PART
SIXTY
The
Cambridgeshire Line from Tamworth in Staffordshire to Australia
Updated May 2022
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In February 2016 Cathy Young noticed that the family
of Josiah Collett (Ref. 60K1) was also included in an appendix at the end of
Part 43 – the Staffordshire Line to Kentucky and Michigan. Cathy had been searching for Josiah parents
for some time and could hardly believe that they had already been listed on
the Collett website for quite a few years.
Therefore, this family line now goes back a further two generations,
thanks to Cathy’s eagle-eye. In the earlier
versions of this family line Cathy, had provided details of likely parents of
Josiah which turned out not to be so, those details now included in Appendix
One at the end of this file. |
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The
earliest records for this family spelt Collett with a single t and in one
case the name was written as Collit, while in another it was Collott. Today there are still members of the
Collett family living in Toft near Cambridge, one of them being Koran Collett
(Ref. 60R14) and his wife Gill, whose family line is denoted by the names in
capital letters. New details added
during April 2013 were kindly provided by Debbie Hipgrave of Gamlingay in
Cambridgeshire, a good friend of Maxine Collett (Ref. 60S9). |
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This is also
the family line of Wendy Powell of New South Wales in Australia which was previously
set out in the Appendix in Part 43 before it was incorporated into this
family line in March 2016. |
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60I1 |
James Collit [previously Ref. 43j1] of
Staffordshire may have been born around 1650 and, as a married man in 1672,
he fathered a son of the same name who was baptised in the village of
Edingale, midway between Tamworth and Burton-on-Trent. The second of those two towns is the
starting location for the Collett family described in the aforementioned Part
43 – The Staffordshire Line to Kentucky and Michigan. Although no other baptism record has been
found to date, a certain George Collett and his wife Sarah were living in
Tamworth at the same time as James’ son James. So, the question might be, were they
brothers? In case they were George has
been included here for completeness. |
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60J1
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James Collit |
Born in 1672
at Edingale |
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60J2
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George Collit –
not confirmed |
Date of birth
unknown |
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60J1
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James Collit [previously
Ref. 43k1] was
baptised at Edingale on 9th August 1672, the son of James
Collit. It was as James Collet that he
married Rebecca Blith (Blithe) at Tamworth on 31st March
1695. The marriage is known to have
produced at least five children, the first born prior to the couple’s wedding
day. Their son James was born at
Tamworth and baptised there, while his older sister Rebecca was also baptised
at Tamworth over three years earlier under the name of Rebeckah Collet. In fact, the first five children were
baptised with the name Collet, while for the sixth and seventh child the
surname was recorded as Collitt. |
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In addition to
seven of the children listed below, it is possible that Rebecca gave birth to
a Joseph for whom no baptism record has so far been found. The logic behind this assumption is that
from 1727 to 1734 a Joseph Collet of Tamworth produced four children, the
second child being named Rebecca possibly after Joseph’s mother. His first child was named Ann, which may
have been his wife’s name. It
therefore seems likely that if Joseph was the child of James and Rebecca he
was born between Josiah and Ann, where he has been temporarily placed in the
hope that his position in the family can be verified at a later date. |
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60K1
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Rebecca
Collett |
Baptised on
19.01.1695 at Tamworth |
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60K2
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James Collett |
Born in 1698
at Tamworth |
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60K3
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Elizabeth Collett |
Born in 1701
at Tamworth |
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60K4
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Josiah Collett |
Born in 1703
at Tamworth |
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60K5
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Joseph Collett –
not confirmed |
Born circa
1705 at Tamworth |
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60K6
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Ann Collett |
Baptised on
15.09.1706 at Tamworth |
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60K7
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George
Collett – infant death |
Baptised on 05.03.1709
at Tamworth |
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60K8
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George Collett |
Born in 1711
at Tamworth |
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60J2
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George Collett [previously
Ref. 43k1], whose
date of birth is not known, may have been the brother of James (above), and
therefore the son of James. What is
known is that like James junior, George was also living in Tamworth during
the first decade of the 1700s. He was
married to Sarah and their eldest son was James Collett, another likely link
to George being the son of James. In
most of the baptism records the surname was written as Collit or Collitt. |
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60K9
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James Collett |
Baptised
during Feb 1703 at Tamworth |
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60K10
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Mary Collett |
Baptised on
14.11.1706 at Tamworth |
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60K11
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Anne Collett |
Baptised on
15.06.1709 at Tamworth |
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60K12
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Elinor
Collett |
Baptised on 11.02.1711
at Tamworth |
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60K13
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Susanna Collett |
Born in 1714
at Tamworth |
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60K2
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James Collett [previously
Ref. 43l3] was
baptised at Tamworth on 3rd June 1698, the eldest son of James and
Rebecca Collett. At the time of the
baptism of his first three children the surname was recorded as Collit,
whereas for the later children it was Collet.
Sadly, there was no mention of the mother’s name on any occasion. |
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60L1
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Joseph Collett |
Born in 1722
at Tamworth |
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60L2
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George
Collett – died in 1728 |
Baptised on
30.12.1727 at Tamworth |
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60L3
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Catherine
Collett |
Baptised on
13.09.1728 at Tamworth |
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60L4
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George
Collett |
Baptised on
14.10.1729 at Tamworth |
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60L5
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James Collett |
Born in 1730
at Tamworth |
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60L6
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William
Collett – infant death |
Baptised on
01.11.1734 at Tamworth |
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60L7
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John Collett |
Born in 1738
at Tamworth |
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60L8
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William
Collett |
Baptised on
26.07.1741 at Tamworth |
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60K3
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Elizabeth Collett [previously
Ref. 43l3] was
baptised at Tamworth on 25th March 1701, the daughter of James and
Rebecca Collett. She later married
Thomas Brisco at Tamworth on 9th October 1726, when her name was
recorded as Collit, like her brother Josiah (below). |
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60K4 |
JOSIAH COLLETT [previously
Ref. 60K1] was baptised at Tamworth on 29th December 1703, the
son of James Collett and Rebecca Blithe.
It
is therefore very interesting that, as Josiah Collit, he later married (1)
Mary Blithe at Tamworth on 29th December 1726. Mary
Collett nee Blithe died in 1841 and it is not known whether she gave birth to
any children. Three
years later Josiah married (2) the much younger Martha Blooden at the
Cathedral in Lichfield (pictured right) on 7th September
1744. The only children so far found
for the couple were born and baptised at Tamworth, the cathedral records
confirming their father was Josiah Collet. |
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60L9
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John Collett |
Born in 1749
at Tamworth |
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60L10
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Sarah Collett |
Born in 1751
at Tamworth |
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60L11
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JAMES COLLETT |
Born in 1753
at Tamworth |
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60K5
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Joseph Collett [previously
Ref. 43l5], whose
birth, nor his baptism has been confirmed, was very likely born at Tamworth
around 1705 and may have been the son of James and Rebecca Collett. It would appear that he was married around
1726 and over the next two decades the married produced at least seven
children. The first two children were
baptised as Collit, with the following children baptised using the name
Collet. |
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60L12
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Ann Collett –
infant death |
Baptised on
16.10.1727 at Tamworth |
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60L13
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Rebecca
Collett |
Baptised on 17.10.1729
at Tamworth |
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60L14
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Ann Collett |
Born in 1731
at Tamworth |
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60L15
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William Collett |
Born in 1734
at Tamworth |
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60L16
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Mary Collett |
Baptised on
06.01.1742 at Tamworth |
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60L17
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Joseph
Collett |
Baptised on
12.09.1744 at Tamworth |
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60L18
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George Collett |
Baptised on
17.03.1745 at Tamworth |
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60K8
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George Collett [previously
Ref. 43l8] was
baptised at Tamworth on 2nd July 1711, the youngest child of James
Collett and his wife Rebecca Blythe.
By 1730 he was married, and it was also while he and his wife were
living in Tamworth that their two known children were born. Both daughters were baptised with the name
Collet, although neither record included the name of the mother. |
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60L19
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Elizabeth
Collett |
Baptised on
08.03.1730 at Tamworth |
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60L20
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Sarah Collett |
Born in 1732
at Tamworth |
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60K13
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Susanna Collett [previously
Ref. 43l13] was
baptised at Tamworth on 14th September 1714, the youngest daughter
of George and Sarah Collett. She would
have been in her thirties when she married Henry Awcoat at Tamworth on 2nd
June 1751. |
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60L1 |
Joseph Collett [previously
Ref. 43m1] was baptised
at Tamworth on 24th October 1722, the son of James Collit. The baptism records for his three known
children did not include the name of his wife. |
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60M1
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Elizabeth Collett |
Born in 1747
at Tamworth |
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60M2
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Thomas Collett |
Born in 1756
at Tamworth |
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60M3
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Charles Collett |
Baptised on
15.07.1759 at Tamworth |
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60L5
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James Collett [previously
Ref. 43m5] was
baptised at Tamworth on 2nd February 1730, the son of James
Collit. He later married Elizabeth
Kent at Tamworth on 13th September 1750, where all of their
children were born and baptised. |
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60M4
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Hannah Collett |
Born in 1759
at Tamworth |
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60M5
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Elizabeth Collett |
Born in 1761
at Tamworth |
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60M6
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Sarah Collett |
Born in 1764
at Tamworth |
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60M7
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Isaac Collett – not
confirmed |
Date of birth
unknown |
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In addition to
James Collett, the son of James Collit, there was another James living in
Tamworth at the same time that the above three children were born to James
and his wife Elizabeth. That James Collett (Ref. 60L5/A) was
married to Mary and their children were baptised at Tamworth in 1759, 1761,
and 1763, as detailed below. |
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60M8
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Nanny (Nanny Collet) Collett |
Baptised on
08.06.1759 at Tamworth |
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60M9
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Ettie (Etty Collet) Collett |
Baptised on
07.09.1761 at Tamworth |
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60M10
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Bessie (Bessy Collitt) Collett |
Baptised on
30.12.1763 at Tamworth |
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60L7
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John Collett [previously
Ref. 43m7] was
baptised at Tamworth on 13th May 1738, the son of James
Collit. He married Elizabeth Waters at
Tamworth on 13th April 1762. |
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60L9
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John Collett was born at Tamworth in early 1749 and
was baptised there on 15th May 1749, the eldest child of Josiah
Collett and his second wife Martha Blooden. |
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60L10
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Sarah Collett was born at Tamworth in 1751 and was
baptised on 8th April when her father was confirmed as Josiah
Collett. Sarah later married Thomas
Rawby (Rawbey) at Tamworth on 5th December 1774 when she was 23. |
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60L11 |
JAMES COLLETT was born at Tamworth in 1753, the son
of Josiah Collett and Martha Blooden, who was baptised there on 30th
September 1753 as James Collet.
Tamworth is just over the county boundary from Leicestershire, and it
was at Asfordby, near Melton Mowbray that James Collit married Elizabeth
Marriott on 20th August 1781.
Elizabeth was born in 1753, the daughter of Henry Marriott and Mary
Parker, and was in an advanced state of pregnancy on their wedding day. Two months later the couple’s first child,
their daughter Elizabeth, was born. Sadly,
she only survived for around five months when she died and was buried at Asfordby. |
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James
and Elizabeth were still living in Asfordby three and a half years later when
their son Henry was born there, but after a further six years the family was
living in the adjacent village of Kirby Bellars, just one mile south of
Asfordby when their daughter Elizabeth was born, and again five years after
that when their son James was born. It
is quite likely that other children, so far undiscovered, were born into the
family during the years between their four known children. James Collett died in 1817. |
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60M11
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Elizabeth Collett |
Born in 1781
at Asfordby |
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60M12
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HENRY COLLETT |
Born in 1785
at Asfordby |
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60M13
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James Collett |
Born in 1791
at Kirby Bellars |
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60M14
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Elizabeth Collett |
Born in 1796
at Kirby Bellars |
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60L14
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Ann Collett [previously
Ref. 43m14] was
baptised at Tamworth on 30th December 1731, the daughter of Joseph
Collit. It was also at Tamworth on 11th
November 1757 that she married Samuel Wilkins. |
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60L15
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William Collett [previously
Ref. 43m15] was
baptised at Tamworth on 11th August 1734, the son of Joseph
Collit. He married Martha Newbold at
Tamworth on 23rd March 1761, where all of their children were born
and baptised. |
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60M15
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Sarah Collett |
Baptised on
24.05.1762 at Tamworth |
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60M16
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Mary Collett |
Baptised on
11.09.1763 at Tamworth |
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60M17
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Martha Collett |
Born in 1769
at Tamworth |
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60M18
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Lydia Collett |
Baptised on
09.06.1771 at Tamworth |
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60L20
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Sarah Collett [previously
Ref. 43m20] was
baptised at Tamworth on 23rd December 1732, the daughter of George
Collett. Sarah appears to have married
fairly later in her life, when he married Thomas Rowley on 5th
December 1774 at Tamworth. |
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60M1
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Elizabeth Collett [previously
Ref. 43n1] was
baptised at Tamworth on 25th May 1747, the eldest known child of
Joseph Collit. In 1770 the parish
records in Tamworth included the baptism of two Collett children who were
baptised on the same day. However, no
name of the father was entered in the records, nor was there the full name of
the mother, just that her surname was Collett. So, it is very much an estimate that she
may have been unmarried Elizabeth Collett, who appears to be the only
suitable lady of the correct age. |
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60N1
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Sarah Collett twin |
Baptised on
07.01.1770 at Tamworth |
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60N2
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James Collett twin |
Baptised on
07.01.1770 at Tamworth |
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60M2
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Thomas Collett [previously
Ref. 43n2] was
baptised at Tamworth on 10th March 1756, the son of Joseph
Collit. It was also at Tamworth where
he married Mary Sketchley on 8th February 1780, and it was also
while they were living in the Tamworth area that their children were born and
baptised in Tamworth. It is possible
that Mary died during the birth of her last child, since there is the
marriage at Tamworth of a Thomas Collett and Charlotte Spar which took place
on 13th October 1800. There
is also the possibility that Thomas died six years later because at Tamworth
on 30th March 1807 Charlotte Collett married John Hutton (or
Hatton). |
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There is every
chance that Thomas and Mary had other children between 1783 and 1799, and
records have been found under the surname Collott, but at Stafford. They relate to Thomas Collott who was born
during 1788 and his sister Ann Collott who was born in 1793. It may be of interest also, that upon the
marriage of Thomas’ daughter Elizabeth in 1815, she was recorded in error as
Elizabeth Collitt. |
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60N3
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Thomas
Collett died 31.12.1780 |
Baptised on
31.12.1780 at Tamworth |
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60N4
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John Collett died 14.09.1783 |
Baptised on
04.05.1783 at Tamworth |
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60N5
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Thomas Collett –
not confirmed |
Born in 1788
at Stafford |
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60N6
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Ann Collett – not confirmed |
Baptised on
29.12.1793 at Stafford |
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60N7
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Elizabeth Collett |
Born in 1799
at Tamworth |
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The following are the children of Thomas Collett and
his wife Charlotte: |
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60N8
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Charlotte
Collett |
Baptised on
11.09.1803 at Tamworth |
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60N9
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Thomas
Collett |
Baptised on
02.06.1805 at Tamworth |
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60M4
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Hannah Collett [previously
Ref. 43n4] was
baptised at Tamworth on 1st July 1759, the daughter of James
Collett and Elizabeth Kent. It was on
21st June 1779 that she married Francis Dankes in Tamworth. |
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60M5
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Elizabeth Collett [previously
Ref. 43n5] was
baptised at Tamworth on 9th August 1761, the daughter of James and
Elizabeth Collett, and it was at Tamworth that she married George Platts on
26th October 1789. |
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60M6
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Sarah Collett [previously
Ref. 43n6] was
baptised at Tamworth on 10th April 1764, the daughter of James and
Elizabeth Collett. It was also at
Tamworth where she married Richard Sketchley on 4th December 1795,
fifteen years after Thomas Collett (above) married Mary Sketchley at
Tamworth. |
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60M7
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Isaac Collett [previously
Ref. 43n7], whose
date of birth is not known, may have been the son of James Collett and
Elizabeth Kent although no baptism record has been found to confirm
this. What is known is that an Isaac
Collett of Tamworth was married there to Martha Moore on 31st
December 1783, and their three known children were baptised there. |
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60N10
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Elizabeth
Collett |
Baptised on
28.03.1785 at Tamworth |
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60N11
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Ann Collett |
Baptised on
06.11.1790 at Tamworth |
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60N12
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John Collett |
Baptised on
07.09.1794 at Tamworth |
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60M11
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Elizabeth Collett was born at Asfordby in 1781, just
after her parents were married there on 20th August. It was also there that she was baptised on
16th October 1781, the first child of James Collett and Elizabeth
Marriott, and there that she died on 13th March 1782. |
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60M12
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HENRY COLLETT was born at Asfordby in 1785, where he
was baptised on 30th October 1785, the son of James and Elizabeth
Collett. Sometime during the first
decade of the new century it would appear that Henry travelled the fifty miles
south-east of Melton Mowbray to settle in the village of Toft, six miles west
of the city of Cambridge. It was there
on 18th October 1815 that Henry Collett married Susan Beaumont who
was already five months pregnant with their first child. Susan was one of the ten children of John
Beaumont and Lydia Pauley and was baptised as Susannah Beaumont on 15th
July 1798 at Comberton, just one mile east of Toft. |
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Henry
and Susan are known to have had nine children, eight of whom were born at
Toft, with just their first child baptised at nearby Comberton only four
months after they were married.
However, the first national census in June 1841 did include a number
of anomalies. The family was still
living at Toft on that occasion where Henry was an agricultural labourer with
a rounded age of 50, rather than 55, while his wife was named as Lucy Collett,
instead of Susan, and she was 40. By
that time the couple’s eldest son had left the family home to be married, and
their second daughter Ann was already working and living separately from her
family but still in Toft. Therefore,
the children listed with Henry and Susan (Lucy) were Elizabeth Collett aged
20, John Collett aged 18, Stephen Collett aged 13, Susan Collett aged 11,
Mary Collett who was eight, Lydia (Siddia) Collett who was five, Gifford
Collett who was two years old and another Siddia Collett who was only four months
old, who did not survive. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
It
is established that it was during the following year that Henry Collett, aged
57, died on 21st July 1842, his death at Toft being recorded
during the third quarter of that year, leaving his wife Susan to raise their
three young children. It is also
possible that whatever caused his death may have also taken the life of his
youngest daughter. By the time of the
next census in 1851, Susan Collett, aged 55 and from Comberton was a widow who
was undertaking general work to gain an income, when she was residing in a
tenement on Main Road in Toft. With
her was her youngest surviving child for company, Gifford Collett, who was 11
years old who, even at that age, was already working as an agricultural
labourer. At that time in her life
Susan was recorded as undertaking general work to provide for herself and her
son, when they were living in the dwelling next door to her so Stephen who
was married with a child of his own by then.
No record of her has been found in Great Britain after that time, the
reason being that the entire family, excluding her eldest son Henry who died
in 1853, eventually emigrated to South Australia, some of them between 1852
and 1854. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
It
was in 1857 that Susan Collett sailed to South Australia on board the ship
Carnatic to be reunited with her family, and travelling with her was her
married daughter Lydia and her husband, Susan’s youngest son Gifford and his
wife, and her grandson Young Collett, the eldest son of the late Henry
Collett who had died four years earlier.
Once settled in her new surroundings Susan Collett, who was 61 by
then, worked as a midwife. Later on,
she was living at the home of her son-in-law Stephen Hindes at Finniss on the
Fleurieu Peninsular of South Australia.
Twenty-six years after arriving in Australia Susan Collett nee
Beaumont died there in 1883 at the age of 85 and was buried at Strathalbyn,
sixty kilometres south-east of Adelaide. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
60N13
|
HENRY COLLETT |
Born in 1816
at Comberton |
||||||||||||
|
60N14
|
Elizabeth Collett |
Born in 1818
at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60N15 |
John Collett |
Born in 1822
at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60N16 |
Ann Collett |
Born in 1824
at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60N17
|
Stephen Collett |
Born in 1827
at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60N18
|
Susan Collett |
Born in 1830
at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60N19 |
Mary Collett |
Born in 1833
at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60N20
|
Lydia Collett |
Born in 1836
at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60N21
|
Gifford Collett |
Born in 1839
at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60N22
|
Siddia
Collett |
Born in
February 1841 at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60M13
|
James Collett was born at Kirby Bellars in 1791, and
was baptised there on 30th July 1791, the son of James and
Elizabeth Collett. It is possible that
James married Mary Starkey at Sheepy Magna near Atherstone in Leicestershire
on 6th June 1816. It is
also possible, but not proved, that James and Mary may have followed James’
brother Henry (above) to the village of Toft, since it was there in 1817 that
a John Collett was born. Although no
baptism record for John has been found, it was around 1845 that John Collett
took up with Mary Ann Rutter at Toft.
Mary was the daughter of Henry and Mary Rutter, and was baptised at
Toft on 24th May 1818. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
It
was also at Toft that Mary gave birth to John’s twin children John Collett
Rutter and Harriet Collett Rutter, who were baptised at Toft on 25th
January 1846. Sadly, John died on 13th
March 1846, and was buried at Toft. As
regards John and Mary, and their daughter Harriet, it would appear that they
emigrated to Australia, where they settled at Round Swamp, Capertree Valley
in New South Wales, about seventy miles north-west of Sydney. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
It
was there that Harriet Collett married George Dowling who was born in Sydney
on 29th September 1843. The
couple appear to have married in late 1864, or early in 1865, since their
first child, Eliza Jane Dowling was born on 9th September 1865,
and she was followed two years later by a son John Robert Dowling who was
born at Round Swamp in 1867.
