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Archive for the ‘Archibald Beatty (1877-1946)’ Category

New chapters of the Beatty family story – the 1930s

Posted in Archibald Beatty (1877-1946), Beatty family, Charles Gordon Beatty, Enniscrone, Mont Albert, Victoria, Australia, Harold Beatty, Littleton family, Peggy Beatty, Victoria, Australia, Winifred Blair, tagged on October 15, 2015| 2 Comments »

“Enniscrone” 12 Trafalgar Street, Mont Albert. Home of Archie and Connie Beatty and family. Front and drive 1932

After wading through hundreds of (mostly unlabelled) photos, several years of Peg’s diary and various letters and other stuff, I’ve added two new chapters of our family story: see the links to them in the right hand column. Chap 11 deals with the family from 1930-1935 and includes the move to “Enniscrone”, Mont Albert. Peg’s diary records many visits to and from other branches of the Beatty and Forster family, and I’ve mentioned many of these. The Littleton family, particularly Ruth, Geoff and Gwen occur in many of the photos.  Chap 12 is mainly about Harold and his friends and their camp at Rye Back Beach on the Mornington Peninsula, which they called McBeatsome Town.

I have to say it’s a lot easier and more rewarding writing about this very well-documented end of the family story. It’ll probably take another visit to Ireland to tease out more about the early 19th century Beattys with no guarantee even then.

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New photos of James Beatty family and identities resolved

Posted in Archibald Beatty (1877-1946), Beatty family, Emma Matilda Beatty, James Paget Beatty, Kathleen Marion Beatty, tagged , on December 9, 2011| 8 Comments »

One mystery is completely solved. We now have a labelled copy of the 1892 photo of the whole James Beatty family, and yes, the baby is Rupert and Charles Gordon is on the far right! Also the earlier photo was apparently taken in Dublin, which narrows the window of opportunity for the family to have travelled to Australia. Many thanks to Jocelyn, grand-daughter of Alfred Joseph for permission to include her family photos here, and also to the Charles Gordon branch for photos of him.

James, Kathleen and Emma Beatty above, and Archie Beatty sitting in front, Melbourne about 1884

This is my favourite of the photos Jocelyn sent, as one of Archie’s grandsons looked so comically like him at the same age.
I’ve revamped the Beatty page of the image gallery with all the new photos, and rewritten the relevant parts of the chapter of the story “The Beattys out of Ireland“. I haven’t uploaded the revamped family tree yet but will get there. I think I’ll write a new chapter about the Pagets next.
It would be wonderful if we could get in touch with the heirs of the eldest Beatty, James Paget (Jim) as apparently they have Marcella’s own Bible and the 1835 document appointing her father James Paget a JP! A letter from Janet Godfrey to Pag Beatty listed Marcella’s entries in the Bible. Mostly this was information already known, but included details such as Archie having been born at Kinard Lodge in Enniscrone and Marcella Constance Isobel having died aged 4 weeks at Woolpress Farm, Baddaginnie, presumably on a visit to her grandmother. All this information is now included in The story and will be in the family tree when I update it.

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Have you established our relationship to Admiral Beatty yet?

Posted in Archibald Beatty (1877-1946), Beatty family, tagged , , on October 23, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Everyone in our family knows that we are related to the glamorous hero of the First World War Battle of Jutland. When I asked my father how he knew, he said “Oh, everybody knows that!” His father Archie had a beautifully framed and labelled large photograph of “Admiral Beatty on board his flagship watching the surrender of the German fleet”. Which obviously proves it 🙂

"Admiral" Archibald Beatty c. 1930

Unfortunately I’m sure this is one of those family myths. The well documented family tree of the famous Earl goes back through many generations of soldiering Anglo-Irish gentry whose family mansion was Borodale in County Wexford in the far south-east of Ireland. On completely the other side of Ireland in County Fermanagh in the 17th century a lot of Scottish borderers were settled as tenant farmers, many of them named Beatty. You can tell that our Beattys were originally Scottish because James Beatty (born 1842 Co. Fermanagh, father a farmer) was both married and buried a Presbyterian. The family of his wife Marcella (the Pagets) were Anglican though as were his children. I’m afraid it’s highly unlikely that any relation of David Earl Beatty wandered up to Fermanagh or Mayo to take up farming or shop keeping with the Presbyterian Beattys up there.

I think the fun-loving Archie Beatty is the culprit. While I can find no mention at all until the mid 1920s that we are supposed to be related to County Wexford Irish gentry on the Beatty side, once the fame of David Beatty spread, Archie started to sign himself “Admiral” and kept notes from his friends where he is addressed as “Skipper”, “Admiral of the Fleet” and even “Earl”! I suspect it was fun to assume a relationship based on shared name and Irish ancestry and never mind the boring details. He is even on record dressed for the part! He has certainly made it difficult for family historians among his descendants though. What killjoys we are!

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Hilda, house parties and the whole Carron Vale thing

Posted in Archibald Beatty (1877-1946), Beatty family, Carron Vale, Mooroolbark, Victoria, Australia, Constance Mary Forster, Gordon Ewing Forster, Harold Beatty, Hilda Mclean Forster, Peggy Beatty, Stanley Wiseman Forster on June 8, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Carron Vale, Mooroolbark, about 20 miles from Melbourne near Mount Dandenong, was the country home of Archie, Connie, Harold and Peg Beatty from 1913 until late 1927. Hilda Forster lived with them for most of that time, along with Connie’s  lady companion and various staff.

Verandah with “boy’s rooms” at Carron Vale

It had a golf course and tennis court, and every weekend Stan and Gordon Forster among other friends and relations would congregate there. It sounded like Camelot at Mooroolbark from the stories we heard from Harold, Peg and more recently from their cousin Gwen Taylor (nee Littleton) who, along with her older brother and sister Geoff and Ruth was a frequent visitor.  As with other Camelots there was also the sense that everything was not quite as perfect as it seemed.

