"The Holes Was Eaten By Rats ..."
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Table of Descendants of Thomas Plummer Clarke and Frances Stelfox
Compiled for the website by Russell Hudson 11 February 2010. Last update 04 March 2011.
Links to the Descendants of the Nine Children of Thomas Plummer Clarke and Frances Stelfox
The following seven children had descendants (click the link to see them):
Ivan (A*) | Alfred (C) | Kathyren (E) | Ernest (F) | Robert (G) | William George (H) | Frances Ray (I) |
The following two children did not have descendants (scroll down the table to see their entry):
Jessie Ann (B) | Thomas (D) |
*The birth-order of the children is indicated by the letters A (first born) to I (last born). See notes on the format of the table of descendants (below).
Links to Further Information on Clarke Descendants: | Robert Clarke | William George Clarke |
Source of the Data in the Lists of Clarke Descendants - Brief History of my Clarke Family Research
Since the late 1970's I have been contacting Clarke relatives and collecting and compiling information on the descendants of Thomas Plummer Clarke and Frances Stelfox. The first "Table of Descendants" was compiled in July 1980, and was based largely on lists of descendants sent to me by a few supportive Clarke family members. Since then, other family members have continued to support the venture, enabling me to make regular updates to this co-operative family history research project. Some have provided large sections of their family line, others have been kind enough to point out errors, or provide me with details on recent births, marriages and deaths in the family. Some of these family members have been corresponding with me for about thirty years, others have only recently made contact.
I was born in Kalgoorlie in 1939, the first son of Joyce Elizabeth Clarke/Hudson (1909-1984) and William Russell Hudson (1909-1973), a Science Master at Eastern Goldfields High School. Both of my Clarke grandparents, William George Clarke (1878-1941) and Elizabeth Annie Douglas/Clarke (1882-1943), were at that time resident at 96 Piccadilly Street, Kalgoorlie and photographs taken in the few months following my birth include some with me together with my Clarke grandparents. My older cousin Margaret Elizabeth Goodacre(1938-) was born some six months earlier than me, the daughter of my mother's elder sister Frieda Frances Clarke/Goodacre (1907-1981) and her husband Robert Charles Goodacre (1903-1956).
My first recollections of my Clarke family relatives, however, date back to the period between 1940 and 1951 when, with the exception of the years 1946 and 1947, my father was Senior Science Master at Bunbury High School and the family lived at 9 Picton Crescent. My mother maintained a close contact with her elder sister Frieda, who was still living with her family in Kalgoorlie, and her younger sister Grace Clarke/Baird (1911-2004) who was living in Perth with her husband Keith Hugh Baird and their children Susan Jennifer (1939-), Barbara Ann (1941-), Lesley Alison (1943-) and Peter David (1946-). On visits to Perth it was not uncommon for all of the "Clarke cousins" to gather at the Baird home at 30 Irvine Street, Peppermint Grove and have their photographs taken.
Some Photographic Memories of my Clarke Relatives in Western Australia
I have no recollection of my mother's younger brother Robert Douglas (Tim) Clarke (1913-1942), who was killed in a Beaufighter crash off Darwin during the Second World. His wife, Ivy Annie (Billy) Thomson/Clarke/Truscott maintained contact with our family and, even when we moved to Perth in 1952, she remained a regular visitor to 30 Irvine Street, which my parents had purchased from the Baird family when we left Bunbury. The health of my grandparents declined and, though still resident in Kalgoorlie, William George was forced to seek medical treatment in Perth, which meant we saw him and my grandmother at times in Kalgoorlie, other times in Perth and rarely in Bunbury. After he died in 1941 (my memories of him are poor) my grandmother spent time in Perth with her daughter Grace (I saw her on our visits to Perth) and in Bunbury, where she died in 1943.
We also had contact with some members of the broader Clarke family and these included my mother's cousin Marcus Davenport Clarke (1899-1974), his wife Bessie Emma May Gayton/Clarke (~1910-1944) and their children (my second cousins) Ann Patricia Clarke (1935-) and Frances Winifred Clarke (1937-) who also lived in Bunbury for a period in the 1940's. Following Bessie Clarke's death in Bunbury in 1944, the family remained in WA for a short period before returning to New Zealand. The link between the families remained strong, with Marcus making frequent contact by mail with our family and sending regular updates on their family and news of the extended Clarke family in New Zealand. A highlight of this correspondence for me was the enclosure by Marcus of used postage stamps from New Zealand which I carefully soaked and mounted in my stamp album; my New Zealand stamp collection was the envy of my stamp-collecting friends.
