Another contributor to the family wiki

At last we have another contributor to the family Wiki!

Today Julie Gould contributed to a page on Alfred William Green (1839-1886), which makes the family wiki what it is meant to be — a collaborative family project in which various family members contribute to build up our picture of the family. So today is a great day.

I’ve edited the page a bit — renamed it to fit the naming pattern of other pages and added links, and that is of course what happens with a wiki — various people will contribute.

As Julie has noted, Alfred William Green was the youngest surviving son of William John (Goodall) Green and Margaret Gray of Canada, who settled in Australia, and was a customs officer on the New South Wales Queensland border.

We know very little about his descendants, so I hope Julie can help us there, particularly with the more recent generations. We know a little about Alfred’s eldest son, W.A.G. Esdaile Green, who changed his name to William d’Este-Stuart-Grey, and that another son Frederick Arthur Walpole Green died unmarried, but not much more.

Beningfield family

A Beningfield family group has recently been started on Facebook.

This is interesting to us because many of the South African Beningfields are related to us (though we are not descended from Beningfields) through Louisa Flamme, who married Samuel Beningfield in Cape Town in 1833.

In the early 1840s the family moved to Durban, and Samuel Beningfield became a well-known auctioneer, and some of his sons followed him in that occupation, and their descendants are cousins in varying degrees.

Some are more closely related than others, because Samuel and Louisa Beningfield’s son Reuben Widdows Beningfield married his first cousin Martha Crighton, whose mother, Petronella Francina Dorothea Flamme, was Louisa Beningfield’s sister.

Though you will not find any descendants of the Flamme family with the Flamme surname, we have managed to record 1683 descendants of Johan Friedrich Wilhelm Flamme (1780-1831) and Johanna Sophia Breedschoe (or Breitschuh) (1782-1836). Those on our side of the family are Crightons, but there are many descendants with other surnames as well, some of the most common (apart from Crighton and Beningfield) being Mechau/Michau, Haupt, Enslin, and von Backstrom.

Johan Friedrich Wilhelm Flamme came from Twiste in Hesse-Nassau, Germany. Johanna Sophia Breetschoe was the daughter of Johan Christoph Franciscus Breidschuh, a German, and Francina van de Kaap, a slave owned by Peter Hacker. Johanna Sophia Breedschoe and her sister were born in slavery, and were manumitted by their father. And they are the ancestors we have in common with the Beningfields.

Among the descendants of the Natal Beningfields are the Hickman, Grice and O’Flaherty families.

The 1683 Flamme descendants (565 of whom are Beningfield descendants) are only the ones we know about. We haven’t been able to trace the others yet. But we hope that some of them will be interested enough to help us add to the family history.

Jack Fingleton by Greg Growden

Greg Growden is better known as a rugby writer, but it seems that he writes about cricket too. I’m not sure which branch of the Growden family he belongs to — does anybody know? Several branches of the Growdens went to Australia.

clipped from www.cricketweb.net In 1991 I stumbled across a little paperback book called A Wayward Genius by Greg Growden. I had never heard of the author, but the subject matter being discussed was that of ‘Chuck’ Fleetwood-Smith a colourful Test cricketer from the 1930s. The small book was consumed in one sitting (224 pages) and I was mightily impressed with the author. For the next few years I would check the new cricket books at summer time, and keep my eye out for any new offerings from Growden. After a while I gave up hope of any new books until I walked into my local bookshop last week and found a beautifully presented hardback book titled Jack Fingleton by Greg Growden. Seventeen years is a long break between books, but like the acting of Jack Nicholson, the writing of Growden has improved with age.

The Hannan family

My grandmother was Janet McCartney Growdon, born Hannan (1882-1946). She died a couple of days before my 5th birthday, so I have only a few childhood memories of her, and of going to visit her and my grandfather at McKenzie Road in Durban, where they lived. In their back garden was a big avocado pear tree. Their house was near the Stamford Hill aerodrome, long since removed further north to Virginia, and replaced by sports stadiums – Kingsmead, Kings Park, and a new one being built for the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

When we were in Durban a couple of months ago we visited my grandparents’ grave in Stellawood Cemetery, where they are buried with my uncle Willie Growdon, whom I never met — he was killed in a motorbike accident before I was born.

Three years ago, however, we visited some other graves — of my grandmother’s grandmother, after whom she was named — Janet Hannan, born McCartney, and her husband Thomas Hannan. Their graves are in Girvan cemetery, in Ayrshire, on the west coast of Scotland.

Gravestone of Thomas and Janet Hannan in Girvan

For much of the 19th century the Hannan family lived in Girvan. Janet McCartney came from Maybole, not far away, and they were married there. But most of their children died young, and their names are inscribed around the gravestone.

