By Jove, I Think I Found Them!
A Family Detective Story
I haven’t posted any articles this past month, life just got a bit full, as it sometimes does. There was a milestone birthday (mine), a few funerals, and all the everyday bits in between. So, the writing took a back seat. But, if you’re anything like me, you’ll know that a family historian never really switches off. Amidst it all, I found myself chipping away at an old mystery. And wouldn’t you know it, I finally cracked a brick wall that had stumped me for years.
This is the story of how I uncovered the real beginnings of Emily Schulze, who was long believed to be a Clinch but turned out to be someone entirely different—a Rees.
You know that niggling feeling when a detail doesn’t quite sit right? When a name or date just itches at the back of your mind? That’s how it started with Emily. Every family record listed her maiden name as Clinch, and I had no reason to doubt it, until one strange clue changed everything. And that little twist led me down a path of discovery I’ll never forget.
The Clue That Sparked It All
While researching my great-great-grandmother Ann Green, whose own story is a whirlwind, I came across an inconsistency that made me stop and think. Ann’s tale is dramatic enough for a historical novel: she was born in Dublin, ended up in London, and at just ten years old was tried for coining, counterfeiting money, with her father. Newspaper accounts from 1844 painted quite a scene: young Ann hiding twenty-two fake coins in her dress while her father, Thomas (going by the alias John Green), flung acid at police trying to arrest them.
Though Ann was acquitted due to her age, her father was sentenced to fifteen years of transportation to Australia. And Ann, despite being found not guilty, eventually followed, alongside her sister Matilda and their convict mother, arriving in Van Diemen’s Land in 1848 under the alias Barrow. I'd told much of this story already in my book In Search of Orphan Annie, but a few puzzle pieces were still missing.
In 1851, Ann married John Clinch, a fellow former convict. They had one child, Ann Matilda, in 1853. But John took off for the Victorian goldfields, as soon as he had received his conditional pardon, (free but must remain in the colony) before the baby was born and never came back. By 1856, he was in prison in Victoria.
Around 1856 and 1860, Ann had two more children, Emily and George Frederick, whose father was purported to be John Clinch. But how could that be? Wasn’t he in prison? Additionally, they were supposedly born in Sydney. However, despite scouring records, I could find no birth entries that matched. This is where that curious clue led me further down the rabbit hole. Was Emily really a Clinch? Or had we, as a family, been telling ourselves the wrong story all along?
Then came Neil Campbell, Ann’s final partner—perhaps husband, though no marriage record survives. With Neil, she had six more children in New Zealand, including my great-grandmother, Alice Zenobia Campbell. Ann's life took her from Dublin to London to Hobart to Auckland, and through it all, her children adapted.
Finally, A Break Through
The big break came while researching into one of Emily’s sons, Stanley. He was born Stanley Nelson Dean Schulze in 1895, the son of a German sea captain. But in World War I, he enlisted under the name Gunner S. Reece. Not Schulze—Reece. That struck me as odd. Yes, many people with German surnames anglicised or changed them during the war, but this wasn’t a vague alias. It felt purposeful. And then came the clincher: his military records listed his mother as "Emily maiden surname Reece." Not Clinch. Reece.
Wait—what?
That single detail shook everything loose. If Emily wasn’t born a Clinch, where did Reece come from? And how had I missed it?
Searching with New Eyes
I went back to basics. Instead of searching for Emily Clinch, I started looking for any child born to a woman named Ann Green, leaving the father’s name blank. I opened up the search area too—beyond Sydney, beyond New South Wales.
And that’s when it happened. Right at the top of the Family Search page, two unnamed children popped up:
A male child born in 1856 to George Rees and Ann Green, Hobart, Tasmania
A female child born in 1860 to the same couple, same place 1
They had to be George Frederick and Emily.
The penny dropped.
Emily wasn’t born Clinch at all—she was born Rees (or Reece, depending on the spelling). And George Frederick, likewise, started life as a Rees. The surname Clinch only came later. George also went on to use the surname Campbell later in life. Everything began to make sense.
Note: I should also add here that after a bit of super sleuthing into George Reese, he came out to Tasmania as a convict, as did his first wife Margaret Richardson. As we say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Emily’s Remarkable Life
Emily, born in Hobart in 1860, became an extraordinary woman in her own right. She married Oswald Waldemar Schulze, a German sea captain, in 1878. They had six children and moved across the Pacific, living in places like Tonga.
She wasn’t content to be just a wife and mother. In 1893, she signed New Zealand’s Women’s Suffrage Petition. In 1904, she even applied for a patent for a medical device. Clearly, she inherited her mother’s grit and ingenuity.
Emily passed her courage on to her son Stanley, who, during wartime, chose to reclaim his birthright and become a Reece again.
Why It Matters
Names in the colonial world were slippery things. People didn’t stick with one name the way we usually do today. They adapted to circumstances. Took new partners, moved colonies, shed past lives, and reinvented themselves. But bloodlines remain. The paperwork might have misled us for a time, but the records eventually revealed the truth.
So when Stanley signed up as Gunner Reece in 1915, he was reclaiming something more than a safe-sounding name. He was reaching back through the tangled branches of his family tree and anchoring himself to his mother’s true origin.
What Comes Next?
Now, I’m hoping to find Emily’s descendants. This may be possible through DNA matches, as we are connected through Emily’s mother, Ann. George Frederick, never had children, but Emily did, as did her half-brothers and sisters, allowing Ann’s line to continue.
If you are family reading this, please consider testing your DNA. We don’t all inherit the same pieces of DNA beyond our parents and grandparents. Perhaps you will be the one to help connect this family.
This was one of those “By Jove, I think I found them!” moments—the kind that keeps us family historians hooked.
So, if ever you find yourself puzzled by an ancestor who seems to vanish or whose records don’t align, take a breath. Step sideways. Search under the mother’s name, or the child’s middle name. Think like the person you’re researching, not like the bureaucrats who filed their papers.
Sometimes the story isn’t lost; it’s just hiding in plain sight.
I created a podcast using NotebookLM that summarises the story as an audio file. Click here to listen.
Note: Since finding these two birth entries on Family Search, I have been unable to replicate the exact search again. What does that indicate?
"Australia, Births and Baptisms, 1792-1981", FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XT68-313 : Wed Mar 05 19:48:34 UTC 2025), Entry for Rees and George Rees, 1860
Fabulous read. How exciting.
Haven't done a DNA yet.
Fascinating story - I love when one little nugget of information turns everything on its head and gives us answers we didn't know we were looking for.