Site contents © Copyright Michael Crouch, 2000. |
Site contents © Copyright Michael Crouch, 2000. |
|
The Search Begins
It has long been known that Archibald Crouch (1892-1967) was born in Hobart, Tasmania. Much of his early life was spent there as an orchardist, an infantryman of the Royal Derwent Regiment and of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) in the Gallipoli campaign of the First World War. The difficulty in tracing back any further has been the absence of any birth records in Australia or annotations to records attesting to his actual birth. Records for five years either side of his apparent birth date (10th June, 1892 according to army records) show no mention of an Archibald Crouch although other Crouches do appear. The only other male child born in Hobart on that day was named Rhyl Garrett. The mystery deepened when it was found that no mention of Rhyl Garrett's father was given; Garrett was the mother's name. Rhyl Garrett it would seem was an illegitimate child. The mother of Rhyl was named as Amy Elizabeth Garrett of Hobart. The only other relative known of at this point was the grandmother, Mary. It was clear that some searching was going to be required in order to make sense of this apparent discrepancy. Archibald Crouch's army records stated that he was born in Ranelagh, Tasmania and this seemed as good a place as any to start looking. A few years earlier, I had a short and stilted correspondence with a family of Crouches living in Tasmania. There had been a number of sons and a daughter. Several sons had died in tragic circumstances; two died at sea, another killed by a falling tree. It was suggested that two of the sons may have been adopted although they were unable to identify which two sons they might have been. They remembered Archibald although they had no idea what had become of him. Proposing that one of the adopted sons may have been Archibald, it seemed logical to conclude then that Archibald Crouch and Rhyl Garrett may have been one and the same. The idea received further backing when I contacted a member of the Garrett family in May of 1995 through an enquiry placed in the Genealogical Research Directory. Mrs. Poppy Lopatniuk had been tracing the Garrett family tree for some time along with another relative, Mrs. Phyllis Bhogal. They had researched thoroughly the arrival and settlement of the Garrett family in Australia and Tasmania but had reached an impasse with the son of one of their ancestors. That son was Rhyl Garrett. What I was able to tell them of Archibald's background seemed to fit in. The conclusion was that Rhyl Garrett may have been adopted off into the Crouch family. The name of Archibald's father, according to army documents, was John Baird Crouch. He may have been simply the adoptive father or he may even have been the real father. With no adoption records existing at that time, we may never know the truth for certain. Both Garrett and Crouch families feature predominantly in the history of Tasmania's settlement. This account will look at both. However since the likelihood is that the Garrett's represent the true bloodline from which Archibald came, that is the history that we shall look at first. To do that, we have to go back two hundred years from now to the parishes of Lyncombe and Widcombe in the city of Bath, England. |
