14 February 2009

St Andrew by the Wardrobe

Yesterday and today have brought forth two births and two weddings. The birthdays were, today in 1691 & 1748, of Catherine & Elizabeth Wright respectively. That's all the information I have about either of them but I can tell you that they were my 3rd cousin 8 times removed and my 4th cousin 7 times removed so, with all due respect to them, I think I can say that we're not close!

First of the weddings was yesterday in 1836 when George Fordham and Elizabeth Collings tied the knot at St James, Hemingford Grey. They went on to have six children and I've only traced one of the entire family past the 1851 census; I think I need to do some more work on them!

And now to Australia; well, via Stoke Newington, the birthplace of Ernest Culpin who married Hilda Emma Colman yesterday in 1913 in Queensland. He went off to the Great War with the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in 1915 as part of the Australian Army Medical Corps - he was a doctor, you see. After the war he became a surgeon and also, in the 1920s, he became Commodore of the Oxley Sailing Club in Brisbane. According to the Courier-Mail of March 1934, he and Hilda "entertained a large number of guests at their house in Yeronga" when Mrs C. was wearing "a spray of English honeysuckle with her georgette frock in autumn tonings." This excellent detail came from an online Australian News Index, and I also managed to find some medical papers written by Ernest.

He enlisted again, at Kelvin Grove, Queensland, for the next war and served as a Colonel. Ernest died in 1963 and Hilda died the previous year. As far as I know there was only one child of their marriage: Ernest Keith, who was born in 1913.

The title of today's entry comes from a christening in 1798 which I found in the online IGI. Apparently it's not the next book in the Narnia series but a church in London!

Happy day today; not only did it not snow but also England didn't get too badly beaten by Wales. Phew . . . !

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