Category: People

Peter and Roseanna – the Lovebirds

Peter Frederick Thomas Giles was just nine years old when he emigrated to South

PFT & Rosanna2 (2)
Peter Giles and Roseanna Glass in Peterborough South Australia.

Australia from Cornwall with his parents and brothers aboard the Art Union in 1864 from Cornwall [1]. They settled with members of his father’s extended family in the Adelaide Hills after arrival.

Roseanna Glass by contrast was born in  South Australia. Her parents had emigrated from Gloucestershire in 1858 aboard the Bee [2]. She was the oldest surviving daughter of her parents. Her birth record tell us she was born in 1868 in Mount Arden, a remote town in the Flinders Ranges, South Australia.

Peter would eventually go north, presumably in search of work. He would take up employment with the South Australian Railways. At that time, the Railway lines were being laid to allow establishment of a Railway network within South Australia.
Peter and Roseanna married in Blinman on September 1st 1882. The marriage record gives Rosanna’s age as 16, but if we calculate her age, using the birth record, she was in fact 14 years old [3, 4].

Theirs was a marriage of mobility and frequent movement through remote areas of South Australia where Peter was employed as a ganger on the Railways. The back breaking work of laying railway tracks. Much of their journey around South Australia is documented in the birth locations of the 14 children born to this couple over 25 years [5]. Many of the birth locations were not towns, but railway sidings, temporary in their existence. Seven sons and four daughters survived.
A life lived in harsh remote locations is never easy, and to have raised a large tribe of children who thrived is evidence of a strong bond.

      Rosanna – Blinman April 29 1883. Blinman, SA.
Ellen Mary – Feb 8 1885. Norton’s Summit, SA
Mabel – October 6 1887. Camp Hergott and Peake Railway camp, SA
John Henry – April 18 1889. Blinman, SA.
Jane Mary – May 21 1891. Wangiana, SA
William George – April 25 1893. Tintinara, SA.
Fanny Elizabeth – June 28 1895. Gulnare, SA.
Thomas – June 6 1897, Gulnare, SA.
Philip – April 25 1899, Gulnare, SA.
George David – June 5 1901. Oodla Wirra, SA.
Ernest Charles – August 22 1903. Oulnina siding, SA.
Richard – August 1 1904. Oulnina siding, SA.
Peter Frederick Thomas – July 9 1906. Petersburg, SA.
Samuel Rye – December 5 1908. Rose Park, SA.

Giles-2180-1
Diamond wedding notice from ‘The Times’ September 1942.

 

A Diamond Wedding Anniversary celebration took place in 1942, to mark 60 years of marriage [6]. At the time of this celebration, there were 55 grandchildren and 26 great – grandchildren. They are remembered by their grandchildren as being a ‘pair of old lovebirds’. The legacy they leave is large.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References –

[1] The Ships List – Art Union 1864. http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/australia/artunion1864.shtml  Accessed Feb 16 2019.

[2] The Ships List – the Bee 1858. http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/australia/bee1858.shtml Accessed Feb 16 2019.

[3] Birth Record of Roseanna Glass, born March 20 1868, Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages, South Australia, 61/298.  Accessed online at Genealogy SA online database – https://www.genealogysa.org.au/ Accessed Feb 17 2019.

[4] Marriage record of Roseanna Glass to Peter Frederick Thomas Giles, September 1 1882, Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages , South Australia, 132/1011. Accessed online at Genealogy SA online database – https://www.genealogysa.org.au/ Accessed Feb 17 2019.

[5] Genealogy SA online database https://www.genealogysa.org.au/  Accessed Feb 17 2019.

[6]Anon.  ‘Diamond Wedding.’  The Times and Northern Advertiser, Peterborough South Australia, Fri 25th Sept 1942. Page 4

Elizabeth Raven

elizabeth (raven) westMy family tree is liberally peppered with strong women. There are several I would like to meet, not least Elizabeth Raven, my great – great grandmother.
Elizabeth’s arrival in South Australia is not clear. Her father William, came to South Australia as a soldier with the 96th Regiment. One source suggests William Raven was in South Australia by 1836 [1]. While I have not found a birth record for Elizabeth, other documents suggest her birth about 1834, making her approximately two years old at the time of arrival in South Australia. Elizabeth was the second child, and oldest daughter in a family of six children. She outlived all of her siblings.

In the first South Australian Marriage in my family tree, Elizabeth married Robert West in 1853 at the Holy Trinity Church in Adelaide. Robert was 20 years old, Elizabeth 19. The first child, Frances Elizabeth, was born the following year. There were a total of twelve children born to this couple over 19 years. Five of those children would pre decease their mother.[2]

She was 38 years old when husband Robert died at the age of 40, leaving her with nine children aged between 20 and one.

I would like to talk to Elizabeth about her strength, and how she kept her family together in a time when there were no widows pensions, or any significant social support.
Providing for a large family of growing children would have required a great deal of resilience, Elizabeth appears to a have been able to hold the family together and rear strong and resourceful daughters. For me this is evidenced by the handicrafts, and resourcefulness I witnessed in my grandmother who would tell of having learned her skills from her mother, my great grandmother, Mary Ann.

If I trace the newspaper death notices of the daughters of Elizabeth, there is evidence of headstone for robert & elizabeth west (nee raven) + several of their children. (reduced)strong bonds between them. A trait most likely forged through the need to work together for survival. In another show of unity, all of the children born to this line of women, bare the middle name of ‘West’, a way of carrying forth the family name. Only one son had survived to a marriageable age, but he did not had children. My grandmother had always been proud of her middle name and the connection it gave to her mother, and it has made the cousins of my grandmother easier to find in records.

There are so many questions I would like to ask Elizabeth Raven, matriarch of my line.

 

 

[1] Family History SA. ‘South Australian Pioneer Families’ http://familyhistorysa.org/colonists.html Accessed Jan 22, 2019.
[2] Genealogy SA. ‘On line Database’ https://www.genealogysa.org.au/ Accessed Jan 22 2019.