Find Ancestors

Thank you SylviaInCanada - you assistance and advice about using the post board has been very useful - you can see that I am a novice!

The information that you found on the jewish/australia site was from my sister who was living in Greece until a few years ago and she only had the information which I had given her as I had the actual Barnados document .
It states literally that :
Some distant relatives by marriage collected £20 for my grandmother and she was receiving it at the rate of £2 per month (as she was left destitute when my grandfather died). She was temporarily sheltered by a Mr and Mrs Wyles since the 16th August renting 3 small rooms over a stable.

RELATIVES (of the 3 small boys):
3 paternal uncles nemed Cohen; an address which has found them is-
Jolly Old Fellows, Ltd., Pitt Street, Sydney, NSW
This document was written on 28th August 1924 when my father and elder brother were admitted for six months only into Barnados Homes.

The reason that we have tried both Odd fellows and Old fellows is because there are so many name changes along the way and try everything we can?

Thank you again

Re you uncles .....................

you orignally posted that the address you had for them was "The Odd or Old Fellows"

and that led JoonieC to research Oddfellows .......... which is a long time fraternal organization.


Now you state that the address was

Jolly Old Fellows Ltd, Pitt Street, Sydney NSW.



That is something quite different from the Oddfellows!!



Jolly Old Fellows seams to have been a phrase used by soldiers in WW1 ................ you can buy records from Jolly Old Fellows discography, which are the songs from the First World War




I found this site by googling

http://www.jewishaustralia.com/seekingrelatives.htm


and on there was this request ............... is this you??

-----------
SEARCHING FOR COHEN FAMILY MEMBERS
I am looking for information regarding my grandfather's family.

All we know about his background is that he met my grandmother in South Africa, he changed his name from Cohen to Martin-Collins and his religion to Church of England, they married in Durban in 1917, then left for England in 1919.

Whilst there they had three sons (one my father).

My grandfather died in 1924 but made mention of having three brothers called Cohen who were working for a company called Jolly Old Fellows Ltd of Pitt Street, Sydney at this time.

Does this ring any bells for anyone?

Pxxxxxxx Cxxxxxx
xxxxxxx, Greece

---------------

(and she gives an email address that may or may not still be in use.




note that she definitely references the uncles "working for a company called"

Valerie ..................


I do wish you had NOT ticked JoonieC's reply ................ you cannot now remove that tick, but it shows up on the Board Index as indicating that ALL your questions have been satisfactorily answered


Very few people will now open this thread.



It is a quirk of GR that they allowed that tick, but cannot seem to install a means of removing it.




All you can do now, is to remember NOT to use it in future

Thank you also for the reply to my looking for my Paternal Great Uncles as I was hoping, against hope, that I may have been able to find out where our Grandfather was actually born - was it the UK; South Africa or Australia - I do realise that with the surname Cohen (which he then changed to Collins) that without their first names it would be almost impossible - the only information that I had about them was a one sheet of information from Barnados once I was able to obtain my Fathers and elder brothers information from them.

It literally states:

RELATIVES:
3 paternal uncles ( of the boys of course as this was the Barnados information) named Chen; an address which has found them is- Jolly Old Fellows Ltd, Pitt Street, Sydney NSW.

When I was visiting Sydney a few years ago, I could see that Pitt St is in the heart of the business centre of Sydney now with high rise offices.

The Barnados information also states before the inclusion about the RELATIVES that my Grandmother had been left destitute with the 3 children and some distant relatives by marriage collected £20 for her and she was receiving it at a rate of £2 per month whilst temporarily sheltered in 3 small rooms over a stable at 16, Sandringham Mews, High Street , Ealing.

My search of this address so far has not revealed anything as to where she went after giving away her youngest son , the baby Richard for fostering via the Catholic Church.