Tragically it was at Round Swamp that Harriet Dowling nee Collett died
on 10th May 1886, and she was survived by her mother Mary Ann
Collett nee Rutter who died at Round Swamp on 26th February 1905. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
Harriet’s
husband survived her by twenty-eight years, when George Dowling died at
Granville in New South Wales on 23th November 1914, while his son John Robert
Dowling died at Lithgow, NSW on 14th October 1931, and his
daughter Eliza Jane Dowling died at Casino, NSW on 1st January
1946. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60M14
|
Elizabeth Collett was born at Kirby Bellars in 1796 and
was the second child of that name born to parents James Collett and Elizabeth
Marriott. It was also at Kirby Bellars
that she was baptised on 10th July 1796. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60M17
|
Martha Collett [previously
Ref. 43n13] was
baptised at Tamworth on 6th December 1769, the daughter of William
Collett and Martha Newbold. She later
married John Miring at Tamworth on 31st October 1802. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60N5
|
Thomas Collott
[previously Ref. 43o5] was
born during 1788 and was baptised at Stafford on 7th December
1788. However, it has not yet been
proved that he was the son of Thomas Collett and Mary Sketchley whose first-born
son, Thomas died in 1780 on the day he was born. He has been included here simple because he
had an interesting life and may have been the child of Thomas and Mary. In 1821 he was arrested for
burglary when he was 33 and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He
was transported to the convict hulk Justitia on 9th November 1821
when his convict number was 481. The
records at the National Archive Office indicate that he left the hulk on 15th
March 1822 and sailed to Van Diemen’s Land on 1st April, arriving
there on 23rd July 1822. He
retained the convict number 481 and the records at VDL described him as being
5 feet 2½ inches tall, light brown hair, grey eyes, occupation canal cutter,
sentenced in Stafford on 1st September 1821, and transported for
life on board the ship the Prince of Orange.
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
His
prison record, kindly sent in by Sue Collett (Ref. 21T16) in Tasmania,
reveals that Thomas Collott was incapable of keeping out of trouble. On 20th November 1824 he was
caught stealing and was punished by being given just bread and water. On 7th June 1826 he refused to
carry out duties order by a constable and was given 24 lashes. On 31st December 1829 he was
charged for being absence without leave and on 8th January 1833 he
was charged with being drunk and absent from his duty, as a result his ticket
of leave, granted on the Queen’s birthday, was reduced. He was charged on 11th March
1833 with being drunk in a public house and was confined for ten days, and on
12th April 1833 he was discovered drunk in the catholic burial
ground. He was confined for another
six days on 22nd November 1833, again for being drunk. Despite two more offences in 1835 and 1836
it was on 14th July 1841 that he was granted a conditional pardon,
which was extended on 3rd October 1847, by which time he was
around 59 years of age. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
Appendix Two
at the end of this family line also includes details of other Colletts who
were on the wrong side of the law, and this is a continuation of Appendix Two
in Part 43 – The Staffordshire Line to Kentucky and Michigan which includes
more stories of Collett bad boys. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60N7
|
Elizabeth Collett [previously
Ref. 43o7] was born
at Lichfield and may have been born around three years old when she was
baptised at Tamworth on 4th August 1799, the daughter of Thomas
Collett and Mary Sketchley. It was as
Elisabeth Collit that she married John Carter at the Church of St Editha in
Tamworth on 31st October 1815, when the witnesses were James Pipe and
Margaret Hollier and Elizabeth signed the register in her own hand. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
The marriage
produced the following children who were born at Tamworth, although they were all baptised in St Chads Church in Lichfield.
Thomas Carter (born in 1816), Frances
Carter (born in 1820), Isaac Carter (born in 1823), James Carter (born in
1826), Jabez Carter (born in 1828), William Carter (born in 1829), George
Carter (born in 1832), Mary Carter (born in 1834, who died in 1835), Miriam
Carter (born in 1836), and Arthur Carter (born in 1838, who died in 1895). |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
By 1841 the
Carter family was living in West Leicester where they were recorded as Jno
Carter 45, Elizabeth Carter 40, James 15, Jabez 14, William 12, George, who
was nine, Mary, who was five, and Arthur who was three. It is worth noting that Miriam was called
Mary on that occasion after her late sister.
However, ten years later she was one of just two children still living
with her parents, by which time she was using her baptised name. John Carter was 59, Elizabeth Carter was
54, Miriam Carter was 15, and Arthur Carter was 13. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
In the East
Leicester census of 1861 Elizabeth Carter from Tamworth was 62, while her
husband John, who died during the following decade, was 68. That was confirmed in the subsequent census
of 1871 when Elizabeth Carter from Tamworth was a widow still living within
the East Leicester district at the age of 75.
According to the next census in 1881 Elizabeth, aged 83, was a visitor
at 10 Ratcliffe Street in the Leicester suburb of Belgrave the home of
cabinet maker Samuel Elliott aged 29.
The only other person living at on that occasion was Ada Elliott, who
was three, the daughter of Samuel Elliott and his absent wife who was
Elizabeth’s granddaughter Eliza Ann (see below). |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
Elizabeth
Carter nee Collett was the 3x great grandmother of Wendy Powell of New South
Wales. She was 90 years old when she
died on 3rd November 1886 of old age while she was staying at 9 Ratcliffe Street in the Leicester suburb of Belgrave, where she had
been a visitor for at least the last six or more years. That was the home of her granddaughter
Eliza Ann Elliott nee Barratt, the informant of her passing, who was the
daughter of Elizabeth’s youngest daughter Miriam Barratt nee Carter, the wife
of Abraham Barratt from Olney in Buckinghamshire. It was nine years earlier that Miriam and
Abraham Barratt had emigrated to Australia in 1877. Curiously the death of the widow Elizabeth
Carter was recorded on fifth of November 1886 at the sub-district of Rothley
within the Barrow-on-Soar registration district of Leicestershire, to the
north of the City of Leicester. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60N13 |
HENRY COLLETT was born at Comberton in 1816, where
he was baptised as Henry Collett on 18th February 1816, the eldest
child of Henry Collett and his wife Susan Beaumont. Not long after he was born his parents
moved the one mile to the village of Toft where all of his siblings were
born. He was around 18 years old when
he married Elizabeth Newman at Hardwick, two miles north of Toft, on 23rd
October 1834. Elizabeth, who had been
born at Hardwick on 21st June 1819 and the daughter of Thomas
Newman and Sarah Longstaff, was with-child on the day of their wedding and
within five months their daughter was born and baptised at Toft. Over the following five years Elizabeth
presented Henry with the two more children, both of them also being born
while the family was living in Toft. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
That
was confirmed by the Toft census of 1841 when Henry Collett and his wife
Elizabeth were both 25, and their three children were Ann Collett, who was
six, Young Collett, who was four, and Eliza Collett who was two years
old. Later that same year Elizabeth
gave birth to the couple’s fourth child, and during the next ten years their
family was completed with the birth at Toft of a further four children. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
All
eight children were still living at Toft with Henry and Elizabeth in 1851,
their dwelling described as a tenement on the main road in the village. Henry Collett, aged 35 and from Toft, was
an agricultural labourer, his wife Elizabeth from Hardwick in Cambridgeshire
was 36, and all of their children were confirmed as having been born at
Toft. They were Ann Collett, aged 16,
Young Collett, aged 14 and an agricultural labourer working with his father,
Eliza Collett who was 12, John who was another agricultural labourer at the
age of just nine years, Henry Collett, who was seven, William Collett, who
was four, Elizabeth, who was three, and latest arrival Frederick who was only
three months old. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
It
was only two years later that Henry Collett suffered a premature death, his passing recorded at Caxton
(Ref. 3b 266) during the fourth quarter of 1852, after which his body was
laid to rest at Toft on 17th October 1852 at the age of
only 37. After just over five years as
a widow Elizabeth Collett, formerly Newman, married William Caten at Toft on
25th November 1858 when her father was named as Thomas Newman and
his father was John Caten. By the time
of the census in 1861 the pair of them was residing at a dwelling on the High
Street in Toft when their surname was recorded as Cato. William Cato from Great Creaton was 36,
while his wife Elizabeth Cato from Hardwick said she was 40 when she was
actually nearer ten years older than her husband. Living with the couple on that occasion
were the five youngest children from Elizabeth’s previous marriage. They were John Collet who was 20, Henry
Collett who was 17, William Collet who was 14, Elizabeth Collet who was 11
and Fredrick Collet who was 10, all born at Toft. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
During
the following years two of Elizabeth’s children, William and Elizabeth, left
the family group to be married, and by 1871 her sons Henry and Frederick were
still living and working together in Toft in 1871. It may be the spelling of her surname and
her inability to give her correct age when she was living with her much
younger husband that is the reason no obvious record for Elizabeth Caten or
Cato has been found in 1871. However,
by the time of the next census in 1881 Elizabeth Cato from Hardwick was more
accurately recorded as being 67 when she was living alone in the High Street
in Toft. No record of her has been
located in 1891 but again in 1901 she was recorded as Elizabeth Cato from Hardwick
and not loving in Toft, when she was 88 and the only person of that surname
living within the Caxton registration district of Cambridgeshire. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
Previously,
in error, it was stated here that Elizabeth may have died in Gloucestershire
during the first three months of 1895 or that she passed away in
Cambridgeshire during 1884. However,
both of these dates are incorrect, since the death of Elizabeth Cato,
formerly Collett nee Newman, was recorded at the Caxton register office (Ref.
3b 212) during the third quarter of 1907 when she was 94. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
Although never listed
with the family in any census, Henry is also understood to have had a son by
the name of George Collett, but it is not clear if he was born prior to
Henry’s marriage to Elizabeth. The
details relating to George are that he eventually lived in Australia where he
was married and had a daughter Jane, who was later married to become Jane
Grimes and who had a son George Grimes. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
60O1
|
Ann Collett |
Born in 1835
at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60O2
|
Young Henry Collett |
Born in 1836
at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60O3 |
Eliza Collett |
Born in 1838
at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60O4 |
JOHN COLLETT |
Born in 1841
at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60O5
|
Henry Collett |
Born in 1844
at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60O6
|
William Collett |
Born in 1846
at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60O7 |
Elizabeth Collett |
Born in 1849 at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60O8 |
Frederick Collett |
Born in 1850
at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60N14
|
Elizabeth Collett was born at Toft in 1818 and was the
eldest daughter of Henry Collett and his wife Susan Beaumont. It was also at Toft that she was the first
member of the Collett family to be baptised there, at the Church of St Andrew
(on the right) on 23rd
June 1818, when her parents were confirmed as Henry and Susan. When
Elizabeth was approaching her middle twenties, she married Benjamin Hart at
Toft on 7th December 1841.
He had been born there in 1817, and over the next two years the
marriage produced two children for him and Elizabeth. Lydia Hart was born not long after they
were married and was baptised in Cambridge on 5th March 1842. Their son Henry Hart was born |
|
|||||||||||||
|
just
over a year later and he was baptised at nearby Comberton on 5th
March 1843. The widow Elizabeth Hart
nee Collett died in 1884 at the age of 66. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60N15 |
John Collett was born at Toft in 1822, and was
baptised there on 28th July 1822, the son of Henry and Susan
Collett. In the census of 1841 John
was still living with his family in Toft when he was 18 and was working with
his father and brother Stephen (below) as an agricultural labourer. No further record of him has been found in
England after that time and that was because he sailed out of Plymouth on 1st
May 1852 bound for Adelaide in South Australia on board the ship
Gloucester. Making the journey with
him were his brothers Stephen and Gifford (below). The only other thing known about John was
that he died in 1900 at the age of 78.
Some sources believe that he eventually returned to England and that
he was living at Toft in 1891 when he was 69, although no actual census
return for him at Toft has been found. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60N16 |
Ann Collett was born at Toft in 1824, where she
was baptised on 8th May 1824, the daughter of Henry and Susan
Collett. At the age of 16 Ann was
still living in the village of Toft, but by that time she was working and
living separately from her parents.
Just over six years later Ann married William Hindes at nearby
Comberton on 16th October 1847 and seven years later they are
their family emigrated to Australia where their family was raised in South
Australia. Ann and William and their
two children, Susan aged six and Elizabeth who was two, sailed to Adelaide on
board the ship Ostrich with her sister Mary (below), arriving there in July
1854. Ann was two months into her
third pregnancy when they sailed from Southampton on 20th April
1854. Her brothers John (above) and
Stephen and Gifford (below) had made the same journey in 1852, and her
married sister Susan and her husband had travelled out there from England in
1853. |
|
|||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
Ann’s
family survived the three-month journey to Australia and four months later
her son William Henry Hindes was born on 10th November 1854. The family’s move to Australia was
completed in 1857 when Ann’s mother, her sister Lydia and her brother Gifford
and their spouses, and her nephew Young Collett joined then in South
Australia. Four years prior to the
death of Ann Hindes her brother Stephen was also living in South Australia
when he passed away. William Hindes
was born in 1823 and died on 23rd July 1893 at Glen Osmond in
South Australia where, less than eight years after, his widow Ann Hindes nee
Collett died on 9th February 1901 at the age of 76. Their daughter Elizabeth Hindes was born in
England on 24th February 1852 and she married Patrick Corcoran at
Gambierton who was born during February 1847.
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60N17
|
Stephen Collett was born at Toft in 1827, and was
baptised there on 4th November 1827, the son of Henry and Susan
Collett. He was 13 years old and an
agricultural labourer at the time of the first Toft census in 1841 when he
was still living there with his family.
It was just over eight years later on 21st July 1849 that
Richard married Elizabeth Baldock at Toft, where she was born, and with whom
he had nine children. The first child
was born while they were still living at Toft, as confirmed by the Toft
census of 1851. By that time Stephen
Collett was 22 and an agricultural labourer living in a tenement on Main Road
in Toft with his wife Elizabeth who was also 22, and their son Richard from
was one year old. Living in the
tenement right next door was Stephen’s widowed mother and his youngest
brother Gifford Collett. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
On
1st May 1852 Stephen, Elizabeth and their son Richard sailed on
the ship Gloucester from Plymouth to Adelaide, when they settled in South
Australia where their remaining children were born. However, during the long voyage there was
an outbreak of measles on the Gloucester, which was followed by scarlet
fever, which resulted in the death of 23 passengers, mostly children. Another such fatality was Richard Collett
who was under three years old when he died eight days after arriving in
Adelaide. It is also rumoured within
the family, that Elizabeth actually gave birth to the couple’s second child
during the voyage, but that it too did not survive, and therefore is not
included in the list below. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
Once
in Australia the family initially settled at Glen Osmond, where their second
(or third) child was born, before moving to the Strathalbyn and Finnis area
of South Australia where their later children were born. It was also at Finnis, just south of
Strathalbyn, not far from Adelaide that Stephen Collett died on 4th
March 1897, when he was 70 years old. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
60O9
|
Richard Collett |
Born in 1849
at Toft, Cambridgeshire |
||||||||||||
|
60O10
|
William Collett |
Born in 1854
at Glen Osmond, South Australia |
||||||||||||
|
60O11
|
Thomas Collett |
Born in 1856
at Strathalbyn, South Australia |
||||||||||||
|
60O12 |
Sally Collett |
Born in 1859
at Rankins Creek, South Australia |
||||||||||||
|
60O13 |
Elizabeth Collett |
Born in 1861
at Strathalbyn, South Australia |
||||||||||||
|
60O14
|
Richard Henry Collett |
Born in 1863
at Finnis, South Australia |
||||||||||||
|
60O15
|
Mary Ann Collett |
Born in 1866
at Finnis, South Australia |
||||||||||||
|
60O16
|
Stephen Collett |
Born in 1868
at Finnis, South Australia |
||||||||||||
|
60O17
|
Susan Collett |
Born in 1871
at Finnis, South Australia |
||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60N18
|
Susan Collett was born at Toft in 1830, where she
was baptised on 18th April 1830, the daughter of Henry and Susan
Collett. It was also at Toft on 4th
November 1850 that she married Thomas Baldock, who was in all probability the
brother of Elizabeth Baldock who married Susan’s brother Stephen Collett
(above) during the previous year. In
the census of 1851 Susan Baldock was 19, while her husband Thomas was 22,
when they were still living in the village of Toft. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
It
is known that the couple emigrated to Australia during 1853 on board the ship
Calabar where they were presumably reunited with three of Susan’s brothers
John, Stephen and Gifford who had made the same journey in the previous
year. All the couple’s children were
born in South Australia, the first of them being Sally Baldock who was
baptised at the Church of St Michael in Mitcham, South Australia on 9th
April 1854, when her parents were confirmed as Thomas and Susan Baldock. The next four children were born after the
family had settled in Nairne in South Australia, and they were James Baldock,
who was born on 20th November 1861, but who died on 18th
September 1865; the next two were the twins Ann and John Baldock who were
born on 26th April 1864, and both of them died that same day; and
Thomas Baldock, who was born on 23rd May 1865 and died the very
next day. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
Perhaps
it was due to the tragedy of losing all four children at Nairne that prompted
the move to a new start at Glen Osmond, as it was there that their next child
was born. Thomas Frederick Baldock was
born on 10th April 1867, but three years later the family was
living in Adelaide. It was there on 17th
June 1870 that another son was born, but once again he did not survive long
enough even to be named, and died that same day. The couple’s last child was Henry Thomas
Baldock, and he was born at Parkside in South Australia on 12th
April 1874. Thomas Baldock died in
Australia on 4th September 1890, and his widow Susan Baldock nee
Collett survived him by eleven years when she died in 1911. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60N19 |
Mary Collett was born at Toft in 1833 and was
baptised there on 21st July 1833, the daughter of Henry and Susan
Collett. She was eight years old in
the census of 1841 when she was living at Toft with her family. Ten years later she was still living in
Toft, but separately from her family on that occasion, at the age of 17. In 1854 she accompanied her married sister
Ann on the sea voyage to Australia on board the ship Ostrich which sailed from
England to Adelaide. |
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|
|
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|
It
was following her arrival in South Australia that Mary married Carl August
Christian Schunke who was born in 1826 and died in 1894, and with whom she
had seven children. Their first child
Heinrich W J Schunke died shortly he was born in 1858, Hannah Augusta Schunke
was born during the following year, Wilhelm Schunke was born in 1860,
Charlotte Schunke was born in 1861, Elizabeth Schunke in 1862, George Schunke
in 1864 who died the following year, and Bertha Schunke who was born in 1866. Mary Schunke nee Collett died in 1904. |
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|
|
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|
Her
daughter Elizabeth Schunke later married to become Elizabeth Hart. During 1933, fourteen years before she
died, Elizabeth was living on a farm at Yalangor, north of Toowoomba where
she made a quilted bedcover measuring 2019mm x 1144mm. Today that same quilt is recorded with the
National Quilt Register (Ref. 424AM) and is the property of Alys Mercer nee
Hart of South-West Queensland the maker’s granddaughter. The quilt is made of white linen with a
green border and is divided into blocks, each block containing an Australian
bird. |
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|
|
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|
Alys
saying of the work “The quilt was
entirely handmade. My grandparents had
settled at Darling Downs in 1902, previously having living in South
Australia. They still had the Adelaide
Chronicle sent to them weekly and this is where my grandmother obtained the
wild flower designs, getting a different one each week as they were
published. There was no electricity on
the farm so this would have been worked with the aid of a kerosene lamp. Daylight hours were not used for such
frivolities as fancy work, and not a stitch would have been sewn on any
Sunday.” |
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|
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|
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60N20
|
Lydia Collett was born at Toft in 1836, the youngest
daughter and penultimate child of Henry and Susan Collett. She was baptised at Toft on 31st
July 1836 and in 1851 she was 14 and living in the village of Great Shelford,
just south of Cambridge. She later
married John Constable at Haslingfield, not far from Great Shelford, on 24th
November 1855, John having been born in 1836.
Haslingfield lies just four miles south-east of Toft and four miles
west of Great Shelford. Their wedding was recorded at
Chesterton in Cambridge (Ref. 3b 1087) during the last three months of 1855. Two years later, during 1857, the couple
emigrated to Australia when they sailed to Adelaide on board the ship
Carnatic accompanied by Lydia’s sister-in-law Charlotte Collett nee Thompson,
her nephew Young Collett (below), and the remainder of John’s Constable
family. Charlotte’s husband Gifford Collett (below) had already
travelled to South Australia with his mother Susan in April 1857, as an
advanced party to pave the way for the rest of the family to join them there. |
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|
|
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|
It
was in South Australia that all of the seven children of Lydia and John Constable
were born. They were Harriet Constable
who was born at Nairne on 31st March 1858 but who died at Lower
Finnis in 1864, William Henry Constable who was born there on 2nd
February 1863 who died in 1937 having married Nora Day around 1891 with whom
he had seven children, Susan Constable who was born at Goolwa on 6th
September 1865 and who married Gavin Wilson died in 1952 having had eleven
children, Ellen Constable who was born at Lower Finnis on 5th
November 1868 and married George Galpin 1862-1936 and they had six children
before her premature death in 1911 probably during the birth of her seventh
child, Harry Constable who was born in 1869, Stephen Constable who was born
at Lower Finnis in South Australia on 7th July 1872, and Elizabeth
Ann Constable who was born at Strathalbyn in South Australia on 20th
November 1875 who married Walter T Heath with whom she had two children. It was also at Strathalbyn that Lydia
Constable nee Collett died in 1924 at the age of 87. |
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|
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|
|
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60N21
|
Gifford Collett was born at Toft in 1839, the last
child of Henry Collett and his wife Susan Beaumont, whose birth was registered at Caxton (Ref. xiv
29) during the second quarter of the year. Not long after he was born, he was baptised
at Toft on 19th May 1839.
