Who was Charlotte Broadley?

McGregor & Macuire, Grocers, 107 Wellington Street, East Collingwood, Courtesy of the State Library of Victoria Collection, H694.  Charlotte may have done a bit of shopping here, as Budd St where she lived is only one block over from Wellington Street.

First the good news - this blog has been selected by the National Library of Australia to be perpetually preserved in Pandora Archive - you will see the new Pandora button to the right. The preservation of one's work is a great thing for bloggers, so I didn't want the occasion to pass unremarked.


After the Griffiths returned to the Melbourne suburbs, the family continued to grow, with the birth of George Henry Griffith in 1865, Alfred John Griffith and Charlotte Broadley Griffth, twins, in 1867.  Another two children arrived in 1873 and 1876 - Emily Frances Griffith and another George Henry Griffith, but I want to press the pause button at 1867.

Many, many years ago when I first learned the names of the Griffith children, I was convinced that Charlotte Broadley was the name of a relative of either Susan or George.   I had done enough of the Susan Rochester tree to rule out that side of the family, but George is still a complete unknown,  so I decided to have a red hot go at discovering whether there was a Charlotte Broadley,  or a Broadley family, in Liverpool that could be related to George Griffith.

I went through Censuses and birth, death and marriage records in Liverpool, all to no avail.  There actually *were* Charlotte Broadleys to be found, but I could not connect them in any way to the Griffith family.  Eventually I put that theory into the tested but unproven pile, and moved on.

At some stage I had gone through the Sands & McDougall Melbourne Directories tracing the various addresses of the Griffiths, and found them to have stayed mainly in the vicinity of Collingwood and Fitzroy.  I had a list of addresses gleaned from the alphabetical section, and was happy with that.  However, at a later time I thought I might pay a visit to some of these addresses and take a photo if the houses were still standing.  It was when I was looking through the suburban streets listing for the Budd Street, Collingwood East address to establish the position of the house in the street that my eye fell on a Mrs BROADLEY.   The unexpectedness of it was a bit of a shock.  Could this Mrs Broadley be Charlotte Broadley?

It took a fair bit of sifting through Victorian BDM *microfiche* (yes, it was that long ago), but I did eventually establish that a Charlotte Jones married Allen Broadley in Melbourne in 1856. Tonight, many years later,  I thought I would pop her name into an Ancestry search to see if someone had done her family tree, but what turned up was actually more interesting - Charlotte Broadley as a ratepayer in East Collingwood.

I sifted through the various years, and in 1868 found a ratepayers listing for Budd Street, East Collingwood, with Allan Broadley tinsmith and George Griffiths (sic), violinist listed sequentially. 

Broadley was shown as the owner of the property he occupied - a five roomed house of wood - and he was also shown as the owner of the 3 roomed wooden house occupied by the Griffith family.

I have discussed before the absence of George Griffith in New Zealand  in 1866 and 1867, and expressed some doubt whether George was the father of the twins.  He might have travelled back and forth to make it possible, but I don't know the answer.   But what the naming of the child Charlotte Broadley does suggest to me is that Mrs Broadley was very kind to Susan at this time, and the naming of the infant was a gesture of gratitude or admiration on Susan's part.

Arriving at this point, I realise that the birth certificate for Charlotte could resolve that question - was Charlotte Broadley senior present at the birth? And was George Griffith the informant, or was he missing in action?

Stay tuned.