Great great grandparents competition winners

When you subscribe to findmypast.co.uk we send you a series of emails to help with your research. One of them involves finding your great great grandparents and we have just awarded the following people a 12 month Full subscription for achieving this:

May 2010 - Meredith Cupitt
June 2010 - Hilery McAlpine
July 2010 - Colin Sproston

Congratulations to all of you and a big thanks to everybody who entered. Keep emailing us your great great grandparents and you could be one of the next winners.

This is a quarterly competition so the next round of winners will be announced in November.

3 Responses to “Great great grandparents competition winners”

1. Narelle Catling says:

   6 August 2010 at 7:36 am

   Here is my most favourite GGgrandfather’s story:

   My great great grandfather, Caesar AUGUSTUS was born in c 1817 in South America (Pernambuco, Brazil). He was the son of a ship’s carpenter so probably spent much of his life on the docks playing and eventually working.

   In June 2006, after many decades of research by many members of the family, I found Caesar in the 1841 UK census. He was the male servant of Horatio and Junius Smith, cotton merchants, living at Strangeways Hall, Manchester. This find unlocked the key to generations of the AUGUSTUS family,in the UK, who were previously unknown. It also solved the mystery of why he named his house in Australia “Strangeways”.

   Caesar married Charlotte ROBERTS in 1847 in Cheshire. They had 3 children Casar, Earl Maurice and Charlotte. In 1853 when baby Charlotte was only 1 year old, her mother Charlotte died of gallstones and liver failure. Caesar was a ship’s steward during his short married life and when his wife died he could not take care of the children and work at his trade. He placed his two surviving children into the care of his widowed father in law, Griffiths Roberts and his two unmarried daughters Annie and Jane.

   Caesar possibly never saw his children again as he arrived in Australia on an unknown ship and remarried in 1855 to Annie RITCHIE a domestic servant recently arrived from Scotland. It is clear that Caesar did not abandon his children and possibly even kept in touch with them. Annie had four boys by Caesar and on each birth certificate Caesar recorded the three children from his previous marriage in detail. Caesar bought land, built his own home and stables, had a very successful business as a Draysman in Richmond, Victoria, until his death in 1872.

   My quest to discover Caesar began as a teenager and has become an obsession. I no longer worry if his children ended up in a workhouse, but wonder how he came to be in the UK from South America. Maybe he was employed by the Smith brothers on one of their trading voyages to Brazil to purchase cotton. Maybe he was working on the docks as a young man with his father, when the chance to see the world and find better opportunities came his way.

   Family records for Brazil are very difficult to locate and research is a challenge when I do not speak the language. I am however satisfied that the children of his first marriage went on to live full and challenging but hard lives. If only I could find just one living descendant from this line of the family. What an achievement that would be.
   Narelle

   Reply
2. jessmoore says:

   6 August 2010 at 8:19 am

   Narelle - thanks for sharing your story with us. The amount of detail you’ve found out about your great great grandfather is brilliant - you’re able to paint a detailed picture of his life. How rewarding your research must have been - and there’s always more to do isn’t there?

   We’re always interested to read stories of how you’ve all got on with your family history research - post any stories here or on our Facebook page.

   Reply
3. puma trainers says:

   30 August 2010 at 8:51 am

   Congratulations to all of you and a big thanks to everybody who entered. Keep emailing us your great great grandparents and you could be one of the next winners.

   Reply