Trove Tuesday - Aunty Mary

My Aunty Mary would have been ninety-seven yesterday. I have many fond memories of Mary Aileen Curry (1923-2014) but one of my favourites is when I was flower girl at her wedding to Edward Corbett in 1957. I was so honoured to be part of this occasion and took this role seriously but, as the event did not make the local press, I have to rely on my memories and photographs.

Jill and Mary, April 1957

Trove has given me a few insights into Aunty Mary's earlier life.

1926 'Spencer.', The Gosford Times and Wyong District Advocate (NSW : 1906 - 1954), 18 February, p. 3. , viewed 26 May 2020, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article161110901

This short snip reports on the first major challenge young Mary faced. She just took this disability in her stride and forged ahead with a happy and successful life.

1937 'DIOCESE OF BATHURST', National Advocate (Bathurst, NSW : 1889 - 1954), 28 January, p. 4. , viewed 26 May 2020, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article160351086

The Currys were a Catholic family, until I found this snip, I thought that the name of the school that Mary and her siblings attended was different from the one cited in this article. I was obviously getting confused with the name of their Parish Church. The results above are for religious knowledge exams in the Diocese of Bathurst.

1938 'DIOCESE OF BATHURST', National Advocate (Bathurst, NSW : 1889 - 1954), 19 January, p. 6. , viewed 26 May 2020, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article160703622

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Twelve months later the tables had turned with Uncle Tom scoring 81 in the religious knowledge exams. I know that Aunty Mary left school after her third year of secondary education. I wonder where she worked between then and 1942. There is mention in Trove of a Nurse M. Curry at Canowindra in 1939, perhaps that was Mary.

1942 'About People', The Forbes Advocate (NSW : 1911 - 1954), 13 October, p. 2. , viewed 26 May 2020, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article219510430

Mary used to talk about working in Forbes but I didn't know when this started and for whom she worked.

1942 'About People', The Forbes Advocate (NSW : 1911 - 1954), 24 December, p. 2. , viewed 26 May 2020, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article219516509

1945 'About People', The Forbes Advocate (NSW : 1911 - 1954), 5 January, p. 2. , viewed 26 May 2020, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article218691812

I remember this story as Aunty Mary told me that my Dad sent her money to hep buy replacement clothing which may have been hard to come by in the war years. 

1945 'Advertising', The Forbes Advocate (NSW : 1911 - 1954), 5 January, p. 5. , viewed 26 May 2020, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article218691823

So Mary was working with Goldsborough Mort before she moved to Sydney.

1945 'About People', The Forbes Advocate (NSW : 1911 - 1954), 26 January, p. 4. , viewed 26 May 2020, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article218694258

I didn't know that Mary was a VAD volunteer during World War Two. 

1948 'About People', The Forbes Advocate (NSW : 1911 - 1954), 12 March, p. 2. , viewed 26 May 2020, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article218418670

With her younger sister, Kathleen, Mary moved to Sydney to work at Goldsborough Mort, this article tells me it was by 1948. As there was a post-war shortage of rental accommodation in Sydney Mary and Kath, who lived in Springfield Avenue, vacated their flat so that after I was born my parents could have a place of their own for our family. 

1948 'About People', The Forbes Advocate (NSW : 1911 - 1954), 3 February, p. 6. , viewed 26 May 2020, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article218415232

 No doubt Mary enjoyed this opportunity to return to Forbes and catch up with friends.

I previously blogged about Aunty Mary here: https://geniaus.blogspot.com/2014/07/vale-aunty-mary.html

Those of us who have relatives from rural areas are fortunate that local newspapers that are digitised on Trove give us glimpses into their lives. 

Tinsel Town

As I was looking for a cemetery photo to adorn a post on the Geneadictionary I came across this photo of Ben Hall the Bushranger's grave in Forbes Cemetery.  I snapped this image in April last year when visiting my Great-Grandmother's grave.

Tinsel Town!

I can't fathom why the grave was adorned with Christmas Tinsel in April.

Another grave photo

Twice in one week....

....it's almost too much for an old girl to bear.

Earlier this week I wrote about a response I had to my one of my "Do you Know...?" blog posts.  I often hear from other people via comments on this blog or my family web site.

A recent comment on my "I Found it in Forbes" blog post sent shivers up my spine. For over 20 years I have been trying to gather more information on my Great-Great-Grandmother's family to no avail. A name like Bridget Ryan made my task rather difficult. My trip to Forbes unearthed an obituary that gave me a few clues about which I blogged. On Wednesday this comment appeaered on my post:

Now aren't I fortunate to have an Ancestry.com account! I hopped on to that site and found details of extra siblings for Bridget and some family stories.

And you know what I am going to do?  Commit what some other genealogists see as a Mortal Sin - I am going to copy this information into my database and publish it online before I check my sources. I will then set aside a few hours to do a bit of research on these new cousins and add sources as I find them because my online tree is a work in progress that I share with others. If others choose to copy my erroneous infrmation they do it at their peril.

