Strange Notations From a Laborious Life

Like many people I am interested in my family history and heritage. Wanting to know where your roots lie is, I guess, a very human trait.
I’m very lucky. I have a rich vein running back through my ancestors with English, Irish, Scottish, Protestant and of course, Catholic blood.
My father always talked about a fellow called “Cecimus” Sumner who had supposedly come out to Australia with his brother, my great, great grandfather, Henry Sumner, then disappeared and not much was known about him or where he ended up.
Cecimus has almost become a mythical figure to me. Every time family history was brought up my Father would start again, “there was a Cecimus Sumner who my Dad always talked about…wonder what happened to him?”
Now one would think that someone with a name like “Cecimus” wouldn’t be too hard to track down, I’ve certainly never heard of anyone else with a name like that but Cecimus has indeed proved elusive over the years.
My aunty did the Sumner family tree years ago and Cecimus didn’t pop up out of those investigations although I must say much of the photocopied paperwork of birth, death and marriage certificates, many which were copies of documents over 100 years old were almost illegible. I guess Cecimus could have been in there somewhere and you could miss him due to bad handwriting. Neatness must not have been a priority when you were entering name after name on a ledger sheet.
These records only dealt with those of my ancestors who had lived and been born in Australia and Cecimus had gone off and done his own thing, reputedly to South Australia so it wasn’t a suprise that he didn’t pop up.
The advent of the internet age didn’t help and Cecimus remained a mystery and I began to think that he may have been a figment of the collective family imagination.
Recently I was at my Father’s place discussing the Herald SunTour cycling race which was coming up and I was showing him the computer graphic of the first stage of the race which ran through Gisborne in central Victoria. My great,great Grandfather, Henry Sumner is buried there and of course Dad’s thoughts turned to Cecimus again.
“Dad said there was a Cecimus Sumner who came out with his brother…..”
So, having recently joined the website, Ancestry.com I got to work to try to find Cecimus and solve the family mystery once and for all.
The Sumners of my line can be traced back to Formby, Lancashire and I got back as far as Richard Sumner, a surgeon, who had been born in Formby in 1797. Much of the problem with researching our family tree is that each generation had named a son after a brother so there are several men named “Thomas”, “Richard” and “John” and you are never quite sure which era you are looking at unless you study the timelines properly. This continued down to my own grandfather who was John Richard Sumner.
I had been through several generations of Sumners of Formby when I flicked back to the page of Dr Richard Sumner and noticed he had nine children. One of his sons, born in 1831 was named, “Septimus”!
Septimus Sumner. Could this have been the elusive “Cecimus”?
I said to Dad, “Is this him, Septimus Sumner?”
“That’s him, Cecimus Sumner!”, replied my Father, a little thankful I think that he wasn’t crazy and Cecimus/Septimus had actually lived.
So part of the mystery was solved but some of it remained. The records as I said showed that Septimus had been born in Formby in 1831 but there were no other records of him. He had obviously gone to South Australia and been lost to my line of the family at least.
I daresay I have relatives in South Australia who may be able to fill me in on what happened to him. Maybe on a rainy day sometime in the future I can delve more deeply into the family tree and once and for all solve the mystery of “Cecimus” Sumner!