A busy week and now back into it.....
Aug.27th 1887: William and Eliza's daughter Edith dies at Akaroa after ' 2 years Marasmus Asthenia '.
Sept.1887: William Winter deserts the family from Akaroa.
Oct.4th 1887: William sentenced to 7 days labour at Addington jail for ' failing to support his wife and family '.
Feb. 21st 1888: warrant issued by ChCh Bench to pay 14 pounds 10 shillings in family support.
March 1888: William sighted in Ashburton.
May 1888: William arrested in Timaru by Sergeant Thomas Livingstone.
May 29th 1888: William given 6 months Hard Labour at Lyttelton jail.
Oct.25th 1888: William and Eliza's son Cyril admitted to ChCh Hospital. Living at the Lyttelton Orphanage.
Oct.1888: William released from jail.
July 30th 1889: Ordered to pay 15 shillings per week support.
Aug.7th 1889: William jailed again to 6 months Hard Labour at Lyttelton jail.
Jan.1890: William released from Lyttelton jail.
Mar.20th 1890: William sighted at Barrys Bay.
May 5th 1890: Warrant issued for William's arrest again.
Aug.27th 1891: Divorce statement filed by clerk James Andrew Cassidy ( for solicitor Thomas Walter Stringer ) at ChCh. Enquiries revealed William may have left the colony and that his only relative was step-father James Lambert, market gardener, of St.Albans.

An email from Rachel Vavasour at Rangi Ruru ( Vavasour is a name that crops up in the Alington tree a couple of hundred years ago ). Rachel confirmed that Eileen started at Rangi in 1905 and is getting the Honarary Curator to dig up more details if available. I came across a book in the Society of Genealogists in York St.or Kent St.,Sydney in 1990 which contained a photo of her being a first day pupil at Miss Someone's Academy ( I thought ), the predecessor of Rangi, but the Rangi site appears to contradict this. Rachel will put me straight but does anyone have Rangi info in the meantime ?

Slight correction to the last post. 74 Bristol Street or Crosby House: Aged Care Centre is on the right side of the old house and no.84 is the back section on the left side. So no.78 must be the old house ( fingers crossed that the postal numbers haven't been changed ). Managed to get some good photos of it today but this computer is so ancient it doesn't have a flashdrive slot ( an Arche Artec which I think is Latin for wood-burning computer ). Just downloaded a pdf ChCh Libraries 1922 phonebook which lists a K.Howell Fountain residence at ' The Ganges', 78 Bristol Street, St.Albans. Will post a photo or two when I get my hands on a computer manufactured this or last century.

Got called in to work overnight which ruined my chance to photograph the Bristol Street houses, however, managed to stop off at 5 a.m.and check the letterboxes. 74 Bristol is the two storey white wooden place with the sign, then the derelict and obviously abandoned house which is easily 100-plus years old, then 80 Bristol on the back section that curves round behind the old house The old in-between house is on two sections which I assume are nos.76 and 78. There is a slight gap in the padlocked gate to the old place, should be able to slip through and get some photos, I mean, look for my lost dog....

Hi Charles, Yes I remember the Argentyns and Cheekes from the masses of research that Lyn and David Hall gave me.He photocopied hundreds of pages when at the Society of Genealogists in London. Complete books in some cases. I'm in the garage today trying to find which boxes it's all in. Sir Richard Gardiner the mayor of London, Sir John Cheyney who translated the first ancient Greek into English, King John, Henry I, Henry II, the Scottish kings through to William the Lyon, Malcolm who killed Macbeth, the current Bellingham in English parliament, etc... I must stop going on memory and get that paperwork although I'm pleased that my memory isn't quite as munted as I thought it was ( munted has been adopted by ChCh after the earthquakes ). So yes, we are cousins. Just realised you have an email symbol at the top of your entry, I'll use that next time. Back to the garage....
Cheers for now, Greg McC.

