Thomas Ambrose is even more mysterious than William Browne. Thomas married Florence Maude Jordan at St David's Church in Surry Hills, Sydney on 31st January 1894. The announcement in the Sydney Morning Herald stated that he was the eldest son of T. Ambrose of Brisbane. His marriage certificate states that he was a shearer, 29 years old, a bachelor, who lived on Castlereagh Street in Sydney, and was born in England. His father's name is given as Thomas Ambrose, a deceased estate agent. In place of his mother's name, there is a squiggly line. Even in 1894, it is hard to imagine pursuing a living as a shearer living on Castlereagh Street in the middle of Sydney. When his daughter Ivy was born, he stated that he was born in Brisbane, though he still claimed to be a shearer. He is later listed in the 1943 electoral roll and on his death certificate as a carpenter. On his daughter Ivy's marriage certificate he is listed as an engineer.
The only Thomas Ambrose recorded as born in Queensland, NSW, or Victoria in the relevant period was the second son of Henry Ambrose of Toowoomba. No recorded migrants arrived from England of compatible age, and no Thomas Ambrose died in Queensland between 1864 and 1894 that could be his father. It seems that his whole story was made up. On his death certificate, where his nephew, Joseph Robinson, was the informant, there are no parents' names, but he is said to have been born in Highgate Hill, Queensland. All this would make us think he was an orphan or an "illegitimate child" perhaps adopted by a Thomas Ambrose.[1]
We carried out a Leeds Analysis of David's DNA matches. This method first identifies people at the second cousin level as lead members of groups of matches and then finds people at the 3rd cousin level who are related to them. This usually results in four groups, one related to each grandparent. David's analysis resulted in four groups: Stern, Hirsch, Browne, and Ambrose. Browne only had one member - Faye Hartley - a member of the Woodward Family. The Ambrose cluster contained more people at the 3rd cousin level of DNA matches. As we already had detailed trees for the Davis and Jordan Families, we knew that these matches didn't belong to those families. We built a family tree for these matches on Geni. Their common ancestors are David Fincham and Phyllis Pilgrim, who came from Kenninghall in Norfolk and immigrated to Queensland in 1875. Phyllis died on arrival.
We then used a very stripped-down version of this tree and the number of shared centimorgans with both David and Rafi to do a WATO analysis. This method uses Bayes factors to estimate the odds of different hypotheses.[2] Allowing the system to automatically suggest hypotheses results in the greatest likelihood being assigned to Thomas as a full sibling of the other Fincham children. However, if he was born in 1864 he would then be a twin of Alice Maud and no-one of this sort appears on the 1871 British census, which reports on this family, and he doesn't arrive with David and Phyllis Fincham to Australia.
So, we think it is more likely that he was a half sibling of the other children. This means that Thomas would be either an "illegitimate" son of David Fincham if he was born around 1864 or a child of Phyllis Pilgrim if, in fact, he was born before they married in 1862. As Phyllis was 29 when she married David this is definitely possible. Another possibility that we considered is that he was a nephew of David or Phyllis Fincham.[3] Finally, as David Fincham was much older than his wife, we thought he might have had another child before his marriage who then gave birth to Thomas Ambrose. We then tested just these three hypotheses:
It is 13 times more likely that he was a half-sibling of the other Fincham children than he was either a nephew of David and Phyllis Fincham or a grandson of David Fincham. This means that it is also highly likely that he was born in England.
We did this analysis in 2023. Then in July 2024, Barbara Thurm, a DNA match of Rafi, contacted us. The family tree that she had constructed led back to John Pilgrim and Margaret Shardelow as our common ancestors, so that we are 5th cousins. Assuming that this is correct means that Thomas Ambrose was the son of Phyllis Pilgrim and was presumably born before she married David Fincham. This implies that Thomas was probably around five years older than he stated at his marriage. Thomas named his daughter - Ruth Leah's mother - Ivy Phyllis, which supports this idea.
Thomas and Florence had two daughters: Doris born in 1895 in Redfern and Ivy born on 9th November 1898 in Rockdale (both in Sydney). Doris married Jesse Hurst in 1918, but she died in 1924. They had one child – Kenneth Hurst. Kenneth married Joan Saunders Swinbourne and they had three children.
