cavenagh of the town and county of Wexford, the estate lapsed to the FitzGeralds. The house once a fairly substantial one is now reduced to be an ill kept farmstead. It is situated about one mile to the NE of the Kilkea demesne, just off the road passing thro Ballynamony bridge.  On the left bank River Greese: to the east of Kilkea Castle.

Google street view of the countryside close to Ballynamony

Kilkea Castle from Antiquities of Ireland by Francis Grose 1792 retrieved from Wikimedia Commons

The abbey at Graiguenamangh is 60 kilometers south of Athy and Ballynamony and seems a long way away. However, Wentworth Cavenagh’s son, James, had been appointed a guager, a customs collector for the canals and waterways. 

Bridge over River Barrow at Graiguenamangh . Photograph from geograph.org

Athy and Graiguenamangh are both on the River Barrow , an inland link between the port of Waterford and the Grand Canal, which connects Dublin to the River Shannon.  In the mid-18th century it became a commercial navigation route, with Graiguenamanagh serving as a base for commercial barges operating on the river.

James Cavenagh acquired Tillots Holding at Graiguenamanagh  in 1736 on a lease of lives renewable for ever, the head rent being paid to Lord Clifden. Tillots Holding consisted of a house, malthouse, and 2 ½ acres of land.  

Wentworth Odiarne Cavenagh writing in the late 1920s records that the house had “been let for some years past to the Roman Catholic priests of the Abbey” and that “it is now known as the ‘Priests house’…[standing] opposite the little gate of the churchyard leading to the north door of the Abbey.”

The north of Duiske Abbey at Graiguenamanagh from Google street view. Perhaps James Cavenagh’s house is to the left of the photo.

Duiske Abbey at Graiguenamanagh had been founded in 1204. The Abbey was suppressed under Henry VIII in 1536. Following the dissolution the abbey church continued to be used as a local place of worship. The Church of Ireland re-roofed the west end after the tower collapsed into the nave in 1744. The church was returned to the Roman Catholic community in 1812 and restoration was completed in the 1980s.

Graignemanach Abbey. From The antiquities of Ireland by Francis Grose 1791, at archive.org.

Related posts

• THE CAVENAGHS OF KILDARE by Wentworth Odiarne Cavenagh

Wikitree: Wentworth Cavenagh and James Cavenagh

F is for field day

My fourth great grand uncle George Kinnaird Dana in 1811 served as colonel of the 6th Garrison Battalion quartered in Nenagh, Tipperary. The Battalion paymaster was his brother William Pulteney Dana, one of my fourth great grandfathers.

Garrison Battalions were reserve troops, primarily concerned to maintain defence and good order in potentially troublesome territory. They were recruited from elderly veterans or other troops considered unfit for front-line combat. The 6th Battalion had been raised at Dublin from limited-service personnel of three regiments of foot. It was stationed at Nenagh in Tipperary, a hundred miles to the southwest.  

In June 1811 the 6th Garrison Battalion had a field day. Blank ammunition had been issued but unfortunately a ball cartridge had been mixed with it. One man was shot in the back.

Saunders’s News-Letter 25 June 1811 page 2. Image retrieved from FindMyPast and reproduced with kind permission of The British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk)

At Nenagh William Pulteney Dana met Charlotte Elizabeth Bailey, a daughter of the Reverend Henry Bayley, Rector of Nenagh. Around 1812 they were married. Their two oldest children were born in Ireland.

In April 1814 Napoleon had surrendered to the allies and since the war was over Garrison battalions was no longer needed. On 5 December 1814 the Garrison battalion was disbanded.

Captain William Pulteney Dana now on half-pay returned to live in Shropshire. William and Charlotte had ten more children all born in Shropshire.

In June 1814 William’s brother George Kinnaird Dana was promoted to Major-General and returned to England.

Wikitree:

• George Kinnaird Dana (1770 – 1837)
• William Pulteney Dana (1776 – 1861)
• Charlotte Elizabeth (Bailey) Dana (abt. 1795 – 1846)

E is for Edmund

Edmund Alexander Champion de Crespigny, youngest child of Philip Augustus Champion de Crespigny (1850-1912), a retired Royal Navy officer, and Annie Rose Charlotte Champion de Crespigny nee Key (1859-1935), was born 12 July 1890 and baptised at Bramshaw, Hampshire, England, on 14 October 1890.

