SCHRODER & EDWARDS

by Alan Craig           Download the PDF for this page  (2.3 MB)

Robyn’s paternal family stems from two branches that came together in 1900 at Charters Towers in Queensland. First, there were the Prussian Schrödter and Kumm families who arrived at Rockhampton in 1871 to join siblings who had made the sea journey in 1865. This family departed from the village of Bietikow, near Prenzlau, in Brandenburg. Prenzlau is close by the modern German-Polish border. The Schroder family first settled as dairy farmers at Wararba Creek, near Caboolture, before drifting to Brisbane and beyond. William Schroder, Robyn’s grandfather, moved north to Charters Towers, Queensland, before 1900. The story of the Schroder family is told in two separate chapters:

1: Prussia: 1835–1878 (Prenzlau & Angermünde, Brandenburg)

2: Queensland: 1865–1960 (Caboolture, Brisbane & Charters Towers)

The other branch was English. These were the Edwards and Shorter families who came, respectively, from Essex and Suffolk in eastern England, both lying northeast of London. Their stories are told over three pages. The first deals with the families that lived in Suffolk, mostly in Barrow and the neighbouring hamlet of Burthorpe Green. The second story traces the origins of the Edwards family that emerged around the towns of Chelmsford and Springfield. These families finally merged in Plumstead, Kent, when Susanna Shorter married Thomas Edwards in 1866. This couple migrated to the Australian Colonies in 1873, and their story is told in the last of the three pages.

1 a: Suffolk: 1659–1901 (Drake & Cobbin families of Tostock & Cavendish)

           b: Brand Family: 1695–1772 (Barrow)

           c: Shorter Family: 1864–1916 (Burthorpe Green)

2 a: Essex: 1783–1861 (Edwards & Finch families of Chelmsford)

          b: Edwards & Shorter: 1866–1873 (Plumstead, London)

3: Downunder: 1873–1914 (Australian Colonies)

           +  James McCartney connections

The following chart graphically shows how these stories are connected:

The charts below show all the known direct ancestors on Robyn’s paternal side. It will be worth keeping these charts handy as you read the various stories about these families. Robyn’s maternal side was the Galt -Ferguson families whose stories begin at this link.

Additional notes:

You will have noticed in these charts that, for many in the English female lines, we have a given name, but no surname (and sometimes, no name at all). This comes about because there are some major problems when dealing with English genealogy. Unlike Scotland and Queensland, once a woman in England married, her maiden name was never used again — and, without the mother’s birth name on her children’s baptismal records, we have no way of tracing her family origins. Very often, frustratingly, only the father’s name is given! If we’re lucky, we can occasionally find the mother’s name on a sibling’s baptism, and then the parents’ marriage entry through trial and error. Let’s compare these two examples from old parish records, the first in Scotland, the second from England:

1768, April 24th | Richard Littlejohn, Wright in Ardargie, and Janet Dick his wife, had a son baptized by Mr. Reid, Antiburgher Minr. at the Path of Strouiehill, that was born on Fryday the Twenty Second Currt., named Robert.

Septbr. ye 20th Thomasin daughter of William Gouch by Alice his wife was baptized.

In the Scottish record we have: the father; his occupation; his place of work; his wife’s maiden name; the minister and church; the birth date; date of the baptism; and name of the child — contrast all this with the English record where you get: the baptismal date; child’s name; father’s name; and the mother’s first name only. A world of difference! Mind, not all old Scottish records were always as effusive, but we almost always get the mother’s maiden name, and thereby the opportunity to find her marriage and birth records.

Another drama for the genealogist is that, for many years, copies of the original ‘handwritten’ entries in the English parish records were only occasionally available to the researcher. For Scotland, all the surviving records have been scanned and made available for viewing and downloading from the internet. In England, we largely had only a transcription of the record from index lists, and this meant we could often be unsure we had the correct record, and no opportunity to correct mistakes made by those doing the transcriptions [note: since 2025, Ancestry.com has started uploading digital copies of many old English Parish records, so this situation is getting better]. Things began to improve somewhat for English parish records in the middle of the 1800s, and original census records are generally available, but birth and marriage records are still not as fulsome as those from the north (however, they are infinitely better than Irish records, which still are not digitised).