Daniel Cottier Bate of Liverpool, England and Australia
Daniel Cottier Bate was baptized on Nov. 13, 1825 at the church of St. Peter in Church Street, Liverpool, Lancashire, England. His parents were William and Catherine (Cottier) Bate. His younger sister, Rebecca (Bate) Buck, was my great-great-grandmother. Daniel does not appear with his family in the 1841 England census. See William and Catherine (Cottier) Bate for more information. At the time that census was taken Daniel would have been about 16.
My mother's cousin, John Buck, has provided much useful information on the Cottier and Bate families. In a letter from John to me dated July 25, 1993, he told me the following story:
"Dean Babcock said one time a man got off the train apparently of a hobo status and came to Azel Buck's where he died about three days later, and Azel had to have him buried. He had told Rebecca that he had worked for her brother in Australia and this was why he came looking for her in Canada."
Dean Babcock was my grandmother's cousin; his mother was a Buck. Dean did much work on the family history. Azel Buck was Rebecca (Bate) Buck's husband. This story must date to the second half of the 1800s. If not for this story, I would probably have assumed that Daniel Bate died young. I would never have known to look for him in Australia. Rebecca had only three brothers, William, Daniel and John. John moved to what is now Ontario, Canada, with his family and appears there in census records with them. I have tentatively identified William in Ontario too, and John Buck has heard stories involving an "Uncle Billy Bate" in Ontario. It made sense that Daniel was the one who had gone to Australia.
I have found the following death record on the http://www.ancestry.com website:
Name: Daniel Bate
Death Date: 1899
Death Place: New South Wales
Father's Name: William
Mother's Name: Catherine
Registration Year: 1899
Registration Place: Liverpool, New South Wales
This record looks like a good fit for several reasons. First, the last name is listed as Bate. Many of the records for this family show the name as Bates but Bate appears to be what they called themselves. Daniel Cottier Bate would have been about 74 in 1899, which seems like a reasonable age at death. Unfortunately the record does not tell us how old this Daniel Bate was when he died. The names of the parents fit with Daniel Cottier Bate`s parents. It`s also interesting that the registration place for the death, which is also presumably the area where he lived, is Liverpool. As Daniel Cottier Bate was from Liverpool, England, he may well have been drawn to a place named Liverpool. This Liverpool is now a suburb of Sydney, Australia.
The http://www.ancestry.com website has one more record that might be this Daniel. I found it in the database called Sands Directories of Sydney and New South Wales, Australia, 1858 - 1933. In the 1870 directory, there is a D. Bate listed as living at Pyrmont Bridge Rd. in Glebe, a suburb of Sydney. I will watch for new releases of Australia databases to see if I can confirm that this is my Daniel. Unfortunately I have found nothing so far to indicate whether this Daniel Bate married and had a family.