Following our move to Perth in 1952, I became interested in the fact that my grandfather William George Clarke had been born in Russia, and that his parents Thomas Plummer Clarke and Frances Stelfox/Clarke had lived and worked as an textile mill engineer in Russia for much of the period from about 1865-1885. My parents provided evidence of his Russian heritage, by producing a certificate of baptism from Moscow together with an ornate "Niello" christening cup with a view of the Kremlin. When William George Clarke was nine years old, the family migrated to New Zealand and his father became involved in timber mills and then was employed as a battery manager and engineer at the Martha Mine, Waihi. The description of Thomas Plummer Clarke in the New Zealand Cyclopedia provided an excellent summary of his working career. A reminder of my grandfather's education in New Zealand could be found in an inscription on the inside cover of a book prize he received from Auckland College and Grammar School. It reads "3rd Prize Awarded to W. G. Clarke, December 1892. I was also interested to see family records of my grandfather's enrolment and service in the New Zealand Contingent during the Boer War and to see his discharge papers and his Boer War Medal. My parents also told me that, following his move to Western Australia in about 1905, William George maintained a strong interest in rifle shooting and also in the Boer War veterans association. My Aunt Frieda was also very important in developing my interest in the extended Clarke family, and as a visitor to Irvine Street, she was an enthusiastic raconteur and would provide me with snippets of information on relatives and events and I would make brief notes.
A visit to Perth in 1981 by my mother's New Zealand-based cousin Mercia Marguerite Clarke/Barnes (1899-dec) and husband Lewis Agassiz Barnes (1901-dec) was very informative and, on her return to New Zealand, she mailed copies of a number of Clarke family documents that I had not previously seen. These included: a document from the UK Foreign Office on 07 May 1884 requesting that (her father) "Evan" (Ivan) Clarke and his brother Thomas Clarke, be allowed "to pass freely without let or hindrance" on the trip to Russia; several pages from a diary with notes on events between 1884 and 1944; and a letter from the US from Robert Clarke (1877-dec) to his sister-in-law Elizabeth "Alice" Davenport Clarke (1865-1951) informing her of the details of the death in Florida of his sister Jessie Ann Clarke (1868-1920). In 1983, she also sent a number of copies of photographs of her grandmother, Frances Stelfox/Clarke, her father Ivan Clarke and group of eight of the nine Clarke children. Some of these were taken in England, others were taken in Russia. Vaudine Barnes subsequently published some of these photographs in her publications on her great grandparents (see below for publication titles). A very informative description of my great grandfather Thomas Plummer Clarke was published in 1902 in the Cyclopedia of New Zealand (Cyclopedia of New Zealand 1902-Vol. 2 Auckland Province and District. A profile of Thomas Plummer Clarke, p504).
The year 1981 was also memorable because my second cousin Ann Clarke/Thornton, came to Perth with her husband Jim Thornton and son Peter. Jim was on sabbatical leave and the family stayed briefly at Irvine Street with my mother Joyce Clarke/Hudson before renting accommodation in nearby Mosman Park. We saw Ann again in 2000 when she accompanied her sister Frances ("Francie"), a parish vicar, during her period of study leave visiting parishes in Western Australia. Ann and Francie stayed with us and they revisited some of the sites of importance to them in the childhood, including the boarding school in Darlington, where they stayed from March to December 1944 after their mother died in February at Bunbury. They also visited their childhood haunts in Bunbury and went to their mother's gravesite in Bunbury Cemetery.
In anticipation of their visit in July 1981, I compiled a provisional list of descendants of Thomas Plummer Clarke and Frances Stelfox. Not unexpectedly, the coverage of the descendants of my grandfather, William George Clarke, dominated the list, whilst the New Zealand Clarke relatives were "thin on the ground". It was timely, however, as in 1984 I had a conversation with my cousin Margaret Goodacre/Pinchback who, on learning of my interest in documenting the Clarke family, informed me that her daughter Kathleen Marie Pinchback/Loncar (1958-) was also involved in family history research and would appreciate seeing some of the information I had gathered. This was sent to her on 13 Nov 1984 and included my list of Clarke descendants and copies of the documents I had received from Mercia Clarke/Barnes.
