Thank you, Jane! I'm very excited about all the information you've found. I wish I could find absolute proof that Isaac and Mary Ann Austen's son James was my great-grandfather. At this point it appears there is a good chance he was. The recorded history of the Isaac Austen family is growing more and more complex (and I admit to being confused!), but so far I've seen nothing that would rule their James out as being my ancestor James Austen.
This morning while I was searching online for more information about the Isaac Austen family, I found an entry at another ancestry website from a descendant who wrote that in 1858, two years after Isaac's death in 1856, Mary Ann put her children on a ship and went to South Africa. One brother went to Transvaal, one to southern Rhodesia, and one went to Australia. The entry didn't state whether the brother who went to Australia had first gone to S. Africa. To reply to the entry, one would have to be a paid member of the website, which I'm not, but I had nothing to offer, anyway. My great-grandfather James would have been living in America from at least 1851 or 1852, so I know he didn't go with the family. If Mary Ann was buried in 1860 with Isaac in Tobridge, she must have left S. Africa and returned to England. I don't think bodies were transported great distances for burial at the time - or were they sometimes?
At another website I found an entry from a descendant of Isaac and Mary Ann's who lives in Australia and was looking for other descendants of theirs. His email address was provided, so I emailed him, explaining that I might be a descendant, and sent him the link to this thread. I don't know if I'll hear back from him. Maybe he'll join this forum.
I was amazed to read in your post that Isaac's father, John, was married in America, and that this John's father, also named John, died in America. That seems odd, but so did the S. Africa information!
Yes, I'd like very much if you'd try to contact the researcher on Ancestry. Maybe you could direct him here. Would that work? However you decide to handle it would be fine with me.
Oh, my goodness, how I would love to see a portrait of Isaac, and a photo of his tombstone Do you know the name of the cemetery? As I'd mentioned in an earlier post, I was once told that an ancestor - or ancestors - of my father's were buried in one of the possible Gray's "Elegy" churchyards, and I've wondered about it for years.
Thanks again for all you've done!
Author
Topic: James Austen, Godalming (Read 12700 times)