Women's History Month: My Maternal Great-Grandmothers.

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 My last post for Women's History Month is about my maternal great-grandmothers, Isabella and Maryanne. Both of these ladies were native born and were widowed young.


Isabella Mary Ann Vaughan was born on 18 September 1847 at Domain Terrace, Sydney. Today the State Library of New South Wales stand on the spot but in 1847 it was a row of terrace houses.

Isabella was the fourth child and second daughter for Henry Vaughan and Charlotte Chasmar. In October 1866 she married William Henry Martin and together they had nine children. William dies sometime between 1878 and her re-marriage in 1884, to August Jasper. It is through this marriage that she becomes my great-grandmother. Isabella and August had four children but only their eldest, Evelyn Maude reaches adulthood.

She doesn't appear in the newspapers, other than her first marriage and then her death, on 29 October 1922.

Isabella's legacy from her second marriage was 4 children, with three dying very young, 10 grandchildren, 22 great-grandchildren and 35 great-great-grandchildren.


 Domain Terrace, today.


Maryann was born on 6 December 1859, to Simon Grant and Anne Cameron, in Ballarat, Victoria. She was their second child to be given this name as her big sister, Maryann had died the previous year. In August 1883 a small noticed in a local paper announced that he had married Arthur Galbraith, from Scotland. Their first son, Arthur Alfred Victor was born in 1885. Sometime between then and the birth of their second child, William in 1890, the family had moved to Sydney. Arthur Snr, ran a grocery store and maybe she helped him. I do have oral family stories that Maryann wasn't very well and the boys spent time with their maternal aunt, Jessie, who had also moved to Sydney and married.

Both the deaths of Arthur and Maryann were hard to find, but thanks to Trove, I spotted a death notice for a May Mary Galbraith in 1912. Following this up I found a Return Thanks notice, naming her two sons and I realised that I had finally found her. She was widowed in 1893, when Arthur died, on the voyage home, from Scotland, leaving her with the boys. 

My personal feeling is that she probably was suffering from depression, as she died on 1 March 1912, in the hospital for the insane, Stockton, near Newcastle, having spent time in Callan Park, Sydney.

Maryann's legacy, two children, 15 grandchildren and from Arthur Jnr, 22 great-grandchildren and 34 great-great-grandchildren. (I don't know any of William's side)



Callan Park.




Comments

  1. rosie3 April 2022 at 12:40

    My g g grandmother also died in an asylum- the Kew lunatic asylum (terrible name) in 1898.
    I came to a similar conclusion as you, thatshesuffered a severe depression. She was widowed and had five children die as infants.

    ReplyDelete

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