How is the research going Stanley?

I had hoped to head north this week but due to work commitments Imindoors says I can't!

As soon as I can though, I'll get those discs to you.

MACDONALD NEWS 01/02/2009

Isn’t it all fascinating! This bit about the Old Man living with Lilian over the brush explains Jim’s dark comment to Father where he suggested he wasn’t exactly family. I always wondered whether this meant Alex wasn’t his father but My dad (Les) was sure he was. I am comforted because it means that my Paternal grandad did live to be over 100, hope for me yet.

Too busy writing books to go too deeply into this at the moment but I’m so pleased Mike is still digging. Regarding father’s memoirs, I’ve always been quite relaxed about the fact that his war service and medals were fiction, he actually spent most of his time in hospital with clap (God bless the professional lady who gave it to him! Without her intervention I wouldn’t be here!) Remember that after WW1 he needed a legend to get a job, a war hero would stand more chance than a diseased Aussie!

Nice to know I have even more relations and I’m glad you young uns are doing the work. Thanks for keeping me in the loop. All copied and archived. I must be getting to be the oldest on our side of the family.....  A Patriarch at last!

Love, Stanley

Please look at www.oneguyfrombarlick.co.uk to see what I am up to.
See LULU.com>buy>search for recent books ‘Barnoldswick’ and ‘Bancroft’

----- Original Message -----

HALLO ALL

HOPE THIS FINDS YOU ALL WELL AND ENJOYING 2009.

I WAS DOING SOME (MORE) GENIE-ILLOGICAL DIGGING RECENTLY AND REVISITED WWW.GENESREUNITED.CO.UK WHICH A LOT MORE PEOPLE ARE NOW USING – SO THERE’S MORE TO BE DISCOVERED ON THERE THAN THERE WAS EVEN 2 OR 3 YEARS AGO. ANYHOW, I FOUND SOMEONE WITH AN INTEREST IN A VERA MCDONALD BORN DUBBO 1909…….AND IT TURNS OUT THAT THE LADY CONCERNED, CHRISTINE WHITING, IS A GREAT GRANDAUGHTER OF LILLIAN PRINCE nee JOHANSEN/JOHNSON, WHO LEFT A CHAP CALLED JAMES PRINCE AND SETTLED WITH OLD ALEXANDER ‘ALEC’ MCDONALD IN DUBBO … PRODUCING OF COURSE LESLIE MCDONALD IN 1893 ! LILLIAN AND JAMES HAD SONS INCLUDING ‘JIM’ WHO WAS KILLED IN AN ACCIDENT – SEE THE ATTACHED (I DO HAVE A PHOTOCOPY OF THE ORIGINAL NEWSPAPER ARTICLE) ; JIM MARRIED OLIVE’MIN’ WHITE WHO SEEMS TO HAVE LIVED VERY CLOSELY WITH THE MCDONALDS AND THEY HAD KIDS WHICH LED TO CHRISTINE. SO – MARARET SUSAN JANET PHILIP AND I HAVE A SORT-OF COUSIN – BORN 1948 – LIVING IN SYDNEY !!! COOL.

BELOW IS THE EMAIL TRAIL BETWEEN US SO FAR; SOME AMAZING NAME COINCIDENCES, AND A RELATIVE WHO WASPREMIER OF NSW IN THE 80’S …. HOPEFULLY CHRISTINE WILL BE ABLE TO ROOT OUT SOME COPIES OF PHOTOS IN DUE COURSE.

I WAS THINKING ABOUT THE GALLIPOLI ISSUE; CHARLES PRINCE (JIM’S BOTHER) WAS KILLED THERE (SEE BELOW). PERHAPS ANOTHER PRESSURE ON LES TO SAY HE WAS THERE – I HAVE A FEELING THAT ALL HE SAYS ABOUT GALLIPOLI IS TRUE – BUT IT HAPPENED TO SOMEONE ELSE, PROBABLY SOMEONE THAT HE KNEW.

Can anyone add anything to Christine’s questions down at the end ? Interesting that Les mentioned a dentist in connection with Min, and that Chris’s family story has a black-sheep dentist from Dublin further back down the line !

Chris’s email is above in the CC box.

