I have just begun to paddle in the lake of
ancestry - the 'in' hobby for the retired.
No, I'm not making fun of it, just teasing a little until I get used to
this stage of life. It was almost a year ago, at my favourite aunt's 95th birthday
party - well done Aunty Joan - when Heather, a relative of Aunty Joan's late
husband, mentioned her ancestry work and asked me a question about my
grandfather. Then she whipped out her pink laptop and clicked on Ancestry.com
to show me what she thought was an error.
I've always had an interest in family history. As a child my favourite bedtime stories were those Mum told of her childhood and I picked up some of the names and relationships. These stories formed a base for the rest of my life and looking back I can see how important they were. Maybe if more families went into details about who they are and where they come from our young adults would be more secure and able to see the big picture, instead of just their selfies.
I've talked to other relatives at times so my family story collection is constantly being added to, and edited as I discover the 'true' facts about events and lives. Funny how people are happy to talk openly about some things but add to or change details of events they feel a sensitive about. There was great fear about how you appeared to other people 100 years ago.
Sadly, it's mostly my mother's family story as Dad's was out of reach geographically and also personally as they/we did not keep in touch. I have not yet joined Ancestry.com - because I haven't had the time to devote to this that would justify the expense. But Heather introduced me to Trove - a collection of scans of newspapers and magazines from something like the 1750's up to the 1950's, and this has certainly kept me busy. I've found amazing things including my grandmother's wedding notice, lists of people who attended the charity balls she organised after WWl, my parents wedding notice and my birth etc. I've even discovered a few bits and pieces about my father's family which is exciting. Back in the days before emails and facebook every event or announcement went into the newspaper. Heather also put me in touch with the daughter of my grandfather's brother and that led to some very interesting insights.
I've always had an interest in family history. As a child my favourite bedtime stories were those Mum told of her childhood and I picked up some of the names and relationships. These stories formed a base for the rest of my life and looking back I can see how important they were. Maybe if more families went into details about who they are and where they come from our young adults would be more secure and able to see the big picture, instead of just their selfies.
I've talked to other relatives at times so my family story collection is constantly being added to, and edited as I discover the 'true' facts about events and lives. Funny how people are happy to talk openly about some things but add to or change details of events they feel a sensitive about. There was great fear about how you appeared to other people 100 years ago.
Sadly, it's mostly my mother's family story as Dad's was out of reach geographically and also personally as they/we did not keep in touch. I have not yet joined Ancestry.com - because I haven't had the time to devote to this that would justify the expense. But Heather introduced me to Trove - a collection of scans of newspapers and magazines from something like the 1750's up to the 1950's, and this has certainly kept me busy. I've found amazing things including my grandmother's wedding notice, lists of people who attended the charity balls she organised after WWl, my parents wedding notice and my birth etc. I've even discovered a few bits and pieces about my father's family which is exciting. Back in the days before emails and facebook every event or announcement went into the newspaper. Heather also put me in touch with the daughter of my grandfather's brother and that led to some very interesting insights.
So, the error in Ancestory was to do with Mother's father. Mum's sister is Aunty Joan but she, understandably, gets a little confused these days and I became the back up memory. I knew that my grandfather had changed his name at one time - I thought it was before he married Eva, my grandmother.
I found this in some notes Aunty Joan wrote
for me about 10 years ago, and these are her words:
'I was
born on 2nd May 1917 in our family home, which had been designed by my father, at Ryde, NSW. The house had gardens and an orchard. Other
houses were few and far between. Opposite us was a Chinese (market) garden
where men worked all day, often carrying two buckets of water on sticks across
their shoulders. They had a primitive hut in the garden.
Father had been born Otto Wilhelm Schwertmann, but the war of 1914 – 1918 forced some businessmen to adopt more English names. Father chose the names of English towns and became Otford Wilton Weston. Hundreds of people with German names were interned in camps though they had been nothing but good citizens. German names were frowned on for many years. Even when I went to school at ten or twelve years of age, we called out rude things to children with German names. I’m glad Margaret and I were saved from this, although we were completely unaware of our good luck at the time'.
Father had been born Otto Wilhelm Schwertmann, but the war of 1914 – 1918 forced some businessmen to adopt more English names. Father chose the names of English towns and became Otford Wilton Weston. Hundreds of people with German names were interned in camps though they had been nothing but good citizens. German names were frowned on for many years. Even when I went to school at ten or twelve years of age, we called out rude things to children with German names. I’m glad Margaret and I were saved from this, although we were completely unaware of our good luck at the time'.
This is a good family story, but from talking
to other people and checking in Trove I've found that it wasn't my grandfather
who changed his name, it was my great-grandmother who insisted on it. And, it was done after Ot, as they called
him, married my grandmother, Eva. They married on 20th June 1914. A newspaper
notice dates the name change as 24th June 1915. My grandmother, who I knew very
well as she lived with us for years, never let on that she had originally been
Mrs Schwertmann. I have no memory of my grandfather who died when I was a baby.
There was a bad reaction from a number of
family members to Eva marrying a German. Many years later, when my mother
divorced my father and then married an actual German that negative reaction surfaced again. BUT ...
and this is delicious, my cousin discovered that my grandfather had not really come
from Germany. The town where my great-grandfather was born is/was technically
in Denmark! The borders moved back and forth a bit over the years. I think it's
really wonderful and would like to blow a few raspberries to that long gone
generation who protected themselves with hate and also, because my father's
grandfather was Danish and that gives me Danish blood on both sides. Sadly Mum
and Dad never knew that.
But back to the name change. Mum always said her father
had been born in Germany. His father, Christian, had come to Australia for the Sydney
International Exhibition, held in 1879. He was so impressed with Australia that
he returned home to Germany and came back with his whole family, including my
grandfather who was almost 10 years old. This cemented the idea of German
ancestry. The true story as I have now
discovered, is; Christian Swertman did come to Australia for the Exhibition, as
a single man from Denmark, with a contact address of c/- the Bank of Hamburg,
London. He married an Aussie girl named Grace Noble, a teacher from Victoria with Scottish ancestry. They had three children; Otto, Hubert and Olga. Christian
was killed in a street accident in 1896 when Otto was about 10 years old. At that young age my grandfather found he had
a family to support. He went to work selling newspapers and eventually put his
brother through school and himself through university while assisting his
mother, grandma Weston, and sister Olga. Later Hubert disappeared and his two
daughters went to live with grandma Weston. Otto became a well known Sydney
Architect and a humanitarian.
About her husband, my grandmother
once wrote; 'Father, (her husband Otto)
had a wonderful voice, and I enjoyed singing too. It was lovely having friends
and family gather around the Pianola and we would sing far into the evening,
forgetting about the time'.
In 2000, my second
cousin Ian, who was a bit younger than Joan and my mother, and who, until his
death in 2013 was the keeper of the family history, told me;
'Eva and Ot had lived
a wealthy life until the depression. When Ot didn’t have work he was depressed
and often refused to get out of bed. They became very poor, eventually they were
without a business and they lost the house.
They had always been the ones to help other people and didn’t like to
take help. This stressed the marriage and probably contributed to their
separation.'
Pride was such a problem for that generation, or was it fear of judgement or class discrimination? In all the
years that the family stories were told by my mother, grandmother and
aunts, it was never mentioned that Eva and Ot lost everything in the depression.
I did know that they separated. Eva took Margaret, the youngest, and moved to a small
flat over a shop and Eva went back to nursing. Mum told me that her mother
'worked with a doctor, visiting sick people in their homes, to change dressings
etc. She got to know many people and their life stories.' It sounds a lot like the District Nurse
work that my sister did in the 1970's.
Joan went to live
with relatives and Ot moved in with his former secretary and her children, who
soon became more his children than his own daughters. In Eva's family it was
always hinted that the hard times were caused by (bad) Otford leaving Eva and
the girls. Eva was still angry with him forty years later. Isn't life interesting - it's like a soap opera?
I am so glad I
listened to the stories my relatives told. While it's only a tiny part of the
full story it is somewhere to begin and so much better than nothing. And it's
very entertaining to smooth out the wrinkles and discover a fuller picture of
people with real lives, and jobs and mistakes and problems. I think they all
did the best they could for the time they lived in... and what more can any of
us do? I'd encourage everyone to ask about
their family history and/or write their own life story to hand down to the next
generation, it could be important to at least some of them one day.
Oh, and that error
on Ancestory.com (I'm not promoting them, it just keeps coming up), someone had
changed my grandfather's Christian names to the new ones he'd chosen but left
the original surname. It's all fixed
now.
 |
| Photos taken between 1928 and 1932 My grandfather, Otford - my grandmother, Eva - my aunt, Joan and my mother, Margaret |
"It doesn't
matter how many say it cannot be done
or how many people
have tried it before;
it's important to realize that whatever you're doing,
it's important to realize that whatever you're doing,
it's your first
attempt at it."
.jpg)
+sleep.jpg)