He was recorded in the June census of 1841 as being two years old, so
he was only three years old when his father died during the following
year. By the time of the next census
in 1851, Gifford was the only child still living with his widowed mother in a
tenement on Main Road in Toft, while in the adjacent tenement lived his
married brother Stephen (above). At
the age of 11 Gifford had already finished his school and by then was already
employed as an agricultural labourer like other members of his family. |
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|
|
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|
Just
less than six years later, Gifford Collett married Charlotte Thompson at Toft
on 4th January 1857 when he was 18 years old and confirmed as the son of
Henry Collett. Charlotte’s father was
recorded as William Thompson and when she was baptised at Caxton on 2nd
May 1841, she was recorded as the daughter of William and Maria Thompson. It was also later that same year that
Gifford and accompanied widowed mother Susan as they boarded the ship
Carnatic on 28th
April 1857, bound for a new life in South Australia.
It is likely that Charlotte made the same journey later on, when
Gifford’s married sister Lydia Constable and her extended family sailed to
Adelaide. |
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|
|
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|
Where
four children were previously listed below, it now seems highly likely that
the previously named William Henry Collett, whose date and place of birth was
not known, was actually the couple’s second child previously listed simply as
Henry Collett. All three children were
born after the family settled in Finnis near Strathalbyn in South
Australia. Charlotte Collett nee
Thompson died in Australia in 1916, and was followed two years later by her
husband, when Gifford Collett died at Coolgardie in Western Australia during
1918 at the age of 79. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
60O18
|
Eliza Ann Collett |
Born in 1869
at Finnis, South Australia |
||||||||||||
|
60O19 |
William Henry Collett |
Born in 1872
at Lower Finnis, S A |
||||||||||||
|
60O20 |
Susan Mary Collett |
Born in 1875
at Yarrowie, S A |
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|
|
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|
|
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60O1
|
Ann Collett was born at Toft in early 1835 and
within five months of her parents being married there. She was baptised at Toft on 29th
March 1835, when her parents were confirmed as Henry and Elizabeth
Collett. She was six years old in the
Toft census of 1841, and was 16 in the Toft census of 1851 when on both
occasions she was living there with her family. |
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|
|
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|
Four
major events in her life took place over the next two years. Firstly, at the age of 17, she married John
Saunders on 9th August 1852 at Bourn, just two miles west of
Toft. Six months later the couple
sailed to a new life in Australia, arriving there on 15th May
1853. And it was while the couple were
in Sydney in 1853 that Ann Saunders nee Collett died, the same year that her
father also died back in England. John
Saunders was the son of John and Mary Saunders, and was baptised at Bourn on
24th May 1832. He survived
his young wife by fifty-eight years, when he died in Australia in 1911. |
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|
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|
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||||||||||||||
60O2
|
Young Henry Collett was born at Toft in late 1836, where
he was baptised on 29th January 1837, the eldest son of Henry
Collett and his wife Elizabeth Newman.
In the census of 1851 Young Collett from Toft was 14 and was employed
as an agricultural labourer working with his father and his younger brother
John (below), while living at the family home in a tenement on the main road
in Toft. Just over two years after
that his father died and in 1857, he left England on board the ship Carnatic
with his aunt Lydia Collett (above) to join other members of Lydia’s Collett
family from Toft in South Australia. |
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|
|
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|
A
little while later he sailed to America where, on 12th April 1862,
he married Martha Matilda Josephine Marshall at Osmond, Pierce County in
Nebraska. Matilda was born in 1841,
the daughter of John Marshall. Over
the next twenty years their marriage produced eleven children for Young and
Martha. It is unclear where the
couple’s first child was born, although it may have been in Nebraska, before
the couple left America for a return to Australia, since it is known that all
of their subsequent children were born at Glen Osmond, after they had settled
in South Australia. Young Collett died
at Glen Osmond in South Australia on 11th June 1888 when his
youngest child was only three years old, while his widow passed away in 1920. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
60P1
|
Jack Collett |
Born in 1862 |
||||||||||||
|
60P2
|
William Henry Collett |
Born in 1863
at Glen Osmond, S A |
||||||||||||
|
60P3
|
Frederick Young Collett |
Born in 1864
at Glen Osmond, S A |
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|
60P4 |
Ellen Elizabeth Collett |
Born in 1865
at Glen Osmond, S A |
||||||||||||
|
60P5 |
Annie Collett |
Born in 1868
at Glen Osmond, S A |
||||||||||||
|
60P6
|
Sarah Peggy Collett |
Born in 1870
at Glen Osmond, S A |
||||||||||||
|
60P7
|
Thomas Collett |
Born in 1871
at Glen Osmond, S A |
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|
60P8 |
Elsie Collett twin |
Born in 1878
at Glen Osmond, S A |
||||||||||||
|
60P9 |
Samuel Collett twin |
Born in 1878
at Glen Osmond, S A |
||||||||||||
|
60P10
|
Eva Collett |
Born in 1879
at Glen Osmond, S A |
||||||||||||
|
60P11
|
George Alfred Collett |
Born in 1885
at Glen Osmond, S A |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60O3 |
Eliza Collett was born at Toft in 1838, the third
child and second daughter of Henry Collett and his wife Elizabeth Newman, and
it was as Eliza Collett that she was baptised at Toft on 5th May
1839. Eliza was two years old and 12
years of age in the next two census returns for the village of Toft and was
still only 14 when her father died, following which her mother remarried in
1858. However, just a few months
before the next census in 1861, when Eliza was 22, she married Joseph Wing at
St Paul’s Church in Cambridge on 8th January 1861. Joseph was also
22 and his father was named as William Wing, while Eliza’s father was
recorded as Henry Collett, although by that time he had died and did not see
his daughter married. The event was recorded at
Cambridge (Ref. 3b 649) during the first quarter of 1861. |
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|
|
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|
Their
marriage produced a total of five children for the couple over the next
seventeen years, and all of them born in the parish of St Andrew-the-Less in
Cambridge. By 1871 both Eliza and
Joseph were 32 and, on that occasion, they had three children, Florence who
was seven, Arthur who was six, and Sarah who was three. At the time of the next census in 1881 the
family had increased in size with the addition of two children, but had sadly
seen the death of their father, Eliza’s husband Joseph. |
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|
|
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|
The
Cambridge census return listed the family as living at 5 New Court in the
Holy Trinity district of the city, where Eliza Wing from Toft was a widow at
43. To make ends meet for her young
family Eliza was working as a servant in one of the colleges of the
university. Her children living with
her were Florence Annie Wing who was 17 and employed at home (while
her mother worked), Sarah Ann Wing aged 13, Kate Mabel Wing who
was seven, Henry William Wing who was five, and Harriet Eliza Wing
who was three years old. |
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|
|
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|
By
that time in his life, Eliza’s eldest son Arthur Joseph Wing, aged 16,
was a boarder at 34 Bridge Street in Cambridge St Clements, from where he was
working as a chemist’s apprentice.
After a further ten years, the census in 1891 placed Eliza living
within the parish of St Andrew-the-Great in Cambridge. She was 52, and still living with her were
her four youngest children. Sarah was
23, Kate was 17, Henry was 15, and Harriet was 13. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
Eliza
Wing from Toft was still employed by one of the colleges in March 1901, when
she was 62. Still living with their
mother in Cambridge were three of her daughters. Sarah Anne Wing who was 33 had no
occupation, so was probably at home as the housekeeper, Kate Mabel Wing, aged
27, was a school mistress, and Harriet Eliza Wing was 23 and working as a
draper’s assistant. Six years later
Eliza’s youngest daughter married Philip Edward Morse during 1907. Eliza’s two missing son were both married
before March 1901 and were living in the Woolwich district of London where
they were both working alongside one another.
Arthur J Wing, aged 36, was a chemist and a druggist, while his
brother Henry W Wing, aged 25, was a chemist’s assistant. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
According
to the census in 1911 Eliza Wing, aged 72 and from Toft, was still living in
Cambridge, with just two of her unmarried daughters for company. Sarah Anne Wing was 43, and Kate Mabel Wing
was 37. Her married daughter Harriet
Morse, aged 33, was living in the Edmonton area of London with her husband
who was also 33. Also by 1911 Eliza
was a grandmother to the seven children of her two sons. Both families were still residing in
Woolwich, where Arthur Joseph Wing, aged 46, was living there with his wife
Elizabeth Jane, who was 49, and their four daughters Doris Kate, 18, Muriel
Florence, 16, Evelyn Maud, 15, and Olive May Wing who was 11. The family of Henry William Wing, aged 36,
comprised his wife Elizabeth Mary, aged 33, son William Henry, who was nine,
daughter Ethel Maud, who was seven, and Bernard Arthur Wing who was six. |
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|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60O4 |
JOHN COLLETT was born at Toft in 1841 and it was
there that he was baptised on 7th November 1841, the son of Henry
and Elizabeth Collett. He was nine
years old in 1851, by which time he was already working with his father and
older brother Young Collett as an agricultural labourer. Two years later his father passed away when
he was only 37 and his mother remarried five years after that sad event. At the time of the next census in 1861 John
Collett was 20 and was the oldest of the five siblings still living with
their stepfather William Cato and their mother Elizabeth at their home on the
High Street in Toft. Also, at that
time and living nearby in Toft with her family, was Ellen Rogers, aged 21,
who had been born at Toft in 1840, who would later be the wife of John
Collett. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
It
was eighteen months later at Toft on 25th September 1862 that John
married Ellen Rogers, the daughter of William and Mary A Rogers, and over the
remaining part of the decade their marriage produced five children, all of
them born at Toft. So, by the time of
the next census in 1871, the family were recorded in error under the surname
of Collitt. And they were parents John
and Ellen Collitt, both 30, Gifford Collitt who was eight, William Collitt
who was six, Elizabeth Collitt who was four, Sarah Collitt who was two, and
Selina Collitt who was not yet one year old. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
Two
more children were added to the family during the next four years, although
the extra children were offset by the departure of the couple’s eldest son
who was no longer living in the family home by 1881. The census that year recorded the family
still living at Brook Lane in Toft, which comprised John Collett, an
agricultural labourer of 40 years, his wife Ellen aged 41, and their six
remaining children. The eldest was
William, aged 16, who was working as an agricultural labourer with his
father, while his five younger siblings were all attending the village
school, and they were Elizabeth aged 14, Sarah aged 12, Selina aged 10, Eliza
who was seven, and Alfred who was five years old. Every member of the household was confirmed
as having been born at Toft, and living just five dwelling away in Brook Lane
was John’s younger brother Frederick (below) with his wife. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
John Collett was 49 years of age when
he died at Toft early in 1891, his death recorded at Caxton register office
(Ref. 3b 315) during the first three months of 1891 and prior to the census
day that year. His passing was confirmed in the census
return, in which Ellen Collett aged 50 was a widow, who was still living at
Toft but at Brook End on
School Lane, with her two sons William and Alfred. Also still living at the family home was
Ellen’s unmarried daughter Sarah who had with her, her base-born daughter
Alice Maud Collett. One more person
completed the household and he was agricultural labourer George Brown, aged
36 and from nearby Comberton, who was described as a visitor. Nine years later, when Ellen was 60 years old, she died at Toft, with
her death also recorded at Caxton register office (Ref. 3b 253) during the
third quarter of 1900. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
60P12
|
Gifford Collett |
Born in 1862
at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60P13
|
WILLIAM HENRY COLLETT |
Born in 1864
at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60P14
|
Elizabeth Annie Collett |
Born in 1866
at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60P15 |
Sarah Collett |
Born in 1868
at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60P16 |
Selina
Collett |
Born in 1870 at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60P17
|
Eliza Collett |
Born in 1874 at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60P18
|
Alfred Collett |
Born in 1876 at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60O5
|
Henry Collett was born at Toft in 1844, and was
baptised there on 24th March 1844, as Henry Collett the son of
Henry and Elizabeth Collett. He was
seven years old in the census for Toft in 1851, and would have been only nine
years old when his father died at Toft in 1853. Five years later his mother remarried to become
Elizabeth Cato, and it was with her and her new husband William, at their
home on the High Street in Toft, that Henry was living in 1861 when he was 17,
when with him were four of his Collett siblings. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
Henry
was still in the village of Toft within the Caxton registration district in
1871 when he was 27 and a labourer.
Still living with him at that time was his younger brother Fred
Collett (below), while living nearby was their married brother William. However, more importantly, also living there
at that time was Elizabeth Rogers who was two years old, the base-born
daughter of Henry Collett and Elizabeth Rogers, who was living with her
grandmother Mary Rogers. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
It
was at Toft during the following year, on 7th July 1872, that
Henry Collett married Elizabeth Rogers, the event being recorded at Caxton
register office Ref. 3b 789).
Elizabeth, who was born at Toft on 7th June 1844 and
baptised there on 1st June 1845, was the daughter of Joseph Rogers
and Mary Nupschurch of Cambridge. It
seems likely that the family may well have been related to Ellen Rogers of
Toft who married Henry’s brother John Collett (above). Once they were married their base-born
daughter took the name Elizabeth Collett.
Early in the following year Henry and his wife and their daughter
emigrated to Australia. The family of
three sailed into Brisbane, the Port of Maryborough harbour, on board the
ship ‘Glamorganshire’ on 3rd May 1874, the ship’s passenger list
confirming that Henry Collett was 30, his wife Elizabeth was 29, and their
daughter Elizabeth Collett was five years old. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
The
family settled in the Maryborough area of Queensland, just inland from
Brisbane, where Henry was employed by George Walker at Brookfield Farm. The farm lay on the banks of the Mary River
and it was in the river that Henry Collett drowned on 3rd November
1874, after just six months in the country.
Brief details of his suspicious death were reported in the Maryborough
Chronicle on Thursday 5th November 1874, the same day that he was buried, as
follows: |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
‘Henry Collett,
a labourer, was drowned in the river at Walker’s Point on Tuesday last. He had undressed and entered the river for
the purpose of bathing. The body was
recovered by the police yesterday and the inquiry will be held by the Police
Magistrate this morning.’ Two day
later the newspaper recorded the result of the police inquiry, as follows: |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
‘The Police Magistrate
held an inquiry on the cause of death of Henry Collett, whose
body was found in the Mary River. The
wife of the deceased said “I and my husband were employed by J G Walker at
Brookfield on the Mary River. On
Tuesday last I saw my husband leave the kitchen with a fork to go to this
work in the garden. About 7 o’clock
that evening, my husband not coming home, I went in search of him on the
river bank. When I saw his clothes
laying there I called for help and some men came. The bank of the river at this place is very
steep. A messenger was sent to the
police and, assisted by some men, I searched for my husband until 11
o’clock. Yesterday the police found
his body in the river. He was 31 years
of age, a native of Toft in Cambridgeshire, England and came out to this
colony in the ship Glamorganshire. He
could not swim and I never knew him go into the river before, more than to
wash his feet. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
George Walker identified
the body as that of his later employee Henry Collitt. The bank near where the clothes were found
is very steep and the water deepens suddenly and is very deep. Believed the deceased must have been
affected by sunstroke, or a shark, or some large fish, attacked and dragged
him in. Constable Pickering proved the
finding of the body about 300 yards from the bank. The body was much eaten by fish. Both hands and feet were missing, it
presented a mere skeleton, with the exception of the head and face which
could enable a person to identify the body.
Doctor Power had examined the body at the morgue. The flesh is completely eaten off the
bones. Also, the internal viscera
gone, a portion of the face only having flesh on it. The body showed marks of fish, evidently a
large kind, probably sharks. The hands
and feet were also entirely gone, as if eaten off by some voracious
fish. The body being a mere skeleton,
it is impossible for me to say the cause of death or whether the supposed mutilation
by fish occurred before or after death.” |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
It
was twenty months after that tragic event that his widow married Christian
Rasmussen at the Office of the District Registrar in Maryborough on 12th
July 1876. Christian had arrived in
Maryborough from Hadersleben in Germany when he was 17, and on their wedding
day Christian was 23 years old compared to Elizabeth who was 32. From that second marriage Elizabeth had
further children, including another daughter Anna Maria and three sons, Henry
Andreas, John Charles and Ernest Augusta who was born with club feet who
suffered an infant death at seven months caused by convulsions when he had
whooping-cough. She also had an
adopted son. Forty-eight years after
the death of her first husband Elizabeth Rasmussen, formerly Collett nee
Rogers, died at Brookfield Farm, Walker’s Point, Granville on 9th
March 1922 and was buried the following day at Maryborough Cemetery. The death notice was published in the
Maryborough Chronicle on the day that she was buried. It confirmed “Elizabeth Rasmussen, beloved wife of Christian Rasmussen, aged 77
years and 9 months died at Brookfield Farm on 9th March 1922.” |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
Her
obituary read as follows: An old identity of Maryborough, in the
person of Mrs Elizabeth Rasmussen, who had been an invalid for several years,
passed away peacefully yesterday morning at her residence at Brookfield Farm,
Walker’s point. The deceased, who was
in her 78th year, was a native of Toft in Cambridgeshire, England
and came to Maryborough in 1874 with her first husband the late Mr Henry
Collett in the ship ‘Glamorganshire’, and settled at Walker’s Point for some
years. She afterwards removed to the
Island plantation where she resided for a period of 28 years, but returned to
Walker’s Point, where she had since resided.
She is survived by her husband and a family of two daughters and three
sons, in addition to one adopted son, 23 grandchildren and 14 great
grandchildren. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
It
is now known, thanks to information received via Cathy Young from Leanne
Wroe, an historian and researcher in Maryborough, that Elizabeth was
bedridden for seven years prior to her death due to a broken hip and during
those years she never left her bedroom.
Her daughter Anna (Annie) Maria continued to live at the farm to look
after her mother, even after she was married.
At Elizabeth’s funeral Annie had a fall when she was pregnant with her
son Kenneth who was later born with a slight deformity which was blamed on
that fall. Annie later had another
child, Frank, whose father was a kanaka – a person of Polynesian
descent. Leanne Wroe is a direct
descendent of Henry Collett. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
Following
the death of her mother, Annie Maria Steinhardt and her husband Edward
remained at the family’s Brookfield Farm in Walker’s Point, and it was there
that Annie passed away during 1928.
Annie died from cancer at the age of 48, just two months before the
death of her son Kenneth who was only six when he died from an appendicitis
which turned into peritonitis. Edward Steinhardt continued to reside at
Brookfield Farm with his father-in-law, up until he remarried. Christian Rasmussen was still living at
Brookfield Farm when he died on 30th January 1931, at the age of
78, from the injuries he received when he was gored by a bull. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
60P19
|
Elizabeth Collett |
Born in 1868 at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60O6
|
William Collett was born at Toft in 1846, where he was
also baptised on 30th August 1846, the son of Henry and Elizabeth
Collett. He was four years old in the
Toft census of 1851, when living there with his family at Main Road Tenement,
and was just six years old when his father died. After five more years his mother remarried
and it was with her and her new husband that William and four of his siblings
were living at toft in 1861 when he was 14.
Seven years later William Collett married Jane Townsend at Toft on 1st
November 1868, the event recorded at St Ives (Ref. 3b 623) during the
last quarter of 1868. Their marriage
resulted in the birth of eight children, although their first-born son, who
may have been born at St Ives or at Toft, did not survive beyond a few
months. It may have been that sad
event, or a job opportunity, that prompted the couple to move into the city
of Cambridge, where all of their remaining children were born. |
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|
Jane Townsend had been born at Pidley
near St Ives in Huntingdonshire, her birth registered at St Ives (Ref. xiv
218) during the second quarter of 1847,
the daughter of Joseph and Susan Townsend. According to the census in 1871, the
childless couple was living at Toft, when they were awaiting the birth of
their first child who was born in the weeks and months after the census
day. Irrespective of where the child
was born, it was baptised at Toft during July that same year, but died
shortly thereafter. On the census day
in 1871, William Collett was 24 and his wife Jane was 23. |
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|
By
the time the next census was conducted in 1881, William and his young family
were living at 4 Cavendish Terrace in Cambridge, within the parish of St
Andrew-the-Less. William, aged 34 and
from Toft, was employed on the railway, his wife Jane from Pidley was 33, and
their four surviving Cambridge born children, at that time, were William H
Collett who was eight years old and attending the local school, Florence A
Collett aged five years, Albert H Collett who was three, and Sidney H Collett
who was one year old. Three years
later, at the time of the birth of their next child, William and Jane had
left Cambridge and had travelled thirty miles north to Wisbech area of
Cambridgeshire, where the births of their final three children were all recorded. |
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|
The census in 1891 is very confusing
because there are two separate entries for the very same Collett family, but at
differing location descriptions. Within
both census returns the ages and names of the family members was the same, so
perhaps one form was completed by William and the other completed by
Jane. The individual members were recorded
as William Collett aged 44, Jane Collett aged 43, Florence Collett who was
16, Sidney Collett who was 11, Eliza Collett was seven, Lily Collett was four
years old, and Daisy Collett was only a few days old. Again, both census returns included boarder
George French aged 25 who in one was a tram driver, and the other a railway
servant. Similarly, head of the household
William was described as a tram conductor in one and a rail servant in the
other. The two different dwellings
were described as Silt Road in Emneth, the other as South End in Wisbech St
Peter. |
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|
Living
not far away from his family in 1891, and within the same area of the county,
was William and Jane’s absent son Albert, who was incorrectly recorded by his
employer as Alfred K Collett from Cambridge who was 14, while the couple’s
eldest son William had already left the family by 1891, and was living and
working in Leicester. Ten years later,
William Collett, aged 54 and from Toft, was a tram conductor living with his
family in the village of Emneth, just south-east of Wisbech. Listed in the census return with him was
his wife Jane, aged 53, who on that occasion said she had been born in
Fenton, the village right next to Pidley, her previously stated place of
birth. The children still living with
them were Florence, aged 26 and a dressmaker from Cambridge, Eliza 17 and a
milliner from Wisbech, and Daisy who was ten and also from Wisbech. |
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|
After
a further ten years it was just Eliza and Daisy who were the only children
still living with William and Jane at Emneth in 1911. William Collett from Toft was 64 and still working as a tram
conductor, while his wife Jane Collett, from Fenton was 63. The couple’s two daughters were described
as Eliza Jane Collett from Wisbech who was 27 and a milliner, and Daisy Evaline Collett, who had no stated occupation,
was 20 years of age and also from Wisbech.
