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.
taggerty 