BURIALS - HOLY TRINITY KELSO

 
 
There were 454 burials performed at Holy Trinity during this decade. On 
average around one per week.
 
The information recorded for each burial is as follows:
 burial date
 death date (after 1837)
 Christian name
 family name
 age
 abode
 civil status at time of death
 year and ship of arrival
 quality or profession
  cause of death (not 1840)
 officiating minister
 reference number
 
Various miscellaneous remarks in the register have been recorded as 
'end-notes' at the bottom of the list.
 
The burials are listed in chronological order.
 
The Rev. John Espie Keane continued his chaplaincy from the previous 
decade until December 1837 when he was placed by the Rev. Joseph Kidd 
Walpole who in turn was replaced by the Rev.Charles Woodward in 1840. 
The Rev.Charles Dickinson - Chaplain at Field of Mars, the Rev.Thomas 
Hassall - Chaplain at Sutton Forest and the Rev.Richard Taylor - Chaplain 
at Liverpool all performed a burial at Holy Trinity during the decade. 
 
Being such a large parish geographically the chaplain was often away from 
the Bathurst settlement and the parish clerk was called upon the perform 
quite a few burials in his absence.
 
At the beginning of this decade the information to be recorded on the 
official government supplied forms for each burial  was; reference number, 
date of burial, Christian name of the deceased, family name of the deceased, 
age, abode, ship of arrival, quality or profession and officiating 
minister. 
 
Regrettably in 1839 the 'Ship of Arrival' column was removed from the  
official forms altogether but it was still occasionally recorded by 
nothing like as often as previously. The year and ship of arrival have 
been heavily researched outside the parish register.
 
The 'Ship of Arrival' column was replaced by a 'Date of Death' column,
making identification much more difficult.
 
For the colonial born their year of birth and parents names are recorded 
in the 'Ship of Arrival' column.
 
Interestingly Rev.Woodward started using the new forms in 1838 and as 
a consequence started recording dates of death one year earlier than other 
parishes (but not in all cases unfortunately).
 
Both Rev.Keane and Rev.Walpole were two of the few chaplains to regularly 
record the 'cause of death'. Interestly both used the officiating minister 
column to record this information (the last column on the right of the 
page). As a consequence a new column to accommodate this data has been 
added to this file. For some reason Rev.Walpole abruptly stopped recording 
this data in 1839.
 
The ages at death ranged from one day for James Calfe (there were four 
stillbirths burials recorded as well) to 103 years for First Fleeter James 
Shiers (although if his age of arrival on his indent is correct he 
was more like 92 years) and 96 years for Edward Williamson (but this 
age has not been corroborated from other evidence). The number of infants 
who did not live past their fifth birthday was relatively low at 59 
or 13% of all burials. Unfortunately 65 adults did not have their ages 
recorded and who could not have it calculated from other sources.
 
Despite extensive research the identity of the deceased at Holy Trinity 
has only been discovered in 321 (or 71% of) cases during this decade.
 
There were two burials in the State Archives Pioneer Series file which 
have no entry on this parish register. It is very likely that both result 
from typographical errors and relate to post 1840 burials.
 
The reference number would direct the reader to the relevant entry 
in the original source document. The reference numbers for Holy Trinity 
run sequentially from 0120 to 0445 in 1838. The numbers were 
re-initialized to A001 in 1839 and ran to A127 at the end of the decade. 
The numbers 0218 & A043 were duplicated and number A091 was omitted.
 
To locate an entry on this list; firstly an alphabetical search on the 
name would be made on List 5 using code "HTK" from which the date of 
burial would be retrieved, secondly using the appropriate date, the 
burial would then be located on this list.

Proceed to Church Register

Return to 1831-1840

Return to Home Page

This work is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.