Also copying to Sandra Smith at the Dubbo library for info.

Rank

Private [Pte]

Service Number

1821

Unit

1 Company Machine Gun Corps

Service

Army

Conflict

1914-1918

Date of Death

21 September 1917

Cemetery or Memorial Details

29 The Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial Belgium

War Grave Register Notes

PRINCE, Pte. Charles, 1821. 1^st Coy. Machine Gun Corps. 21^st Sept., 1917. Age 32. Son of James William and Lilly Prince (nee Johnsen), of Apple Tree Flat, Mudgee Rd., New South Wales. Native of Redfern, New South Wales.

Source

SO – HERE WE GO – ENJOY, AND SEND HER AN EMAIL TO SAY HALLO !

LOTS OF LOVE

MIKE

Hi Mike

Wow, that was an exciting email.  We share a great great grandmother, with different great great grandfathers.

Lillian married James Prince, their son James Prince (killed in the telegraph pole accident) married Olive White in 1911.    They had 3 kids, James (went to Canada after 2^nd world war), my mum Olive, who married Joe Unsworth then had three kids and George, who went to Tasmania, married Gladys and had 6 kids.  James Prince married Olive White when she had 3 children already, Jack, Alice and Charlie White – don’t know what happened to the father, but rumour that he was a mate of James Prince who then married his widow.  Between 1911 and 1915 they had 3 kids, so Olive Prince then was a widow with 6 kids.  She married again in 1925, Arthur Jamieson, and died in 1946 aged 66.  I never knew her, I was born in 1948.

I have been working on my family tree recently.   We know a bit about the White-Prince connection in Australia, originating from a Dublin dentist (George White) transported to Australia for fraud in late 1700s.  I had found that Lillian Johnson married James Prince in Mudgee, but perhaps there was a name change from Johansen, or somebody couldn’t read the handwriting.

I have been looking into my father’s side, who was Joseph Unsworth from St Helens, Lancashire.  He comes from  a family of glass workers at Pilkingtons in St Helens.  As it happens, an English cousin is visiting us right now.  She is my second cousin, as her grandmother and my father were siblings.  Her name is Jude Hindle and she lives in Accrington, Lancs.

Would love to exchange more info.  Have spent some time in UK, lived there for 3 years 1977-1980.  Married an Englishman, Whiting.  Travelled back and forth for a few years, but had kids so stayed in Sydney, Australia.

You might be interested to know that my brother, Barrie Unsworth, was the Premier of NSW from 1986-1988.  He has had a career in trade unions and politics, and is now retired. 

Look forward to hearing from you with your side of the family story!

Cheers

Chris Whiting

Hurrah !

Makes all the searching worthwhile when you find a positive link !

Very pleased to meet you if only electronically and at a great distance.

Where to begin ?

My mother Dorothy is the daughter of Les(lie) McDonald, who shared a mother (Lillian) with Jim. It took me a while in the BDM records to work it all out ! Les had talked about Jim as a brother, but of course I couldn’t find a Jim McDonald …I got there in the end. I visited Dubbo three years ago and did some visiting and digging around; got a lot of help from Sandra Smith at the Dubbo library.

My biggest resource is the fact that my uncle Stanley, Les’s son in Yorkshire (and named for Les’s closest brother Stan) made tape recordings of all the fantastic tales of his life in Australia prior to WW1. They exist transcribed at Stanley’s website www.oneguyfrombarlick.co.uk

This link – copy and paste into your browser – should take you to the list, if it doesn’t work go to the search and put ‘dubbo’ into the search facility - http://oneguyfrombarlick.co.uk/forum_search.asp?mode=DoIt&search=dubbo&searchdate=0&Searchmember=0&SearchMessage=0&andor=phrase&forum=0

Another one is something I started putting together but haven’t developed – it will show you some of our visit in 2005. Oddly we’d named our daughter Alexandra with no thought whatsoever that her great great grandfather was Alex McDonald !

http://mcdonaldfh.blogspot.com/

You might also like to see my family and I at our new home in Devon up on the moors above Plymouth –

www.theoratory.moonfruit.com     the ‘about us’ page has pics of us.

