I love Google. Just love the strange twists that come about ... went to the local library searching for a book written by Mr Titchener. Found a reference that all his collections (and they are vast) had been donated to the Devonport Museum.http://devonportmuseum.org.nz/ Mr Titchener has now moved to Aussie seeking a warmer retirement I think. Anyway, his collection has been sitting while, as alterations have been made to the Devonport Museum and Celia Walker the curator there (despite all the crazyness a building site causes) started looking for me. And came back with an additional name which I didn't have before. Henry Edgecombe from 1885. So again, I googled his name to see what I would find, and there was an online article by David Verran which led me to another name John Stogg from Feb 1889. So my total number of jockeys and riders has reached a total of 149.
David Verran is planning a book on the Alison brothers and will include the Takapuna Race course and why such a dangerous race track was used for so long.Can't wait for it.
Which in a strange way brings me back to George Albert Baker, the last jockey killed at Takapuna RC. I was trying to confirm some info on his mum, and found a gentleman called Mr David Maxwell had loaded some info into familysearch.org in July of this year. Figuring he might reply I posted off an email with a querry as to the possibility of my Kate Maxwell being his Katherine Maxwell. (With FamilySearch, you can't tell where someone is from, it could be NZ or it could be Timbucktoo) Back came his reply, he was in NZ and yes these two people were in fact the same person. After a bit of emailing, I sent him all the stuff I had on Albies family. David had passed this onto his mother who was just delighted to finally have some information about her eldest sister. Other than remembering Katherine and her husband were both horse crazy, she had no idea what had happened to them. How cool is that!
Dunno who you are, or why you're reading my blogg, but thanks, I hope you enjoy my ramblings. If you've never tried Genealogy, give it a go. You might be surprised how addictive it can be. As for me personally, I've been doing a bit of my own family these last few weeks and discovered, they were a bunch of lively crooks. Some days the stone is NOT worth turning over.
