Convict or Grocer?

A genealogical researcher with ties to Australia will often hope for and experience great delight in locating a convict or convicts in their own family history.   Delight because the records related to Convict transportation from the United Kingdom to Australia between the late 1700s and the mid-1800s are very comprehensive.  Convicts are some of the poorest and most maligned early European settlers to Australia, and have the largest collection of easily accessible historical records which relate to many facets of their lives.   Being able to build a more complete picture of who your ancestor was, where they lived and with whom, to trace their journey across the globe and to know the colour of their eyes and what they looked like is ‘meat on the bones’ of genealogical research. These pieces of information add colour and depth to our research and provide us with a much greater and precious connection with our family history.

Years ago, my family incorrectly claimed an Irish Convict named Eugene Connor as our own. To be fair I am largely responsible for this error, as I made a connection between the arrival of this man to New South Wales on the Convict vessel Hive in 1835, and Eugene Connor, a Grocer who raised his family in the Cumberland district of Sydney in the 1840s and 50s. My view was mirrored and supported by other researchers and over the years my family have continued to believe that our grandfather, John Hugh O'Connor husband of Eliza Sarah Wightman who lived in Kawhia, New Zealand, until his death in 1954 was the grandson of Eugene Connor an Irish Convict.  

I’ve learned a great deal more about genealogical research in the 15 years since I found Eugene the Convict, and now with a Diploma of Family History from the University of Tasmania under my belt I can safely say my research is a great deal more comprehensive and robust.

I now know there were two men named Eugene Connor in New South Wales in the same time frame, both from County Kerry, in Ireland.   One a Convict who made a dramatic arrival to NSW on the vessel Hive in 1835 and the other a Kerry farmer’s lad who became a Grocer and who arrived in Sydney as a bonded immigrant on the vessel Susan in 1839.

My stories of both men can be read here:

Eugene Connor the Convict        Eugene Connor the Grocer

If you are descended from either of these men I would very much like to hear from you.

Grocer

The story of Eugene Connor and Elizabeth Griffin who arrived in Sydney as bonded immigrants in 1839 is coming soon.

Secret Sex

My most recent blog post which revealed my family's 'Big Fat Secret' has drawn a number of responses including a warning about 'cans of worms' and the fervent hope that the family's dignity will not be further compromised, I assume compromised by me posting more about the 'improper' and secret sexual activity of my ancestors.   This left me quite puzzled as to why anybody would be distressed about sex which may have lasted only 15 seconds, between two adults not married to each other 157 years ago, and how my writing about the results of this ancient sex could compromise somebody’s dignity today.

I also made me wonder just how much historic secret sex there has been in my family that may cause people to be embarrassed if I were to talk about it.  Genealogy by its very nature is about sex, we keep a track of who had sex with whom, when and where and we chart the products of this sex through the various stages of their lives until they also have sex and the cycle begins again. Where the records don't tell us who one of the parties to the sex was we leave blanks in our records.  Blanks we overlook and ignore, and put something of a metaphorical road block there.  "Do Not Pass - Unknown Parent"    Of course we don't talk about it in terms of actual sex and especially not when the sex is illicit or between couples married to other people or just not married at all.  It's sort of like colouring outside the lines, we see it and it looks a bit messy and for the most part we just try to pretend it didn't happen.

Casting my mind back over the 20 years of my family research activities I realise there is a lot of evidence of secret sex which stretches back as far as a genealogists eye can see.  Sex I am perhaps not supposed to talk about even if everybody who did it has been dead for decades. Keeping secrets is not something I'm good at, especially secrets which aren't really secret and we don't even need to be embarrassed about or ashamed of.   So I'm dragging these secrets out of the family cupboard, like so many musty old quilts and I'm laying them in the sunlight. 

My grandmother Olive married in 1908, and by 1912 she was shacked up with a different man in a different city and having babies with him.  She had three illegitimate children before hubby number one died and she was free to marry again.  Such a surprise to discover long after her death that she had actually been Mrs Carne before she was Mrs Kinzett and in between she had lots of sex with somebody not her first husband who became her second husband and nobody ever talked about it.

