Why I don't have public social media profiles anymore

 Perhaps this headline is inaccurate. I do have one public social media account - an instagram that I barely use. I had intended on populating it, but the longer it has existed, and the more Instagram pesters me via notifications regarding their features, the less likely I have become to actually use it. I don't see this changing.

It goes like this: I used to have public Facebook, and microblogging via Twitter. I don't now. This has led to many folks trying to access my personal Facebook and Instagram accounts with little luck. In a more innocent time, I may have accepted their friend requests, but nowadays, not so much. It's nothing against them, it's more the desire for peace and sanctuary.

For me, deleting my Twitter account came to a head nearly three years ago. I was on holiday, for the first time in ages, and following six lockdowns, and I found myself sitting in the Arctic Circle with the aurora going on over my head, stressing about something playing out on that platform. It was actually making me physically ill - because of my stress, I was being hit by waves of nausea and panic. So I signed out of the account then and there, deleted the app, and never signed in again. 

The person who caused this trigger event was not responsible for me leaving the platform. They were simply an aggrieved person acting out in what was a long list of Twitter events. Twitter lent itself to performative callout culture being mistaken as "taking action". I myself had contributed to that on many occasions. Yet the problem was, during the six lockdowns in Melbourne, it also became a bit of an outside lifeline for me. Isolated from the world, and feeling like I was in an abusive relationship with the state government, I (like many others) turned to the platforms to maintain connection. This connection was often superficial, and the longer it went on, the less it did to stop my descent into deep depression such as I had not experienced for fifteen years. I was not in a good spot at all, but it took for me to be somewhere else trying to enjoy life to finally realise this and take action. 

There's an additional part to this. At roughly the same time, I became a political candidate. What's more, despite my having little chance of winning in the safe seat I ran in as an actual local, I was targeted by a bunch of hacks who were seemingly unaware of their latent racism. As such, my public social media spaces became a place where my words were twisted for memes, and my mental health was of no great importance to those looking to score points in their peanut gallery. What started as an action to promote democracy in my local area turned into a time period where suicide ideation became a reality. What's more, I was completely unequipped to deal with my own mental health issues, so they consumed me, and those close to me. When the election was finally over, and I had the opportunity to resume a private life, I took it.

Social media was responsible for me having a side gig as a commentator in the first place, but it is not going to be a part of my future. The longer I was on it, and the more I saw those of us who are not white cis men being targeted for being uppity enough to take back some space, the more futile I felt it was. My words have the same right to be out there without personal harassment as the words of those white dudes, existing in the spaces to be considered by the readers. I, and any other commentator from a similarly marginalised perspective, should not have to put up with the shit we do for simply existing.

So yes, I will not be returning to public social media any time soon, though I continue to write, and commentate. I will leave that for those who still have the will for it and get something out of it. For those still interested in what I have to say, check out my Linktree for updated article listings. Also, keep an eye out - ideas are brewing and all this family history research I have been doing potentially serves another purpose. 

Peace, and for those still holding on in those toxic online spaces, I salute you. You are made from tougher stuff than I.

The Marigold - family history series

 Today, I believe I solved a mystery that was 150 years old. It's one that I have referred to before - my maternal grandmother's lines and how, while her paternal line just unfolded before me with ease and I watched as I became the descendant of a brown dude who was a revolutionary, her maternal line just brickwalled.

I am no closer when it comes to her maternal grandfather, John McVeigh. I still believe I am in the ballpark with my idea that we have some misspelt surnames there, and potentially a couple of convicts, but I cannot be sure.

Eliza Louisa Hibbert though, I am now reasonably certain I have solved. For fans of Downton Abbey, it's a "Marigold" story. And probably one that, if I wasn't so stubborn while also driven by accuracy, I may not have solved.

Eliza was my first clue that, when encountering relations on Ancestry, you need to question everything. If things don't fit, people will shoehorn stuff in, mainly in the hope they can construct their family trees. 

