The Clutterbuck Blog: Connecting New Zealand

by Kirstin Duffield, treemad at btinternet dot com

I have been researching Clutterbucks for nearly 15 years now, I have collected a database of over 7000 people, 1800 marriages and covering 11 generations. The sources range from the traditional sources such as the IGI to my permanent subscription to Ancestry.com deluxe membership combined with valuable contributions from other researchers, passenger lists, obituaries, local paper archives, family bibles, photographs and family tales. Looking through the obvious for logical behaviour, cross references, from multiple sources and just plain old common sense has helped me to help loads of Clutterbucks who are interested in their family history. Added to this of course the privilege of the kind gift I received a couple of years ago of my own personal copy of “An Account of the principal branches of the Family of Clutterbuck”, Witchell and Hudleston – my eternal thanks to Mr Jones Who’s aunt married a Clutterbuck, the son of Henrietta Louisa Clutterbuck and Archie Kirkman Lloyd.

So when I was approached by Sonja from Australia who had the mystery of William Clutterbuck apparently born in 1832 in Hull (as it stated on his marriage certificate) who married Lydia Baker in January 1859 in Geelong, Victoria, Australia. Sonja was a descendant of their first surviving daughter Lydia Clutterbuck who travelled with her parents to New Zealand in the early 1860s first to Dunedin then later to Nelson.

Independently I have known Ian Clutterbuck who lives in New Zealand and he in turn knows Jenifer who is descendent of the second surviving daughter of William and Lydia, Frances who married Thomas Barnett.

But the two families had apparently lost touch and the living relatives appeared to have no knowledge of each other.

I started with the marriage certificate, William Clutterbuck aged 27 born in Hull son of Joseph and Frances nee Drew and Lydia Baker aged 24 born in Collumpton, Devon. But as far as I could see from every combination of search I could manage there was no possibility of William from Hull 1832 – not that was absent from England by the 1861 census as he was in Australia by then. I did find Lydia living with her parents in Collumpton, that was easy.

So I continued to look for William b1831/2 and his parents Joseph and Frances in any 1841 or 1851 census but to no avail. In the meantime I collected the information from Sonja (Including a family photograph) and Jenifer (through Ian) and collated what I could from the birth cert of Lydia, the death cert of William and Lydia’s first daughter Mary Ann and the birth cert of their son William jnr. I know from Ian that their second daughter Frances was born in New Zealand in 1862, and as William their son was born Dec 1861, we only had a small window to look at movements between Australia and New Zealand. I found a William Clutterbuck on the voting registers of Dunedin in April 1862, so the window was even shorter. But passenger lists between Australia and New Zealand are not as comprehensive as those from England to down under.

Figure 1 Family of Lydia Clutterbuck b1860 and William Lester and 12 children

But in my searches of passenger lists I did find a 21 year old Lydia Baker sailing from Plymouth to Geelong in 1857 on the Thomas Arbuthnot, but no sign of William so far. Looking further ahead I found a listing page from the local Nelson, NZ paper of the 1860’s which not only listed other children of William and Lydia but also Williams own demise on 2nd August 1875. In total William and Lydia had 7 children but definitely lost four of those in childhood. So far it is only the line of Lydia b1860 and Frances b1862 that we have connected up, what happened to William is still unknown although he is suspected to have also died young. What the obituary entry did introduce was that William snr was in fact William Blacksely Clutterbuck, the first time the middle name had been seen. He was known to be the only 40 something aged William in Nelson and married to Lydia, there was no confusion on who he was, but what it did mean was there was for the first time a secure connection to The Book, because on page 125 there in black and while was William Blakesley son of Joseph Clutterbuck and Frances. The IGI confirmed a marriage between Joseph and Frances in 1825 in Stonehouse, Gloucs. Added to this Sonja confirmed the Blacksley name came from Frances Drew’s mother’s maiden name so again another firm connection. The names are rare anyway, and the Drew name was not native to Gloucestershire except one line from which Frances Descends.

Although the spelling of Blakesley sees a couple of variants: Blakesely, Blacksley, Blackesly, the name is unique in the Clutterbuck line and it now firmly connects the New Zealand Li from William and Lydia to the Clutterbucks of Stroud. Within that group was Joseph Clutterbuck b1788 Rodborough (m Sarah Roberts 1817) the Civil Engineer, his son John William Clutterbuck the Wool Merchant, Captain Henry Clutterbuck of the Royal Lancaster Regiment b 1874 killed at Mons in France 1914 of whom the Times Paper wrote a spectacular epitaph on September 8th George William Clutterbuck b1858 the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary and author of In India/Bombay the Beautiful and his three achieving children: George William b1882 who appointed the chief assistant to the Clerk of the London Committee during the formation of the National Insurance Scheme, Sgnt Albert Ernest Clutterbuck b1883 of the 10th Middlesex Regiment and Millie Gertrude b1891 won 1st prize in Advanced English at Royal Society of Arts, and worked for the Air Ministry.