This story has been published a couple of times already but I feel it is time it was published here on my blog for future researchers and my family:
Emily Elizabeth Beavan (née Shaw) is my great-great-grandmother.
Oral tradition said we had an authoress in the family, and once I started researching my family, I soon discovered it was Emily. She was born in Belfast, Ireland, about 1818.
As well as being a wife, mother, and teacher, Emily was also an author of novels and poems; and she kept an album, rather like the autograph album of my day, in which she drew and wrote some of her poems and short stories. I discovered this album in the belongings of a fourth cousin I met through the course of my research. He was also descended from Emily. Amongst Emily’s own writings, there are also poetry contributions from a few others, including her husband, and keepsakes like pieces of lacework, dried flowers, and all kinds of other fascinating things. The album was begun in 1835 in Belfast and travelled with her wherever she went until she passed away in Sydney, Australia in 1897. It has remained in the family ever since and became an integral part of my research and my other blog “Emily’s Quill Pen” https://emilysquillpen.wordpress.com/
The story that follows is one of quite a dance all over the world in search of clues about her family and the identity of her parents. I believe they perfected the art of the cryptic clue!
First Stop – Australia
My story starts with the birth certificate of Emily’s daughter and my great-grandmother Amy Bastable (née Beavan). The entry in the Victorian BMD microfiche indexes themselves took a bit of finding because I was a real novice then, and unbeknownst to me, Amy had been registered without a name. As a consequence, the indexes had recorded her as “F Beavan”. It wasn’t until later, when I noticed a “M Beavan” with the same parents that I thought I was looking for, that the penny dropped, and I realised “F” was for female and “M” was for male!
Amy’s birth certificate showed she was born in 1856 in Kilmore, Victoria, Australia, and stated that her parents’ full names were Frederick Williams Cadwalleder Beavan and Emily Elizabeth Shaw. The certificate also gave me the extra information that they had been married in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. The registration had been completed by her father who was the local registrar at the time and I often wonder if he knew I was going to come looking and so filled in more information than was normal.
Knowing that Amy had lived most of her life in Sydney, Australia, I searched through the New South Wales (NSW) indexes for Emily’s death, and I discovered that Emily had died in Sydney. By purchasing her death certificate from the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages in Sydney,[1] I found that her eldest son, Alfred Beavan, was the informant. He stated that Emily’s father was Samuel Shaw, Master Mariner, and that her mother was Isabella Pringle.
Onward to New Brunswick Canada
Through extremely generous and kind archivists at the University of New Brunswick and fellow genealogists in Canada, I was able to find a record of the marriage of Emily and Frederick which took place on 19 June 1838 in Norton, Kings County, New Brunswick. The marriage was recorded in a book written by B. Wood-Holt (1986).[2] However, I also found the marriage in the Belfast Newsletter dated some six months later and with a slightly different date for the marriage in the Belfast Newsletter, 1 January 1839:
“June 20, at Norton, near St. John’s N.B. Surgeon Bevan to Emily Elizabeth Shaw, eldest daughter of Mr. Samuel Shaw, late of Belfast.”
With the help I received in Canada, I was able to piece together quite a long story of Emily’s life in that country. This included one period that she wrote about in a book about life in the “the backwoods of New Brunswick” at Long Creek where she lived with her husband and growing family for seven years. Journals and newspapers of the time also carried her stories and poems, which gave me a unique insight into small windows of her life and her contemporaries. Her stories and poems were often based on her own experiences or those of people or events she knew, even if they were somewhat embellished for the sake of a good story. Militia lists and other people’s diaries and memoirs, much to my surprise, also held snippets of information about her husband, Frederick.
As well as Emily’s own teaching career, I found some details about the lives of some possible siblings—Frances, Pringle, and Samuel Shaw. Friends had managed to find, at the National Archives in Ottawa, their petitions for a licence to teach. From these petitions, I was able to obtain various details about their religion, places of birth, and education levels, as well as estimate how long they had been in New Brunswick. They were teachers in the same area of New Brunswick and appeared to be connected to Emily because her husband provided references for some of their petitions. I sailed along quite happily for a couple of years finding all sorts of wonderful things about Emily, her husband and, in particular, her brother Pringle Shaw.
Next Stop – Ontario, Canada
Pringle Shaw was a teacher, writer, and a very community-spirited person who made small appearances in newspapers and is mentioned in local histories in the area around Kettleby, a small community in King Township, Ontario, that I learned about by using Google to search the Internet for his name. An unusual name is always a bonus in family history research!