Eliza was very shoehorned, but I guess it was understandable why she was. According to her marriage and death certificates, her parents were Joseph Hibbert and Eliza Sarah Kipps. They had a number of children, including a daughter named "Louisa Elizabeth", and Eliza Sarah actually gave birth to her final child when she was 47 (terrifying thought to me at 47 right now!). People had misidentified Louisa as Eliza Louisa yet when it came to the records, it didn't fit. This woman was 9 years older than Eliza's husband John, yet marriage certificates and cemetery records showed her being seven years younger than him. Further digging showed that Louisa married a man named George Podesta, and that she died in 1912. 

Yet despite what Eliza Louisa's marriage and death certificates stated, no birth certificate existed for her. What's more, she does not appear on her named mother's death certificate. She does appear on her named father's death certificate, but as "Louisa Eliza" and with an illegible age. Had she been born to Eliza Sarah and Joseph, Eliza Sarah would have been 45 - not impossible, particularly considering the one younger brother, but certainly not usual.

                                {segment - Joseph Hibbert death cert}
 

When Eliza Louisa died, it was June 1947 and she was listed as being 74 years old. Her beloved husband John followed her to the grave a mere couple of weeks later. She was fondly remembered by my nanna Lorna as being a warm woman, who was like a mother rather than a grandmother to her because Avis was out making her boots. Nanna actually lived with her grandparents and her mother until she married at 18. Eliza Louisa was a steadying influence in a house of rather strong-willed individuals.

Therefore if she had a birth certificate, it would have indicated that she was born in 1872 or 73. Eliza Sarah did not give birth in that year. She did, however, have two daughters who would have been old enough then to have children - Sarah Avis (18yo), and Louisa Elizabeth (16yo).

Perhaps I should have taken closer notice of Joseph Hibbert's death certificate, because the first clue was there. But then again, I don't know that I would have got it from the listed "Louisa Eliza".

The answer appears to be this: according to the records, on the 10th of August, 1872, Sarah Avis Hibbert gave birth to a daughter named "Louisa Eliza Londriggan" in Panton Hill, Victoria. Her mother, Eliza Sarah, was listed as the witness. The father was a man listed as "Edmond Londriggan", who was a 28 year old brickmaker from Ireland. Allowing for misspellings and so forth, this man does not appear to exist - there are no records for him in Victoria beyond this birth certificate, and I haven't found him on passenger lists for migration, nor cemetery records. He doesn't seem to exist elsewhere in Australia either - I located an "Edmund Longrigan" in a NSW cemetery, but he was too young. Sarah Avis was listed as married to this man, and carrying his surname too, yet no marriage record exists. Victoria was the best record-keeping state in the country. 

When it comes to Sarah Avis' death certificate though (1890), no daughter named Louisa Eliza Londriggan is listed, and nor is a first husband named Edmond. She is, however, shown as having married firstly, a man named William Townsend to whom she had two children (both did not survive infancy), and then secondly, to a man named Robert Moyes to whom she had a son named Francis. On her marriage certificate to Townsend (who was more than twice her age), she was listed as a "spinster", rather than a widow or divorcee, thus making her stated marriage to Londriggan prior unlikely.

I can, therefore, only come to the conclusion that "Louisa Eliza Londriggan" is my second great-grandmother Eliza Louisa Hibbert. Louisa Eliza would have been exactly 74 years old in June 1947 when Eliza Louisa died. I believe Sarah's parents brought up Eliza Louisa as their own, thus hiding Sarah's "illegitimate" child in their already huge brood, and freeing her up to marry at the age of 21 without the stigma or shame society put on unwed mothers at the time. I also believe that in "adopting" Eliza Louisa, they switched her name order around as there was already a daughter named Louisa in the family. Finally, they gave her their surname, and that was the "maiden name" she carried to her grave.

Perhaps if there are living descendants of Francis Moye who test on Ancestry, I will be able to confirm all this. As it stands though, the dates are right, and this explains the absence from both Sarah and Eliza Sarah's death certificates, but the presence on Joseph's. It explains the unfindable "father". It also explains why I do match up genetically with other descendants of Eliza Sarah and Joseph - I am of that flock, but just a further generation along than what our family knew.

