Each month a member of the Lakes Entrance Family History Resource Centre (LEFHRC) is providing research into their family history and this week treasurer of LEFHRC Jan West delves into her mother’s side of the family.
John Andrew and Janet Burns were married on December 6, 1901, in Chryston Lanarkshire, Scotland. John Andrew was a steel works labourer, working long hours to feed his growing family. Unfortunately, John was killed at a railway station in Glasgow three months before his youngest child, Joan Andrew, was born.
Joan was born 75 minutes after midnight, on March 15, 1920, at 176 Merry Street, Motherwell Lanarkshire, Scotland. Joan was the youngest of nine children, all born at home and raised by her widowed mother and sisters.
Joan, at the age of 19, boarded the Morton Bay in Southampton on February 8, 1939, to visit her eldest sister who had immigrated to Australia. Joan was presented with a leather bound zipped Bible by her friends before sailing. The Bible is now a treasured possession of her daughter, Jan.
WWII had started and all ships were confiscated to move troops to war zones. Joan, along with many others, was stranded in Australia and issued with an Identification Card and ID Number.
She found work at Johnson & Johnson rolling and packaging bandages to be sent overseas to dress wounded soldiers. Joan moved to a button factory, where you would find her pockets filled with buttons when she finished her shift. Most of these buttons were given to seamstresses to help them make a decent living, while their husbands were away at war.
Jan said she also has a collection of her mum’s buttons.
Joan met her future husband, Robert West, in Sydney and they married in Botany, New South Wales, on August 29, 1944. Two years later in 1946, Jan West, was born in Liverpool, NSW.
Robert was offered a job with BHP in Whyalla, South Australia, and it was there twins Paul and Margaret were born in 1950. Joan was kept busy raising three children under four years of age.
When their children had all left home, Robert and Joan moved to Swan Reach to be close to their daughter, Margaret.
Joan passed away May 1, 1999, in Bairnsdale, aged 79 years.
If you want to explore your family history you can join this friendly group every Monday and Saturday, 1pm to 4.30pm, in their rooms behind the Information Centre.
“We will make you feel very welcome,” Jan said.
