Con Colleano and Winifred Constance Stanley Trevail

Winifred Constance Stanley Trevail and Con Colleano

My 2nd cousin, twice removed, Winifred Constance Stanley Trevail, daughter of Herbert Fleming Trevail and Alice Maud Stanley Blazey was the wife of - IMDB is the only source to list a date (but no other details) for their marriage as 10 July 1926 - Con Colleano (Cornelius Sullivan), who was the most famous and highest paid "swashbuckling circus performer with matinee idol looks" of his time, known as “The Australian Wizard of the Wire”. A member of the Circus Hall of Fame, Con Colleano is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the first person to prefect the forward somersault on the tight wire.

"Winnie Trevail began appearing on the stage in Sydney (and before that in New Zealand) as a child [...] "Mrs. Winnie Colleano (neé Trevail) was herself a well known Australian Vaudeville Soubrette", dancer and trapeze artist.

Con Colleano on a slack-wire, circa 1920

Con Colleano, born Cornelius Sullivan, on 26 Dec 1899 in Lismore, New South Wales, was of Aboriginal, Anglo-Irish and West Indian descent and adopted a Spanish persona and a costume of a ‘toreador’ or bullfighter. 

Colleano’s Indigenous heritage was unknown to his fans – which included one of history’s most infamous racists - "Few people are aware of the fact that in the 1930’s, Adolf Hitler issued an Aboriginal Australian tightrope walker with a German passport so he could come and go as he pleased."

Trevail abandoned her own career in 1924 to travel with her husband.

Passenger lists reveal that Cornelius Sullivan and Winifred C. S. Trevail left Southampton, England on 13 Sep 1924, on the RMS Berengaria (former SS Imperator), The first Cunard "Queen". This was their first trip to the US, so their port of arrival was the infamous Ellis Island, New York. Various sources tell us that, in 1924, Con made his debut at the New York Hippodrome before returning to the circus with Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

There is a subsequent record of Cornelius and Winifred C Sullivan Colleano travelling from Southampton to New York, on the Berengaria, on 24 Feb 1937. 

On 7 Jan 1938, Cornelius and Winifred (Sullivan) Colleano, left Sydney, bound for California, on the luxury American ocean liner, SS Mariposa (1931).

On 8 Sep 1939, Cornelius and Winifred Sullivan, listed as British, board the Italian ocean liner, SS Rex, leaving the port of Genoa, bound for New York.

These, I'm sure are just the tip of a globe-trotting iceberg, but it was finding these records of voyages that led me to discover more of their story.

The former Albion Hotel (pub) at Forbes, New South Wales, Sheba, CC BY-SA 2.0

"Sadly Con and Winnie ultimately lost all their money indulging in a luxurious lifestyle, giving it away to friends and making a disastrous investment in a pub in outback Australia in the 1950s (what were they thinking?)." 

Con died, in Miami, on 13 Nov 1973, after which Winnie returned to Australia, where she died, in Sydney, in January 1986. They had no children.

Con Colleano home movie: circus preparations (1928)

Were they really married? Who cares?

IMDB is the only place to list a supposed date, but not place, for their marriage. I've [so far] been unable find a record of a marriage anywhere in the world, which, of course, doesn't mean there wasn't one. However, in all the articles I've read about the couple, including Con's obituary, not once is the date and place of their marriage ever mentioned, which I find strange. On the other hand, I did find a record of a marriage of a Winifred C Trevail, in Victoria, Australia, in 1919 to a Leonard Mendoza. It would take $20 AUS to obtain the certificate to see if there are enough clues to tell whether this is the same Winifred C Trevail or not, but several things occur to me: Just how many people named Winifred C Trevail are there likely to be? One source claims that Winnie met Con, in Melbourne, which of course is in Victoria, when she was 22. Not hard to imagine that she may have met and married someone else there when she was 19. Someone with the surname Mendoza even sounds like her "type". Who knows? 

You know that I'm much amused by the frequent, self-aggrandising family stories, but this one probably takes the biscuit - although no surprise perhaps among theatrical types. In several articles, it mentions that Winnie "claimed descent from the Earls of Derby" and it appears that the source of that quote is her own brother, Eric, so it may well have been a story perpetuated in the family. A claim doesn't make it true though! And through which side would that be, I wonder? The line we share: the 'illegitimate born' former dyer who downgraded to labourer in Norfolk, or the bankrupted tenant farmer in Cornwall? Lovely people, I'm sure, but Earls or any other type of nobs they were not!

Sources (many of these links contain images):

1. Con Colleano From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2. “The Australian Wizard of the Wire”
3. AUSTRALIAN VARIETY THEATRE ARCHIVE
4. Inducted into the Ring of Fame: 1992
5. Meet the true circus wonders
6. Con Colleano: Australia's 'Wizard of the Wire'
7. Con Colleano: Wizard of the Wire
8. Colleano, Con (Cornelius) (1899–1973)
9. Circus pays homage to wire wizard
10. Interview with Eric Trevail, brother of Winnie Colleano
11. The Aboriginal tightrope walker who duped Hitler & Mussolini

Videos:

1. Con Colleano rehearsing his tight wire act at his home, circa 1939
2. COLLEANO, CON, Australia's tightwire wizard (USA, c.1929)
3. COLLEANO, CON, a life commemorated, (Australia, 2005)
4. COLLEANO, CON, mini-doco of tightwire artist (Australia, 1994)
5. Con Colleano home movie: circus preparations (1928)

Further reading: The wizard of the wire : the story of Con Colleano 

Daniel Thompson Botterill and Jessie Elizabeth Maslin

80 Queens Road, Peckham

Daniel Thompson Botterill, second son of Dan Stephen Thompson Botterill and Mary Jane Harris, married Jessie Elizabeth Maslin, daughter of James Maslin and Jessie Elizabeth Dunford, in the 3rd quarter of 1905, in Greenwich.

Daniel and Jessie then had two sons: 

1. Joseph Daniel Botterill born 3rd quarter of 1907, died in the 1st quarter of 1908 and buried on 25 January 1908 at Charlton Cemetery (Greenwich)
2. Daniel Thompson Botterill born in the 3rd quarter of 1908, in Greenwich

The second boy, like David Copperfield, was a posthumous child, because Daniel Thompson Botterill had died, aged 26, at 26 Inverine Road, Charlton and had been buried, on 18 January 1908, at Charlton Cemetery (Greenwich). 

Not unsurprisingly therefore, we find that Jessie Elizabeth Botterill remarried in 1910, to Welshman, Evelyn John Gutton Budge. Confirming that I'd found the correct spouse, Jessie Elizabeth Budge is living with her son, Daniel Tompson Batterell (sic) (2), in 1911 in Gillingham, Kent. Her new husband however, was boarding in the household of a Henry Webb in Chatham. That doesn't seem far enough away for him to be boarding for a work related necessity, so I suspect an estrangement, but I'm still looking for a record of a divorce or Jessie's death.

In 1912, Jessie Elizabeth Budge is listed on the Electoral Register at 80 Queens Road, Peckham (second floor), a mystery in itself as she would not have had the vote until at least 1918 and only then if she had enough wealth [unlikely].

Meanwhile, records show that Evelyn John Gutton Budge had arrived in Quebec, Canada in Jun 1911 and appears to have travelled alone. In 1913, he crossed the border into the United States, where he appears to do Military Service during WWI and, in 1917, married Mabel Dorothy Morris. They apply for Naturalization in 1918 and he died there in Los Angeles, California on 2 Sep 1969.

There are some indications that Daniel Thompson Botterill (b. 1908) may have gone to Canada at a later date, which I still need to investigate.