Staff Sergeant William Vivian

[nudge67]

So, its ANZAC Day, and I'm trying to identify all relatives within six degrees of separation who served in the AIF.

My great-grandfather Victor Rhodes Vivian was a 26-year-old Trooper who embarked aboard the HMAT Seang Bee at Adelaide on 10th Feb 1917. His next of kin was his father John Peter Vivian of Mannum, South Australia.

On the same ship was Staff Sergeant William Vivian, age 31, who's listed next of kin was his father, J. Vivian, of Mannum, South Australia.

are they brothers? or cousins? I am reasonably sure that all the Vivians in Mannum at that time were of the same rather large extended family, yet I can't see how William fits in.

Thanks in advance, all help is always appreciated.

Nudge

[wivenhoe]

NAA WW1
VIVIAN William  Service Number - 17136
Place of Birth - Moonta SA : Place of Enlistment - Adelaide SA
Next of Kin - (Father) VIVIAN Johnson

 Yorke's Peninsular Advertiser 5 Oct 1917  p2   Obituary foe Johnson VIVIAN
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/216030583?

  see also   https://aif.adfa.edu.au/showPerson?pid=309423

genealogysa    birth
VIVIAN   William   M   Johnson VIVIAN     Daly   355/314   1885

[nudge67]

wow! so that's interesting. My Vivians are not of Cornish descent. Went down that road before. In fact, theirs is an anglicization of the Flemish surname Whiffen. So there was a second unrelated VIVIAN family in the Mannum area!

[Christine Cramer]

Three of John Peter Vivian's sons enlisted for WW1.  They were:

James Seymour Vivian, service no. 771
John Wallace Vivian, service no. S15342
Victor Rhodes Vivian, service no. 3188

William Vivian, service no. 17136 (the staff sergeant) had a different father, Johnson Vivian. William Arthur Vivian, service no. Depot, was related(his nephew), being the grandson of Johnson Vivian (his father Henry was Johnson's son).

You can see the service records of these men at the website of the National Archives.

https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/SearchScreens/BasicSearch.aspx

I will see if I can establish whether the two families were related.

[Christine Cramer]

Johnson Vivian was a native of Camborne in Cornwall and had been living in Mannum for six and a half years before his death in 1917 (source:  Trove obituary).  He emigrated to Queensland in 1870 and lived there briefly before moving to Moonta where his son (the staff sergeant) was born.

John Peter Vivian (father of the three WW1 brothers) died in Mannum in 1922.  According to his Trove obituary, his father James Peter Vivian arrived in Sydney as a free settler on the ship Navarino (port of origin Gravesend in Kent, England) afterwards travelling overland with sheep to South Australia.  Some descendants disagree, saying he was the English convict James Vivian who arrived on the ship Claudine in 1829.  In either case, these men were both English, not Cornish.

So there doesn't appear to me to be a connection between the two families.