My 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 
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.
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