My great grandfather Thomas Wood (son of Thomas Hawson and Hannah Wood) was born in Womb
well, Yorkshire England on 5 November 1848.
He married Catherine Jane Wilson on April first 1874 in Ipswich Queensland Australia. He died in Toowoomba on 23/12/1885 at the age of around 37 of typhoid fever which was very common in those days. This age was curiously close to the age of death of his father Thomas who died at 37 and one of his sons Charles Ernest who also died at 37. Fortunately this 37 year old “curse” has passed over subsequent generations although his son Robert Cecil passed at age 51.
How did he get here?
For many years, how he came to Australia had been a mystery and the mystery ultimately was solved via knowing to look for a Land Order and obtaining a copy and subsequently identifying the Storm King as the ship on which he arrived. It answered the question many of us ask “How did my ancestor get here”. Having your name recorded as T W Hanson on the ships passenger lists Queensland never helped.
For descendants of Thomas Wood, I hope to make some of the family details a little more readable than entries in a computer program or on an old piece of paper stored in a dusty box to be thrown out after that persons death. Perhaps this will help some of his great great great grandchildren become interested in genealogy and ask their own questions about what happened, so we never again get “why did this happen?” questions