Disappearance John Henry MATSEN from Victoria

[muss]

Hi

Found this http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/AUS-MELBOURNE/2009-10/1256679748

Muss

[giblet]

Mmmm i wonder.. Going with the link muss posted. see what you think.

NSW marriage
9170/1906    MATTSON    JOHN H    O'CONNOR    MARY O    SYDNEY

NSW birth index
21139/1908    MATTSON    LETITIA C    JOHN H    MARY O    SYDNEY

Nah i dont think the above is him. Sorry but i would scrap the above

[Floozy]

To hard to tell Giblet, I wonder if he went to India where his brother was?

[morghana]

Thank you Robert for posting this. John Christian's signature looks like he may at this stage be having trouble with his eyes . Trove mentions that he went blind and his son William ,  prior to accepting the mining job in India, built him a house and said.''You will never want while I am alive.''

As John H was an assayer & metallurgist , I have tried tracking the mining reference in case John was employed there also . Oorgaum South India where the Kolor Gold Fields were .

I checked a website that lists the residents of Kolar ,for the year 1905 only . [ as John wasn't with Emma in 1903] . He wasn't on the list .
http://www.oocities.org/kolargoldfield/kgf1905.html

I also checked Families in India Society. No mention of him .[ though it doesn't guarantee he wasn't in India of course ]
http://www.new.fibis.org/-

Thanks for scouting round Susan ... and feel free to ask for any info I may have re family

Thanks for mentioning the 4 pages Giblet .

Muss mentioned the South Star mine Ballarat . Interestingly it did close down sometime  in 1902,
[ though it reopened in 1905] so John would've had to find a new employer.

The next reference to bigamy means if it were true . . . he may have taken an alias name....yet
wouldn't using an alias have hindered his employment prospects in Australia ? Couldn't have proved his mining expertise .

If he did remarry using the Matsen/Mattsen/Matson  name, wouldn't he have been easy to track?  ie newspapers reported on ' deserters' and legally men were meant to pay maintenence for children.
But the bigamy idea is worth pondering .

Thanks everyone for being such a Think Tank !

[morghana]

Regarding the John Mattson in NSW [ m Mary O'Connor] , I saw via a basic non membership Ancestry search that the NSW Mattson was listed as residing in NSW from 1892 - 1886 [ Sands directory ] so it suggests it's a different John .

whilst looking there, I saw a John Mattson had arrived in California in 1904 , departure from Newcastle Australia . Birth listed as about 1874 [ 1 year out] , residence given as Finland.
His family had come from Finland and in 1904 there was mining activity in California .
His father had come to Australia via America . Don't know if this was just the sailing route in those days or if he had spent time there or had relatives there .

it's just speculation but I'm just following the gold mining possibilities given I haven't found a death record in Australia . Makes it tricky when so many outward shipping lists are still on microfilm

[Suem02]

Hi

This is s long shot but may not be the same person.

My great grandfather was Jan Eric Norberg. He wnt missing from Sweden in 1884 and ended up in Nz somehow.. no one knows what he did in between but he married my great grandmother in 1899 in Wairoa.
He changed his name to John Mattsen.

In 1884  he was listed in the church records as missing or dead in sweden. He was in the Swedish Navy.

Let me know if its possible this is the same person

[Floozy]

Hi,

Morgahna has not been online for a long time.

I am a distant relative to Matsen/Reed families

The person you mention is not the John Henry Matsen we are looking for. Our John was born in 1873 Steglitz , Victoria, Australia

Regards Susan