Lovely surprise from the past!

[Churchie]

It's so lovely when complete strangers take the time to get involved - I think we forget that our research is often interesting to other people too.

I recently wrote a 'To whom it may concern' letter addressed to the farm where my gg grandfather lived, not knowing if the property even has the same name after all this time.
I enclosed a translation of a Galar Gan (a Welsh poem of lament, written for him on his death) which talked about his great love of the land he lived on, and the stream that gave the farm its name. He obviously had a strong constitution, as he took a bath in the stream every morning, even when he had to break the ice first!
To my delight, I received a letter back from the current owners who found the poem deeply moving, and went straight outside in the snow and photographed the stream for me, so I now have a stunning photo of his outdoor bathroom, completely unchanged, and just as it must have been 120 years ago.

Always worth asking - you don't know what you'll get back, and wonderful results like these make the disappointments pale into insignificance!

Caroline.

[joboy]

That is lovely Prue ....... and see what an interest you have stirred in the hearts of people interested in family history.
Tallow wood is as 'hard as the hobs of hell' and he must have been a very patient craftsman.
Thank you for posting it.
Joe

[PrueM]

Thanks Joe, Caroline and Mrs Griff 

I always enjoy reading other peoples' stories of discoveries of their ancestors' "things" or special places, so it's a pleasure for me to be able to share my own story with you all.  And if it encourages others to send off random letters to strangers, all the better 

Joe, yes, I understand it is very hard wood and the fact that he did it with a pocket knife is nothing short of either miraculous or insane...he was a prodigious carver of walking sticks too, not sure what he made those out of but he often asked in family letters for his nephews to look out for appropriate bits of wood for him to use. 

I think I should have liked Old Uncle Ned 

Cheers
Prue

[Richard T]

New to Rootschat but have researched heaps of the Thorley family. Thomas Allan Thorley worked for the Marsh family at Salisbury Court as a carpenter (immigration Cert states he was a Millwright from Rivistin (Riverstown) C. Cork, Ireland) bookkeeper and shepherd. He died in 1861 aged only 46 "of Natural Causes" after an illness of 13 days. The Manager (and brother of the owner) of the Salisbury Run, C M Marsh, was the informant on the death cert. The Marsh diaries (at Armidale University Library) show two entries ...13.7.1861 "Thorley died' and Thorley buried".

A relatively young family was left fatherless. Evidence of Marsh benevolence may be in the NSW land ownership records. The names of two of the sons of Thomas and Mary (nee Meehan) Thorley .....William Joseph Thorley (oldest) and Cadman Samuel Thorley (youngest) appear on many of the grants of the blocks that became the Thorley family farms of Woodburn and Greylands and some of the same deeds also show Marsh as one of the grantees.

The Woodburn and Greylands property is reputed to have been was one of the biggest wool producers in New South Wales in the early 20th century ..and family lore has it that those family members residing there lived life in a very opulent manner.  Portion of these properties had originally been part of Salisbury Run.

It was not until 1925 that the Hayne and Thorley families became directly interlinked. marriage no. 11950/1925 was Ida May Thorley and Clarence Matthew Hayne.  Ida was a daughter of William Joseph Thorley (from above) and Mary Agnes (nee O'Neill).

An earlier indirect Hayne - Thorley link is via the marriage 6635/1942 of  William Clyde Jurd to Rita May Hayne. William's mother was Catherine Mary Thorley (m. Ebenzer Jurd 6354/1899) Catherine was a niece of William Joseph Thorley. Her father was William's brother, John.

William and John Thorley married sisters from the Burraston family. And their sister Mary Anne jane Thorley married Joseph Burraston. So three Thorleys married three Burrastons of the same generation.

I digress ....it seems like a history of much or the Uralla area! 

I was really interested to see the Salisbury Court fireplace and the link to the Hayne name. It rather says that E Hayne and Thomas Allan Thorley or his family were associated with Salisbury at about the same time.

I wonder if there may be more old photos of Salisbury Court around which could show any of the staff employed there in the early days? There is a facebook site for Salisbury Court which might be a   good spot to add them (as well as here on Rootschat)?

[PrueM]

Hi Richard
Apologies for the late reply to your post.
I'm afraid I don't recognise any of the Hayne names you mentioned - My family was Haynes so probably we are talking about two different families.  Sounds like they were around the same area at the same time, however, so possibly knew each other.  Most of my Hayneses had moved away by the early 1900s, with Edward up at Boorolong being the only stayer.

Prue

[jbml]

That's a gorgeous story Prue - although of course "sir" is the honorific of somebody with a knighthood or a baronetcy, neither of which is properly described as a "peer of the realm" (only Barons and upwards are properly so described ...)

As others say, though, it is remarkable how interested other people - including complete strangers - can be in these things.

Last weekend, I turned up out of the blue at the house where my grandfather was born, and rang on the door. I explained to them that I was trying to identify the location of an old family photograph (the only photograph we have of my great aunt Doris, who died age 2 in 1908) - and showed them my grandfather's birth certificate with their address on it, so they could see that I was genuine in what I was attempting.

They could not have been more accommodating! They were really and truly fascinated in what I was trying to do, invited me through the house and into the back yard to see what the rear elevation looked like, and helped me to peer at the minute details of the brickwork showing in the photograph in order to compare it to the brickwork of their house.

Our final conclusion was that the photograph had to have been taken somewhere else ... but what lovely people!!

Some time I intend to knock on the door of my grandmother's old house, and ask if they are aware of the story of the carved angels in the hallway (saved by my grandfather from the site of a church which had been bombed during the blitz; and subsequently incorporated into the fabric of that house when my grandmother bought it following my grandfather's death).

And I fully intend to visit the house where I was born on my 50th birthday. I think that one may be another "take my birth certificate with me" visit ...