I fairly swiftly found that Les’s tales were not necessarily 100% true or accurate; they follow the great tradition of Aussie story telling, and I think (in fact I KNOW) that some parts are wholly true while others are probably true but happened to someone else, and some are embroidered somewhat. Eg Les says he went to Gallipoli in WW1 – he didn’t. BUT he DID go to France ! He leaves an impression that he was in the infantry – but in fact he was an engineer on the light railways as was brother Stan. He evidently felt pretty cut-up about the war, and people he knew did go and get killed, and he stopped the stories at that point. Understandably so. After WW1 he deserted and stayed in England and changed his name to Graham, and worked in engineering all his life. In fact he was awarded an MBE after WW2 for his work !! He didn’t dare go to the Palace to get it –probably worried he might get found out !! All that meant that my Mum (and brothers Stan and Leslie) never had any contact with family other than with Les’s brother Stan or Sister Doris (‘Dos’) by letter.

Les and Stan’s service records are on view at the AWM website – I shook up some skeletons in closets when I located them – Les had gotten married in Oz before he went off to France – oops!

(One odd coincidence occurred – Les arrived by Troopship into Plymouth, and I happen work at the same docks he would have come into ! In fact some of the old railway tracks that he would have trundled away on are still there.)

You’ll see in the tape transcripts that Min features a lot in Les’s tales; he even says that his parents expected them to get married ! I like the bit where one Christmas in about 1915 he brings a horse home on his mate’s train, rides through the station hall at Dubbo and home to their house ‘The Peppers’ (still haven’t found exactly where that was or if it still stands) and as it was so hot they kept a bed outside under the pepper trees and he thought nothing of jumping in – with Min ! took a while to work out that Min was the name that Olive White was known by.

So – I know a little about what happened in Dubbo next , and have a few photos of the family as they developed. I know that ‘old Alec’ lived by the showground until he died, and that a descendant Leon Pamount still lives there somewhere. Sister Dos had a son Jude (Maloney) who I have contacted by email to say hi. and leon has a sister Michelle in the Canberra area I think. We did email but I didn’t hear much back from her. Les’s brother Alex vanished in the 1940’s being last seen in Katoomba. I also visited Coral, wife of Alan son of Les’s brother Stan in Sydney and she filled in some blanks nicely. ( Les’s son Stan also has two daughters living in Oz – Janet and Margaret, both in Perth.)

I would dearly love to know more about Lillian and Alex, their histories, any photos (I have none of Jim or Olive), and basically everything !!!!

Well, see what you make of all of that for starters – the memoir tapes are several hours of reading !! If you can, I suggest printing them off …..

I will collate the photos I have and see what I can send; might be a lot for email – do you have a good broadband connection where you are ? (Where are you ?! )

With best regards and big smile

Mike.

Hi Mike (and Sally)

Just received your AMAZING email.   Printed it to read on the train to work.   Will be in touch.   SOOOOO exciting.

Cheers

Chris

Hi Mike

Thanks for the photos.  How fantastic to see them.  I worked out that Lilian is our great grandmother, not great great.  She was my grandfather’s mother, and your grandfather’s mother.  This is a bit weird, talking to a cousin I never even imagined.  I liked your website too.  No Blackberry at this end, I just printed it off on paper….

Well, I went to the Stan McDonald site and read though the Les tapes.  I can see what you mean about Les perhaps embroidering the tales a bit. 

I know for sure he is out of sync with some dates.   I have a newspaper report of the accident Jim Prince had, and it is definitely in 1915. ( 22 October)  The story about the telegraph pole breaking off at the ground is correct, although Les’s telling of it is a bit awry.  I have attached  transcripts which I have copied from the newspaper I found in the State Library.

Bit mystified by my grandmother, Min (Olive) White.  I knew about the children before she married Jim Prince, but there were three kids – Jack, Charlie and Alice (born 1909).  Perhaps Alice was the product of another union altogether?!  I believe she married Jim in 1911, and James was born 1911, Olive 1912 and George 1914.  When Jim Prince died in the accident in 1915, he was 27 and Olive (Min) would have been 35, with 6 children. 

