The mystery of Amelia

Amelia and Norah

 Amelia and daughter Norah are pictured about 1911. They look content and happy. This is really a very gentle photo. Discovering Amelia's story was not easy. At first I was given a few verbal details: she was born at Paradise, she married young and her husband left her with three tiny children. Fred Elwin was engaged to build a small hut for her and her children on her father's property at Narrawa near Wilmot. She later followed Fred to W A and he possibly married her at some time.
Later I received a written piece from one of her children, which outlined most of this and backed up most of the story. Some of it has turned out to be true, but it is the missing pieces which add mystery and make the family historian's search so interesting. Amelia had a sister Mary Ann also known as Twinnie. She was called Twinnie according to story because (1) she and Amelia looked so alike or (2) they shared one dress, each wearing it on alternate days so that one of them could go to school. It is possible that there were two dresses the same but the basis for these stories can never be truly known.
I discovered through BDM indexes, that Amelia had been married and become a mother at the age of 16, very young by today's standards but quite common at that time.(and earlier than my correspondents had realised).

Amelia and 2 friends

Following up the Chiplin family became my next interest and I found records in BDM indices, newspapers and electoral rolls. They had lived in N W Tasmania and had moved to the West Coast. There were marriage breakups, sad deaths of parents and young children but no more mention of Charles Chiplin, whom, I had been told had gone to W A and had wandered into the desert and (died?) disappeared. The family story was definitely that he had died. Some members of the family were quite sure he had never gone to W A at all. However, electoral rolls from 1910 onwards showed me that Amelia, Charles and some of his relatives had all gone to Western Australia and had lived in close proximity.

Suddenly, in 1910 a newspaper announcement gave news of the separation of Charles and Amelia, shortly after she had given birth to a child to Fred Elwin.(Norah). Fred and Amelia went on to have another 5 children before she divorced Charles on the grounds of desertion many years later. The puzzles which cannot be easily solved are: what happened between the initial separation around 1900 and 1910 when Norah was born and why did she wait so long to divorce him? Why did Amelia and Charles both go to W A if they were separated and did she follow Fred Elwin over there? All we know is that she had arrived before January 1906.

Charles at some time returned to Tasmania and did not die in the desert as I had been told, but in hospital at Latrobe in 1943. Fortunately, his death notice named enough relatives to confirm his identity both in Tasmania and in W A. I thank the person who put the notice together!

Many of the stories historians gather have elements of truth and some creative facts. Amelia's has been one of them.