Family connections from across the seas

Local family history buff finds unknown English relatives & masterminds a reunion

It was last month a group of English tourists took in the sights and sounds of the Limestone Coast. Hardly a red letter event, except this holiday was five years in the making and was a family reunion for a familiar name in this region – Medhurst.

Jean Winterfield, a Medhurst descendent, had developed an interest in family history and she became the conduit for the English and Glencoe families and the driving force behind the whirlwind weekend catch up.

It was in 2017 that Jean was trawling around the Surrey History Centre and came across a war hero by the name of Williams Edward Medhurst and she delved deeper and found more names that were familiar and eventually made contact with the centre to obtain contact details and begin the journey of meeting new family members.

From that initial request for contact details the matching of the English and Aussie cousins happened quite swiftly with English based Annie and Shelia wasting no time to touch base with their, previously unknown, Australian relatives.

“They did not that they had cousins in Australia nor did we know about them so that whole journey has been very exciting from the start,” Jean said. Annie Dean (Medhurst) and her husband Tony and Shelia Richards (Medhurst) and her husband Geoff turned out to be fourth cousins, with the connection dating back to the 18th century.

The trio of Medhurst women share a great great great grandfather, Michael Medhurst, who married Elizabeth French, and their great grandfathers were brothers.

In a twist of fate, just as there is a strong clan of Medhursts here in the South East of South Australia, the English Medhursts are also south easterners calling the Sussex and Surrey region home with their ancestors originating from the towns including Hailsham, Chalvington and Eastbourne, south of London.

With the unmistakeable connection established, Jean stayed in touch with Annie and Shelia through email, facebook and messenger with 2018 the first time a trip to Australia for the English relatives put on the agenda.

“…they did not that they had cousins in Australia nor did we know about them so that whole journey has been very exciting from the start…” Jean Winterfield

“That was supposed to happen in 2020 but COVID threw a spanner in the works and the trip was postponed,” Jean said.” It was re-booked for 2021 but sadly once again our international borders and COVID put paid to that and finally 2022 became a reality for us.”

Given the magnitude of the trip, Jean realised adding other Aussie relatives to the visit made perfect sense.

“Knowing that there are so many Medhurst cousins in this region plus elsewhere I figured it would be nice for our English cousins to get to see many more relatives during their visit rather than just seeing me hence the planning to have a mini- reunion or get together of sorts for us to welcome them to the South East,” Jean said.

And in the end, there was quite the welcoming party for the English visitors with around 25 cousins and their partners getting together for lunch at the Mount Gambier Community RSL after a morning of sightseeing before heading to the centre of the Medhurst universe – Glencoe – on the Sunday for a personal history tour.

It only made sense that the two English couples were able to learn about the Glencoe forefathers James and Susan Medhurst and their two children James and Emma that after arriving in South Australia in 1859 eventually ended up calling Glencoe home. Eight more children were subsequently born and since then the many generations of James and Susan have lived in Glencoe or nearby and still do today.

Peter and Lesley Medhurst kindly showed the Medhurst contingent around the area and hosted an afternoon tea at their home, provided a tagalong tour to see the sites where many of the Medhurst families lived, as well as a wonderful tour of the heritage listed Glencoe Shearing Shed and the hall which houses many honour boards that feature the names of many Medhurst and associated families.

“It was a fabulous get together for us all,” Jean said. “Sadly one of their cousins Sue Jones had planned to come too but this year was unable to travel due to work commitments.”

Safe to say, Jean’s newfound interest in family history has only been boosted by her recent successful reunion project.

“I have a great interest in genealogy and Ancestry.com has been a boom in finding relatives and past histories plus the DNA aspect so of course to actual find living and breathing relatives, when so often they are long since gone, is very rewarding,” Jean said. “Currently my interest takes me to about six family trees piecing my prior histories together which I find interesting and finding relatives means finding lots of new friends.”