James Wallace 1826-1899

Tracing James Wallace has been a mystery for me and other researchers for some time.  Sue Penrose put me onto some information that I believe solves the question.

A query was posted by lynbee on Rootschat.com – James Wallace-I have lost this line of the family!  She posted what was know about James Wallace: his birth in Ireland in 1826, his enlistment in the 65th Regiment, guarding convicts on a voyage to Tasmania, posting to New Zealand, and discharge from the army in Wanganui in 1849.  Lyn’s question – did anyone know what happened to James?

Descendants of James Wallace and Maria Brophy from Tasmania replied to the query because they thought they might be related. Their James was also from Ireland, had been to Australia before being posted to New Zealand “and fought in the war there which we believe was in Wanganui. In the 1850′s he moved to Tasmania and married.”  However marriage and death registration did not have details of James’s parents.

The Rootschat.com exchange does not provide a definitive and documented link between the James Wallace in my tree and the James Wallace who died in Tasmania.  There is considerable overlap of the facts though.

Discharged in New Zealand, by Hugh and Lyn Hughes, lists soldiers of the Imperial Foot Regiments who took their discharge in New Zealand between 1840 and 1870.  A search of the book shows that there was only one James Wallace discharged in New Zealand. This was the brother of Arthur Wallace and John Alexander McKane Wallace who were also discharged in Wanganui.

The headstone for James Wallace in Westbury Cemetery gives his age at death as 72 years (see image below). This matches with his birth in 1826.

Headstone of James Wallace, his wife Maria and son; Westbury, Tasmania. Photo from Darryl Booth.

I believe that the story passed down to the children of James and Maria from Tasmania matches sufficiently with what was known from army records and New Zealand to conclude that this James Wallace is the the brother of Arthur Wallace and John Alexander McKane Wallace.  I will be updating my tree accordingly.

Please let me know if this is an error and you have an alternative James Wallace who fits better.

NOTE – Discharged in New Zealand, by Hugh and Lyn Hughes, was published by the NZ Society of Genealogists in 1988.  A pdf version is now available on CD from the Society’s website.

UPDATE (6 June) – I have now updated the tree on Rootsweb with descendants of James Wallace I have found to date.

Margaret McKone (nee Heavey)

I have been researching the HEAVEY family who migrated from Ireland to Otago, New Zealand about 1875.  Recently I found there was another family member, Margaret, born about 1859 in Mullingar, Westmeath.

In 1882 Margaret Heavey married Michael McKone, born about 1858 in Ballyconnell, Cavan, Ireland.  Michael was a labourer in County Cavan when at the age of 18 he migrated to New Zealand as an assisted passenger aboard the “Loch Awe” on 6 April 1974.  After arriving in Auckland, Michael  worked his way south and settled near Oamaru, North Otago. He was employed as a labourer with the New Zealand Refrigeration Company and was put in charge of the company’s water races at Awamoko, north of Oamaru.

Margaret and Michael had 16 children. Margaret died in 1902 at Awamoko, and was buried in Oamaru. To date I have traced 338 descendants and 131 spouses of descendants. If you can provide additional information please get in touch.

Get Visitor Comments on Websites at RootsWeb

Enabling – and encouraging – your visitors to contribute to your website through comments is a great way to develop an interactive and engaging website, and build a regular audience. And a powerful way to gain invaluable feedback so you can adjust your website to meet the needs and expectations of your audience.

Although I had a Guestbook on my website, Chris Korte’s New Zealand Genealogy Project, it was not really adding to the website, with comments being viewed on Rootsweb. It was obtaining some comments, but relatively few.  Also, because I did not have an email link, I did not review visitor comments frequently enough.

I hope I have fixed this now by using some software from htmlCommentBox on my website.  The javascript code was flexible enough to meet my needs and has several advantages when used on free Rootsweb websites:

• The comments are stored and the scripts processed on htmlCommentBox, not Rootsweb.  Rootsweb limits the processing of some code needed for adding visitor comments to a web page.
• The same code script can be inserted on the pages where you want to get and display visitor comments.  Only comments for that page are displayed.
• You are emailed when visitors leave a comment, providing an alert.
• Moderation of comments is easy; that is approval of comments so visitors can view.
• The code can be modified to meet different requirements.  I have a new Guestbook, and can now accept visitor comments on Family notes pages (e.g. see comments on biographical notes for Korte family).  In addition, I am able to show recent comments from the whole site on the home page.
• Visitors can be emailed automatically when a person replies to their comment.

If visitors provide comments to the pages I have set up, it will be easy to add additional code so comments can be added to other pages.  I am waiting to see how useful it is for visitors.

Example of htmlCommentBox showing input form and a posting.

Visitors adding comments to this blog is easy.  I hope it will be just as easy now on my website, Chris Korte’s New Zealand Genealogy Project.

Tracking Vistors to your WorldConnect Family Tree

I am interested in the demographics of who is visiting my family tree on Rootsweb WorldConnect. What country, city are visitors from? What pages are looked at most often?

After a few unsuccessful attempts, I have now managed to set up tracking so I can answer these questions, and others. I use Google Analytics.

