The quote on Samuel Merrick's gravestone

On my trip to Rookwood Cemetery the other day we visited the grave of Samuel Merrick, as I knew there was an inscription in italics that I previously hadn't been able to decipher, but I thought my aunt and I together might have more success.

The engraving on this section of the gravestone was very worn, and very difficult to read, but in the end we managed to pick out enough words to work it out, with the help of Google!

Now the labourer's task is o'er
Now the battle day is past
Now upon the farther shore
Lands the voyager at last.
Father in thy gracious keeping
Leave we now thy servant sleeping.

The inscription is the first verse of the hymn "Now the labourer's task is o'er". It seems a very appropriate verse to have on Samuel's gravestone - he was a labourer - a bootmaker. I also like the imagery of the farther shore - this refers to heaven, but it also alludes to Samuel's own journey from Sligo, Ireland, to Sydney, Australia.

The grave of James and Susanna Ball

The other day my aunt and I visited Rookwood Cemetery to see if we could locate the grave of James and Susanna Ball. They are buried in the Anglican cemetery, section B, in graves 274 and 275. Until recently, there were no good markers in the Anglican section to give you any idea of what the grave numbers were, but a little while ago someone went through and put in little white stakes, with numbers on them at the ends of the rows. SOOO helpful!

We located the right row and walked along but it didn't leap out at us. Closer inspection found it, with the headstone fallen onto the actual grave, though it was at least right-side up, and completely overgrown by grass, bulbs and a couple of camphor laurel saplings. We cleared away the grass and leaves as best we could and attempted to transcribe it. It was very weathered in places, so it took us quite some time to work it all out - we think we've got it all correct!

Sacred to the Memory 

of 

Susanna 

the beloved wife of 

James Ball 

of Botany Road Redfern 

who departed this life 

October 23rd 1871 

aged 57 years 

She hath done what she could. 

Now in a nobler sweeter song 

I sing His power to save, 

Whilst my poor lisping stammering tongue 

Lies silent in the grave.

Also to the memory of 

her four children who died in the City of London 

Thomas John aged 3, Emma aged 2 

Mary Ann aged 2, Arthur Henry 1

Also the above 

James Ball 

who died 7 May 1879 

aged 66 years 

The memory of the just is blessed.

Also 

Louis Affriatt 

infant son of 

Henry A and Louisa Wilson 

and grandson of the above 

Died 2nd June 1879 aged 13 months 

Thy will be done

Also 

Elsie Louisa Wilson 

Died 27th October 1883 

Aged 16 months

"She hath done what she could" suggests a woman who had a hard life but did her very best under often trying circumstances. Considering Susanna Ball lost four infant children, her husband was in debtors prison for at least two months, and she travelled with her family all the way to the other side of the world to begin a new life in a foreign land, never to return "home", I certainly think she faced some hardship.

The quote in italics is from the hymn "There is a Fountain" by William Cowper. It gives us some idea of what Susanna believed, that once her mortal body died she would be in heaven, singing the praises of her saviour Jesus.

Why the Beringers switched from Catholic to Protestant

Yesterday I had a lovely morning meeting five of my Beringer cousins. I worked out our relationship - I am second cousin once removed to them (and them to me), they are all siblings. They are descended from Charles Joseph Wilfred Beringer (their grandfather) and I am descended from Charles' brother Adolf, known as Jim (my great grandfather). We had a great time, sharing photos and stories.

I realised quite some time ago that, way back, my Beringer ancestors were Catholic - back in Germany. I was surprised at this because in my family we are all Protestant and I had assumed that they always had been. However, when I delved into it I found that Adam and Caroline Beringer, my great great grandparents, the ones who emigrated to Australia, were definitely Catholic. But I also knew that pretty much all the next generation had switched to Protestantism. Why?

