1) Katherine Louisa KING - New Zealand and NSW
Lyndal
(C)Katherine Louisa CLARK(e) married Thomas Terry KING in New Zealand in 1894. Although widowed in 1896, she registered the birth of my father (Phil(l)ip KING) in 1911, naming Thomas Terry KING as his father. I want to research her movements and life events up to 1918, by which time she was a property owner in Moss Vale NSW.
Main Research Question:
Where did Katherine live between 1896 and 1918?
When did she come to Australia?
How did she get the money to buy property?
Records and Resources I Have Used to Date
• Catherine Louisa CLARK Birth Certificate from the General Register Office, London (1). Parents are named as George Adams CLARK and Elizabeth COLLIER, Norfolk. This is accurate.
• 1881 census of England (2) showing that Katherine (with a ‘K’) Louisa CLARK lives at Roydon, Norfolk with her parents. Accurate record.
• New Zealand Marriage Index shows Katherine Louisa CLARK married Thomas Terry KING in 1894 – accurate record.
• New Zealand Death Index confirms Thomas Terry KING died in the first quarter of 1896 – accurate record
• New Zealand Herald 21 March 1896 (5): Letters of Administration issued for Thomas Terry KING – accurate record, to be followed up with search of New Zealand Archives for digitalised copy of Letters of Administration.
• New Zealand Herald 24 February 1897 (6) ‘In Memorium’ for Thomas Terry KING - more a curiosity than a reliable piece of evidence.
• Will (7) of George Adams CLARK 12th January 1906 naming Katherine Louisa KING of Wanganui and Florence Elizabeth KING amongst beneficiaries. Accurate copy of the Will.
• Death Certificate (8) of George Adams CLARK, lodged with the Probate Records - reliable and official document in agreement with other records
• New Zealand Electoral Roll for 1905-06 (9) listing Katherine CLARK as ‘wife’ and address in Wanganui, New Zealand. Substantially accurate.
• NSW Death Certificate (10) for Nancy Phyllis KING, Katherine’s daughter, stating she was born in Wanganui in 1906. Questionable accuracy as fact but given by the informant as his family knowledge. No Birth registration found. (New Zealand Birth Index records birth of Nancy CLARK to Catherine CLARK and John William KING in 1906, in Napier NZ. This could be a could be totally irrelevant but needs following up).
• NSW Birth Certificate (11) 29 March 1911 for Philip Moses KING. This document is based on substantially inaccurate information provided by Catherine Louisa CLARKE (sic). This document cannot be relied upon other than to confirm that Katherine was in Australia at this time.
• Postcard photograph dated 11 November 1913 (12) Phillip KING, age 22 months … showing names and three addresses in New South Wales, including one at Moss Vale. Information written on photographs is not generally reliable but can provide information for further follow-up.
• Evening News, Sydney, 9 December 1913 (13): news item naming “Nurse KING of Moss Vale). This could be reliable if about Katherine and is worth further follow-up.
• NSW Marriage Index (14) showing that Florence Elizabeth king was married at Moss Vale in 1917 to John PARNELL. This is reliable information.
• Letter from Phillip KING, May 1988, (15) reminiscing about life in Moss Vale in 1918. This establishes a year by which Katherine was probably living in Moss Vale but childhood memories can be inaccurate.
Repositories and Records that I Plan to Use
• Passenger lists: George Adams Clark and his family travelled from England to New Zealand, and Katherine Louisa King travelled from New Zealand to Australia accompanied by her daughters. I have not yet been successful in locating them on passenger lists in Ancestry.com.
• Bowral Library Local History Collection: Rate Books for Wingecarribee Shire Council would show dates for Katherine at Moss Vale.
• Lands Department Records will show information about the purchase or transfer of the property at Moss Vale – DP 833256 and DP 1189690 – I have to go to Sydney to see these. http://www.lpi.nsw.gov.au/land_titles/historical_research
• State Library of New South Wales provides a gateway to many resources including passenger lists, through the same Ancestry.com library edition as has been used during the course. I have joined this Library but will need to go to Sydney to fully access many resources. http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/
• NSW State Records includes hospital records, nurse registration records http://www.records.nsw.gov.au/. Also land records: https://www.records.nsw.gov.au/state-archives/indexes-online/indexes-to-l
• Church Missionary Society Records: the KING and CLARK families were missionaries and lived at places associated with the missions. It is likely that Katherine lived and worked in missionary settings after 1896. The following website is a starting point for this research: http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/facilities/cadbury/index.aspx
REFLECTIONS:
Until 1896, Katherine’s life can be located through records, but between then and 1911, I have only found one record for her, in Wanganui’s Electoral Roll, New Zealand for 1905-06 (8). She, with her daughter Florence Elizabeth KING are named in George Adams CLARK’s will of January 1906 (7) as living in Wanganui. At some time during or after 1906 she had (or acquired) a girl named Nancy, whose birth was apparently not registered.
