For many years, my husband Trevor’s family had resigned themselves to never knowing the identity of their great-grandfather.

Their grandmother Ida Beatrice Conroy was born in Bingara, New South Wales, on 13 January 1889 to Emma Ethel Conroy aged 20, with no father given on the birth registration.[1]

Selected Crotty and Conroy family tree

Ida married William James Tighe in Goondiwindi, Queensland on 13 October 1904.[2] The marriage registration named both Ida’s mother and father, but it also raised questions.

Ida’s father’s name was stated as Frederick Conroy, a blacksmith.

Mother Emma’s surname was given not as Conroy, the maiden name she used until she later married, but as Crotty which was her mother Mary’s maiden name. Further research determined that Emma was not the child of Mary’s husband James Conroy but that of a neighbour, which may have helped her dispense with the surname in this situation.[3]

Ida died on 18 May 1941 in Brisbane. Her mother outlived her and was the informant for her death registration. She again named Ida’s father as Frederick Conroy, a labourer.[4]

No evidence could be found for the existence of Frederick Conroy. It seemed the surname Conroy was given simply to match Ida’s maiden name and to mask her illegitimacy. Was Ida’s father really named Frederick? Sadly, the family resigned themselves to not knowing who fathered this child born to a part-aboriginal girl in country New South Wales.

Fast forward to 2017 when Trevor took a DNA test with Ancestry. He was intrigued to see his ethnicity and the many people who shared his DNA but did little more than glance over these. With a “humph” he passed his test results to me, to see if I could make anything of them. At that time, engrossed in other challenges, DNA analysis was not on my to-do list.

Fast forward again to 2024 when I decided to learn to use the DNA genealogical tool properly. Or at least begin to understand it, as the detail can be quite challenging to master. I enrolled in the course “Analysing Your AncestryDNA Results” with the Society of Australian Genealogists.

After some salutary lessons in not jumping ahead – I was completely lost and frustrated more than once because of this trait of mine – I began to make sense of the long list of shared matches. I decided to focus on Trevor’s DNA and see if the puzzle of Frederick could be solved, as in theory, a gap of three generations seemed possible to bridge. Our teacher Christine was equally enthusiastic and soon cracked the puzzle, leading me gently through the steps to identify Trevor’s great-grandfather for myself.

Maternal and paternal lines were identified and coloured dots were applied to show the various ancestral lines. Sure enough, there was a collection of matches that didn’t fit with any of the identified lines. One, I’ll call him Joe, shared sufficient DNA to be a potential second cousin and his Ancestry tree showed a great-grandfather named Frederick!

A “quick and dirty” family tree was built for this Frederick using the free index search of the NSW Registry records, combined with searching local newspapers in Trove. Joe’s great-grandfather was Frederick William Schroder, who indeed had lived in Bingara around the time of Ida’s birth. With increasing excitement, similar trees built for three other shared matches of Trevor and Joe also lead back to Frederick William Schroder of Bingara.

There was a brief hiatus to investigate another Frederick William Schroder who lived about the same time, in Lismore and Tamworth. No DNA shared matches were found to link back to this man who clearly just happened to have the same name.

Frederick was 30 when he married in 1892, three years after Ida’s birth, and had six more children with his wife Elizabeth née Cowan.[5]

Frederick’s father Carl (John Carl Frederick Schroder) emigrated to Sydney in 1854, aged 24, from the town of Barth in North Western Pomerania. Today this is part of Germany but Barth was part of Finland until 1819, then part of Prussia, which became one of the constituent states of Germany in 1918.[6] Carl moved to Bingara where he became the police constable. He married Anne Berry at Warialda, 40 kilometres north of Bingara, in 1859. Anne came to Sydney from Swimbridge in Devon in 1858.[7] Frederick was their third child of twelve, all born in Warialda despite the family living in Bingara. Perhaps there was a good midwife there. Despite Frederick’s German-sounding surname, he was born in Australia with mixed German and English heritage.

DNA shared match ‘Joe’ was the grandson of Frederick and Elizabeth’s eldest son Frederick. ‘Bill’ was the grandson of daughter Gertrude. ‘Jane’ was the granddaughter of daughter Marjorie. The final match, ‘Helen’, showed her to be the 2xgreat granddaughter of Frederick’s sister Sophia.[8]

Ancestry’s new Pro Tools allows us to see how much DNA different shared matches share with each other. Using this tool confirmed that Joe, Bill and Jane are likely to be 2^nd cousins based on the DNA they share with each other. Interestingly, none of them share sufficient DNA with Helen for her to appear on their shared match lists. She matched with Trevor by only 36 cM, and with several other known cousins by a similar amount.

Using the ”What Are the Odds” tool in DNA Painter[9] showed that the hypothesised relationships are likely.

Frederick Schroder

Ida Tighe née Conroy

The strong genetic links between the cousins and with Trevor add weight to my hypothesis that I have, indeed, finally found Frederick. Comparing photographs of Frederick and Ida shows a similarity of expression, although the photos are not clear.

In his marriage registration Frederick claimed to have no children despite Emma and Ida living in the same tiny country town. Did the Schroder family know that Ida was his child? Frederick’s obituary in 1936 described him as “a highly esteemed resident of Bingara” and, at the time of Ida’s birth, his father was the local police constable – indicators of a social status incompatible with a known illegitimate child, let alone a liaison with a “half-caste” in the parlance of the day (Emma’s grandmother was indigenous).[10]

Sadly, none of these shared matches have responded to my messages. Nonetheless, I continue to test my hypothesis with further reasonably exhaustive research and hope to add this branch to Trevor’s tree soon.

[1] New South Wales, NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Birth registration, Conroy birth, 1889, Bingara; reg no 22465/1889.
[2] Queensland, Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Marriage registration, Tighe Conroy marriage, 1904, Goondiwindi; reg no 1904/C/579.
[3] “WINDSOR.” The Sydney Morning Herald, 3 June 1869: 5. Web. 28 Sep 2024 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13180130>.
[4] Queensland, Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Death registration, Ida Beatrice Tighe, 1941, Brisbane; reg no 1941/B/52047.
[5] “About People” The Inverell Times (NSW : 1899 – 1907, 1909 – 1954) 9 March 1936: 4. Web. 16 Feb 2024 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article185367469>.
[6] State Records Authority of New South Wales; Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia; Series: Certificates of Naturalization, 1849-1874; Series Number: NRS 1039; Roll: 2694
[7] State Records Authority of New South Wales; Kingswood New South Wales, Australia; Persons on bounty ships (Agent’s Immigrant Lists); Series: 5316; Reel: 2138
[8] Names of modern-day descendants have been changed for privacy
[9] https://dnapainter.com/tools/probability
[10] “Mr. F. W. Schroder” The Inverell Times (NSW : 1899 – 1907, 1909 – 1954) 11 March 1936: 4. Web. 16 Feb 2024 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article185367073>.