#52 Ancestors #Week 19 – Nurture
At different times many families have been called on to
nurture children whose own parents are missing – through death or
desertion.
In my family, it was my grandmother Josephine and her sister
Elsie who were deserted by both their parents.
I don’t know the circumstances, but sometime in 1887, my great
grandmother Mary Jane left her husband, taking baby Edward Morgan with
her.
Clearly George Morgan, the children’s father, was unable to
cope with two little girls; Josie was 5 and Elsie 3 at the time. He took them to his sister, Mary Josephine
Fleming and her husband William who lived in Summer Hill. Her mother, Bridget Mary Morgan (known as
Bedelia), who had been widowed a few years before this, was also living with
them.
The girls never saw their mother again and must have lost
touch with their father when they were quite small, as they grew up believing
they were orphans. In fact, George died
in 1921 and their mother went on to have two more “marriages” (at least one of
which was bigamous) and 12 more children.
When they learnt of her death in 1933, Josie and Elsie discovered a
whole new family of half siblings.
Mary Josephine and William had been married only 8 years and
had already had six children when they took in their two nieces. (One of their daughters, also Elsie, had died
in infancy in 1883). What a generous couple
they must have been. Josie and Elsie
were absorbed into their growing family (there were five more children born
between 1888 – 1899), and they spoke lovingly of their “Aunt Sis” all their
lives.
The Fleming family had many misfortunes. Four of the other children died young. Virgil, the eldest was married with four
children of his own when he died at the age of 32. Arthur Rudolf Fleming died at Fleurs, on the
Western Front in 1916. Norman
accidentally drowned in a local swimming hole at the age of 8, in 1896. Bruce died of Bright’s disease at the age of
26.
William and Mary Josephine Fleming
The house in Summer Hill where the Flemings raised their 10 children as well as their 2 nieces
Paul’s great grandmother, Esther, was 2 months pregnant and had
four small children when her husband, Charles William McCann was swept from his
horse and drowned in the flooded Wilsons Creek, in 1889. The eldest of the children was Paul’s
grandfather, Charles John McCann, who was 9 years old.
The family story is that Esther’s brother-in-law, John Beale
McCann, proposed to her on the way home from the funeral. We will never know if this was expedience or
duty or true love, but she married him.
There is some doubt about how this was initially received in the
family. John and Esther went to Casino
and were married quietly at the Manse with no family witnesses – she actually
gave her name as “Esther Johnson”. And
Charles William’s grave in the old North Lismore cemetery says ”leaving his mother, brothers and sisters to mourn their loss"
Nevertheless, tensions appear to have settled down and
family harmony resumed. Esther went on
to have three more children, although only one survived babyhood, and by the
time she was an old lady she seems to have been much loved and held in high
esteem in the family. John McCann raised
all her children as his own. He and Esther
are buried together in the Alphadale cemetery.
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