At the time of the 1891 English census Edmund was 8 months old, living at Round Hill, Bramshaw with his parents, two brothers and sister, and two adult cousins of his parents and three servants.

Tne years later in 1901 he was at boarding school at Bramshaw.

Edmund died aged 15 on 29 May 1905 at Cushendun, near Ballycastle, County Antrim, Ireland. The cause of death was a diabetic coma and he had been in the coma for two days.

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Two photos of Edmund shared by a cousin in response to this post. “From Rose Champion De Crespigny’s family history book.”

The death certificate informant was Ada McNeill, a maternal cousin.

Cushendun Bay and town from Altagore. Photograph from geograph.org

Cushendun, Northern Ireland. Photograph by Quentin Michon 2008 retrieved from Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0

Cushendun is in the north-east of Ireland, north of Belfast

At Bramshaw Hampshire there is a memorial for Edmund which states he was buried 30 May 1905.

Identity theft

Some years later an unknown person assumed Edmund’s identity. On 30 December 1919 a man calling himself Edmund Alexander Champion de Crespigny aged 29 (born 1890) married Elise Emma Richard at Lausanne, Switzerland. He stated he was the son of Philip Augustus Champion de Crespigny and Annie Rose Key and that he had been born at Lyndhurst [less than six miles from Bramshaw].

There have been cases of people assuming the surname Champion de Crespigny, claiming to be an illegitimate child of a member of the family. This was different. This man was not claiming to be an illegitimate child, his claim was to be the son Edmund who had died in 1905. This man died in 1967 and I wrote about him at Edmund Alexander Champion de Crespigny (1890 – 1905 or 1967?)

The real Edmund was my 5th cousin twice removed.

Wikitree:

• Edmund Alexander Champion de Crespigny (1890 – 1905)
• The man who assumed Edmund’s identity

D is for Dublin

Ellen Murray, one of Greg’s great great grandmothers, arrived in Victoria in 1854 as an assisted immigrant on the ‘Persian‘. Also on board was her sister Bridget. The passenger list records Bridget and Ellen Murray as both from Dublin. Their religion was Catholic; both could read and Ellen could also write; Bridget was twenty-four (which means that she was born about 1830) and Ellen was eighteen (born about 1836).

Ellen married James Cross, a gold digger, at Buninyong in 1856. The marriage certificate states her father was George Murray, a glassblower, and Ellen nee Dory.

On 1 May 1825 George Murray married Eleanor Doyle at St Mary’s (Pro-Cathedral), Dublin. Witnesses to their marriage were Joseph Carolan and Margaret Ryan. I believe these are Ellen Cross nee Murray’s parents and that Doyle was mistranscribed on the marriage certificate.

George and Ellen (Eleanor) Murray had the following children baptised mostly at St Mary’s

• Mary, baptised 18 March 1826
• Peter, baptised 17 May 1827 at  St Michael and John’s, Dublin
• Bridget, baptised 12 November 1828
• Peter, baptised 21 February 1831 (2 records for same name and date)
• Joseph, baptised 3 April 1834
• Ellen, baptised 21 May 1836

In 1826 at the time of Mary Murray’s baptism the family were living at McLinburg Street. This is probably Mecklenburg Street which later had an unsavoury reputation.

The back gate of the Gloucester Street laundry, where the delivery vans once came and went, is on Railway Street, formerly called Mecklenburg Street. In 1904, Mecklenburg Street was a terrace of grand but fading Georgian houses, and it was here that James Joyce set the “nighttown” section of his novel “Ulysses,” a phantasmagoric visit to a brothel run by “a massive whoremistress” called Bella Cohen.

She was a historical figure. And Mecklenburg Street was the heart of a square mile of brothels, speakeasies and slums that took its informal name — Monto — from Montgomery Street, the next street over. It was here, when southern Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom, and when Dublin was a major garrison town of the British Empire, that the authorities tolerated, even encouraged, what was often described as the biggest red-light district in Europe.

Monto was a last resort for runaways, widows and abandoned wives. Madams like Bella Cohen controlled them with violence and money, keeping them in debt to pay for clothes and lodgings. As they left their prime teen years, lost their health and their looks, the women passed from “flash houses” for the wealthy to the cheap “shilling houses” and then to the alleys. Those who became pregnant were dumped on the street. 

