Immigration & Emigration

Members of this family have flown all over the world for all kinds of reasons over the years. There were Featonbys who joined the Gold Rush to Australia and settled in Victoria, including one who became a founder shareholder in the transport company that developed into Yarra Trams; Ritcheys who left coal mining in the North East of England to make a new life as farmers in Canada, though one joined the army there and came back to Europe to fight in WW1 before moving down to Detroit, Michigan; one William Chicken emigrated in about 1881 to Bohemia (now Czech Republic) to work in the coal mines there. 

William and his wife, Mary, had two children in England before moving to Bohemia. It's hard to imagine the courage needed to move a family overseas to a country with a different language, different customs and different culture. William probably met other English men at the mine - he wouldn't be the  only immigrant but Mary would have to go to shops where English was a foreign tongue, with currency that she'd never seen before. They obviously made the effort and settled, because their next child was born in Bohemia and named Richard Ludwig Chicken. Their eldest daughter is listed in the family Bible as Barbara Chicken (Huhn). For some time I thought that was perhaps her married name until it was pointed out to me that Huhn is German for Chicken. 

They didn't lose their contact with the old country though. A grandson, Ludwig Chicken known as Lutz, became a well-known mountaineer, married a woman who was born in Yorkshire of Austrian descent and was noted for always speaking English at home.  

Their eldest son became a "manufacturer's agent" and travelled between England and Austria regularly. He married in Austria and their second son was born in Germany in 1914. It's hard to imagine the situation they found themselves in - a marriage that straddled two countries with a child born in a third at the outbreak of war involving all three. Somehow they came through safely and lived to a ripe old age, unlike their eldest son who was killed fighting in what was then Burma in WW2. 

Somewhere there might be descendants of William and Mary's daughters Barbara, Isabella Anna and Ellen. I haven't been able to find any details of their lives at all, other than the birth of Barbara in Nottinghamshire and her baptism in County Durham. The birth and names of the other two were told to me by the relative who had the family bible but unfortunately that disappeared after his death. Attempts to search the records in the region of their probable births have been thwarted by not knowing which parish they would have lived in, and not even being certain of the town.  I'd love to hear from them if anyone reads this.

Image of the church of St James courtesy of  Orange.man - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3943744

#52Ancestors

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