In October1985, my second cousin Sandra Stelfoxe Clarke (1941-) wrote to me from New Zealand to say she had seen my 1981 list of descendants and informed me that she too was compiling a list of descendants from her grandfather Ivan Clarke and was working on the descendants from the other children of Thomas Plummer Clarke and Frances Stelfox. She enclosed some notes she had compiled on her research. She wrote again in May 1990 saying that she had prepared a draft of a Clarke family tree and, in collaboration with her eldest cousin Vaudine Marguerite Barnes (1929-2006), was sending out copies of the draft to "one member of each branch of the T. P. Clarke family". She also mentioned the possibility of a Clarke family reunion being organised, with a suggested venue of Waihi on the Coromandel Peninsular, where Thomas Plummer Clarke and Frances Stelfox/Clarke had spent the latter years of their lives. Details from Sandra's family tree were added to my database of Clarke descendants. In January 2011, Sandra provided me with an update to the descendants of Alfred Clarke.
Vaudine Barnes wrote to me in June 1990 and confirmed the intention that she and Sandra Clarke to organise a reunion at Waihi and gave further details of the progress of their efforts to add to the list of descendants and, in particular, to try and trace the descendants of Robert Clarke, who was last known as being in the United States. This was the start of a long and fruitful exchange of Clarke-based information with Vaudine, that included a visit to her home in Hamilton in 1993 by myself, my wife Jenny and our son Michael. Vaudine conducted extensive research on the Clarke family in Russia and the history of Russian textile mills and, in particular, she wrote comprehensive accounts on the lives of her grandparents Thomas Plummer Clarke and Frances Stelfox Clarke. These were published as follows:
Barnes, Vaudine (1995). “Frodsham to New Zealand via Russia : Thomas Plummer Clarke a Victorian Engineer (1840-1905)”. Frodsham Local History Society Journal pp 9-11.
Barnes, Vaudine (1995). “Frances Clarke nee Stelfox (1847-1924): Raising a Family in Russia and New Zealand” – A Research Essay for Anthony Ivan Clarke (to celebrate) his 60th birthday (on) 20th October 1995., Hamilton, New Zealand.
Barnes, Vaudine (2002). “A Victorian engineer” The New Zealand Genealogist Vol. 33, no 278, Nov/Dec 2002, pp393-395.
In October 2004, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a phone call from Rosanne Erica Clarke/Ward (1941-) who, through discussions with Ann Clarke/Thornton, had discovered she had a second cousin (me) in Perth, Western Australia. She kindly provided me with details of her family.
Barbara (Babs) Mackenzie (1934-) is the granddaughter of Kathyren (Kate) Clarke/Mackenzie (1873-1954), the third daughter of Thomas Plummer Clarke and Frances Stelfox. In 2005, Babs posted internet requests for information on the Clarke family. I replied in August 2005, advising her that much was known about the family, informing her of the recent publications by Vaudine Barnes and providing her with a link to my own web site, where I had published a brief summary of the Clarke family history. During the next month or so, we exchanged a number of emails in which she recounted many memories of her parents and grandparents and also provided me with an update on her branch of the Clarke family tree, in particular her own children and grandchildren.
As well as the contributions from all of those mentioned above, I am grateful to all of my immediate family (brothers John and Geoff Hudson and their families) and my cousins (Margaret Goodacre/Pinchback and her family, and Susan Baird/Watkins and family, Barbara Baird, Lesley Baird and Peter Baird. All of these family members have assisted in the compilation by keeping me informed of recent births, deaths and marriages in their own families or in those with whom they have frequent contact.
See Credits and Links for further acknowledgements and references (coming soon!!).
Help to Maintain the Database
Clearly the descendant database is a work in progress; it is incomplete and there are many Clarke family members whose details are absent or in error. Please notify me if you find any errors or omissions and I will be delighted to make the necessary corrections so that the database will become more accurate and complete through time. I am also aware that, because the process of gathering the names of descendants of Thomas Plummer and Frances Clarke is somewhat eclectic, I cannot be sure that all family members have given approval for their inclusion in the list . If you would like me to remove names or details please let me know. I can be contacted at: [email protected].
Notes on the Format of the Compilation
of Descendants
1. Database: Details of Clarke descendants have been entered on a MS Excel Spreadsheet. These details include full dates for births, baptisms, marriages, deaths and burials, together with locations for each of these events. Similar details have been entered for partners in marriages or relationships. Additional data has been recorded on migration, profession, special achievements, and so on.
2. Lists of Descendants: The lists presented below have been extracted from the database, and arranged in family groups from each of the children of Thomas Plummer Clarke and Frances Stelfox. Only the year of birth, marriage or death has been extracted for this summary in recognition of privacy concerns.