From the New York Times DUBLIN JOURNAL “A Blot on Ireland’s Past, Facing Demolition” January 2018 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/15/world/europe/magdalene-laundries-ireland.html

Georgian houses in 1826 of course would have been relatively new and perhaps the neighbourhood was not so run down at the time.

Georgian housing in Summerhill, Dublin. Image from Flickr, taken by Sean Bonner 2013. CC by 2.0.

Glassmaking in Dublin probably began about 1675. There were many glass houses in Dublin in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Many products were produced in Dublin including bottles, cut glass, decanters and goblets, looking glass, plate glass for coaches.

Dublin glass houses from Irish glass : an account of glass-making in Ireland from the XVIth century to the present day page 29 from archive.org
Irwin’s Glass-House, Potter’s Alley, Dublin; Whyte’s Glass Shop, Marlborough Street, Dublin, and Glass- 
House at Ringsend. From 1845 advertisements.

Interior of a glass-house, showing the furnace with openings to the pots, workmen at the chairs making glass objects, blowing glass, mavering glass on the maver in the foreground, the various tools used, and, to the left, the annealing oven. From Irish Glass page 38.

Sources

• Ireland, Catholic Parish Registers, 1655-1915 retrieved through ancestry.com
• Westropp, Michael Seymour Dudley (1920). Irish glass : an account of glass-making in Ireland from the XVIth century to the present day. Herbert Jenkins, London. Retrieved through archive.org.

Related posts

• M is for Arrival in Melbourne of the Persian in 1854
• Should I accept this Ancestry.com ‘hint’?

Wikitree:

• Ellen Cross nee Murray
• George Murray

C is for Carrigaline

Between 1649 – 1653 the forces of the English Parliament, led by Oliver Cromwell, invaded Ireland. In charge of a regiment raised in Kent from April 1649 was a Colonel Robert Phaire. Phaire had formed his regiment from volunteers who had opposed the Royalists in 1648 who were now being disbanded.

Phaire was a Regicide, one of the three officers to whom the 1649 warrant for the execution of Charles I was addressed. However, he refused to sign the order to the executioners. For this he was arrested but not tried, and released in 1662. It has been suggested Phaire escaped severe punishment at the Restoration by having married the daughter of Sir Thomas Herbert.

One of my tenth great grandfathers Paul Cudmore (abt 1614 – abt 1700) was a lawyer who came to Ireland with Cromwell’s army in the regiment of Colonel Phaire. Paul’s future father-in-law, Captain Michael Gale (died 1681), one of my 11th great grandfathers, was a member of the same regiment.

In 1663 Paul Cudmore and Michael Gale were implicated in a plot to overthrow the new King. Cudmore and Gale were named in a deposition sent on 26 June 1663 by Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery to King Charles II informing the King of a plot to overthrow the government. 

Orrery wrote, “The four mentioned in his enclosed deposition were officers who served under Phaier.” Orrery imprisoned Paul Cudmore, Gale, the two other men, and Colonel Phaire. The deposition stated :

On a Sabbath day in the afternoon about the end of April last, deponent met Mr. Samuel Corbett, who told deponent that Captain Michael Gale wished to speak to him. Deponent was asked to meet Gale, Captain John Taylor, Paul Cudmore and Corbett at the Stone- house beyond the bridge of Carrigeline [Carrigalinel], in the barony of Kirricarry [Kerricurihy] , co. Cork, on the next Wednesday.

On 31 July 1663 James Butler, Duke of Ormond, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, ordered Phaire’s release. In 1660 Ormond had played a part in Phaire’s acquittal of the charge of regicide. I assume Paul Cudmore and Michael Gale were released at the same time.

Although the Earl of Orrery referred to Paul Cudmore as an army officer under Phaire, only two of the men he named were given an army rank. I think it is likely that Cudmore served Phaire in an administrative rather than a military role.

Paul Cudmore practiced as a solicitor and in the 1680s served in that capacity to Colonel Phaire at the time of his death in 1682. 

Cudmore married Anne Gale in 1655 becoming the son-in-law of Captain Michael Gale.

Carrigaline, on the River Owenabue, is a town in County Cork, Ireland, about 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) south of the city of Cork.  

There are several bridges. One to the west of Carrigaline, called the Ballea bridge, leads to Ballea castle, possibly the stone house referred to in the 1663 deposition. The present Ballea castle was built around 1660.

Ballea Castle in about 1880, retrieved from the Facebook page Carrigalene memories

Image from geograph.org.

