Challenges of the Female Line

Fragment of the Chubb Family Tree

My quest for H.S. Chambers' Australian family is complicated by sketchy clues, such as the family tree that he left with only first names but that is just part of the challenge. A further complication is that the connection is on the female line; lines whose changing surnames make them notoriously difficult to trace.

Many years ago, I was given a handwritten family tree by a fellow Chubb researcher. There was more detail on some lines than on others but towards the middle of the tree there was the fragment that you see above. Harold Strange Chambers' parents were William Strange Chambers and Sarah Ann Conway Chubb, the married couple on the left of the tree fragment. Sarah Ann had a sister and a brother. It appears that her brother didn't have any children but her sister, Henrietta, had a daughter and a son, Margaret and William Henry, according to the tree. As Sarah Ann's children would have carried the last name Chambers and Henrietta's children would have been McKays, the logic appears to have been that their offspring wouldn't have appeared in the Chubb Family Tree as they were no longer Chubbs. I am happy that the two McKay children appear as it provides some clues about Harold's cousins.

The dates and places of birth for the McKay children are interesting. There was a significant amount of time between their births, William Henry's year of birth was given as 1870 while Margaret's was written as 1885. Were there children in between? It seems that the earlier birth was in Weymouth, Dorset, a place I know that the grandparents, William and Elizabeth Chubb, lived for a time. The later birth was in Bangalore, a bit further afield. That place name is significant given the next of kin information on Harold Chambers' WWI documents.

I appears that the name of the house Margaret Little, Harold's cousin, was living in was Bangalore. It appears I am on the right track.

Images:

Chubb Family Tree, courtesy of Peter Chubb, my own personal records

Extract from AIR 79/1366 #151183 for Harold Strange Chambers, The National Archives, UK