Descendants of great-great-great grandfather George Ritchings and great-great-great grandmother Maria Ritchings (née Whitton). Composed by Aunty Nellie, the youngest of Frederick & Ada's ten children. This copy was annotated and passed to Russell by Aunty Elva, 9 October 2000.
“This was composed by my Aunty Nellie, who was my Father's youngest sister. The first Frederick mentioned above was my Grand-Father & the second one was my Father.” — handwritten on the original by Aunty Elva (Ritchings) Coomber📜 View the original handwritten document (PDF)
Two families crossed the seas to Australia and became one. Their story joins in the marriage of Frederick Ritchings and Ada Eliza Gregory, whose ten children branch into the generations below.
George Ritchings & Maria Ritchings (née Whitton). Parents of George, Frederick, Jane, Ted and Ern. Their son Frederick was born at Robe, SA, in 1866.
Family tradition says William Gregory died on the voyage and was buried at sea, and his widow Sarah (née Peason) remarried a Mr Knight at Marshall Mount. Records, though, show Ada's parents as William Gregory (1840–1913) and Sarah Pearson (1838–1915), who both lived and died in Australia — so the "buried at sea" story likely belongs to an earlier generation, still to be traced.
The Ritchings deep roots are in Gloucestershire, England (around Cirencester and Siddington). Genealogical research on the wider Ritchings family, supported by DNA studies, traces the surname to an Anglo-Saxon origin (from the old name "Hich"), not the Norman/French one sold by heraldry sites. By the 1860s George Ritchings' branch had moved to Cardiff, Wales (a child was born there in 1865) before emigrating — which is the "came out from Wales" the family remembered. They settled at Robe, on the South Australian coast, where Frederick was born on 13 November 1866.
The Gregory family came from England to New South Wales. Ada Eliza Gregory was one of eleven children of William Gregory (1840–1913) and Sarah Pearson (1838–1915). Family tradition of a Gregory forebear "buried at sea" appears to belong to an earlier generation than this documented couple.
Marshall Mount — recorded as “Marshall Mount, Sydney,” this is almost certainly Marshall Mount in the Illawarra, a rural district between Dapto and Albion Park just south-west of Wollongong (established 1829, named after Sarah Osborne née Marshall). This fits the family’s strong later presence around Wollongong, and it is where Sarah Gregory settled after remarrying.
Kangaloon, birthplace of Ada Eliza Gregory (16 Jan 1874), is a village in the Southern Highlands of NSW, about 16 km east of Bowral — where Frederick and Ada married in the Wesleyan Church in 1893. The name is Aboriginal for “kangaroo landing ground.”
Wooroolin and nearby Memerambi (and the reunion site at Atkinson Dam, Lowood) are in Queensland’s South Burnett and Lockyer regions — the family moved north from the NSW Highlands to farm there, which is why so many later branches are Queensland-based. Frederick and Ada are buried together at Memerambi Cemetery.
Searching cemetery and civil records, we confirmed Frederick's birthplace as Robe, SA; his death 24 September 1944 and Ada's 6 August 1950, both buried at Memerambi Cemetery, South Burnett, Queensland; and Ada's full Gregory birth family with dates — including her sister Clara (1876–1975), the "still alive at 99" of the original record.
Graves & records: Frederick's grave · Ada's grave — both at Memerambi Cemetery (Find a Grave).
Leonard Ritchings' wife Margret Ada Frances “Peg” Sainsbury (26 Nov 1932 – 4 Jul 2000) was the daughter of Charles Claude Edwin Sainsbury (b. 1909, Coonamble NSW – d. 2007, Rockhampton), a Second World War veteran of the 10th Queensland Volunteer Defence Corps, and Josephine Maude “Maude” Sainsbury (née Hayden) (1910–1984). Charles's own parents were Ralph Ernest Sainsbury (1872–1952) and Elizabeth Sainsbury (1882–1911).
Peg rests with her parents at the Rockhampton Crematorium Garden of Remembrance (memorial).
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