50-Day Family History Blogging Challenge - Day 24
Fragments of Family History – The Family of William Stephens & Mary Newman Buckman – Mary Emma Stephens
Jennifer Jones from TRACKING DOWN THE FAMILY has initiated a 50-Day Family History Blogging Challenge. This is a big writing commitment, but I have decided to participate. I have decided my topic will be “Fragments of Family History”. I will write short posts of newspaper items or single stories connected to my family history. This may expand over the 50 days.
Mary Emma Stephens
My 2x Great Grandmother, Mary Emma Stephens, was the second child of William Stephens and Mary Newman (known as Mary Ann) Buckman. She was one of only two of their eight children to survive to adulthood. When the family arrived in N.S.W. from England in 1840 on board the ship, Royal Consort, as Assisted Immigrants, the record says Mary Emma was 3 years old on the last 27 December.1 This means she was born on 27 December 1836. According to Mary Emma’s death certificate, she was born in West Bromwich, Staffordshire.2
Mary Emma was baptised at St Michael & the Holy Angels Catholic Church, West Bromwich by Reverend George Spencer on 2 April 1837.3
The Assisted Immigrant Record says William, Mary Ann and Mary Emma were Roman Catholic. William and Mary Ann were both baptised Church of England. The explanation for the change in religion was found with the birth of their Australian born children.
According to the English naming pattern, Mary Emma should have been named after her paternal grandmother, who was Mary and she was. The name Emma is nowhere else in the family.
Mary Emma, known as Emma, was brought up in Sydney. As she is one of my sixteen Great-grandparents, I will write a fuller account of her life at a later date as part of the “My Sixteen” series.
Ancestry.com. New South Wales, Australia, Assisted Immigrant Passenger Lists, 1828-1896 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2007. Original data: New South Wales Government. Persons on bounty ships (Agent’s Immigrant Lists). Series 5316, Reels 2134-2143. State Records Authority of New South Wales, Kingswood, New South Wales.
NSW Births, Deaths & Marriages, Death Certificate for Mary Emma Drinkwater, Registration No. 8101/1894.
FindMyPast, England Roman Catholic Parish Baptisms, Birmingham Archdiocesan Archives, P304/1/1,1832-1855, p21.