Was "Matilda Armstrong" my most elusive ancestor?
"Matilda" Here's my maternal great-grandmother "Matilda Armstrong". Well that's what Mum's written on the back of the photo. We often talked about Matilda's husband, John Henry Lutge, drowning in the bombora off Grotto Point in Middle Harbour when Mum was a baby. Mum couldn't remember meeting her paternal grandmother. In about 1905, John Henry and Matilda built their family home on a large block of land in Cremorne. Within 20 years, the land was subdivided and sections resumed for roads. By 1925, their home sat on a "quarter acre block" and Mum's parents were building next door. So Mum grew up living next door to the house that had been the home of her paternal grandparent. But what had happened to her grandmother? Mum knew her Dad had siblings. She'd remark how strange it was that she never met her paternal first cousins even the one who shared her name, Beryl Lutge. Yet Mum grew up close to her father's uncles, aunts an...