What We Knew!

 

We started with his death certificate and the birth certificates of his 5 children. The death certificate revealed that he died at Marrickville in 1933 and that he was 76 years old. It said that he was born in Denmark and had been in Australia about 64 years. This would have made his arrival in Australia about 1869 at the age of twelve (12).

 His children’s birth certificates gave differing indications of his birthplace. Two said that he was born in Denmark. Another two birth certificates show that he was born in Jutland, Denmark. The birth certificate of his fifth child, Rita May Madsen (b.1898) states that he was born in Tiset, Denmark and was aged 42. This now gives an approximate year of birth as 1857.

What is the Truth!

 

Family stories can be valuable sources of information to the genealogist about family members long gone. However, we have to be careful of the truth of these stories!

My great grandfather was Martin Ditlev MADSEN. The family stories said that he was an orphan, that he jumped ship and that he changed his name. How do we go about proving or disproving these stories and what did we know when we started to learn about him.

We knew that he had been born in Denmark and arrived in Australia by ship.

The other knowns included:

Marriage to Mary Ann WARDLE at her father's house in Wallsend on 15 March 1881. We had a copy of the marriage certificate but this gave little information about him.

The couple had five children and their Birth Certificates gave a little more information. Each certificate showed different information relating to his Country of  Birth and each one displayed his age.

William (b. 1882) - Denmark, age 26

Joseph (b. 1884) - Denmark, age 27

Martha (b. 1887) - Jutland, Denmark, age 31

James (b. 1890) - Jutland, Denmark, age 34

Rita(b. 1898) - Tiset, Denmark, age 42

This allowed to us calculate his birth year as 1856. This was the only information that we had of Martin before his arrival in Australia!