There are two parts to the setup.

1. In Google Analytics you need to define the default URL – I used wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com.  This refers to the whole WorldConnect site, but only your family tree pages will send tracking codes.  You  copy the tracking code from Google Analytics for insertion in web pages displaying your family tree.
2. You then need to log into Rootsweb, open your account page, and under Worldconnect Tree ID select Edit. Click on the tree you want to track (in my case chris_korte), then click on Display Options under Tree Settings.  I pasted the tracking code from Google Analytics into the Page Footer.  Due to restrictions on string length for the page footer, I needed to remove the existing footer.  Before pasting, I also edited the tracking code in notepad to remove formatting spaces and carriage returns – I made one line of text.

So far this has tracked visitors for a few hours successfully.  When it has run for longer I will update on what has worked and what has not.

I have been able to see number of visitors, pageviews, visit duration, audience details, traffic sources and content.  These are the normal statistics that Analytics reports.  In-Page Analytics can not be reported, but this is not a concern to me.

I presume the tracking code can be inserted in other parts of the WorldConnect page, but I have not tried.

Google Analytics reports that “The Google Analytics tracking code has not been detected on your website’s home page.” This is because Rootsweb WorldConnect does not allow users to alter the home page.

Google Analytics says “For Analytics to function, you or your web administrator must add the code to each page of your website.” Because the footer is displayed whenever my tree is displayed, the tracking code will report all instances of my tree being viewed.

In case you do not know, use of both Google Analytics and Rootsweb WorldConnect is free.

CrashPlan for Backup

Backup of genealogy data is essential to avoid loss of your work.  I have written before about backup, but have recently started using the CrashPlan service. This post is to let you know about this new service.

Why Backup

So far I have had to use backups to get my research back twice. My computer disk needed to be reformatted to recover from a virus the first time, and the second time my genealogy files got corrupted.  Recovery is easy from backup files if you have them.

I have been backing my genealogy research up to a local network hard drive and to Carbonite, an online service that stores your files in the US.  However I was not happy with Carbonite because backup is very slow once you exceed 200 GB.  I need to backup over 700 GB because I have a lot of digital images from photography.

CrashPlan+

CrashPlan is an automatic backup service. Files and folders of your choosing are backed up when the CrashPlan software detects a change in files. You can choose when backups occur if you want to limit the time. The selective, incremental, and fully automatic backup system keeps the latest version of everything you want backed up without you ever having to think about it.

You can backup to a hard drive attached to your computer, to another computer on your network, to a friends computer using the internet, or to CrashPlan’s servers.  CrashPlan has servers in Australia for customers in New Zealand and Australia – CrashPlan Australia.

I took the CrashPlan+ Unlimited plan.  This allowed me to backup all my files (700 GB) on their Australian server plus to a local hard drive.  I also have an additional backup of my genealogy data to their server plus my wife’s computer when it gets turned on.

I used their “seed service” where they sent a hard drive, I backed up my files to the drive, and returned the drive to Sydney.  The files were then loaded onto CrashPlan Australia.  It would have otherwise taken several month to upload all my files as my current internet plan only allows 50 GB per month.  The ”seed service” is expensive – $A165.

CrashPlan has several plans available.  A 10 GB plan for one computer costs $A35 per year.  With this plan you can backup (unlimited) to hard drives and friends computers for free, you are just limited to 10 GB on the CrashPlan servers. An Unlimited Family plan allows backup of unlimited amounts of personal files from 2-10 computers for $A165 per year. A free plan does not allow backup to CrashPlan servers and has several limitations.

CrashPlan keeps old versions of files so you can retrieve them if you want to.  I have retrieved files after I made changes then wanted to go back to an old version. If you have files on the CrashPlan servers you can download to your apple or android device using an app.

I tried to backup to my network attached storage but this did not work.  Access to network storage is not supported by CrashPlan although they provide an unsupported workaround. I used the workaround, but only managed to get half my backup done.  You may have success with a smaller backup?

Site Update

This post is to let you know about recent changes to my website – Chris Korte’s New Zealand Genealogy Project.

The Site visitors page was updated using visitor data from Google Analytics. Information for three calendar years is included in the report. The number of visitors increased in 2012 compared with 2010 and 2011. In 2012 there were over 190 visits per month by visitors who looked at the site, each looking at 3-4 pages on average per visit (these were the “non-bounce” visits).

A new page added with information about Awatuna in Taranaki was added to the site. Awatuna is the district where the Korte family settled in Taranaki, cleared the forest, and dairy farmed.  The purpose of the page is to provide some photos and history on the settlement, now almost gone.

Details of Thomas McLAREN (1862-1958) have been updated, following research showing that his brothers emigrated from Ireland several years before him (instead of all traveling to New Zealand together).

The location of Abergavenny Farmhouse, Scoulton, United Kingdom was added to Rushbrooke family notes. I had visited the farm in 2005 but was unable to locate it on a map previously. Abergavenny Farm is where Ernest Edwin RUSHBROOKE (1859-1940) spent his early life.