Jane Collett, nee Townsend, died in 1921 at the age of 73, her death recorded at
Cambridgeshire register office (Ref. 3b 535). Nearly five years later her husband William
Collett died in 1926 when he was 79, his death being recorded at Cambridge
register office when he was living within the Chesterton area of the city. The aforementioned Cathy Young is a direct
descendent of William Collett. |
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|
|
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|
60P20
|
William Henry Collett |
Born in 1871
at St Ives/Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60P21
|
William Henry Collett |
Born in 1872
at Cambridge |
||||||||||||
|
60P22
|
Florence Annie Collett |
Born in 1875 at Cambridge |
||||||||||||
|
60P23 |
Albert Henry Collett |
Born in 1878
at Cambridge |
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|
60P24 |
Sidney Herbert Collett |
Born in 1880
at Cambridge |
||||||||||||
|
60P25
|
Eliza Jane Collett |
Born in 1884
at Wisbech |
||||||||||||
|
60P26
|
Lily Collett |
Born in 1886
at Wisbech |
||||||||||||
|
60P27
|
Daisy Evaline Collett |
Born in 1891
at Wisbech |
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|
|
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|
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60O7 |
Elizabeth Collett was born at Toft on 11th March 1849,
and was baptised there that very same day, the daughter of Henry and
Elizabeth Collett. She was three years
old in the census of 1851 and, following the death of her father two years
later, her mother remarried when Elizabeth was 10 years old. In the Toft census of 1861, Elizabeth Collett
was 12 years old when she was living there with four of her siblings at the
High Street home of William and Elizabeth Cato. No record of her has been found after 1861. |
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|
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|
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60O8 |
Frederick Collett was born at Toft towards the end of 1850, with
his birth registered at Caxton (Ref. xiv 31) during the last quarter of the
year. He was just three months
old at the time of the Toft census on 30th March 1851, when he and
his family were living in a tenement on the main road through the village. He
was baptised at St Andrew’s Church in Toft on 31st August 1851,
the youngest child of Henry Collett and his wife Elizabeth Newman. He was two years old when his father was
tragically taken from the family in 1853, after which his mother was married
for a second time in 1858. Three years
later Fredrick Collett was 10 years old when he and four of his older
siblings were living with their mother Elizabeth Cato and her husband at a
property in the High Street in Toft. |
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|
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|
By
1871 it was as Fred Collett aged 20 that he was living with his older brother
Henry (above) when they were very likely working together as general
labourers. Living close by in Toft was
their married brother William with his new wife. Thirty months after that census day, Frederick Collett, a bachelor,
married Elizabeth Ellen Shadwell, a widow from Ramsey in Huntingdonshire,
at Toft on 28th September 1873. Seven years later, the childless couple was
recorded as Frederick Collett from Toft, aged 30 and a farmer of 20 acres,
and his wife Elizabeth E Collett from Ramsey who was 35. At that time, they were living in the first
dwelling on Brook Lane in the village of Toft, the same lane where
Frederick’s older brother John Collett (above) and his wife Ellen and their
family were also living on that occasion, just five doors away. |
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|
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|
Ten
years later in 1891, farmer
Frederick Collett was 40, and his wife Elizabeth was 45, and they were still
living in Toft at Church
Lane. However, over the
following year they left the village, when they moved to Chapel Lane in Wimblington
(the Isle of Ely),
midway between Chatteris in the south and March in the north. And it was there that they were living in
1901, when Frederick from Toft, was an ordinary farm labourer aged 46, while
his wife Elizabeth from Ramsey was 48.
Why they gave reduced ages is a mystery, when in fact they were 50 and
55 years of age respectively. |
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|
|
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|
By
April 1911, Frederick Collett from Toft, was 60 and a labourer working on a farm, when he was living
at Doddington, just a
mile south of Wimblington, with his wife Elizabeth Collett who was 63
and from Ramsey. Frederick Collett
died in 1936 when he was 85, with his death recorded at Cambridgeshire register office (Ref. 3b
641). The Will of Frederick Collett,
who died on 15th January 1936, was proved at Cambridge on 20th
August 1936 when William Henry Collett was named as the beneficiary. He was most likely the eldest surviving son
of Frederick’s older brother William Collett (above), who raised his family
in Leicester and died there in 1947. |
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|
|
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|
At
some time in his life Fred Collett is reputed to have had a liaison with a
Mrs Lindsay, which resulted in the birth of a daughter, who may have been
named Elizabeth Collett. It is
possible, although not proved, that Mrs Lindsay may well have been the wife
of Peter Lindsay of Toft, whose wife was the former Sarah Collett of Toft
(Ref. 60P15). If so, she was the
daughter of Fred’s older brother John (above) and was born in 1868, Sarah
therefore being his niece and eighteen years younger than Fred. |
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|
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|
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60O9
|
Richard Collett was born at Toft during the second
half of 1849, and within four months of his parents’ wedding day. He was baptised later that same year on 11th
November 1849, the eldest child of Stephen Collett and his wife Elizabeth
Baldock. On the day of the census in 1851, the three of them
were still living in Toft, where Richard was one year old. It was during the following year, when he
and his parents sailed out of Plymouth on board the ship Gloucester, bound
for a new life in Australia.
Tragically, during the long sea voyage there were outbreaks of measles
and scarlet fever which took the lives of 23 of the passengers. Sadly Richard, who had survived the
journey, died eight days after the family arrived in Adelaide when he was
still under three years old. |
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|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60O10
|
William Collett was born at Glen Osmond in South
Australia on 14th May 1854, two-years after his parents Stephen
and Elizabeth arrived there from England.
Although no
positive records have been so far been found that, there is a chance that
William was later married and possibly had a son Stephen – named after his
father, around 1880. The reason for
thinking this is because the military service record for Stephen Collett, who
was born at Millicent in South Australia, named his father and next-of-kin as
William Collett. The same record also
stated the place of his enlistment was Melbourne. Nothing more is known about him at this
time, except that he died during 1941. |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60O11
|
Thomas Collett may have been born at Glen Osmond like
his brother William (above), although the birth was registered at Strathalbyn
in South Australia on 13th November 1856, when his parents were
confirmed as Stephen and Elizabeth Collett.
It was on 2nd March 1887, when he was 31 that Thomas
married Jessie Williamson in South Australia, their union providing them with
two children who were both born at Strathalbyn. Jessie was born on 26th May 1858
at New Hambourg in South Australia, the daughter of Alexander Russell
Williamson and his wife Margaret Belfour Reid. Thomas Collett was 75 years of age when he
died at Strathalbyn on 7th January1931. |
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|
|
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|
60P28
|
Margaret Elizabeth Collett |
Born in 1889
at Strathalbyn, S Australia |
||||||||||||
|
60P29
|
John Williamson Collett |
Born in 1890
at Strathalbyn, S Australia |
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|
|
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|
|
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60O12 |
Sally Collett was born at Rankins Creek in South
Australia on 16th March 1859, the eldest daughter of Stephen
Collett and his wife Elizabeth Baldock.
She later married George Werrey/Werry. |
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|
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|
|
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60O13 |
Elizabeth Collett was born at Strathalbyn in South
Australia on 20th May 1861, the daughter of Stephen and Elizabeth
Collett, and she later married John Dawson. |
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|
|
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|
|
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60O14
|
Richard Henry Collett was born at Finnis near Strathalbyn on
2nd September 1863, the son of Stephen and Elizabeth Collett. He married Emily Lenard Fidock who was born
in 1861 and who died in 1937. Richard
Henry Collett had died some thirty-four years earlier, when he passed away
during 1903 at the age of 40. There is
no record of any children born to the couple, which might indicate that they
were married shortly before Richard’s death. |
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|
|
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|
|
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60O15
|
Mary Ann Collett was born at Finnis on 24th
March 1866, the daughter of Stephen and Elizabeth Collett. She married Albert Edward Henley on 26th
March 1891 at Finnis when she was 25, and they had six children. Albert was born in 1865 and died in 1957,
sixteen years after his wife. Mary Ann
Henley nee Collett died at Wyalong in New South Wales on 24th May
1941, at the age of 75. Their six
children were Ethel May Henley (1891-1966), Albert Lewis Henley
(1893-1972), Iva Maud Henley (1896-1988), Percival Collett Henley
(1898-2002), Herbert Edward Henley (1900-1969), and Jean Elizabeth
Henley (1908-1989). |
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|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60O16
|
Stephen Collett was born at Finnis on 17th
December 1868, the youngest son of Stephen and Elizabeth Collett. He was nineteen when he married Ethel May
Jackson at Milang in South Australia on 2nd March 1898, with whom
he had a daughter. Stephen Collett
died seven months before his eightieth birthday, when he passed away on 27th
May 1948. Ethel May Collett nee
Jackson, who was born in 1874, survived him by eighteen years, when she died
in 1966. |
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|
|
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|
60P30
|
Gwendoline Victoria Pearl Collett |
Born in 1898
at Finnis, S A |
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|
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|
|
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60O17
|
Susan Collett was born at Lower Finnis, Strathalbyn
in South Australia on 14th November 1871, the last child born to
Stephen Collett and his wife Elizabeth Baldock. Susan was 31 years old when she married Joshua Retchford at Claremont,
Western Australia on 6th January 1903. Their marriage produced two daughters Olive
Louie Retchford and Doris May Retchford. Joshua Retchford was born in Adelaide on 13th
September 1874, the son of Edmund Retchford (1838-1903) from at Alcester in
Warwickshire, and Anne Retta Constable (1841-1905) from Toft in
Cambridgeshire, who were married at Blakiston, South Australia on 23rd
June 1859. It was also at Adelaide
where Joshua Retchford died on 22nd November 1952. After seventeen years as a widow, Susan
Retchford, nee Collett, died at Mildura in Victoria, Australia, on 8th
June 1970, when she was five months short of her 99th birthday. Susan was the grandmother of Sharon Barends
in Australia who, in 2020, kindly provided all of the details of the life and
children of Susan Retchford, nee Collett. |
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|
|
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|
As regards their two girls, Olive
Louie Retchford was born at Leederville in Western Australia on 11th November 1903. It on her twenty-sixth birthday that she
married Victor Albert Williams Cox (1897-1971) at Port Pirie South in South
Australia, with whom she gave birth to a daughter Sharon, and a son, no
longer alive in 2020. Olive Louie Cox,
nee Retchford, died at Mildura in Victoria on 28th September 1990,
at the age of 87. Her sister Doris
May Retchford was born at Cannington in Western Australia on 13th
May 1906. Doris later married Reginald
Oswald Jamieson married at Torrensville in South Australia on 1st
July 1933, Reginald having been born on 8th December 1902 at
Barunga, Daly in South Australia. Doris was only 52 years old when she died in
Adelaide on 22nd May 1958.
She and Reginald never had any children, and it was also at Adelaide
where he passed away on 5th December 1990. |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60O18
|
Eliza Ann Collett was born at Finnis in South Australia
on 1st May 1869, the eldest of the three known children of Gifford
Collett and Charlotte Thompson. She
married James Collett before 1893, but it is not apparent at this time who he
was or from which branch of the Collett he came. Eliza and James had three children, the
last of whom only survived for a short while and died within a year. Eliza Ann Collett died at St Peters in
South Australia on 27th October 1939 aged 70. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
60P31
|
Ethel May Collett |
Born in 1893
at Adelaide, S Australia |
||||||||||||
|
60P32
|
Christopher Collett |
Born in 1897
at Port Pirie, S Australia |
||||||||||||
|
60P33 |
Henry Percival Collett |
Born in 1904
at Adelaide, S Australia |
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|
|
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|
|
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60O19 |
William Henry Collett was born at Lower Finnis during 1872,
and was the son of Gifford and Charlotte Collett. All that is known is that he married
Adelaide Eliza Woodruffe, although it has not yet been established whether
they had any children or not. |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60O20 |
Susan Mary Collett was born at Yarrowie in South
Australia on 7th August 1875, the last child of Gifford Collett
and his wife Charlotte Thompson. She
was nearly 21 when she married William Morgan on 15th April 1896
at Melrose in South Australia, and over the following years they had seven
children. William Morgan was born in
1869 and died in 1935, after which his wife Susan Mary Morgan nee Collett was
a widow for eighteen years until her death at Mount Margaret in Western
Australia during 1953 at the age of 78. |
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|
|
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|
They
seven children of Susan and William were Daisy Ellen [Ella] Morgan
(1897-1976 who married Walter H Gribble 1889-1966 with whom she had a son
Walter Gribble 1920-2004), Frederick Gifford Morgan (1898-1899), Dorothy
Pretoria Morgan (1900-1980 William C Ticehurst 1895-1958), Olive Una
Morgan (1902-), John H Morgan (1906-1971), Clarice Mabel Morgan
(born 1910 who married Donald A Sullivan), and William J G Morgan
(1912-1912). |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60P1
|
Jack Collett was born in 1862, the eldest child of
Young Collett and Martha Marshall who were married in Nebraska in the April
of that year. At some time after his
parents were married, they left America and sailed to Australia, where they
set up home at Glen Osmond in South Australia. It is not known at this time, whether Jack
was born in America or Australia, or somewhere in between. |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60P2
|
William Henry Collett was born at Glen Osmond in 1863, the
son of Young and Martha Collett. He married Sarah Jane Anderson and they had
six children before the end of the century.
William Henry Collett died in 1945 at the age of 82. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
60Q1
|
William Darsey Anderson Collett |
Born in 1886
at Eastwood, S Australia |
||||||||||||
|
60Q2
|
David Arnold Young Collett |
Born in 1889
at Eastwood, S Australia |
||||||||||||
|
60Q3 |
Kenneth James Collett |
Born in 1891
at Eastwood, S Australia |
||||||||||||
|
60Q4 |
Malcolm Ross Collett |
Born in 1893
at Eastwood, S Australia |
||||||||||||
|
60Q5
|
Edwin Lancelot Collett |
Born in 1896
at Glen Osmond, S A |
||||||||||||
|
60Q6
|
Bernard Young Collett |
Born in 1898
at Glen Osmond, S A |
||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60P3
|
Frederick Young Collett was born at Glen Osmond in 1864, the
third son of Young and Martha Collett.
He later married Elizabeth Ann Smith and was only 37 when he died in
1901. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60P4 |
Ellen Elizabeth Collett was born at Glen Osmond in 1865, the
fourth child and eldest daughter of Young and Martha Collett. She married Alfred Badcock and died at
Kalgoorie in Western Australia on 12th July 1932 aged 67. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60P5 |
Annie Collett was born at Glen Osmond in 1868 and
she later married George Phillips, with whom she had a daughter Florence
Violet Phillips who was born in 1888 and who died in 1961. George was born in 1865 and died in 1941,
having spent the last three years of his life as a widower, following the
death of Annie Phillips in 1938. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60P6
|
Sarah Peggy Collett was born at Glen Osmond in 1870 and
she later married William Hart with whom she had a son John William Hart who
was born in 1893. Sarah Peggy Hart nee
Collett was 74 when she died in 1944. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60P7
|
Thomas Collett was born at Glen Osmond in 1871, one
of the sons of Young and Martha Collett, and all that is known about him is
that he died during 1908 at the age of 37. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60P8 |
Elsie Collett was born at Glen Osmond in 1878 and
was the twin sister of Samuel (below).
She was married to Fraser, although it is not clear if that was her
husband’s surname or his christian name.
Presumably she died as Elsie Fraser nee Collett in 1919 when she was
only 41. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60P9 |
Samuel Collett was born at Glen Osmond in 1878 and
was the twin brother of Elsie (above).
Nothing more is known about him, except that he too died during 1919,
like his twin sister. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60P10
|
Eva Collett was born at Glen Osmond in 1879, the
youngest daughter of Young and Martha Collett. She married Frank Adolph Grimes and it was
as Eva Grimes nee Collett that she died in 1952 at the age of 73. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60P11
|
George Alfred Collett was born at Glen Osmond in 1885, the
last child of Young Collett and his wife Martha Marshall. He later married Mary Emma Evelyn Gore and
the marriage produced three daughters for the couple. George Alfred Collett died on 21st
March 1967. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
60Q7
|
Ella Martha Collett |
Born in 1906
at Magill, South Australia |
||||||||||||
|
60Q8
|
Annie Evelyn
Collett |
Born on 02.10.1907
at South Australia |
||||||||||||
|
60Q9
|
Nancy May Collett |
Born in 1912
at Summertown, S A |
||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60P12
|
Gifford Collett was born at Toft in 1862, the eldest
child of Henry Collett and Ellen Rogers.
His birth was
registered at Caxton (Ref. 3b 420) during the last quarter of that year. It was at Toft church, when he was around
one year old, that he was baptised on 22nd February 1863, the son
of Henry and Ellen Collett. He
was eight years old when he was living with his family at Toft in 1871, but
by 1881 he had left the family home at Brook Lane in the village. At that time in his life Gifford Collett
from Toft was 17 and a lodger at the St Marys Street, Ely home of widow Sarah
Watson and her two sons. His
occupation was recorded as being that of a (corn miller) Militia Recruiting,
similar to another lodger at the house, Tom Thorpe who was 20 and a (farm
labourer) Militia Recruiting.
Presumably the two young men were awaiting a call to join the army or
the police force. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
By
1891 Gifford Collett was 27 and was living and working in the Fulham &
Hammersmith district of London, where interestingly other Colletts were living
at that time, although none of them appear to have been related to Gifford or
his family. Seven years after that day, the marriage of
Gifford Collett and Annie Allen was recorded at St Pancras register office in
London (Ref. 1b 132) during the second quarter of 1898. Anne Allen was baptised at Lindridge in
North Worcestershire on 5th January 1868, the daughter of William
and Ellen Allen. Where Gifford and
Annie were three years later has not been determined, but it may be that Gifford
was with the military in South Africa, that separation resulting in the birth
of their first child five years after their wedding. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
According
to the census in 1911, the family was living in the Kentish Town area of London where Gifford
Collett from Toft in Cambridgeshire was 47 and working as a general labourer. His wife Annie Collett was 43 and from Lindridge in North Worcestershire,
and their three children were Alfred Collett who was six, William Collett who
was four, and Evelyn Collett who was just five months old, all three of them born after
the couple made their home in Kentish Town.
Gifford was still residing in London where he died at the age of 64,
when the death of Gifford Collett was recorded at London register office
(Ref. 1b 103) in 1927. |
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|
|
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|
It is likely that Gifford Collett
junior was born at the end of 1903, with his birth recorded at St Pancras
register office (Ref. 1b 128) during the first three months of 1904.
Tragically, a few weeks later, the death of Gifford Collett junior was also
recorded at St Pancras register office (Ref. 1b 97) during the same three
months of 1904. The birth of second
son Alfred Collett was also recorded at St Pancras register office (Ref. 1b
144) during the quarter of 1905. The
birth of William Collett was recorded at St Pancras register office (Ref. 1b
103) during the second quarter of 1907.
The birth of the couple’s only known daughter Evelyn was also recorded
at St Pancras register office (Ref. 1b 125) during the last three months of
1910. |
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|
|
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|
60Q10
|
Gifford Collett |
Born in 1903 at Kentish Town, London |
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|
60Q11
|
Alfred
Collett |
Born in 1905 at Kentish Town,
London |
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|
60Q12
|
William
Collett |
Born in 1907 at Kentish Town,
London |
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|
60Q13
|
Evelyn
Collett |
Born in 1910 at Kentish Town, London |
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|
|
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|
|
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60P13
|
WILLIAM HENRY COLLETT was born at Toft in 1864 and his birth was registered
at Caxton (Ref. 3b 438) during the third quarter of that year. It was also at Toft where he was baptised on
20th November 1864, the second child of John and Ellen
Collett. He was six years old in the
Toft census of 1871, and by 1881 he and his family were living at Brook Lane
in Toft, where he was working with his father as an agricultural labourer at
the age of 16. In both of the census
returns he was simply listed as William Collett. |
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|
|
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|
William’s
father died during the 1880s, so by 1891 William, aged 26 and an agricultural
labourer from Toft, and his youngest brother Alfred, and their sister Sarah
(below) were the only siblings living at Brook End on School Lane in Toft
with their widowed mother. Also living
with them was Alice Maud Collett, who was six months old and the base-born
daughter of William’s unmarried sister Sarah, together with visitor and
agricultural labourer George Brown aged 36 from Comberton. Nine months after the census that year
William Henry Collett married (1) Eliza Adams at Toft on 25th
December 1891. The wedding was recorded at Caxton register
office (Ref. 3b 1036). Eliza
was 25 and over the next eleven years she presented William with five
children. |
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|
|
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|
According
to the next census in 1901 William, Eliza and their four children were living
at Brook Lane in Toft. Every member of
the household had been born at Toft, with the exception being William’s
wife. William Collett was 35 and an
ordinary farm labourer, while his Eliza Collett was also 35 but from
Chesterton in Cambridge. Their four
children were recorded as Albert Collett who was eight, Nellie Collett who
was six, Wilfred Collett who was three, and Alfred Collett who was one year
old. Living in the house next-door was
William’s married sister Sarah Lindsay nee Collett (below) with her husband
Peter and their two daughters, plus Sarah’s older base-born daughter Maud
Collett. |
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|
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|
Just less than two years after that
census day, Eliza gave birth to her fifth and last children on 1st
February 1903, but did not survive the ordeal. The premature death of Eliza Collett, nee
Adams, was recorded at Cambridge register office (Ref. 3b 309) during the
third quarter of 1903, where her son’s birth was also recorded, with the
extra forename of Adams. Having to
work to support his family as a lone parent, it was agreed that the new baby
should be passed into the hands of William’s youngest brother Alfred who was
married, but had no children. Left with his four older children to look
after, it was not long before William married (2) Margaret Ellen York at Toft
on 26th November 1903.
