Hello again winenhoe,
Re: your questions:
Do you have death certificates for these people -
William Cornelius QUINLAN d. 1935
Anne Nora JOHNSTON nee QUINLAN d. 1915
Ellen MORGAN nee QUINLAN d. 1926
***I have Ellen Morgan's death certificate. I now know that it contains some errors rather than clarifications. It was informed by my grandfather who either didn't know or chose to muddy the waters. I suspect he didn't know. He put, e.g., that she had lived all 70 years in Victoria.
William C. Quinlan is the easiest and clearest for researching. His name is clear on Tasmanian records, as are his parents. He is in fact named after his father. And the death notice in newspapers (provided courtesy of you) makes it clear he died in my grandparents' house at 284 Tyler St. Preston, with that suburb named on the bdm site as place of death. Little ambiguity about his name.
I do not have (but a distant cousin may will have) Annie Johnston's death cert. but what we do have is a collection of newspaper accounts of her stabbing murder at the home of her sister Ellen and brother William, at the hands of the estranged husband (John McNamara) of Ellen Morgan's daughter Lettie. Annie Johnston's family believe her to have been born Margaret Quinlan in Tasmania.
"...They seem to have chosen new names when they came to Melbourne, for reasons best known to themselves." Do you know when they arrived in Victoria, and what names they used in Tasmania?
I do know that Ellen Morgan was in Adelaide in 1878 for the birth of her first child Emily Sophia Morgan and her next child died in Melbourne in 1880, so she reached Victoria in the interim.
Annie Johnston's family have no clear idea when she left Tasmania but her marriage record places her here in Victoria in 1884. She would have been 20/21 y.o. at that time and her sister was in Melbourne by then. Their father died in 1882, violently. These two events may or may be related. Their brother Bill may well have been in Campbell Town in 1890, as a criminal record suggests. He must have been in Victoria by 1895 for his name to appear on Gordon Quinlan's birth cert. as the father.
Just when we think it can't get any murkier .....
And Judith, re: this observation of yours:
That Launceston registrar was determined to add a 'd' to the surname!
Spot on! or was the Quinlan spelling the error? Given the prevalence of illiteracy at the time the scribe doing the recording of details may well have best guessed a spelling which a family member didn't know for sure anyway. Simple matter of fact is: I don't know with any certainty. I lean towards Quinlan, given that W.C. Quinlan's name stays without the (d), and I could be dead wrong.
I cannot thank you all enough for your help.
