31 March 2009

From Queensland to Fenstanton

In my last entry, I briefly mentioned Rose Culpin, daughter of Millice & Hannah, and it's her I'm going back to. She married John Howard Simmonds, a stonemason, yesterday in 1900 in her father's house in Queensland and they had went on to have two children. I also know that she was a well-known photographer and that she died in July 1960.

I was able to find this out thanks to yet another magnificent Australian online resource - the Australian Dictionary of Biography, and her entry can be found here. There is also a photograph of her in the Picture Australia collection and, although it says it's free of copyright, I think I'll play safe and refer you to the picture here, rather than reproduce it myself (until I've read the small print).

Looking back at that final sentence, it sounds a bit big-headed - I mean, how likely is it that someone will read my blog and immediately make the connection to the actual photo? Best not to take the risk, methinks!

Back to Blighty now and meet Emily Armes, my great-great-aunt (or, wife of her great-granduncle, as my genealogy program puts it), who was born today in Fenstanton in 1874, the daughter of James and Elizabeth. She married (Millice) Charles Culpin in Hemingford Grey in 1894 and they started their married life in Conington, Huntingdonshire. After a few years they made their home in Swavesey, Cambs, and begat ten children in all. I know very little about her life in the village other than that she died in 1949. I think I need to look in the local papers at the time to see if there was a funeral report.

However, that will have to wait until the Central Library returns to its home in Cambridge and, as it's already running pretty late, I'm not holding my breath for their proposed re-opening at the end of May this year. Watch this space . . . . .

More soon.






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