Last year, in June, I came across the challenge 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks on the “No Story Too Small” blog. At the end of December, I had only completed 28 posts, so I will be continuing that series, as well as setting up posts for this year’s challenge.
This year, the challenge comes with topics, and has been expanded to allow the inclusion of collateral lines. The topic for week 1 was Fresh Start.
My ancestors all came to Australia between 1841 and 1863, which gave me a number of ancestors to choose from for this topic, but I decided this week to look at a collateral line, the brother of one of my ancestors, William Samuel Doyle.
William had come to Australia with his parents and siblings in 1862, when he was 8 years old, and the family had settled in the Ballarat area.
William married Mary Ann Allen in 1877 in Ballarat, and their children were all born in Victoria. Sometime in the 1890s-1900s, William and Mary decided to make a fresh start in Western Australia. The exact date they moved is not yet known, but William and Mary’s youngest child, Frank, was born in 1893 in Victoria, and the family appear on the Western Australian Electoral rolls in 1903, at Albany.
- Doyle Elizabeth Mary F Parade-street
- Doyle Marrianne ” Parade-street, housewife
- Doyle William Harold M Parade-street, clerk
- Doyle William Samuel ” Parade-street accountant
William appears to have left the family in Western Australia, while he went for work in Queensland, as the next entry for a William Samuel Doyle was on the Queensland Electoral rolls:
Year 1919, State Queensland, District Wide Bay, Subdistrict Nanago
Doyle, William Samuel, Kingaroy, accountant
He was still there in 1925, and appears to have died in 1929
William Samuel Doyle, death date 18 Oct 1929 death place Queensland registration number 004227 page number 474.
There were a number of fresh starts for William – his father Thomas had originally been from Ireland, but had moved to England, where he had married Catherine Mills. Thomas and Catherine then migrated to Australia with their young family in 1862, and settled in the Ballarat area. William then moved to Western Australia with his family, and then finally on to Queensland.
Lois Willis - Genealogy and Family History 