Ancestry.com has recently added merchant navy records to their online databases. From these, I discovered that Pringle had returned to Ireland where he was trying his hand as a sailor from 1843 until 1845, when he was paid off in Quebec. He then apparently went to the United States as he authored a book, Ramblings in California that was published about 1850, in which he describes his travels through California during the gold rush. He next turns up in the 1851 Ontario (Canada West) census as a school teacher once again.
At one stage, I joined an Irish Yahoo group on the Internet when they were using a chat room to get to know each other. I was chatting one afternoon to a lady from Canada and, as you often do, I asked where she lived in Canada. What a moment of serendipity it was when she replied that she came from Tilbury—the same township in Essex County, Ontario, that Pringle had finally settled in! On her bookshelf was a local history of this township, and it was to be a very late night while she sent me transcribed excerpts and photos from the book about Pringle, his wife, family and especially his eldest son, William Shaw, who had been a Mayor of the township. The next week she was out taking photos of their headstones for me and managed to get me a copy of the book for my library as well. This family was fast becoming a family historian’s dream.
Conflicting Information
Then a setback in my research quickly dissipated the euphoria. I had sent for, and received, the registration of the death of Pringle in Tilbury, Ontario, which was dated 1 March1915. The registration had been made by Pringle’s son, William Shaw. William had stated, in agreement with Emily’s death registration, and as I expected, that Pringle’s father was Samuel Shaw, Master Mariner. The pinch, however, was reading his statement that said Pringle’s mother’s name was Isabel Adelaide McMoran and not Isabella Pringle as Emily’s son had stated on her death certificate!
This very unexpected development was especially perplexing as it had always seemed to me that Pringle had been named with his mother’s maiden name—the name given on Emily’s death certificate. The use of a mother’s maiden name as a forename was something I had seen quite a few times before, and I had thought it was a perfectly logical scenario. What now? Could there be an error on Pringle’s certificate? Perhaps Samuel had married two Isabellas? How was I ever going to solve such a conundrum, especially in those reputed difficult and missing Irish records that I heard so much about and was rather reluctant to go near?
Time went on and I continued to research by following Emily and the other “siblings”, although I was always never quite sure I was on the right track. I felt that if I researched sideways, I just might uncover more evidence one way or the other.
The Search Resumes… Ireland
So it was that my research eventually took me to Ireland in search of Emily’s parents. Little did I know that, despite my reservations, I would end up learning so much more about her life and that of her family.
My first success with Irish research came about as a result of a very kind and generous fellow family historian who lives in Belfast. He had discovered the obituaries for Samuel and Isabella Shaw in the Belfast Newsletter. I found that they had both died in their eighties and were buried in the same grave at Clifton Street by searching the Clifton Street Cemetery burial registers and cemetery records which I found were online.[3]
After writing to the General Register Office (GRO),[4] I obtained the death registration certificates for Samuel and Isabella Shaw. The informant was identified as “O’Connell Shaw” on both death registrations, and Isabella had been residing with him at the time of her death. I had not come across this name before and suspecting he was probably a son, one of the things I set out to do then was find out who he was and whether records about his life would help.
Eventually, the opportunity arose to take a trip to Ireland to see if I could unlock the secret of my Shaw family in that difficult arena of Irish research.
It was on a visit to the Linen Hall Library in Belfast, where there are card indexes of the Belfast Newsletter, that I discovered the marriage of Samuel Shaw and Isabella McMorran at St George’s Chapel in Belfast on 20 September 1817; and to be sure, as one should always do, I checked the original newspaper and later the parish registers on film through a local Family History Centre[5] and found it to be correct. To my disappointment, however, this information had confirmed that the parents on Pringle’s death registration were correct and therefore added still more weight to my ever-increasing doubt about Emily’s connection to Pringle and the other Shaw family members.
One thing I was quite certain about, however, was that if Emily and Pringle were brother and sister, they could not have had different mothers. Various sources had narrowed Emily’s birth year to about 1818, while Pringle had given a birth date of 2 January 1825 in the 1901 Canada census.[6] As Emily was older than Pringle, there was no way her father could have married a second time after she was born to an Isabella Pringle when he had married Isabella McMorran in 1817. So that put paid to that theory.
Normally, I would have decided that they were from a different family and I was probably on the wrong track, but there was something nagging in my mind. For one thing, Pringle had written a poem in Emily’s album, suggesting there had to be some sort of connection. It seemed unlikely they could be cousins as their fathers had the same name and occupations. I felt there just had to be a logical explanation somewhere, and I set out to find it, starting with O’Connell Shaw, the informant on Samuel and Isabella’s death registration.