Margaret was born on 6th November 1873 at Raunds in
Northamptonshire, and that marriage resulted in the birth of a further three
children during the remainder of first decade of the new century. The new Collett family was still living in
Toft, at Brookside,
by the time of the next census in 1911, and still living with them were the
three sons from William’s first marriage. |
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|
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|
The
household was listed as William Collett aged 45 and a horseman on a farm, Margaret Collett aged
37, Albert Collett aged 18 and
a farm labourer, Wilfred Collett aged 13 and another farm labourer, Alfred Collett aged
11, Gladys Collett who was six, Oliver Collett who was two years old, and
Ralph Collett who was only six months old.
Everyone in the household had been born at Toft, with the exception of
Margaret. On that same day, and living nearby in Toft, was
eight-year-old Arthur Adams Collett, the nephew of Alfred and Louisa Collett. William Henry Collett died in 1941 at the
age of 76, his death
recorded at Cambridgeshire register office (Ref. 3b 1357), while his
much young second wife was 99 when she died in 1972. The death of Margaret Ellen Collett was recorded at Cambridgeshire
register office (Ref. 4a 1035). |
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|
|
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|
60Q14
|
Albert Collett |
Born in 1892
at Toft |
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|
60Q15
|
Nellie May Collett |
Born in 1895 at Toft |
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|
60Q16 |
Wilfred Henry J Collett |
Born in 1897 at Toft |
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|
60Q17
|
Alfred John Collett |
Born in 1900
at Toft |
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|
60Q18
|
Arthur
Adams Collett |
Born in 1903 at Toft |
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|
The
following are the children of William Henry Collett and his second wife
Margaret. |
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|
60Q19
|
Gladys Florence Collett |
Born in 1904
at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60Q20
|
Oliver Raymond Collett |
Born in 1908
at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60Q21
|
Ralph Collett |
Born in 1910
at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60Q22
|
CHRISTOPHER ERNALD COLLETT |
Born in 1912
at Toft |
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|
60Q23
|
Kenneth H Collett twin |
Born in 1914
at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60Q24
|
Royston W Collett twin |
Born in 1914 at Toft |
||||||||||||
|
60Q25
|
Sybil A Collett |
Born in 1916
at Toft |
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|
|
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|
|
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60P14
|
Elizabeth Annie Collett was born at Toft on 7th October 1866,
and was baptised there as Elizabeth Annie Collett on that same day,
the eldest daughter of John and Ellen Collett. It was as four years old Elizabeth Collett
that she was recorded in the Toft census of 1871 when she was living there
with her parents, as she was ten years later in 1881. On that occasion the family was living in a
cottage in Brook Lane, in the village, from where Elizabeth was attending the
local school at the age of 14. Eight years later, the
premature death of Elizabeth Collett was recorded at Caxton (Ref. 3b 257)
during the fourth quarter of 1888, when she was only 22. |
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|
|
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|
|
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60P15 |
Sarah Collett was born at Toft in 1868, the daughter
of John Collett and his wife Ellen Rogers.
Her birth was
registered at Caxton (Ref. 3b 450) during the last three months of the year. She was two years old and 12 years of age
in the two census returns following her birth when, on each occasion she was
living with her family at Brook Lane in Toft.
Around nine years later she gave birth to a base-born child and in the
Toft census of 1891 Sarah was still living with her widowed mother and her
two brothers William (above) and Alfred (below) at Brook End on School Lane. Unmarried Sarah Collett, aged 22 and from
Toft, had living with her, her daughter Alice Maud Collett who was seven
months old, who was described as the granddaughter of head of the household
Ellen Collett. |
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|
|
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|
It was later that same year, that the
marriage of Sarah Collett and Peter Lindsay, also of Toft where they were married,
was recorded at Caxton register office (Ref. 3b 1035) during the last three
months of 1891. Their marriage produced two daughters, both
born at Brook Lane in Toft, where the family was still living in 1901. Peter Lindsay was clearly not the father of
Sarah’s base-born daughter, since the census that year continued to record
her surname as Collett. According to
the Toft census that March, Peter Lindsay was 30 and an ordinary agricultural
labourer, his wife Sarah Lindsay was also 30, and their three children were
described as Maud Collett, aged 10 and a boarder with the family, and
daughters Constance Lindsay who was nine, and Dora Lindsay who
was seven. |
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|
|
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|
All
five occupants of the dwelling in Brook Lane had been born in Toft while, in
the adjacent dwelling was Sarah’s brother William Collett and his
family. By the time of the census in
1911 only Peter and Sarah Lindsay were still living in Toft, when they were
both 40 and, by which time, their daughter Constance Lindsay, from Toft, was
living and working in Cambridge at the age of 18. Sometime later Constance Lindsay, who was
known within the family as Connie, emigrated to Canada where she married Jack
Saunders at Windsor in Ontario. |
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|
|
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|
It
is rumoured that a Mrs Lindsay had a relationship with Fred Collett (Ref.
60O8), the youngest brother of Sarah’s father, although nothing has been
found to verify or disprove this.
However, there is a possibility that the liaison was with Sarah
Collett, Fred’s niece, before she became Sarah Lindsay and that he was the
father of her base-born daughter, even though the rumour suggests the child’s
name was Elizabeth Collett. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
60Q26
|
Alice Maud
Collett |
Born in 1890
at Toft |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60P16 |
Selina Collett
was born at Toft in 1870
when her birth was registered at Caxton (Ref. 3b 447) during the fourth
quarter of the year. She was
another daughter of John and Ellen Collett, with whom she was living at Brook
Lane in Toft on the day of the census in 1881, when she was ten years of age
and attending school. Selina Collett was twenty-four
years old when her marriage was recorded at Caxton register office (Ref. 3b
673) during the first quarter of 1894.
Unfortunately, the corresponding record for the groom at Caxton has
still to be found. |
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|
|
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|
|
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60P17
|
Eliza Collett was born at Toft in 1874 and was the
youngest daughter of John and Ellen Collett.
Her birth was
recorded at Caxton (Ref. 3b 40) during the second quarter of 1874. By 1881, Eliza Collett from Toft was seven
years old and attending school, while living at Brook Lane in Toft with her large
family. It is understood within the
family, that she was eventually banned from attending the village school in
Toft for being a ‘disruptive influence’. After leaving school, she also left Toft, and in 1891 Eliza Collett
from Toft was 16 years old and a domestic servant in the Holy Trinity area of
Ely and Market Hill, the younger of two servants at the address. She never married and her life was cut short
at the age of 24, when the death of Eliza Collett was recorded at Caxton register
office (Ref. 3b 278) during the third quarter of 1898. |
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|
|
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|
|
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60P18
|
Alfred Collett was born at Toft in 1876, the last
child born to John Collett and his wife Ellen Rogers. As with all of his older siblings, the birth of Alfred Collett was
also registered at Caxton (Ref. 3b 490) during the second quarter of 1876. It would appear that he spent most of his
early life in Toft, where he was five years old in 1881, when he was living
with his family at Brook Lane. With
the death of his father during the next decade Alfred Collett, aged 15, was
living with his widowed mother in 1891, together with his two unmarried siblings
William and Sarah (above), plus Sarah’s ten-month-old illegitimate baby Alice
Collett. |
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|
|
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|
Just
before the next census in 1901, Alfred became a married man, when he married
the much older Louisa. It would be logical,
considering the age gap, that Louisa was possibly a widow when she married
Alfred. No suitable manage of an
Alfred and a Louisa has been located. However,
there is every chance that she was Louisa Chapman from Bourn, just west of
Toft, the daughter of Thomas and Mary Ann Chapman, who was baptised at Bourn
on 6th June 1858. So,
by the time of the 1901 census, Alfred Collett, aged 25 and an ordinary farm
labourer from Toft, was still living in the village, but with his wife Louisa
Collett who was 42 and from Bourn. Within two years of that
census day, Alfred’s sister-in-law Eliza Collett nee Adams, the wife of his
eldest brother William Henry Collett (above), died after giving birth to
Arthur Adams Collett. With his brother
already having four children, and with Alfred and Louisa unlikely to have any
children of their own, it was decided to allow the couple to look after baby
Arthur. That was certainly the
situation by the time of the next census in 1911, when the three of them were
still residing in Toft. Alfred Collett
from Toft was 35 and a
labourer working on a farm, and his wife Louisa Collett from Bourn was
52. Living with the couple, was their nephew Arthur Adams Collett
from Toft, who was eight years old and a scholar. Completing the household in 1911, were two
other nephews of Alfred and Louisa, and they were schoolboys Victor Hands
from Hampshire who was 11, and Walter Harden from Islington who was nine. It therefore seems highly likely that the
three boys were being schooled by Louisa at the couple’s home in Toft. |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60P19
|
Elizabeth Collett was born at Toft in 1868, the
base-born daughter and only child of Henry Collett and Elizabeth Rogers who
were later married at Toft during July 1872.
It was as
Elizabeth Rogers that her birth was registered at Cambridge (Ref. 3b 517)
during the first two months of 1868. Furthermore,
Elizabeth Rogers was baptised at Toft on 1st March 1868, the
daughter of Elizabeth Rogers. In
1871, at the age of two years, she was recorded in the census living with her
grandmother Mary Rogers. When she was
just five years old her parents emigrated to Australia and arrived in
Brisbane on 3rd May 1874, on board the ship ‘Glamorganshire’. The early years of her life were spent at
Brookfield Farm, Walker’s Point, a farmstead on the banks of the Mary
River. Tragically, after living there
for less than six months, her father drowned in the river and his body was
badly eaten by sharks. |
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|
|
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|
In
July 1876 her mother married Christian Rasmussen following which Elizabeth
then had a half-sister and three half-brothers. Nine months later Elizabeth Collett was
admitted into Glanville State School on 16th April 1877. Just over ten years after that, when
Elizabeth was around eighteen years old, she married Christian Peter Jensen
at the Church of St Paul in Maryborough on 7th June 1887. Christian Peter Jensen was born at Jutland in Demark
during 1859 and he sailed to Australia during 1878, on board the ship
Herschel. He arrived at Maryborough
that same year and initially stayed at the immigration barracks for a short
while, before moving to other accommodation.
He
died on 10th August 1910 at Maryborough, in Queensland, and was
buried there during the following day. |
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|
|
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|
Once
married the couple settled at Central Farm, Island Plantation aka Raingauge
Road in Maryborough. On moving to
Central Farm, the pair of them first lived in a shed that was elevated off
the ground, while they built a house on the property which sadly got washed
away in the flood of 1890. The Great
Flood of 1890 was a major flood with only the tops of houses and the roof of
the Island Plantation Mill visible above the water. The devastation of cane, hay, corn and
Lucerne was fearful and small crop farmers like Christian Jensen and his
stepfather-in-law Christian Rasmussen lost everything. The children are
listed on the St Helens School Registers all except the oldest three. |
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|
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|
Over
twenty-three years, the marriage produced twelve children for Elizabeth and
Christian, and all of them survived to old age. The class registers at St Helens School
curiously included the names of only nine of their children, missing just the
three eldest children. The couple’s
last child was born in 1910, the same year that Christian Peter Jensen passed
away from pneumonia and influenza.
With the death of her husband Elizabeth found it difficult to keep her
family together because of the lack of money.
However, her mother’s Rasmussen family came to her aid. Three years later Elizabeth joined the
religious group United Christians Convention (aka Two by Two) in 1913. |
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|
|
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|
Elizabeth
Jensen, nee Collett formerly Rogers, appears to have suffered a fall in her
old age and was perhaps admitted to hospital where she died at Maryborough on
1st August 1948 aged 82 and 6 months, the cause of death being
uraemia an illness associated with kidney failure. The death certificate also confirmed she
had a fractured right leg. Following her
death Elizabeth was buried at Maryborough Cemetery on Tuesday 3rd
August 1948. Eighteen years prior to
that, the Electoral Roll for Maryborough included Elizabeth Jensen residing
at 95 Saltwater Creek Road in the town, from where she was undertaking domestic
duties on 10th April 1930. |
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|
|
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|
The
twelve children of Elizabeth Collett and Christian Jensen were Annie E
Jensen (1887-1988 who married George A Baumgart 1889-1962), Henry C
Jensen (1889-1950 who married Auguste J L Sakrzewski 1888-1965), Florence
M Jensen (1891-1971 who married Ernest E Schwarzrock 1883-1966), Charles
W Jensen (1893-1992), Martha Louise Jensen (7.12.1894-Feb 1957 who
married Wilhelm A Bandholz 1888-1961
at Maryborough on 11.05.1918), Ernest R Jensen (1897-1967 who
married Isabel Lesilea Muller 1901-1988), Ethel Mary Jensen
(1898-1994), Walter Percy Jensen (1900-1982 who married Jessie I
Ditchmen 1906), Rose Alice Jensen (1903-1903), Minnie M Jensen
(1904-1988 who married Fredrick W Bandholz), Arthur E Jensen
(1906-1999 who married Beatrice A Abell 1910-2002), and Stanley H Jensen
(1910-1992 who married Gladys Flora Backer 1914-1992). |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60P20
|
William Henry Collett may have been born at St Ives at the
home of his maternal grandparents, just after the census day in 1871, but it
was at Toft that he was baptised on 16th July 1871, the first
child born to William Collett and his wife Jane Townsend. Sadly, he did not survive and died shortly
after, since the next son born into the family was given the same name. |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60P21
|
William Henry Collett was born at Cambridge towards the end
of 1872, the eldest surviving child of William and Jane Collett. His birth was registered at Cambridge (Ref. 3b 518) during the last
quarter of that year. Before he
was born, his parents had spent their first years together at Toft and may
have moved to Cambridge for work purposes.
And it was at Cambridge that William Henry Collett was baptised at St
Paul’s Church on 6th
February 1873, to parents William and Jane. By the time of the census in 1881 William H
Collett was a scholar who was eight years old, living with his family at 4
Cavendish Terrace in Cambridge. The
next census in 1891 recorded William H Collett from Cambridge living and
working within the Leicester East registration district, although his age was
recorded in error as being 20, instead of 18. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
It was in the middle of the following
decade that the marriage of William Henry Collett and Maude Tryphena
Robinson, who was born in Leicester in 1874, was recorded there (Ref. 7a 546)
during the third quarter of 1896. After two years together, Maude discovered
she was expecting the birth of the first of the couple’s two sons. The census return in March 1901 placed the
family of three living at
Berners Street within the area of Leicester that was formerly known as
St Margaret’s. William H Collett, aged
28 and from Cambridge, was a letterpress printer, his wife Maude T Collett
was 26, and their son Cecil W B Collett was two years old, having been born
in Leicester. Staying with the family
at that time was William’s sister Lily Collett (below) from Wisbech, who was
only 14. |
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|
|
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|
During
the following year, Maude gave birth to the second of William’s sons, after
which the family of four left Leicester and settled in Birstall, within the Barrow-upon-Soar
district of the county, where they were living in 1911. William Henry Collett from Cambridge was 38
and a commercial
traveller in printing ink, his wife was Maude Tryphena Collett who was
36, and their two sons were recorded as Cecil William Bunting Collett, aged
11, and Douglas Willis Collett, who was eight years old. On that census day, the family was employing Minnie Newton, a
28-year-old domestic servant. Also,
exactly thirteen years later, William’s wife died at Birstall in
Leicester on 9th March 1924.
Her Will which was proved at Leicester on 23rd April 1924
contained £22 12 Shillings and 6 Pence, which was passed to her husband
William Henry Collett, whose occupation was that of a metal salesman. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
In 1936, William Henry Collett was
named as the sole beneficiary under the terms of the Will of his uncle
Frederick Collett, his father’s younger brother. Just over twenty-two years after being
widowed, William Henry Collett died in Leicestershire on 27th
January 1947, following which his Will was proved there on 25th
April 1947, when the two beneficiaries were named as Albany Gordon Smith and
Reginald Arthur Siddons. By then,
although his two sons were married, they never had and children and had left
England many years earlier. So,
perhaps there was no close relationship between. Albany Gordon Smith was born in Leicester
on 26th January 1898 and died in 1970, and Reginald Arthur Siddons
was another who was born in Leicester, near the end of 1895, who died in
1949. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
60Q27
|
Cecil William Bunting Collett |
Born in 1899
at Leicester |
||||||||||||
|
60Q28
|
Douglas Willis Collett |
Born in 1902
at Leicester |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60P22
|
Florence Annie Collett was born at Cambridge in 1875, with her birth
registered there (Ref. 3b 500) during the third quarter of the year. It was at the Primitive Methodist Chapel in
Cambridge that she was baptised on 20th February 1876 as Florence Anna Collett,
the eldest daughter of William Collett and Jane Eliza Townsend. It was at 4 Cavendish Terrace in Cambridge that
the family was living in 1881, when Florence A Collett was five years old. During the next decade the family moved to
Emneth, just south of Wisbech, and was living there at Silt Road in 1891,
when Florence was 15, had left school, but had no job of work. She was again living with her parents in
1901, but at Westmeadowgate in Emneth, where she was 25 and a dressmaker. Almost immediately after that census day, the marriage of Florence
Annie Collett and John William Aspland was recorded at Wisbech register
office (Ref. 3b 1280) during the second quarter of 1901. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
Three years after their wedding day,
Florence gave birth to a daughter, with the three members of the family
residing at Peterborough in 1911, where their daughter was born. Florence Annie Aspland from Cambridge was
35, John William Aspland from Chatteris was 38 and an iron-turner in general
engineering, while Edith May Aspland was seven years of age. Florence Annie Aspland died on 31st
December 1954 and was buried Grantham Cemetery in Lincolnshire, when her
death was recorded at Lincoln register office (Ref. 3b 84) during the first
quarter of 1955 at the age of 79. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60P23 |
Albert Henry Collett was born at Cambridge during the third
quarter of 1878, and was three years old in the Cambridge census of 1881 when
he was living at 4 Cavendish Terrace with his family. During the next few years, he and his
family moved out of Cambridge and settled in Wisbech. By the time he was 14, his stated age in
the census of 1891, his employer gave his name in error as Alfred K Collett
when he was living separately from his family but not far away from them
within the Wisbech area. Towards the
end of the following decade Albert married Mary Ann Topliss, one of the daughters of Jemima
Topliss. In the census of 1891,
married Jemima from Leicestershire was 49 and living at Lamcote Grove in
Nottingham with her three daughters.
They were Mary Topliss who was 18 and a teacher at a day school, Jemima
Topliss aged 16, and Sarah E Topliss who was 15. Their father was absent from the family home
that day. By March 1901, the
childless couple was residing at 18 Annesley Terrace in the Gorton district
of Manchester. Albert Henry Collett
from Cambridge was a railway porter aged 23, while his wife Mary A Collett
was 28 and from Cavendish Bridge in North Leicestershire, right on the county
boundary with Derbyshire. Her
occupation was that of a day school teacher.
Staying with the couple that day was Mary’s unmarried sister Sarah E Topliss from
Long Eaton, near Cavendish Bridge, who was 25 and described as living on her
own means. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
Ten
years later Albert’s wife Mary Collett aged 38 and from Cavendish Bridge was a visitor at the Nottingham
Colwick home of her brother-in-law Arthur Foster who was 43 and an oil
storeman with the Great Northern Railway.
His wife Elizabeth Ann Foster, Mary’s older married sister, was 44, and
their two children were bookshop assistant Alice Jemima Foster aged 14, and Bernard
Topliss Foster who was 10. This is
another validation that Mary Collett was formally Mary Ann Topliss whose
birth was registered at Leicester (Ref. 7a 226) during the second quarter of
1873. The reason Mary was
staying with the family was because, less than four weeks before the census
day in 1911, Albert had sailed to America on the White Star Line ship Dominion
which left Liverpool on 9th March 1911 bound for Portland,
Maine. The vessel’s passenger listed
included Albert H Collett, aged 33, whose occupation was lecturer, and one
month later his wife was the visitor at 22 Woodland Grove in Colwick within
the Nottingham parish of St Mary the Virgin. |
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|
|
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|
Curiously
three years prior to that there is a record of an A H Collett, his wife and
his child Edrea, sailing on board the very same ship, the Dominion, although it
was making the return journey, having left Portland in Maine and arriving at
Liverpool on 3rd March 1908.
It seems highly likely that this was the same family, even though no
record of daughter Edrea Collett has been found, either in the UK or North
America. Sometime after Albert Henry
Collett arrived at Portland in 1911, he eventually chose Canada rather than
America in which to live, presumably with his wife, who very likely joined
him later on. |
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|
|
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|
What
is known for sure is that it was during the month of June in 1919, when he
was 41, that he arrived in Niagara Falls where he spent the next few
years. However, it was on 30th
November 1923 that Albert H Collett, aged 46, sailed into Southampton Harbour
on board the SS Minnedosa of the Canadian Pacific Line from Montreal in
Canada. The ship’s manifest stated
that the address where he would be staying was 93 High Street, Old Chesterton
in Cambridge, and that his occupation was that of an auctioneer. Upon his passing, at the age of 76, Albert Henry Collet was buried at
Kingston (upon Thames) Cemetery & Crematorium on 10th August
1955. |
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|
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|
|
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60P24 |
Sidney Herbert Collett was born at Cambridge in 1880, the son
of William and Jane Collett, his birth registered there (Ref. 3b 529) during
the second quarter of the year. He was
one year old at the time of the census in 1881 when he was living with his
family at 4 Cavendish Terrace in Cambridge.
During the next few years his father’s work took the family to Emneth, just south of Wisbech,
where they were living at Silt Road in 1891, when Sidney Collett from
Cambridge was 11. |
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|
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|
By
March 1901 Sidney Herbert Collett from Cambridge was 21, when he was a
leather salesman living and working in the Bromley area of Kent in
London. Five years later, the marriage of Sidney Herbert
Collett and Louisa Maud Seal was recorded at the Surrey Epsom register office
(Ref. 2a 83) during the third quarter of 1906. Louisa, who was born on 1st May
1880, gave birth to the first of the couple’s two daughter one year after
their wedding day. According to the
April census in 1911, the family of three was living in Leicester where
Sidney Herbert Collett from Cambridge was 31 and a commercial traveller in the rubber industry.
