Modern Day Eastman Descendants...
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Modern Day Family Members...
It's all well and good to have a website that holds information about Eastman ancestors, but I've found that it means nothing if you can't show where the family has lead to.
I haven't yet been able to find out much information on the Eastman families of the early 1900s. Data seems to be very limited at the moment and I've tried to find out what I can about the Eastman ancestors without having to pay for certificates or a genealogist to do what I can do myself.
Prince Leopold Eastman, the youngest son of Henry Eastman and Mary Ann Prince, is my great grandfather. He was born in February 1885 and married Alice Dowding in 1908. Prince, (or "Leo" as he was often called) and Alice only had one child, my grandmother Dorothy Alice Eastman, who was born on 30 March 1915, a fair while after they were first married.
There were never any more children between Leo and Alice. As Leo never came home from from WW1. I have not been able to find details on when Leo actually joined the military but he had transferred to the 2nd Battalion of something (I forget and need to look this up!). WW1 ended on 11 November 1918 and Leo died on 29 November, just eighteen days after the war had ended. He had died of Malaria. An inscription for P. L. Eastman can be seen on the Downton War Memorial.
Alice Eastman was remarried by the end of 1919. She married Stephen Harris, a man eleven year her junior from Junee in New South Wales, Australia and a member of the Australian Imperial Forces. Alice and Stephen emigrated to Australia and their son Ormonde Brooklyn Harris was born onboard the Orient Line's S. S. Ormonde that departed from London and docked in Brooklyn, Sydney in 1920. The S. S. Ormonde only made two other transits to Australia after 1947 (having previously been in war service between 1939 and 1944) before she was decommissioned in 1952 and scrapped (or "junked" as they call it) in Scotland.
Like her marriage to Leo Eastman, Alice's marriage to Stephen Harris only produced one child. Fortunately for Stephen, it was a son to carry on the family name. It is also interesting to note that when Alice and Stephen married, Alice was already heavily pregnant with Ormonde. Subsequently, Stephen Harris adopted Dorothy Eastman and the record of Dorothy's marriage to Arthur Norman Delany can be found with the bride's name being that of Dorothy A. Harris. History repeated itself when Dorothy married Arthur as she herself was already pregnant with her first child.
It seems that Alice Dowding had a strong aversion towards children. Family legend says that she attempted to encourage a miscarriage of Dorothy before she was born and apparently tried the same thing when she was pregnant with Ormonde. I don't know if any of this is true. Admittedly, it was about seven years into the marriage of Leo and Alice before a child was born, yet to look at the photographs of Dorothy alone and with her mother, Dorothy was always well dressed and care had been taken in her appearance. I personally think that if a mother was not at all interested in her child, then something would definitely show, especially in photographs. The family legend says that Alice once tried to miscarry Dorothy and was advised to "sit over a pot of boiled onions", which she thought was a great joke because she laughed and admitted that it only "burned her bum". No doubt this idea was an old wife's tale and I haven't a clue how much stock people put into old wife's tales back in the early 1900s. It could simply have been that Alice knew this wouldn't work at all and was just having a joke with her grandchildren, considering that in the mid 1900s things that were said to children were not the "no-no" that they are today. Perhaps Alice didn't like children because she had so many brothers and sisters of her own that sibling rivalry was something she didn't want her own children to suffer. Or, maybe, she came from a home where her childhood just wasn't a happy one. I think the latter may be likely, since she never wanted to return to England and always said there was "nobody left" of her family. Looking back over the history of Alice's marriages, it could have also been that she was a "modern" girl who wanted to have fun and the prospect of birthing ten children (as the family legend suggests is a tradition) may not have been an appealing one. Since Alice died in 1963 of a heart condition and renal failure, it is something that we will never know in this lifetime.
Descendents of Prince Leopold Eastman...
Dorothy Alice (Eastman) Harris
Born: 30 March 1915 in Downton, Wiltshire, England
Christened:
Married: Arthur Norman Delany...1935 in Woollahra, New South Wales, Australia
Parents: Prince Leopold Eastman and Alice Dowding
Died: (Still living)
Children:
* Notes on William Delany... William died of Diphtheria at the age of 4 years. He was buried in the Anglican section of the Queanbeyan church cemetery (now known as Riverside Cemetery) which is situated on the Molonglo River, in New South Wales, Australia. In 1974 the Molonglo flooded badly and the Anglican portion of the Queanbeyan church cemetery was washed away and lost forever. Very few remains were recovered and those whose bodies were lost were inscribed on a plinth (a plaque of sorts) which was given to the families of the people who could not be found. Billy's name was on this plinth. Dorothy used to visit Billy's grave every weekend until she moved to Queensland. It was while residing in Queensland that she was given news of the flooding and posted the plinth. Since 1974, Dorothy has kept a rosemary bush in her garden in memory of Billy.
To see photographs of the Delany children, click here.
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© Toni Lancaster... 2005