A visit with the friendly staff at the GRO while I was in Belfast gave me a clue that O’Connell had passed away before 1922 as he wasn’t on their computerised indexes that started in that year. Armed with this knowledge and by using the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) Will Calendar indexes,[7] I was very fortunate to find a copy of O’Connell’s will which gave me his death date of 5 June 1918. If you have never seen an Irish will from this time, it can be an amazing resource full of information about parents, children, siblings etc. Once again, using the information from the will, the Belfast Newsletter came to the rescue with a death notice that announced his burial was to take place at Dundonald Cemetery in Belfast:
“SHAW – June 5, 1918 at his residence, Woodlea, Shandon Park, Knock O’Connell Shaw (late of Belfast Harbour Office). Funeral (private) to Dundonald Cemetery to-day (Friday), at 11 a.m. No flowers“ – Belfast Newsletter, 7 June 1918
Clues from the Crypt
Back home in Australia, I wrote to Dundonald Cemetery to confirm the burial information for O’Connell Shaw. I learnt from them that buried in the same grave as O’Connell were his sisters Matilda Shaw and Adelaide Shaw, and one of his nieces, Maud Wilson. Three of his children and a sister-in-law, Emily Shaw, were buried in the adjoining grave.
The identity of his sister-in-law in the grave was confirmed by her death certificate that I subsequently sent for from the GRO in Ireland. This Emily Shaw was another person I had not heard of before. I knew that she couldn’t be my great-great-grandmother as she was married and had died in Sydney. From the certificate, I learnt that this Emily was the widow of Thomas Shaw, a Captain, and that she was born about 1857 and therefore probably belonged to the same generation as O’Connell. Most importantly, I learnt from this record that O’Connell had a brother named Thomas.
Following up old Research
Determined to leave no stone unturned, and because I am very curious by nature, I then decided to follow someone who I suspected was one of O’Connell’s children to see where that might lead. Her name was Edith, and I was fairly certain she was another daughter as other newspaper research had led to the Brooklyn Eagle (New York) with a legal notice regarding an estate. The notice listed, in addition to other apparent relatives of the deceased, the sons and daughters already known to me as those of O’Connell Shaw. Amongst the list of those particular children was an Edith Sibley. This indicated to me that if Edith was a daughter of O’Connell, then she had probably married someone with the surname Sibley. So, using the Cheshire parish registers at FamilySearch[8], I discovered an Edith Shaw who had been married to Osbert Carden Sibley in1906 in Cheshire, England!
Armed with another irresistible unusual first name of Osbert, I was able to find his birth registration in the GRO indexes at FreeBMD[9] and his baptism in the Cheshire parish registers index at FamilySearch, revealing that his father was Septimus Sibley. Always curious, I searched their names using Google and found out they were surgeons and that Osbert’s father was quite famous. So I decided to check The Times newspaper (London) and some of the 19th century Gale newspaper databases which are available online through my National Library of Australia membership, as I thought there might be something newsy about it since they were obviously “society”.
The newspaper search came up with a description of Edith Shaw’s wedding in the Liverpool Mercury (29 September 1894)—what she wore, the bridesmaids, and so on—and they mentioned that the bride was the niece and adopted daughter of Thomas Shaw, who gave her away. The guests included O’Connell Shaw, Miss Isabel Shaw, and Miss Susie Shaw. Researching Isabel and Susie I discovered that they were the daughters of William McNeice Shaw and his wife, Mary. Was he another brother of O’Connell?
A search of the Irish civil registration indexes[10] enabled me to order Edith’s birth registration and this confirmed that her father was O’Connell Shaw, even though it wasn’t mentioned in the newspaper article. Therefore, because Thomas was mentioned as uncle as well as adopted father in the newspaper, Thomas and O’Connell must be brothers.
I wondered…Was this Thomas Shaw, who was the uncle and adopted father of Edith, also the husband of Emily Shaw buried at Dundonald Cemetery? So I decided to check FamilySearch again and found a marriage of Thomas Shaw and Emily Connor in Lancashire in 1872.[11] Using this information, I was able to get the references from the civil registration indexes at FreeBMD and order a certificate from the GRO in England which confirmed it was the right entry by his father’s name, Samuel Shaw. The witnesses were William McNeice Shaw and Mary Brown. Through using the various England and Wales censuses, it subsequently turned out that both Thomas and William were Master Mariners and lived in the Liverpool area from at least 1871.
