On the 30 January 1900, at the Melbourne General Cemetery, Miriam Anne Armstrong (nee Fitnam) was interred in Section NN Grave No 232. Miriam was only 31 years old.
Fifty four years later to the day, Miriam’s great granddaughter Janita Kathryn, first child of Ormonde and Leonie (nee Armstrong) Gauld, was born in Brisbane.
In 1929 Miriam’s mother, Elizabeth Fitnam (nee McDonald) was buried in the same family plot, aged 92. Elizabeth was born in 1837, probably in Ireland.
Janita’s great-uncle, William John Armstrong, the son of Miriam and Donald Armstrong is memorialised on Miriam’s gravestone. William died at the battle of Mont St. Quentin in France on 31 August 1918.
The final burial in this plot was Miriam’s sister, Elizabeth, who died 5 June 1952, aged 83. On this very day Paul O’Neill was born in Brisbane.
On a sunny late winter’s day in 2009, at the Australian War Cemetery in Peronne, France, Paul & Janita stood before the grave of Janita’s great-uncle and Miriam’s second son, “Willy”. He fought in the Australian Second Division, 24 Battalion. They were the first family members in almost 100 years to visit William’s grave.
What does all his have to do with Mansfield, Victoria? It was here that the young William Armstrong enlisted. Our visit here has given us another link in our research into the life of Uncle Willy “who died in the war”. With the help of the local historical society, Janita found the only known photograph of her great- uncle.
William was teaching at the small, one-teacher school of Delatite, just outside Mansfield, when he enlisted in 1916. The school was opened in the 1860s and it closed in the mid 1970s.
Tomorrow the search continues to Delatite.
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