Since my last post I've been on a little trip to Queensland with my sister to meet new-found cousins. Since I hate going anywhere, especially flying, the trip itself was awful - just as I expected - but actually meeting the people was most enjoyable, though we all talked ourselves silly.
We flew to Toowoomba, a city about two hours' drive west of Brisbane, where we stayed with Judith, a cousin discovered through Ancestry.com. Our common relatives, a brother and sister, go back three generations.
(I'd completely forgotten about a dreadful flood five years ago that had nearly washed Toowoomba away, despite the fact that it is perched on top of a mountain. The downpour caused a wall of water 8 to 20m high to flood the area in the photo above, washing away everything in its path, drowning 20 people and continuing on to inundate Brisbane.
Check it out online: Grantham flood images. My cousin lost her house in Grantham.)
In Brisbane we caught up with Joseph, the Jewish dentist's, side. In spite of marrying twice, he had no children apart from my father, but his sister did, and we met her great-grandson, Graham. If you remember, Joseph got my grandmother, Annie Louise, pregnant, and, as she was a Catholic nun, it must have caused quite a stir back in 1907.
We visited Joseph's grave - nothing but grass, which is hard to understand, as have you ever met a poor dentist??? Then we visited a double grave, complete with headstone, containing the remains of grandmother Annie Louise and the nice man she later married, Matthias Philipson.
Now, for the really interesting bit. That afternoon, when Yvonne, the sister-in-law of the Jewish cousin Graham, was walking her dog, she chatted to another dog-walker, a lapsed Catholic, whose name I do not know. This nameless person's vivid imagination, together with her knowledge of Catholic stuff, enabled her to put together this story, which I think is what must have happened. The already known facts are in straight black letters and the imagined bits in red Italics:
Annie Louise Fairbrother, born in London and christened Anglican, emigrated to Brisbane aged 7 with her family in 1887. Several more children were born, and some years later her father was charged with beating her mother and I presume they separated. At the age of 15, Annie Louise was sent to a Catholic nunnery or school (probably All Hallows in Fortitude Valley), as a domestic servant. There she converted to Catholicism in return for being taught the piano to a level high enough to enable her to become a piano teacher. She was either called or planned after taking her final vows to call herself, Sr Stanislaus.
In Brunswick St, Fortitude Valley, right opposite the railway station, Joseph had his dental surgery. Annie Louise became pregnant before taking her final vows and went to Sydney by steamer to give birth to Joseph Stanislaus Fairbrother in St Margaret's Hospital for 'respectable' unmarried mothers.
She called the baby Joseph after the baby's father and Stanislaus after herself as it had been a love affair, but she would not allow herself to marry a Jew, so, two years later married Matthias, a good Catholic.
Sounds spot-on to me! The sad part is, it seems neither of Joseph's later wives loved him, as the first one left him and the second one outlived him and didn't even give him a grave or headstone, and he wasn't a Jew by religion, anyway!
Ironically, St Stanislaus was the patron saint of Poland and that's where Joseph's Jewish family came from in the 1700s.
We flew to Toowoomba, a city about two hours' drive west of Brisbane, where we stayed with Judith, a cousin discovered through Ancestry.com. Our common relatives, a brother and sister, go back three generations.
(I'd completely forgotten about a dreadful flood five years ago that had nearly washed Toowoomba away, despite the fact that it is perched on top of a mountain. The downpour caused a wall of water 8 to 20m high to flood the area in the photo above, washing away everything in its path, drowning 20 people and continuing on to inundate Brisbane.
Check it out online: Grantham flood images. My cousin lost her house in Grantham.)
In Brisbane we caught up with Joseph, the Jewish dentist's, side. In spite of marrying twice, he had no children apart from my father, but his sister did, and we met her great-grandson, Graham. If you remember, Joseph got my grandmother, Annie Louise, pregnant, and, as she was a Catholic nun, it must have caused quite a stir back in 1907.
We visited Joseph's grave - nothing but grass, which is hard to understand, as have you ever met a poor dentist??? Then we visited a double grave, complete with headstone, containing the remains of grandmother Annie Louise and the nice man she later married, Matthias Philipson.
Now, for the really interesting bit. That afternoon, when Yvonne, the sister-in-law of the Jewish cousin Graham, was walking her dog, she chatted to another dog-walker, a lapsed Catholic, whose name I do not know. This nameless person's vivid imagination, together with her knowledge of Catholic stuff, enabled her to put together this story, which I think is what must have happened. The already known facts are in straight black letters and the imagined bits in red Italics:
Annie Louise Fairbrother, born in London and christened Anglican, emigrated to Brisbane aged 7 with her family in 1887. Several more children were born, and some years later her father was charged with beating her mother and I presume they separated. At the age of 15, Annie Louise was sent to a Catholic nunnery or school (probably All Hallows in Fortitude Valley), as a domestic servant. There she converted to Catholicism in return for being taught the piano to a level high enough to enable her to become a piano teacher. She was either called or planned after taking her final vows to call herself, Sr Stanislaus.
In Brunswick St, Fortitude Valley, right opposite the railway station, Joseph had his dental surgery. Annie Louise became pregnant before taking her final vows and went to Sydney by steamer to give birth to Joseph Stanislaus Fairbrother in St Margaret's Hospital for 'respectable' unmarried mothers.
She called the baby Joseph after the baby's father and Stanislaus after herself as it had been a love affair, but she would not allow herself to marry a Jew, so, two years later married Matthias, a good Catholic.
Sounds spot-on to me! The sad part is, it seems neither of Joseph's later wives loved him, as the first one left him and the second one outlived him and didn't even give him a grave or headstone, and he wasn't a Jew by religion, anyway!
Ironically, St Stanislaus was the patron saint of Poland and that's where Joseph's Jewish family came from in the 1700s.
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