I
had a request from Patricia, a lady from Australia, who found two links to
online family trees concerning her grandmother, born Maude Isabel Mallet,
parents Thomas Britten Mallet and Emma Hulance, nee Davis. Both references indicated
she had been born in Plympton, Devon in 1856. As the Online Parish Clerk for the parish
she asked me whether I could verify the parents’ names, birth date and
location.
One
of the trees was on Genes Reunited and gave only
the year, quarter and registration district for Maude’s birth. The other
reference was on a webtrees family file, Britten Family of
Northamptonshire & London. The second, again, only had information
on the quarter when the birth was registered but had substantial other data
about Maude’s family, including parents and siblings. Her younger brother and
sister had been born in Australia which gave us a time frame for when the
family moved there from England.
I
set out to see what I could find in my parish records. Sometimes these searches
that seem simple end up leading you around in circles.
As
is often the case with lookups in the area, I determined that the Plympton
reference was for the Plympton St.
Mary Registration District not the parish as Maude Isabel was not listed in
the baptism registers of any of my parishes.
A
quick search of Ancestry and FindMyPast records brought up information about
Maude’s parents on various family trees: his baptism in 1811, in Hampshire,
England, parents Thomas Mallet Esq. and Sarah Saunders; her baptism in 1828, in
Somerset, England, parents Jacob Davis and Catherine Hulance; their marriage in
1853, in Middlesex, England; his death in 1864, in Australia; and her death in
Australia in 1912.
Maude’s
birth on Ancestry, again, was only shown on the civil birth index in Plympton
St. Mary Registration District in 1856. Her baptism was indicated to have been
in July of 1856, in Australia, though, which indicated she may have been born
in Devon just before the family left for Australia. Perhaps they were just
waiting near the port to board their ship when the baby decided to come.
I
suggested to Patricia that she order the birth certificate from the General Record Office using the
volume and page references given in the index. The document she received did
indeed confirm that Maude’s parents were Thomas Britten Mallet and Emma
Hulance, nee Davis and that she was born in Plymstock parish, which is just
across the inlet from the port of Plymouth; so a couple of important questions
were answered.
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Birth
certificate for Maude Isabel Mallet, parents Thomas Britten Malled and Emma
Hulance Mallet, formerly Davis; obtained from General Register Office, England
In
further correspondence with Patricia I learned quite a bit about this very
interesting family. Thomas Britten Mallet was born in Hampshire, England
however the family soon after moved back to their “homeland” of Jersey in the
Channel Islands where Thomas and later siblings were baptized. He served in the
local militia from a young age, according to one source, being promoted to 2nd
lieutenant at fifteen and to Captain at twenty-three. By the 1840s he was a
shipping agent, and owner (?) for emigrant ships to Australia and probably
other destinations. There is an 1845 freedom of the City of London document
that shows him being admitted to the Company of Spectaclemakers. It is not
known whether he was actually involved in the making of eye-glasses or whether
this was a way to gain access to the business community of London. He ended up
taking his family to Australia in 1856, as we first discovered in the search
for his daughter, Maude Isabel. He bought a sawmill business near Melbourne from
his brother-in-law in 1860. The business was not viable and went bankrupt in
1862. He died in 1864, apparently leaving his young family in some economic
hardship.
One
of the reasons why this particular story resonated with me is that I believe
one of my 2nd great-grandfathers, Robert Anderson, may also have
been born while his family waited by or even on the ship to take them from
Glasgow, Scotland to Canada. His birth, indicated on numerous records,
including his own death certificate, was on January 6th, 1832, in
Glasgow. No baptism record has been found for Robert, which is curious as that
was a common practice of the day in the absence of civil birth records.
A
note on the 1901 Canada census showing his brother, John, says the family arrived
in Canada in 1832. His older siblings were born in Scotland, near but not in
Glasgow, and those younger were born in Canada. So we have some written reports
and some indirect information that Robert was born in Glasgow in 1832 but
nothing direct to confirm it. If he was later baptized in Canada those records
appear to have not survived.
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Robert Anderson
(1832-1912)
Other
of my ancestors’ families are split with some births in Great Britain and
others in Canada; so that, too, is similar to the story of the Mallets. I will
have more to say about my immigrant families in my next blog – number 100.
Wayne
Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in
England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has
published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is a past
Editor of Chinook, the quarterly
journal of the Alberta Family Histories Society. Wayne also provides genealogical
consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated
