I'm Australian (and Other Things I Didn't Know)

I thought my family history had been lost to time. My great-grandfather on my father's side was from South Africa, and the name Orford is particular enough that it was pretty clear we started in England, but that is all that anybody remembered.

I was reminded of this recently and created an account on one of the online genealogy sites to see what I could see. It turns out that the answer was quite a lot. I have verified that all of the below is true, from scans of the original documents starting in 1740. This is probably of interest to about five people in the world, but I found the process of discovering it to be thoroughly absorbing, and am very glad to leave this record here.

Origins of a Name in Suffolk, England

The Orford name is derived from ora ford, meaning shore ford, or crossing by the sea. This makes sense when examining a map of the River Alde in Suffolk, called the River Ore near the seashore, as it takes an unusual course behind the Orford Ness, an interesting shingle formation on the southern Suffolk shore. A small town at the crossing was called Oreford, and there you have it.

As with other places in England, people moving to a new area sometimes took as their surname their place of origin. This is probably how Robert Orford's family came to Cranworth - a small town in Norfolk fifty miles northwest of Orford, Suffolk - prior to 1740.

Cranworth, Norfolk, to Hobart Town, Van Dieman's Land - Robert Orford and Ann Bishop

Robert Orford, Jr. was born in the parish Cranworth with Letton in Norfolk, England, in 1772, son of Robert and Mary (Neave) Orford. His parents lived in Cranworth until their deaths, his father Robert in 1800 aged 60, his mother Mary in 1826 aged 86. His younger brother, John, is last seen in the 1851 census at age 75, a widower in Sporle with Palgrave, a township 16 miles northwest of Cranworth. Robert Jr. would lead a more eventful life.

St. Mary's, Cranworth, Norfolk - baptistery and cemetery.

On January 11, 1796, aged 23, Robert Jr. married Ann Bishop - a local woman seven years his senior - at Tuddenham, 40 miles southwest of Cranworth. Robert and Ann's first child, Judith, was born three months later, but did not live to the end of the year. They remained married and would have five more children - Mary (1797), Anne (1800, died 1807), Robert [III] (1802), Lydia (1804), and George (1809) - all in Bressingham parish. Their life for the next ten years was totally obscure.

It didn't stay that way. On 28 July, 1818, Robert Jr., then aged 47, was convicted at the summer assizes, Tuddenham, Norfolk, of stealing a sheep. This was grand larceny under the Bloody Code, and he was sentenced to death. Per the policy of the day, this sentence was later commuted to life and transportation, and he was held at the Norfolk gaol until he could be taken to Portsmouth, and to the HMS Hibernia, a 110-gun ship of the line that had served in the blockades of Napoleonic France.

HMS Hibernia was launched in 1804 and served until 1905. Photographed here
in service at Malta in 1900, 82 years after its single convict transport voyage.

The Hibernia set sail on November 20, 1818, with 160 male convicts aboard bound for Sydney, New South Wales, by way of Van Dieman's Land. The passage took an unusually long 172 days. Robert was one of the 105 (of the 157 surviving) convicts unloaded at Hobart's Town - now Hobart, Tasmania. Like most such men, he was probably given a bit of land to hold, and work to do. The Hibernia's convict log lists him as a butcher by trade, 5'6", "hazle" eyes, "black/gray" hair, and "dark" of complexion.

The remarkable thing is that his family followed him.

Hobart to Sydney and Back Again - George Orford and Mary Angell

It isn't clear exactly when, or how, but Ann Orford and at least their two youngest children - Lydia and George - followed Robert to Tasmania at some point in the next ten years.

Hobart Town, Caswell (1821)

Robert's youngest son George would have been about 8 years old when Robert was convicted. He next appears on January 1, 1833, aged 23, marrying Mary Angell, then age 20, in Hobart Town. Without getting too lost in the research weeds, I'll mention here that a later death certificate establishes that the George Orford who married Mary Angell is the same one who was born in Cranworth in 1809, to Robert and Ann.

George and Mary Orford had six children: Robert George (1833), Mary Ann Jane (1835), George Henry (1838), Elizabeth Angell (1840), Sidney (1842), and Charles Edward (1844). The first two were born in Hobart, but the next three, including Sidney, were born in Sydney, indicating that the family lived there for several years between about 1838 and 1842, and named their last child born there after the town. What they were doing, I do not yet know. In any event, their youngest child was born in Hobart, indicating a return.

Emigrants Leaving Ship, Sydney Harbor ca. 1845

Robert and Ann passed away after George and his family had returned to Hobart. Ann died in Hobart in 1849, aged about 83. Robert Jr. died in 1855, aged about 85. They were buried together on a hill overlooking the sea, at the end of the world 11,000 miles from where they had started. The graves are now gone, but an inscription to them both remains.

Hobart to Melbourne - Sidney Orford and Ellen McOmish

George Orford had traveled, possibly with his mother, halfway across the world and started a family. His children led varied lives. Robert George does not seem to have married, was arrested at least once, and died young. Mary Ann Jane married William Marshall and started a family still found in the area today. George Henry married Mary Ann Gomm, and they had eight kids with cool names like Ursula, Asa, Beatrice, and Beryl, in Melbourne. Elizabeth Angell married but died shortly afterwards, possibly in childbirth. Sidney moved to Melbourne, and Charles Edward moved overseas (more below).

George's second-youngest son, Sidney Orford, appears to have been a colorful person, in a gritty and possibly very religious sort of way. He was a plasterer, a trade that would stay in the family for three generations. By 1867, aged 25, he made his way across the water from Hobart to Melbourne, where he married Ellen McOmish, the daughter of a Scot who had immigrated to Australia ten years before. His parents (George and Mary) may have moved there at this time as well.

Sidney and Ellen proceeded to have ten children over twenty years, following a not uncommon but, to modern sensibilities rather morbid, naming custom:

* Sidney (the Younger, Part I [my terminology]) born 1868
* John Alfred born 1869
* Edith Maude born 1871
* Elizabeth Anne born 1873
* Sidney (the Younger, Part I) died 1874
* Elizabeth Anne died 1875
* Sydney (the Younger, Part II) born 1875
* Charles Henry born 1877
* William Arthur (Part I) born 1879
* George Albert born 1881
* William Arthur (Part I) died 1883
* William Arthur (Part II) born 1884
* Florence Amy born 1886
* Sidney (the Younger, Part II) died in 1894 in South Africa

Florence Amy Orford baptism registered in Saint Peter's parish, Victoria, 1886.

In other words, Sidney and Ellen's first son, Sidney, died at age 5. They named the next male child born Sidney as well. This also happened with William Arthur. Fortunately, the family was meticulous about their baptisms, and the church meticulous about keeping the records. The story is filled out with a headstone, still apparently extant in Melbourne:

In memory of Sidney ORFORD died 12 Nov 1910, age 68 years Sidney ORFORD died at Sth. Africa 14 Oct 1894, age 19 years Sidney ORFORD died 20 Apr 1874, age 5 yrs. In memory of George ORFORD died 26 Jan 1874 also his wife Mary died 21 Feb 1878 Elizabeth Anne ORFORD died 25 Jan 1875 William Arthur ORFORD died 28 Jul 1883 Ellen ORFORD died 5 Sep 1928.

That is, Sidney and Ellen had ten children. Three died very young, and one died in his 20s in South Africa. All were buried together, as were Sidney's parents when they died, and Sidney and Ellen themselves. Whatever else he might have been, Sidney was a family man his whole life.

Meanwhile, Sidney's brother, Charles Edward, had been traveling. He appears to have emigrated to California, although it is not clear exactly when. Or at least, a man of the same age and birth year appears in the 1892 Santa Clara, California, voter roll, noted as a "currier" from Australia, "light" complexion, "gray" eyes, "brown" hair, 5'5", with a scar on his chin, resident in San Jose's Third Ward. Assuming this is the same man, he was the first Orford of his line to reach the western shores of the American continent. But he would not be the last.

Melbourne to San Francisco by Way of Cape Town - John Alfred Orford and Laura Susan Barnard

Many of Sidney Orford's children (including Edith Maude, George Alfred, and possibly others) started their own families in Australia, and the name is relatively common in the south of that country still today. Two of Sidney's sons, however, sought their fortunes in the wake of their uncle Charles Henry: William Arthur Orford (er, part II), and John Alfred Orford.

William Arthur Orford's Naturalization Petition. Down with King George.

William Arthur came first. He arrived in San Francisco in 1906 on the S.S. Sonoma, had married a local girl within a year, and swore his allegiance to the flag in 1912, by which  time he had moved to Vallejo. He had at least one son.

John Alfred Orford - William's brother, Sidney's son, George's grandson, and Robert Jr.'s great grandson - is my great-great grandfather. He had been born on June 4, 1869, in Fitzroy. He had married Laura Susan Barnard in 1891, in Melbourne, and they had had at least five children: Leslie Alfred (1892, Fitzroy), Edgar Barnard (1897, Fitzroy), May Laura (1901, somewhere in South Africa), Norman Fuller (1904, somewhere in South Africa), and Thelma (1910, San Francisco).

As is clear from their children's birthplaces, the family had moved once before emigrating to the United States. Some time between 1897 and 1901, they traveled together to South Africa. Although this date range coincides with the events of the Second Boer War, and family tradition says that it is related, it is not clear how or to what extent that is relevant - it seems unlikely that John Alfred was among the many Australians mustered by the British Empire to fight the Dutch, since he had brought his family with him. Sidney (the Younger, Part II) had died in South Africa in 1894, of unknown causes, and so the family may have had business interests of some sort there - and, given the time, place, and players, probably not humanitarian ones. [Edited to add: they may have been operating a rubber plantation, according to my dad's recollection of something Leslie said]

Whatever they had been doing in South Africa, it did not work out. In August 1907 John Alfred and his family had embarked from Cape Town and arrived back in Melbourne. John had immediately continued on to San Francisco, and his wife and children - Leslie (16), Edgar (12), May (8), and Norman Fuller (5), had arrived in San Francisco via Victoria, British Columbia, two years later - on July 30, 1909, on the S.S. City of Puebla. Thelma was born the next year.

Famous aerial photograph of San Francisco in ruins following the 1906 earthquake and fire.

According to the 1910 Census, the family rented at 1126 Broadway, and John Alfred worked "dockside." According to his WWI draft registration (1917), he found work as a "punch and shearman," a shipyard occupation. However, by 1920, the family had moved to a rental 1238 Eighth Avenue, Oakland, John Alfred was working as a plasterer, and Leslie had moved out. By 1930, John Alfred had purchased a house at 627 East Tenth, where they remained until his death in 1956.

Early downtown Oakland - 1915

John's children had small families, for the most part. Edgar Barnard married Helen Olson of Alameda and they had a son, Alfred Edgar, who lived in Alameda and died in 1995. May Laura married Edward Sanderson, and passed away in 1984. Norman Fuller Orford had a daughter with a first wife in 1926. He died in 1974, the daughter in 2010. Finally, Thelma lived in Oakland at least until 1948, after which her trail goes cold. She appeared on page 2A of the Sept. 26, 1937 Oakland Tribune, as president of the Business Girls' Forum of the YWCA.

Leslie Alfred Orford and Ruth E Leavitt

Leslie Alfred Orford had been born in Melbourne in 1892, moved as a child to South Africa and experienced who knows what there, after which he had been taken from Cape Town, to Melbourne, to San Francisco. He had finished school in the eighth grade. In 1910, aged 17, he was working in a laundry in San Francisco. By 1917, he had taken a job in the shipyards, and by 1920 he had taken up the family business, working plaster and hauling bricks.

I have less information on my great grandfather than any other member of the patrilineage discussed here. By accounts, Leslie was not a pleasant man. He was and remained virulently racist to the end of his days, and apparently considered himself more of South African than Australian heritage, notwithstanding his relatively short stay there - hence the family understanding that we had come from there. He moved away from the rest of his family between 1910 and 1917. In 1917 he was naturalized, and married Ruth Leavitt, from Minnesota, shortly afterward.

By 1920, Leslie and Ruth lived at 1121 98th Avenue, Oakland. By 1930 they had purchased a home at 4800 Calaveras Avenue, Oakland - later renamed MacArthur Boulevard and now underneath Interstate 580 near Mill College. They had two sons: Herbert Leslie and Norman Alfred.

He passed away in 1968, and she lived to 1988 - I very vaguely remember meeting her once, when I was very young.

Norman Alfred Orford and Marguerite Christney

Norm Orford was my grandfather. I was aware he had been in Oakland in his 20s, and was vaguely aware that the family was from the area. He enlisted in the Navy in June 1941 and served as an ordnanceman at Henderson Field after the USMF took it, and through the Battle of Guadalcanal.

His war story (recorded in oral history form, part I and part II), even if perhaps containing an exaggeration or two, is amazing. Guadalcanal was a terrible place, and his descriptions are consistent with the histories I have read on the Pacific Theater in World War II. It does not appear that he was aware that he fought, in part, for the benefit of his Australian relatives.

Japanese attack on shipping, Nov. 12, 1942

World War II was, of course, only a very small part of his whole life, although it would remain an important part of his identity to his own dying day, in 2009. He married my grandmother after he came home, and they had two children - my father, Michael, and my aunt, Diane. The family moved to Montana for a time, before settling in Washington state.

My father by that time had struck off for Alaska. And that, as they say, is that.

Alaska Marine Highway System ferry, Southeast Alaska

I expect I will be thinking about all of this for some time to come. Certainly, I can never know these people, and what characters I have invented for them are almost certainly inaccurate. How could they be anything else? Yet they seem a little more real for having left traces of themselves behind. In a strange way, it feels as if some part of myself that I did not know was empty has been filled.