But I digress. The purpose of this post was to share my excitement and stand on my virtual pedestal to promote social media as a marvellous means of making cousin connections.

Billion Graves

On our recent trip we travelled back to Sydney via a few towns where some ancestors buried.

One of the cemeteries I had previously visited in Cobar many years ago but the images I had taken of my grandparents' headstones were poor quality. I wanted to rephotograph these and also look for other family resting spots. The two other cemeteries where I managed to find some family graves, in Broken Hill and Forbes, were new to me.

Locating the graves in each of these sites wasn't particularly easy. In Cobar and Forbes there was no resource available to pinpoint the graves' exact location; the map of Broken Hill Cemetery that was available by the Cemetery gate was quite confusing even for Mr Geniaus who is not spatially challenged like me.

Ben Hall the Bushranger - Forbes Cemetery

In order to make it easy for cousins who may be seeking these graves in the future I added each of them to Billiongraves. The GPS coordinates that Billiongraves attaches to these images will make finding them in the future much easier for those who make use of the Billiongraves site or app.

As we were on a tight time schedule I could not commit myself to photographing all of the graves in each of these cemeteries. I did, however, take and upload a few rows of headstones  around the graves I was visiting in Cobar and Broken Hill.

In less than half an hour I was able to photograph over 100 images in Cobar cemetery. These are now available on Billiongraves site; those who wish to visit these graves can use the GPS coordinates to locate them efficiently.

How about joining and downloading the  Billiongraves  app to your Android or other device so that you can contribute to the database when you find yourself (above ground) in a cemetery. While in a cemetery take some time to photograph a row or two of graves. This is a painless and enjoyable way of helping others connect with their ancestors.

Fab Find in Forbes

For our homeward journey from Congress in Adelaide we took the long way round. We had never visited the outback City of Broken Hill but had been wanting to do so for a number of years. Taking this route through western New South Wales provided, in addition to some sightseeing, an opportunity to visit a few cemeteries.

In Broken Hill I looked for my grandmother's sister's grave but could not find her listed in the Broken Hill Cemetery database even though I have her funeral notice indicating that she was buried in the Catholic Section of that Cemetery. I did, however, locate a few graves of more distant relatives in that cemetery.

My Great-Grandparent's headstone in Cobar

Our next stop was Cobar where I wanted to get better quality images of my Duncan Great-Grandparents' grave. This we accomplished early in the morning after we had been repelled by the over 100f. temperatures on the afternoon we arrived. I also wanted to locate Elsinore, the property my grandparents, my  mother and the family lived on in the 1920s and 1930s. The staff at Great Cobar Heritage and Visitor Information Centre went out of their way to help us but we were unable to locate Elsinore on maps in the Centre. I was pleased to see that there was a huge photo of my Granddfather's catering truck in one of the displays and in another display a large photo of Gertrude Pusell, another of my grandmother's sisters.


About another 300 km down the road was Forbes. I knew that my Great-Great-Grandmother, Bridget Curry (Nee Ryan), was buried in the cemetery there and wanted to visit and take a photo. While we were travelling along I discovered on the internet that The Forbes Family History Group was open yesterday, Wednesday; we did not tarry as I was keen to visit the group to see if they could direct me to the grave and hopefully give me some other information on the family. I have never been able to locate any information about Bridget's family or her immigration as there are so many girls named Bridget Ryan in the NSW immigration records.

Volunteers at work - Forbes Family History Group

 As I gingerly opened the door of the centre I was greeted by laughter and happy chatter; tiptoeing into the room I found around ten people working away at tables and computers. They appeared to be engrossed in indexing tasks. I was greeted warmly and within ten minutes a volunteer, Jan, had found the grave location in their cemetery index. Another volunteer was concurrently looking in other files for me; she found an obituary for Bridget. At first I wasn't too impressed as I already had an obituary from the Sydney newspaper that didn't tell me much; then I stopped and read the proffered obituary; it was a more detailed one from the local, Forbes Times. I let out a squeal.

Bridget Curry (nee Ryan) Obituary

For twenty years I had been trying to find out more about Bridget and this scrap of paper gave me some wonderful leads. It listed Bridget's children confirming their places of residence in 1911. The best piece of information was that she had a brother who was a pioneer priest in New South Wales. From using the clues supplied in this article I have, in a couple of hours, found so much about the interesting life of Rev Michael Harrington Ryan and also that Bridget had a sister who had emigrated to the Colony with her husband Peter Birmingham in 1842. Once I can get to some libraries and use print resources I should be able to add more branches and leaves to my tree. I also need to go through the microfilm of The Forbes Times to see if I can get a clearer copy of the document.

Forbes Family History Group

I was so impressed with the collection at The Forbes Family History Group; it isn't a collection that is rich in published print resources, its strength is in the huge collection of locally prepared indexes and files that were stored around the walls in A4 folders. I am ever so grateful to the volunteers in that group who have devoted many hours to developing these local resources.

I cannot express how thankful I am for the work done by The Forbes Family History Group.

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