The topic for this week is “Last One Standing”.

For the purpose of this exercise (only), I chose to interpret this as “The last person with a particular surname descended from a specific ancestor”. Which excludes daughters who marry and change their surname although of course they would still be blood descendants.

My daughter Nicole Hoffmann was the last Hoffmann-of-that-surname descended from her 3xG Grandfather Gottfried Hoffmann (born about 1829 in Saxony) and his wife Karoline.

Gottfried and Karoline had one known son, Friedrich Hoffmann 1862-1933. There may have been other children but none can be found.

Friedrich Hoffmann was born in Friedrichsdorf in the Duchy of Anhalt, Saxony. He married Louisa Berger 1865-1952 In about 1885 in Pfalz, Bayern.

Friedrich and Louisa had 3 sons and a daughter. The eldest son, another Frederick 1886-1975, the only child born in Germany, went to the USA where he married Maude Estelle Jones and had a son and daughter but their son did not marry. So there are no more American Hoffmanns of this particular line with the Hoffmann surname (but plenty of female descendants!)

Another son of Friedrich and Louisa, Charles Hoffmann 1892-abt 1959 married and lived in England but did not have any children.

However, Friedrich and Louisa’s second son William Hoffmann 1889-1955 married Margaret Louisa Darragh in 1912 in Belfast and they had a son to carry on the Hoffmann surname, and also a daughter.

William and Margaret Louisa’s son William Frederick Hoffmann 1914-1953 married Joyce Attrill in 1940 in Kent and they in turn had a son, Geoffrey Kendall Hoffmann, 19444-1983. Geoff married Nancy Johnston (me) in Sydney, Australia and we had one daughter, Nicole Hoffmann.

Nicole’s surname is no longer Hoffmann. Until her marriage she was the Last Hoffmann Standing. Of course there are many, many other Hoffman/n families but none as far as can be ascertained with blood ties to our line descended from Gottfried and Karoline.

(A fuller account of the Hoffmann family is at https://nancyvada.me/genealogy/the-hoffmanns-of-belfast/ – it needs updating).

Topic: So Many Descendants.

My Great Great Grandfather Henry Prendergast (1813-1867) married Mary Costello (1812-1902) in February 1832 in Tuam, Galway. They had ten children, of whom seven survived. The whole family emigrated to Australia on the “Pestonjee Bomanjee” in 1854 and their last child was born in Australia.

As far as I can ascertain, there were 51 grandchildren and 106 great and great-great grandchildren – several had families of over 14. A total of 157 early descendants with at least another 30-50 in the current generation and further down the track. Every now and then I make another connection through DNA, then have fun trying to work out the line of descendancy.

One third cousin turned out to be now living in my home town! It is lovely to have a cousin living nearby. So many family stories to swap!

I do not have a photo of Henry and Mary, but this is their daughter Margaret (my great grandmother, born 1844) and one of her daughters.

Topic: At the Cemetery.

When I first saw my Great Grandfather Frederick Wentworth Wade’s grave in the beautiful old St. Johns Cemetery in Invercargill NZ, it had several well-weathered blocks of marble inscribed with his name and dates 1838-1912, his second wife Ada Gresham Macloskey’s name and dates 1858-1931, and on top the remains of what was a large simple cross with Ada’s name (his first wife Adela 1848-1874 died in Melbourne, Australia aged 26). But the cross had been broken off and was lying alongside the main block in two pieces. I was on a very brief visit from Australia – no time to do anything.

Some years later (2002), now married to a New Zealander, I revisited the cemetery and discovered the cross was missing. But scouting around I soon found it on someone else’s grave site. The large lettering ADA was unmistakable. We carried it back to its rightful place.

A little later still I made contact with a distant cousin Barbara Ashmore, descended from Ada’s sister Constance Macloskey 1862-1897. Constance’s grave is a short distance from Frederick and Ada’s. Barbara and I decided to have both graves restored, that is the respective monuments cleaned and in Ada’s case the cross repaired, strengthened and re-erected, and fresh gravel placed on top. We also had plaques inserted, in Barbara’s case for her uncle Compton Tothill 1895-1915 who died aged 20 at Gallipoli in WW1 and is buried in Chunuk Blair, and in my case for Frederick and Ada’s only daughter Florence (Fonna) 1878-1965 who had left instructions in her will that she was to be buried with her parents and her name also inscribed on the monument, but apparently this was not done.