His wife was Louisa Maud Collett from Sutton in Surrey
who was 30, and their daughter Phyllis Mary Collett from Woodside in Surrey was three years
old. Completing the household was domestic cook Janet
Ferguson who was 27. On the day of the
census, Louisa was in an advanced state of her second pregnancy, with the
couple’s second child was born during the second quarter of 1911. |
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|
|
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|
It is perhaps surprising that Sidney
H Collett from Cambridge, and the son of William Collett at Wisbech, arrived
in San Francisco, California, onboard the SS Ventura on 21st January
1919. The details on his arrival card recorded
that he was 38, a married man and a merchant, living at Birmingham in
England, who had previously been to the USA as a tourist in 1913. It also stated that he had no relatives in
America. Therefore, it is assumed that
his was the initial visit to the country, taken on behalf of his siblings
later crossed the Atlantic for a new life in Canada. |
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|
|
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|
It
was Sidney’s brother Albert Henry Collett (above) and his twice-married
sister Daisy Evaline Tustin (below) who both emigrated to Canada with their
respective families in 1919 and 1921. Sadly,
Daisy died while she and her family were living at Niagara Falls, where Albert
also lived. It is uncertain whether
her two children, one from each of her two marriages, were minors or adults
when she died, but it is known that after she died her husband Frank Tustin
returned to England and stayed at the home of Sidney Herbert Collett and his
wife Louisa Maud. During the Second
World War the couple’s youngest daughter was married and her children were
eventually born after the war in Australia.
It therefore seems highly likely that the eldest daughter of Sidney
and Louisa was still unmarried and was still living with her parents when
Frank Tustin arrived from Canada.
Despite their twenty-year age difference, Frank married his
niece-in-law Phyllis Mary Collett, and they lived out their lives at Hastings
in Kent. |
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|
|
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|
Coincidentally,
it was also at Hastings that Sidney Herbert Collett died on 1st
September 1959, his
death recorded at Sussex register office (Ref. 5h 306) at the age of 79. His Will was proved in London on 23rd
October 1959 when it was stated that Sidney Herbert Collett lived at
101 Lower Park Road in Hastings where he died on 1st September
1959. Probate also named the joint
executors of his Will as Louisa Maud Collett, his widow, and Hugh Roberts
Wade, a solicitor, when his personal estate was valued at £16,471 12
Shillings and 9 Pence. It was
twenty-one years after that when Louisa Maud Collett passed away, her death
being recorded at Hastings & Rother register office (Ref. 18 0933) during
March 1980 when she was 101 years old. |
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|
|
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|
60Q29
|
Phyllis Mary Collett |
Born in 1907 at Woodside, Croydon |
||||||||||||
|
60Q30
|
Sybil M P Collett |
Born in 1911
at Leicester |
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|
|
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|
|
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60P25
|
Eliza Jane Collett was born at Wisbech in 1884, the
daughter of William and Jane Collett, with her birth recorded at Wisbech
register office (Ref. 3b 633) during the second quarter of the year. As Eliza Collett, aged seven years, she was
living with her family at
South End within the St Peter parish of Wisbech. Not long after that her family moved the
short distant to Emneth, and where they were living at Westmeadowgate in 1901,
when Eliza was 17 and a milliner. It
was as Eliza Jane Collett, aged 27, that she was recorded living with her
parents at Emneth in 1911 when
she was still working as a milliner. |
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|
|
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|
It
was during the second quarter of the following year that Eliza J Collett married
Arthur G Hayward at Wisbech, when the event was recorded at the Wisbech
register office (Ref. 3b 1373). The
witnesses at the wedding were Robert W Elvin and Eliza E Plumb. It is not known if Eliza and Arthur ever
had any children. Arthur G Hayward
died at Cambridge during March 1947 when he was 61, while Eliza Jane Hayward
nee Collett survived him by just over twenty years when her death was
recorded at Cambridge register office (Ref. 4a 215) during June 1967 at the
age of 83. |
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|
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|
|
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60P26
|
Lily Collett was born at Wisbech in 1886, the
daughter of William Collett and his wife Jane Eliza Townsend, whose birth was registered at
Wisbech (Ref. 3b 591) during the fourth quarter of the year. She was four years old in the census of
1891 when she was living with her family at Silt Road in Emneth just south of Wisbech. Ten years later she was staying with her
eldest brother William, at his home on Berners Street in Leicester, when she was
recorded as Lily Collett, born
at Wisbech, who was 14 years old. She later returned to the family home, since it was at Wisbech
register office (Ref. 3b 1051) that the marriage of Lily Collett and Walter
William Ward was recorded during the last quarter of 1910. |
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|
|
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|
By
the time of the census in 1911, their marriage had already produced the first
of their three children while they were living at Wisbech St Peter. Walter Ward from Manchester was 28 and a commercial traveller in
drapery, his wife Lily Ward of Wisbech was 24, and their daughter was Eileen
Lilian Ward, who was seven months old and also born at Wisbech. It was also at Wisbech that the couple’s
next child was born six months later, that same year, before the family moved
to Chesterton in Cambridge, where their last child was born. Walter William Ward died in Suffolk during
1956. Lily Ward nee Collett died
whilst in Wembley Hospital on 23rd March 1965. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
60Q31 |
Eileen Lilian
Ward |
Born in 1910
at Wisbech |
||||||||||||
|
60Q32 |
Jack Ward |
Born in 1911
at Wisbech |
||||||||||||
|
60Q33 |
Stanley Ward |
Born in 1914
at Chesterton |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60P27
|
Daisy Evaline Collett was born in Wisbech, her birth recorded
at Wisbech register office (Ref. 3b 623) during the second quarter of 1891,
the last child born to William Collett and his wife Jane Eliza Townsend. The fact that she was simply listed as
Daisy Collett in the Wisbech St Peter census of 1891 means that she was born
before the fifth of April that year.
Therefore, she was very likely only a few days old, when she and her
family were residing at South End in Wisbech St Peter. During the next few years her parents took
the family across the county boundary into Norfolk, to live in the village of
Emneth, just south-east of Wisbech. It
was there, at
Westmeadowgate, that the family was living in 1901 when she was again
recorded as Daisy Collett, aged 10 years and from Wisbech. |
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|
|
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|
In
the next census for Emneth in 1911, Daisy Evaline Collett aged 20 and with no job of work, was
still living there with her elderly parents, perhaps having taken the role of
housekeeper. It was either at the end
of the following year, or early in 1913, when the marriage of Daisy E Collett
and (1) Philip D Campbell was recorded at Middlesex Brentford register office
(Ref. 3a 254) during the first three months of 1913. Philip was born in Northumberland in 1885
and may have been an orphan because he was living with his elderly widowed
grandfather Philip Beddall in Cambridge in 1891, when he was six years old. Daisy presented Philip with an only son Alan
Campbell in 1913. The absence of other children
may be an indication that Philip served with the armed forces during the
First World War. Certainly, it looks
very much like Philip may well have been killed in the last year of the war, with
his death recorded at the Norfolk St Faiths register office (Ref. 4b 126)
during the first quarter of 1918. It
was two years after her loss, that the marriage of Daisy Evaline Campbell and
(2) Frank Tustin was recorded at Peterborough register office (Ref. 3b 686)
during the last quarter of 1920. Just
over six months later Daisy and Frank emigrated to Canada. |
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|
|
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|
Apparently,
during her life, Daisy was known within the family as Eva. And so it was that she and her new husband eventually settled at
Niagara Falls in Ontario, where their only child, Norton Eric Tustin
was born on 25th March 1922. It was also to Niagara Falls that Eva’s
older brother Albert Henry Collett (above) had moved in 1919. It was during the month of June in 1921 that Frank Tustin, aged 31,
and his wife Daisy E Tustin, aged 30, sailed on the SS Scandinavian to Quebec
City, when Frank’s occupation in England was that of a policeman, who was
intending to secure work as a salesman in Ontario. Also included on the same passenger list,
and also heading for Niagara Falls, was Cecil W B Collett who was 22 and the
eldest son of Daisy’s eldest brother William Henry Collett, therefore he was
Daisy’s nephew, who was only eight years younger than his aunt, with whom he
was very likely a travelling companion. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
Eva’s eldest son Alan joined his
mother in Niagara Falls, where he changed his name to Alan Tustin, although
later in his life, after a failed marriage, he reverted back to be Alan Campbell
once again. During the Second World
War, Eva’s youngest son was a mechanic with the Royal Canadian Air Force who,
on 6th June 1942, travelled to Sweet Grass in Toole County,
Montana, USA. The travel manifest,
included his date of birth (as above), together with confirmation that he was
the son of Frank Tustin of 841 Fourth Avenue, Niagara Falls, his onward
destination was Great Falls in Montana, where he knew no one, and would only
be there for three days. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
Upon
the premature death of Daisy Evaline Tustin, nee Collett, (date not known, but after the
6th June 1942), her widowed husband Frank Tustin returned
to England, where he was reunited his brother-in-law Sidney Herbert Collett
(above), his late wife’s older brother.
And it was Sidney’s eldest daughter Phyllis Mary Collett who became
the second wife of Frank Tustin, following which the couple then made their
home at Hastings in Kent. |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60P28
|
Margaret Elizabeth
Collett was born at
Strathalbyn in South Australia on 2nd March 1889, the eldest child
and only daughter of Thomas Collett and his wife Jessie Williamson. On 18th September 1912 she
married Joseph Rupert Verner at Strathalbyn and they had four children. Joseph was born on 15th February
1890 at Wirrabara in South Australia, the son of Robert Verner and Janet
Adair. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
Doris
Irene Verner was born in 1913 and died in 2000, Rupert Lindsay Verner was
born in 1916 and died in 1974, Jessie Madge Verner who was born in 1918 and she
died in 2001, and Robert Thomas Verner who was born in 1925 and died that
same year. Joseph Rupert Verner died
on 10th June 1964 at Mount Barker in South Australia, while his
wife survived him by just over eleven years when Margaret Elizabeth Verner nee
Collett died on 21st October 1975. |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60P29
|
John Williamson Collett was born on 29th May 1890
at Strathalbyn, the only son of and second child of Thomas Collett and Jessie
Williamson. John married Myrtle Dodd
in South Australia during 1913, and their marriage produced six children for
John and Myrtle, although apart from one of them, their dates of birth are
not known at this time. Therefore, the
order of the names listed below may not be correct. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
Myrtle
Dodd was born at Lake Plains in South Australia on 12th May 1891,
the daughter of Frederick Robert Dodd and Emily Sarah Putland. The only other known fact about John
Collett is that he died in South Australia during 1957, and was followed
seven years after by his wife who died in 1964. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
60Q34 |
Thomas (Tom)
Gifford Collett |
Born circa
1914 at Strathalbyn; died 2001 |
||||||||||||
|
60Q35 |
Stephen
(Steve) John Collett |
Born circa
1916 at Strathalbyn; died 1997 |
||||||||||||
|
60Q36 |
Clarence James Collett |
Born during
1919 at Strathalbyn |
||||||||||||
|
60Q37 |
Margaret
Collett |
Born circa
1921 at Strathalbyn |
||||||||||||
|
60Q38 |
Lawrence Roy
Collett |
Born circa
1923 at Strathalbyn; died 2014 |
||||||||||||
|
60Q39 |
James (Jim)
Vincent Collett |
Born circa
1925 at Strathalbyn; died 1996 |
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|
|
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|
|
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60P30
|
Gwendoline Victoria
Pearl Collett was
born at Finnis in South Australia during 1898, the only child of Stephen
Collett and his wife Ethel May Jackson.
On 14th August 1920 she married Frank Turner Sellick at
Adelaide who was born in 1892 and who died in 1964. Their marriage produced two children and
they were Fay Olive Sellick who was born in 1922 and Bruce Collett Sellick
who was born in 1924 and who died in 2005, having served as a pilot during
the Second World War. Gwendoline
Victoria Pearl Sellick nee Collett died at Adelaide in 1991. Gwendoline was an accomplished singer and
her talent was acknowledged in Australia where she received a national award
for her singing career. Most of the
time during her concerts she was accompanied on the piano by her
sister-in-law. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
After
the war Bruce Collett Sellick continued flying when he became a pilot for a
commercial airline company. It was
through his work that he met and married Marie Membrey who was an air
hostess. Their marriage gave them
three children, Lynette Sellick (1954-1971), Susan P Sellick, born in 1956,
and Kym E Sellick who was born in 1961 who later married Rick Stucke. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
As
regards the eldest child of Gwendoline Collett and Frank Sellick, Fay Olive
Sellick married John Graham Bolton and they had: (a) Alan Graham Bolton, born
in 1949 who Elizabeth Home with whom he had Thomas Bolton (born 1976) and
Julie Bolton (born 1979); (b) Abigail Bolton, born in 1950 who married Nigel
Streeter with whom she had Jethro Streeter (born 1975) and Nicholas Streeter
(born 1977); (c) Yvonne Bolton in 1956; and (d) Bruce Bolton who was born in
1961. |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60P31
|
Ethel May Collett was born at Adelaide on 1st
October 1893, the eldest child of Eliza Ann Collett and her husband James
Collett from another branch of the Collett so far undetermined. She married Edward Stanley Burgess at
Norwood in South Australia on 30th October 1913. Edward was born at Cygnet River in South
Australia on 22nd July 1890.
Very shortly after they were married Ethel gave birth to a daughter,
Gwendoline Phyllis Burgess, who was born before the end of that year. Gwendoline later married William John
Lawton who was born in 1905 and who died in 1987. By then he had outlived his wife by forty
years, as Gwendoline Phyllis Lawton nee Burgess died during 1947. |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60P32
|
Christopher Collett was born at Port Pirie on 16th
August 1897, the eldest son of Eliza Ann and James Collett. Just after the start of the First World War
Christopher enlisted with the 12th Infantry Battalion at
Adelaide. He was given the rank of
Private and the service number 3702 and he sailed out of Adelaide Harbour on
board the RMS Malwa on 2nd December 1915. While still in Europe, and following his
safe return from the fighting there, he married (1) Nellie Patterson McVake
at Glasgow in Scotland during 1919. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
What
happened after that is not clear because Christopher must have married (2)
Dorothy Louisa Jackson in the first half of the 1920s since she presented him
with a son in 1925. Eleven years later
the family was living at Marrickville in the Dalley area of New South Wales
in 1936, and it was there that they were still living in 1943. Dorothy Louisa Jackson had been born at
Carlton in Victoria in 1902, and she died at Auburn in New South Wales during
1962. Eight years after that
Christopher Collett died at Cabramatta in New South Wales on 17th
March 1970. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
60Q40 |
Gordon William Collett |
Born in 1926 |
||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60P33 |
Henry Percival Collett was born at Adelaide on 1st
August 1904, the youngest child of Eliza Ann Collett and her husband James
Collett. Nothing more is known about
him at this time, except that Henry Percival Collett died at Burnside in
South Australia on 6th May 1905. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60Q1
|
William Darsey Anderson Collett
was born at Eastwood
in South Australia during 1886, the first-born child of William Henry Collett
and his wife Sarah Jane Anderson. All
that is known about his life is that he was around sixty-eight when he died
in 1954. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60Q2
|
David Arnold Young
Collett was born at
Eastwood in South Australia during 1889, the son of William and Sarah
Collett. He served with the Australian
Imperial Forces during the First World War, and his military confirmed his service number as 810 12603,
that he was born at Adelaide S A, that he enlisted at Morphettville
S A, and that his wife and next-of-kin was Amy Findon. The only other information currently known
about David is that he died during 1976. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60Q3 |
Kenneth James Collett
was born in 1891 at Eastwood, South Australia, another son of William and
Sarah Collett. Like his three of his
brothers, he saw active service during the First World War, and it is from his military
service records that we know just a little bit more about him, as
follows. His place of birth was
confirmed as Eastwood S A, he enlisted at Keswick S A – as did his brother
Malcolm (below), maybe together at the same time, his service number was 75, and
that his mother and next-of-kin was Sarah Jane Collett. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60Q4 |
Malcolm Ross Collett was born at Eastwood in South
Australia during 1893, the son of William Henry and Sarah Jane Collett. He was relatively young when Malcolm Ross
Collett died in 1932. Malcolm enlisted
with the army at Keswick, S A, and was Private 2333 with the 48th
Battalion Australian Imperial Forces at the time of the First World War, when
he mother Sarah Jane Collett was named as his next-of-kin. However, on 10th October 1917 he
was the subject of a Court Martial. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60Q5
|
Edwin Lancelot Collett was born at Glen Osmond in 1896, the
son of William Henry and Sarah Jane Collett, and he died in 1959. Nothing further is known about him at this
time. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60Q6
|
Bernard Young Collett was born at Glen Osmond in Australia
during 1898, the last child born to William Henry Collett and his wife Sarah
Jane Anderson, and he died during 1952.
His military service record confirmed that he was born at Glen Osmond
in South Australia, that his service number was 57507, and that he enlisted
for service in the First World War at Adelaide. However, it is the name of his next-of-kin
which is rather curious, because it stated that it was his father August John
Collett. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60Q7
|
Ella Martha Collett was born at Magill in South Australia
during 1906, the eldest of the three daughters of George Alfred Collett and
his wife Mary Emma Evelyn Gore. Ella
later married Sidney Albert Curtis. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60Q9
|
Nancy May Collett was born at Summertown in South
Australia on 29.01.1912, the youngest of the three children of George Alfred
and Mary Emma Evelyn Collett. All that
is known about Nancy at this time is that she died at Kelmscott in Western
Australia on 21st June 1990. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60Q14
|
Albert Collett was born at Toft in 1892, the eldest
of the four children of William Henry Collett and his first wife Eliza
Adams. Albert was eight years old in
1901 when he was living with his family at Toft, and was 18 by the time of
the census in 1911 when he was living with his father who had remarried
following the death of Albert’s mother not long after 1901. It was in 1924 that he married Grace Craft
in Cambridgeshire with whom he had two children; the first born in Cambridge
before the family moved to Hertfordshire, where the second child was
born. All that is currently known
about Albert apart from this, is that he died during 1975. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
60R1 |
Conway Albert William Collett |
Born in 1927
at Chesterton, Cambridge |
||||||||||||
|
60R2 |
Cecil E Collett |
Born in 1933
at Royston, Hertfordshire |
||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60Q15
|
Nellie May Collett was born at Toft on 12th January
1895, the daughter of William and Eliza Collett. Her birth was recorded at Caxton register office (Ref. 3b 457) during
the first quarter of 1895. She
was living with her family at
Brook Lane in Toft in 1901, when she was six years old, but shortly
after that her mother died and her father married for a second time. Upon leaving school, Nellie entered into
domestic service and by 1911 she was living and working at Chesterton in
Cambridge, where her mother had been born.
On that occasion she was recorded in the census as Nelly Collett from
Toft who was 16 and the
younger of two servants employed by boat-builder James Foster, a widower aged
86. Twenty years later, the marriage
of Nellie M Collett and John T Hooks was recorded at Chesterton in Cambridge
(Ref. 3b 1183) during the last three months of 1931, John having been
born in Cambridge in 1897. No children were born out of
their married, with the death of Nellie M Hooks recorded at Cambridge
register office (Ref. 4a 506) during the third quarter of 1971. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60Q16 |
Wilfred Henry J Collett was born at Toft in 1897, and was named
after his brother who had died during the previous year. The birth of Wilfred Henry Collett was recorded at Caxton register
office (Ref. 3b 432) during the third quarter of the year. By 1901 Wilfred was three years old when he
was still living at Toft with his mother and father and his three surviving
siblings. Following the death of his
mother during the next few months, and his father marrying again, Wilfred
Collett aged 13, was living at Toft in 1911 with his father and his stepmother
and their young family. It was during the spring of 1928
that the marriage of Wilfred H Collett and Ada Webber was recorded at Caxton
register office (Ref. 3b 1125).
The marriage is known to have produced two children for the couple, the birth of their youngest son
recorded at Cambridge register office (Ref. 3b 1311) during the last three
months of 1939. The later death of
Wilfred Henry J Collett was recorded at the Cambridgeshire register office
(Ref. 9 0735) during 1981. |
||||||||||||||
|
|
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|
60R3 |
Kenneth W H J Collett |
Born in 1929
at Cambridge |
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|
60R4 |
Michael B Collett |
Born in 1939
at Cambridge |
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60Q17 |
Alfred John Collett was born at Toft on 31st March 1900,
another child of William Henry Collett by his first wife Eliza Adams. His birth was recorded at Caxton register office (Ref. 3b 454) during
the second quarter of the year.
The family was altogether for the Toft census in March 1901, when
Alfred was one year old, but sadly just after that his mother passed
away. Alfred was eleven years old in
1911 when he was still living with his father and his stepmother at Brookside in Toft. The only other fact known about Alfred is
that he died during 1978, with
his death recorded at the Cambridgeshire register office (Ref. 9 0925) as
Alfred John Collett. |
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|
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60Q18 |
Arthur Adams
Collett was born at Toft on 1st February 1903,
the last child of Eliza Adams, the first wife of William Henry Collett. Shortly after he was born, or maybe even
during the birth, Eliza Collett died and Arthur’s father remarried. However, sometime before then, baby Arthur
was passed into the care of William’s youngest brother Alfred Collett ad his
wife, who had no children of their own.
