This week I decided to use My Heritage to work out which person to use for today’s post. I found there was an article about the drowning of Alfred Briggs in 1903. I then used Trove to find more articles, to determine if this Alfred Briggs was the same Alfred as the one in my tree. I checked my tree, and found I already had an article about this event in my tree.
I then searched on Trove, and found another article about Alfred’s drowning.
There were several other articles about his drowning in newspapers from around Australia. I then found his funeral notice.
In looking for other articles, I found a funeral notice from the same year, that appeared to be for his wife.
I then checked the Victorian BDM indexes to confirm that Alfred Owen Briggs had married a woman named Margaret. I found he married Margaret Meighan (Meeghan) in 1898, and I found two children, Violet Doreen Briggs born in 1900, and Thomas Keith Briggs, born in 1902, died in 1903. I then checked the Bendigo Cemeteries Trust website, and found Margaret Briggs was buried 8 December 1903 at Kangaroo Flat Cemetery, and their son Thomas Keith Briggs was buried 30 December 1903 at Kangaroo Flat Cemetery.
I then went back to Trove, to see if I could find out how Margaret died, and found another funeral notice.
I then found an article about her death
There were a few more articles about her death.
Then I found this article, which made me think I had the wrong Margaret.
I then went back to the BDM indexes, which confirmed that there was only one Margaret Briggs who died in 1903, and that her father was Patrick Meighan. I then checked for a marriage of a James Lutey and Margaret Jackson, and I only found a marriage of Richard Eddy Lutey to Mary Bailey Jackson. I then realized that I already had Mary in my tree. After Richard died, she had married Alfred Owen Briggs’ father, Thomas Briggs, in 1884. Mary Bailey Briggs, formerly Lutey, nee Jackson, died in 1910. It seems the writer of this article had confused the family members.
Alfred Owen Briggs was born in 1869 at Woodstock, Victoria. He was the son of Thomas Briggs and Elizabeth Oldroyd Sharp. Elizabeth was the sister of my great grandmother Sarah Jane Sharp.
