Sunday 2 December 2018

#52Ancestors - Week 48 - Next to last

Family history research often produces mysteries that can take a while to solve, particularly when you are unaware initially that a mystery even exists.

My grandfather, Henry John (Reginald) Moses, was the youngest of five children, or so we thought. The first four children of George and Elizabeth Moses - Letitia, Parthenia, George and Elsie - were born between 1866 and 1879. Reg was born ten years later in 1889. I remember my aunt saying that my grandfather was a 'change of life' baby when the gap between Elsie and Reg was mentioned in a conversation. There was also a gap of eight years between the birth of George and Elsie which was a little unusual when babies were often born every two years in families at that time.

Records in the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages confirmed the births of the five children. The section about this family in the book, A Rich Inheritance, provided the same information. It was only when I was trying to locate the date of death of my great grandmother that I discovered that Reg had another sister, Constance, who was born in 1882.

The resources that helped me locate the existence and life of Constance Henrietta Moses are recorded in a separate blog post Moses family notes. Needless to say it was searching Trove for information about the death of my great grandmother that led to the discovery of the existence of another great aunt who was the 'next to last, child in her family.

Having discovered Constance the mystery still remains as to why her birth does not appear to have been registered when the births of her brothers and sisters appear in the official records. Another mystery is why family members appear not to have been aware of her even though she did not die until 1974.

Constance was 19 when she married her first husband in 1902. She and her husband moved to Queensland. After the death of her husband in 1926 she later remarried. Constance's mother had obviously kept in touch with her daughter as Elizabeth was staying at her daughter's house when she died. It was the death notice referring to Mrs E J Babington as Elizabeth's daughter that alerted me to the fact that there was apparently an unknown child in the family.

It is unlikely that we will ever know the full story as to why Constance (or Hettie as she was later known) was not recorded in any family records. However she has now been reinstated into her rightful place in our family tree.

1 comment:

  1. Wow - fancy that -the family not being aware of her, when she was born only 3 years after the other. I also have one child who does not seem to be christened or registered when all the others are. I even tried school records, to ascertain his real birth date.

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