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| Site contents © Copyright Michael Crouch, 2009. This web site was launched on 7 June 1998 |
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The Search Begins My paternal grandfather was Archibald Crouch. His legal parents are recorded as John Baird and Catherine Elizabeth Crouch. The fact remains however that there is no record in Tasmania or Australia of the birth of Archibald Crouch, nor of his siblings, even though Archie was without doubt born in Hobart, Tasmania on 10th June, 1892. Searches for several years either side of that date reveal no sign of him. Indeed on that particular day, there is only a record of one male birth on the island. That baby’s name was Rhyl Garrett, mother Amy Elizabeth, father unknown. Unknown? Almost certainly an illegitimate birth then. Which raises the likelihood of adoption. There is no record of any other boy being born in Tasmania on that date. Was Archie born to Amy Garrett, a single mother, and adopted by John Baird Crouch’s family? No records exist of any adoption. There was no legal requirement for it in Australia back then and the practice of giving unwanted children away seems to have been generally accepted. So we have no firm evidence for his familial origins but everything points to Archie having been born as Rhyl Garrett and then given over to the Crouch’s and renamed as Archibald Crouch. Given similar backgrounds to the discovery of further siblings and the hypothesis seems to bear scrutiny. Both Garrett and Crouch families feature prominantly in the history of Tasmania's settlement. This following account will look at both. However since the likelihood is that the Garrett's represent the true bloodline from which Archibald came, that is the history that we shall look at first. To do that, we have to go back two hundred years from now to the parishes of Lyncombe and Widcombe in the city of Bath, England. |