Family History Update...the Italian Connection

Further to the post Our Family's Italian Connection from 2nd Jan 2010.
Ok we have some progress mostly thanks to Graham Whitt (author of the original infomation).
Graham is a direct blood decendant of Antonio and Felistea Wett. Early in the 1900's Grahams grandfather (or Great grandfather)? changed his family name from Wet (or Wett) to Whitt.
NOTE this is only an update and the story may evolve.
Our Wet (Wett) connection is via my Grandmother Agnes Leohnora Reed (nee Wet) her parents were Antonio and Felistea and she was brought up in that family.
However, and this is the newsy bit, it looks like Agnes Leohnora was not Antonios child or Felistea's. Its fairly likely that she is Felistea's daughter's (Lydia) child. Lydia's father was Thomas Durham Felistea's first husband who died not long after arriving with his family in NZ from England.
Therefore while we have and adoptive relationship with Antonio our blood line on our grandmothers side goes back through Lydia/Felistea/Thomas Durham etc.
Graham Whitt (This gentleman is really on to this geneology stuff) has send me a very cool overview of what he now understands to be Felistea's story. Note some of the comments reflect the exchanges we have been having as we share infomation.
Graham has not included Agnes Leohnora in the story as we can't find her birth certificate.
But we have good reason to draw an interim conclusion that Agnes Loehnora was in fact Lydia's child so until proved otherwise we will hold that understanding. Also it is unclear who her father may be.
Graham's email to me follows.

Hi Mike,

Your email was a real surprise, and it is wonderful to think that this lady has remembered so much from her connection with the Wett family.

I have garnered a lot of information about Filistea and her early life, before she met and married Antonio Wett. The following is a brief over-view - I am sorry if some of this is repeat information of that I passed on before (I’m losing track of what I have and have not told you):

 Filistea was born in Crediton, Devon (near Exeter on the south coast of England) in about 1837. In her early life she lived with her mother (Sarah FROST) and her maternal grandparents (William & Elizabeth SARGENT) at Crediton and Exeter. William Sargent was a schoolmaster in Crediton, although by the 1851 England Census, he was listed as a ‘pauper’ (formerly Schoolmaster). I can find no England Census records of Filistea’s father, but on her marriage certificate to Thomas Durham, her father’s name was given as William FROST, a baker.

 Filistea married Thomas DURHAM in Southampton, on 10 March 1861. Thomas’ profession was given as ‘shipwright’.

 Just prior to their emigration to New Zealand in 1865, Filistea and Thomas had a daughter, Lydia Filistea DURHAM, born in Bideford, Devon, near Filistea’s hometown of Crediton/Exeter.

 Thomas DURHAM was born in London in about 1817 and for some time was a ‘ships carpenter’ in the Royal Navy. He died in Collingwood on 27 March 1868, at his nephew’s (Joseph Durham BRACE) house. It was reported in his obituary that: “he died after a ‘long and painful illness’, and that he was formerly of the ‘Her Majesty’s Royal Navy’, and that he was ‘present at the relief and capture of Lucknow, for which he wore a medal, as also Crimean and Burmese medals.”

 Filistea also gave birth to a son, Joseph DURHAM, in ‘her residence’ at Haven Road, Nelson, on the 6 April 1868 (about 10 days after the death of Thomas Durham at Collingwood). Joseph died of fever at Collingwood, in about 1873, aged 5 years. It is likely that he was staying/living with his father’s nephew, Joseph BRACE, where his father had died in 1868.

 Given the above, it is possible that Filistea and Thomas came to NZ from India, although the Nelson Evening mail of the time records that: “Mr & Mrs Durham & Child - Arrived in Nelson, New Zealand, aboard the ‘Water Nymph’, from London, on 12 December 1865.”

 There are 2 other children, listed as Durham children, which I believe were Filistea’s children, whether or not Thomas Durham was the father is debatable. The first of these was Eliza Margaret DURHAM, born in 1867, but who died at 2 months. The second was Elizabeth Agnes DURHAM, born in 1870 and who went on to marry a William Joseph HARNESS.

 I have been able to trace that Lydia Filistea DURHAM had 2 children before her marriage, in 1887, to Albert Edward LETTE. The first was Elizabeth Agnes DURHAM, who was born in Sept. 1881, with her father being given as John HOLDANE, although the St Mary’s Catholic Church records in Nelson show she was baptised as Elizabeth Agnes WETT.

 Lydia’s second child was Thomas Alexander DURHAM, with there being no record of who the father was. I have also not been able to find out much about Thomas.

 Lydia died in about 1948 and I have not, as yet, traced any children from her marriage to Albert Lette.

 I am not sure about the story of Filistea being a maid in waiting to Queen Victoria. My search of England Census records does not show her having lived in London, nor that she had come from a family background that royal staff would have come from in those days. Would be something if she did though.

 The ‘slashing’ and ‘badly injured’ references to Filistea certainly match what I have found out. In addition to the story, which I have previously told, of Antonio stabbing Filistea, Filistea herself was also (in 1869) involved in an altercation with a woman friend who hit Filistea with an axe, injuring her quite badly. This woman was sentenced to 6 months jail.


I am currently working through about 50 newspaper cuttings/reports, from historic Nelson newspapers (from the ‘PapersPast’ database at the NZ National Library), on both Antonio and Fislitea. When I have finished these and put them in some sort of order I will send my notes to you – they make for very entertaining reading. Many refer to the Reed family.


Cheers


Graham