Katherine’s father, who died in 1912, (7) had substantial property, part of which was willed to Katherine. By then, she was living in Australia and had / acquired another child, Phillip Moses KING, who she registered as her own in May 1911 using substantially false information (11).
Katherine Louisa had connections with a number of NSW towns: Lithgow, given as Phillip’s birthplace in late March 1911; and Wellington, where the birth was registered, on 25th May, 1911 (11). Phillip was photographed in November 1913 at Woollahra and there is an inked address on the photo for Mrs. K.L. KING at Cootamundra, and a pencilled address for Berrima Road, Moss Vale (12). These addresses may not have been written at the time the photograph was taken. Florence was married in Moss Vale in 1917 (14). Phillip recalled being at school in Moss Vale from 1918 (15).
It is certain that, by 1913, Katherine had connections with Moss Vale, for example a newspaper article mentions Nurse KING accompanying a woman to the hospital (13). The letter from Phillip KING gives a firmer date for the family being settled in Moss Vale as he states he went to school at Moss Vale from 1918 (15).
The question of how Katherine Louisa acquired funds to buy her property still needs research. She inherited “half my collection of silver plate, books, ornaments, coins, pictures and curios”, in 1912 from her father (7); the sale of these might have been enough to buy the Moss Vale house with four acres. I need to establish when the property in Moss Vale was bought, and how she gained her qualifications as a nurse/midwife, from which she earned income.
Katherine Louisa King was in Australia from 1911 onwards, but I still know little about where and how she lived in the years following her husband’s death in 1896. Unanswered questions include: Did she have a husband or a long term relationship in the years she lived at Wanganui? Why did she leave New Zealand, when did she arrive in Australia with Florence and Nancy, and where did she live and work prior to buying property in Moss Vale?
References
1. General Register Office, London, 1871/394: Birth Catherine Louisa Clark
2. 1881 census of England, Class:rG11; Piece: 1971; Folio: 113; Page: 16; GSU roll: 1341474
3. New Zealand Marriage Index 1840-1950 Folio No. 177 – microfiche- sourced through Ancestry.com
4. New Zealand Marriage Index 1848-1964 Folio No. 105 – sourced through Ancestry.com
5. New Zealand Herald, 21 March, 1896, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10085, Page 3- accessed through Papers Past
6. New Zealand Herald, 24 February, 1897, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10374, Page 1 – accessed through Papers Past
7. George Adams Clark: New Zealand Archives, NZL, Probate Records 1843-1998
8. New Zealand Electoral Rolls, 1864-1981, Matawatu-Wanganui: No. 3681.
9. New South Wales Death Certificae May 13 1985 No. 10079 Nancy Phyllis KING
10. Rawene cemetery headstone inscriptions: http://myrasplace.net/hstones/hstns.htm
11. New South Wales Birth Certificate, District of Wellington, 1911/709 Philip Moses KING
12. Photograph of “Phillip KING aged 22 months” in possession of Lyndal BREEN, 10 Anembo Street, Moss Vale
13. Evening News, Sydney, 9 December, 1913: ‘Moss Vale Woman’s Death Supposed Result of a Quarrel’.
14. Australia, Marriage Index, 1788-1950, Florence Elizabeth KING – accessed through Ancestry.com
15. Phillip KING, letter to grand-daughter, Michaelle BREEN, 5 May, 1988, in possession of Lyndal BREEN, 10 Anembo Street, Moss Vale.
