It seems that people are still fascinated with Midwives which again feature in the latest additions to the Geelong and District database. Unlike teachers who had to give up their job if they married, midwives could be single women, married women or widowed women. Women of any status are traditionally difficult to trace and perhaps that is one of the reasons for the popularity of this index in our database. There are still some years to be indexed from the Victoria Government Gazettes and when they are finished we’ll start extracting Geelong District women from the Registers of Nurses in the Gazettes.
Pictured is Jane FRANCIS, a midwife in our district. Jane PIPER was the daughter of John and Grace PIPER. On 8 April 1830 Jane married Joseph FRANCIS at Bradworthy Parish Church in Devon, England. The couple had 10 children in England. In 1853 they emigrated to Geelong where their married daughter, Mrs Elizabeth PRICE, had settled. Jane FRANCIS is recorded as the midwife on birth certificates from 1867 to 1884. Jane died 2 December 1891 aged 82 and is buried in the Geelong Eastern Cemetery. [photo and information provided by Pam Jennings]
This is the list of additions since 23 June making a total of 1,405,236 entries in the database:
- Geelong District: Midwives – 1940, 1941, 1943 & 1945 – 177 entries
- Bush Nursing at Forrest & District: accidents & recoveries – book – 671 entries
- Barrabool: Shire Rate Books [GRS 877] – 1908, 1913 & 1853 – 3,885 entries
Details on these indexes can be found in the Geelong & District Potpourri pages.
And don’t forget to search again for your ancestors in the Geelong & District Database – they could have been in the last load of additions!
Geelong and District 