And it was with them that eight-year-old schoolboy Arthur Adams
Collett was living with them in 1911. The
birth of Arthur Adams Collett was recorded at Caxton register office (Ref. 3b
401) during the first three months of 1903, and all that is currently known about
him, is that he was still residing in Cambridgeshire when he died in 1993 |
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|
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60Q19
|
Gladys Florence Collett was born at Toft during 1904, the
first child of William Henry Collett by his second wife Margaret Ellen York. Her birth was recorded at Caxton register office (Ref. 3b 416) during
the third quarter of the year. All
that we know about her is that she was six years old in the Toft census of
1911, when she was living there with her parents and two younger siblings,
and that she died in 1989. |
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60Q20
|
Oliver Raymond Collett was born at Toft on 4th January 1908,
the second child of William and Margaret Collett. His birth was recorded at Caxton register office (Ref. 3b 366)
and he was two years old in 1911 when he was living with his family at
Toft. The later marriage of Oliver R Collett and Lily E Day was
recorded at Cambridge register office (Ref. 3b 1601) during the third quarter
of 1937. The births of their
four children were all recorded at Cambridge, where the mother’s maiden-name
was confirmed as Day. It was during
1995 that Oliver Raymond Collett passed away at the age of 87, his death recorded at the
Cambridgeshire register office (Ref. 3311c c32c). |
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|
60R5 |
Raymond W Collett |
Born in 1938
at Cambridge |
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|
60R6 |
David B Collett |
Born in 1945
at Cambridge |
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|
60R7 |
Averil J Collett |
Born in 1949
at Cambridge |
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|
60R8 |
Mavis A Collett |
Born in 1956
at Cambridge |
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|
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60Q21
|
Ralph William Collett was born at Toft on 20th September
1910, the son of William and Margaret Collett, his birth recorded at Caxton register office
(Ref. 3b 354) during the last quarter of the year. As just Ralph Collett aged six months, he
was living with his family at Brookside in Toft on the census day in 1911. Ralph was thirty-six years old when he
married widow Ellen Osborne, nee Duncan, who was born at St Olave in
Bermondsey during 1917. The wedding of Ralph W Collett
and Ellen V Osborne was recorded at Cambridge register office (Ref. 4a 777)
during the second quarter of 1947. By that time in her life, Ellen already had
a son from her previous marriage, and he was Terence Osborne who had been
born at Hailsham in Sussex during 1939.
In addition to son Terence, Ellen presented Ralph with four children
over the next twelve years when they were living in Cambridge. It was during 1995 that the death of Ralph William Collett was
recorded at the Cambridgeshire register office (Ref. 3311c c32c). |
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|
60R9 |
Barry W Collett |
Born in 1948
at Cambridge |
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|
60R10 |
Anthony John Collett |
Born in 1949
at Cambridge |
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|
60R11 |
Rosemary Collett |
Born in 1953
at Cambridge |
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|
60R12 |
Jacqueline M Collett |
Born in 1959
at Cambridge |
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|
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|
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60Q22 |
CHRISTOPHER ERNALD COLLETT was born at Toft on 20th August 1912,
the son of William and Margaret Collett, his birth recorded at Caxton register office (Ref. 3b
710) during the last quarter of the year. The spelling of his second forename may
simply be a genuine error, in so far as his name may have been Arnold rather
than the otherwise unheard of Ernald. It was during the summer of
1937, at Lothingland in Suffolk, that farmworker Christopher Collett married
Violet May Burgoyne, their wedding recorded there (Ref. 4a 410) during the
third quarter of that year.
Once married the couple initially settled in Cambridge, where their
first three children were born, before moving into the village of Toft, where
another three children were added to the family. The family’s home was a thatched cottage at
Brookside in Toft, Provenance Cottage, which was still there in 2013. The only other detail so far known about
Christopher, is that he died on 18th February 2001 when he was 89,
and when his death was
recorded at Cambridgeshire register office (Ref. 3311b b48c) as Christopher
Ernald Collett. His wife Violet May
Collett, nee Burgoyne, was born on 9th August 1911, and survived
her husband by four years, when she passed away during July 2005, the death of Violet May
Collett recorded at Cambridge register office. |
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|
|
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|
60R13 |
Christopher Keith Collett |
Born in 1938
at Cambridge |
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|
60R14 |
KORAN W G COLLETT |
Born in 1940
at Cambridge |
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|
60R15 |
Margaret Ann Collett |
Born in 1942
at Cambridge |
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|
60R16 |
Gerald Paul Collett |
Born in 1947
at Toft |
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|
60R17 |
Marilyn E Collett |
Born in 1949
at Toft |
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|
60R18 |
Linda J Collett |
Born in 1954
at Toft |
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|
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|
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60Q23 |
Kenneth H Collett was the twin brother of Royston
(below) and was born at Toft in 1914, the twin sons of William and Margaret
Collett. His was the first birth to be recorded at Caxton
register office (Ref. 3b 729) during the third quarter of the year. His mother’s maiden-name was confirmed as
York, but very tragically, his death was also recorded at Caxton (Ref. 3b
434) during that same three-month period in 1914. |
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60Q24
|
Royston W Collett was the twin brother of Kenneth
(above) and was born at Toft in 1914, with his birth recorded at Caxton register office (Ref. 3b
729) during the third quarter of the year, when his mother’s maiden-name was
confirmed as York. Around six months
later the death of Royston W Collett was recorded at Caxton register office
(Ref. 3b 795) during the first three months of 1915. |
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|
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|
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60Q25
|
Sybil A Collett was born at Toft in 1916, the final
child of William Henry Collett and his second wife Margaret Ellen York. Her birth, as Sybil A Collett, was recorded at Caxton register office
(Ref. 3b 639) during the fourth quarter of the year, when her mother’s maiden-name
was confirmed as York. Sadly,
when she was approaching one year of age, the death of Sybil N Collett was also recorded at
Caxton register office (Ref. 4b 455) during the last three months of 1917,
having died at Toft. |
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60Q26 |
Alice Maud Collett was born at Toft during the summer of 1890, her birth recorded at Caxton
register office (Ref. 3b 423) during the third quarter of the year. She was the base-born daughter of Sarah
Collett, with speculation that her father may have been Fred Collett (Ref.
60O8), Sarah’s uncle and her father’s youngest brother. In the Toft census of 1891, Sarah and her seven-month-old
baby Alice Maud Collett were living at the Brook End, School Lane home of Alice’s widowed
grandmother Ellen Collett, nee Rogers. When her mother married Peter Lindsay near
the end of 1891, Alice retained her Collett surname, as confirmed in the Toft
census of 1901. On that occasion,
ten-year-old Maud Collett from Toft was living at the Brook Lane home of her
stepfather Peter Lindsay, her mother Sarah Lindsay and her two half-siblings Constance
Lindsay aged nine and Dora Lindsay who was seven. Just prior to the next census day, the marriage of Alice Maud Collett
was recorded at Caxton register office (Ref. 3b 857) during the second
quarter of 1910. Not having her
married name, means she has not been identified within the 1911 Census. |
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|
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60Q27
|
Cecil William Bunting
Collett was born at
Leicester in 1899, possibly
at Berners Street, the eldest of the two sons of William Henry and
Maud Collett. His birth, as Cecil William B Collett, was
recorded there (Ref. 7a 292) during the second quarter of the year. It was as Cecil W B Collett aged two years
that he was living at
Berners Street in Leicester with his parents in 1901. Sometime after the birth of his brother
Douglas (below) the family of four moved to Birstall within the Barrow-upon-Soar
area of Leicestershire, where they were living in 1911, when Cecil was
recorded under his full name of Cecil William Bunting Collett at the age of
11. Ten years later, Cecil W B Collett aged 22 and a clerk,
sailed across the Atlantic to Quebec City on board the SS Scandinavian in
June 1921, bound for Niagara Falls in Ontario. On the same vessel was his recently married,
for a second time, aunt Daisy Evaline Tustin nee Collett, the youngest sister
of Cecil’s father, with her new husband.
She was only eight years older than Cecil, when they were travelling
together to establish a new life at Niagara Falls, where Daisy’s brother Albert
Henry Collett had already settled two years earlier. It was in Canada that Cecil met and married
Muriel Sparling. It is also known that
the couple adopted a son William, who became William Collett and eventually
married Mary Mesita. When Cecil William Bunting
Collett died in 1953, he was buried at Lundy’s Lane Cemetery in Niagara, at
the age of 54. |
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|
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|
60R19 |
William Collett [adopted] |
Date of birth
unknown |
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|
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|
|
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60Q28
|
Douglas Willis Collett was born in Leicester, the younger of
the two sons of William Henry Collett from Cambridge and his wife Maud
Tryphena Collett from Leicester. It is possible that he was
born, either at the end of 1902, or early in 1903, with his birth was
recorded at Leicester register office (Ref. 7a 267) during the first quarter
of the latter. Shortly after he
was born, his family moved
four miles north to Birstall, within the Barrow-upon-Soar district of the
county, and it was there they were living in 1911. On that occasion he was described as Douglas
Willis Collett from Leicester who was eight years old. He was nearly twenty-seven years old when the banns of marriage for
Douglas Willis Collett and Winifred Irene Brown were first read at the
Anglican Church in Birstall on 1st December 1929. It was at the end of the year that the
couple was married at Birstall on 30th December 1929, when the
wedding register stated that Douglas was 26 and living at Homeleigh on
Birstall Hill, the son of William Henry Collett, while Winifred, who was
known as Rene, was 22, from Birstall, and the daughter of William Oswald
Brown. |
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|
|
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|
Douglas was 54 years old when his
death was recorded at Leicester register office (Ref. 3a 494) during the
third quarter of 1957. He was buried
in the cemetery at St James the Great in Birstall on 10th
September 1957, the church record confirming the date he died as 6th
September. During his life, it is understood that he
spent some time living in Singapore. |
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|
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|
|
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60Q29
|
Phyllis Mary Collett was born on 10th July 1907 at Woodside, just
north-east of Croydon, the eldest of the two daughters of Sidney
Herbert Collett and his wife Louisa Maud Collett. The birth of Phyllis Mary Collett was recorded at Croydon register office
(Ref. 2a 343) during the third quarter of that year. She was three years of age in the Leicester
census on 1911 when her
place of birth was recorded as Woodside in Surrey. All that is currently known about Phyllis
is that she was unmarried when her father’s brother-in-law visited the family
after the death of his wife Daisy Evaline Tustin, nee Collett, possibly
during the years leading up to the Second World War. Even though Frank Tustin was around twenty
years older than Phyllis, they were later married and lived together at
Hastings on the Kent coast. It was
also at Hastings that Phyllis’ father Sidney died in 1959, while she passed
away during 1995 when
she was living within the county of Sussex. |
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|
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|
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||||||||||||||
60Q30
|
Sybil M P Collett was born at Leicester shortly after
the census day in 1911, the youngest daughter of Sidney and Louisa
Collett. Her birth as Sybil M P Collett was recorded at
Leicester register office (Ref. 7a 291) during the second quarter of that
year. She was 32 years old when the
marriage of Sybil M P Collett and David McKay was recorded at Hendon register
office (Ref. 3a 1343) during the last three months of 1943. All three of the couple’s children were born
while they were still living in England, before the family emigrated to
Australia. The family sailed out of
Southampton on 30th July 1952 onboard the ship, ‘New Australia’, a
vessel of the Shaw Savill Line, bound for Sydney, New South Wales. The passenger list included the name of
Master Alistair McKay who was under one year old. |
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|
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|
It
is known that the family settled in Brisbane, where they were still living in
2013. The three children of Sybil and David
were Sheila M McKay whose
birth was recorded at the Sussex Battle register office (Ref. 5h 23) during
the second quarter of 1946, Elizabeth Jean McKay whose birth was recorded at
Hasting register office (Ref. 5h 298) during the first quarter of 1949,
and Alistair McKay whose birth was also recorded at Battle register office (Ref. 5h 10) during
the last three months of 1951, making him around nine months old when the
family left England. In all three
cases, the mother’s maiden-name was confirmed as Collett. |
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|
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|
Sheila
McKay married Gilbert Forward and they had Cameron Forward who was born in
1985, and Bradley Forward who was born in 1989. Jean McKay has a daughter, Lynette McKay,
while Alistair McKay is married to Karen and they have three children, Jason
(born 1972), Debbie (born 1976, who is married to Jason Shugg, with two
sons), and Tamara (born 1982). |
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|
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|
|
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60Q32 |
Jack Ward was born at Wisbech 24th
September 1911. He was the second
child and eldest of the two sons of Walter William Ward and his wife Lily
Collett. He married Gladys Olive
Jessie Harris, who was known as Olive, around the time of the start of World
War Two, and the marriage produced three children, the first born during the
war years and the other two a few years after it was all over. |
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|
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|
Carole
Brenda Ward was born at Southend-on-Sea in 1942, whereas Gillian Ward was
born there in 1950, and David Ward was born in Harrow during 1956. David was only twenty years old when his
father died at South Harrow in Middlesex during 1976. Jack’s eldest daughter Carole, who was born
at Southend-on-Sea, first married Colin Thompson, and later she married
Russell Accorsini. It was with Colin
that she had two daughters Jacqueline and Catherine. |
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|
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|
Catherine,
who was born in 1964 at Bushey in Hertfordshire, married Nicholas Young with
whom she had five children. Today, in
2011, Cathy Young lives in Spalding in Lincolnshire, and it has been with her
help and support that this family line has been constructed. Jack Ward, a merchant seaman during the
Second World War, died at home at 7 Brooks Avenue in South Harrow on 10th
April 1976. |
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|
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|
|
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60Q33 |
Stanley Ward was born at Chesterton in
Cambridgeshire during 1914, the son of Walter and Lily Ward. He later married Amy Halliday and they had
a daughter Christine who was born in 1944.
She in turn married Ronald Kibble with whom she had two daughters
before Ronald died in 2007. Their
eldest daughter, Debbie, was married and is now divorced but not before she
gave birth to Jessica and Oliver.
Christine and Ronald’s second daughter was Linda, and she married Will
Dodge with whom she has a son Ryan Dodge. |
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|
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|
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60Q36 |
Clarence James Collett, known as Jim, was born at Strathalbyn in South Australia during 1919 and was
one of the six children of John Williamson Collett and his wife Myrtle
Dodd. His second name came from his
grandmother’s maiden-name. During the
Second World War Clarence was a member of the Australian Infantry in which he
was Private Clarence James Collett, service number SX11962. Tragically, he was captured by the Japanese
forces and very likely died in captivity on 27th October 1943 at
the age of 24, and was buried at the Kanchanaburi Cemetery in Thailand (then
Siam). His next-of-kin were named as
John Williamson Collett and Myrtle Collett of Strathalbyn. |
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|
|
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|
During the previous year
in 1942, Kanchanaburi came under Japanese control. It was there that Asian
forced labourers and Allied prisoners of war built the infamous Burma Railway, and constructed a bridge, as immortalised in the film Bridge on the River Kwai. Almost half of the prisoners working
on the project died from disease, maltreatment and accidents. At Kanchanaburi, there is a memorial and two museums to commemorate the dead.
In March 2003, the Thailand-Burma Railway Museum opened and the JEATH War Museum is dedicated to the bridge and the Death Railway, the construction of which is modelled on the huts used to house the
prisoners. JEATH stands for Japanese,
English, Australian, Thai, and Holland, the nationalities involved in the
tragedy. |
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|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60Q40 |
Gordon William Collett was born at Sydney in New South Wales
on 8th March 1926, the only child of Christopher Collett and his
wife Dorothy Louisa Jackson. Apparently,
it must have been just after the Second World War that he married Sybilla
Eileen Croll at Queensland, when he would have been around twenty or
twenty-one. There is a question-mark
over this since it is alleged that she had married Lionel Kent in 1940 (see
below), so why was she not Sybilla Kent.
By 1949 Gordon and Sybilla were living at Glenmore in East Sydney,
when he was 23 and she was 34. There
is no record of any children, and Gordon William Collett died while in Sydney
on 1st August 1983. |
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|
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|
His
wife Sybilla, who was born at Sydney on 25th November 1915, the
daughter of Allan Watson Croll and his wife Sybilla Margaret Bluett, survived
him by twenty-three years when she died during 2006 at Murwillumbah in New
South Wales. A record on the Ancestry
website states that Sybilla married Lionel Ernest Kent in 1940 and that the
wedding took place at Rockdale in New South Wales, the same record also
indicating that Lionel Kent later died in 1979. Therefore, Sybilla must have been divorced
from him after the war, to enable her to marry Gordon William Collett prior
to 1949. |
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60R1 |
Conway Albert William Collett was born at Chesterton in
Cambridgeshire on 20th
August 1927, the eldest of the two children of Alfred Collett and
Grace Craft. His birth as Conway A W Collett was recorded at
Chesterton register office (Ref. 3b 574) when his mother’s maiden-name was confirmed
as Craft. The later marriage of Conway
A W Collett and Marjorie O Hookham, who was born at St Ives during 1929, was
recorded at St Ives register office (Ref. 4b 981) during the third quarter of
1950. It was around two years
later that their son was born when they were living at St Neots. Conway Albert W Collett was in Northamptonshire when he died, where
his death was recorded (Ref. 9 1194) during February 1975. Afterwards his body was taken to Fen Stanton,
near St Ives, where he was buried in the churchyard there on 27th
February 1975, under his full name of Conway Albert William Collett, aged 67.
|
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|
60S1 |
David C E Collett |
Born in 1952
at St Neots, Huntingdonshire |
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|
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|
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60R2 |
Cecil E Collett was born at Royston, Hertfordshire in
1933, where his birth
was recorded (Ref. 3a 1076) during the last quarter of that year, and when
his mother’s maiden-name was confirmed as Craft. He was younger of the two sons of Alfred
and Grace Collett. It was also as Cecil E Collett
that his marriage to Jane A
Cooper was recorded at
St Ives register office (Ref. 4b 615) during the last three months of 1958. Four years later, the couple was still
living in the St Ives area, when their son’s birth was also recorded. |
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|
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|
60S2 |
Steven J Collett |
Born in 1962
at St Ives |
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|
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|
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60R3 |
Kenneth W H J Collett was born at Cambridge in 1929, the
eldest of the two sons of Wilfred Collett and Ada Webber. The birth of Kenneth W J Collett was recorded at Cambridge register
office (Ref. 3b 609) during the first quarter of 1929, his mother’s
maiden-name confirmed as Webber. Curiously,
it was as Kenneth W H Collett, when he was still living in the
Cambridge area, that his marriage to Phyllis L M Sutcliffe was recorded at Cambridge register office (Ref. 4a 628)
during the first three months of 1953.
Two children were then born to the couple, with the birth of daughter Denise A Collett
recorded at St Neots register office, twenty miles to the west of Cambridge,
(Ref. 4b 548) during the first quarter of 1954. It was just over a year later, that son
David J Collett was born, with his birth recorded at Cambridge register
office (Ref. 4a 298) during the second quarter of 1955. The birth record for both children
confirmed the mother’s maiden-name was Sutcliffe. Nine years later, the premature death of
Kenneth W H J Collett was recorded at the Cambridgeshire register office
(Ref. 4a 210) in 1964 at the age of only 36 years. |
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|
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|
60S3 |
Denise A Collett |
Born in 1954
at St Neots, Huntingdonshire |
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|
60S4 |
David J Collett |
Born in 1955 at
Cambridge |
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|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60R5 |
Raymond W Collett was born at Cambridge near the end of 1938,
the eldest of the four children of Oliver Raymond Collett and Lily Day. His birth was recorded there (Ref. 3b 597), when his mother’s
maiden-name was confirmed as Day.
It was also at Cambridge register office that the later marriage of Raymond
W Collett and
Wendy J Scott was recorded (Ref. 4a 591)
during the second quarter of 1967.
The marriage resulted in the birth of two daughters, their births also
recorded at Cambridge, when
their mother’s maiden-name was confirmed as Scott, Deborah Maria – during the
fourth quarter of 1968 (Ref. 4a 406), and Kathryn Louise – during the first quarter
of 1971 (Ref. 4a 1209). |
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|
|
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|
60S5 |
Deborah Maria
Collett |
Born in 1968
at Cambridge |
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|
60S6 |
Kathryn
Louise Collett |
Born in 1971
at Cambridge |
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|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60R6 |
David B Collett was born at Cambridge in 1945, the son
of Oliver and Lily Collett, where his birth was recorded (Ref. 3b 896) during the fourth quarter
of the year, with his mother’s maiden-name confirmed as Day. Again, as David B Collett, his marriage to
Sandra L Barnard was recorded at Cambridge register office (Ref. 4a 859)
during the first quarter of 1968. Sandra was also born in Cambridge during
1948. It was towards the end of the
following year that the
birth of their son was recorded at Cambridge (Ref. 4a 1213). |
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|
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||||||||||||||
|
60S7 |
Bryan Richard
Collett |
Born in 1969
at Cambridge |
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|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60R7 |
Averil J
Collett was born at Cambridge
in 1949, where her birth
was recorded (Ref. 4a 402) during the second quarter of that year, and when
her mother’s maiden-name was confirmed as Day. A very young Averil J Collett married Bruce
King during the last three months of 1966, the event also recorded at
Cambridge register office (Ref. 4a 710).
Over the next four years, Averil gave birth to two sons, with the
birth of Andrew Paul King recorded at Cambridge (Ref. 4a 484) during
the second quarter of 1967. By the
time of the birth of their second child, the couple had moved the short
distance east to Newmarket, where the birth of Robert Bruce King was
recorded (Ref. 4b 4566) during the second quarter of 1970. For both births, the mother’s maiden-name
was confirmed as Collett. |
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60R8 |
Mavis A Collett was born at Cambridge in 1956, the
last of the four children of Oliver Raymond Collett and his wife Lily
Day. Her birth was recorded at Cambridge register office
(Ref. 4a 351) during the second quarter of the year, when her mother’s maiden-name
was confirmed as Day. It was also at
Cambridge register office (Ref. 9 0532) where the marriage of Mavis A Collett
and Roger J Tovell early in 1978. |
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|
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|
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60R9 |
Barry W Collett was born at the start of 1948, the
first child born to Ralph Collett by his wife Ellen Duncan. His birth was recorded at Cambridge register office (Ref. 4a 328)
during the first three months of that year, when his mother’s maiden-name was
confirmed as Duncan. Barry was
still living within the Cambridge area when he married Elizabeth D Dimock, their wedding recorded at
Cambridge (Ref. 4a 799) during the second quarter of 1971. Elizabeth was also born at Cambridge during
in 1951. |
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|
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|
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60R10 |
Anthony John Collett was born in the Cambridge on 27th March 1949,
the son of Ralph and Ellen Collett, his birth recorded at Cambridge register office (Ref. 4a
392), when his mother’s maiden-name was confirmed as Duncan. He was married twice, the first time to (1)
Renee J Gifford with their wedding recorded at
Cambridge register office (Ref. 4a 1126) during the third quarter of 1969. Renee was born at Gamlingay in 1952 and
presented Anthony with two daughters, the births of both were recorded at Cambridge; Donna
Marie (Ref. 4a 1181) during the last three months of 1970, Maxine Claire
(Ref. 4a 1060) during fourth quarter of 1973.