Just looking at the marriage certificate.  On 4 February 1911 at Nyngan NSW Olive Mary White of Cowra aged 30 married James William Prince (same name as his Dad) aged 23.  The parents names on the certificate are James William Prince of Mudgee, Farmer and Lily Johnson.  Olive’s parents were George White, Farmer of Cowra, and Sarah Ann Marshall (deceased at the time of the marriage).

Have a Baptisms Register entry for 3 children on 17 December 1915, which was after Jim Prince died in the accident.

Alice Isabel born 7 March 1909 parents names Charles and Olive Mary White, address Darling St Dubbo, father’s occupation Labourer

Olive Lillian Margaret born 16 October 1912 parents names James William and Olive Mary Prince, address Darling St Dubbo, father’s occupation Labourer (this is my mum)

George William born 1 October 1915 parents names James William and Olive Mary Prince (the rest as above).  The baby was less than a month old when Jim died!

Olive White married Arthur Jamieson in 1925, ultimately moved from Dubbo to Sydney and died in 1946, aged 66 which means she was born 1 June 1880, making her 7 years older than Jim.   But the way Les talks about her makes her out to be a slip of a girl!!  And a bit of a tart at that!!  Not sure I wanted that much information about her, but I did keep reading!  I understand that both Alice and Olive wanted to get away from home (eg Arthur) and married in 1930 to get out.  My mum married again, to my Dad.

Interesting about the dentist(?) by whom she had the two children Les mentions.  Would like to find out more about that if I could…any clues?

Do you also know what happened to Jim Prince, Lilian’s husband.  Did he die, leaving her with Jim and Charles, George having died at 2 yrs or did they divorce?  She must have remarried quite soon, or was she not married to Jim Prince….seems to have been a lot of it about.

Yes, I have been to Dubbo, and to the cemetery.  I also spoke to Sandra Smith at the Dubbo Library!  With their help I found James Prince’s grave in Dubbo, but never even thought beyond that at the time about any other relatives.  All we have of him is a picture, sort of a photographic etching that my Mum had, which lives with my brother Barrie.  The family resemblance is quite strong, my brother looks just like him.  We were in Dubbo at the time of the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, say 10-12 year ago.  So the memory of Dubbo is quite strong.

Your place in Portsmouth looks lovely.  I will send the details to my cousin, Jude Hindle, who has just gone back to UK yesterday.  Would be landing in about an hour in Manchester.  What about all the name co-incidences.  My dad’s sister had two daughters, Margaret and Elizabeth.   Margaret had three daughters, twins Patricia and Judith (Jude, who has just visited me) and Elizabeth had two daughters, Janet and Margaret. I thought it was spooky that Janet and Margaret on the maternal side live in Perth!!

Thanks for all your investigations

FROM DUBBO PAPER (did not note exact date, think Friday 23/10/15 edition)

A FATAL FALL

Mr J.W. Prince killed

With deep regret we report that a distressing fatality occurred at Eunungerie yesterday afternoon, the victim being Mr James William Prince of Manning Terrace, Darling Street, North Dubbo.  It appears that the unfortunate man, with Mr G Dalton  and another workmate, was engaged telegraph line-repairing at Eumungerie.  He had ascended a telegraph pole which apparently had decayed near the ground.   It broke and precipitated Mr Prince heavily to the ground.   The pole fell on Mr P:rince, who sustained shocking injuries, including a fractured skull and broken ribs.   The injured man was taken to Dubbo by the evening train, and conveyed in the ambulance to the District Hospital.   He lingered till about 1 o’clock this morning when death released him from his sufferings.   The deepest sympathy is expressed on all sides at the dreadfully sad calamity which has overtaken the family.   Deceased was a native of Mudgee and was a son of Mr James Prince of that town.   He was 27 years of age.  A widow and six children (three of whom are stepchildren) deplore their irreparably sad loss.  Their names are James, Olive and George Prince, and John, Charles and Alice White.  The discress of the family is accentuated by the fact that two of the children are ill.  Private Charles Prince, who is serving his country at Gallipoli, is a brother of the deceased.   Only a few days ago the subject of this obituary forwarded his brother a present for Xmas.  An exemplary husband d and father and a kindly man has been suddenly taken from our midst, and the Dubbo community deeply condoles with the grief-stricken relatives.   The funeral will take place tomorrow afternoon.

