Patrick Victor Martindale White was born on this day, 28 May, in 1912 in Knightsbridge London. He can be found in the England & Wales, FreeBMD Birth Index, 1837-1915 shown below. 

His family moved to Australia 6 months later and Patrick White went on to become a renowned author, penning 12 novels and 8 plays.

White spent some time in England and returned to Australia after the War, settling in the Sydney suburb of Castle Hill. He is shown below on the Australian Electoral Rolls, 1903-1980, described as a farmer. 

In 1973, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the only Australian to have been awarded the prize. He was also named Australian of the Year in 1973. He died in September 1990.

The England and Wales National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858–1966 records are particularly interesting as they show where and when your ancestors died and the value of the estate they left behind.

Now I don’t know about you, but none of my ancestors left too much money behind, but there are a few famous faces in these records who had larger estates than the average person.

• Noble Prize Winner George Bernard Shaw died in November 1950, leaving behind a huge fortune of £367233 which equates to over $16 million in 2012.

• Former Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill passed away in January 1965, leaving behind an estate worth £304044 or approximately $7.7 million by today’s standards.

• Celebrated nurse Florence Nightingale left behind £36127 when she died in 1910. That’s the equivalent of over $5 million in today’s money.

• Poet T.S Eliot died in 1965 and left £105272 to wife Esme, which is approximately $2.5 million by today’s standards.

The 1911 England & Wales Census contains over 36 million records and a wealth of information for family historians.

I was having a look through the records and found a Mr William Joylance Court. His occupation is listed as a Barrister at Law and he is shown with his wife Mary and 2 daughters, Evelyn and Dorothy. Also listed are his 10 staff members including a butler, valet, footman, housekeeper, two ladies maids, head housemaid, kitchen maid, housemaid and scullery maid.

How big a house would you need for all these people? Well, the wonderful 1911 England Census tells you! On the back of the schedule, there is a space for the number of rooms. As you can see from the image below, the Roylance Court household had 26 rooms!

What have you found in the 1911 England and Wales Census? Leave a comment below or post on our Facebook Wall.

Best known as a Sydney criminal, gang member and madam, Matilda “Tilly” Devine was born Tilly Twiss in the UK in 1900.

She can be found on the 1911 England and Wales Census with her parents Edward and Alice and 7 siblings, residing at 57 Hollington Street, Camberwell in London. A few years later in 1917 she married Aussie serviceman James Edward Devine. She arrived in Australia in 1920 and became infamous for her criminal activities. She died in 1970.

Having grown up with my great-grandparents who were fabulous story-tellers, I didn’t think I’d uncover anything in my family history that I didn’t already know. However, I came to uncover some remarkable stories about the women in my family and I thought it was no wonder that when women are seriously ill in my family the general reaction is “she’ll be right, we only breed Mallee bulls”.

My great-great-grandmother was always referred to as “Little Nan” (shown in the photo above). She was fairly tall for a woman at that time (about 175cm) but was crippled by tuberculosis in around 1900. She had gone from a tall striking woman to having a hunchback. Unfortunately this didn’t leave her with a long line of suitors so when my g-g-grandfather wrote her a perfunctory letter from South Africa saying “I need a wife, sail to Cape Town”, she took him up on his offer.

She gave birth to my g-grandfather in 1908 and the deformity to her spine increased dramtically. I can’t imagine the turmoil of giving birth to an 11lb baby in 1908 when your spine is so curved that instead of standing straight at 175cm you are now only 160cm tall!

Yet she never complained. She worked on the farms day and night, hunched over, in pain and when she died the autopsy revealed that none of her organs were where they were supposed to be. She would always say “the work needs to be done and I’m doing it”.

I wondered where she got her strength from but her mother was even tougher still. She didn’t understand what the fuss was about when she rode 8 months pregnant at full gallop through a snow blizzard in Gippsland in 1885 to get some ingredients for dinner. When she was 84yrs old she made the long journey from Bairnsdale to Kensington to make sure that my grandmother (her great-granddaughter) was being bathed correctly. She wasn’t and stayed for a month telling it like it is.

I think of them when I’m having a little whinge about work being stressful and remind myself how good I have it.

On retirement I decided to take up the hobby of finding where we came from, not an easy feat as Mum had very little information about her Mother who died at the age of 32 in child birth.

Mum being only very young was fostered out to a family friend with her stepbrother, who she had no idea at the time was her stepbrother. When Granddad remarried Mum was brought back to the family unit, however, her step mother did not allow any talk about Mum’s family.

On commencing my search I came across a email which had lay dormant for some years of a person looking for information about my relations, this lead to me discovering a 2nd cousin who had done extensive research into Mum’s family and written a book.  

On contacting him I was able to get a book to Mum and it revealed all the family, photos of her Mum which she had never seen and to top it all off our family line goes back to King Edward 3!

At 85 years Mum now knows where she came from and an explanation as to why she had a fascination for English Royal history.

Mother’s Day is fast approaching and we’d like to hear about the mothers in your family.

How has Ancestry.com.au helped you discover more about the mothers in your family tree? Be it your own mother, a grandmother, great grandmother?  Let us know!

Simply click on Submit Your Story and enter your anecdote. Remember to add photos of your ancestors in your story if you have them. Click on Submit a Photo to upload a picture.

My parents met when they worked for the same firm in Purfleet, Essex in post-war Britain. Their friendship developed when they both played sport for the firm’s sporting club, and subsequently started dating. 

In 1952, Dad decided to immigrate to Australia, following his brother who had left England in 1949 with his young bride, to try life in “the lucky country”. Dad and Mum continued corresponding once Dad left England. 

In 1953 Dad proposed to Mum by letter. I can only imagine his nervousness while he waited the six weeks for his letter to reach England and then another six weeks for Mum’s reply to reach him. 

She accepted his proposal, so he sent money for her to buy herself an engagement ring. I still have the engagement ring and the receipt from the London jeweller where she bought it. She then applied to immigrate to Australia too and arrived here in March 1954. They were married in April 1955, and lived the rest of their days in Australia, having a number of trips back to England to visit family and friends.

Sue 

My father was never very demonstrative of his love for our mother and he always called her “Mum”. Three years ago our darling mother who will be 95 this coming September had to be placed in a Nursing Home for the extra care she needed as she can no longer stand or walk.

Whilst sorting through her belongings I found several beautiful love letters that our father had written to her before they were married. He passed away in 1991 and it was a wonderful surprise to find that our dear, old dad really was an old “romantic” after all.

Lynda Turner