Tying Things Together
When I was in Ireland, I had also taken the opportunity in Dublin to check the 1911 Irish census which showed O’Connell, a widower, living with his sister Adelaide and two daughters, Ada and Sara Campbell Shaw. Both the 1901 census and the 1911 census were available at that time if you visited the National Archives in Dublin and knew the address. I only had an idea of the 1911 address, and this census gave me their places of birth and the presence of a hitherto unknown niece, Maud Wilson. I have since located them in the 1901 census as the census for both years are now online at the National Archives of Ireland website.[12]
Interestingly, the census said Maude Wilson had been born in Hong Kong in 1866. This sure was a family of travellers! As Maude had also been buried in one of the plots in Dundonald Cemetery, I sent for her death certificate from the GRO. Her death certificate revealed she was the daughter of Thomas Wilson, and the abstract of his will from PRONI revealed his wife’s name was Maria and that he was a Master Mariner who had died at sea in 1867. FamilySearch[13] confirmed that Maria Caroline Shaw married Thomas Wilson in 1856 in Belfast, and the details were confirmed by using the Ireland civil registration indexes available at FamilySearch[14] and purchasing a certificate from the GRO.
The certificate also revealed that one of the witnesses at Maria’s marriage was William Shaw—the same name recorded as a witness in the marriage of Thomas Shaw and Emily O’Connor. This gave me evidence of a familial relationship between Maria, Thomas, and William.
Another name that was of particular interest to me was Matilda Shaw as I had found her signature in my great-great-grandmother Emily’s album. A Matilda Shaw was also buried in the same grave as O’Connell Shaw at Dundonald but had died prior to him. Therefore, she was not listed as a sibling in his will, unlike his sister Adelaide who was still alive at the time. Using the Irish Family History Foundation website,[15] I discovered that Matilda Ann Shaw was baptised in St Anne’s Church, Belfast, on 26 January 1828, the daughter of Samuel Shaw and Isabella McMurran.
So, I now had two children born to Samuel Shaw—Matilda in Belfast and Pringle in Canada—with a mother named Isabella McMorran/McMurran, and another, my great-great-grandmother Emily, with a mother named Isabella Pringle. I also had a record of the marriage of Samuel Shaw to Isabella McMorran; confirmation that Samuel was the father’s name of both Maria and Thomas Shaw; and proof that Thomas was a brother to Maria. Moreover, I am fairly certain Thomas was also a brother to William Shaw.
Further research on O’Connell himself also proved to be rewarding. While the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) indexes, FamilySearch, and his will obtained from PRONI gave me O’Connell’s children’s names, it was a search at ScotlandsPeople [16] that confirmed to me the identity of his parents. I had no particular reason to look in Scotland, except that I couldn’t find anything in Ireland, and I know there are sometimes close links between Ireland and Scotland. The records showed his marriage to Margaret Trimble on 27 September 1867 in Glasgow and revealed the names of his parents as Samuel Shaw and Isabella Shaw, nee McMoran—the same people whose death records identified O’Connell as the informant. I now had full parental confirmation for three children.
It seems that family members followed certain career choices with the men being seafarers, sometimes working later on for the Belfast Harbour Commission, and/or teaching. The women all seemed to choose teaching. According to the 1911 census of Belfast, Adelaide Shaw, the previously mentioned sister of O’Connell, was a teacher; and O’Connell, like his father when he retired from the sea, had worked for the Harbour Commissioners.
Once again, I searched the indexes of British Newspapers through the Gale newspaper online databases, and I was fortunate to find an article in the Belfast Newsletter about Adelaide’s career when she retired from teaching in 1892. The dream family returns!
As can be seen, newspapers would have to be one of my favourite areas of research, no matter what country I am researching in. They are an invaluable resource for finding out something about the lives of your family. Sometimes you have to be creative with your search terms, but the rewards can be plenty.
Thinking a little laterally … who is Isabella Pringle?
I have never found a marriage of a Samuel Shaw and Isabella Pringle. I did, however, locate an interesting reference to a marriage of William McMorran and Eliza Pringle on 11 December 1785 in Saul Parish, Downpatrick, Co. Down on the International Genealogical Index (IGI) database at FamilySearch.[17] Downpatrick is not far from Belfast, and this marriage would fit with the birth year of Samuel Shaw’s wife, Isabella Adelaide McMorran, which, from information on her death certificate and burial, would be about 1797. Although this is twelve years after the marriage of William McMorran and Eliza Pringle, I thought they could very well be her parents.