It was an exciting place for Harold and Peg to spend their childhood though.

I’m posting this because I’ve written up all of the Carron Vale period into “Our family story” (see the chapters on the side menu), although I might add some more photos as I get around to it.  There are albums full of them!

Next I’ll deal with Harold’s jackarooing period and the 1930s. It might take a while though as there’s a lot of photos and documents to sort before a clear timeline emerges to hang all those stories of his on.

I’d love to hear from anyone with further information about the family at this period, especially corrections to, different versions etc. of this story.

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A Paget breakthrough : Gentleman James, Kinard Lodge and the Baddaginnie connection

Posted in Archibald Beatty (1877-1946), Baddaginnie, Victoria, Australia, Beatty family, Caroline St., South Yarra, Victoria, Australia, Charles T S Paget, Hannah Dempsey, James Beatty 1842-1903, James Paget (1802-72), Kinard Lodge, Enniscrone, Co. Sligo, Ireland, Marcella Constance Paget, Paget family on May 23, 2011| 6 Comments »

This was one of those exciting discoveries that keep us family historians hooked. It happened a few weeks ago now, before I had a website, but I thought it deserved a post. We knew the name Paget mainly because Beatty boys kept getting it as a middle name through a family tradition based on it being an ancestral connection with some social pretensions, and we vaguely understood it to be the maiden name of Marcella, the wife of Jas. Beatty who brought his family to Australia in the late nineteenth century. Both the index records and Marcella’s death certificate named her parents as James Paget and Hannah Dempsey which pushed the family tree back another generation. A Google search then found those names connected in this record of a Paget estate called Kinnard (or Kinard) Lodge near Enniscrone, County Sligo.

http://www.landedestates.ie/LandedEstates/jsp/estate-show.jsp?id=218

Archie Beatty’s descendants all knew that he had been born at Enniscrone shortly before his family left for Australia.  A bit of collaboration discovered James and Marcella’s marriage certificate where the occupation of her father, James Paget is given as “Gentleman” whereas his father (also James Beatty) is a “Farmer”.

Another connection was made while scouting through digitised Argus pages in TROVE (surely the cleverest thing that the National Library of Australia has ever done!). Look what the Beattys call their house in Caroline St., South Yarra at the time of Charles Gordon’s birth.

From The Argus, Melbourne, Weds 25 Feb 1885

But the real breakthrough was discovering this announcement in TROVE:

Paget-Beggs marriage from the Argus Thurs 19 Nov 1885

What the heck is someone claiming to be a son of “James Paget of Kinard Lodge, Ireland” doing in Violet Town, Victoria? Our Pagets are all supposed to be in Ireland being gentry!! I spent an afternoon checking all the Paget births, marriages and deaths in the indexes forVictoria. A high proportion of them took place around Voilet Town and Baddaginnie. It became clear that two sons of James Paget had come from Ireland to Victoria, married two Beggs sisters and had many children, later losing most of their sons in the First World War. In fact at one stage, half of the Pagets in Victoria were certainly relations of ours.

The most interesting entry of all was for a “Hanorah” Paget who died at Baddaginnie aged 75 in 1897.  Surely it couldn’t be Hannah herself? Another $30 for the death certificate and YES! She is our Hannah, wife of James Paget, born in Ireland having arrived in Victoria the same year as James and Marcella Beatty, with her children listed with ages given including Marcella, James, and Charles. Yay for informative Victorian death certificates. If she hadn’t come to Australia we’d have been lucky to find a death certificate for her at all, and even so it would have had far less information.

And yes, the name of her father, John Dempsey, pushes the family tree back another generation. It’s a shame that Charles Paget who was the informant didn’t know his grandmother’s name.  Oh well, the hunt continues.

Added 9 May 2012: My most up-to-date information on the Pagets is now part of “The story” – see the link to it in the right hand column.

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A Beatty get together

Posted in Alfred Joseph Beatty, Archibald Beatty (1877-1946), Ballina, Co. Mayo, Ireland, Beatty family, Caroline St., South Yarra, Victoria, Australia, Charles Gordon Beatty, Charles T S Paget, Emma Matilda Beatty, Hannah Dempsey, James Beatty 1842-1903, James Paget (1802-72), James Paget Beatty, James Reginald Paget, Kathleen Marion Beatty, Kinard Lodge, Enniscrone, Co. Sligo, Ireland, Marcella Constance Paget on May 8, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I had a great weekend with descendants of Charles Gordon Beatty who I was thrilled to discover a couple of months ago. Wonderful food was eaten and much fun was had. We examined old documents from the “Jas. Beatty” box,  speculated about the identity of people in old photos and took a few new ones which we plan to label more carefully so that future generations have a better idea who we are 🙂

Many new anecdotes can now be added to the Beatty family story so I couldn’t resist immediately rewriting the 19th century part of it. Find it on the side menu it’s called “The Beattys out of Ireland” under “Our family story”

https://taggerty.wordpress.com/the-story/the-beattys-out-of-ireland/

One wonderful new (to me) anecdote gives a whole new meaning to this photo of young Archie (centre right) and friends

The Beatty boys of South Yarra used to get into altercations with boys from Richmond at the boundary of their territories, the Punt Road bridge across the Yarra. The eldest, Jim was very big and used to sit on the most troublesome of the opponents while his 3 younger brothers and friends dealt with the rest. Jim certainly isn’t in this photo, and we don’t think Charles Gordon is either, but if this lot of likely lads were defending the South Yarra end you’d think twice before crossing the bridge! I wonder what the Forsters of Toorak would have thought?

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