I don't know exactly what Eileen inherited from the Colemans but when she died in 1963 she had already turned over to my father the house and one acre at 117 Memorial Ave. plus the central business block in Ashburton along East Street, either between Moore and Tancred or Tancred and Burnett. My father sold it in the late 1970s/early 80s I think because of, tah dah...earthquake repairs. A figure of $80,000 needed springs to mind.The old man was probably asset rich, cash poor. He also inherited 100 acres of farmland between Johns, Hussey, and Englefield Roads here in ChCh which he initially farmed but then leased out, to a man named Lawrence Stott at one stage. I was supposed to inherit the farm according to our agreement in Dec.1982 but a few months after I went to Sydney in 1985 he secretly sold it to the dreadful Kain brothers ( I met them ) who turned it into one of their Apple Fields properties and later sold it as part of Northwood. The murky fingers of Perpetual Trust were in this profitable pie. In c.2004 I encountered the middle-man who negotiated the sale between the Kains and Perpetually Untrustworthy, sorry, Perpetual Trust. The old man had received $400,000 from the sale, the middle-man said no, we negotiated $500,000 with Perpetual. This was before they were legally obliged to declare any commissions.
Fred Johnstone, or Pop Johnstone as known in the family, controlled the pursestrings for Eileen. In the 1950s it was a Mr.Pither of Perpetual.

A very lucky Alington coincidence....
A few weeks after receiving the adoption material from Wellington in 1990, some photos were developed at the photo lab I was running at Circular Quay, Sydney. There were photos of Alington gravestones, obviously taken in England. I scribbled a note on the packet with my phone number and received a call a day later. The photos had been taken by Lyn and David Hall of South Coogee and it transpired Lyn and I were cousins descended from brothers George and Giles Alington born 1501 and 1503 at Horseheath, Cambridgeshire ( going entirely by memory here, any Alingtons reading this feel free to correct me ). They gave me some 20 years of research including a John Alington will from the early 1300s in Latin for which they had to track down an elderly lady specialising in ancient Latin, quite different to later Latin apparently.
One thing that struck me in all the wills, bequests, etc. back then ( speaking generally here ) was the acceptance of illegitimacy. Was it that the male bloodline was considered so important ( primogeniture and so on ) ? Is the prudery and squeamishness surrounding illegitimacy a product of the Victorian era onwards?

The Ancestry tree is probably the one I posted around 2005.
I visited the Winter family between 2000 and 2005. The very nice couple I spoke to, who quite happily accepted my research, warned me that the family historian would never accept an illegitimate birth in the family. That person would not believe it and would not co-operate, despite the fact that I had Coleman's 1897 sworn statement naming Eliza Ann Winter as the mother. Very frustrating.
I managed to get the adoption statements from Social Welfare/RGO prior to getting married in 1993.I had read that inherited genetic diseases were just about the only reason for them to stop playing secret squirrel with adoption material so...
two birds with one stone. Without them I would never have known the Alington and Winter names and this site would've meant nothing to me. Everyone knew Gran ( Eileen ) was adopted but no-one knew anything more than that. I suspected one of the birth parents was a Winter, in keeping with the British tradition of using one of the birth parents' names as part of the new name. For example, one of my great-great-grandparents was baptised and registered as Sydney Smith Sharp ( putative father's surname as middle name, unmarried mother's maiden name as surname ) then changed it to Sydney William Smith ( step-father's christian name as middle name, putative father's name as surname ) some 20 years later before he got married.
I tend to think that the relationship between Alington and Eliza began when he was at the Mount Hutt Roads Board in Methven and she was living with family there having been deserted and awaiting divorce. Alington was in the Hunt Club with Coleman I seem to recall...the Colemans were obviously unable to have children and an adoption would mean that Alington could see his daughter as 'uncle George' perhaps.

The Feb.1912 death notice for Amelia Coleman describes her as dying at ' The Ganges ' and her death certificate says she died at 78 Bristol Street. Tomorrow I visit 78 Bristol !