Gertrude Male
“Nan”, Gertrude Kealy, our mother Edna’s mother, was from Birmingham England, and she had told me once that she’d worked at the Cadbury Chocolate Factory – and that’s about all I knew about her origins for most my life. Now, there is much more information that can be found about her. She was born Gertrude Male in 1898, daughter of Walter Male & Maria Nock, at Hasbury, just outside Birmingham. She was living at Selly Oak when she married my grandfather Richard Thomas Patrick Kealy in 1917 while he was serving during WWI.
After the war, she emigrated to Australia [when? what ship?] and lived for some time in the inner Melbourne suburb of Brunswick with Richard and his family. A short move across to Rosanna Rd, Heidelberg in 1931 was followed by the family finally settling in, the then outer suburb, of seaside Mentone.
In her later years, she lived in a neat, self-contained, ‘granny flat’ in nearby Cheltenham at the rear of her son Pat’s property.
Distribution of Male & Nock surnames
Neither surname is what could be considered as a common name, and as the maps show, the numbers per shire indicate both have concentrations in the West Midlands (and also in the South West for Male). The Nock name is particularly concentrated in Staffordshire.
The concentrations within certain shires suggests that there was little movement of the families away from their origins. These are post industrial revolution census results, reflecting the past migrations from rural to urban industrial centres across England. Earlier 19th century statistics would likely show even greater localisation as the quantity and effects of relocation are reduced.
With relatively little movement compared to Australian, where 19th century opportunities in settlement encouraged family dispersion, families are often associated with the same location for many generations. Spouses are also usually from the same or nearby locations, reinforcing the highly localised pattern of genealogical records.
Early research into the Male & Nock family lines reflect such localisation around the town of Halesowen and nearby village of Hasbury, about 12km south west of the Birmingham city centre.
Place names & Geography
As soon as I began investigating the Male & Nock families, the confusing quagmire of English place names had me bogged down searching maps at different scales and looking up the various changes to the place naming system over time. Counties, shires, parishes, boroughs, districts have all been fluid over time, and the way a single location is described can vary according to the place hierarchy used (such as using civil or church land division names).
So, a pause was needed to get a geographical foothold in the quagmire, and get a working understanding of how places are noted in the English records – currently and historicaly.
This is a map of the modern divisions of The West Midlands Region, and this is the basis of the heirarchy of places used here and with the family tree. 7 is a metropolitan county of the same name, West Midlands – basically the greater combined metro area of Birmingham, Coventry, etc. The historical record locations are checked on a modern map, and then converted to a consistant hierarchy of place names for use on the web site and for the “Place” field in the family tree. Old style heirarchies using names of parish or shire will be kept as is, in the “Address” field.
Families in Halesowen & Hasbury
These are some of the place names on the Male records in a contemporary perspective. What were small villages and farming areas are now part of the suburban sprawl of Birmingham
Hasbury is a suburb of Halesowen in the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley in West Midlands, England.
Male family in Selly Oak
Gertrude & Richard T P Kealy
The stays in Wangaratta
1970s Gertrude would visit her daughter Edna’s family for several weeks/months, usually during winter as she seemed to prefer the crisp frosty but often sunny weather in Wangaratta to the bleak grey and cold winds in Melbourne.
As she didn’t drive, her family would arrange the 3 hour trip along the old Hume Highway. The journey to and from involved a lunchtime meeting and counter meal at the local hotel in Avenal, approximately the half way mark, of Pat & Mavis (or Frank & Nora) driving north, and Jack & Edna driving south for the changing over.
Always feeling a draft, (and letting Edna know about it) the lounge room doors were firmly closed and her favourite chair was moved up, close to the heater, where she could see and hear the television more easily and in cosy comfort.
