Janice Young named her book In Search of Elizabeth after Elizabeth Roser, daughter of William and Diana, whom she believed had disappeared from the family home. This is how she explained it:
Among the first of William’s tasks, was to build a cottage to shelter his family. With a new baby coming it wouldn’t be easy to fit seven people into a tent. Dianah1 gave birth to a daughter in December 1842, four months after their arrival in the Colony, and named her Dianah. During the construction of the cottage, William and Dianah, taking Lucy, Fanny and Mary Anne with them, went into the bush to gather blackboy rushes to thatch the roof. Family tradition has it, that they had left Elizabeth at their camp, in charge of the baby, and had gone about their work gathering rushes, close by. Elizabeth’s cries brought them running, but when they got to their campsite Elizabeth had disappeared and was never seen again. There were signs that natives had been around their camp and it is believed she was abducted. A search at the Registrar General’s office to 1905 and of the Resident Magistrate’s letters, have not bought to light a death or a marriage for her. The last time any mention was made of her was her departure with her parents to York. It is for her that this history is entitled.
To have suffered the loss of their nine year old daughter must have been an unbearable grief for William and Dianah. To have proof that she was dead would have at least been some consolation, instead they were left to wonder for the rest of their days.2
They weren’t left to wonder for the rest of their days as their child was alive and well. Elizabeth Roser grew up and married when she was 20 years old. She was married in the Congregational Chapel in Perth in 1853 and she and her husband, James Osborne, who was a carpenter according to the marriage certificate, left shortly after to live in South Australia. Her husband was a ticket-of-leave man having arrived in the State as a convict in 1850.
There is little doubt that this was the Elizabeth as she has the same surname (Roser) and is described as an immigrant per the Simon Taylor, which was the ship that brought the family to Western Australia.
In fairness to Young, she did her research in the 1970s when online research was not as easy as it is now. Family history research then involved physically searching for records in the archives or going to the marriage registry to look up marriage details. It is so much easier now to track people down through the many family history sites and online repositories of data.
Notes
1. Young spells Diana’s name with an ‘h’ on the end.
2. Young, JM, In Search of Elizabeth, Chatterbox, Perth, 1982, p 19
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