Rhonnie’s father was Ian Maxwell Phillips and her mother Beryl Ione Rowe. The key ancestor families, matrilineal and patrilineal, are shown in the trees below.
IAN PHILLIPS
BERYL ROWE
ORAL HISTORY
One of the first things to do in family research is to seek out the stories from the remaining ancestral informants.
PHILLIPS/ROWE
Rhonnie was the eldest Phillips child and recalled her grandmothers Esther Phillips and Edna Rowe. She also recalled family reports of links to the family names Hallett, on her fathers mothers side, and Wyatt, on her mothers mothers side. In addition there was a definite name change in the family; in that the name of her grandmother had been Edna Jaensch not Wyatt and the change occurred around 1914, believed to be because of the German links to the name Jaensch.
Rhonnies father was still alive when we commenced, but had very little to add to Rhonnies recollections. Several months later, however, when we had told him how we were unable to locate any records of his father, he came up with another name, TOGNOLINI. This was the name of an uncle, his fathers brother, Ian recalled, but had no other information to add, except that he never understood why the different name for these two brothers.
So, we had a few names (Wyatt, Jaensch, Rowe, Phillips, Hallett) to start our searching, but as you can see below, there are many more and believe me even more in the stories that unfold from these few leads.
The following trees should assist in navigating through the families.
It is also useful to know at a glance, where the families originated. Below are the locations of the families that originated in the British Isles. The only missing family is our German, Jaensch family. The central German village of Posen, where they came from, is very small, even today. The best way to see it is via Google Earth – search ‘Posen, Bucha, Germany’.
The Swiss-Italian Tognolini family, although of considerable interest and included in the narratives, are not ancestors from a genealogical perspective and therefore do not appear in the trees. Annie Phillips became Annie Tognolini but after our ancestor was born.