I decided to follow up this lead by checking the source, which is a transcript by Rev. Edward Rea, when I was researching at PRONI on a second trip to Belfast. I found yet one more little piece of evidence that my hunch was correct. The transcript notes that William McMorran was of Belfast, while Eliza Pringle was of Downpatrick. Isabella was a native of Belfast according to her burial record, although on a Canadian census, her son Pringle stated she was born in Scotland. So, perhaps she was actually born in Scotland but spent most of her life in Belfast, and hence was considered a native of Belfast. It is certainly possible that William and Eliza could have lived in Belfast after their marriage and also that they may just as easily have lived in Scotland as well for some of the time. Directories do show a William McMorran in Belfast in the early 1800s. I cannot be totally certain that these are Isabella’s parents as I have yet to discover her baptism. However, there seems to be some kind of link to Scotland in the family since Isabella’s son O’Connell had gone there just to be married and then returned with his wife to live in Belfast. If William and Eliza are Isabella’s parents, it seemed to me to be a feasible explanation that Pringle was actually named after his maternal grandmother rather than his mother.
Seeking more evidence, I then decided to recheck the Clifton St Burial Ground Registry, searching by grave number as it is not indexed, to see who else might be buried in the grave of Samuel and Isabella Shaw. Lo and behold, I found the burial of Elizabeth McMorran on 15 February 1843 who was entered in the record as
“…relict of the late William McMorran, Great Patrick St. Born at and came from Downpatrick. One daughter in Belfast and one in America.“
Also, there was an Eliza Moran, daughter of E. Moran, Patrick Street, buried in 1847 at the age of 52 years and so born about 1795. They are both buried in the same grave as Samuel and Isabella which, after further research, appears to have been purchased as a McMorran burial plot. Isabella was quite likely the daughter “in America” as research into her husband, Samuel Shaw, shows she must have been back in Belfast by the end of 1844 and so, in 1843, was probably still in Canada, which is sometimes referred to as America. Eliza, daughter of E. Moran, would be the “One daughter in Belfast”.
In the alphabetical section of Martin’s Belfast Directory for 1841-2[18] is the following entry
“McMorran, teacher of needlework, 18 Tomb Street.”
My great-great-grandmother Emily Shaw lived on Tomb Street before the family went to live in Canada. I know this from one of the stories she wrote and also because her father, Samuel Shaw, is recorded as living there in the Belfast directories of 1831-32 and 1835-36 online at PRONI. Henderson’s New Belfast Directory and Northern Repository for 1843-44 has the following entry
“Mrs McMorran, teacher, seminary 64 Great Patrick St.”
I think these listings all relate to Eliza Pringle, wife of William McMorran, who died in 1843.
Conclusion
My theory has taken many years to formulate. An examination and research of all the possible avenues that I can think of in a wide and sometimes obscure variety of resources in archives, record offices, libraries, historical societies. and on the internet has brought me to my conclusion. I have researched sideways, not only backwards and forwards, and by doing this I have discovered a huge amount of information about this family and their lives. I have constantly reviewed, revisited, and reassessed my research whenever something new came to light. The evidence I have uncovered seems to me to overwhelmingly tie them all in together.
The names Elizabeth, Isabella, Adelaide, and William are all names used throughout the family, especially Emily’s family; and combined with all the other evidence, I believe that there is an error and it is on Emily’s death registration. I am now certain that her mother’s name was in fact Isabella Adelaide McMorran and that William McMorran and Eliza Pringle/McMorran are Emily’s grandparents. Perhaps the explanation for this lies in the fact that death is a very stressful time for relatives of the deceased and the informant on a death certificate is not always fully aware of all the facts when giving the information. It is possible that either informant on the two death certificates in my case could have been mistaken. As it turns out, however, it appears to be the informant on Emily’s death certificate, her son Alfred Beavan, who was confused. Isabella Pringle did not exist. I guess I was lucky her son did make that error because otherwise I probably would not have found out half of what I know about them or even that some of them ever existed.
I do consider myself incredibly fortunate to have been able to build up a very good picture of Emily and her family. The search, however, does still continue, especially for the baptism of Emily and the rest of her siblings which will hopefully provide a maiden surname to prove once and for all who her parents were, or perhaps it may yet turn into another conundrum! Only time will tell.
