Monday, March 2, 2015

Finding the Alexander Whittle Pub in Sydney with Lots of Help From my GeneaMates

While we were at RootsTech, Linda and I had a fun time talking with the Australian contingent (about ten really enthusiastic and friendly geneamates!) both in the Media Hub and at DearMYRTLE's Geneabloggers dinner and party.

In the discussions, I mentioned that Linda's great-grandmother, Jane (Whittle) McKnew (1847-1921) was born in Sydney, and her parents had a pub there located at 11 Sussex Street (recalled from memory, scary that!  hope it was right).  Geneablogger and RootsTech attendee Sharn White (who blogs at http://sharnsgenealogyhints.blogspot.com/) noted that she knew exactly where that was in Sydney and that she would go there and take some photographs when she returned home.

Sharn and her husband went to the Central Business District of Sydney late last week, and she posted a number of photographs on Facebook, addressed to me.  A number of other researchers added research information to the post, and I went exploring in the links they gave me.

A Google Map for this area is below (the stickpin is approximately the location):


Longtime Genea-Musings readers might recall that back in 2010 I wrote a series of blog posts about my research into the Alexander and Rachel (Morley) Whittle family - see Whittle Research Compendium in http://www.geneamusings.com/2010/09/whittle-research-compendium.html .  One of the posts was about the newspaper articles I found on Trove in http://www.geneamusings.com/2010/09/finding-whittles-in-australia.html.  The result was a lot of helpful suggestions, guidance and record-finding by a number of researchers in a significant crowd-sourcing effort.

Since then, I have found more bits of information - I was surprised to find two of them already in my family file folders!  I explored some of the sites mentioned in the Facebook posts by Michelle Patient, Jenny Joyce and Sharn.  The websites they suggested included:

*  Book: Sydney in 1848 - http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600151h.html

*  NSW Government State Records - http://srwww.records.nsw.gov.au/indexsearch/keyname.aspx

*  City of Sydney Archives - http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/learn/history

*  City of Sydney Assessment Books - http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/learn/search-our-collections/house-and-building-histories/assessment-books

*  Historical Atlas of Sydney - http://www.photosau.com.au/CoSMaps/scripts/home.asp

*  Claim a Convict - http://www.hawkesbury.net.au/claimaconvict/surname.php

*  Wikipedia page for Sussex Street, Sydney - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sussex_Street,_Sydney

The NSW Government State Records had records for publican licenses, which I could purchase.  I looked in my family folder, and there it was - courtesy of the World subscription of Ancestry.com (the New South Wales Publican Licences) and Genea-Musings reader Lisa Nap in The Netherlands.  Here it is:



On 21 June 1848, Alexander Whittle was the proprietor of The Lancashire Arms pub at Sussex Street and Union Lane in Sydney.  This is a closer location than I had before (which I cannot find now!).  I couldn't find Union Lane on a Google Map near Sussex Street.

Back in 2010, I had found that Alexander and Rachel Whittle of Sussex Street had Publican Licences #162 and 163, from an 1850 newspaper article.

Today, I found two entries in the Assessment Books for 1845-1948.  The search results:



There are links to the records.  Here is the top of the second item (which shows the column headings):


Further down the page is the entry for Alexander Whittle:


This entry tells me that:

*  House number: 2004
*  Situation:  Sussex Street
*  Name of person rated:  Alexander Whittle
*  Name of owner or landlord of property:  George Mitchell
*  House, warehouse, or shop:  Public House
*  Brick ,stone, wood or iron:  Brick
*  Slated, shingled or otherwise:  Shingled
*  No. of floors:  2
*  No. of Rooms:  6
*  Gross Annual Value in Pounds:  45
*  Remarks:  Kitchen & Shed detached

The information for the first entry is:



This entry tells me that:

*  House number: none
*  Situation:  Chippendale, Odds & Ends
*  Name of person rated:  Andrew Whittle
*  Name of owner or landlord of property:  Alexander Whittle
*  House, warehouse, or shop:  House
*  Brick ,stone, wood or iron:  Brick
*  Slated, shingled or otherwise:  Shingled
*  No. of floors:  1
*  No. of Rooms:  2
*  Gross Annual Value in Pounds:  9
*  Remarks:  Attached Kitchen

From these records, it looks like Alexander Whittle owned was the landlord of the first property, and Andrew Whittle (I wonder who that is! A brother? A cousin? An uncle?) was residing in it.

The Public House on Sussex Street was owned by George Mitchell, not the Whittles, and did 45 pounds of business on the year.  This list also provides probable neighbors, if the houses on the list are next to each other.

The second item has a house number of 2004.  I don't know if that is just a sequential number for the assessment, or is an actual address of the house.  If it is an actual address, then I'm wrong about the Public House being at 11 Sussex Street.

Once again, a story about my genealogy research led to a search in a distant place by a wonderful lady while at a genealogy meeting.  Isn't it great when that happens?  Sharn knew the geographic area, Sharn and Michelle and Jenny know the resources in the place, and they all freely provided the time and information to help me out.  I really appreciate it!  Thank you, Sharn and friends.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2015/03/finding-alexander-whittle-pub-in-sydney.html

Copyright (c) 2015, Randall J. Seaver


6 comments:

Cassmob (Pauleen) said...

Fantastic work by all concerned. A walking example of collaboration and local knowledge...the kind of expertise we used to get only in the relevant family history society library but is now possible world-wide.

GeniAus said...

A great example of Geneacooperation. Great work SSharn, Jenny and Michelle.

GeniAus said...

A great example of Geneacooperation. Great work SSharn, Jenny and Michelle.

GeniAus said...

A great example of Geneacooperation. Great work SSharn, Jenny and Michelle.

Kerrie Anne Christian said...

worth a look - several newspaper articles also mentioning the publican licenses

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article28648770
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article12947114
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article12903470

Randy Seaver said...

KerrieAnne,

I checked those three long lists out, and the only mention I saw of Alexander Whittle was the third one, from 1849, where he was listed as Lancashire Arms on Sussex Street.

Lots of pubs in Sydney in the 1840s!

Thanks -- Randy