3. Generation Level: As indicated on my home page, all of my ancestors migrated to Australia or New Zealand in the mid to late nineteenth century. Some of these pioneers were at my great-great grandparent level, others at my great grandparent level. For consistency, I have assigned Generation Level 1 to my great-great grandparents, Level 2 to my great grandparents, and so on. Where my great-great grandparents were migrants to Australia or New Zealand, the list of descendants begins at Level 1. However, as my Clarke great-great grandparents did not leave England, the list of Clarke descendants commences with my great grandfather Thomas Plummer Clarke at Level 2 (see below).
4. Children: All children of Thomas Plummer Clarke, for example my grandfather William George Clarke (1878-1941), are at Level 3, and are listed in order of birth from A first-born), through B (second-born), and so on. The names of the nine children and their families, follow in order. Thus, on the complete list, William George Clarke, the eighth-born child will be listed, together with his family, below the entries for each of the first seven children and their families (these have been omitted from the example below). William George's entry begins with the number 3 indicating he is at Generation Level 3. The letter H indicates he was the eighth-born child of Thomas Plummer Clarke and Frances Stelfox. Similarly, his second-born child, Joyce Elizabeth Clarke would appear below her elder sister Frieda and family (omitted in the example) and Joyce would be listed as 4B (generation 4, second child).
5. Marriages and/or Relationships: Unmarried descendants without children are indicated with a "0" after the letter indicating the order of birth. Thus, George Russell Bearne ROBERTSON (below) is at the seventh generation level (7), is the first-born child of Elizabeth and Neville ROBERTSON (A), and is unmarried and without children (A0). Those with a "1" after their birth-order letter are in their first marriage or their first child-bearing relationship, those with "2" are in their second, and so on. The name of the spouse or partner is listed after the letter "m", and the year of marriage follows, if known.
6. Family Groups: In the example below, Douglas Russell Hudson (me) is listed at Generation Level 5; I am the first child (A) of Joyce Elizabeth Clarke and William Russell Hudson; my first (and only) marriage/child-bearing relationship (1) is with Jennifer Elizabeth Baldwin. The three children (Level 6) from the marriage/relationship, and seven grandchildren (Level 7) are listed directly below the line for Douglas Russell Hudson and Jennifer Elizabeth Baldwin.
The next entry after that for Chloe Isabella Hudson would be that for Douglas Russell Hudson's next younger married brother [5 B1 John William Hudson]. Each of John William Hudson's children and grandchildren would then follow, and so on.
Example: Some of the Descendants
-- 2 A1 Thomas Plummer CLARKE b~1840 d1905 m1865 Frances STELFOX b~1847 d1924
(Names and families of the first seven children of Thomas Plummer Clarke are omitted in this example)
-- -- 3 H1 William George (Bill) CLARKE b1878 d1941 m1905 Elizabeth Annie (Betty) DOUGLAS b1882 d1943
(Name and families of the first child of William George Clarke are omitted from this example)
-- -- -- 4 B1 Joyce Elizabeth CLARKE b1909 d1984 m1936 William Russell HUDSON b1909 d1973
-- -- -- -- 5 A1 Douglas Russell HUDSON b1939 m1963 Jennifer Elizabeth BALDWIN b1940
-- -- -- -- -- 6 A1 Elizabeth Elaine HUDSON b1964 m1990 Neville Bearne ROBERTSON b1962
-- -- -- -- -- -- 7 A0 George Russell Bearne ROBERTSON b1992
-- -- -- -- -- -- 7 B0 Thomas Alexander Michael ROBERTSON b1995
-- -- -- -- -- 6 B1 Jane Anne HUDSON b1966 m1991 Clinton Peter GIBSON b1963
-- -- -- -- -- -- 7 A0 Ashleigh Elizabeth Dorothy GIBSON b1992
-- -- -- -- -- -- 7 B0 James Peter Douglas GIBSON b1994
-- -- -- -- -- -- 7 C0 Jennifer Jane Margaret GIBSON b1996
-- -- -- -- -- 6 C1 Michael Russell HUDSON b1968 m Cavell ALTMAN
-- -- -- -- -- -- 7 A0 Ben William HUDSON b2004
-- -- -- -- -- -- 7 B0 Chloe Isabella HUDSON b2005
(Names and families of the third and fourth child William George Clarke are omitted from this example, as are the names and families of the ninth child of Thomas Plummer Clarke).
Descendants from the Marriage of THOMAS PLUMMER CLARKE (~1940-1905) and FRANCES STELFOX (~1847-1924)
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