52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Jane Elizabeth Sedgwick (Rofe) 1855-1928
A little about Jane Sedgwick nee Rofe.
This will be part of a weekly project looking at some of the the ancestors from across my family tree and how they fit in with what I have been looking into.
Jane Elizabeth Sedgwick (Rofe)
Jane is my great-great grandmother on the maternal side. My Grandpa’s grandmother.
Thanks to research about the Newcastle Industrial School for Girls, an institution she was sent to in her teenage years, there is some very detailed information about her life.
Jane was born in 1855 to Spencer Rofe and Dinas Payne. Dinas was married multiple times and there are a number of different spellings of her name through the records.
According to the Newcastle research, the baptism (NSW Baptism: V56 1855/3111) is recorded at Camden’s Wesleyan Church.
Spencer Rofe was run over by his own cart at Towrang, near Goulburn in 1859.
This newspaper report (Goulburn Herald 1/10/1859) calls him Spencer Rope and describes the accidental death.
It seems the family moved into the South Sydney area, though the marriage certificate for Dinas and Thomas Hall has the marriage in the St George district in 1861.
Her mother had accused her of having about with thieves in the streets of Newtown. She had a number of appearances in the Central Police Court reports.
The medical reports described her as slightly deranged and of weak intellect but recommended the Industrial School at Newcastle rather than a lunatic asylum.
She entered the school on 12 January 1870, aged 15. When the school closed in 1871, she had been apprenticed to a Dr Creed in Aberdeen with good recommendations. Though she did not complete the time, with some of the other servants unable to live with her.
The address for her return was
Mrs Thomas Hall,
c/o Mr Hanston
42 Milgate Street
Shepherd's Paddock
South Sydney
Shepherd’s Paddock was mainly a garden area for the landowner but parts seem to have been a slum kind of area in what is now Chippendale. This article talks about some of the issues associated with the area.
Thomas Hall had left town by 1866 and eventually died in Forbes in 1876, aged 45.
The Newcastle research indicates she was back in trouble with the law in 1875 for “derangement of mind”.
By 1880 Dinas had married again, this time to Michael Bennett. The marriage certificate is under “Denis Rose” rather than Dinas Rofe. As mentioned, her name seems to regularly change through the records.
By 1883 Elizabeth had married John Herbert Sedgwick in the Redfern district.
He was born in 1850 in the Pennant Hills area.
This chart shows their children
It seems four of the children - George, Maud, Reuben and Enis, died as infants. The information I have from MyHeritage, which came from another person’s tree, is that they were first living in Waterloo before moving further west to the Riverstone area.
They were still in Waterloo when Edward, my great grandfather, was born.
They moved to Marsden Park - here you can see a plan of the original blocks for sale.
John Sedgwick died by suicide in 1903 at Marsden Park. There are quite a number of articles about him from the time.
Some of them referred to him as an “invalid” and no longer able to work. If he had been in the district 16 years, they must have moved there the same year Edward was born. By 1903, Jane would have been aged 48.
Dinas died in 1911.
The funeral notices include from Mrs J Sedgwick and Mrs A Brown, as well as the Salvation Army and others. I haven’t placed who the Browns are but it seems they are grandchildren of Dinas.
Interesting to see the Dinas name was passed through the family. One of the grandchildren of Dinas and Michael Bennett was Hannah Dinas Cook. She died in Newcastle in 1990.
Like her mother, Jane was buried at the Rookwood Cemetery. She died in Granville in 1928, with 17 Illalong Road, Granville listed as the address. That is nearby to where my Grandpa grew up.
It seems there was a lot of hardship in Jane’s life. In my weekly posts I will try to expand on some of the other characters mentioned.