Open Questions

The state of play

Two days of work have closed more of this list than they opened, which is not the usual direction. What follows is the honest position, including the searches that found nothing.

1 · The join that decides the whole pedigree

2 · The Australian arrival

• answered Which ship? The convict ship England. He embarked with a detachment of thirty men of the 39th on 8 April 1826; the pilot was discharged in the Downs on 6 May; she reached Port Jackson on 18 September after 135 days with no deaths among her 148 convicts. "Mrs. D'Arcy and family" were cabin passengers. The voyage →
• answered Which Maria? Neither marriage was at Chatham in 1810. He married Mary Ludlam in Kent in 1806 — Le Mesurier was her mother's maiden name, which is how it got into the tree — and Maria White in County Wicklow about 1819. So Frederick Robert the surveyor is a half-brother to our line. Set out here →
• answered The first marriage is dated, and it is 1805. The Salisbury and Winchester Journal of 23 September 1805, p. 3: "Captain George d'Arcy", son of "Lieut Colonel d'Arcy", married "Miss Ludlam". A contemporary printing that also ties him to his father. Here →
• Still to do: the c.1819 County Wicklow marriage to Maria White, still known only at second hand — and the 1805 parish entry behind the newspaper notice.
• answered George Lindsay D'Arcy's christening. Indexed from the register: St James Sydney, 5 November 1829, father George Pitt Darcy, mother Maria — which proves Maria White, not Mary Ludlam, was his mother, and makes Frederick Robert a half-brother.
• How old was the Major? Every 1849 death notice says 69, giving a birth about 1780; the tree says 18 February 1783; WikiTree offers "about 1781". Three answers, no register. Try the 39th's muster rolls and his commission papers.
• Where was he between 1832 and 1849? His regiment left for India in 1832 and he did not go. Did he sell out, retire on half pay, or transfer? Half-pay lists would say — and his obituary's account of a decline "not passed in the paths of pleasantness" suggests the answer matters.
• The Orthes gold medal. It was sent in error to Lieutenant-Colonel Bruce and took four years to reach him. The correspondence would be in the War Office papers, and it would be worth reading.

