Tag Archives: family history

A footnote on Princess Budhson

Posted on by
11
Shahu II

Shahu II

In a recent post, I described the descent of my great-aunt Boodie (Florence Teasdale Smith) from an Indian Princess. Princess Budhson (was the daughter of Raja Shahu II Bhonsle (1763 – 3 May 1808), who was the titular Chhatrapati (emperor) of the Maratha Empire, and his third wife Rani Shrimant Akhand S Gunwatabai.

The Ancestry database India, Select Births and Baptisms, 1786-1947 (1) contains an index entry for the marriage of Henry Crawshay Teasdale to “Native Woman Buh’Hson”. The same name is cited on the birth certificate for her daughter Emma. Her name is also variously given as Budhson or Bakshan in various sources and family trees. I did a google search for names in the district of Satara in the Maharashtra state in Western India and found “Bakshan” but no mention of the other two variants. So perhaps Bakshan was the currect version of her name.

Ellen Teasdale

Ellen Teasdale

Emma Mary Teasdale

Emma Mary Teasdale

Major Henry Crawshay Teasdale(1801-1843) and Princess Buh’Hson (1803-1831) had three children Ellen Teasdale (1825-1895), Emma Mary Teasdale (1825-) and Henry Jackson Teasdale (1830-1870). As Emma was born in May 1825, it is likely that she and Ellen (from whom my Aunty Boodie is descended) were twins.

 

Boodie and theosophy in Australia

Posted on by
2

My great-aunt Boodie (Florence Teasdale Smith) was born around 1892 in Melbourne and was descended from Irish quakers and an Indian Maharajah (see ancestral-tales-a-theosophist-a-thief-and-an-indian-princess).

Boodie and her mother were theosophists, and Boodie was a vegetarian who never ate meat. She was involved in funding the construction of an amphitheatre at Balmoral to watch for the coming of Krishnamurti. Another family recollection was that “her money bought a house in Balmoral for the theosophists”. This note gives a brief overview of theosophy in Australia and sheds some light on the “house” and amphitheatre in Mosman.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Florence Teasdale Smith (Boodie)

Continue reading →

Ancestral tales: a theosophist, a thief and an Indian Princess

Posted on by
26

My father had three uncles and an aunt on his father’s side and they were an important part of his formative years. I met them all as a young child, and my father told me many stories about them. In particular, I remember Aunt Boodie, the wife of his uncle Robert, as an eccentric old lady. She continued to send birthday and Christmas presents to me and my sister until we were in our teens, but they were things suitable for very young children. My father certainly thought she was very eccentric, particularly because she was a theosophist.

So in the internet age, I used the power of the internet to research her background, and to contact people who knew about some of her ancestors. And what stories I discovered. A famous poet who committed suicide, a bank robber, and an Indian princess among other things. If I had been researching in the pre-internet days (as recently as early 1990s), there is no way I would ever have discovered some of these stories or contacted descendents with some knowledge of them. Continue reading →

Books by Colin Mathers

Posted on by
Reply

A comprehensive list of publications relating to my professional work is available at www.colinmathers.com

Colin Mathers. A Baker Family History. Thomas and Mary Baker,  their Australian descendants and European ancestors . Lulu.com, Australia, 2024 (143 pages). (In press).

Colin Mathers. James Cook and the discovery of Queensland: The Australian descendants and English ancestors of James Cook and Anne Cobb. Lulu.com, Australia, 2023 (98 pages).

Colin Mathers. A Baker Family History. The family and ancestors of Audrey May Baker: from England and Ireland to Australia. Lulu.com, Australia, 2023 (253 pages).

Colin Mathers and Irene Waters. Audrey’s Family: a Daughter, Mother and Grandmother. Pixxibook, November 2021 (148 pages).

Colin Mathers. Shall I try Australia? A history of the Mathers family in Ireland, Scotland and Australia from the 17th to the 21st century. Lulu.com, Australia, 2010 (148 pages).

DSCN4793My great-grandfather, James Mathers, was born in Armagh, Ireland, in 1852 and moved to Scotland in the 1860s where he married Margaret Melrose. They migrated to Australia with their six surviving children in 1897. This book documents the history of the family in Australia, and traces the Mathers and Melrose ancestors in Ireland and Scotland back to the 1700s and earlier. The previous generation, born around the 1820s, were almost all illiterate labourers and coalminers. The subsequent history of the Mathers family encapsulates the dramatic changes in the educational, cultural and economic opportunities brought by the Industrial Revolution in Britain.

