Clarisse Verbena Knevett was born in Burra South Australia on 25 November 1884.
Her mother was Christina Knevett nee Mcdonald, and her biological father was Herbert Gentle. Her mother’s husband was James Knevett.
Christina had married blacksmith James Knevett at Gum Creek (west of Burra) in 1876, when she was 15 or 16 years old, probably in her father’s house. (It was the residence of Mr Mcdonald. Although a Methodist church had been built in the town in 1871). James was likely from the same part of South Australia.
Christina and James had four sons, the first, James Alexander, born a nice nine months after their wedding, in Terowie, well west of Gum Creek. Two years later the family were north of Jamestown, in Bellalie, when William Henry was born. Sadly, William died at home just three weeks later. In 1879 a third son was born back in Kooringa/Christina’s home town. This third son was also named James – James Henry. Both Christina and James Snr had father’s called James, and James Snr came from a long line of James’. (Both James A and James H lived to adulthood, so its not that one child died and another was given the same name). Their fourth son, Joseph was born in 1882, in Hill River, south of Burra, near to where James Snr possibly had family.
In 1881 and 1883 James Snr appeared in residents lists of Kooringa/Gum Creek – still a blacksmith.
There are no more mentions of James in Kooringa.
Then, in 1884, Christian had her daughter, Clarisse Verbena, in Kooringa, with Herbert Gentle recorded on the birth certificate as the baby’s father. I believe that in order to Herbert to be recorded as the father he had to have “owned up to it.”
Herbert was a Burra local. Aged 23 – the same as Christina – when Clarisse was born.
In 25 July 1886 Christina had another daughter, Mary, in Kooringa. This time there was no father listed on the birth certificate. I don’t know where Herbert Gentle was.
Four years later (25 Nov 1890) Christina married again, to George Attrill. The marriage occurred in her own house in Kooringa (or that of her Knevett relatives).
In 1890 Herbert Gentle was far away, in Broken Hill, where he also married. He’d spent his whole life in Burra, but he and his brother and step brother headed north.
What happened to James Snr??!
Back in June 1877, a James Knevett had been sentenced to two years hard labour in South Australia for horse stealing. If this is THE James, then how did he get to be the biological father of either of those boys?? There had been Knevett’s in South Australia since the first decade of the century (as SA didn’t become a colony until later, I don’t know much about what as going on there), and many of those Knevett men had been called James, so there’s no reason that James may not have had cousins with the exact same name (I mean he had two sons called James Knevet!!). On the other hand, the James who stole horses, was living north of Jamestown, vaguely near where William Henry had lived his short life in 1878…
James appears in the official record again, in 1893 when he died in QLD.
I have no idea what Clarisse knew about her biological father. At her wedding, her father was listed as being James Knevet, and she was definitely known by the Knevett name, and was married in Kooringa in 1902 so was most likely considered part of the Mcdonald family, too. She and her husband had four children, and moved to WA 1915. Clarisse was living in WA when she died in 1956.
Herbert Gentle died in Broken Hill in 1899.
Other than her birth, I can’t find anything about Mary under Knevet[t], Knivett or Attrill. (The Mary Knevet who died in 1893 is not her; she was born in 1817).
When Christina died in 1902, she was mourned by her family, and recorded in the newspaper as having three daughters and four sons. (She’d had two daughters and a son with George Attrill). The three daughters number shows that at least one of her illegitimate girls was considered part of her family by the rest of the family. I wonder if the three rather than four, means that either Mary had died, or had married, and was therefore not “left behind” in the sense the other children were? I hope it doesn’t mean that she was elsewhere not knowing who her family were.
So, how are this lot my family? Herbert Gentle’s half brother was George Gentle, my great great grandfather, making – according to ancestry – Clarisse my “first cousin 3x removed,” and Mary, “stepdaughter of third great uncle.”
The Knevetts and Gentles may have had a relation beyond the one between Christina and Herbert. Herbert moved to Broken Hill in the 1880s, and both the James Knevett Jnrs moved there too. On his death, James Alexander, known as Bert, was living in Broken Hill (you’ d change your name, too, if you shared with a brother with as many entries in the Broken Hill gaol registers as James H racked up). During WW1, James Henry was living in Iodide St Broken Hill when he enlisted. That the two families may have known each other in Broken Hill is is very much conjecture. Herbert had died by 1899, and I actually don’t think either James was first recorded as being in NSW prior to that. However, according to an ancestry tree, James Alexander (Bert) and his wife ran the Bromide St shop opposite the Broken Hill Public School, so it’s very likely that a good many Gentle children visited there even if they had no idea of the relationship between their uncle and the shop keeper’s half-sister.
The First Ball I Took Your Mother To 