Shout-Out to a Cemetery ... the Toowoomba Cemetery!!

Ah, the places life leads you!  

I'm becoming a cemetery super sleuth and giving shout-outs to a cemetery!!!  

I'm also now a Find-A-Grave volunteer and contributor.

None of this was on my horizon twenty years ago, but here we are.

Part of family tree research is finding out where the final resting places of our family members are located.  I have found that to be quite difficult for a few of my ancestors and extended family relatives, as they lived and worked in quite small, and sometimes remote, country areas.  

Ancestors of mine who lived out their lives during the early 1800s here in Australia, working as shepherds or cedar-cutters, were sometimes laid to rest in rural locations that were not cemeteries, or were laid to rest in cemeteries that were not "officially" recognised, had non-existent record-keeping, and in some instances, can no longer be found.

Ancestors who were buried in "official" cemeteries are not always easy to find either.  Sometimes there is no record of the location of the burial plot and it remains unmarked and unknown.  Sometimes the record relating to the burial is incorrect and the information is unrecognisable to following generations.

This was the case for my maternal great grandfather, Edmond O'Donnell, an Irish immigrant who began and lived out his Australian life in Toowoomba, Queensland.  

I knew that my great grandfather had died in Toowoomba in 1893 as I had his death certificate which stated clearly he was buried at the "Toowoomba Cemetery".  

There are now actually 19 cemeteries across the Toowoomba region, but research led me to find out that the most likely cemetery where Edmond was laid to rest would have been the Drayton & Toowoomba Cemetery, a heritage-listed cemetery in Harristown, a suburb of Toowoomba.   It was surveyed in May of 1850 and the first registered burial was in 1866, so it was highly likely my great grandfather would have been buried there in 1893.

I scoured the records on sites such as Ancestry.com, Find-A-Grave and the Australian Cemeteries Index, without any luck.  I could find no record of a burial plot for an Edmond O'Donnell who had died in 1893 in Toowoomba. 

There was a record for an Edward O'Donnell who had died in 1893, but there was no recorded birth date, country of birth, age or any other information that related at all to my great grandfather, so I dismissed that record fairly quickly.  

I then did the next best thing and tried to find the grave of my great grandmother, Edmond's wife, Bridget O'Donnell / O'Brien nee Burke.  

I was hoping this might lead me in a roundabout way to the burial plot of Edmond.

Bridget had re-married after the death of my great grandfather and had lived for another 44 years until her death in 1937, but her death certificate stated she was also buried at the "Toowoomba Cemetery".  

Her second husband had been buried elsewhere and seemingly had disappeared from Bridget's life many years before her death.  I thought perhaps Bridget had been buried with Edmond instead!  As the informant was Bridget's and Edmond's daughter Mary Margaret, I thought maybe Mary Margaret had arranged for her mother and father to be buried together, which may have been a rather romantic notion but I was hoping was a possibility.

Anyway, I did find a record of Bridget's burial at the Drayton and Toowoomba Cemetery, but again there was no indication of where her final resting place was actually located.  That left me rather deflated and despondent, as I had hoped to travel to Toowoomba one day and pay my respects to the great grandparents I never knew about until around thirteen years ago, when I began my family tree research!

So, all of this failure in finding burial plots for my great grandparents happened a while ago now, and just recently I decided to try another tack.  Of course, looking back I now know I should have done this years ago, but hindsight is such a beautiful thing!

About a month ago, I was surfing the net and decided to see whether the Toowoomba Regional Council had any information about the Drayton & Toowoomba Cemetery.  Sure enough, there was a link - 'Deceased search & family history'.  Worth a try, I thought. 

 

I used the online deceased search tool, typing in the name Edmond O'Donnell ... nothing!  Then for some reason, totally inexplicably, I typed in Edward O'Donnell and clicked 'go'!  This is what popped up.

What the!!!!  The entry was for an Edward O'Donnell, but the plaque on the massive memorial clearly stated Edmond O'Donnell!  