CORONIAL REPORT 

The Eumungerie Fatality -  Coronial Inquiry

On Saturday morning at the Court House, Mr A Gates, Coroner, held an enquiry into the death of James W Prince who met his death at Eumungerie on Thursday last.

Mr D McGuinn appeared to watch the case in the interests of the relatives of the deceased.

Sergeant Meagher deposed that deceased was a married man residing at North Dubbo.  He was employed by the Telephone Department of the commonwealth of Australia as linesman.   His life was insured for 200 pounds in the National Insurance company.   Witness went with the local engineer, Mr McKay, on Friday to the scene of the accident, and saw a telephone pole lying just outside the railway yard at Eumungerie.   He cut off a piece of the butt of the pole about a foot long, where it had broken off.   The whole of the heart of the pole had rotted away where it had n\snapped off, but was perfectly solid a few inches further up.   He also cut off the stump in the ground about four inches.  The top portion showed that the inside of the butt of the pole had rotted away.   One side showed solid for about two inches but on the opposite side the pole had almost rotted away.   He saw the but of the pole taken out.   It had almost rotted away.   This but was about four feet in the ground.   The portion which rested on the ground was solid.

Dr Burkitt, Government Medical Officer, gave evidence as to the cause of deceased’s death.  He examined Prince at the hospital and found that he was suffering from fracture of the base of the skull, with symptoms of concussion and laceration of the brain.  On the right side of the face were severe contusions and lacerations, showing the application of great violence, as from a fall from a great height to the ground.   His condition on admission to the hospital was regarded as hopeless, and he succumbed to his in juries about 1 am on Friday morning.

By Mr McGuinn:  Deceased’s condition was not prejudiced by the removal by train to Dubbo.

By Sergeant Meagher:  There being no hospital accommodation at Eumungerie, and a train being available an hour after the accident, it was in deceased’s interests to be brought to Dubbo. A fall from  a pole would cause the deceased’s injuries.

Robert Henry Rowling, laborer, of Dubbo, said that he went with deceased to Eumungerie to assist in the alteration of the telephone line at the railway station.  They had to shift three telephone posts.   Deceased went up the centre telephone pole and disconnected six wires.  The post was then taken out, and deceased adzed off the sap part for a distance of 5 ft up the post.   The bottom of the pole was then tarred.   The pole appeared sound and was re-erected in the new hole.   When it was in position deceased climbed up to put the wires on the insulators.  Witness assisted Prince to put up the wires.  When he was handing up the last wire he heard the pole crack and looking up he saw it falling.   Deceased was strapped to the pole by a body strap.  Witness jumped out of the way of the falling pole, and deceased fell on top of it, face downwards.   His head hit the ground.  He never spoke after he fell.   He was bleeding from the mouth and ear.

Michael George Dalton, labourer, who went out with deceased and the last witness to effect alterations to the telephone line at Eumungerie, corroborated the evidence of Rowling.

R.V. Mckay, District Engineer, Postmaster-General’s Department, Dubbo said that deceased was employed as telephone lineman.   He had about two years’ experience.  Witness gave Prince instructions to do some work at Eumungerie and told his to get the necessary assistance.  Witness knew nothing of the happening until he got a telephone message from Eumungerie.  Witness examine the pole, which was a yellow pine.   There was nothing to show by its appearance that the pole was rotten .   It was only by testing that the state of the pole could be ascertained.   This test had not been made.  The cause of the pole breaking was dry rot, and \the pull of the wires which were on an  angle on the top of the pole.   The pole was 30 ft long, 25 ft being out of the ground and about 10 in in diameter at the butt end.

By Mr McGuinn:  Deceased was a competent, reliable, sober man.  The dry rot extended for about 18 in down the butt of the pole.  The rot was more pronounced on one side than the other.   If deceased had found the defect in the pole it would be his c\duty to cut the defective part off.

The Coroner found that deceased, James W Prince, died at the Dubbo District Hospital from injuries accidentally received by the breaking of a telephone pole at Eumungerie on the 20^th inst.

    


Stanley Challenger Graham




Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk