Origins.net

I recently came across Origins.net (http://www.origins.net/ ), which claims to be ‘the premier resource for tracing your British and Irish ancestors’. You can pay a subscription or search and then pay for documents, but it is supposed to have access to wills and probate records, key Irish records and specialist British and London records, which is not very specific, and makes you wonder if you can get the same information from other sources. The site has recently made available Greater London Burials 1545 – 1909. These indexes cover the City of London, Middlesex and South London (metropolitan Surrey) parishes and include well over half a million burials. This index brings together hundreds of individual registers. The project was commenced in 1978 by Cliff Webb and continues on to cover to end of the burial registers rather than 1837, where a lot of other databases cease. Certainly worth a look if this could apply to your ancestors.

They Might Not Be Buried Where They Died

I recently read the warning that a person may not be buried where they died. Here at Manly Library we get many requests to find people in Manly Cemetery, because Manly is the district in which the death was registered, and it is surprising how frequently they are not buried in Manly. There are several other cemeteries in the area, including Mona Vale, Frenchs Forest, Macquarie or Northern Suburbs, and we frequently find records of a person buried or cremated elsewhere. A person may wish to be buried with other family members, or family members may want them buried closer to where they live.

It is possible that a person died while travelling or living a distance away with a relative and were returned ‘home’ for burial. Perhaps they died in the local hospital and lived some distance away. Sometimes people who pass away at an advanced age will be returned to where their spouse was interred, especially women who have gone to live with relatives in another area possibly will be returned to be buried next to her husband.

The case of Robert Shute is one example. The Shute Shield is the premier grade rugby trophy in NSW and was struck in honour of the late Robert Elliott Stewart Shute, who died on June 6, 1922, following a match at Manly Oval. Robert played for Sydney University and the University Club had the shield made following his death and donated it to the NSWRU to be used as a perpetual trophy for the Sydney first grade competition. As his death was registered as happening in Manly, it was assumed he was buried in Manly. We were asked to ‘locate’ him. When I considered other information about where he lived, studied and played sport, I soon found that he was actually buried in Waverley Cemetery.

The importance of the right burial plot

Dick Eastman, in his online genealogy newsletter, recently reported about the lady who found another woman buried next to her husband in the plot that she thought was reserved for her own use someday.

It seems that the cemetery's previous owners had sold the cemetery plot twice in the 1980s. The husband was the first to occupy the plot but the second person to be buried there was a woman from the other owner(s). The cemetery owners could not dig up the strange woman, but were willing to relocate the husband, so they could still be buried side by side.

Such mix-ups are rare, but widely reported when they do happen. An incident at Manly Cemetery was reported as far afield as Broken Hill, Darwin, Perth and Victoria. About 1901 a man bought a plot of land in Manly cemetery. He did so to prevent his mother-in-law being buried there. His sister-in-law was buried in Manly Cemetery and knowing that his mother-in-law wanted to be buried beside her, he bought the plot alongside so as to thwart her. However in June 1926 he discovered that she had died in 1921 and that her remains had been interred in his plot. The man had been separated from his wife for 30 years and blamed his mother-in-law for the alienation of the affections of his wife. The man had moved to Victoria, but when he returned to Manly he found his plot had been used and insisted that his mother-in-law be removed, and as a legal fight was not desired, the undertakers exhumed the body of the mother-in-law and removed it to another grave.

The story was reported in Barrier Miner (Broken Hill, NSW) Sat 26 June 1926 p.1; Northern Standard (Darwin, NT) Tuesday 29 June 1926, p3; Mirror (Perth, WA) Sat 26 June 1926 p.1; and Gippsland Times (Vic) Monday 28 June 1926, p3.

And a sign of the times – A printed notice on the gatepost at Manly cemetery: “This way In. One Way Traffic” from SMH Thursday 16 July 1953 p.1 Column 8.