Ending a war

In April 1919, Australians were preparing for the first peace-time commemoration of Anzac Day. For many this would truly confirm the events of Armistice Day that had ended the War to End All Wars. But for some, the terrible war was far from over.

Our great grandmother Lucy COLEY must have felt mixed emotions when she signed for a package from Army Records Branch on 19 April of that year. It was another sharp reminder that it was just six months since her son, Charles Cephas COLEY, had fallen in the Battle for Mont St Quentin on the Somme. On the other hand, this promised to bring her "the effects of No 6421 Coley C.C." by which she would remember her cherished son.

Lucy was obviously a strong woman. The undeniable shock of finding military paraphernalia rather than his personal items sent her not to her bed, but to her writing desk. She dutifully acknowledged the delivery and enclosed the official receipt but then added the following plaintive postscript (spelled as she wrote it).

Could you please tell me if there is anything els belonging to this soldier comming to me, he had a good many things which he treasured & I would so like to have them for remembrance.

To the credit of the staff in Victoria Barracks, they responded promptly. On Anzac Day (which was not yet a public holiday) the Major in Charge of Base Records signed a reply indicating that another package had been located and would be despatched post haste.

On May 5, Lucy received the second parcel. This one contained "2 wallets, testament, notebook".

These simple items no doubt gave her greater comfort than either the medals forwarded in May 1921 or the Commemorative Scroll and King's Message that she was eventually to receive in December 1922.

What will you do when you grow up?

Many trees show evidence of a link across generations in the activities they carried out. Aristocratic families passed rich lands to their descendents. Newly-emerged captains of industries and commerce bequeathed factories and emporia to the next generation. Artisans passed the skills of the family trade from parents to children.

In one branch of our family, the connection is not so obvious. Across four generations, our COLEY ancestors worked in different aspects of a single industry—transport— as new technologies transformed the ways in which people and goods were moved.

Philemon (our 3xgreat grandfather) was employed on the great canals that carried industrial goods throughout the midlands. Although Philemon's father is unknown, his step-father (Richard Holloway) is listed in the 1841 census as a "Boatman".

When Philemon and Sylvia brought the family to Australia, they probably believed that they had left that life behind them as they set themselves up in agriculture. Their son Philemon Lewis (our 2xgreat grandfather) followed his father on the land but when economic conditions changed, he sought employment with the railways.

Great grandfather Alexander Clarence took a job as a conductor with the Brisbane Tramways that lasted throughout his working life.

Our grandfather, Ronald Alexander, pursued a number of careers in a full life, but for a significant period worked as a booking clerk with Australian National Airways.

Very few of us fully understand the images and impressions that we absorb as children and the impact they may have on our later lives. The experiences of the COLEY family in transport suggests they can be stronger than we might think.

Leviticus, Iolanthe and sisters-in-law

When a family historian launches into the day's planned project, it is unwise to predict where it might lead. Who would have expected that a quick check on the details of Philemon Lewis COLEY's two wives would find me juggling biblical commentary and Victorian light opera as sources?

The facts are straight forward. On 6 February 1887, P L COLEY married Margaret HARLEY. They had two daughters (Margaret Lucy and Beatrice Olive) before Margaret's untimely death on 26 March 1892. As was common at the time, Margaret's younger sister Lucy HARLEY came to help care for her young nieces. On 26 May 1893, P L and Lucy married and went on to become our 2xgreat grandparents. Which prompted someone to ask "Wasn't it illegal for him to marry his wife's sister?".

A preliminary search offered Leviticus xviii 18 as the ultimate authority on that question…

from which derived A Table Of Kindred And Affinity: Wherein Whosoever Are Related Are Forbidden In Scripture And Our Laws To Marry Together. The inevitable conclusion is that under Canon Law and in the Ecclesiastical Courts such a marriage would be considered "irregular" at best. But was it "illegal" in 19^th century Queensland?

The Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage Act removing the bar to such marriages eventually passed the Imperial Parliament in 1907 after more than half a century of trying. Gilbert and Sullivan's 1882 operetta Iolanthe mocked the inactivity (or intransigence) of the House of Lords on a range of important issues and had included the line "We will prick that annual blister, marriage to deceased wife's sister".