My great uncle Sam, Olive's younger brother, was a very handsome young man, who married in 1913 and then in 1918 while in England fighting the Imperial Scourge impregnated a young British Nurse who later gave birth to an illegitimate son named Jimmy, and all the while his dutiful wife kept the home fires burning back in little old New Zealand. There is no doubt this caused some considerable distress in the family, especially when the young nurse later formed life-long friendships with Sam's siblings and visited them in New Zealand.

Sam's father Frank, you will remember from my 'Big Fat Secret', was divorced by his wife in 1911.  She had left him some years earlier on her Doctors advice.  Frank had contracted Syphilis in about 1901, a disease which in a world without penicillin would take 30 years to kill him. He was the son of Phillis Harris otherwise Smith, or Phillis Smith otherwise Harris depending on which records you consider to be official, and yes there is a story that involves sex which explains why she had so many names, we’ll get to that soon.  Frank's father was not his mother's husband, he was a Finnish Miller named Gustaf, a man employed by Frank's Uncle.

Gustaf was the illegitimate son of Madgalena Menlos the daughter of a Magistrate from the town of Tornio in Lapland.  There are no official records of who Gustaf’s father was and some speculation that he may have been a sailor.  You being to see that because of sex my family tree has a number of "Do Not Pass" signs and we've really only just begun.

Phillis Smith otherwise Harris was one of five 'natural born children' of Hannah Smith supposedly by her employer Robert Harris, a farmer from the hamlet of Taston in Oxfordshire.  On many occasions Hannah was called before the Church Council for 'Immoral behaviour and the begetting of illegitimate children'.  Hannah accepted the punishments dished out by the prurient church men and never revealed the name of her children’s father or fathers as the case may be.  The children were all raised in Robert Harris' home, with the surname Smith which suddenly became Harris after Robert died. Hannah never married and had a sixth child after Robert’s death who used the surname Smith, but was not an 'otherwise Harris'. Interestingly the five siblings never really overcame the naming issue as nobody quite knew what name they should have, so they continue to be known as Smith otherwise Harris and not Smith or Harris or even Smith-Harris.  This name indecision was surely the red flag of illegitimacy waving over this generation of Smith otherwise Harrises.    I always really liked the idea that Hannah had thumbed her nose at the Church Dust and their rules and continued to colour with apparently little regard for where the lines were.

Hannah's mother Elizabeth was born in 1781 and had her first child to her husband Thomas Smith in 1800.  Widowed twenty years later she managed to produce a child between the death of Thomas in April 1819 and her second marriage in November 1820 to Robert Harling who was some 15 years her junior.  The child bore the surnames of both Thomas Smith and Robert Harling, she was perhaps just indecisive. 

John Godfrey's family were not always the picture of perfect morality either.  John if you recall is the 'paper' father of Frank who is really the son of Gustaf the Miller.   John's father, also John, in 1821 ran away with the daughter of his benefactor, taking her to London where they married illegally, she using a name not actually her own.   Elizabeth was just 16 years old and by the standards of 1821 and of today was a minor.  Luckily her parents saved  both their daughter’s reputation, and their son in law's neck, by allowing their errant daughter to marry John the following week and the illegal marriage never made it to the official record books.  The path of true love never does run smoothly as the saying goes, and especially with a fair smattering of lust and lies.

These people are five generations of just one of my families and as you can see we have a long history of colouring outside the lines.  If you do by some small chance feel a little uneasy at the revelation of your ancestor's carnal activities, try to remember that without their sex, improper or otherwise you wouldn't exist.

Big Fat Secret

How DNA testing uncovered a big fat secret in our family tree!

Eighteen months ago, when I DNA tested ten of my family members I had high hopes the DNA results would help me break down some brick walls in my family tree.   I had been researching my family history for close to 20 years at that point, and DNA testing seemed to be the next logical step.  While I did expect to find a few adoptees, I was not expecting there would be a secret exposed that would change our known family tree and ethnicity. But that is exactly what happened.

