Wow! Thanks for all the replies...
I did not realise (as I'm new to this) that I needed to post all the details I already know, so thanks to those who've looked up a whole lot of stuff for me. I am most impressed with the ice cream maker find - I did have that on Ancestry on my Shoebox as a possibility... and I think that fits in well with the other information I have. Mary Elizabeth's maiden name was Foster. My tree is a Public one (Hooper family tree) on Ancestry.com, so I hope people are able to see it.
Sandra's information on the James family is mostly known to me. Lillian Newton (nee James) was my grandmother and she and Jack (John Frederick) came to Australia after they retired, in about 1966. My family (my mother, Peggy, was their daughter) followed in 1970.
I think there may be a mis-reading of the date Lilian and Jack went to Canada, as I have their actual Itinerary and passenger list here. They travelled over there in 1958 to visit a daughter who emigrated to Ontario in 1956 (still living). That would make Lilian's age of 56 correct at the time.
According to a relative of Ada Foster (Elizabeth's sister), both Ricardo Picconi and David John James were a taboo subject in the family, but this relative had no idea why. Elizabeth's daughter to Ricardo, Elsie or Eliza, was known of by my grandmother - but she didn't remember her name and said she "ran away from home" at age 17 - and looking for her was what started me off on the whole Family Tree hunt, about 10 years ago. I found that Elsie married a Thomas Arthur Sutton in 1914. Checking the Electoral Rolls (as I couldn't find a death for Elsie Sutton) it seems that they divorced and she went back to her maiden name, under which I did find her death in 1939 in London.
I would think the visits from the Italian side of the family from Canada (to Edith, Ada Puckett's daughter and family) would have been around the 1930s.
I have been piecing together the child William on the 1891 Census, and have found him living with his Uncle (also William, who was married to Henrietta Ross, but she disappeared I know not where!) in a Boarding House in London in the 1911 Census. A friend in the UK found William's birth record in the Gray's Inn Workhouse in 1888 and I have his birth Certificate, on which Elizabeth says she is a "Music Hall Singer!" The workhouse record lists her on entry as a "Prostitute" (quite a shock for our family!) aged 16, and a "Domestic Servant" when she left. Poverty may have been the key here, as Elizabeth's father Edward had left her mother Phoebe Elizabeth (nee Thompson) for another woman a few years before that. No father is listed on either birth or baptism record for William. Still don't know where William was in 1901, but then David James is also "missing" on that Census and Elizabeth lists herself as the "Head."
Very interesting about the passenger list for Gertrude Wales - I had no idea about that one and this means I may have other relatives in Victoria that I'll have to check out.
Yes, Ada Puckett had 3 children, Gertrude (1898), Edith (1906) and Frederick (1902), who worked for the Salvation Army and the family rumour about him is that he nicked off to Canada (after 1911, as I've found him on the UK Census in London) with the proceeds (another Canadian connection!). I haven't found any newspaper reports on that at this stage.
Let me know if you need any more information.
Cheers
Marilyn
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Topic: Picconi family (Read 6966 times)