So on the face of it, the marriage of P L and Lucy (and the legitimacy of five of their eight children) was open to question until 1907. But Queensland was an independent Colony with its own Parliament.

In 1877, the Queensland Parliament has considered and passed The Deceased Wife’s Sister Marriage Act (41 Vic. No. 25.). On 10 April 1878, Queen Victoria had given her Royal Assent and hence "no marriage between any man and the sister of his deceased wife shall within Queensland be voidable or in any wise impeachable upon the ground only of such affinity between the parties thereto any law usage or custom to the contrary notwithstanding".

So had the COLEY family remained in England, such a union in 1893 would have been able to be challenged on the (completely unscientific) grounds of consanguinity. But in their new home, logic prevailed and the marriage was entirely legal.

That 1877 Act stood until the Acts Repeal Act of 1991 tidied away a number of older statutes including the Lady Bowen Lying-in Hospital Land Sale Act 1887, the Sandgate Racecourse Act 1896, the Enemy Contracts Annulment Act 1915 and the Deceased Husband’s Brother Marriage Act 1931. What could Gilbert and Sullivan have made of that?

A better life (Part 2)

On 5 April 1899, Philemon Lewis COLEY accepted appointment as a Lengthsman in the Southern Division Maintenance Branch of the Railway at the wage rate of 6 shillings and 6 pence per day.

In the 1903 Electoral Roll for the Division of Maranoa (Polling Place of Muckadilla) he was showing as living with his wife Lucy COLEY at 345 Mile Camp. There were apparently no other adult residents.

It is more than 500 kilometres from the Fassifern Valley (B) to Muckadilla on the Maranoa (A).

What had become of the good life of a decade earlier?

There had been personal tragedy when Margaret died on 26 March 1892, leaving PL with two small daughters. It seems that her younger sister Lucy HARLEY came to assist with the care of her nieces; then on 26 May 1893 married Philemon Lewis.

At the same time, the economy of the Colony was taking a battering. The maritime strike of 1890 and the shearers strike of 1891 had significant impact on agriculture. Then, between January and June of 1893, Brisbane (the capital city) was battered by four floods. Both cross-river bridges (road and rail) were swept away and a major coal mine at Ipswich was destroyed.

The direct effect of the flooding was barely detected in the Fassifern Valley but the economic effects could not be avoided.

By 1899, P L and Lucy had added three more children (Walter Lewis, Sylvia Mabel and Charles Cephas) to the family and the property at Thorn could not support them. So our 2xgreat grandfather turned to the same employment his father had followed four decades earlier — maintaining a section of transport infra-structure.

The Electoral Roll for 1905, showed that the Coley family had moved back closer to "home" and were living at Railway Station, Stapylton as electors in Oxley (voting at Beenleigh). They would have been based there when great grandfather Alexander Clarence COLEY was born on 25 August 1905 and his sister Laura May almost three years later.

In 1912, the family were living in Blenheim. Their eldest son, Charles Cephas, was admitted to the teaching profession as a pupil-teacher at Blenheim State School in October of that year. The Electoral Roll for the Laidley Subdivision of the Moreton Electorate of 1913 shows P L (misspelled as Philimon) listing his occupation as "farmer" once more. Their last child, Berenice Alicen, was born there on 25 June 1914.

It was at Blenheim that P L died on 10 July 1915. In 55 years, the son of a canal labourer and a nail-maker had seen both sides of working life in his new land but could look forward to his son following a respected profession that would assure his future.

How the war in Europe would cut short that dream is a tale for another day.

A better life (Part 1)

Before leaving England in 1866, Philemon COLEY was a labourer on the canals that snaked through the Black Country. His wife Sylva TRUMAN had grown up working with her siblings at the nail forge that her mother maintained behind their home. Little wonder that they took up the offer of a new life in Queensland.

By November of 1879, Philemon and his family must have considered themselves "landed gentry" running cattle and growing crops on their own property at Mount Walker in the Fassifern Valley. While their five children must have worked hard on the farm, they would never again know the extreme hardship that had taken two of their brothers in 1864 in Worcester.

On 26 May 1883, not yet 24 years old, our 2xgreat grandfather Philemon Lewis COLEY registered a brand that would distinguish his cattle from those of his father. On 15 November that year, he sought a lease over 120 acres of Crown Lands described as Portion 148 in the Parish of Rosevale. He paid a £6 survey fee and £3 rent for the first year for the Homestead Selection.

Philemon Lewis must have been able to quickly convert the lease (by demonstrating significant physical improvements and paying 5 years rent) because in the 1884 Electoral Roll for the Ipswich/Fassifern District, he is recorded as being qualified to vote as a Freehold land owner like his father. By contrast, his brother Cephas is listed as a mere "resident" of the district.

On 6 February 1887, P L COLEY married Margaret HARLEY. By 1890, they were living on, and working, their own farm in one of the Colony's most productive areas with two daughters, Margaret Lucy and Beatrice Olive.

Life in Queensland was good for the Coleys — for a time.

A mysterious death

Today (14 July) marks the 114th anniversary of the death of Bertha Spragg (a sister of our 2xgreat grandfather, Philemon Lewis COLEY) at Silverdale. The Brisbane Courier reported it as a "supposed case of suicide".

The event itself raised a number of questions for investigation. Who was this "adopted son" never before mentioned within the family? Did the reference to "Ipswich Hospital" mean the same in the 1890s as it did in the 1950s — a mental health facility? Who believed that "she did not appear to have anything the matter with her" on the day before her death?

The nature of the newspaper story added further layers of complexity. Had it not included a reference to her father (Mr P Coley), the document (which twice mis-spelled her husband's name) might never have been found. How could the paper's "Ipswich Correspondent" have got the name and place of residence wrong but included so much other detail.

Any reader of the depositions sworn at the inquest will form a good idea of which witness was the source for the news story, and cannot help but wonder how or why he would misreport his own address.

On 21 July 1898, Mr Sealy JP concluded that Bertha died by her own hand and that there were "no suspicious circumstances". And there the matter rested.

But modern family members, brought up on a diet of television crime series, would love to ask several of those who gave evidence about the sequence of events, about times and distances, and about the purported reasons for some actions.

Perhaps most of all, we would like to ask Philemon COLEY (the family patriarch) why he did not attend the inquest to report on the events of the week before Bertha's death when was living at her old home,but sent her brother John Thomas instead?

If it is true that every family tree contains at least one dark secret or impenetrable mystery, then the tragic death of Bertha SPRAGG looks like ours.

Happy coincidences

I got a real buzz listening to the July episode of the Genies Down Under podcast yesterday.

Apart from all the usual excellent features, my excitement was caused by the fact that Maria included an item that I had submitted from our family history. The theme for the episode was "Coincidence stuff for genies: Tales of genealogy flukes" and I wrote a short piece about the multiple appearances in our history of the ship SS Demosthenes.

At Christmas 1916, Charles COLEY and Reginald NOYES sailed on HMAT A46 Demosthenes from Sydney as reinforcements for the 25th and 26 Battalions respectively. There is no evidence that they ever met, but a decade later, Charles' nephew Alexander Clarence COLEY married Henry's niece Doreen NOYES and they became our great grandparents.

After the end of War War I, the Demosthenes was returned to the Australian Commonwealth Line and resumed service on the England-Australia route. In 1928, grandfather Robert Joseph MCALLISTER (from the other side of the tree) migrated to Australia with his mother and younger brother aboard the very same SS Demosthenes.

However much a family historian may claim that he spends hours poring over old documents and on-line databases for the intellectual challenge of solving real-life puzzles, the boost to the ego of having your work out in public is very nice.

Thanks Maria, for the opportunity to show my children that this "ancestor" is still productive.

A tale of two immigrants

On May 30 1866, Thomas Harlin, M.A. (a Fellow of St Peter's College Cambridge) arrived in Moreton Bay on his way to take up the position of Mathematics Master at the Ipswich Grammar School (which had been established as the first secondary school in the Colony in 1863).