DNA testing for genealogical purposes is relatively new but it is already an important tool for genealogists.   It is a very simple process for those being tested.  You take a sample of saliva or a cheek scraping and send it off to the testing lab, and in a month or two your results are available.   They will show you a breakdown of your ethnicity estimate based on reference populations.  You are also matched with the hundreds (maybe even thousands) of people who share some of the same DNA as you.  If you are very lucky those people you match will have a family tree, you will quickly be able to see how you are connected and they will respond with friendly messages about your shared history.   If you are unlucky there will be no family tree to investigate. If you are really unlucky, even when you send carefully thought out messages of enquiry, your DNA matches will respond with silence.

Your Cousins!

To make the most of the DNA data, I shared it with my family interested in using it for their own research.   One of the people who took this opportunity was my maternal first cousin Gail Cooper-Douglas who, using her own DNA data in conjunction with her sister’s and a handful of our maternal cousins made great headway with her own family tree.  In mid-2018 she contacted me with a puzzle in our DNA, saying she’d identified many DNA matches who appeared to be from Scandinavia and wanted to know what if anything I knew about it.   As I’m Irish on my Dad’s side, I had assumed anything Nordic showing up in my DNA was probably my (yet undiscovered) Viking heritage.  If you’re Irish, you’re probably descended from some ancient Vikings, right?

Where did you come from?

Gail suggested our maternal 2x Great Grandfather may not be who we thought he was and although on paper his name was John Godfrey, in our DNA he appeared to be somebody else.  She showed me many DNA matches to New Zealand and American families with Scandinavian Ancestry and with family trees that didn’t match anything in our family tree.  Initially I was extremely sceptical.  I’ve been researching family history long enough to know you can’t accept anything at face value.   Although I couldn’t help but think what this might mean for my family.  Had we suddenly lost all our proudly held Oxfordshire heritage?  The Apothecary son of a Baker who married the granddaughter of Rev. James Williamson the Bamford Lecturer whose portrait hangs in the Queens College at Oxford, were they no longer ours?   What about the hours of research I put in to track down Mary Cowperthwaite from Westmorland? Was I researching somebody else’s family?  And we’re just right in the middle of restoring the Godfrey Family graves at Picton! What would my poor long departed Mother have thought of this desecration of her family?   This is history Maureen, sometimes you can easily misread its shape. You’ve researched a thousand family stories to find the nugget of reality in them, and you know that even at the risk of destroying somebody’s childhood memories, ‘family truth’ is occasionally at odds with the records! …please, just calm down.

Together Gail and I painstakingly went over her research looking at family trees and DNA matches however small which might lead us to an accurate conclusion. Despite that Gail’s fervent hope was I would have some other explanation, or be able to completely disprove her theory, eventually I conceded that on the balance of probability she was correct, and that she really had uncovered a big fat secret.  Our great great grandfather was probably not John Godfrey, despite what the last 170 years of paperwork and all our family stories were showing us.     After puzzling over what to do we contacted a small group of Godfrey family members who had also DNA tested and were avid family researchers.  We figured they would look at the research and maybe find reasons we were not reading this correctly.    We shared the secret with them and they went.  “Wait… does this mean? ...what about? ...But we have a Bamford Lecturer … and the grave restoration at Picton and all that…”  And nine of us shared our DNA data with each other and the resulting analysis made Gail’s theory crystal clear.

Francis Robert Godfrey
1861-1931

 The man we have always believed was the father of our great grandfather Francis Robert Godfrey b. 1861 is not John Godfrey.    I know!  I can hear you saying, “That’s rubbish Maureen!”   So… right now, you have the choice of not reading any further and sticking with our known family history, of believing the existing paper trail and our family stories as they have been told since forever, or you can read on and discover who is responsible for our Nordic genes.

*  *  *

Initially Gail located many DNA matches to our maternal first cousins who appeared to originate in Finland, specifically the city of Tornio in Lapland.  By a process of elimination, she determined the matches were occurring within the descendants of our great grandparents, Francis Robert Godfrey (FRG) and Elizabeth Ann Rabone (EAR).      Further investigation revealed none of the matches were with descendants of the siblings of either FRG or EAR.    That led Gail to conclude either FRG or EAR shared only one parent with their siblings, most likely a mother.   More investigation into the ancestry of these DNA matches in New Zealand revealed a man living in Renwick at the same time as John and Phillis Godfrey, who was born in Tornio, Lapland, and whose descendants we share DNA with.  That man was Gustaf Bary, born in 1833 the illegitimate son of Magdalena Menlos, of Tornio in Lapland, and at one point he worked for John Godfrey’s brother Henry!