APPENDIX
The Family of Samuel Shaw and Isabella Adelaide McMorran
Emily’s father, Samuel Shaw, was a Master Mariner and various records show that he and the family travelled back and forth between Belfast, Ireland, and Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, throughout their lives. From about 1835 until about 1842, Samuel is not mentioned in Irish newspapers or directories during this time, and this travel is also evidenced in some of the births, marriages, and deaths of their children:
- Emily Elizabeth Shaw – born ca.1818 in Belfast, Ireland; died 6 August 1897 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia; married Frederick Williams Cadwalleder Beavan on 9 June 1838 in Norton, King Co., New Brunswick.
- *Frances Shaw (a probable daughter) – born ca.1819 in Sligo, Ireland(?); died 18 May1898 in New Brunswick, Canada [see Note].
- *Samuel Shaw (a probable son) – born ca.1821 in Belfast, Ireland(?); died before 1918 [see Note].
- Pringle Shaw – born 2 January 1825 in Belfast, Ireland; died 1 March 1915 in Tilbury Centre, Kent, Ontario, Canada.
- Matilda Ann Shaw – baptized 26 January 1828 in Belfast, Ireland; died 17 February1906 in Belfast Ireland.
- William McNiece Shaw – born 27 December 1831 in Belfast, Ireland; died 25 August 1897 in Egremont, Cheshire, England.
- Maria Caroline Shaw – born ca. 1831 in Belfast, Ireland(?); died before 1918.
- Thomas Wilkie Shaw – born 16 January 1832 in Belfast, Ireland; died 30 October 1917 in Liscard, Lancashire, England.
- O’Connell Shaw – born ca. 1837 in New Brunswick, Canada; died 5 June 1918 in Belfast, Ireland.
- Adelaide Shaw – born ca.1838 in New Brunswick, Canada; died 14 December 1925 in Belfast, Ireland.
One other male child was buried as an infant at sea in about the year 1836 or 1837. Emily described him in the prologue to a very touching poem about him in her album:
x”… he was a child remarkable for infantile [sic] intelligence and extreme beauty – the deep lustre of his clear blue eyes, beautiful curls of his sunny hair waving over his lovely forehead always brought to my mind the forms of those bright thousands who sing the holy song before the eternal throne in the blest place where I hope once more to meet him. A few days after leaving Ireland his spirit took its flight and his body was committed to the deep waves of the Atlantic there to repose till the mighty voice that shakes Heaven and Earth shall say: Give up thy dead thou Sea.”
* Note:
It is believed that Samuel and Isabella were the parents of Frances Shaw and Samuel Shaw who were teachers at the same time and in the same area of New Brunswick as Emily and Pringle. Further research is needed to positively confirm these probable siblings. Descendants of Frances say that, according to oral tradition, her father was Samuel and her mother had the maiden name of Irwin. Perhaps, however, this is another case like Emily where the mother has been misidentified. Frances was also said to have been born in Sligo. However, no records have yielded any information on her birth or parents, so this link remains a little tenuous. Very little information has been found about the younger Samuel except for his teacher’s licence in New Brunswick and a link back to a Belfast address used by Samuel and Isabella and another used by their son William McNiece Shaw.
[1] Registry of Births Deaths & Marriages, New South Wales (http://www.bdm.nsw.gov.au/)
[2] B. Wood-Holt, Early marriage records of New Brunswick: Saint John City and County from the British conquest to 1839 (St. John , New Brunswick: Holland House, 1986).
[3] Glenravel Local History Project ( http://www.glenravel.com)
[4] General Register Office, Government Offices, Roscommon (http://www.welfare.ie/en/Pages/General-Register-Office.aspx)
[5] Family History Center operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS)
[6] Ancestry.com, “1901 Census of Canada,” database and images ( http://www.ancestry.com).
[7] Will Calendars. PRONI (http://www.proni.gov.uk)
[8] England, Cheshire Parish Registers, 1538-2000, index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org)
[9] FreeBMD (http://freebmd.rootsweb.com)
[10] Ireland, Civil Registration Indexes, 1845-1958, index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org)
[11] England Marriages, 1538–1973, index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org)
[12] Census of Ireland 1901/1911, The National Archives of Ireland (http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/)
[13] Ireland Marriages, 1619-1898, index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org)
[14] Ireland, Civil Registration Indexes, 1845-1958, index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org)
[15] Irish Family History Foundation ((www.irish-roots.ie)
[16] ScotlandsPeople (http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk)
[17] FamilySearch, “International Genealogical Index (IGI)”, database (https://familysearch.org).
[18] Available online at PRONI (http://www.proni.gov.uk)
In Search of Men and Women with Initiative - Solving Family Puzzles 