Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Whittle Children Deaths in Australia

I posted Whittle Birth Records in Australia after finding records for five children born to Alexander and Rachel (Morley) Whittle in the FamilySearch Pilot site also has an Australian Births and Baptisms, 1792-1981 collection.  I also looked in the FamilySearch Pilot Australian Death and Burials, 1816-1980 collection and did not find any of the three children who do not appear in the 1852 California State Census.

Fortunately, reader Cheryl Bailey in Australia knew that there were other death records available online (an index at http://www.bdm.nsw.gov.au/) and offline.  She knew that the actual records were on microfilm at a Queensland State Archives and was going there in the near future, so she volunteered to look up the death records that might pertain to the Whittle children.

She found records for two of the deceased children, William and Margaret, but not the other child, John. 

A record from St. Laurence church in Sydney shows:

*  William Alfred Whittle, died 23 December 1852, buried 25 December 1852, aged 10 months, resided on Parranall Street [?, in Sydney?].  His father's occupation was a sawyer.

A record from Cainfordoron [? I can't read it clearly] parish shows:

*  Margaret Whittley, died 3 June 1850, buried 5 June 1850, aged 10 months, resided on Sussex Street [in Sydney].

Both age at death dates line up well with the birth dates in the birth records.  I also know that the Whittle's resided on Sussex Street in Sydney.

Here are the images for Margaret Whittle's record obtained from Cheryl - she split up the images to show the top and the bottom of the page:




There are lessons to be learned here (I mean re-learned, of course!), including:

*  Not ALL records are in online databases.  Cheryl knew, from experience, that there was a death records index online, and that the records were on microfilm and where to access them. 

*  Even if there are record collections online, the online collection may be incomplete.  There is an Australian death and burial database online at FamilySearch, but it did not have these records. 

*  Posting research details, and problems, on message boards, mailing lists, forums, websites,  blogs and other social media may result in readers or searchers finding the information, and the readers may offer advice or do research in an act of kindness.

*  The online genealogy world is a wonderful community of researchers, educators, writers and readers. 

My thanks to Cheryl for performing this intentional act of genealogical kindness.  I love my blog readers! 

2 comments:

Rod Van Cooten said...

I think that the parish is 'Camperdown'

Rosemary said...

Parish is definitely Camperdown.