I will never know if Eliza Louisa knew any of this. I hope she did, but regardless, if she didn't, I am glad that she still grew up with her family. And she went on to create and nuture a family of her own, to which, I am proud to now know and be a part of.

Around the world with the Wallers

 Since I have returned from the Netherlands, I have been watching back-to-back episodes of Who Do You Think You Are? on SBS's On Demand. It's a rather peculiar thing to do, but has been spurred by watching other people go through their journeys and seeing what it is that I may have missed.

To recap, my holiday to the Netherlands was spurred not only from severe burnout and lingering background depression, but also my discovery that I am the 5th great-granddaughter of Dutch-Burgher revolutionary Pieter Quint Ondaatje. There was definite and defiant joy at finding out that I had such an incredible political figure in the mix there, but also that the "white side" of my family ended up not being terribly white at all. His grandson, James George Waller, who to me is 3rd great-grandfather, is the one who migrated here, and though his own migration trip remains a mystery, his line and parentage is not. Indeed, once I uncovered it, this was the most complete line I had, and it turns out that the one migrant-of-colour I have on my maternal side of the family was the only person who came here who had any money behind him at all. The rest were very working class, and two lines lost everything in the Sacramento shipwreck.

What has struck me watching all these episodes though is while I may have all the documents linking my descent from Quint and Christina Hoovenaar, and while I may have seen a great many places associated with him while in the Netherlands, I am missing two links. I don't know much about their daughter Hermina Wilhelmina, why she stayed in the colonies long enough to meet and marry British ship-builder James Waller, and what her life was link as an educated woman-of-colour sailing the world. I also don't know much about James George Waller, why it was that he chose Australia when he had sisters who went to Canada and Jamaica, and what his life was like. He was a man of colour with means in the early days of Melbourne, and he was clearly adored by his children. He showed progressive values and I am trying to ascertain if he, like four generations before him, was also a member of the Freemasons. Conversely, he also suffered hardship - his wife, Caroline Hodges from Bristol, appears to have died of alcohol-related illness. And I do wonder how his non-white heritage played out for him, particularly in the later part of his life where Australia was actively legislating for an end to non-white migration.

But watching these episodes of others has highlighted the mysteries I still need to solve. As well as the lives of Hermina, then James George, that is. I, for example, need to know what it is that my great-great-grandmother Eliza Louisa Hibbert does not have a birth certificate. I need to know whether I am right about her husband John McVeigh's parents in Sydney, and need to know whether they were convict descent (seems likely - they were Irish descent and not wealthy) or whether I have barked up the wrong tree here. I have, after all, had to run with the assumption that the surname has changed spelling (or was misspelt due to illiterate forbears) in order to find records that match dates and places. Staying with the Irish, I need to know John Henry Robinson's story beyond him being born in Dublin. I have names for parents, but being very common Irish names (John Robinson and Mary Farrell), that doesn't narrow it down. A man that adored by his family cannot have simply appeared from nowhere. The biggest mystery of all though remains on dad's side: did Frank Gillen know he fathered my great-grandmother Mary, and how did he come to do so (beyond the obvious)? How, also, did this influence his research with Baldwin Spencer on the Arrernte? 

Part of me sort of hopes SBS sees me here, and decides they want me on this show so they can unpack some of these stories. Truth is, I have spent a fortune on government records because sloppy research, and shoehorning records on Ancestry, had led to distant relations making mistakes that I had to correct. But I don't have the additional money to dig in the above any further. Particularly given Irish records can be precarious due to their history of colonisation by the English. I cannot help but feel that many co-descendants, due to their whiteness, have stopped at the ethnicity estimates. I don't understand their lack of curiosity with regards to the actual people involved, because the minute you drill down, you work out the ethnicity estimates mean little. But perhaps they were simply looking for validation of their identity, and as someone who has been "othered" my entire life, I did not need that validation. I know who I am.

If people do take on these journeys, my advice is to take everything on Ancestry with a grain of salt. The presence of names and records can be overwhelming, but they are only really as good as the people who have been on the system before you. You need the certificates, and you need the stories. The historical echoes lie in those stories, and not the faulty ethnicity estimates.