It’s amazing what you find when you’re not looking! A few nights ago, when I should have been in bed, I was browsing through the NZ Archives online Archway for someone completely different when I decided to do a few searches for some other family names. Up popped two very interesting looking wills, one for John Linklater & the other his wife Elizabeth Ann. I was immediately awake but shortly to be deflated when I saw they were in the Wellington Archives (I live in Auckland). Before emailing them to find out I’d probably be paying an arm & a leg to get copies through the mail I decided to ask the NZSG mailing list if there was anyone who visited the Archives regularly who wouldn’t mind looking for me.
So thanks to Lesley & Peter ……. who came to the party I now have the two wills plus affidavits of all sorts in my hands, well on my computer but soon to be printed out!
I know I’ve already said in an earlier post that I had the final proof so this just puts the icing on the cake – John leaves to his sister a gold watch, she was Jean, later known as Jane, married to Crighton Clark, who I already knew to be the sister of my great-grandfather James Linklater.
Strange that he gave his wife’s maiden name and that she was ‘known as Mrs John Linklater since the sixth day of Sep 1857’, which begs the question, were they ever legally married? I’ve not found a marriage for them in NZ but it could have been overseas seeing he was a mariner. 1857 is also about 7 years after their daughter was born, she died in 1872 aged 22, listed as the only daughter of Capt John Linklater in the newspaper account of her death. Elizabeth had been previously married to Richard Husband Williams so perhaps she was never divorced from him and/or didn’t know where he was. His death doesn’t seem to have been registered in NZ so he may have left the country. Well, all sorts of intrigue there!
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