Some two or three days ago I was looking through photos of my late wife Edith who passed in Cairns in May 2007. She had told me about one photo in particular of herself and her friend Judith Jensen, both nurses at Footscray Hospital, Melbourne in the early 1950's. The photograph was taken in Trafalgar Square after their voyage from Melbourne in the Otranto Aug/Sep 1955. They both went on to Copenhagen which I had always thought to be Judith's home. Ede worked there as a live in Nanny for some months before going to Scotland where she married her first husband Dick Stewart.
The passenger list gives Judith Jensen birth date as 31st October, 1931, travelling on a Danish passport, country of last and of future residence, Australia.
Being inquisitive I decided to see if I could find more about Judith in Ancestry and there is a tree which does have her being born in 1931, but in Australia with her father being Olaf Waldemar Herman Jensen of Copenhagen who migrated to Australia in 1909. Olaf or Oluf married a Dorothy O'Brien in Melbourne in 1924 and they lived in Newport Melbourne but later on in Williamstown where Judith grew up, went to school and became a Nurse.
It more or less all fitted in until I found that this Judith Jensen had married Peter Nelson in 1952 and they had a son John born 1954 who died in 1957. So now it looks most unlikely that this could be the same Judith Jensen, Ede's old friend. However, remembering that Ede did go to High School in Williamstown as did Judith, I can't help wondering since both born same year, both nurses, both with Copenhagen ancestry.
I then turned attention to Olaf Jensen and again one public, and two private trees popped up in Ancestry. A quick look in Family Search and I found his birth registry record, born Oluf Valdemar Herman Jensen 9th February 1890 and baptised there in May 1890.
There was another Oluf/Olaf Valdemar Jensen born in Copenhagen with an age in 1917 that virtually matches the above. However I have now looked at all of the first Oluf's war records and they just cannot be one and the same.
Nevertheless there is more mystery in the war records for these include a letter to the Australian Military via the Danish Consul in Melbourne from an unknown wife in Copenhagen.
Malcolm