Fonna was the only paternal relative who I ever met apart from my grandparents, I remembered her dimly as a lovely old lady, a world traveller. Amazingly, my relatively newly discovered cousin Barbara and her mother had known her too! In the second photo Fonna is third from the left and Barbara’s mother Mary Alicia Compton Tothill 1896-1971 is the bride, marrying Irishman Albert Switzer Ashmore 1889-1970.

So it was a great pleasure to be able to restore the grave to some semblance of what it once was and at the same time to honour the wishes of my Great Aunt Fonna.

The topic for this week is BRICK WALL

I have one mysterious ancestor, my GGGF Thomas Darchy, born February 1820 in Augsburg Bavaria. Thomas Darchy, a wealthy young man aged 19 with mysterious antecedents, arrived unaccompanied in Adelaide, Australia in 1839 on board the “India”. Several family legends claim that he was the son of a Scottish nobleman and a French heiress, and/or a descendant of the French Dauphin “on the wrong side of the blanket”. Intriguingly, Thomas’ great grandson Darchy Catt has been told by someone who did not know the family history that he looks “just like a Bourbon”!

From legal records held in the Swiss Archives we know Thomas was born in Augsburg, Bavaria on 24 February 1820, his baptismal certificate naming his parents as Thomas Darchy ‘English property owner’ and Amey Maude Philipse; his godfather was given as ‘Herr Alexander Johann Wilhelm Bradford, English nobleman owning estates in and near London’. In reality the godfather/guardian was Dr. Alexander Broadfoot, a pecunious army surgeon on half pay and the son of a Scottish merchant. Later he was to be appointed Inspector General of Health in the Ionian Islands, quite a promotion. Ten days before Thomas’ birth the baby was entrusted to the guardianship of a Swiss doctor Frederick Louis Ferdinand Sacc, formerly aide de camp and advisor to the King of Prussia and Prince of Neuchatel. Dr. Sacc, a Prussian, became a citizen of Neuchatel soon after his appointment as Thomas’ guardian.

Thomas spent his first nine or ten years happily in Cortaillod in the Canton of Neuchatel, Switzerland being cared for by members of the Sacc family. Then in 1829 Dr. Sacc received a letter saying Thomas was to go to England (Sacc’s private papers in the Archives include a draft letter a distressed Sacc wrote protesting that this was “too soon”). It is not known exactly who ordered this, but Broadfoot was involved.

Thomas was escorted back to England or Scotland by a well-known churchman and Fellow of Trinity College, Julius Charles Hare, who was issued with a special passport attesting to his identity by the Ambassador of the King of the Low Countries. At that stage Thomas probably only spoke French and German, and it is likely Hare instructed him in English language and social customs on the long journey. It is curious that in all the collected papers of Hare and all the books and articles written about him there is not a single mention of his trip to Neuchatel to collect Thomas. Nor has any trace of Thomas’ parents or their marriage been found in any records. Were the names falsified? Why all the pomp and intrigue?

It is not known where Thomas spent the next nine years, nor with whom, nor the source of his early wealth. It did not come from the estates of Dr. Sacc or Dr. Broadfoot. But he never made any secret of his early years in Cortaillod and several of his children visited Neuchatel and the Sacc family after his death.

All attempts to verify his parentage and to find their marriage have also failed. A brick wall indeed!

A fuller story is at https://nancyvada.me/the-mysterious-advent-of-thomas-darchy/

The theme is ; BEARDED.

All the ancestral male portraits which I have show bearded gentlemen. One favourite is my Great Grandfather Alexander Johnston (1829 – 1906). How I acquired his portrait is a story in itself.

When I first started genealogy I knew little about my father’s family. I knew his father, a younger Alexander, had been born in Launceston, Tasmania and that his father had been a librarian. I started to correspond with a lady living there whose Johnston family were also from Launceston but we soon established we were not related. However she went on making enquiries on my behalf and one was at the Launceston Library. It turned out they had a huge portrait of Great Grandfather, commissioned on his retiring after over 60 years’ “faithful service”. Without being asked, the Library had a professional photograph taken and mailed it to me.

Great Grandfather looked exactly like my own clean-shaven father, apart from his huge beard. The same benign expression, the same dark eyes. But both look totally unlike my Granddad.

I’m certainly not bearded but I seem to have inherited characteristics from both GGFather and Gfather ….

The story of Alexander and his wife Margaret is at https://nancyvada.me/alexander-johnston-margaret-lyle-tasmanian-pioneers/