Tracing Family Branches

Today’s photograph is another of the priceless treasures that Barbara Cooper was wonderful enough to send to us after reading my blog and getting in touch with me.  This is the only photograph I have seen of my husbands paternal Grandmother Violet Helen Marguerite Martin nee Murray together with her sons William Allardyce James Martin (1929-1934), Ronald Kingsley George Martin (my husbands father) and Alan Edward Raymond Martin.  Violet was the Granddaughter of Baron Raimund Von Stillfried Rathenitz and his Japanese partner Nishiyama Haru through their daughter Helen (see more posts on this here , here  and  here ). We are extremely grateful to Barbara and her Mother before her for keeping this photograph and the others safe and in such wonderful condition since the 1930’s, especially as everyone in the photograph is now deceased.  With William dying not long after this (see here ) and Alan being raised by Violets sister Molly and her partner, the photograph is ...

I am very excited to say that thanks to the University of Cambridge Digital Library (see here ) I have finally found some records pertaining to my husbands Grandfather William Allardyce Martin and his time as a civilian prisoner of war at Changi during World War Two.  William was a prison officer at Changi before the fall of Singapore and while he was captured, he did manage to get his wife and son safely out of Singapore with them ultimately living at Barrow in Furness in England for the duration of the war.  William survived the war and in 1945 arrived in England on the Tegelberg , the stay was not a long one as he returned to Singapore in mid 1946 on the Mauretania .  With his health ultimately compromised from his time as a prisoner of war he died at the Tan Tock Seng Hospital in Singapore in August 1949 and was buried at Bidadari Cemetery. Changi internment camp: nominal roll of internees, June, 1942 This record mentions that his wife was Eurasian and was p...

A while back I posted about my husband's Great Grandfather James Harvey Murray (see here ) and how I was trying to confirm that his wife Helen was the daughter of Baron Raimund Von Stillfried-Rathenitz and his Japanese partner.  My research proved to be correct and Helen was indeed the daughter of Baron Raimund Von Stillfried-Rathenitz and Nishiyama Haru.  Helen and her two sisters Mary and Anna were left in a convent school in Singapore in 1883, prior to the Baron returning to Europe from Japan permanently.  I have found newspaper articles, shipping records and other records with regards to Helen and family and have shared this with other researchers and hope to find more in the future. One record of interest that I intend to follow up is here . An interesting family story that I have been told is that after the end of the second World War when Helen and her daughter Dorothy wanted to go to England to meet up with surviving family members at Barrow in Fur...