This edition of the book was available only to Mathers family members, and a second edition is planned. The second edition will include substantial additions and new information, not least because it has recently been discovered that James Mathers had an older sister, who migrated to Australia earlier, and whose existence was unknown to his descendents. Continue reading →

Origin of the name Mathers

Posted on by
2

The names Mather and Mathers are not uncommon in Ireland and are thought to derive from two separate sources. The name MATHER (also MATHUR) originated in Yorkshire, England, as an occupational surname originally denoting a mower (from the Old English: Maedere ‘mower, reaper’)1. The earliest recorded instance of this surname dates from 1249 in Nottingham. This name is fairly common in England and Ireland, though in Ulster for instance it has become MATHERS. Mather is the more numerous in the other provinces and it is on record in Dublin since the first half of the seventeenth century. By the end of that century it was well established in Co. Armaugh2 where my Scottish Mathers ancestors migrated in the 1700s. Mathers has to some extent been changed to Mathews in Co. Down.

However, the Scottish name Mathers, of separate origin, was also brought to Ireland by Scottish migrants. Scotland, during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, was ravaged by religious conflict and many Scots migrated to Australia and Ireland. Families migrated from Scotland to Ireland with promises of cheap Irish land, and many settled in Armagh, including my Scottish ancestors (probably around the mid-1700s). There is always much debate about the pronunciation of the surname Mathers, by other people. It is accepted by all members of the Scottish Mathers that Mathers is pronounced as if there was a Y in it, MA(Y)THERS.

1. Reaney PH. A Dictionary of English Surnames. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1997.

2. Edward MacLysaght. The Surnames of Ireland. Dublin: Irish Academic Press; 1980.

The villages of Mathers – Easter 2014

Posted on by
7

East Mathers, West Mathers and Milton of Mathers are villages just north of St Cyrus and the Kaim of Mathers (see previous post https://mountainsrivers.com/2014/05/11/a-visit-to-the-mathers-ancestral-castle-in-scotland/). St Cyrus is about 60 km north east of Dundee in Angus and about 50 km south of Aberdeen. St Cyrus lies between the mouths of the South and North Esk Rivers, and developed at a natural harbour that traded in skins, hides and cured salmon in medieval times. It is about 50 km south of Aberdeen. The cliffs and dunes provide a nationally important habitat for flowering plants and insects, and a breeding ground for tern and have been declared a National Nature Reserve.

Continue reading →

A visit to the Mathers ancestral castle in Scotland

Posted on by
56

According to some researchers, the Scottish name Mathers originates from a place name on the east coast of Scotland, a place name associated with the Clan Barclay. The Barclay lairds of Mathers took the title “laird of Mathers” or equivalently “Second of Mathers” etc, and some Mathers claim that this is the origin of the Mathers surname, and by implication, that the Mathers descend from the early Barclays of Mathers. There are certainly quite a number of people called Mathers who lived in this area in the nineteenth century, but its more than likely that they took their name from the place rather than by descent from the Barclays. But I won’t let that stop me from claiming a cannibal laird as an ancestor – see my earlier post https://mountainsrivers.com/2014/01/20/my-cannibal-ancestors/

Heading towards the village of East Mathers on the east coast of Scotland

Heading towards the village of East Mathers on the east coast of Scotland

Continue reading →

Maternal ancestors: Bronze age, iron age, Roman Britain

Posted on by
4

This post has been superceded by a new post my-maternal-ancestors-from-eve-via-ice-age-europe-to-victorian-england which contains latest information from a recent more detailed analysis of my mtDNA together with revised and updated dates and locations of haplogroup founders.

This is the last of a series of posts on my deep maternal ancestors, identified through analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) which is passed only from the mother to the child and so provides a trail of maternal ancestors identifiable through the mutations accumulated in the mtDNA. In this post I summarize the “recent” maternal ancestors who lived through the beginnings of agriculture in Britain, the British bronze age, the British iron age, the Roman occupation, and post-Roman Britain.

Continue reading →

Origins — the fascination of ancestors — recent, ancient, extreme

Posted on by
1

I have had an interest in the history of my family since childhood, when I wrote a short history of the Mathers family that drew heavily on documents and recollections of family members, particularly those of a great-uncle and great-aunt born in Scotland in the 19th century. When I discovered Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy as a teenager, I was fascinated by the genealogical charts in the Appendices to the Lord of the Rings. For some reason, I find the tracing of connections to a larger history deeply satisfying. Over the last ten years, I returned to researching my ancestry using the powerful tools offered by the Internet, with access to databases and historical records that I would not have dreamed possible before.

Continue reading →