Deserting Wives & Families
The Police Gazettes are a wealth of information...though these are all from the NSW Gazettes, they are available for other states... You could be surprised as to what you will find in them.
Deserting wives and families was frowned upon and was considered a punishable crime. These items are full of interesting facts... they give the names, including aliases if applicable, area of abode, full descriptions of the deserter, clothes they had been wearing, whether they left on foot or horse, etc. They are a veritable Pandora's box for researchers.
To their credit, they also post if a warrant has been cancelled... but not often as to why.
1873
Please click to enlarge
New South Wales Police Gazette and Weekly Record of Crime (Sydney : 1860 - 1930), Wednesday 25 Feb.1880 National Library of Australia. http://nla.gov.au/nla.newsarticle251642230
DESERTING WIVES AND FAMILIES, SERVICE & C.
26 May 1880
New South Wales Police Gazette and Weekly Record of Crime (Sydney : 1860 - 1930), Wednesday 14 Jul. 1880National Library of Australia http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article251642646
29 Jan 1896
10 May 1899
11 Aug 1928
21 Nov 1928
Have you recognised any ancestral names, perhaps a 'maybe' ? We would love to hear if one of those mentioned belongs to you...
10 May 1899
11 Aug 1928
I was quite interested when I saw the name of DILLON in the page above.. but didn't know whether to feel relieved or miffed when I discovered it wasn't one of my Dillons.
21 Nov 1928
Have you recognised any ancestral names, perhaps a 'maybe' ? We would love to hear if one of those mentioned belongs to you...
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I used the Aust Govt Gazettes to find a 2nd Great Grandfather that fled insolvency and deserted his wife in Sydney for the Californian goldfields in 1850. His poor wife died a few months after he left her (4 months pregnant), leaving her only surviving child, my Great Grandfather, orphaned. Using Trove I was able to piece together the unfortunate circumstances surrounding my great great grandmothers death (newspaper articles on the inquest into her death stating she had been abandoned by her husband); her aunt's name (witness at inquest); and then finding him on a passenger list heading for California only a few weeks before her death in the Gazette. So the Gazette is also useful to piece together deserters earlier than 1860.
ReplyDeleteGreat to read of your success.. albeit a very sad story...
DeleteI find both TROVE and Government Gazettes invaluable. We are fortunate to be able to access both for free, as any researchers can, no matter where you live.
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