Ivy married Wallace Mann in 1919. She had three children with Wallace: Richard, Muriel, and Joyce, known as Joy. They divorced by 1930 and Ivy married Sydney Browne in 1931. Their story is on the Browne Family page.
According to Ruth Leah Browne, at first she grew up not knowing she had half-siblings - her mother had abandoned them to an orphanage. At some point, they came and introduced themselves. Muriel and Richard would later visit Ruth Leah and her family in England and Joy corresponded with Ruth Leah. Joy helped her mother, Ivy, when she suffered from dementia but resented her earlier treatment.
Thomas died at his home in Punchbowl, Sydney, NSW on 19th June 1948. Thomas was cremated at Rookwood. Florence died on 6th July 1953 in Randwick.
Muriel and Joyce married two brothers: William and Colin Thomson. Joyce and William had a daughter, Linda, who became estranged, Ruth Leah said that no-one knew where she was, but apparently Joy had her address. It seems that Muriel had a daughter, Heather Cox, which we know from a letter from "Marie Lyons" to Ruth Leah about Joy's death and funeral, which the latter two attended.
Richard died in 1990 and Joy died in 1994 both in Sydney. Muriel lived for a while in Canberra and died in 2010.
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Endnotes
[1] Three Thomas Ambrose's arrived in Australia in the relevant period who were not seamen. The only Thomas Ambrose who arrived in Queensland (on the Duke of Buccleuch) was married with children and was born in 1860. So, this seems to be neither Thomas Ambrose nor his father. A 25 year old arrived in 1862 from Liverpool to Melbourne with two younger sisters, Bessie and Johanna, on the Star of India. Finally, T. Ambrose, aged 37 arrived from Mauritius in February 1858 on the Admiral Napier. There were only two passengers on board and the captain declared that they weren't immigrants within the meaning of the Victorian act that made provisions for certain immigrants. The Admiral Napier set sail for Singapore in March with Tom Ambrose on board, but now aged 30! Two convicts named Thomas Ambrose arrived earlier. A Thomas Ambrose also appeared in a Brisbane newspaper in 1852. The 1862 arrival is, therefore, the only recorded possibility for Thomas Ambrose's father.
The only recorded marriage of a T. Ambrose in Victoria was in 1874 to Margaret Daily. Both parties were Irish. It is difficult to link this to the 1862 arrival as that was recorded as English. In any case, they can't be the parents of our Thomas Ambrose. There is an 1863 marriage in Sydney between Thomas Ambrose and Mary Lanigan. A couple named Thomas and Mary had three children from 1864 to 1868 at MacDonald River northwest of Sydney, so this looks like them. According to Geni this Thomas was the son of the convict who arrived in 1790 born in 1804. There are no recorded marriages of a Thomas Ambrose in Queensland till 1897.
Only two Thomas Ambroses died in NSW in the relevant period. One in 1871 is the Thomas born in 1804. The other died in 1892 in Inverell. The latter was born in 1881 in the same place.
If Thomas Ambrose was born in England, as we think, we still don't know how Thomas got to Australia.
[2] The Bayes factor is the ratio of the likelihood function under the two different hypotheses. If the prior probability of each hypothesis is equal the posterior odds of the two hypotheses is equal to the Bayes factor. There are no free parameters to be estimated in this problem, so the likelihood is the product of the probability densities (from the population distributions) of the observed centimorgans for each match given the assumed relationship for that person under the hypothesis. This is a mouthful and might be easier to understand with some equations, but at least David now understands it. The WATO analysis makes most sense when you have a small number of hypotheses that you can say are equally likely a priori. So, first decide which relationships are ruled out a priori.
[3] A possible candidate for Thomas Ambrose's mother is Charlotte Pilgrim who appears on the 1841 census living with two other girls. She may have been Phillis' sister as Charlotte and Phillis' mother, Bathsheba, had died. She was a teacher who may have died in 1860.
Last updated on 7 February 2025
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