The eldest son, William Hannan (1856-1928), went to Glasgow, where he met and married Ellen McFarlane. He was a carpenter and joiner. One of their sons, Stanley Livingstone Hannan, was killed in action in the First World War, and his memorial is next to that of his grandparents in Girvan Cemetery.

Memorial to Stanley Livingstone Hannan, and his father William Hannan

William and Ellen Hannan’s eldest son Tom Hannan (1879-1941) married Hannah Carson and lived in Glasgow. He was a life-long socialist, and was jailed as a conscientious objector in the First World War. His youngest sister Maria (Ria) married Jack Cochrane, and we know nothing about what happened to them. If anyone knows, please let us know!

The other children of William and Ellen Hannan came to southern Africa. Janet McCartney Hannan met George Growdon in Waterval Boven, Transvaal, where he worked as an engine driver for Central South African Railways, and they were married there on 2 June 1909. My mother Ella Growdon was born in Pretoria exactly a year later, and a couple of years after that they moved to Durban permanently.

Emily Livingstone Hannan married first Charlie Mould, and then Arthur Sharp, and lived in Berea in Johannesburg.

David McFarlane Hannan went to Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), and died at Ndola in 1951. Their children lived in Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Duncan MacFarlane Hannan (1894-1957) married Margaret Helen Bain, and was a butcher in Durban.

If anyone reading this is related to this Hannan family, please visit our family Wikispace, and have a look at the Hannan family pages there. You can goin Wikispaces and add to the family stories there.

Davi

Who visits here?

Some statistics about recent visitors to this blog:

	Num	Perc.	Country Name
	113	25.57%	United States
	105	23.76%	South Africa
	61	13.80%	United Kingdom
	49	11.09%	New Zealand
	40	9.05%	Australia
	17	3.85%	France
	16	3.62%	Canada
	9	2.04%	Denmark
	6	1.36%	Germany
	5	1.13%	India
	4	0.90%	Norway
	4	0.90%	Netherlands
	2	0.45%	Brazil
	2	0.45%	Russian Federation
	1	0.23%	Malaysia
	1	0.23%	Indonesia
	1	0.23%	Finland
	1	0.23%	Greece
	1	0.23%	Egypt
	1	0.23%	Paraguay
	1	0.23%	Argentina
	1	0.23%	Philippines
	1	0.23%	Sweden

Linking the Growdens

I spent another few hours in the LDS family history centre in Johannesburg yesterday looking at marriage registers for St Neot, Cornwall.

I knew that some Growdens came from there through my third cousin once removed, Monica Louise Deragowski of New Orleans, USA.

When we started researching our family history we didn’t know anything about the Growdens (though ours all used the spelling Growdon) beyond the fact that my great grandfather William Matthew Growden came to the Cape Colony from Cornwall and worked on the railways, first as a platelayer, and then as a permanent way inspector.

I found some British phone books in the Durban public library, made a list of the Growdons in Cornwall and Devon, and wrote to them. I got a reply from a Mrs K. Growdon in Brixham, Devon, and she said that she had had a letter from Monica Louise Deragowski asking about the Growdon family. So I wrote to her, and we corresponded for about 15 years until she died in 1993. She had written to Growdons all over the world, and sent me some information from a Sylvia Reebel in Pennsylvania, who had traced her Growden ancestors to the St Neot and Warleggan parishes in Cornwall.

Sylvia Reebel was connected to them, but her family didn’t seem to be connected to ours. What was interesting was that they had the same names, almost.

On Sylvia Reebel’s side there was a William Growden who married Ann Cocker and had children

William born 1784
Joseph born 1789
Jane born 1790
Matthew born 1792
Elizabeth born 1795
John born 1797
Thomas born 1800

On our side there was William Growden who married Elizabeth Saundercock at Cardinham, and had children:

Jennifer born 1793
William born 1794 (Monica Deragowski’s great grandfather)
Joseph born 1796
Thomas born 1798
Matthew born 1800 (my great great grandfather)
Ann born 1802
Joanna born 1804
Jenifer born 1806
Elizabeth born 1807
John born 1811

The boys’ names match — there was

William, Joseph, Matthew, John and Thomas in one family
William, Joseph, Thomas, Matthew John in the other

There are similarities in the girls’ names too, though not as great. The similarity might, of course, indicate nothing more than that those were popular names at the time, but it could also indicate that they were family names perpetuated down the generations.

There might have been difficulty telling them apart in later life had the first lot not emigrated to Pennsylvania and married and died there.

What I’m trying to do is put all the Growdens and Growdons I find into one Growdon file, and gradually link them up. I’ve got a long way to go yet, but if we collect all the snippets of information together, eventually we might join together different parts of the jigsaw puzzle.

If you’re a Growden or a Growdon or have Growden relatives, please consider joining our Growden forum, and trying to make the links.