Ballea Bridge Image from Wikimedia Commons By user Eh cork – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

Carrigaline is just south of Cork

Wikitree:

• Paul Cudmore
• Anne Cudmore nee Gale
• Michael Gale
• Robert Phaire

B is for Bailieborough

Margaret Smyth (1834 – 1897), great great grandmother of my husband Greg, emigrated on the ‘Persian‘ to Australia from Ireland, arriving  in Melbourne, Victoria on 9 April 1854 with a baby born on the passage.

The passenger list records that Margaret Smyth was from Cavan. Her religion was Church of England; she could read and write; and she was 20 years old. She did not find a job immediately on landing, but went to stay with her cousin John Hunter. I am yet to find out more about John Hunter.

On 19 November 1855 Margaret Smyth, dressmaker from Cavan, aged 22, married John Plowright, also 22, a gold digger. Their wedding was held at the residence of John Plowright, in Magpie, on the Ballarat diggings, five miles or so from where Greg and I live now. On the certificate Margaret’s parents are given as William Smyth, farmer, and Mary nee Cox.

On documents Margaret usually gave her birthplace as Cavan. On her death certificate her birthplace was given by her adopted son Harold as Bailieborough, Cavan.

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  Northern end of Castle Lough in the Bailieborough Demesne

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  Main Street, Bailieborough, Co. Cavan in 2007

The ‘Ireland Valuation Books’ of 1838 have a William Smyth of Tanderagee Townland, Bailieborough Parish, Clankee Barony, County Cavan. This could be Margaret’s father.

More and more records are being digitised, so perhaps some useful documents will come to light. DNA connections also offer some tantalising clues but I have not yet found any definite Smyth cousins.

I hope we can visit Ireland one day, and Cavan will certainly be part of the trip. Before we go I hope I will have discovered more about Margaret Smyth’s family there.

Bailieborough is north-west of Dublin

Related posts

• M is for Arrival in Melbourne of the Persian in 1854
• Cavan calling

Wikitree: Margaret Smyth

A is for Avoca

Major Thomas Mitchell, Surveyor-General of the Colony of New South Wales from 1828 to 1855, undertook several journeys of exploration. His third, in 1836, took him south into what is now Victoria. On 10 July he recorded in his journal that he and his party

crossed a deep creek running westward which I named the Avoca, and we encamped on an excellent piece of land beyond it.

Mitchell, Thomas, Sir, 1792-1855 (1839-01-01). Three expeditions into the interior of Eastern Australia : with descriptions of the recently explored region of Australia Felix and of the present colony of New South Wales. T. & W. Boone volume 2 retrieved through http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks/e00036.html

Mitchell was born and raised in Scotland not Ireland. The inspiration for the name probably came from Thomas Moore’s 1807 poem ‘The Meeting of the Waters’. The final stanza has:

Sweet Vale of Avoca! how calm could I rest
In thy bosom of shade, with the friends I love best;
Where the storms that we feel in this cold world should cease,
And our hearts, like thy waters, be mingled in peace.

Print shows a view of the confluence of three rivers, the “River Avonbeg”, “River Avonmore”, and “River Avoca”, in the “Vale of Avoca”, County Wicklow, Ireland; many of the features shown are identified below, such as “Shelton Abbey, the Mansion of the Earl of Wicklow” and the “Holy Well” on the left, and the “Woods of Glenart, the Seat of Lord Carysfort” on the right. Includes four lines of verse from the poem “Avoca, the Vale The Meeting of the Waters” by Thomas Moore.
Currier & Ives & Moore, T. (1868) The meeting of the waters. In the Vale of Avoca, County Wicklow Ireland
. County Avoca Ireland Wicklow, 1868. [New York: Published by Currier & Ives 152 Nassau St. New York] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2002710554/.

In the 1850s the town of Avoca was established on the Avoca River. Greg’s great great grandfathers George Young and John Plowright were gold miners there. 

The Avoca River in October 2020

The Avoca River in January 2021 from the same vantage point

My Cudmore relatives had a property on the Darling River named Avoca. We visited it earlier this year. It was said that Daniel H. Cudmore named it Avoca after his father’s hometown in Ireland. However his father, Daniel M.P. Cudmore, was from Limerick Ireland. I am not aware of any connection of the Cudmore family to the town of Avoca in Ireland.

