HOME                updated Aug 2010
INLAWS and OUTLAWS
STANLEY

 STANLEY

The jigsaw continues to be filled in.    It is amazing that the family has remained such a mystery for so many years - also very SAD - so many rellies out there that we never knew or met.

From what I have discovered, Charles & Caroline Mary (Rose) Stanley, my g g grandparents, must have been rather staunch Baptists. (Memorial in Baptist Church in the grounds of Scotch College).

My grandfather, Edwin George Washington Stanley, met and fell in love with Ethel May Ewens, whilst he was at Mount Gambier for a Band Concert.

Ethel must have been of a different religion, which appears not to have gone down well with Charles & Rose - therefore Edwin was 'expelled' from the family.   

It has been incredible to find there are other 'Aunts, Uncles and cousins' who knew nothing of (or chose to forget) our branch of the family, or vice versa.  The 'putting together' of the family came about through the assistance of the Mitcham Historical Soc. who were able to give me the first pieces of information on Charles & Rose and some of the background of their early lives, especially about the Mitcham Band.

I have now come across purely by 'accident' information about Charles's sister Mary who emigrated the following year, and the young son of Charles & Rose (Charles John Lawrence Stanley) who came out to Australia with his parents and had, as far as I had found out, had just disappeared from the scene. 

I continue to be amazed at just how far people traveled back in the early days - how long it must have taken, the effort required, the patience, the hardships.  No longer the dirt tracks, the bullocks and drays - just hop in the car, and off you go.   It is no wonder, that finding a 'family' can be such a jigsaw - people just didn't seem to 'stay put' as I would have expected.  This is true of England as well.
One expects a family back then to have relatively 'stayed put' - this is certainly not the case.

Since  I started this 'notation' I have made yet more discoveries, with the help of other new found
cousins ( albiet once or twice removed).  Yet more pieces for the puzzle.
 

I am still trying to find more about gggrandfather David Stanley who was mysteriously born in Coventry in c1815 and who disappears until his marriage in 1840 in Northampton.
A trip to Coventry to the archives there proved fruitless in June/July 2006.............he still remains
a mystery.

If any Stanley member out there reads this account, and the names are familiar - please do get in touch.

It is now August 2010 and David still remains a stumbling block.  He is still the 'mystery man' and for that matter, so are his inlaws, the Wood family and his daughter in law's family the Barber family.
I have still been unable to find a birth for Caroline Mary (Rose) Stanley, nee Barber - yet once she arrives in Australia, a lot more info has come to light.

I am soon to meet a cousin, I knew nothing of him and he knew nothing of me - evidently his grandfather was sent out of the fold like mine.

Further to this - the meeting was great - talk about amazing, although nothing like my first cousin in appearance, had I have closed my eyes, I would have instantly recognised the voice.

His family too, were separated from the 'main group' upon marriage and the following generation have been as astounded as I to find there are more of us out there.

One day the mystery of David might be revealed - in the meantime - I continue the search.