I knew that their mother Caroline had committed suicide, and that therefore she had not been able to be buried in a Catholic cemetery, and instead was buried in the Presbyterian section at Rookwood Cemetery. Knowing that your beloved mother was not allowed to be buried in her own denomination's cemetery might well have been a reason to reject the denomination you were brought up in, except that I was pretty sure that the children never knew that their mother had committed suicide. So what brought about the change was a mystery to me. I also knew that their father, Adam, had not converted to Protestantism, as he was buried in the Catholic Cemetery at Rookwood, with his second wife, Elizabeth. I believe they also married in a Catholic church. So it was definitely something that caused the children, but not their father, to switch.

And so, yesterday while talking with my cousins, I found out the reason. It all had to do with Adam Beringer's second wife Elizabeth.

My Beringer cousins were talking with great affection about their Auntie Mary, who was the youngest of the Beringer children - she was only one year old when her mother committed suicide. My cousins were brought up Catholic, as their mother Dorothea had married a Catholic. Auntie Mary went along with them to some family event at their church and one of them offered to sit with her and help her through the service. Auntie Mary cheerfully said that she had been brought up a Catholic, so she was very familiar with everything happening. Auntie Mary later explained to them that her family's governess, Miss Elizabeth Gates, who was their father's second wife, was Catholic. She has always been portrayed to me as the archetypal wicked stepmother, which according to Auntie Mary's stories, was completely true. The way she treated all the children was so bad that they all decided that if she was a Catholic and treated them like that, they wanted nothing to do with Catholicism. Apparently her throwing them all out when they turned 14 (after they had finished school) was a mutual thing - the children (independently of her) decided to get out as soon as they had finished school, to get away from her.

It would appear to me that the children's relationship with their stepmother affected their relationship with their father very negatively. I believe that they rarely saw him, but at least some of them had some contact with him. When WW1 broke out Charles Beringer made a statement, now held in the National Archives of Australia under the ASIO files "Depositions of Enemy Subjects in the Public Service", as he was employed by the public service, but had a German surname - apparently it was to prove he wasn't a German sympathiser. In this statement he said "I do not know whether my father is living or dead. I saw him once in Parramatta Park about 8 years ago. He did not know who I was. He was an engineer. The last I heard he was at Merrylands ... just out of Parramatta" (NAA, A387, 43). This statement certainly suggests he was estranged from his father. When George Beringer returned for a 10 day holiday to Australia in 1927 he only visited his father the night before he left, though he spent quite a bit of time with his siblings throughout the visit. Plus there are some photos which exist of an elderly Adam with some of his children and grandchildren, definitely taken after the marriage to the wicked stepmother, though she is conspicuously absent. All this suggests to me that Adam's children had occasional contact with their father after they each left home, but probably as little contact with their stepmother as possible. I wonder if Adam ever realised how much damage his second wife did to his family, or whether he was blinded by love?

Why visiting graves can be extremely illuminating

I went to Rookwood Cemetery this morning. My main objective was to find the grave of Adam Beringer, which I did, after an hour and a half of searching in the unmapped Catholic cemetery. Unfortunately his second wife Elizabeth clearly wasn't willing to spring for a gravestone, so it was unmarked. I did know that it was grave 2600 though, and discovered some graves had the number engraved in the sandstone at the base, and I was able to count back to find the right grave.

So after that little let down (the grave being unmarked) I thought I'd head to the Anglican cemetery and search for a grave in Section A (the Anglican cemetery also is not mapped at this stage) that I was interested in. I arrived in Section A to discover little white pegs at the end of the rows, announcing what grave number was next to them. You beauty! According to the numbers, the grave I was looking for shouldn't have been too difficult to find. I stumbled across the grave, expecting to find a Samuel Merrick buried there - one whom I wasn't totally sure I was related to but I thought it might be helpful to find it nonetheless. However, I was delighted to find other people buried in the grave, killing three birds with one stone (pardon the pun).