Unfortunately, he had not enjoyed his voyage from England aboard the Southern Ocean. In a letter to the editor of The Brisbane Courier published on Wednesday 6 June 1866, he described fellow passengers as "the scum and refuse of the town populations of Great Britain".

This character assessment by such a distinguished English gentleman is of interest to me because among the "lower classes" conveyed by the Southern Ocean under the auspices of the Queensland Government Immigration Agency were our 3xgreat grandparents Philemon and Selva COLEY and their son Philemon Lewis COLEY (our 2xgreat grandfather).

Mr Harlin's letter was a long one as he had much to say on the character of the purported "railway artisans" who had been afforded free passage. He opined that "some ... are convicted thieves, and ... several of the rest are morally certain to swell the gaol charges of Queensland within twelve months of their landing".

It is not surprising that some in the Colony took exception to the views of Harlin and responded in (what we might now describe as) a robustly Australian way. Undeterred, the man (who, within a few years, would become the foundation Headmaster of the Brisbane Grammar School) contributed another lengthy letter on Thursday 7 June advising the Queensland government on how it ought to manage its migration program which included purported verbatim transcripts of conversations that occurred during the voyage.

On 8 June 1866, the Courier carried a letter signed an old resident of brisbane which included "I went to the depot to see and judge for myself as to the quality of the immigrants by the Southern Ocean. I have conversed with them, and believe them to be, almost without exception, a steady, hard-working class of people, and not as 'T. H.' describes them 'the scum of London.' For the future, I should advise 'T. H.' to mind his own business, and not trouble himself about people who, although they may have not had, perhaps, such a good education, and be able to put M.A., etc., at the end of their names, are quite as good as himself."

Despite his apparent lack of academic distinction, I find much to admire in the opinion of that "old resident", both with respect to our COLEY ancestors and their apparent accuser.

Both Philemon Coley and Thomas Harlin travelled from Brisbane to Ipswich to take up employment soon after arriving. Given the schoolmaster's views of his fellow passengers, it is unlikely that their paths crossed again. Nevertheless, it would be wonderful to know the opinion of the ship canal labourer concerning the Cantab Fellow; if indeed, Philemon deemed him worthy of a single thought.

Our house?

• When I first began to investigate our COLEY ancestors, two questions demanded attention.
• Did they have anything to do with Captain Coley's cottage in Brisbane?
• Were they from Coleyville (south-east of Ipswich)?

The cottage which stood near the current Queensland Parliament House was reputed to be the first privately owned home in Brisbane. It was built in the late 1840s and said to be still standing early in the twentieth century.

Richard James COLEY (almost always referred to as Captain Coley, although his links to the sea are undocumented, except in his obituary) was a well-known merchant in the colony and was appointed the Sergeant-at-Arms of the first Queensland Parliament. This position has responsibility for keeping order in the Assembly and protecting the Speaker. Fortunately the role is ceremonial, because by then Captain Coley was over 60 years old and in failing health.

Any links I could find to such a prominent early citizen of Queensland would be a terrific limb for the family tree. Nevertheless, I reminded myself that manufacturing links to desirable ancestors is not acceptable practice.

Sadly, Richard James COLEY died from a gunshot by his own hand in 1864. The Coroner ruled that it was due to "temporary insanity". An examination of his financial affairs showed the Captain was close to penury and that the famous cottage was heavily mortgaged. His son, also Richard James, died in Roma in 1872, allegedly by taking strychnine.

Perhaps a connection to this COLEY group would not be well-regarded when the family gathered? However, I must press on.

Richard COLEY had arrived in Brisbane in 1842 from van Diemen's Land (Tasmania). He had lived there since 1835 engaged in farming (and perhaps, coastal trading) with his brother-in-law after migrating from Norfolk in England. He was born in London in 1797 to Ann BLINKERN and Richard James COLEY (who had been a merchant Captain).

Since I now know that our proven COLEY ancestors were labourers who left the Black Country of the Midlands to arrive in Moreton Bay in 1866, there is no possibility of a link to the Captain and his famous cottage.

Was the time spent chasing down a negative result wasted? Certainly not, when I have learned so much about the context of the new colony into which our real ancestors moved.

And Coleyville? As always, that is a tale for another time.