Looking in Australia for Kenneth & Jean Walmsley and Kevan & Renee Crompton

Question

I am looking for sisters Jean and Renee (new Molyneux) who marred Kenneth Walmsley and Kevan Crompton in  double wedding in 1961 in Farnwoirth, Lancashire , England

They then emigrated to Australia I believe but I don't know where exactly.

Jean will be about 79 now and Renee 77.

I am their cousin in England who they have never known.

I would love to hear from them or anyone who knows of them

Thank you

Answer 1

Hi Christine,

The best searching strategy would be to see if you can find these two couples on the Australian Electoral Rolls which are available on Ancestry.com. Rolls are available upto 1984. A lot of public libraries have a library subscription to Ancestry.com without you having to purchase a subscription, so make enquiries at your local council library to see if they have access. Friday (26th January) is Australia Day and Ancestry usually lets Australian residents search its Australian records for free for a couple of days around Australia Day. If that happens this year then I'll run the searches myself when access is granted.

Comments

I had a quick look but I cannot find anything that matches with both people in each couple. Of course, I forgot to say that you need to be an Australian citizen to vote in Australia, and British citizens don't have to take out Australian citizenship in order to permanently reside in Australia. So they may not have applied for Australian citizenship.

1961 onwards is not a good period for family history records. Searchable newspaper records end in 1954 and most states' registries of births, deaths, and marriages freely available databases terminate before 1961. You could see if you could find a passenger manifest for the Walmsley and Crompton couples leaving England, either on Ancestry.com or on FindmyPast.com which libraries also have free access. That would tell you the port they were sailing to, but gives not a lot of indication as to where they ended up settling.

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Andrew,

Thank you so much for your help and interest in my search.

The information I was given by my parents that these relatives emigrated to Australia was not set in stone.  And I am wondering if it may even have been New Zealand?

And I know that a good way to trace them would be via the passenger lists, but the searches I have attempted have asked what was the destination port, the state and name of ship, and of course I can't enter any of that information.

It would be far easier if I could find a site that would just let me search for Cromptons and Walmsleys departing say Liverpool in 61 or 62.

Thank you again

Christine

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Hi Christine. Just thought I would add that just because there is a field doesn't mean that you have to fill it in. Most genealogy databases will work just fine if you put the name and surname and approximate year of birth. If you haven't got copies of the marriage documents use 25 years before the year of marriage as a starting point. Kevan is a pretty uncommon version of the spelling (Kevin is a lot more common) of the name, and the Walmsley surname is also not particularly common. See what records you get. Don't forget South Africa as a possible destination. They may, as the family members of Charles Dance in a recent Who Do You Think You Are episode, have travelled on a ship bound for Australia but disembarked in Cape Town. Lots of UK people settled in South Africa. I don't know that much about South African records. Ancestry Library Edition is also worth a try because people post their own family trees as well as all the more 'official' records.

It would be a good idea to post what you know already on Wikitree as by going back to earlier generations you may encounter profiles for your ancestors that have already been submitted by other Wikitree members.

Please do only submit the names of people for whom you know who the parents are, because if you are missing these, Wikitree automatically creates Unknown profiles which are not then run through the database of already existing profiles if you come back later and add the actual names. So don't add a father or mother unless you have their own names and some dates (birth or death) so that a search can be run for existing profiles and don't add siblings unless you have already made profiles for both parents.

I am happy to help you get started. If you create a profile for yourself and profiles for your own parents then we can extend further back from the available records. We ideally need people who were born between 1900-1920 to get started. If you have people in your tree born after the Sep Qtr in 1911 the birth index includes the mother's maiden name. If the person has not died then you make their profile private (yellow icon) so their exact dates are not displayed. See my profile Hunter-8415 by clicking on my name to see an example of a profile with certain features restricted. My profile setting is private with public biography displayed. I have this so people can see the links I have to my favourite web-based sources.

Regards, Andrew

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Thank you Andrew.

But I can't seem to find any passenger lists after 1960?

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Hi Christine, to be honest I haven't used passenger lists that much and I am sure you are correct that more recent passenger lists are not available to search. I've had a look on Ancestry and the one you want "UK, Outward Passenger Lists, 1890-1960" somewhat obviously stops at 1960. I probably should have looked this up before writing my original comments. Perhaps more recent lists are not available to protect the privacy of the living and to prevent contact by relatives. Or maybe there is an issue as to who has copyright over the information which is why some Australian newspapers will not be digitised beyond 1954 for the moment. It's sad but is also understandable as not everyone is excited by the prospect of hearing from long lost family members. Another possible reason is that the shipping companies who maintained these lists maybe haven't yet transferred these lists, for the period you're interested in, to the National Archives in Britain or the equivalent preservation bodies elsewhere around the world and so they cannot be added into the system by the people who are behind the FindmyPast site.

I am at a bit of a loss as to what to suggest to do next. Especially when you do not know which country they might be living in. Sorry, maybe another Wikitreer will have the answer.

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Thank you Andrew for your help!