I transcribed the headstone information as best I could:

"Sacred to the memory of Mary Ann, the beloved wife of James Merrick, who departed this life 6th January 1870, aged 24 years. "She is not dead but sleepeth." Also Eleanor Sarah, beloved infant daughter of James and Eliza Jane Merrick, who departed this life 16th March 1880, aged 10 weeks. Also Samuel Merrick, who departed this life 24th August 1913, aged 64 years. [section in italics which is completely illegible]."

I'd love to go back sometime and do a rubbing of the italics section at the bottom to see if I can decipher it.

I learnt lots of new information from that headstone. Firstly, it confirmed my guess that my ancestor James Merrick had been married to Mary Ann Cooper before he married Eliza Jane Ball.

Secondly, I discovered where James and Eliza Jane's only child who didn't make it through childhood was buried - Eleanor Sarah. This information does not seem to be noted in the Anglican cemetery online Deceased Search.

And thirdly, I could now confirm that James Merrick did have a brother called Samuel (coupled with the related death notice in the Sydney Morning Herald, 25 Aug 1913), who died, aged 64 years old. With both this headstone and Samuel's death notice I now know that Samuel was born in about 1849, and that he and James had a brother, John. I don't know if the brother John emigrated as well - there is a record for a John Merrick, with parents William and Susan Jane (not Jane), dying in 1959 in Parkes. Perhaps it is him or perhaps he stayed in Ireland. I also am inferring from the headstone and from the wording of the death notice that Samuel was not married, otherwise, surely a wife would have been mentioned.

And I do not now think that my relations James and Samuel arrived in Australia on the Hotspur because the dates do not work - James was definitely older than Samuel and the brothers on the Hotspur had Samuel older. I'm not ruling out that they were related though - all bootmakers, all Anglican/Church of England, with the same surname, from the same town...

Caroline Beringer's grave

I took a trip to Rookwood Cemetery on the weekend. Rookwood Cemetery is Sydney's biggest cemetery and takes up a whole suburb. It was opened in 1868 and has Anglican, Catholic and Independent denomination sections. It was originally known as the Necropolis.

I took a list and some hand drawn maps with me, showing the important family graves I wanted to see. I particularly wanted to see if I could find Caroline Beringer's grave - I had looked up the location on the cemetery website and it seemed like it might be possible to find it - it was the second last grave in a row, three rows in within a particular section. I wrote down some of the names of the surrounding graves to help me locate it, especially since I had been told that it may not have a headstone.

I also knew that it was in an area that was quite overgrown. Yes, it was. There were actually very few obvious graves in that section, only a few headstones standing up amongst lots of trees and bushes. The trees had clearly had a lot of time to grow.

I found what I hoped was the right row and looked for names. I found Kirchner. That was a name I had written down. It turned out I was in the next row across. I counted graves, and actually managed to locate Caroline's grave. There was no headstone, but the grave was edged in sandstone. It had a very thin sapling growing at the end of it. I took a moment to think of her, and told her I was sorry for what happened to her. I wonder if anyone has been to visit her since she was buried. Perhaps her husband did, but I don't think her children knew she was there. I wanted to honour her memory, and visit for the sake of her children who probably never got to.

The Wickhams

Mum has a whole lot of original birth, death and marriage certificates that have been passed down. There was a marriage certificate for Robert Wickham, fireman, who married Ann Jane Smith, "in private life" on Oct 12, 1876, at the bride's residence. Mum was aware that Robert Wickham died in an accident on the Railways here in Sydney, so I set about looking for him. A search of the historical newspapers at Trove found a funeral notice for a Robert Wickham, Enginedriver, in the Sydney Morning Herald in June 1896. The funeral notice said he was to be buried at the Necropolis cemetery (Rookwood). I looked up the cemetery records for Rookwood and found him listed as R Wickham, buried 14 June 1896, aged 44. In the grave beside him was A Wickham, buried 16 April 1931, aged 76 - if the grave beside was Robert Wickham then this would be his wife Annie. Further searching on Robert Wickham in 1896 showed that this was indeed the Robert Wickham I was searching for:

