Continuing on
from my last blog post about my great great grandmother’s family, I thought I
would investigate whether the family in the picture could include some of
Janie’s brothers and sisters. The photo did have written on it “Grenfell
family” but that wasn’t to say they were all Grenfells. ‘Janie’ was Mary Jane
BLUETT prior to her marriage to James GRENFELL.
Janie was one of
the seven surviving children of Phillip BLUETT (1839-1899) and Mary Jane HUNN
(c1837-1897) of Cornwall. Phillip and Mary Jane, along with two of their three
daughters, arrived in Victoria barely a month before their first son (another)
Phillip BLUETT was born in Eaglehawk in April 1871.
Young Phillip
met with an accident with gunpowder when he was 12 years old, but obviously
survived. See the Trove article.
I have now
traced this Phillip to Western Australia. He seems to have moved around quite a lot,
following the mining industry.
In 1893, he
married South Australian-born Laura MORGAN in Victoria. Their first child’s
birth was registered in Bendigo Victoria, the second in Cobar, NSW, the third
in Orange NSW, the fourth in Fryers Creek (near Castlemaine) Victoria, the
fifth in Boulder (Kalgoorlie) Western Australia and the sixth in Perth Western
Australia.
After Laura died
in 1918, he married Florence HEY in Perth in 1921.
The fifth child
had one of the more interesting names in my family tree,
especially when read
aloud with the surname:
Hector Cyclone
Bluett – and he obviously wasn’t ashamed of his middle name – see the Trove
article. So often family notices only include initials, but not this one.
So, where did
the ‘Cyclone’ come from?
I thought ‘maybe
he was born in the middle of a cyclone’ – Western Australia is well known for
them (one is bearing down on the mid north coast now). But they are not so
common inland.
So, back to
Trove.
There were a
couple of cyclones possible for his 1904 birth registration:
16 Dec 1903: “a
thunderstorm of cyclonic force” swept across Kalgoorlie and Boulder; and
29 Dec 1904: “a
terrific rainstorm, travelling practically in the same direction, and almost
equally with the force of that which caused so much damage to and destruction
of Kalgoorlie-Boulder properties 12 months ago, swept over the district this
afternoon.”
Hector went on
to live marry and live until 1974. I wonder if he passed his middle name down
in his family.
And, so, I got
distracted from the rest of the Bluetts and whether they could be in the photo
with Janie. Another time!