2014 Jaarboek van de Indische Genealogische Vereniging 27

Dear all,

The latest captioned annual publication (294 pages) dropped in my mailbox a few days ago and has a number of very interesting articles about Sumatra and specifically Padang. Regrettably it is in Dutch for whom it is recommended reading.

The previous annual publication 2013 Jaarboek van de Indische Genealogische Vereniging 26 had an interesting article about the Familie Maidman. Remember Adeline Jessy Maidman was married to our Captain William Townsend in Padang on 18th January 1864. If have since established contact with decedents of Adeline Jessy Maidman in The Netherlands.

The focus of the "Indische Genealogische Vereniging" is about European people who settled in South- en South-East Asia, as well as Afrika en the Caribbean (including Suriname).

Membership is Euro 38/year (address in The Netherlands), Euro 41 (Europe) and Euro 45 (outside Europe). The individual annual books can also be ordered through their website: www.igv.nl.

I will endeavour to post salient points from this annual publication on this blog.

Best wishes,
Thomas.

Captain William Townsend blog continues...

Dear all Captain William Townsend blog followers,

Last year August, I was fortunate to travel to Brisbane for a few days. Together with my distant cousin Janis Morec-Townsend, we visited Geoff Drew's widow and daughter to pay our respects on behalf of all Captain William Townsend bloggers. 

We also visited the Bald Hill cemetery, where Captain William Townsend and his wife Elisabeth Salmon Thomas are buried and the Toowoong Cemetery where a number of our relatives are buried including Victor Louis Townsend in an unmarked grave, a number members of the Raff family and Shirley Daisy Ferrers. 

We visited Frank Purssell who's wife Gloria Purssell-Carmody was a very active family researcher until her untimely death on 6th March 2013. Her archive is still intact and we do hope Frank will find a suitable destination of the files to secure Gloria's hard work. I visited her grave as well as well as the places Captain William Townsend lived in Sandgate including the “Mango Cottage”, 32 Park Parade, Sandgate.

At the Sandgate Historical Society and Museum I met Fay Hebbard and checked what they have on file.

Sandgate Historical Society and Museum

150 Rainbow Street, Sandgate, 

QLD, Australia, 4017

Email sandgatemusm@bigpond.com

Phone  07 3869 2283

Business Hours  Wednesdays and Sundays from 10 am to 3pm

With support from the late Geoff Drew's family, I have been added to this blog as editor to keep it in the air. That way we will be able to keep all of Geoff's contributions and those of others.

Next, I will be looking for a few more volunteers to join the editor's committee to secure continuity. As a minimum, I would like to have two based in Europe and two in Australia. Ideally, I am looking for a custodian for each branch of Captain William Townsend's children. 

We have also been fortunate to retrieve the latest Captain William Townsend manuscript Geoff had been working on with the help from blog members.

Similarly to the blog, I intend to seek co-editors, to validate the entries and complement the stories with anecdotes and pictures.

Once the editor's are happy with the quality and completeness, I intend to provide hard-bound copies to family members at cost. 

Publication as e-book will have hurdles to overcome about copyright of the photo's and censorship of people living.

Hope you will continue to support this blog and provide new and interesting anecdotes related to this illustrious family that have spread the globe.

Best wishes,

Thomas.

Not dead yet ....

I was thinking that it was about time I drew a line under the Townsend saga, when out of the blue came an email from David, brother of Simon. This has set me off again, looking into the life and times of Brewa Haly's grandfather, Charles Robert Haly, What an interesting character - arrived in Sydney in1838, and well established in Queensland by the 1840s. Member of the early Queensland Colonial parliaments, and it seems a principled man who said what he thought and to hell with the consequences.

The email has also set off a flurry of checking, with some new information found about some of the Captain's descendants (there's always something new on the internet when you go looking).

Anyway, this blog is still alive, despite the long break between posts.

Yet Another Living Descendant in Contact

Welcome to Judi, a great-great-granddaughter of the good Captain, who has come across this blog and offered to fill in a few gaps. I love the internet!

Important Message

Readers please note that this blog was started quite some time ago. Inevitably, some of the information posted will have been, at best, slightly erroneous or, at worst, completely wrong. Many corrections and much supporting information has been supplied by descendants or connections of the Townsend family. These have generally been left in the Comments section, with few corrections made to the original text.

However, the off-line document has been reworked may times to incorporate the new and amended information.

Descendants of Captain William Townsend and his associated families are welcome to contact me direct at geoffreydotdrewatbigponddotcom (make the necessary corrections in the email address) to obtain a copy in .pdf format. Unfortunately, the document contains details of living persons, so I cannot make it available to the casual researcher. One day, I will sift through it and remove such detail so that it can be made more widely accessible.

Many thanks to those who have followed this journey into the life and times of a very interesting man, and considerable gratitude to those who have contributed the lives of their particular branch.

Geoff

It just goes to show ...

... that if you persevere with something like this, there is always an interesting fact waiting to pop out at you. In the list of descendants of the Captain's third marriage, there is a Simon Townsend, born November 1946. I didn't make the connection at the time, but if you do an internet search on "Simon Townsend" you will find much about his days as the developer and host of the children's TV show "Simon Townsend's Wonderworld". However, if you search on his full name "Simon Patrick Townsend", you will find why his name should resonate with all of us who were subject to the "conscription ballot" during the Viet Nam conflict. Simon, while working as a journalist (like his father and grandfather) sought exemption from army service on the grounds of conscientious objection but this was rejected and he was incarcerated for some time in Holsworthy Military Prison.

Even More Checking

I came across an oddity in the list of the children of Louisa Cecilia Townsend and Friedrich Ludwig Wilhelm Vogler.

There is something odd here; the birth date for Karl William Maximilliaan Vogler is generally given as 6th April 1870, in Padang, but this is nigh on impossible because Isabella Maria’s birth date is usually given as 30th March 1870, Wiesbaden. A birth in Padang suggests a much earlier date, as the family left for Germany around 1864-1865. I would suggest 6th April 1860 as Karl William’s date of birth.

Also, there seems to have been a sojourn in Ambon in 1865, as George Vogler is said to have been born and died there, even though Harriet Clementine Vogler is said to have died in June 1864 in Batavia while the family was waiting for the boat home to Germany.

Ron/Jeff/Thomas, could you please check your records on these individuals?