by Lyndal
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Contact | Subscribe | Block this user on 2016-10-17 00:56:25
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Comments
markav on 2016-10-17 04:27:37Norfolk Baptisms reads (cant attach photo here)
May 4th 1872 Catherine Louisa
parents
George Adams and Elizabeth Clark
Abode
Roydon
Trade
Land Agent
on her parents marriage cert. George states he is a Gentleman his father also George Adams Clark a Gentleman, they were married in Westminster (image also)
I will post more later
Lyndal on 2016-10-17 04:55:23Thankyou. I haven't seen a marriage certificate or the baptismal information. I have Catherine Louisa Clark's birth certificate - she was my grandmother. She always spelled Katherine with a K, making quite something of it. When my father and mother had children she put forward an idea that all should be named from the central letters of the alphabet - K,L,M,N,O,P because that would maintain a pattern she saw with her own name (Katherine Louisa, her daughter, Nancy Phyllis, her son, Phillip Moses and my mother Kathleen Mary). There were 5 of us and apart from one child with second name Edward (after Kathleen's dad) all our names conformed to this pattern - which makes her use of Catherine with a C and Clark with an E on my dad's birth certificate all the more mysterious
markav on 2016-10-17 05:52:40in the 1851 census George A snr is listed as a 'Proprietor Of Houses' it seems they were a quite well to do family! so I assume this is where Catherine's money came from.
in the Diss Express 22 November 1889 records the death of Elizabeth Clark 7/9/1889 in Rawene Hoklana NZ aged 58
I am now looking on shipping lists
Lyndal on 2016-10-17 06:26:03Thankyou. When Catherine/Katherine's father died in 1912 he left two properties and an interest in a house to Katherine's brother Edward George Clark, who is buried along with Elizabeth Clark in the cemetery at Rawene NZ, having died around 1924. I believe he was married and had at least one son - I only found this today : Terry Ernest Laurie Clark
- Gunner 255316 with the New Zealand Artillery, 14 Light Anti Aircraft Regiment, was a son of Edward George & Marion French Laurie Clark, of Rawene
- Terry Ernest Laurie Clark died in Italy on 14 May 1944
Terry is an important name - Thomas Terry King was Katherine's husband who died. Terry was his mother's maiden name. Florence, Katherine's daughter, had an illegitimate child in 1914, who was named Norman Terry King.
Katherine was left half of George Adams Clark's coin collection and curios - which may have been worth a lot if she sold them?
Shipping lists would be fantastic. I have looked for movements of the G.A. Clark family between England and NZ in the 1880s and for Katherine Louisa's movements (accompanied by two daughters) to Australia from NZ in the period between Nancy's birth (1906) and Phillip's birth (1911) but have found nothing
markav on 2016-10-17 07:53:32Hi I found a K L King and a child N King aged 7 traveling from the uk and arriving in victoria 1913 going to the pier hotel manly probably not them but worth a look at
Lyndal on 2016-10-17 08:15:28Thankyou. This is interesting. The combination of initials KL King and the child N King aged 7 (Nancy was born 1906) so this appears spot on). It is not impossible that they were travelling from UK as I know very little of the movements of KL King about this time. There was a story that Katherine went back to England to deal with an inheritance some time after Phillip was born (1911), which I discounted after finding out her mother was dead and her father died in NZ in 1912. More to discover here.
Also, KL King going to Manly is interesting - she bought a house in Harbord, near Manly, in late 1930s. Perhaps she had a long standing connection.
How did you find this so quickly. I have messed about looking at Passenger lists but I didn't look at Victoria.
markav on 2016-10-17 09:14:17I found it on the Victoria, Australia Assisted and unassisted passenger lists 1913 on ancestry uk (i live in the uk) will now see if I can find them arriving from NZ or Auz but will cross reference them to others in the UK around that time will start with 1911 census
markav on 2016-10-17 10:11:45Name: Phillip Moses King
Birth Date: 27 Mar 1911
Birth Place: Lithgow New South Wales
Year Range: 1939 - 1948
Enlistment Place: Moss Vale New South Wales
Service number: N393844
Next of Kin: Katherine King
Series Description: B884: Army Citizen Military Forces
Lyndal on 2016-10-17 16:01:43Thankyou. You clearly know your way around these resources. I didn't realise that people might not travel to the nearest big city but land elsewhere and travel further later : of course there was the train!
Dad's war service was totally undistinguished I'm afraid. But the record is consistent with other documents - again you see that Katherine is spelled with a K here. [One of my 'problems' is that I think Dad's birth certificate is not a truthful document. Not only was the man named as his father 15 years dead, but the informant (Katherine) suddenly uses Catherine. Other inaccuracies is that Dad's name is misspelt and his actual date of birth is wrong.]
markav on 2016-10-18 03:28:40Hi. most of the family trees have,
Birth of Son Phillip Moses KING(1911–1992)
27 Mar 1911 • Macaulay Street, Lithgow Municipality, Lithgow, NSW, Australia, is this the correct address?
what was his correct dob or any other clues on his birth cert.?
still looking but running out of ideas!
