Theme: A Theory in Progress.

As another participant in 52 Ancestors has written, “There are times when you aren’t quite sure what is right in your research. This is a good week to explore a theory that you have about someone in your family tree”.

My Paternal Grandmother Bertha Wade was born in Invercargill, New Zealand on 5 January 1868 to barrister and solicitor Frederick Wentworth Wade and his wife Adela Macloskey. The sixth of their children, she was only six months old when her mother died during a visit to her family in Melbourne. Bertha was with her at the time but it is not known when she returned to New Zealand. One theory is that she was taken back by her uncle Richard Macloskey’s eldest daughter Ada Gresham Macloskey, although no shipping record can be found. It is known however that Ada had visited her aunt in NZ just a year previously when she was 17.

What is also known is that three years after his wife’s death, Bertha’s father married Ada in Melbourne (so the family must have approved). So 19 year old Ada, besides having a daughter of her own just a year later in 1878, became stepmother to five children between the ages of eleven and three.

But this story is about Bertha. Her eldest sister Annie was an enlightened young woman who signed the first NZ Suffrage petition in 1873 together with her step mother Ada. At that time Annie was working in her father’s office, but she soon took off for the wilds of Western Australia where records show she lived for 3 years, and later in Melbourne, Victoria. One of her brothers Frederick was also on the WA goldfields for some years before marrying in Perth in 1905. Bertha’s second eldest sister Adela also left home early to become a nurse (and much later Matron of the prestigious Geelong Grammar school near Melbourne). Her other brother seemed to have remained in NZ.

Bertha herself must have soon followed her elder sisters to Australia and doubtless adventure. No record of her arrival can be found, but by the time she was 26 in 1901 she seems to have found her feet as Manageress of “Guest’s Toilet Salon” in Bourke Street, Melbourne (a very prestigious address). I cannot be entirely sure that the Manageress was my Bertha but it seems very likely. Advertisements appeared regularly in the Melbourne newspapers, always at the bottom of the social pages, until 1907. In an interview with Mr. Guest himself in 1900, Miss Bertha Wade was described as an expert manicurist. She must have been promoted soon after. Unfortunately it was not said if she came from New Zealand.

One advertisement contained a very poor photograph of Bertha – it is impossible to make out her features but she does appear to have a huge cloud of hair. My one lasting memory of my grandmother just before she died is that she had a huge cloud of snow white hair.

The last advertisement for the Salon with Manageress Miss Bertha Wade appeared on 1 August 1907. Guests continued to operate at a different address, but there was no further mention of a manageress.

Just over a year later, Bertha Elizabeth Wade married my Grandfather Alexander Johnston in Melbourne. Both gave their address as a boarding house. The wedding must have been rather hush-hush as there were no engagement or marriage notices, and they were married at a Manse which advertised its marriage services for a fee. Alex was a journalist from Tasmania who had previously led an adventurous life in WA and who had made several trips to Japan and the Far East. He was 42 and Bertha was 34.

It seems reasonably certain that Miss Wade, Manageress was indeed my Grandmother Bertha. There was one other Bertha Wade in Melbourne for a time but the electoral rolls showed she was elsewhere after the time Bertha married, whereas Bertha’s electoral roll entry simply stopped.

My father never really talked about his mother, and her will made no mention of any early profession of hers – but there is one other supporting fact, she was a wealthy woman and owned the house where my grandparents lived. Of course she may well have received a legacy from her father. Her will indicates a strong forthright woman who stated that granddad could continue to live in the house until he died but must maintain the insurance, house rates etc and not ask their son to pay them!