Introduction and Background
This is the factual story of our Grandfather, Claude Harold Annesley. A handsome man, of English heritage, who arrived in Australia in 1903. But not a lot could be found about him.
It is also a story about an Englishman with two names.
Claude Harold Annesley - Sounds like a rather respected name. After all he had turned his back on his aristocratic family, so he had said, and preferred the open lands of the Queensland outback.
and
Harold Jenning Sedgwick - Not quite the same tone?
Who would have thought that these two names, one given at birth, one created to hide a crime would belong to the one person?
But they do.
For our Australian family, it meant lots of questions, new discoveries, and really answered the question "Who do you think you are"?
SO just who was Claude Harold Annesley or correctly Harold Jenning Sedgwick?
And how did he manage to morph from Harold Sedgwick to Claude Annesley, and more importantly Why?
It has taken many years find the truth about man. For decades his son tried to find him, without success.
He died never knowing the controversy surrounding his father. Probably it was best that he never found out. But solving Family History puzzles and breaking through solid "brick walls", is both very challenging and rewarding and has become my career post retirement.
Finding new families, new relatives, and their amazing contribution to the World has been so very rewarding. Harold/Claude died - in his own words - "a lonely old man".
If only he knew how untrue that really was, but for his actions he paid a heavy price.
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But first, let me explain what I see as my role as a grandmother. While no doubt it is so important to be there for one's grandchildren, to love them and to care for them and to support them at all times, I believe that it is also a grandparent's role to be the teller of the family stories.
To provide them with the knowledge of just whose blood flows through their veins, who was involved in providing the lines that make up their individual handprints, and the DNA of their being.
Each one is individual and different, but they are all linked by common threads. The threads of their ancestors. Their character is formed by the genetic factors of those ancestors. That was something previously unknown to me before I came face to face with myself and my 2nd cousins.
I had so many of their qualities, and sometimes when they wrote, it was my words precisely.
That is quite scary, but reality.
Our health and wellbeing is affected by those genes that they hand down. So it is vitally important that they can be not forgotten, but brought alive with their stories, all that occurred in a time so different to today.
So this research is my everlasting gift to my children and grandchildren, to my nieces and nephews, and to my cousins, many of whom I do not know. Never again will they have to feel that "they don't belong", something that I carried with me throughout my life.
I never knew my own father, never even saw a photo of him until I was 65. But to find his family, to see his photo, and to share some time with my Scottish aunt, uncle and cousins, was a huge highlight of a recent trip to UK.
I understood how Dale Herron felt, he was always "missing" that important person, the one that created him. I understand also his quest to find him, and how important that was.
Dale passed away with dementia before his father was "found". In some respects, I am pleased that he died with a vision of his father as the person he created in his mind.
I am also extremely proud to have been able to find and reveal the "real" Claude Annesley.
I trust you will enjoy his story.
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Usually when writing and researching a family member, I have written the stories from the oldest available ancestor and worked forward. This time, with Claude Annesley, his story can only be told how it was known to his family.
His story began when he arrived in Australia in 1903. Nothing was known of his past. He just "appeared" on the doorstep at a time when questions were not asked, papers were not required, and it was common practice to "write" one's own birth certificates.
Claude's story would still be untold perhaps for years, before my determination to "find" who he really was took hold, and the results have had far reaching affect on his descendants.
The story begins with his life in Australia.
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Our grandchildren - Claude's GG Grandchildren - Some of his legacy
Kris Herron - His Grand-daughter in law
September 2015
To read more of our ancestors the following websites provide an insight into just who is who, and whose life can be found in the fingerprints of my grandchildren.
This is the story of my Durnford relatives, which begins with King William the Conqueror, and has extensive research on my 2nd cousion Col Anthony William Durnford who has incorrectly blamed for the loss of the Zulu War in 1879, and which also contains a dedication of the brave members of the Durnford family who enlisted, world wide, in World War 1, including Montagu John Durnsford, my great uncle. Killed at Gallipoli.
This is the first website dedicated to Robert Jillett, a convict, twice ordered to hang. It was built on existing research, and follows his life and marriage with Elizabeth Bradshaw and the lives of his children. His great granddaughter was Katie Isabel Jillett who married Claude Annesley
This website follows the life of Ethel Schossow's German ancestors. Family names include Schossow, Dickfos and Fischer. The families arrived in the mid 1860's from Prussia, and settled in the Fassifern Valley of South East Queensland.
Elizabeth Bradshaw was a woman before her time. Arrived "free" in Australia accompanying her convict husband Thomas Bradshaw, on the Hillsborough, she forged a life in a new country, as a widow. She was assigned a convict, Robert Jillett, they formed a relationship, and she followed him to Norfolk Island, when he was reprieved at the gallows. They later married on their return to Tasmania.
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