Thank you again

Thank you very much Joonie Cloonie

I will investigate further based upon the information you have found and in the meantime I am awaiting the marriage and death certificates that were ordered last week.
I know name changes happen and have certainly within my grandparents life and I am guessing that the Aletha Alberta is not Granny as her name on the SA marriage certificate is Alberta Aleta.
Thank you again.

the death that AnnCardiff posted of Aletha Alberta Robinson in Birmingham is interesting

it could match with this death for the husband

Name: John G Robinson
Birth Date: abt 1894
Date of Registration: Sep 1966
Age at Death: 72
Registration district: Birmingham
Inferred County: Warwickshire
Volume: 9c
Page: 41


into all our lives the price of a few certificates must fall ... you will want to consider some of these ideas and decide whether to order a marriage and/or death certificate to check them out, for instance


you say you have your grandparents' marriage certificate - does it not name one or both of John's parents??

Valerie I think everyone was rather fully occupied trying to figure out the original part of your query :-)

Pitt Street, Sydney, is in NSW Australia (always wise to specify country, people here are from all over ... you may be using the .com.au or .za or .nz version of this site but most here are reading your posts on .co.uk).

John Martin Collins/Cohen was born c1875 ... in South Africa?

do you know any of the brothers' first names? that information is rather essential if you have it

https://familyhistory.bdm.nsw.gov.au/lifelink/familyhistory/search

I looked at Cohen births in NSW for a John c1875 and there seems to be no match with any John who had three brothers (searching births 1860-1890 with the same mother as any of the John or Jonas births)

I assume they were all born in SA ... but the three brothers settled in NSW?


Oddfellows is a fraternal organization

http://www.manta.com/ic/mvm4prc/au/manchester-unity-independent-order-of-oddfellows

Manchester Unity Independent Order Of Oddfellows
Manchester Unity Travel
307 Pitt St
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

this site
http://www.sydneyarchitecture.com/cbd/cbd4-052.htm
suggests that the Oddfellows moved to Pitt St after 1923

more info about Oddfellows in Australia:
http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/themes/2003/grand-united-order-of-oddfellows

ultimately 'Then in March 2005, Grand United Friendly Society (New South Wales) merged with Australian Unity.'
http://www.australianunity.com.au/about-us

... unfortunately it doesn't seem likely that the organization would have records from the early days as a travellers' lodge ...

if his brothers were born sometime around the same time as John (the 1870s) it seems odd they would all be single and staying at this lodge in the 1920s ... perhaps they used it as a postal address ...

available NSW electoral rolls only begin in 1930
http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=1207

in 1930 there were 794 Cohens on the electoral roll in NSW ... 99 male Cohens in Sydney ...

There are so many Cohens in the NSW BMD indexes that it would be hopeless to try to identify them without their names or at least their parents' names (which are shown in the deaths index ... if they were known)

I am looking for my Grandfathers three brothers who resided at The Odd or Old Fellows in Pitt Street, Sydney in July 1924.
Their names were Cohen and they sent money to my Grandmother in the UK when my grandfather, (who had changed his name from Cohen) named John Martin Collins died on the 1st July 1924 leaving her with three small sons.

Thank you Sylvia - very grateful for your assistance

Valerie


Thank you for the fuller explanation ..... that could give us more information on what / who / where to look



Sylvia (In Canada)

The births of the 3 sons were registered in several different ways and the family certainly travelled around! Thank goodness FMP threw them up (just by entering Collins/Grange) under the various surname/mothers maiden name combinations to then find on freebmd