Lyndal on 2016-10-18 04:38:14Dad's Birth Certificate shows his name as Philip (one 'l') - he was always firm that it was 2 'l's) He said his DOB was 27th March 1911 but the Birth Certificate has 29th March. Lithgow NSW may be right, there was no lying in hospital at Macauley St that I can find, but he could have been born at a private house. One of the puzzles is that the birth was not registered for a couple of months on 25th Mary 1911 and then from Wellington NSW. Wellington is 218 kilometres from Lithgow so not an easy journey with a newborn but quite easy I guess by train. There was also a mission run by the Church Missionary Society at Wellington - the missionary organisation which worked at Te Puna / Keri Keri in the Bay of Islands NZ, and also at Wanganui NZ
The father is shown as Thomas Terry King aged 49 and born 'near Auckand NZ'. My dad said that Thomas Terry King died of appendicitis on the ship coming to Australia and was buried at sea. This is definitely not true: Thomas Terry (not Terence as my dad thought) was born at Te Puna in the Bay of Islands well away from Auckland. He died in 1896 (born 1866)- so if he had been alive in 1911 he would have been 45 not 49. Terry was the maiden name of Thomas Terry King's mother.
On dad's birth certificate the mothers' maiden name is given as CLARKE (probably the only example I have seen in any documents of Clark with an E), other names Catherine Louisa. The Informant is shown as Catherine Louisa King.
Previous children of the marriage are shown as Florence E. 16 years, Nancy 5. Living. One male deceased. As well as Nancy also being born well after Thomas Terry's death, I have found no record of the deceased male baby. Nancy was said not to have a birth certificate (due to the isolation of the area) This is nonsense; even if she had been born in the Bay of Islands there was adequate documentation of other events in that area, for example Florence's birth was registered. I have found a birth record for a Nancy Clark with mother Katherine and father King - born at Napier NZ (which is not too far from the Wanganui area where Katherine Louisa shows up as a 'wife' on the 1905 census).
Sorry it is all such a mess; I don't know what to believe. I hope to find out more about Katherine Louisa as I think that other questions will be answered if I can track her down. She had a charming habit of naming her homes after places she had lived so I have a house named 'Roydon' in Cootamundra (recorded on the back of a photograph) and her homes at Cromer and Harbord where she lived in her later life, both on the north shore of Sydney not far from Manly, were both named Rawene, which also ended up being quite a clue.
Your discovery of the shipping record bringing the names King and Nancy (aged 7) in 1913 to Victoria and thence to the hotel in Manly is going to be worth follow-up.
There is a lot more to uncover.
Thanks for all your help
daree1 on 2016-11-09 05:32:55Hi Lyndal, I am from Moss Vale and am a local historian, I am researching Katherine's (Nurse King)home at 9 Berrima Road Moss Vale for the new owner. I have found that she came to Moss Vale from Cootamundra in April 1915 buying the place off a Mr Hassel. Her home in Cootamundra was called Roydon and she was selling some furniture in January 1915. She named her home in Berrima Road "Te-Kainga" which means "The Home" after reading your blogs I now know why it was names after the Maori language. She had 3 acres 0 roods and 35 perches. Nurse King ran her services from Berrima Road until early 1930s when she ran a small hospital in Elizabeth Street in Moss Vale to about 1940, She went to Sydney to live and died there Dec. 1963 aged 92. Phillip married Kathleen Armstrong of Bowral on Wednesday 12-2-1936. Nurse King delivered my mum and uncle she was born in 1923 1nd the uncle in 1921, she had a old coupe car that she drove to the delivery. I would say she must have moved to Sydney in the early 1950s but not sure. Hope this helps a bit.
Lyndal on 2016-11-09 06:14:38Hello daree1, How exciting to hear from you. I had noticed the house was recently sold (I still live in Moss Vale).
Your post has given me some new and firm information that I was not yet able to follow up, such as the date Katherine Louisa bought the house at Moss Vale. I remember hearing the name 'Hassell' but I didn't know that was the previous owner of the house she bought. Nor did I know those details about her nursing, other than that she was a midwife - she delivered one of my older brothers in the front room of my Dad's house, in August 1938. Dad built his house on the corner of Berrima and Watson Rd in 1936, and that house is now owned and lived in by his grand-daughter and her husband. The little girls your client may notice playing there are Katherine's great, great grandchildren!
