#52 Ancestors. Week Six" Same Name
Talking About George, But Which One?
Yes, that’s right, which George, or Georgina for that
matter am I talking about.
My father was George, so was his father, my mother was
Georgina and so was her mother, and I’ve added to the confusion by calling one of
my daughters Georgina too. There’s a couple of Uncle George’s and a grandfather
George on both my maternal and paternal sides. Confused?
Today’s George was my great grandfather George Pirrett.
There was a family story about him, and it had a grain of
truth, but only a grain.
He was said to have abandoned his wife, Annie (Dwyer),
and the children and gone off to New Zealand to live with ‘that woman’ Jessie
Bell. The other family story about him was that he had at one time been the
mayor of Auckland’s New Zealand.
George did indeed come to New Zealand; he is buried at
Waikumete Cemetery in Auckland. He did also live in the same house as Jessie Bell, as evidenced by this entry in this 1906 electoral roll.
So far so good., but this is where the grains of truth run
out.
Jessie Bell was his cousin.
According to another family researcher, Great grandfather
George fully intended to bring his wife
and family out to live with him in New Zealand. He wrote home to his wife Annie
and sent her money. Annie was, as was not unusual for the time, illiterate, but
Annie’s sister Kate was not. The money went into Kate’s pocket and Annie never
got to hear that her husband wanted her to pack up the children and travel to
New Zealand to be with him.
So why do I think that George did not abandon his family?
Well I believe his true character is illustrated in an excerpt from a book by
George Plimsol. ‘Cattle ships; being the fifth chapter of his Second
appeal for our seamen’
Plimsol writes of the plight of women whose sailor husband's
had been lost at sea and were in need of financial support, support that was
not forthcoming from the shipping company. It did come initially from my great grandfather.
You can read about it in the below excerpt from the book. There is a photograph
of him, proof that it is indeed my great grandfather.
It’s very sad to think that George and Annie died within
a month of each other in 1921. Neither knowing the true story.
As to him being a mayor of Auckland, well that story can
be tracked back to a family member reporting that they had seen a photograph of him in what was taken to be
mayoral chains. A photograph that no longer exists. I’ve searched the mayoral
rolls of Auckland and its then provinces and he is definitely not there. I
think it is more than likely that he was an office holder in a local lodge. Something that is proving difficult to verify
No comments:
Post a Comment