The homestead of Avoca station on the Darling River near Wentworth, NSW.

Avoca is near the east coast of Ireland

Two of the many places in Australia named Avoca after the town in Ireland. There are 42 places in Australia named after Avoca.

Related posts

• The tristate tour February 2021 part 1
• A is for accident in Avoca

Wikitree:

• George Young,
• John Plowright,
• Daniel Michael Paul Cudmore
• Thomas Livingstone Mitchell

A to Z 2021: Irish family history

The 2021 A to Z Challenge will be my eighth.

In 2019 while preparing for a visit to the United Kingdom, I posted about places there associated with my family history. In 2020 I wrote about my family history connections in London.

For the 2021 challenge I will be writing about my Irish family history.

Our Irish forebears shown in dark green and include the Murray, Smyth, Bailey, Mitchell, Cudmore, Nihill, Cavenagh, and Hickey lines. Fan chart generated with DNAPainter.

Irish places associated with my family history: map generated using MyHeritage’s PedigreeMap tool.

Kissing cousins

We each have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on; the numbers double with each generation. In ten generations we have 1024 great great … grandparents.

In twenty generations we would have 1,048,576 18th great grandparents. While this is possible in theory, it is more likely that we have far fewer, simply because our forebears married someone related to them. This is called ‘pedigree collapse’: we have fewer forebears, with multiple lines of descent from the same person.

Recently I have started to record more of my genealogy on Wikitree. I like the idea of collaborating with cousins on a single family tree. Wikitree strives for historical accuracy by requesting that facts are supported with citations. Collaboration means I can see my connections to forebears further back in time. Wikitree is free and contributors sign an honor code of shared of ethics and principles.

There are some interesting applications to help one analyse one’s family tree on Wikitree and one of these is “Ancestor Explorer” developed by Chase Ashley https://apps.wikitree.com/apps/ashley1950/ancestorexplorer/. The app allows you to see a sortable list of all ancestors of a particular person (Descendant) for up to 20 generations back. That list shows the number of lines to the same ancestor if there are multiple lines of descent; an indication of pedigree collapse.

Amongst my forebears the first cousin marriage I have come across is Charles Gordon (1670 – 1702) who married his first cousin Elizabeth Lyon (aft 1662 – 1739). They were first cousins, the grandchildren of Elizabeth Maule (abt 1620 – 1659) and John Lyon (1596 – 1646). Elizabeth Maule and John Lyon are my tenth great grandparents.

The tool tells me that I have 3030 unique ancestors and 20,016 duplicate ancestors (additional lines of descent from a unique ancestor) within 20 generations. That is a lot of cousin marriages leading to a lot of duplicates.

It appears, for example, that I am descended in 1035 different ways from Marjorie Carrick (abt 1252 – 1292). By one line of descent she is my 19th great grandmother and by another line of descent she is my 30th great grandmother. As far as I can see, all the 1035 lines of descent are either through Helen (Kinnaird) Dana (abt 1746 – 1795), one of my fifth great grandmothers or through Sophia Henrietta (Duff) Mainwaring (abt. 1790 – 1824), one of my fourth great grandmothers on a totally different branch. Both women have long Scottish lines of descent that have been well documented on Wikitree.

Portrait of Sophia Mainwaring nee Duff, my fourth great grandmother. The portrait is at Whitmore Hall, Staffordshire. Sophia’s pedigree includes a lot of marriages between cousins.

I have recently added to Sophia’s pedigree, for I discovered her father William Duff (1754 – 1795) was the illegitimate son of James Duff, the second Earl of Fife (1729 – 1809). A link to the nobility of course adds enormously to the family tree as the pedigrees are well documented. William is recorded in the Duff House Mausoleum in Banff, Aberdeenshire. The mausoleum was built in 1793 by his father, James Duff, second Earl of Fife, but included tombs of people not related to James Duff who was attempting to prove descent from an ancient lineage.

My tree on Wikitree is by no means complete. I have recorded only 20 of my 32 possible great grandparents, 28 of my possible 64 great grandparents, and 30 of my possible 128 5th great grandparents. When looking at my personal family tree I have 26 of my 32 possible great grandparents, 36 of my possible 64 great grandparents, and 49 of my possible 128 5th great grandparents; there are 6+8+19 = 33 more ancestors to add to Wikitree.

