Australian DAWEs

Their time has obviously come, again.
A descendant of Isaac DAWE, miller in Tasmania, had popped out of the woodwork a few weeks ago and some updates eventuated to that line, that from second wife Emily GREEN.

Just last week a MyHeritage SmartMatch popped up a TREMBATH/BROTHERAS researcher claiming another of my Isaac DAWs in Australia as marrying Elizabeth Ann BROTHERAS, nee TREMBATH in Cue, Western Australia.
This Isaac was one down the line from my Isaac, miller of Lumburn, Tavistock's brother William (married Mary WAY).
Two surprises here for me,  marriage and Western Australia!
Other researchers may  be well ahead of me here, but I had him has unmarried, born and dying in Victoria!
The information checks out, so Isaac has been included on my webpages for others to see the connections.
The wonderful newspapers online at Trove hint that maybe  Isaac's parents and some siblings also headed for Western Australia at some stage - not yet confirmed that "DAW and family" on the same voyage as Isaac is them however.

And then yesterday another heap of MyHeritage DAWE SmartMatches popped out of the woodwork, from yet another DAWE in Australia, Western Australia even.
These DAWE matches however turned out to be for the descendants of Joseph DAWE & Elizabeth CROSSMAN of Buckland Monachorum, no connection currently proven to my DAWEs above, but the trees are interconnected several times over via other families, such as my BARTERs and WILLCOCKs.

The DAWE DNA project would love to explore whether or not there is a connection between these South West Devon families, so are still looking for any direct male line DAWE descendants of any of these families willing to give it a try.

As a result of the above I've updated my DAWE page and added pages for:

• John DAW of North Lew (to document the erroneous link that several trees make between the two above DAWE trees)
• John DAWE of Yeoland, the John some trees give as the father of my Isaac DAWE, and is where at least one of my connections to his DAWE line begins, and
• Elizabeth KING, wife of John DAWE of Yeoland

Enthusiasm vs accuracy

Contact from an enthusiastic, I presume, "newbie" to this wonderful hobby reminded me of the wisdom enshrined in the GPS.
No not one of those marvellous devices telling you where you are and how to get to where you should be instead, but the Genealogical Proof Standard.
To quote the Board of Certification of Genealogists (American)

"Proof is a fundamental concept in genealogy. In order to merit confidence, each conclusion about an ancestor must have sufficient credibility to be accepted as "proved." Acceptable conclusions, therefore, meet the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS).
The GPS consists of five elements:

* a reasonably exhaustive search;
* complete and accurate source citations;
* analysis and correlation of the collected information;
* resolution of any conflicting evidence; and
* a soundly reasoned, coherently written conclusion.

Perhaps it is too much to ask of an enthusiastic newcomer happily copying data from trees found on the web and claiming relationships to people found there on the flimsiest of "evidence", but even the newest of newcomers should be able to distinguish between the possible and the impossible and do some basic checking, even if it is of other trees.

This little lecture being prompted from someone claiming to be my 7th cousin via the DAWs, stating that the relationship was from her Sampsons back to Philip, and down to my Isaac.
As I've never found any proof of a relationship between the Sampson DAWs of Buckland Monachorum, and my Isaac of Lumburn Mill/Tavistock, I asked what her evidence was for the connection.
None was forthcoming, but as one of the links quoted was for a John DAW b 1742 being married to Sarah MOORE, I smelt a rat in the "conclusions" being drawn.
John and Sarah (MOORE) DAW, are only possible parents for my Isaac (as outlined with doubts, on Isaac's page), and happen to have married in 1744.
A tad precocious for a 1742 birth.
A bit of digging on the other names mentioned led me reasonably quickly to my conclusion that her family was that of Joseph and Jenny (DAWE) DAWE who had family at Meavy before moving to the big smoke of London/Surrey.
That Joseph is highly UNlikely to be the Joseph son of Joseph and grandson of Sampson of Buckland Monachorum as his dates don't match, and most census data gives his birthplace as Cornwall, not that I've definitively identified where in Cornwall as yet (I presume somewhere close to the boundary with Devon as the 1861 census says Berehatton(?), Devon, the rest say Beer, Cornwall).
Regardless of the mis-links, it was an interesting exercise, as all of these families have many connections to mine, and one day, who knows, someone might pop out of the woodwork with all the missing links, with accurate source citations, and dates that gel.

It was also quite interesting seeing what others had for the same "families".
Just looking at two of the culprit trees with John (married to Sarah MOORE) shown as the son of Joseph and Elizabeth (CROSSMAN) DAW of Buckland Monachorum.
Several have John b 1742 marrying Sarah MOORE and Elizabeth REED, but with no dates for Sarah, although most do seem to have Isaac as their son and born 1769/70, so technically possible, if you ignore his siblings born 1745 +.

Another has John b. 1730, marrying Sarah MOORE in 1744, and Elizabeth REED in 1799, and dying in 1814.
Not absolutely impossible, but unlikely to be marrying at 14.

But if you look at the same tree from Sarah's viewpoint, she is shown as marrying two John DAWEs, one 1730-1813, the other 1724-1778, both "marriages" producing an Isaac of about the right dates.
For the record, I believe the 1742 John, son of Joseph and Elizabeth (CROSSMAN) married twice, firstly to my Elizabeth KING, and secondly to Elizabeth REED, with a son from this last marriage marrying Mary ANDREWS, another of my Devon relations.

All in all, quite an entertaining diversion from the real life stuff keeping me from this hobby rather too much at the moment.

Lumburn Mill

A posting on the GenForum FUGE board elicited a prompt response and contact with two researchers of the name in Australia. Like me, they hadn't solved the problem of what happened to Samuel, Thomasin Ann and John Edwin, children of William FUGE and Mary Elizabeth HAMLEY, but were able to add several details, including most of the later baptisms and some exact marriage dates.
But even more interestingly, this contact has finally lead to exact identification of the Lumburn Mill.
I was swapping Tavistock Library stories with one of the FUGE researchers, telling her about how I'd been trying to identify where assorted mills were that Isaac DAWE had been (Newton, Mill Hill, Lifton and Lumburn).
She had also been trying to identify the Lumburn mill as one of the FUGE wives' families had been there from between 1851 and 1861, presumably following on from my Isaac DAWE who had died in 1851 or his son Isaac who had emigrated to Australia by 1857.
When I was in Devon in Aug 2006 I had followed the river up from Lumburn to Middle Lumburn to Higher Lumburn taking pics of likely buildings for the Lumburn Mill, the first being on the A390 out of Tavistock just past the Lumburn bridge.
As my map didn't show any great water source near to this first set, well past the bridge, I assumed it wasn't the mill and had turned off onto the B road to the right, so didn't get to see the front of the first set of buildings I'd snapped from the bridge side.
However, Eleanor's 2003 photo from the other side is an exact match with the family photo that we have marked "Lumburn House and Mill" with assorted well dressed Victorians outside. Obviously the water is either hidden, or has been diverted over the centuries.

Marriage cert of William MATTERS arrived. I had picked the right bride - Mary GRIBBIN (of Newquay, Tavistock), dtr of Edward. Haven't yet found her/them in 1841 and 1851.