A new page was added to the site giving details of Clipbush Barn, Abergavenny Farm, Scoulton – a farm building converted into a residence.  When I visited Abergavenny Farm in 2005 the barn was derelict, but it has since been fenced off and converted into a modern residence.

Abandoned farm buildings in 2005 at Abergavenny Farm, Scoulton, Norfolk.

Clipbush Barn, Abergavenny Farm, Scoulton, Norwich. This is the building front right in photo above.

Another change to the site has been to better enable it for mobile devices like the iphone and ipad.  To achieve this three templates are used for layout.  For iphones, tap on the text to expand to screen width – the layout is affected by a rootsweb header that cannot be reduced in size to match the screen size.

John Ross Somers McLERNON

I started research on John Ross Somers McLernon after seeing he had missed the Titanic which he was booked on.  The following report was published in the Poverty Bay Herald on 3 July 1912.

AN EX-GISBORNEITE’S SUCCESS.

Word has been received that Mr Aubrey McLernon, son of Mr S. McLernon, of Napier, has passed his final examination at the Municipal School of Technology, Manchester. He leaves immediately on a visit to his brother, Mr Ross McLernon, in Montreal, and then comes on to Napier. Mr Ross McLernon was booked as a passenger, by the ill-fated Titanic from England to America on her recent disastrous journey, but fortunately he missed the boat.

Finding Ross

I did not have Ross in my tree. A search of the NZ birth index did not find Ross McLernon, or his sister Marcella Irene.  However I did another search for McLemon, on the chance that might have been a transcription error.  That did find Ross and his sister.

Once I had found Ross’s name, finding details of his life became a bit easier.  My main sources have been ancestry.com, Liisa Macnaughton from Ottawa and Gary Fox who was researching the Canadian Horological Institute. Ross provided the photograph of Ross.

Early life in New Zealand

John Ross Somers McLernon was born in Hamilton, New Zealand, on 17 August 1881. He was the son and fourth child of Samuel McLernon and Mary Jane Somers. Samuel was a watchmaker and jeweller from Atrim in Northern Ireland who had a business in Hamilton from 1876 to 1888.

Samuel purchased and opened a watch and jewellery business in Gisborne in December 1884.  The Hamilton business was closed in November 1888 and the family moved to Gisborne. Ross McLernon attended school in Gisborne. He was amongst the top four students in the October 1895 scholarship examinations at Gisborne High School and was awarded a scholarship.

The McLernon family moved to Napier about 1897 after Samuel McLernon purchased a Napier jewellery and watch business in August 1896. Ross McLernon worked for his father and gave his occupation as jeweller in the 1905 Napier Electoral Roll.

Life in Canada

Ross McLernon moved to Toronto, Canada in 1903 to attend the Canadian Horological Institute, a school that would gain worldwide attention as one of the finest institutions of its kind. The Institute trained students of all ages and with varying levels of experience in the theory and practice of watch making and repair.

The following endorsement was attributed to Ross in 1912 “It was for the sake of experience, and to obtain a more complete horological training, that I decided to leave New Zealand. When doing so I was not satisfied to accept the statements of one school alone, but made careful enquiry about many of the schools on the American continent. Eventually I came to Toronto, and it is with pleasure, and with perfect confidence, that I can recommend the Canadian Horological Institute.“

Ross McLernon in 1903

Ross McLernon married Edith Acer, a Canadian, about 1908.

Ross was listed in the 1908 to 1920 Montreal City Directories as manager of John Round & Sons Ltd, an English silver company with showrooms in London and Montreal. In the 1911 Canadian Census the Ross and his wife were living in Montreal, and  Ross gave his occupation as silversmith.

In 1921 Ross changed career, obtaining work in with his brother-in-law’s Montreal pulp and paper company, J. H. A. Acer and Co Ltd. In 1929 Ross formed Acer McLernon Paper Company Ltd with his brother-in-law John Hamilton Adams Acer, a Montreal based company that became world agents for  many of the major Canadian pulp and paper companies. Ross traveled extensively for the company and was company President from 1948.

Ross died in 1962 aged 80. He was survived by a son and two daughters, his wife Edith having died in 1958.

The company he formed still trades today, since 1978 as Acer, Mclernon Canada Inc. (Acer, Mclernon). The company offers paper packaging products and flexo graphic printing services. In addition, its subsidiary Multipak Ltd., offers laminating and coating solutions, including adhesive laminations extrusion laminations, and multi-layer coatings. The company caters its products to various markets, including bakery, biscuit, cheese, coffee, confectionery fish, frozen food, industrial, liquids, meat paper products, pasta, pet food, pharmaceuticals, and snack industries. Acer, Mclernon is headquartered in Montreal, Canada.

Descendants of Ross hold positions in the Acer, Mclernon and are on the Board of Directors. David H. McLernon is a Director and President of the company. Robert A McLernon is Chief Administrative Officer for the company.

Any descendants wishing to add to this account, or correct it, please get in touch. This is posted under McLaren because my branch of the McLernon family in New Zealand adopted the name McLaren.