Digging Up the Past: When and why John Ross migrated from Araluen to Cope's Creek

This year I started a Family History degree at University of Tasmania.

My first assignment was to create a research question and discuss how I solved it. I decided to start with John Ross and work out when he left Braidwood and why. Many people have researched John and there are still unsolved questions around his parents and their histories but this part of the puzzle was at least easy enough to solve with a bit of  'serendipity'. The biggest solution to solving this question was a small advert. [Please acknowledge my research if you are using it on any other site including Ancestry.com]

Digging Up the Past: When and why John Ross migrated from Araluen to Cope's Creek

OBJECTIVE

When my father died, I inherited a packet containing unpublished family stories compiled by a distant cousin, Pamela Leach. John Ross and his wife Catherine née Toomey's story shed little in the way of personal anecdotes. The group sheets mostly dealt with their incomplete birth histories, the date and place of their marriage, and the birth dates of their children in the New South Wales [NSW] areas of Braidwood and Araluen. Their son Edward's 1871 unregistered birth at Araluen is the last date listed for them in the area. Daughters Catherine and Mary are recorded with only their birth years, 1874 and 1878 respectively. A search of the birth indexes has not found them at Braidwood, Araluen or Hillgrove, in the New England area of NSW, where their mother died, 17 June 1910.

There is an almost forty year and 850 kilometre gap in John Ross' story which leads to the question: When and why did John Ross leave Araluen?

The objective of this research is to trace John's movements and provide a reason why he left Araluen using sources including newspapers, census data, electoral rolls, and postal directories to pinpoint his whereabouts during the 'missing years'. 

Little prior research, by myself, has been carried out on this family partly due to the confusion with other John Rosses in the New England area between 1871 and 1910. By pinpointing John Ross in time and location it is hoped to eliminate the others and create a reference point for future research in uncovering stories about John and his family.

FINDINGS

Unimaginably, a short 'missing friend' advert [source 2] in the personals facilitated finding a new relative, located a missing uncle, and helped answer: When and why did John Ross leave Araluen?

A search of Greville's Official Post Office Directory (1875-1876) and the NSW, and Commonwealth, electoral rolls for the period 1871-1910 failed to locate John in the Araluen or New England areas. Regional names, including Cope’s Creek, were recurrent in different indexes and led to an extensive investigation in Trove which uncovered the advert.

All the clues were there. In 1877 John was at Cope’s Creek where the private tin mining town Tingha was established in the mid-1870s.  The location helped exclude the vital events of several John Rosses in nearby areas. With this knowledge, a birth certificate for Mary Eliza Ross [source 3] was ordered and confirmed her as John and Catherine's eleventh child, born Tingha, 2 August 1876. Future investigations into John’s tin mining efforts may give hints to whatever was 'important'.

Francis Tormey was another 'missing' relative. It was uncertain if he had emigrated but searches in Trove, using the alternate surname, located him in Inverell. 

Comparing the dates and places of Ann's marriage [source 1] and Mary Eliza's birth confirmed the family left Araluen somewhere between 8 October 1875 and 2 August 1876. This is possibly as narrow a date range as can be ascertained.

John and Catherine's newspaper obituaries and the 1891 NSW Census confirmed they resided in Tingha where John worked as a tin miner until Catherine's death. By researching newspapers after John's death, at Quirindi in 1919, a 'lucky strike' [source 4] was able to confirm John Ross indeed left Araluen in search of tin at Cope's Creek.

SOURCES
[1] Marriage certificate of John Lang and Ann Ross, married 8 October 1875, Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, New South Wales, 2114/1875. 

This marriage certificate was issued as a certified true copy of the particulars of the 8 October 1875 marriage of John and Catherine [not recorded] Ross' eldest daughter Ann to John Lang at Araluen according to the rites of the Church of Rome [no church is listed]. Being 17, Ann required parental permission to marry for which her father John endorsed his consent. Ann was living at Araluen, presumably with him.

There is little else to gain from the certificate, but from these factors we can deduce that in October 1875 John Ross was still in the Araluen area.

[2] 'Advertising', Australian Town and Country Journal, 25 August 1877, p. 35,  http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article70608354.

Every Saturday from 25 August to 22 September 1877, John Ross' wife Catherine placed an advert in the 'Missing Friends List' of the Australian Town and Country Journal, seeking her brother Francis Tormey [spelt Dormey in three adverts] to contact her urgently. Catherine gave the address as Cope's Creek, a developing tin mining area near Tingha, NSW. This copy was sourced via Trove. The original is held at the National Library of Australia. Microfilm copies are available at W. & F. Pascoe Ltd, Milson's Point. 

 The advert places the family in Tingha in August 1877 and hint that John is now a tin miner. 

[3] Birth certificate of Mary Eliza Ross, born 2 August 1876, Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, New South Wales, 13352/1876.

This birth certificate was issued as a certified true copy of the particulars of the 2 August 1876 birth of Mary Eliza Ross. Born to father John Ross, of Cope's Creek, and mother Catherine Torney [sic]. Tingha was recorded as the birthplace and was registered by John at Inverell, 19 October 1876.

The certificate verifies John is a miner and narrows the gap from 8 October 1875 to 2 August 1876.

Note: A check of other vital records for Catherine confirmed Tormey as the most common spelling of her maiden name. This may be helpful in future researches on the family.

[4] 'Notes and News', The Braidwood Dispatch and Mining Journal, 25 October 1935, p. 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article119362103.

This 1932 report in The Braidwood Dispatch and Mining Journal is a historic recount of Mr D Grove's 1881 visit to tin miners at Cope's Creek who had migrated from the Araluen goldfields. 'The late John Ross' was one of them. The journal, sourced through Trove (available in print and microfilm at the National Library of Australia), was established after this visit. The article does not clarify if it was a reprint or extract. No other references to this visit could be found in Trove searches.

Importantly, this confirms John Ross migrated from Araluen to Cope's Creek to mine tin.