FATAL ACCIDENT TO AN ENGINE DRIVER. HORNSBY JUNCTION, thursday A fatal accident happened at Beecroft this morning. While the down Northern express, due at Hornsby Junction at 9.44a m. was passing Beecroft, the driver, Wickham, who had been oiling his engine and was returning to the cab, slipped and fell from the engine, breaking his neck. The body was brought on to Hornsby Junction, where an inquest will be held to-morrow. Wickham was highly spoken of by the railway employees, and was generally respected. He was the driver of the train that ran through the slip points at Carlingford about four years ago. Sydney Morning Herald, Friday 12 June 1896.

So now I had the right Robert Wickham. NSW BDM revealed that his parents were named Thomas and Rachel Wickham, but had no record of his birth. So he wasn't born in NSW. The best guess was that he immigrated here, so I checked the NSW Government State Records for him. There was a convict Robert Wickham listed there, who had arrived in NSW in 1830 on the Lady Feversham. Ancestry gave me a hint of a number of family trees with parents Thomas and Rachel Wickham, but of the family trees listed, despite there being many children in the family, none of them contained a Robert Wickham. Although I had no evidence that Thomas and Rachel came out to Australia I did find a death notice in the Sydney Morning Herald for Thomas Wickham in September 1897, so cross-checked it with the Rookwood Cemetery records. There was a T Wickham buried there in September 1897 (with an E Wickham) and an R Wickham (with a D Wickham) buried in the plot beside. On a long shot I rang Rookwood and asked if it was possible to find out who owned a burial plot... depends... (presumably on privacy laws). She looked it up for me. "Those two plots were owned by a Mr Robert Wickham." Bingo! She looked up the names: Rachel (with Dorothy) and Thomas (with Emma). Double bingo! Dorothy and Emma were two of their unmarried daughters.

Robert was part of the family I had hints for on Ancestry. I still don't know why Robert wasn't listed in those family trees on Ancestry - presumably the first one missed him and everyone else copied that tree and missed him too, never bothering to check if there were any more children.

And it's still a mystery to me how the Wickhams got to Australia, so that's some research for another day.

Caroline Beringer

I had come to a brickwall regarding Caroline Beringer's parents, apart from what was listed on the NSW BDM: father - Adolf, mother - Charlotte. I decided the best option was to order her death certificate (this was before I wised up and just ordered a transcript from a transcription agent - much cheaper).

When the death certificate came in the mail a few weeks later, apart from learning her parents' names, it held a surprise:

Caroline had committed suicide. After coming all this way to Australia, with her husband and two children, she then gave birth to six more children. When the youngest of these was 12 months old and the oldest surviving 12 years old, she committed suicide. Reading between the lines I wonder if it was post-natal depression that drove her to it. It's an unbearably sad story.

I could see from the death certificate (section not shown above) that Caroline was buried at Sydney's Rookwood Cemetery (known then as the Necropolis). I looked up the cemetery records online but couldn't find her. I couldn't work out why she was missing from the records so in the end I rang them. The lovely lady on the end of the phone at Rookwood did her best to search for Caroline's records and eventually found them. She updated the database and her records now do come up online. Unfortunately Caroline is buried in a very old part of the cemetery which is very hard to map, and it is unlikely that there is a headstone. So I can't even go and pay my respects to a woman who went through so much. My only hope is that her children knew where she was laid to rest, but evidence suggests they did not, and perhaps they did not actually know of the manner of her death either.

Incidentally, I found a record of Caroline's father Adolf Mondientz in some historical German records. Caroline's death certificate noted he was a painter. I naively assumed this to mean "artist" - probably because I am an artist. However, when I found him in the 1855 Address Book for Cologne he was listed as "Mondientz, Adolph, Dek - painter, Catherinengr. 30". It's much more likely that he was a painter who painted things such as fences, houses etc. There goes my romantic notion of where my artistic ability came from!