Katherine passed ownership of the house to my father when she moved to Harbord in Sydney; I believe this was the 1940's. He subsequently sold it to a Mr Lockwood in the mid-1960s I think.
I'm very happy to hear from you.
daree1 on 2016-11-10 04:10:14Lyndal, I remember the brick house on the corner and if I remember correctly it was named "Willo Vue" or something similar. I have a family, Ian and Margaret Fletcher living there with their 3 children, Barry, Douglas and Christine in the 1950s then John William (Jack) Lockwood lived there with his wife Monica ( they married in 1948 at Penrith) but she didn't stay long, they had a child Max (1951) and Jack's mum Gladys Thelma was there looking after Jack and Max for years, she was born in 1907 and died 11-12-1971.After the Lockwoods Bill and Gloria Acton were there for a while before Fred and Alma Fittler and their daughter Lorraine had the home, after Lorraine married Geoffrey Gilby she named the house "The Ponderosa", this would have been in the 1980s? I still have a bit of research to do but am getting there, do you want to meet up and swap stories? I just live on top of Beaconsfield Road no.70, 0417403208 or daree1@bigpond.com I do all the research on Moss Vale for the historic society, and have been doing families and Mossy since the 1970s Cheers David Baxter
Lyndal on 2016-11-10 08:54:11Hi there,
Big ticks on all that information.
In the 1915 period I believe that Nurse King would have had her daughters Florence Elizabeth King, and Nancy Phyllis King, as well as my Dad (Phillip Moses King)aged 4 and a baby named Norman Terry King who was Florence's child living with her.
Dad, who was a builder, built the brick house in 1936 after his marriage. Until it was finished they lived with his mother in the 9 Berrima Rd house. They named the brick house Willovue.They decided to name the place in the 60s because there were more residences coming in along Berrima Road and no numbers were displayed so the postman was having difficulties. They lived in there all their married life into the 1990s. I remember the Fletchers and the Lockwoods but I got married in 1971 so I didn't really know anything about the people 'across the paddock' after that.
My brother, Lionel King, also lives in Moss Vale, and may remember a lot more as he was born in 1936, and has been here all his life.
I would very much like to meet. I could show you a photo of Katherine King - I would like to contact you after the weekend as I have to go to Brisbane but will be back next week. I'm at No 10, Anembo Street. My mobile phone is 0448645370, or landline 0248691394. Email lyndalbreen@hotmail.com . I've seen your posts on Facebook, and have 'liked' some of them, particularly the items that came up after the Central Hotel was up for demolition.
janilye on 2016-11-14 04:40:10There were two Private Hospital's in the town of Lithgow in 1911.
Nurse Hutchinson's on the corner of Waratah and Lett street; and Nurse Allan's in Railway Pde. Both nurses also attended home births. Macauley-street may have been the patient's home address.
Lyndal on 2016-11-14 12:56:06Thankyou janilye.
That information on the specific locations of private hospitals is helpful. I have no record of Katherine King being in any way associated with Lithgow except for the Birth Certificate, which contains a lot of untruths. A home address for Katherine near that time was in Cootamundra. I guess she might have given birth at a friend's home in Lithgow, but I am inclined to think that Phillip was not her 'natural' child. (She lacked a husband and was 39 years old in 1911)
janilye on 2016-11-15 02:17:59When a great aunt of mine became pregnant out of wedlock, she was packed off to Sydney to have the child, well before the neighbours saw her condition.
That was just the way of it!
Lyndal on 2016-11-15 04:12:08Thanks janilye. I agree that sending young women away to have their babies was common at the time. However my grandmother Katherine Louisa King was not a young woman at 39, and was a midwife herself. I find it difficult to believe Phillip was the result of an 'accident', but of course it could be so. Katherine went to some trouble to provide him with a birth certificate and a father, even if the poor man had been dead for 18 years.
Katherine's eldest daughter had an illegitimate child in 1914. He was born in Sydney, and registered with father 'unknown'.
I can see you have a lot of experience in family history, having had a look at your page. I was curious to know what drew your attention to Katherine King / Clark - I would be happy to try to answer any questions you might have about her