The Lutge Family in Australia

Maria Lutge (nee Jensen) is the mother of our Australian patriarch, Peter Benson Lutge.  She's my great, great, great grandmother! The 1855 Danish Census shows that Maria was born about 1810.  She seems to have lived her life in the small southern Danish town of Aabenraa.  You can read about the family's life  HERE.   In 2018, I visited our Danish town.  You can read about my visit  HERE. On 11 November 1835, Maria married Johann Friedrich Lutge in the local church.  You can still pick out their names from the church register even though they're in Danish! Maria and Johann lived in one of the homes in this small town square where they raised eight children.  It's about 300m from their local church. When Maria died on 9 July 1870, her oldest child, Peter Benson, was living in Australia.  This is shown on her death registration.  There are some differences between the ages of the children shown in this docum...

Enid Purcell Taylor (nee Lutge) Enid was the oldest of the four children of Clifford and Lilian Lutge.  She was born on 19 June 1920 in Chatswood NSW Australia.   On 2 February 1946, she married Ronald Alfred Taylor at Chatswood.   Enid and Ronald had one child, Kenneth Norman Taylor.  He was born in 1947 in Sydney.  Enid died on 27 May 2008 in Sydney.  She's interred at Northern Suburbs Crematorium.   With the aid of enhancement and colourisation offered by MyHeritage.com, here's an enhancement of the beautiful portrait shared by Melynda, her granddaughter, on ancestry.com.  

Here's an article that's just been published in Descent, The Journal of the Society of Australian Genealogists, where I detail recent AncestryDNA matches that evidence Mary Ann (born about 1869) and Hanna Maria (born about 1872) are the children of Peter Benson Lutge and Mary Bonner.   The transcript is also attached.   If you're interested in taking an AncestryDNA test to further our Lutge research, please contact me at chrisw9953@gmail.com. We hear the mantra that “genetic genealogy is only one of the tools of family historians”…but what a powerful tool it can be!  With a well researched family tree and understanding where your DNA matches fit within that tree, you can answer some niggling questions.  Here’s a recent breakthrough that I’ve made… One reason for starting my family history journey was to find out more about the people in these pictures which are over 120 years old.  The first is my great-grandfather, John Henry Lu...

I've know this photo of my grandparents' wedding my entire life.  It's now amongst a group of family photos on the wall in my hallway.  Kelvin Walter Lutge and Ethel Lillian Webb-Wagg were married on 12 November 1921 at St Peter's Anglican Church in Gerard Street Cremorne.  Here's a copy of the church register. I attended an afternoon of organ music at St Peter's yesterday.  The church is only 1.5km from my home.  The last time I was in the church was 30 years ago for my grandmother's funeral. Knowing my family's association with the church after it opened in 1911, I was home to refresh my memory! My great uncles', Bob and Jack Webb Wagg, baptisms in February 1912 commenced the run of "family events" in the church. Until this  morning, I'd never connected the dots to see that my grandmother's attendant was Helene Lutge, Kelvin's sister, and my grandfather's attendant was Harry Webb-Wagg, my grandmother's...

Peter Benson Lutge and his wife, Mary Bonner, founded our Lutge family in Australia with their marriage in 1862 at St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney.  Family history research brings strange synchronicity at times!  Yesterday was 130 years since the death of Mary and today's 150 years since Peter Benson's naturalisation.  We are so fortunate to have Peter Benson's signature on his oath of naturalisation and personal details on his certificate of naturalisation. I've written many times of my search for the birth or baptismal registration for eight of the ten children of Peter Benson and Mary.  I've only located birth registrations for John Henry and Peter Benson (junior).  While the quest continues, there's been a breakthrough!!! John Henry Lutge, the oldest of Peter and Mary's children, is my great-grandfather.  I've had AncestryDNA matches with other descendants of John Henry and his wife, Matilda.  Recently, we've had Ance...

Joyce was the older child of Denis (Dinny) Lutge and Margret Shaunghnessy.  Joyce was born on 6 February 1919 at Mosman.  Dinny and Margaret married in 1917 following the death of Margaret's first husband, Frederick Walkley in 1913. Frederick and Margaret had two children - Margaret Anne (1906 to 1979) born in Balmain and Marie Ivy (1906 to 1978) born in Mosman.  Dinny and Margaret had a son, Denis James, who was born on 11 November 1920 and died 11 days later. Margaret died on 11 April 1926 and the death was registered at Darlinghurst.  Joyce was just 7 years old when her mother died!  Dinny died on 18 February 1953 when Joyce was 34. Joyce married Victor Leslie Kelly in 1940 in Mosman.  They had one child, Denis John, known as John about 1942.  Victor enlisted in the Second World War and died in a Japanese Prisoner of War camp on 12 September 1944.  This is the only photo I have of Joyce with Victor from the Australian War Memorial collect...

On a lighter note, we find many references to John Henry's work as "The Poundkeeper" for Mosman Council.   John Henry was born in 1866 at Cumberland Street in The Rocks.  When he was a youth, the family moved to Military Road Mosman.  His father, Peter Benson, ran a stevedoring company with Richard Moran.  John Henry worked as a stevedore in the Lutge & Moran business.  The partnership was dissolved after Peter Benson died in 1890. In 1895, John Henry entered the NSW Police Force.  His initial placement was in Balmain.  After a couple of years, he was moved to Moree with his wife, Matilda, and young son, Cliff.  Their next son, Kelvin, was born in Moree in 1898.  John Henry left the police force and returned to Sydney in the early 1900s with his family.  They settled in Gerard Street Cremorne where the youngest child, Helene, was born in 1906. John Henry started working for the Mosman Municipal Council.  In 1914, he was ap...