Favourite Find - An unknown brother

Storyteller Tuesday Challenge

Robin Stewart

from

Genealogy Matters

has a new Storyteller Tuesday Challenge: FAVOURITE FIND

My Favourite Find was the discovery of an elder brother for my Great-Grandfather Larkin Foreman Giles. Sadly, it was a newspaper article describing his accidental death by drowning aged 8. The article is from Trove , the exceptional online repository of the National Library of Australia.

On Tuesday an inquest was held before Mr Parker, at Narrow-gut, on the body of Frederick Giles. Giles was a boy of eight years old, employed on the farm of William Larkin Foreman, of Narrowgut; on Monday Giles as usual fetched some water from the river in tin buckets, and returning a second time for some he did not come back to the house, and Mrs Foreman who knew her son wanted Giles, went to look for him, she saw the tin bucket by the edge of the river, but no sign of the boy anywhere, she immediately signalled her son up from the field, and he and two men running up, a boat and hooks were got without delay, and in a short time the body of the poor boy was found in the river in about four feet depth of water, and about fourteen feet in from the bank. The jury returned a verdict of found drowned.

Maitland Mercury (NSW), 30 October 1852, p. 2

THE INQUEST ON FREDERICK GILES-We are requested by the relatives of the deceased, boy, Frederick Giles, to correct our brief report of the inquest on his body, which appeared in the Mercury of last Saturday. The poor lad, who was a son of Mr J. W. Giles, of Port Stephens, was on a visit to his grandmother, Mrs. Foreman, of Narrowgut, and his visit to the river side with a tin bucket was contrary to the repeated injunctions of his grandmother and uncle, who never knowingly allowed him to venture there to fetch water. It is supposed the poor lad took the two buckets to the river and let one of them fall in, and that in the endeavour to recover it he fell in and was unhappily drowned.

Maitland Mercury (NSW), 6 November 1852, p. 2

An 8 year old boy carrying two buckets near a river. Created with Canva AI.