On both occasions, the mother’s maiden-name was confirmed as Gifford. His youngest daughter was nearly four years
old when Anthony married (2) Moira A Turner, their
marriage also recorded at Cambridge register office (Ref. 9 1097) during the
third quarter of 1977.
Tragically, Anthony John Collett was on a day trip to France, when he died at Calais on 6th
November 2004. |
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|
|
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|
60S8 |
Donna Marie
Collett |
Born in 1970
at Cambridge |
||||||||||||
|
60S9 |
Maxine Claire
Collett |
Born in 1973
at Cambridge |
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|
|
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|
|
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60R11 |
Rosemary Collett was born in the Cambridge area during the first three
months of 1953, her birth recorded at Cambridge register office (Ref. 4a 355),
the third child of Ralph and Ellen Collett, her mother’s maiden-name confirmed as Duncan. Rosemary was only nineteen years old when she
gave birth to a base-born daughter, when the birth of Rachel Allison Collett
was recorded at Cambridge register office (Ref. 4a 1106) during the first
quarter of 1972, her mother’s maiden-name confirmed as Collett. |
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|
60S10 |
Rachel Allison Collett |
Born in 1972 at Cambridge |
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60R12 |
Jacqueline M Collett was born within the Cambridge area early
in 1959, the last of the four children of Ralph Collett and his wife Ellen
Duncan. The birth of Jacqueline M Collett was recorded at
Cambridge register office (Ref. 4a 429) during the first quarter of the year,
when her mother’s maiden-name was confirmed as Duncan. It was at the start of 1981 that the
marriage of Jacqueline M
Collett married Cephas Thorpe was recorded at Cambridge register office (Ref. 9 0544) during the
first three months of the year. During the remainder of that decade
Jacqueline gave birth to three children, whose births were all recorded at
Cambridge, when the mother’s maiden-name was confirmed as Collett. They were Rebecca Michelle Thorpe – her birth recorded during
the summer of 1981 (Ref. 9 1479), Dominic Aaron Thorpe – his birth recorded during March 1988 (Ref. 9
1146), and Oliver Samuel Thorpe whose birth was recorded there (Ref. 9 1320) during December 1990. |
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|
|
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60R13 |
Christopher Keith
Collett, who is known
as Keith, was born in Cambridge on 15th January 1938, the eldest
of the six children of Christopher Ernold Collett and his wife Violet Mae
Burgoyne. The marriage of Christopher K Collett and
Jennifer Ann Lawson was recorded at the Suffolk Deben register office (Ref.
4b 2239) during the third quarter of 1961. They were later divorced in 1980, prior to
which they had three daughters who were born at Toft, whose births were recorded at Cambridge register
office, when their mother’s maiden-name was confirmed as Lawson. The three daughters were Joanne M Collett who was born
on 2nd March 1963 (Ref. 4a 623), Lucy M Collett -
her birth recorded during the first three months of 1965 (Ref. 4a 576),
and Helen Mary Collett
whose birth was recorded
during the last three months of 1967 (Ref. 4a 501). Keith was still living on the High Street
in the village of Toft during 2013. |
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|
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|
60S11 |
Joanne M Collett |
Born in 1963
at Toft |
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|
60S12 |
Lucy M Collett |
Born in 1965 at Toft |
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|
60S13 |
Helen Mary Collett |
Born in 1967 at Toft |
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|
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|
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60R14 |
KORAN W G COLLETT was born at Toft in the summer of 1940, his
birth recorded at Cambridge register office (Ref. 3b 1299) during the third
quarter of the year, when his birth record confirmed that his mother’s
maiden-name was Burgoyne. He
was one of the six children of Christopher Ernold Collett and his wife Violet
Mae Burgoyne. It was in the first half
of 1968 that the marriage of Koran W G Collett and Gillian Turner was recorded at Cambridge register office (Ref. 4a 580)
during the second quarter of that year. Five years later, they had two children,
both of whom were born at the hospital in Cambridge. Koran, whose occupation was that of a
haulier, returned to the village of his birth with his young family during
1971 when they purchased a property in Mill Lane, where he and Gill were
still living in 2013. |
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|
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|
60S14 |
Mathew Andrew Collett |
Born in 1971
at Cambridge |
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|
60S15 |
Steven Luke Collett |
Born in 1973
at Cambridge |
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|
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|
|
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60R15 |
Margaret Ann Collett was born in Cambridge in 1942, the
only daughter of Christopher and Violet Collett. Her birth was recorded at Cambridge register office (Ref. 3b 933)
during the third quarter of the year, when her mother’s maiden-name was
confirmed as Burgoyne. Later in
her life she married an American serviceman, Richard Parrish, and had a large
family in America. Tragically, the
family did not enjoy the best of health, and lost two sons to cancer while
still in their childhood. Margaret Ann
Parrish nee Collett also died with cancer when she was living at Warner
Robins in Georgia in 1985, and was followed shortly after by one of her adult
sons with the same illness. |
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|
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|
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60R16 |
Gerald Paul Collett, who was known as Paul, was born at
Toft on 26th
June 1945, the son of Christopher and Violet Collett. The birth of Gerald P Collett was recorded at Cambridge register office
(Ref. 3b 865) during the third quarter of the year, his mother’s maiden-name
confirmed as Burgoyne. In 1967
Paul emigrated to Australia where he later married Sue, with whom he had two
children as indicated below. |
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|
|
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|
60S16 |
Shannon
Collett |
Born in
Australia, date unknown |
||||||||||||
|
60S17 |
Nicole Collett |
Born in
Australia, date unknown |
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|
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|
|
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60R17 |
Marilyn E Collett was born at Toft in 1949, the daughter
of Christopher and Violet Collett. Her birth was recorded at
Cambridge register office (Ref. 4a 378) during the third quarter of the year,
when her mother’s maiden-name was confirmed as Burgoyne. The later marriage of Marilyn E Collett and
Malcolm D Skoulding was also recorded at Cambridge (Ref. 4a 813) during the
second quarter of 1972. All three of
their children’s births were recorded at Great Yarmouth register office, when
the mother’s maiden-name was confirmed as Collett. Aimee Skoulding was born in 1976, Hannah
Skoulding was born in 1978, and Lee Skoulding was born during
1982. |
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|
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|
|
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60R18 |
Linda J Collett was born at Toft in 1954, the last of
the six children of Christopher Ernold Collett and Violet Mae Burgoyne. Her birth was recorded at Cambridge register office (Ref. 4a 320)
during the first quarter of the year, where her mother’s maiden-name was confirmed
as Burgoyne. Linda never
married and in 2013 she was still living in Toft, where she was a retired
nurse. At some time during her working
life, she was the nurse looking after cosmologist and author Stephen Hawking. |
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|
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|
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60R19 |
William Collett was the adopted son of Cecil William
Bunting Collett and his wife Muriel Sparling of Canada. No date of birth is known, but it is
established that William married Mary Mesita, with whom he had three
children. |
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|
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|
60S18 |
Roseanne
Collett |
Born in 1969
in Canada |
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|
60S19 |
Debra Lynn Collett |
Born in 1973
in Canada |
||||||||||||
|
60S20 |
Jeffrey
(Jeff) Collett |
Born in 1978
in Canada |
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|
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|
|
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60S1 |
David C E Collett was born at St Neots during 1952, the
only child of Conway Collett and his wife Marjorie Hookham. It was as David C E Collett that his birth was recorded at St Ives
register office (Ref. 4b 462) during the last three months of 1952, when his
mother’s maiden-name was confirmed as Hookham. It was during the second quarter of 1977 when
the marriage of David C E Collett and Jane E Richardson was recorded at March
register office in Cambridgeshire (Ref. 9 1108). March was where Jane had been born in early
1955 and, after their wedding day, the couple settled in Cambridge where
their two children were born. The
birth their daughter was recorded at Cambridge register office (Ref. 9 1388)
during spring of 1980, when the mother’s maiden-name was confirmed as
Richardson. |
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|
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|
60T1 |
Louisa Jane
Collett |
Born in 1980
at Cambridge |
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|
60T2 |
Graeme David Collett |
Born in 1982
at Cambridge |
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|
|
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|
|
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60S2 |
Steven J Collett was born at St Ives in 1962, the only
child of Cecil Collett and Jane Cooper.
His birth was
recorded at the St Ives register office (Ref. 4b 873) during the first
quarter of the year, with his mother’s maiden-name confirmed as Cooper. Steven was thirty-eight years old when he
married Anita M Hart,
their wedding recorded
at Huntingdon register office (Ref. 9 1144) during the spring of 1990. The births of both of the couple’s two children were recorded at
Huntingdon register office, when the mother’s maiden-name was confirmed as
Hart. For the first of them, George
Edward J Collett, his birth was recorded during the spring of 1994 (Ref.
3331b f25b), with Emily Jane M Collett’s birth recorded towards the end of
1997 (Ref. 3331b g3b). |
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|
|
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|
60T3 |
George Edward
J Collett |
Born in 1994
at Huntingdon |
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|
60T4 |
Emily Jane M Collett |
Born in 1997
at Huntingdon |
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|
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|
|
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60S14 |
Mathew Andrew Collett was born in hospital at Cambridge in
1971, the eldest of the two sons of Koran Collett and Gill Turner who were
living in Mill Lane in Toft that same year.
His birth was
recorded at Cambridge register office (Ref. 4a 1540) during the first three
months of the year, with his mother’s maiden-name confirmed as Turner. Mathew’s partner of twelve years (in 2015)
is Sarah Numan, nee Jackson, who has two children from her former marriage. |
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|
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|
|
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60S15 |
Steven Luke Collett was born in hospital at Cambridge in
1973, the youngest son of Koran and Gill Collett who were living at Mill Lane
in Toft at that time. His birth was recorded at
Cambridge register office (Ref. 4a 1271) during the third quarter of the
year, with his mother’s maiden-name confirmed as Turner. On St Valentine’s Day in 2012, Steven and
his partner Sheena Catherine Cotter were living in Belfast when their
daughter was born. Just over a year
later the family of three was still living in Belfast when the family was
enlarged by the birth of twins. By the
summer of 2015 the family had returned to England and was living in
Lincolnshire. |
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|
|
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|
60T5 |
Edie
Catherine Collett |
Born on
14.02.2012 at Belfast |
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|
60T6 |
Evan William
Collett |
Born on
07.11.2013 at Belfast |
||||||||||||
|
60T7 |
Molly Gill
Collett |
Born on
07.11.2013 at Belfast |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60S17 |
Nicole Collett was born in Australia to Gerald Paul
Collett and his wife Sue. She married
Mike and they have two sons Luke and Jake. |
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|
|
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|
|
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60S19 |
Debra Lynn Collett was born in Canada during 1973, the
daughter of William Collett and Mary Mesita, and she later married Paul
Sadowsky at Niagara Falls. Once
married the couple settled in Niagara Falls and it was there that their two
daughters were born. |
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|
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|
|
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60T2 |
Graeme David Collett was born at Cambridge in 1982, the
youngest of the two children of David Collett and Jane Richardson. His birth was recorded at Cambridge register office (Ref. 9 1250)
during the spring of that year, when his mother’s maiden-name was confirmed
as Richardson. The later
marriage of Graeme D Collett and Jacqueline A Mastin was recorded at Peterborough
register office in the spring of 2003 when he was 21 years old. |
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|
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|
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|
APPENDIX
ONE |
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|
|
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|
The following details were kindly provided
by Cathy Young in England and Leanne Wroe in Australia but, unfortunately,
they do not relate to the Collett family of Toft in Cambridgeshire |
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|
|
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|
|
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|
60h1
|
Tobias Collett |
Born in 1585
at Great Chalfield |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60h1 |
Tobias Collett was born at Great Chalfield near
Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire in 1585.
It was on 8th February 1609 that he married Catherine
Stile. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
60i1
|
Thomas
Collett |
Born on
16.01.1611 at Great Chalfield |
||||||||||||
|
60i2
|
Anthony Collett |
Born in 1620
at Great Chalfield |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60i2 |
Anthony Collett was born at Great Chalfield in
Wiltshire during 1620, the son of Tobias Collett and Catherine Stile. He married (1) Sarah and their two known
children were baptised at Great Chalfield.
He later married (2) Elizabeth Bond and their children were born with
the St Dunstan area of London. Anthony
Collett died in 1659 and prior to the birth of his last child. |
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|
|
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|
60j1
|
John Collett |
Bapt on
08.01.1649 at Great Chalfield |
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|
60j2
|
Mary Collett |
Bapt on
19.04.1652 at Great Chalfield |
||||||||||||
|
60l3
|
Benjamin
Collett |
Born in 1656;
died 1656 in London |
||||||||||||
|
60j4
|
Tobias Collett |
Born in 1658
in London |
||||||||||||
|
60j5
|
James Collett |
Born in 1660;
died 1662 in London |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60j4 |
Tobias Collett was born in London and baptised at St
Dunstan’s Church in Stepney on 25th March 1658, the son of Anthony
Collett and his second wife Elizabeth Bond.
He married (1) Elizabeth Adams, who was buried in London on 4th
October 1685 following the birth of their daughter who was also buried with
her mother on that same day. He then
married (2) Mary Hull who was born in 1655 and by whom his known children
were born. It would also appear that
he married again, for the third time, that marriage taking place at Reading
on 26th March 1711, when his father was confirmed as Anthony
Collett. Tobias Collett died fourteen
years later at Cumberwell in Wiltshire in 1725. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
60k1
|
Elizabeth
Collett |
Buried on
04.10.1685 in London |
||||||||||||
|
The
following are the children of Tobias Collett and by second wife Mary Hull: |
||||||||||||||
|
60k2
|
Josiah Collett |
Born on
29.03.1686 in London |
||||||||||||
|
60k3
|
Joseph
Collett |
Born on
02.05.1688 in London |
||||||||||||
|
60k4
|
Elizabeth Collett |
Born on
19.11.1689 in London |
||||||||||||
|
60k5
|
Ann Collett |
Born during
1694 in London |
||||||||||||
|
60k6
|
Tobias
Collett |
Buried on
04.11.1694 in London |
||||||||||||
|
60k7
|
Rebecca
Collett |
Born on
30.07.1699 in London |
||||||||||||
|
60k8
|
Benjamin
Collett |
Born on
06.02.1700 in London |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60k2 |
Josiah Collett was born at All Hallows in London on
29th March 1686, the son of Tobias Collett and his second wife
Mary Hull. It was at Lavington, south
of Devizes in Wiltshire on 20th August 1718, where he married
Rachel Pinnell and when his father was confirmed as Tobias Collett. Rachel was born during 1693 and died in
1771. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
60l1
|
Jeffrey Collett |
Born on
14.09.1719 at Reading |
||||||||||||
|
60l2
|
Josiah Collett |
Born on
14.02.1721 at Reading |
||||||||||||
|
60l3
|
Mary Collett |
Born on
11.01.1722 at Reading |
||||||||||||
|
60l4
|
Tobias
Collett |
Born on 04.06.1725
at Reading |
||||||||||||
|
60l5
|
Josiah Collett |
Born on
22.06.1729 at Reading |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60k4
|
Elizabeth Collett was born in London on 19th
November 1689, a daughter of Tobias and Mary Collett. Elizabeth, the daughter of Tobias, was
married at Lavington in Wiltshire on 16th March 1723. |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60k5
|
Ann Collett was born during in London 1694,
another daughter of Tobias and Mary Collett.
She married (1) Thomas Barney or Barny during 1756 in Oxfordshire and
later married (2) Thomas Whitehead at Kingsbury in Warwickshire in 1783. |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60l1
|
Jeffrey Collett was born at Reading on 14th
September 1719, one of the sons of Josiah Collett and Rachel Pinnell. Jeffrey later married Mary Leckonby at St
Anne’s Church in Soho, Westminster on 8th April 1763 but was only
married for a short while before he was buried at Reading on 17th
December 1769 |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
60l2
|
Josiah Collett was born at Reading on 14th
February 1721, another of Josiah and Rachel, who was only six months old when
he died at Reading on 21st August 1721 |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
60l5
|
Josiah Collett was born at Reading on 22nd
June 1729, the second of the two sons of the same name for Josiah and Rachel
Collett. Sadly, like his brother and
namesake, he too did not survive and was five weeks old when he died at
Reading on 4th August 1729. |
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|
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|
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|
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|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
APPENDIX TWO FIVE MORE COLLETT BAD BOYS – Cases 3 to 7 (go
to Part 43 for Cases 1 and 2) |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
Case 3 |
In
addition to bad boy Thomas Collott (Ref. 60N5 - previously Ref. 43o5), who
was arrested for burglary in 1821 and subsequently transported to Tasmania, there were
other members of the Collett family who suffered the same fate. The following story relates to Thomas Collett, a soldier of the 3rd Regiment of Guards, who was tried at
the Old Bailey in London on 1st July 1801. The abridged court report read as follows: |
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|
|
||||||||||||||
|
“On the evening of Thursday 30th April
1801, John Fawkner was at the Bell Inn at Red Lion Market and White Cross
Street when he was asked to accompany the publican’s wife Mrs Hayes to the
tavern’s back room as she had something to show him. Joining them was Thomas Collett of the
Regiment of Guards, to whom John was introduced, upon which John was shown a
bag of jewellery and was asked if he could melt-down the gold and
silver. He agreed and they left for
his workshop. The jewellery was
stolen, owned by John Weppler, a planter from Jamaica who had arrived in
London the previous evening, when he had discovered his trunk with its
contents of jewellery valued at over £1,200 missing. He immediately reported this to the Bow
Street Police. It was subsequently
proved that it was Thomas Collett who had stolen the trunk. John Fawkner, aged 29, was found guilty of
receiving stolen goods and was sentenced to 14 years transportation, while
Thomas Collett received seven years transportation.” It transpires that it was the
young barmaid working at the Bell Inn who had overheard the backroom
conversation who had informed the Police, and it was she who claimed the
reward. |
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|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
Case 4 |
This one is very brief and relates to Nathaniel Collett, one of 300
convicts transported on the ship Isabella on 11th July 1833. No further details are known at this time
and, while there is one Nathaniel Collett born in London who could be of the
right age, he was Nathaniel Samuel George Collett (Ref. 19n6) who was born
during 1797 at Peckham, who was still residing in London with his family in
1841 and 1851. |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
Case 5 |
Also in 1833,
but at Gloucester on 28th April, Stephen Collett was sentenced and subsequently transported to Van
Diemen’s Land to serve a term of fourteen years. So far it is not known who he was or what
crime he had committed. |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
Case 6 |
This fourth case
relates to a very young George Collett,
the son of John Collett of Stoke
Newington in London, both as yet unidentified. The prisoner George Collett was 13 years of
age when he was committed for trial at Worship Street Magistrates Court in
Middlesex in August 1833 for robbing a garden of 13 pears from an uninhabited
house. The initial sentence passed
down was one month imprisonment in the Middlesex House of Correction. However, remission was prepared on 29th
August 1833, when the petitioner John Collett, the prisoner's father, entered
a plea on the grounds of clemency, his son being a youth of a prisoner in the
company of older boys who paid fines imposed by court, for which the
petitioner was unable to pay any fine.
A letter from Samuel Twyford at the Police Office in Worship Street
raised no objection to remission of the sentence, while it was at father's
request that prisoner was not originally discharged. |
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|
|
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|
|
||||||||||||||
Case 7 |
The fifth case focuses on Edward
Baldwin and his accomplice Pearce
Collett, born 1770. It was on 9th
July 1800 in London that they were indicted, the first named for feloniously
stealing, on 29th June, twelve yards of mode, twelve yards of
muslin, eighteen yards of lace, and two pieces of handkerchiefs, each
containing seven handkerchiefs, the property of John Read, Robert Read and
James Read and valued around eighty shillings. The other accused, for receiving the same,
knowing them to have been stolen. Thomas
Sapwell was sworn in and made the following statement. “On
29th June, on the Sunday morning, I took the prisoners into
custody, about six o'clock. I went to
the prisoner Collett's house at 7 Two Swan Yard in Bishopsgate Street, and on
a copper, close by where the prisoner stood, I found this piece of cambric
muslin. I asked him where he bought
those things and he said, damn me, I would buy anything. I then took Collett to the Compter,
following which I then returned and searched the house. In his box I found a piece of black silk
mode. I also found a piece of lace
while I was searching the house. I
took the key out of Collett's pocket with which I unlocked the box. I then went to a house at 17 Old Bethlem
Court, where there lived one Elizabeth Day.
I took her into custody and took her to Collett's house where I searched
her and found two pieces of silk handkerchief in her right-hand pocket. I later apprehended Baldwin at the
prosecutor's house.” |
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When Edward
Baldwin was cross-examined, he admitted to having robbed the Reads on
previous occasions and when asked why he said that Collett was continually after him,
telling him to do it. In the end both
men were found guilty with Edward Baldwin being sentenced to seven years
transportation and Pearce Collett, aged 30, being transported for fourteen
years. Pearce (or Pierce) Collett was
married at that time, his wife being Mary Collett. |
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