At last, and quite by accident, here's who she is.
One of the most enduring mysteries in our family research journey was the photo of the woman with the gun. One family had the photo (below) with the name Ella written on the back of it, and it was logically believed that Ella was the name of the woman in the photo. It was the most evidence there was to work on in those pre-internet days.
Through the processes of elimination and deduction, it was thought that this could be a photo of the first-born child of Charles Cossill and Pourewa. Ella was a family name across several generations. It was a logical conclusion. For many years this photo has been shared, circulated and published in family histories with the name Ella as the only evidence, and we claimed this woman as our own.
When we recently discovered that "Ella" was actually called Sarah, and we found her on a whaling ship heading for New Hampshire, it became a challenge to match the same woman with this photo. The firearm and bayonet - and the photograph itself - did not fit in timewise with Sarah's final departure from New Zealand in 1857.
There were more questions than answers: If this isn't Sarah formerly-thought-to-be-Ella, then who was she?
And then, quite by accident, thanks to a suggestion from distant-cousin-Celia to join the "Old North Auckland - Northland Photos & Stories" Facebook group, I stumbled across the photo of our by now mystery woman in an old post. A Cossill descendant had posted the photo with the Cossill story, and other people joined the conversation, noting that they had the same photo - but had a different name - and posted their same photo with their indisputable evidence.
The name on their photo is Hene/Jane Maxwell (1862 - 1932). Hene/Jane was the daughter of Heremaia Te Wake and Maraea Topia (and the half sister of Dame Whina Cooper). She married James Maxwell.
So after all these years of studying the photo for clues and thinking up all the possible contexts of who and where this woman was and how she fitted into our family, it turns out she doesn't. I'm quite saddened to lose her, but very pleased to have been able to solve that mystery at last and to "return" her to her own family after being a member of ours for so long.
Although how she came to be in a collection of family photos with the name Ella on the back is another mystery.
I am so very grateful to this amazing woman in the photo, Jane Te Wake, as even though it turns out she's not ours, by trying to prove she was Ella, we actually discovered Sarah Cossill, and we may not have done so otherwise.
Grateful thanks to the Cossill descendants who instigated and contributed to the FB post that started this revelation and to Jane Te Wake's whanau who shared their information. Thanks also to NZ author Joan Druett, who had discovered our Sarah* long before we did. Joan used information from an earlier post in this blog to join the dots to her information and started us on the process of matching her Sarah with our Ella, finding they were the same person. And thanks to the ancestors for allowing a little bit more about themselves to be revealed. Great team work, whanau!
As always, feel free to challenge, question or add to anything I've written. Whatever helps us get to the facts is always helpful. See email option on the right, or add a comment at the bottom.
Check out the Cossill label on the right for further posts about the Cossill story and Sarah's whaling adventure.
* Petticoat Whalers, Whaling wives at sea, 1820 - 1920 by Joan Druett (1991). Sarah has been hiding in plain sight since 1991 in Joan's book, pp 124, 126-7.
Follow this link to a blog post by Joan Druett about Sarah Cossill Evans.
