Building my Family Tree is rewarding and addictive. Whole new family groups, with unfamiliar surnames, are now connected to me and I’m discovering their stories.

In the early days, as branches emerged, I’d tell my sons of new family connections: “You’re related to the Balchins!”. They’d look up and say, “Oh, Balchin? Great!” But their eyes glazed over in case I might launch into further details. Undeterred, I’d return to the keyboard and dig deeper.

In assessing what I’d learnt, the superficial nature of the details bothered me. Whilst I uncovered names and some dates, I had no sense of who these people were. To maximise the time I spent on my research, I narrowed my focus to my father’s paternal line. I wanted a deeper understanding of these people including why they came to Australia.

Researching my paternal line, I established the name of my father’s Great-Grandfather as John Wellington Jackson. This detail came from the Victorian Death Index of my father’s Grandfather. In adding this new name to my online family tree, a record hint appeared for an Australian marriage between a John Willington Jackson and a Mary Ellen Mcintyre. The middle name, spelt Wellington on one record and Willington on the other, meant I needed another source to verify that the two Johns were the same person. So, I added this marriage to my online tree to generate further record hints.

Various record hints popped up with the births, deaths and marriages of the children of John Willington Jackson and Mary Ellen Mcintyre. These were names I already knew, so this information confirmed that John Willington Jackson (with Willington spelt with an ‘i’ and not an ‘e’) and Mary Ellen Mcintyre were the parents of my father’s Grandfather. This was my first lesson in not trusting ‘official’ information and also understanding that transcription errors occur.

Now I’ve confirmed my relationship to John Willington Jackson and Mary Ellen Mcintyre, I want to know who were John Willington Jackson’s parents? The Australian Death Index didn’t list his parent’s names, but showed he died in Perth, Western Australia; a detail that piqued my interest as all his family lived in Victoria. I logged onto the Western Australia Births, Deaths and Marriages site (www.bdm.justice.wa.gov.au), found John Willington Jackson’s death index record and ordered a copy of his death certificate.

Roadblock #1

John Willington Jackson’s death certificate listed his parents as John Jackson and Elizabeth Willington. The certificate also detailed his children’s names and ages, which confirmed I was looking at the death certificate of my John Willington Jackson. However, I noted that the details of his children’s ages were inconsistent with information I had confirmed from other sources. I added the names of John Willington Jackson’s parents to my online Family Tree and waited for more record hints to take me further on my journey. But nothing appeared!

I started a manual search for more information and took the following into account:

• The death certificate listed John Willington Jackson’s place of birth as Tipperary, Ireland. This information aligned with my father’s understanding of where his family came.
• He was 77 years old when he died (meaning he was most likely born in 1829).
• I estimated his father was born around 1800 (plus or minus 10 years).
• Did John Willington Jackson come to Australia with his parents or on his own?
• When did he emigrate? As a child or an adult?

Searching the passenger lists of inbound ships proved to be a herculean task with ‘John’ and ‘Jackson’ being common names. I searched a wide, then narrow, spread of timelines. I uncovered no information that could be cross-referenced to ensure with certainty that it related to my John Willington Jackson.

I stopped searching passenger lists, only to pick it up again now and then hoping to find something I’d missed. I turned my focus onto finding more information on his parents using Australian and Irish sites, but could not find details that gave me confidence that they related to the people I was searching for. Stumped, and thinking I’d exhausted all avenues, I dropped my search into this line.

Roadblock #2 (but with a tantalising detour)

Sometime later, when my research interests were with another branch of the tree, a message appeared in my Inbox from an Ancestry.com user. His message read: “Unless there are 2 of them from Tipperary, I have the parents of John Willington Jackson for you. The information is in the (free) will of his father William Jackson….his mother is Charlotte Willington…..”

Wait, what?? How can William and Charlotte be John Willington Jackson’s parents? His death certificate stated that his parents are John Jackson and Elizabeth Willington. Could the information on John Willington Jackson’s Death certificate be wrong?

Next time, I uncover the truth about John Willington Jackson.