Not only that, it stated that Edmond was a native of County Kilkenny, had been born on August 31st, 1862 and had died on January 9th, 1892.  I was completely taken aback and got a bit emotional!  This information was a very close match for my great grandfather - the birth date was out, but only by 2 days, and the date of death was out by 1 day.  There was also mention of John Patrick who buried in the plot.  He had passed away at the age of 2 years and 3 months.  This was an exact match for my great uncle, the deceased male listed on my great grandfather's death certificate!

There had never been a photo on any of the other sites, so I had always believed that Edward O'Donnell was a completely different person to my great grandfather Edmond.  This photo however was proof that the person buried in this spot was indeed my great grandfather, but some some reason the name on the record was Edward, not Edmond.

It was at this point that hindsight reared its beautiful head!

When I had started my family tree research way back when I received a message on Ancestry.com, completely out of the blue, from Doreen in the U.S. who wondered if we might be related on the O'Donnell sides of our families.  She provided me with a great deal of information about the O'Donnell family and was positive that I was the descendant of one of the sons of John O'Donnell and Catherine Joy who had been tenants of a farm in Killonerry, County Kilkenny.  At the time I was unsure about the connection, but DNA results proved it to be true.

The reason I originally had some doubts was that Doreen had my great grandfather's name recorded as Edward or Ned, based on information that had been handed down orally over the generations.  Contact had been lost between my great grandfather and his family who had remained in Ireland, along with the members of his family who had emigrated to the U.S.  Following generations therefore had rather sketchy knowledge of this man who had left for Australia.

It does seem however that my great grandfather was most likely known as Edward by his wife, my great grandmother Bridget.  She had been the informant for his death certificate and would have been the person responsible for organising his burial.  It's likely that Bridget identified her husband as Edward when talking with the cemetery staff and this information may have been recorded on the cemetery register, although obviously she also shared that he had been baptised as Edmond.  Hence the confusion and misunderstanding on my part about who was buried at the cemetery.

Once I had realised all of this, I immediately emailed the Toowoomba Regional Council asking if the name could be changed on the cemetery record. I wasn't expecting much I have to admit, but I got a reply from a wonderful guy named Jacob, the Customer Service Officer, who let me know my email had been received and was being passed on to an appropriate person who would follow-up my request.

Unbelievably, I got an email the following day from the equally wonderful Loretta, the Administration Officer for the Cemeteries Services Team.  She let me know that she had indeed followed up by checking details with the Queensland Government's Registry of Birth, Deaths & Marriages and could confirm that the person's name was Edmond.  She stated that she had updated the council's records and this would be evident on the website in 24 hours.  It was!!!!

This is what appeared on the Toowoomba Regional Council's website the very next day.

Simply amazing!  In the space of a week I had gone from not knowing whether or not Edmond had indeed been buried at this cemetery, to having photographic proof that he was indeed laid to rest in the Drayton & Toowoomba Cemetery and his burial plot was marked with a rather magnificent looking memorial!

I then went to Find-A-Grave, suggested some edits and added the memorial photos from the Toowoomba Regional Council's website, and  ....

... this is what can be found now on Find-A-Grave, linked to Ancestry.com, for everyone to see.  I worked at linking in as many of the family as possible - Edmond's parents in Ireland, his siblings in Ireland and the U.S., his wife and his children.  

My great grandfather's final resting place is now visible to all, ensuring his memory lives on, and I owe that in large part to those two wonderful employees of the Toowoomba Regional Council who oversee the records of the Drayton & Toowoomba Cemetery.  They have my eternal thanks!

I've also found out that Edmond's daughter Catherine, my grand aunt, was buried alongside her father and there is a plaque in her honour on another side of the memorial.

My great grandmother Bridget was indeed interred with her first husband Edmond, in the same plot.  Sadly, there is no plaque for her on the family memorial, but I'm so very pleased to know she is there.