Paternity matters

Ten days ago, a very pleasant surprise dropped into my inbox: the original birth certificates of Edmund 'Eddy' OLIVE (1874-1923) and Mabel Olive OLIVE (1875-1940). I mentioned in an earlier post that I was keen to obtain them. These two children, born to Grace and E.A.C. OLIVE prior to their marriage in 1876, were legitimated …

Catherine, the (not quite) forgotten sister

On my recent trip to the Wide Bay Burnett district of southeast Queensland, one of my priorities was to discover where Grace's eldest sister, Catherine, was buried. She was only fourteen years of age when she succumbed to tuberculous meningitis in Maryborough on Christmas Eve of 1858, after an illness of a fortnight's duration. Ironically, …

A legacy of loss: the women of Mount Perry

Let me return to Mount Perry, where I left E.A.C. OLIVE and John Timewell CLARKE counting their considerable financial losses, licking the wounds to their pride, and perhaps apportioning blame for the failure of the Moolboolaman Copper Mining Company (Ltd). Money and pride, however, were the least of the losses sustained at Mount Perry during …

‘Off to Australia!’ E.A.C. Olive and the chambermaid

E.A.C. OLIVE (L) and his father, the Revd John OLIVE, Vicar of Hellingly (R) Yesterday as I was looking over notes that I made in 1995 of conversations with E.A.C. OLIVE's great-grandson, Ron, I came across a specific reference that had eluded me when I was writing the previous post about the reasons why my …

Free DNA tools offer extended to Sunday 7th March 2021

I apologize for the incorrect date in the previous post regarding the MyHeritage free DNA upload offer The good news is that the offer has been extended until Sunday 7th March 2021. The link is: https://www.myheritage.com/dna/upload This is a great offer for anyone with Ancestry, 23andMe or FamilyTreeDNA, because it gives you another crack at …

Free DNA matching tools

If you have had your DNA tested for family history purposes, a current special offer from MyHeritage might interest you. They have extended the original offer until this Sunday - 7th March 2021 - the DNA testing company MyHeritage is offering free upload and analysis of DNA test results performed by other companies, such as …

Men, money and mining

I am writing this blog on 24 February 2021, the 177th anniversary of my great-great-grandfather's birth in Hellingly, Sussex in 1844. This is not a celebratory story - more of a cautionary tale - but he might be glad that I am telling it. Now I believe that I have unearthed the source of a …

E.A.C. Olive on the move

E.A.C. OLIVE, hand-coloured photograph printed on ivory, date unknown. By the beginning of 1871, Edmund Abraham Cumberbatch OLIVE was in Gayndah, in the Wide Bay Burnett region of Queensland. The 18 year old 'new chum' who had arrived in the colonies in 1862 was now a 27 year old man with nearly nine years of …

E.A.C. OLIVE and his siblings

In earlier posts I have referred to several of E.A.C. OLIVE's siblings, but in response to a request from a reader, I'll list all of them here with their birth and death dates, the names of their spouses and whether they had children from their marriage/s. Note that the place names and spellings are those …

E.A.C. Olive: from new chum to old hand

E.A.C. OLIVE, hand-coloured photograph printed on ivory, date unknown. We left E.A.C. OLIVE as a seventeen year old at home in the Vicarage at Hellingly in 1861. In 1862, a few months after his eighteenth birthday, he boarded a ship in Liverpool and set sail for the Australian colonies. What lay behind the decision to …