3 · The Brisbane generations

• answered in part Lindesay Atkinson D'Arcy's service. Sergeant 11335, 12th Australian Depot Unit of Supply, Australian Army Service Corps; enlisted Brisbane 13 December 1915; embarked HMAT Demosthenes A64; returned to Australia 7 July 1919; next of kin his wife Ivy Miriam. Searched at RecordSearch, 9 September 2026, and not found. No B2455 dossier exists for him under Lindesay Atkinson or Lindsay Atkinson, or in the World War I name index under D'Arcy or Darcy. The method was checked against his brother-in-law's record, which came back at once. The claim that a fourteen-page file "is known to exist" is withdrawn. Still to do: ask the National Reference Service, since NAA warns that not all items in the series are catalogued online — and order NAA: J34, C34558, the repatriation pension case file opened for his widow in 1937, which the same search turned up and which is not digitised. His service →
• largely answered Arthur Hartley Sneyd, Private 5050, 9th Battalion. His thirty-page B2455 dossier has now been read: attested Brisbane 16 September 1915, a typist of 5 ft 7½ in, made corporal then sergeant, sent to Étaples in April 1916, and reverted to the ranks on joining the 9th Battalion on 29 July 1916 — twenty-two days before he was killed. The report of death records his burial place as "Not yet to hand", and his effects — a scarf and letters — were shipped on the Barunga, which was torpedoed twenty-five days later. His Red Cross Wounded and Missing file has also been read: he survived the shell that was thought to have killed him, was seen the next morning with his head bandaged carrying a white flag behind stretcher-bearers, and was buried a year later, on report, in a shell hole in No Man's Land near Mouquet Farm under a rough wooden cross. The search →
  Still to do: the CWGC confirmation that he is named on the Villers-Bretonneux memorial — their site has now blocked automated access twice, so the commemoration stands as inferred. And one unresolved conflict: every official record says he died on 20 August 1916, but Sgt. Morton of the 10th Battalion, the only witness to the burial, says 22 August, at Mouquet Farm. The 9th Battalion war diary for 20–22 August would settle it.
• answered same day Vivian Claude Sneyd, MM and Bar, 3rd Australian Field Ambulance (1895–1949) — Ivy's other brother. The archive did not know he had served at all. Found and read: his AWM 28 recommendation for the Bar, for Westhoek east of Ypres on 4 October 1917, and the front of his B2455 dossier — No. 1696, enlisted Brisbane 16 July 1915 aged 19, a salesman of Windsor, entitled to the 1914/15 Star, discharged 30 July 1919. The citation →
  Still to do: the citation for the first Military Medal (awarded 1 March 1917 — the action is not yet identified), the other seventeen pages of his dossier, and NAA J26, M17540, his repatriation medical case file, which runs 1915 to 1948 and would say what the war did to him.
  One correction it forces: his B.103 gives his birthplace as Windsor, Brisbane, where the tree says Rockhampton.
• answered same day A third Sneyd soldier — Pte Ernest Vivian William Sneyd, 3891, 31st Battalion. Found and read: NAA B2455, item 8087517, ninety-two pages. His attestation names his father as Thomas George Sneyd of Landsborough, which confirms him as Arthur and Vivian's first cousin — the identification is no longer inferred. A labourer of 25, once rejected for height, who enlisted 4 December 1915, was wounded with the 31st Battalion at the end of September 1917, invalided to England with bronchitis that November, admitted with albuminuria at Birmingham in May 1918, and sent home on a hospital ship on 5 January 1919. His service →
  Still to do: his Queensland death certificate. The tree says only "1919". The dossier shows eight months in hospital with kidney disease immediately before he sailed, and the certificate would say whether that is what killed him — which in turn decides whether he belongs on a memorial. Add him to the BDM order already drafted.
• answered His death, 10 November 1936. The Courier-Mail obituary of 11 November has been found: he died suddenly, aged 44, of Botany Street, Clayfield, and was buried at Toowong the same afternoon. The medical cause is still not established — that needs the Queensland death certificate. The obituary →
• answered How George Pitt D'Arcy died, 21 March 1931. Found dead in the kitchen of his home in Victoria Street, Banyo; inquest reported 24 April; his son gave evidence of untreated heart trouble. And the age is settled: the South Brisbane Cemetery record gives his birth as 5 May 1864, so he was 66 and the newspaper's "76" is an error. The report →
• answered When did Frederick Robert D'Arcy die? 19 September 1875, at his residence, Spring Hill, aged 63 — his family's death notice in the Brisbane Courier two days later. The Toowong monumental-inscription transcript, which says 10 September and "9th Regiment", is wrong on both counts.
• half answered Constantine D'Arcy — born Barbados, died Chatham. The birth is now documented: christened St Michael, Barbados, 18 February 1786, father Robert Darcy, mother Jane. Connolly says "Died at Chatham, 6 5 1805". So the tree is right about where he was born and wrong about where he died. Still to do: the Chatham burial entry itself, which would confirm it and give an age.
• searched, not found An obituary for Robert D'Arcy. The Gentleman's Magazine for May, June and July 1827 has been searched in full: no notice of his death. Its 1827 volumes do carry a death notice for D'Arcy Wentworth, the colonial surgeon of New South Wales who died two months later — an unrelated man who will contaminate any search not watching for him.
• Florence Isabel D'Arcy, died 22 August 1918, cause given as chlorosis; valvular disease of the heart, aged 24. Confirm the Nundah burial: the council record reads F J D'Arcy and the initial is assumed to be a mistranscription of I.
• The 'This Is Your Life' book presented to Ken D'Arcy on his retirement from National Mutual in 1982, referred to in his eulogy. If it survives in the family it is a primary source for thirty-two years of his working life.

4 · The families they married

• answered in part Atkinson, of Limerick. The christening of 9 July 1832 names his parents: Richard Atkinson and Anne — a generation gained. Still to do: anything at all about Richard and Anne, and the ship of 1862. Limerick is hard: many Church of Ireland registers burned in the Four Courts in 1922. The Atkinsons →
• answered in part Murdoch, of St Quivox. The Scottish statutory register gives William Murdoch's birth as 7 October 1856 at St Quivox and Newton, parents Francis Murdoch and Marion Watt; and their marriage as 6 May 1854 at Avondale, Lanarkshire — Strathaven's parish, and a year later than the tree says. Still to do: the emigration to Queensland, and Francis's own parents. The Murdochs →
• Matson, of Cornacreeve, County Monaghan. Catherine Jane Matson, born 1862, died Toowoomba 1914. Her parents William Matson and Mary Abbot have no dates at all.
• Atwell. James Atwell is said to have come to Australia in the merchant navy and deserted. A desertion would appear in a crew agreement or a shipping-office record, and would date and name the ship. probable The 1861 census has a James Atwell, aged 7, born Hammersmith, living at Westcombe Street, Batcombe, Somerset (Shepton Mallet district) as a nephew of the head of household, with Maria (5), Fred (3) and Henry (1) — a Somerset family with a London-born eldest, which is the right shape. Not yet proved to be him.
• Blum. John Blum, born Germany 1842, reached Rockhampton. Where in Germany, and on what ship? His daughter Martha's dates are now confirmed — born 25 July 1870, died 19 December 1904, buried Lutwyche — but he himself is still only a country and a year.
• Sneyd — largely closed. The scepticism this page called for has now been applied, and it paid twice. The descent from Keele Hall is disproved and the real Madeley line found in its place; and the 1902 coronial file confirms the Australian join under oath — William Hartley Sneyd's widow names his father as "Samuel Sneyd, Gaol Governor". His birth is now documented outright: the Queensland death registration 1902/B/2776 gives 30 September 1837. This archive briefly published 1838 against it and was wrong — a stated age of 64 on 11 September, nineteen days before his birthday, is exactly what 1837 predicts. The file → · The broken graft →
  Samuel Charles Sneyd's own service record — searched again, 9 September 2026, and still not found. The Queensland Police Staff Files (S1108) hold two Sneyds and neither can be him: AF1623 runs 1881–83 and AF1599 runs 1890–97, and he died in 1885. On dates they are two of his sons. null result He served before the Queensland force existed — NSW Mounted Police, then chief constable at Moreton Bay from 1849 — so his record, if it survives, is in a colonial series that predates S1108 or on the gaol side rather than the police side. The Queensland Blue Books would at least confirm his tenure and salary year by year and have not yet been tried.

