Margaret Pratt Finlay has been one of the more elusive of my female ancestors.Immigrating from Edinburgh, Scotland to Sydney in 1841, she married Henry Humphries (later Humphreys), a convict transported from Essex. They married on 9 December 1844 at St Anne's Church of England in Ryde, New South Wales. On her marriage certificate, Margaret's name is recorded as Margaret Pratt.
At the time, Ryde was still a rural area, and Henry and Margaret had an orchard in Watts Lane in Ryde and were respected early settlers to the district. They had 10 children, 6 girls and 4 boys, all living to adulthood.
Like most Australian death certificates, Margaret's death certificate provided helpful information:
- she died at Watts Lane in the Municipality of Marsfield on the 11 September 1896, at the age of 70 years. Her father was John Finlay, a stonemason, and mother was Jean Douglas. She was born in Edinburgh in Scotland and has been in NSW for 58 years. She was married in Ryde, to Henry Humphreys, at the age of 19. Finally, at the time of her death, she had 9 children living and 1 male deceased.
With all this information, it shouldn't have posed too difficult a problem to find Margaret's baptism in Scotland, but not so...
A marriage for John Finlay, stonemason and Jean Douglas (spinster) took place on 27 August 1832 at St Cuthbert's church in Edinburgh, which seemed to be the right one. However, if Margaret was either 16 at the time she emigrated to Australia, or 70 at the age of her death (hence born abt 1826), clearly her birth was well before the marriage of her supposed parents. We couldn't find a baptism for either Margaret Finlay, Margaret Pratt or Margaret Douglas that seemed to fit with the information we had.
Attempts to locate John and Jean Finlay in either the 1841 or 1851 Scottish census also hit a dead end.
Finally, last year, I fell upon an intriguing entry in Australia Trove. It was Margaret's funeral notice in the Sydney Morning Herald, and it mentioned that the funeral would leave the residence of her brother-in-law, Mr Vicars! This was new information indeed and lead to some quite unexpected new findings.
Slowly I pieced together the following information:
- Mr Vicars was in fact William Vickers, who is also a witness to Margaret's will.
- William Vickers had married Georgina Young Finlay in 1887 in Ryde. William was Georgina's third husband. She first married Thomas Barton in 1863 in Chippendale in New South Wales, and then Eli Pickersgill in 1867 in Sydney. (Strangely, Margaret also had a daughter Georgina who married 3 times as well)
- Next, I discovered that Georgina Young Finlay was born in Sydney in 1841. She died in 1914 in Croydon Park, New South Wales, the daughter of John and Jane (a common alternative to Jean).
- Finally I found the immigration record for John Finlay, age 30, mason, Jane age 28, Elizabeth age 3 and Robert age 1, arriving in Sydney on the 'John Barry' in 1837.
I still have lots of questions to find out about Margaret.
1. What is the significance of the Pratt name?
2. Who looked after Margaret in Scotland after her mother went to Australia?
3. When did Jane Finlay die? (I think she may have married Edward Russell in Sydney in 1855, but haven't been able to identify a death record for her yet).
