MILLAR

[minniehaha]

Cenotaph record for Ronald:

https://www.aucklandmuseum.com/war-memorial/online-cenotaph/record/153347


Minniehaha.

[minniehaha]

Possibly the missing birth registration mentioned by the original poster:

1866/9199  Miller Samuel      mother: Sarah   father:  Thomas


Minniehaha.

[Moffitt77]

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.

[Moffitt77]

Lucy 2. Thank you for the interesting clippings. I followed them online, and discovered that Rona’s fiancé had just moved into the same army group as my uncle. A J Smith was a driver/mechanic in that same group. After looking at his photographs which are now in my keeping, I can see that it was one of the most dangerous places to be, because those tanks had to be delivered from one front to the next in the height of the battles. There are hundreds of photographs, and each time I look, I will now wonder if Major Robert Gordon Parkinson is present in any. Some show Casino, and other known battle areas, but many show the men in ordinary activities. 

[Moffitt77]

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.

[Lucy2]

Rona was recorded as Rona Catharine Eaves on her birth record. Variations like this sometimes make our records hard to find.

Well, yes, the online listing at NZ BDM does show "Catharine" as the spelling.
But do bear in mind also that the listings you see at that site are transcriptions of the original records - which may have been difficult to read if they were damaged in some way;  were faded;  were written in a "hand" (- think scrawl) that was difficult to decipher ... etc. etc.
Consider too that the lower-case handwritten (- or even typed) letter  "e" can be - and is often - mistaken for the (lower-case)  letter  " a "  :
 
The NZ BDM online listing of the spelling though, is no guarantee that that was actually the intended spelling of the name.     
For comparison  > >
   at the  "New Zealand Birth Index"  (via ancestry.com site) the birth was recorded as > >
EAVES - Rona Catherine - 1918 - Birth Quarter :  Oct-Nov-Dec  : Registerd at Malvern, Canterbury.

And if we want to be especiially particular about say, a "correct" spelling of a name, then there are usually other records (- and indexes) we can refer to, to determine which spelling was commonly used.    [Electoral rolls - where a person has supplied their (own) details - are mostly a reliable source. ]

  ~  Lu

[Lucy2]

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.

It's there ... at NZ BDM  online  >

1883 / 3108

ALLUN (spelling) - Elizabeth -- JOHNSTON - Hugh


    ~  Lu

[Moffitt77]

Thank you. Your note reminds me that I did find that version. I have too many forms of records, reams of paper files, four non-compatible computer software types,  formerly not able to be transferred, and of course ‘bulging’ current computer files - if I can call them that.

You are so right about handwriting. My own name, which I thought would be uncommon, has about thirty variations, with only the initial M common to them all. I dare say there could be some versions without the M, but I don’t want to think about that.

I recognise a knowledge of handwriting in what you have written. Do you think that it is possible to identify a person’s age from a handwriting style. I have an important letter written by either an aunt or a cousin. They both signed off with the same shortened version of their common name, so I don’t know which of them wrote one of the most important messages in all of my research. I believe that I can identify the difference between the writing of someone who was born 1867, and another who was born in 1995. Can you direct me to someone more knowledgeable about such things, so that air can confirm my findings.  I do have one chart, but fear it is limited.

[Moffitt77]

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