Peter Finch (1845-1891) and his well-travelled son Henry

Peter Finch (1845-1891) and Eliza Esther Turner (1841-1895).
My 2nd great-grand uncle and aunt.

Born in 1845 to parents Henry Finch and Jane Bashford, Peter could well have been the twin of his brother George as they were both baptised on 15 June that year at St Mary’s Church in Reigate, Surrey. And he ended up being one of the most adventurous of the 19th century Finches.

He grew up in the Reigate area with his siblings, mother and agricultural labourer father Henry. The 1861 census, however, doesn’t mention Peter at home on Reigate Hill but does list what looks like a ‘Sela’ of Peter’s age, a labourer – clearly a mistake by the enumerator.

Peter married Eliza Esther Turner on 17 November 1867 at St Mary Magdalene Church in Peckham, South London, and while he was described as a bricklayer from the town, she was living in Reigate at the time of the marriage. I’ve yet to find a baptism record I’m happy with for her but her father was paper maker Henry Turner.

The couple then emigrated to Australia, sailing to Brisbane in Queensland from Plymouth in Devon on 25 June 1869 aboard the Royal Dane. It was a rigged wooden clipper built in 1854 by Toby & Littlefield, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and later sold to Mackay & Baines in London for the Black Ball Line. Renamed in honour of Alexandra, the Princess of Wales, she became one of the most popular ships on the run from the UK to Queensland and on Peter’s voyage was captained by Lewis Davies, arriving on 25 September 1869.

What motivated the Finches to go remains unknown. Was it an escape from poverty at home, an urge to travel or the belief they could make it big in a relatively new colony? A notation in the record collection ‘Queensland Customs House Shipping 1852-1885: Passengers and Crew Transcription’ shows that they took advantage of one of the subsidy schemes designed to encourage Brits to make the move: “Passenger from London; the ship sailed from London via Plymouth; Steerage Free Assisted”. It appears, though, that they moved south from Brisbane because records show them having children and living in New South Wales.

Further evidence to prove these are our relatives are their death certificates. An Eliza E Finch (father Henry) died in 1895 in Leichhardt, New South Wales. Peter’s shows him as the son of Henry and Jane from Reigate. He died on 4 October 1891, at 40 Burfitt Street, after suffering for a year from stomach cancer. His property, with four rooms, a kitchen and washhouse, was valued at £250. His other effects, including a watch, chain, ring, three beds and a dining table, were valued at £20. He had no liabilities. At the time of his death he was still working as a bricklayer and no doubt was kept busy in the ever-growing suburbs of Sydney.

Eliza and Peter had at least seven children in New South Wales but three died as babies.

• Alice Finch was baptised in 1870 in the village of Hartley, about 80 miles west of Sydney, and married James Freeman in Leichhardt in 1897. James died young in 1897. Alice died in the Sydney suburb of Five Dock in 1941.
• Minnie Finch was born in the former gold mining town of Hill End, north west of Sydney, in 1873. She married builder Frederick Henry Emmerick in Leichhardt in 1897 and died in 1937 in Kogarah, south Sydney. Frederick lived until 1960.
• Henry Phillip Finch (1874-1945), whose story is told below.
• Amelia Finch, who was born in 1876 in the Sydney suburb of Waterloo and died there in 1877.
• Rose Finch was born in Balmain, another Sydney district, in 1879. She married builder and carpenter William Freeman in Leichhardt in 1902 and had several children. William died in Abbotsford, New South Wales, in 1951.
• William Peter Finch was born in Leichhardt in 1882 and died the same year.
• Ethel Eliza Finch was born and died in Leichhardt in 1884.
• An Albert George Finch is mentioned on his father’s death certificate and looks to have been born in about 1880. However, I’ve found no records for him.

Balmain, Waterloo and Leichhardt are nowadays in the heart of modern Sydney but Hartley and Hill End lie on the other side of the Blue Mountains. Leichhardt is five kilometres west of the central business district and is named after the Prussian explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, who vanished without trace in 1848 during his attempt to cross the continent from the Darling Downs to the Swan River Colony on the Western Australian coast. These days Leichhardt has a prominent Italian community and, interestingly, there is a Finch Street in the town.

Henry Philip Finch

Peter Finch’s oldest son Henry Philip Finch, born in 1874, followed in his father’s footsteps and moved half-way round the world to start a new life, ending up in the United States.

He set sail as a single man on 3 December 1900 for Honolulu in Hawaii on the SS Miowara, arriving on 19 December. At the time Hawaii had just gone from being an independent republic to being annexed by the USA. After a few months there he sailed for Victoria, British Colombia, on the Premier, and then travelled to Seattle in the US. His World War One draft registration card – FHL roll number 1991649 – completed on 12 September 1918 showed him working as a shipwright at Skinner and Eddy’s shipyard in the city.

In December 1924 he submitted his application to become a naturalised citizen of the USA. On his application he was described as a carpenter, 5ft 10ins tall with brown hair and blue eyes and married to Bergliot Solsberg, a Norwegian woman born in November 1887 and who arrived in the US in 1903. An earlier petition he lodged in Butte, Montana, was ‘denied with prejudice’ on 25 November 1917. What happened to the 1924 petition is a mystery but a further one was lodged in 1927 and listed his children as Rose Bergliot, Signe Irene and Harriet Ester. Henry’s US naturalisation was finally granted by the circuit court of Seattle in 1928.

The 1920 and 1930 US censuses recorded Henry living with his wife, now known as Belle, and daughter Harriet in Sunningdale Precinct, King County, Washington State.

On 22 May 1930 Henry arrived at the ports of Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia, on the ship Aorangi (pictured top), which had sailed from Sydney, Australia, clearly having paid a visit to his homeland. Indeed, in 1935 Bergliot went to Australia on the Aorangi to visit their daughter, now Mrs Rose Hunt of 10 William Street, Double Bay, Sydney. Henry’s sister Minnie travelled to Seattle in September 1926, presumably to visit him.

The 1940 census listed Henry and his wife living at 450 S 160th Street in Seattle. She was working as a housekeeper in a clubhouse and he continued to work as a carpenter. Henry died on 9 June 1945.

In 1947 Bergliot travelled (first class) to Norway from San Pedro de Macoris in the Dominican Republic on the Fred Olsen ship Abraham Lincoln, landing en route at Liverpool.

An earlier document, the 1910 Norwegian census, appears to show Bergliot staying with her children Rose, Signe and Fredrik in Oslo (Kristiania) – with the Solberg family at Sporveisgate 21. Assuming the people she lived with were immediate family, her parents were Christian and Kerstin and her siblings Gyda, Waldemar and Kolbjorn.

Sources: Ancestry.com and Findmypast.com for BMDs, census and emigration/immigration records, Surrey Family History Centre (Woking), New South Wales BDM service, Royal Dane information. Other sources as noted in the text.