Publications
The Russell Reeves Mystery, by Martin Williams, published March 2015 in Sussex Family Historian (vol. 21 no. 5, article, pp.229-233) accessible at: W.S.R.O. [Lib 15860] & The Keep [LIB/508855]
Preview:Three generations of REEVES men, all bricklayers, were laid to rest at the Kyabram Cemetery in regional Victoria, Australia. The only male REEVES of his generation was my grandfather, Albert George REEVES, and the REEVES name died with him in 1989. The oral family history was that Robert Russell REEVES emigrated from Hastings, Sussex in the late 19th Century. This proved correct - his marriage certificate states that on Christmas Eve 1888, at Moonee Ponds (Melbourne), Victoria, a groom named George Robert RUSSELL-REEVES, 25 years old, born at Hastings, married my 2 x grandmother Florence PAYNE. The certificate also reveals that the witnesses present at the wedding were George Albert RUSSELL-REEVES and Willie Charles Ellis REEVES - names completely unfamiliar in our family history. It was an inquiry into the lives of these witnesses that would unearth the intrigue of how the family name came from Hastings to Melbourne.