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Just to say that I was wrong about Mary Isabella marrying William McBride and returning to Ireland. The message about them is published in Ros Davies’ site but is probably just to mention their marriage. Mary died in New Zealand very young, at 25. Another sad loss of a young woman in the family. M

Thank you for supplying the opening date of the Church. It seems that the newspapers meant that the  PHOTOGRAPH was at the opening ceremony, if not all of the pictured men. Clearly the part George Allen played in the existence of the church needed to be celebrated. Our family knowledge contains detail of how he offered financial support to several churches.   

I hope to find George’s burial place. It is not in the usual family vaults and
I cannot now locate the computer-generated newspaper article since I have taken out a reading subscription.

Mary

Lu

Sorry about the typos, especially in a post about writing etc. These 83 year old fingers seem to miss the keys quite often, and the old eyes miss things in the proofreading. M77

Everything helps, so I will go back over Dale’s very first questions. It may help someone like it helped me. I will not repeat details that are already present.


Thomas Millar had an interesting middle name, and it is difficult to decide on the spelling. It is a name which appears on several very early ships to Canterbury. Dale has both McClune and McCune. The printout of his wedding to Sarah Doyle has McClure, but you could argue for McClune. This copy also has Miller instead of Millar.

1. Samuel George appears to have been born to them in 1866. Have not researched further yet
2. The big surprise to me - I have two wonderful, if very wrinkled, newsprint photographs of the double wedding of two Amor sisters, daughters of Elizabeth and Richard Amor. Isabella Amor, b1876, and Alison Amor, b1877, married in 1906 in the Leeston Town Hall. Isabella married John Thomas Millar. (As I write, I remember a family habit and that was to give the father’s name to the child but to use a second name in everyday life.) I have not yet found children for this family. Alison Amor married George Nairn, who was my grandfather’s brother. Their 5 children are recorded in NZ BDM. I will search family records for those of Isabella. I am trying to get newspaper originals of the photographs. It is wonderful also because it has in it the first demonstration Ford car in Christchurch. There it is in pride of place, right in front of the wedding photo, and my grandfather, William James Nairn, its owner, probably transported the happy couples!
3. Another surprise, in that it gave me ANOTHER link between the families - Hugh Alexander Millar married Sara/Sarah Allen, born 1878, and Sarah was my grandmother’s sister - Ellen Allen, who married William James Nairn above, in 1908. Their parents were Alexander Allen and Elizabeth Flynn Allen. Sarah and Hugh, sadly, lost many babies, but two did survive - Kura, married name Cullen, and Arnold James.
4. The next SURPRISE rocked me. I had not previously connected the Millar names because the brides were of different generations. Annie Elizabeth Allen was daughter of William John Allen who married Mary Amelia McKee. This Allen family does have a cousin connection to ours, but the exact nature of the cousinship is uncertain. There is a wonderfully long newspaper report of Annie’s wedding, but I cannot lay my hands on it right now. William John Allen and his two sisters all married in the 1880s. I mentioned earlier that one sister, Mary Isabella married in New Zealand but went back to Ireland. The other sister Elizabeth Allen married Hugh Johnston 8 December 1883, Christchurch, Presbyterian. I cannot find this in BDM, but is in newspapers. These 3 Allen siblings were the children of a Samuel Allen, but the Allens were notorious for the very few given names they used.

Rona was recorded as Rona Catharine Eaves on her birth record. Variations like this sometimes make our records hard to find. Her father, Charles Eaves, died in 1938, and Nicholina Eaves married Arthur William Cooper in 1944.

Yes, I agree that Samuel had to be born in 1866. Our families often ignored middle names, or a second name was added later, because there could be too many with the same ancestor’s name. In NZ it was often a thing to mock ‘middle’ names especially if they were at all pretentious.