Your monthly Jerrems news & updates
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Greetings to our 53 subscribers.
Good news. Ray, Leila and I are working on updating the Jerrems website (with professional help) . More details in future editions.
In the meantime, stay tuned for next years news and enjoy the holidays.
Donald in Georgia
Ray in Sydney
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This article returned, after an absence of nine years, to the subject of the children of Patrick Joseph Healy, the Irish migrant who in the 1870s co-founded the famous Lyon& Healy musical instrument company in Chicago.
One of the children was Marquette, who married Annie Jerrems, and another was Columbus Healy, whose wife Harriet developed a strong interest in cooking. Harriet opened up a small restaurant in Palm Beach Florida, on the south coast of the United States. It was named “Au Bon Gout” meaning “At the House of Good Taste”, it had nothing to do with gout!
Harriet formed strong friendships with famous chefs, including Roger Verge and Julia Child, and taught students how to cook, her most famous student being Mrs Jacqueline Kennedy, the widow of President John F. Kennedy (obviously shown in the photo).
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This article (the fourth in a series) continued the history of my wife Diane’s family, which included a number of convicts. In a previous article in November 2018 I recounted some of the story of convict John Frost. In this article l completed his story and embarked on the story of John’s son-in-law Joseph Lenton, my wife’s great great grandfather.
Joseph, born in 1810, was convicted in 1828 in Coventry for sheep stealing, or for stealing a cloak (the records have two versions) and was sentenced to transportation to New South Wales.
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Having spent some time on my wife’s ancestors I decided to return to my side of the family to tell readers about one of the brothers of my grandfather Edward Smith. William Healy Smith was born in Essex near London in 1891 and married Lillian in 1913. Several years later he enlisted with the 11th Battalion of the famous Queen’s Royal West Surrey Regiment.
William’s battalion took part in a fruitless diversionary attack following the 1917 Battle of Messines (marked by the massive explosion of 18 mines) in the Ypres region of northern France.
Lance Corporals like William were expected to lead their platoons in attack and were accordingly very vulnerable. Unfortunately for William it is likely that he was wounded by gunfire when it was most prevalent, and he later died in a Field Hospital at Wimereux on the west coast of France.
The cemetery, adjacent to the original Hospital, is shown in this poignant photo.
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This rather technical article described the DNA testing services now available and then told you the interesting results obtained by our Editor Donald and myself and Irish reader Donal OCallaghan.
The side photo is a reconstruction of a Neanderthal man, to whom we are all related. The chances are he wasn’t a Jerrems, but more likely he was one of our earlier ancestors!
And the image at the top reflect the general migration pattern for his maternal line.
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After several months of articles devoted to other topics this article returned to my wife’s ancestors, beginning with tying up some loose ends about Joseph and Mary Lenton and then turning to one of their children, Charles Joseph Lenton.
Charles’ first marriage, to Elizabeth Westacott, had a sad ending because Elizabeth and their three infant children died, having contracted TB. His second marriage was to Louisa Eleanor Chislett, the youngest child of Alfred and Jane Chislett.
Louisa was born in 1860 in the city of Sydney. Sadly her father Alfred died from dysentery when she was 16 months old and her mother died from TB when she was not yet nine years old in 1869, so, now being an orphan, Louisa was placed in an orphanage, the Randwick Asylum for Destitute Children, shown in the photo.
Three years later Louisa was taken in by Philip Behl, of German extraction, who lived with his young family in the distant village of Wolumla, near Bega on the far south coast of New South Wales.
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This article followed on from the previous article and hypothesised what Louisa (my wife’s great grandmother) encountered when she was taken in by the Behl family.
One can imagine the trepidation with which little Louisa (at the tender age of 12) first met Philip Behl in 1872. For her, he was a potential benefactor who could make or break her life forever.
The article follows their probable voyage by ship to the fledgeling settlement of Wolumla , followed by her later marriage to Charles Lenton in Sydney in 1885, where they had eight children. In contrast with Charles’s first marriage (where all three children and their mother Eliza died), only one of the couple’s children died during childhood.
