Hi,
Hoping you can help me with a brick wall I have please. I’ve come across your post to the Rootschat site dated back in 2015.
An ancestor of mine was Henry Thomas COLE who married Elizabeth Macdonald 1819 London.
The had 7 children, I descend from the last one, Elizabeth Jane who ended up in Australia, marrying Tom Tratt.
One of their children, Aline, married Joseph Perrin and one of their children Ada, was my dad’s mum.
She has notes that her grandmother (Elizabeth Jane) told her how she recalled coming out to Oz with her mum and maybe a brother (maybe Silas?) and waiting at the dock for their father’s ship to arrive. Apparently he walked right past them and went off with his Melbourne wife. In my Nana’s notes, his name was now George Ward Cole.
George Ward Cole ended up a very wealthy man, he became a ship’s captain, he was then an MP in Melbourne (Cole’s Wharf was named after him), he founded the Victorian seaside town of St Leonards, it was a ‘company’ town. He and his Melbourne wife, Thomas Ann McCrae, lived in a house on the cliff tops of Brighton and had 6 children, most dying young and seemingly all childless.
I have been trying to confirm he was actually Henry Thomas but to no avail. I found his IGI birth registration was submitted by an uncle, Thomas James (on George’s mother’s side) but Thomas Ann McCrae’s birth registration was also submitted by Thomas James! Makes me think they were both done when they were adults, perhaps prior to marrying and needing birth certificates?
George also married in 1824 to an English woman in India and they had a son, Luke Ward Cole who came out to Oz when he was 21 but one New Year’s Day was out in a boat with George and others, and Luke drowned.
I know Henry Thomas was a mariner. I can’t help but wonder if he was born Henry Thomas and became George Ward or born George and became Henry while he was married to Elizabeth!
But then I see in your Rootsweb post, how Henry Thomas lived in Sydney and was married to a convict’s wife and was a millionaire. I’m wondering what name he went by and if it was George Ward/Henry Thomas masquerading as someone else, or if George Ward has nothing to do with us after all. Although my Nana couldn’t have plucked his name from nowhere and the Ward was carried on as a middle name further along the line. She also had some news clippings re George.
I would love to hear of your connection and just who the Sydney man was and where it all fits in please!
Talk about having a wife in every port!!
I also note you had Henry’s London wife Elizabeth dying in a poorhouse – was that in Oz or did she return to England? The only possible death reg. I could find (way back when I first started this) was a death of an Eliza Cole in Sydney in 1869 aged 79.
Really hoping we can connect and maybe my brick wall might fall down!
Cheers Debbie