Surname First name(s) Mother District Vol Page

Births Mar 1920 (>99%)
Collins Leslie V La Grange Southampton 2c 143

Births Mar 1920 (>99%)
Martin-Collins Leslie V Le Grange Southampton 2c 143

Births Mar 1923 (>99%)
Martin-Collins Howard De La Grange Lancaster 8e 1085

Births Jun 1924 (>99%)
Collins Richard P De la Grange Medway 2a 1249

Dear Well Dressing - thank you very much for the information - I do have my grandparents marriage certificate that I found by visiting the records office in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.
I only had my grandmothers 'British' name of Rosaline Collins or Martin-Collins then but knew that they were married there and my grandfather had changed name and religion from Cohen to Collins and Jewish to Church of England.
My grandmother was Roman Catholic. The marriage certificate did state that he was 42 years old and Grandmother was 23 years old .
From information that I received from Barnados in the UK ( when she placed two of her small sons there due to her husband dying on 1st July 1924 aged 49), she had told them she was 26! This meant to me that she was born in 1898?
The rest of the information that she gave to Barnados was that she was of French extraction born in SA and her mother died when she was 18 months old and was then brought up in a Roman Catholic convent.
Her father died in 1915 ( she would have been 17) and he was a farmer in SA. She then married my grandfather in 1917 ( aged 19?) and in 1919 they came to England.I did find the incoming passenger list thank you that you have posted.
I believe that she may have lied about her age when she married as there is a column on the marriage certificate that under 21 years of age needs parental consent and of course they were both deceased by then. Her name on the marriage certificate is Alberta Aleta la Grange age 23 years.
My grandfather is named as John Martin Collins on the marriage certificate.
On the two eldest sons birth certificates he is named as John Martin-Collins and grandmother is named as Rosaline Martin -Collins formerly La Grange and the second son ( my father), Rosaline Martin-Collins, formerly Dela Grange.
The youngest son has John Martin Collins and Rosaline Collins formerly De La Grange.
All of the sons are deceased now but I have found a first cousin in New Zealand (September 2011) and we have become very close and met up in the last few years a few times. She recalls her father (the youngest son) telling her that he was being dressed in his best clothes and taken to The Hotel Russell to meet an 'old' lady?? She would not have been elderly if this was his mother but not sure who it was - as they gave that address, maybe they knew someone who was there when they arrived from SA?
The eldest son was born in the county of Southampton on 19th January 1920 and so I guess she was pregnant on the journey from SA?
There are many mysteries for us as she seemed to disappear following my grandfathers untimely death in Gillingham, Kent in 1924.
The youngest son was less than 4 months old when she asked the RC priest to find someone to look after him and she would return as she had no money.
The older two were placed with Barnados for only 6 months which indicates that she hoped to return for them too as they were not put up for adoption.
The oldest son, Leslie Victor Collins I believe was in the Merchant navy and died in America. Social security index: Leslie V. Collins , SSN 129-20-6784, born 19th January 1920, Died 10th December 1996.

Thank you very much for anything that you have, or do find, as it is quite a task.

Rosaline Martin Collins age 19 arrived in Southampton 17 Sept 1919, shown as housewife

with John Martin Collins, Retiree


UK, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960

Name: Rosaline Martin Collins
Birth Date: abt 1900
Age: 19
Port of Departure: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Arrival Date: 17 Sep 1919
Port of Arrival: Southampton, England
Ports of Voyage: Cape Town
Ship Name: Runic
Search Ship Database: Search for the Runic in the 'Passenger Ships and Images' database
Shipping line: White Star Dominion Line
Official Number: 113441


Name: John Martin Collins
[John Martin Collins]
Birth Date: abt 1875
Age: 44
Port of Departure: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Arrival Date: 17 Sep 1919
Port of Arrival: Southampton, England
Ports of Voyage: Cape Town
Ship Name: Runic



the actual image is very poor, I think the following is correct ......


They boarded the ship in Capetown, and gave the following address:-

Hotel Russell
Russell Square, London

who is the Rosaline Collins in your header?????????

message from Valerie


Looking for anything related to my grandparents - grandfather was John Collins or Martin-Collins - changed name from Cohen - married in Durban July 20th 1917

thanks for the message - you can respond on here and ask any further questions - use the "reply" box - very easy - any probs, just ask

message sent to poster

Name: Alberta A Robinson
Event Type: Death
Registration Quarter: Jan-Feb-Mar
Registration Year: 1957
Registration District: Portsmouth
County: Hampshire
Event Place: Portsmouth, Hampshire, England
Age (available after 1866): 79
Birth Year (Estimated): 1878
Volume: 6B
Page: 485
Line Number: 77

???????????

Name: Aletha Alberta Robinson
Event Type: Death
Registration Quarter: Oct-Nov-Dec
Registration Year: 1974
Registration District: Birmingham
County: Warwickshire
Event Place: Birmingham, Warwickshire, England
Birth Date (available after June quarter 1969): 12 Nov 1895
Volume: 32
Page: 0814
Line Number: 88