My pedigree at Wikitree as at 28 February 2021. Tree generated with DNAPainter from a gedcom downloaded from Wikitree. The fan chart shows 9 generations: on Wikitree I know only 26 of the 512 possible 7th great grandparents. Coloured blocks indicate ancestors whose details are known; light grey indicates unknown forebears.

My pedigree at on my own research tree as at 28 February 2021. Tree generated with DNAPainter from a gedcom downloaded from ancestry.com. The fan chart shows 9 generations: on my own research tree I know only 69 of the 512 possible 7th great grandparents – I need to transfer my research to Wikitree.

My personal research tree has only 15 people at the 14th great grandparent level and there are only 13 people who appear more than once. My Wikitree pedigree has 341 14th great grandparents and 177 people who appear more than once.

I intend to work on increasing my tree completeness at Wikitree and collaborating with cousins on distant genealogy.

C F C Crespigny nee Dana (1820 – 1904): paperback book available

Charlotte Frances Champion Crespigny nee Dana (1820 – 1904) : and her family in Australia by Rafe de Crespigny and Anne Young

The paperback edition of the history of the Dana and Champion de Crespigny families in Australia is now available. The ebook was published 30 December 2020 and a PDF can be downloaded for free.

C F C Crespigny nee Dana 2020 ISBN 978-0-6481917-4-2Download

For those who prefer a hardcopy version the book can be purchased through Amazon:

• Australia for $Au38.50
• United States for $US30
• United Kingdom for £20.00

This biography of Charlotte Frances Champion Crespigny nee Dana (1820 – 1904), also includes her forebears, siblings and descendants. 

Charlotte Frances Dana, of middling gentry background, was married to a county solicitor when she met her second husband Philip Robert Champion Crespigny. After a scandalous divorce and a brief exile in France, they came to Australia in 1852 where Philip Robert became a Warden and Magistrate in the goldfields.

Viewed through the life of Charlotte Frances, this is an account of a migrant Victorian family of the nineteenth century.

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  Charlotte Frances Champion Crespigny née Dana (1820 – 1904) photographed probably in the late 1850s

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION vii

CHRONOLOGY ix

CHAPTER ONE Prologue: The family background of Charlotte Frances nee Dana
The Dana family in America 1
Edmund Dana in England and Scotland 3
The children of Edmund Dana and Helen nee Kinnaird 14
William Pulteney Dana, father of Charlotte Frances 31

CHAPTER TWO The Road to Divorce
The Bible and the census 43
Breakdown 53
Divorce 59
France to Australia 67
A note on the Crespigny surname 77

CHAPTER THREE Victoria in the Gold Rush
The Dana brothers and the native police 79
Family in Victoria 95
Commissioner, Magistrate and Warden of the Goldfields 105
Letters from home 113

CHAPTER FOUR Amherst and Talbot 1855-1871
Settlements at Daisy Hill 121
Public and private life 128
Farewell to Talbot 142
In search of Daisy Hill Farm: a note 145
Tragic cousins: George and Augustus, the sons of Henry Dana 149

CHAPTER FIVE Ararat to St Kilda 1871-1889
Bairnsdale, Bendigo and Bright, with a brief return to Talbot 157
Magistrate at Ararat 163
Constantine Trent in Australia 1875-1881 173
Rose Crespigny and Frank Beggs 182
Philip Crespigny and Annie Frances Chauncy 191

CHAPTER SIX Eurambeen 1889-1904
The second marriage of Philip Champion Crespigny 207
The letters of Constantine Trent Champion Crespigny 1889-1896 207
Banks and the land: the crisis of the 1890s 216
The Eurambeen Letters 1898-1904 218

CHAPTER SEVEN Epilogue: The immediate descendants of Charlotte Frances Champion Crespigny nee Dana
Philip Champion de Crespigny 1850-1927 253
Philip Champion de Crespigny 1879-1918 256
Constantine Trent Champion de Crespigny 1882-1952 259
Francis George Travers Champion de Crespigny 1892-1968 261
Hugh Vivian Champion de Crespigny 1897-1969 262
Royalieu Dana [Roy] Champion de Crespigny 1905-1985 263
Claude Montgomery Champion de Crespigny 1908-1991 264
Rose (1858-1937) and Frank Beggs (1850-1921) 265
Postscript: Ada, Viola and Rose 266
John Neptune Blood 1869-1942 267

BIBLIOGRAPHY 269

INDEX 275