Even though a strong potential candidate had been identified there was still a lot of work to do to confirm what we believe to be true was a reality. We began by identifying how many descendants of Gustaf’s children matched members of our Godfrey family.   At last count there were 24 known descendants of FRG with DNA matches to all or some of the seven known descendants Gustaf Bary.  There are 11 Great Grandchildren of FRG who all match one of Gustaf Bary’s great grandsons.  We have more, and closer DNA matches with the descendants of Gustaf Bary than we do with the Great Granddaughters of Charles and Alfred Godfrey, siblings of our FRG.

Our Family Tree?

Once we had been through this process it seemed very important to then have our analysis reviewed by somebody with far more expertise in this field than we had.  We employed a Genetic Genealogist to look at our family tree and DNA and tell us what she saw.   She said, “You’re almost there”, and we just need to get some Y-DNA tests to prove the male line.  What?!  More DNA tests?!   Yes, more DNA tests, and specifically DNA tests which will track the male Y gene back through each previous generation of sons and fathers.  As many of you know it is only the Y gene which is passed from Father to son.  Girls get two X’s, one each from Mum and Dad, and boys a Y from Dad and an X from Mum.   The Y passes down almost unchanged for generations from Father to Son and so on.   Theoretically if we test a Great Grandson of FRG we have a better than good chance of connecting with men descended from this same male line which will conclusively confirm the male line is Bary rather than Godfrey.  Right now we are looking for more candidates to Y-DNA test.  We have a Godfrey male descended from FRG who has indicated his willingness to test.  If we could just find a Bary male who wants to be a part of our research we'd be overjoyed!

The shared DNA is a clear indicator of our mutual genetic makeup.

Who is this man whose DNA we have?  Gustaf Bary was born in Finland and immigrated to New Zealand in 1855.   He settled in Renwicktown where for a short time he worked as a Miller for Henry Godfrey.  Two years after he conceived a child with Phillis Godfrey he married in 1863 to Sarah Blaymires and together they had 12 children.   Gustaf Bary had a store on Uxbridge Street in Renwicktown, which is the same street were John Godfrey’s Sheepskin Tavern originally stood.  By all accounts Gustaf was a hard working and dedicated family man.   

Gustaf Bary

 This photo of Gustaf Bary from the
Blaymires Family Website

There are very few clues left behind, there are no journals to tell us what happened, and no letters explaining the truth.   What we do know is John Godfrey raised three sons with his name and there is no historical evidence to suggest he treated any of them differently from the others.  Beyond that we are unable to speculate on what occurred, and how Phillis came to be pregnant to a man who was not her husband.  We will only ever know part of the secret.  Thanks to DNA testing and the tenacious efforts of Gail Cooper-Douglas, the what, where, when and who have been figured out, the ‘how’ is probably not our business.

We recognise for many of the family of Francis Robert Godfrey who have always believed we descend from John Godfrey, the information here may be upsetting.   In a sense we have just been told we are adopted, that our father is not who we have always believed him to be.  Despite the new knowledge about our genetics, our family and our history remains unchanged and we can be justifiably proud of the Godfrey legacy.   Honesty, justice and the truth were John Godfrey's drivers, it was these strongly held values that set him on a course of influence in the early political history of New Zealand. It is appropriate that we and future generations of our family know where we came from both biologically and historically.  

~\\*!*//~

 

My grateful thanks to Jocelyn Delaney, Pamela Oughton, Pamela Gordon, Donna Rider, Anne McMichael, Olive Reed and Diane Kinzett for their thoughts, encouragement, and insights in our pursuit of the answers to this mystery.  Very special thanks to Gail Cooper-Douglas, without her tenacity and courageous efforts we would not ever know about this big fat secret.