Exploring a mystery in the GARLAND family
Hamilton becomes significant
Florence Rice* was 39 years old when she had her daughter June. Widowed twice and still with several younger children to raise on her own, I was mystified as to what she’d been up to when June was conceived, and where. Backtracking through Florence’s life, I discovered she was not only born in Hamilton, Victoria, but her two marriages and all five of her children’s births took place in Hamilton. Plus, an electoral roll search disclosed her as still living in Hamilton in 1925, the year before June was born in Melbourne.
I had not had reason to look at my Garland ancestry for quite some time, particularly the limited Victorian connections. I had already verified my pedigree through traditional research and New South Wales was the main geographical player in my past. However, the appearance of Hamilton in Florence’s background jogged a memory. Going back through my family tree, I was reminded that, although my grandfather (Scott Garland) had moved to New South Wales in his early 20s, he had been born in Hamilton in the period during which his father had been working for the Union Bank in that town. Now I was getting somewhere – Hamilton was the common denominator.
I had a mild panic when I wondered whether my grandfather, at age 21, had fathered a child a decade before my aunt and mother were born – until I realised the DNA matching would have predicted a half-sibling relationship between my mother and Stuart Matthews had that been the case. So I turned my attention to the other more likely possibilities – my great-uncles Lovick Tyrrell Garland and James Ardlethan Garland.
I discounted Lovick Tyrrell quite early on. Although I couldn’t be 100% sure, it seemed unlikely he was June’s father given that electoral records for the crucial years of 1925 and 1926 showed him as a station manager at a property in Goondawindi, Queensland. James Ardlethan on the other hand seemed a much better fit in terms of time and place. In 1919 he was living in Grey Street, Hamilton, and working as a bank clerk at the same Union Bank branch of which his father was manager. I could find no other record of his whereabouts until a June 1925 newspaper article recorded his move to Melbourne from Cootamundra, New South Wales, where he had been a Union Bank Staff member. Could this have been the crucial window when he met Florence Rice and June was conceived? He would have been 28 years old. Did he perhaps have no idea he’d fathered a child to the older woman he’d had a relationship with? The only other record I have for James Ardlethan’s location in the next few years is in his father’s obituary in 1929, which notes him as ‘in the service of the Union Bank in South Australia”.
I was confident enough in my theory at this point to pose it to Brian Matthews who, if my thinking was correct, was my second cousin once removed. He was delighted to have the family mystery potentially solved, as was his father, and said it confirmed the rumour in the family that June’s father was the manager of the bank where Florence worked. This was the first I’d heard of Florence having worked in the bank and it added to the picture of ‘right time, right place’.
Not quite so fast
Recognising my still limited understanding of the DNA analysis tools available, I thought I’d take up Chris Woodlands’ earlier offer of a “peer review”. I shared my DNA matches with her as collaborator and her initial thinking was that I was on the right track. However, after a closer look at the matches I shared with Stuart Matthews, she had reservations. If my mother and Stuart Matthews were 1st cousins once removed (ie if my theory was correct), then our shared matches should have included the Tyrrell line – matches through James Ardlethan Garland’s mother’s line. But there were none. All our shared matches were through the Garland line only, and the result was the same when I looked at the matches my mother (and aunt) shared with Stuart Matthews. Even after we cross-checked Stuart Matthews’s shared matches, after he was kind enough to share his DNA test results with us, there were no Tyrrells in the shared mix.
Which could only mean one thing. Given the size of Stuart Matthews’ DNA match with my mother, and the absence of any Tyrrell shared matches, the only other possibility was that my mother and Stuart were half first cousins. This led to the inevitable conclusion that my great-grandfather, James Garland senior, was June Rice’s father. I had entertained the most fleeting thought that this was a possibility when Hamilton emerged as the geographic centre point of the story. However, I very quickly abandoned the idea based on his age at the time (60 years), my assumption that he was already retired and no longer working in the bank, my awareness that he died an early death in Sydney, and the knowledge that his last child with Annie de Clare Tyrrell had been my grandfather – 22 years beforehand.
Being presented with this startling new possibility, which was quickly moving to a probability, I looked at my traditional research on my great-grandfather with fresh (and rapidly disapproving) eyes – and realised how wrong I’d been to discount him so quickly. James Garland senior did not retire from his position as Manager of the Union Bank in Hamilton until 1928.
Electoral records for 1924 and 1925 have James senior living with his wife at Gray Street, Hamilton with the occupation of Manager. Presumably they lived above the bank as Gray St was also the address for the Union Bank. Florence Elizabeth Rice was also living in Hamilton in 1924 and 1925 – in Collins St, which is two blocks from Gray Street. Although her occupation is listed as home duties on both occasions, Stuart Matthews is confident of the family rumour that Florence was working in a bank when she fell pregnant after an affair with the bank manager. By 1926, Florence had moved to the Melbourne suburb of Coburg, presumably to have the baby away from the gossip which would have surrounded her in her home town of Hamilton, to which she never returned. I’m guessing my great-grandfather never knew about his sixth child.
Taking stock
Uncovering family tree secrets and solving genealogical mysteries, particularly using DNA evidence, can be a two-edged sword. Not everyone wants the past brought into the present. Secrets were kept in the past for the same reasons they are now – embarrassment, respectability, illegality, shame, guilt, protection, religious and cultural beliefs – and the main players no longer being around doesn’t mean descendants can’t be hurt by the revelation of those secrets. But the opposite can also apply; healing, relief and resolution can follow the solving of an ancestral mystery.
In this particular case of mystery parentage, Brian and Stuart Matthews are delighted to have found the missing branch of their family tree. And I am very pleased to have found some new cousins. I wondered how my mother and aunt would feel about the news their father had a much younger half-sister. They were actually very amused, although the three of us can’t help but feel a little outraged on Annie de Clare’s behalf that her husband was still busy creating children a good couple of decades after they’d finished their family.
Read more about family history secrets and why we keep them.
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the living.