5 · The letters

Nine enquiries are now drafted and waiting — four letters to institutions and five jobs needing a login, a card or an identity check. They live in the repository under notes/letters/ and requests/.

Nothing has been sent. They are drafts.

6 · What has been read, and found empty

• newly opened · 10 Sep 2026 Is Sneyd-street, Bowen Hills, named for the gaol governor? The street surfaced by accident in a 1902 insolvency notice. Bowen Hills sits in the Parish of North Brisbane, and Samuel Sneyd was mortgaging subdivisions in that parish in 1870 and 1872 (QSA ITM3248152, ITM3622143). Subdividers named the streets they cut. The subdivision plan would settle it, and it is held with the dealings. His land →
• newly opened · 10 Sep 2026 Do Miriam Wakefield and Martha Blum share a grave? The tree gives both women the identical plot — Lutwyche Cemetery, Portion GP5, Section 42A, Grave 78. Martha died in 1904 aged thirty-four; her mother-in-law Miriam died in 1909. Either the older woman was buried with her son's wife, which is worth knowing, or it is a copy-and-paste in the tree. The Brisbane City Council cemetery register would settle it in a minute and is free. The women →
• null · 9 Sep 2026 The 4th Earl of Holderness's will. Searched at the National Archives under Darcy, D'Arcy, Holderness and Holdernesse, and across every PROB record of 1778–80. Nothing. A peer's estate commonly passed by settlement rather than testament.
• null · 9 Sep 2026 Samuel Charles Sneyd in the Queensland Blue Books. Absent from 1870, 1872, 1874, 1876, 1880, 1882 and 1884 — and the series starts in 1870. So he had left the public service before then, which narrows a governorship previously datable only as "from 1859". The 1859–69 volumes are not digitised.
• null · 9 Sep 2026 His Queensland Police staff file. Series S1108 holds two Sneyds and neither can be him: both date ranges fall after his death. He served the New South Wales force and then the gaols, so that series could never have contained him.
• null · 10 Sep 2026 Vivian Claude Sneyd's first Military Medal in the London Gazette. The Bar recommendation records it as awarded 1 March 1917, but the Gazette's full text does not name him. Military Medals to other ranks were gazetted as bare lists of numbers and initials, frequently mis-scanned. The citation is a separate AWM 28 file and AWM's search is down.
• null · 10 Sep 2026 The 1873 insolvency in the newspapers. Trove returns 645 results for Sneyd insolvent and none of the first ten is ours — a South Australian painter, and a Brisbane street called Sneyd-street. The QSA file ITM1056950 remains the way in and is not digitised.

A null is a result. These searches have been run and came back empty; they are listed so that nobody repeats them.

• FindMyPast, all English record sets — baptism of a Robert D'Arcy or Darcy born c. 1741–1761, name variants on. No result.
• Connolly's Roll of Officers of the Corps of Royal Engineers, 1660–1898 — searched in full. Found him, and his son Constantine, and no parentage for anyone; the Roll does not record fathers.
• Records of the Royal Military Academy, 1851 and 1892 editions — searched in full. No Robert D'Arcy. Narrative histories, not cadet registers.
• Gentleman's Magazine, May, June and July 1827 — searched in full. No notice of his death, which for a general officer is itself curious.
• WO 149, Registers of Cadets, RMA Woolwich — begins 1790. Cannot cover him.
• The Dictionary of National Biography — its "D'Arcy, Robert" is the 4th Earl of Holderness. Our Major-General has no entry.