As shown in the photo, Charles, the public spirited bootmaker, was appointed the mayor of Waterloo (an inner suburb of Sydney) in 1917 and held office until 1920.
When the couple later moved to their new double brick house in respectable Ashfield one wonders what memories Louisa had of her childhood sojourns in the orphanage and Wolumla.
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This was an article about sibling rivalries which had surfaced in our Editor Donald’s extended family.
The lead-up to this was that I had detected unmistakeable signs of sibling rivalries between Donald and his siblings who live in Florida. In the blue corner we had Donald, and in the red corner we had his sister Susan and his brothers Warren and Alec and their families.
This rivalry had come to a head when Donald and his wife Sharon moved from North Carolina to a lakeside house in Georgia. Donald threw down the gauntlet by jumping off a high rock in the lake, to which his siblings did not have any answer. But when he boasted about landing, after a fierce battle, a diminutive one kilogram (two pound) bass in the lake they were spurred into action, sending him the above photo of two of the fish (a red snapper and a cobia) they had caught. Obviously completely outclassed, Donald took this in good stead and I am pleased to announce that all siblings are still regular readers of the Jerrems Journal.
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In my research over the years on 19
th
Century Australian colonial history I noticed that nineteenth century settlers frequently used tree bark to construct huts, and even churches, as shown in this photo. I wonder if the church had a choir and what the acoustics were like?
The forests contained eucalypt trees which had thick bark which peeled off fairly easily in sheets and was surprisingly durable. The bark made excellent roofs and walls for huts and was even used for chimneys.
Split timber from trees was also used for the construction of walls of slab huts and aboriginals used large sheets of bark to make canoes.
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This was my second full article about the “Smith” family, my first article being about William, described earlier in the March edition. I turned to his brother Alfred (“Älf”), who also served with distinction in the First World War and has two children who are still living.
Born in near London in 1895 Alf migrated to Perth in Western Australia in 1915 with his brother Edward (my grandfather). After a brief sojourn as a jackaroo on a farm he signed up with the Australian Army and served in the 44
th
Battalion in France.
Alf was allocated to the dangerous task of “runner” who took messages from the front lines to the rear lines and vice versa, dodging snipers’ bullets, machine guns and artillery shells.
In the Battle of Messines in 1917 Alf, at considerable risk to himself, rescued two injured comrades, an act of bravery for which (like my grandfather) he was awarded the Military Medal. Several months later he was seriously wounded in the side and face (a fact I forgot to mention in the article) and was repatriated to England.
After the War Alf continued his fighting spirit, helping his father with the family bootmaking business. He then married Dorothy Pack and took on a number of positions in the drapery and fashion areas, finally passing away after the Second World War in 1969 at the age of 75, survived by his wife Dorothy and children John and Audrey.
The three Smith men formed a heroic trio, one being killed leading his platoon in battle, and two being awarded the Military Medal.
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In this article I continued the theme started in the August edition of bush huts, showing crofters cottages from the United Kingdom and including another method of construction in Australia involving the use of saplings and clay (known as “wattle and daub”) for walls. This is demonstrated in the photo.
Contrary to appearances, although the bush huts might have appeared dark and dingy from the outside they were comfortable on the inside.
The article concluded with Leila’s cat story.
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In this edition I introduced the novel theme of a horse (known as a “waler”) that served in the First World War.
One of 121, 324 walers sent from Australia to allied armies during the First World War, he was known as “Bill the Bastard”, Major Michael Shanahan being the only person who could ride him. The horse had run the gauntlet of Turkish snipers at Gallipoli, been the centrepiece in a buckjumping competition in Egypt, rescued four Light Horsemen in heroic circumstances at the Battle of Romani in Palestine (see above illustration), won a horse race near Jericho, took part in the famous Charge at Beersheba, and finally led the victorious Australian troops into Damascus.
Not bad for a humble stock horse of large dimensions and unknown heritage!
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December Greetings from Angie the Family Guardian Angel
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All the best.
Stay happy and healthy.
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