Elderly relatives have claimed that John Henry William Shade was of German descent and that the name might have originally been Schade. Providing further evidence of his nationality, the Victorian Police Gazette of Nov 3, 1864 contained an advertisement requesting information in respect of the same Henry Shade who had left his family in about 1855 and was last seen in Sydney; this specified that he was "a German, but speaks English well". It is officially documented that he was born about 1816 at Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. There is known to have been immigration to South Africa from Germany prior to this. (He made his way to New Zealand, then to Australia, going to Tasmania, finally settling in Victoria before leaving a family and disappearing from the records.)

In order to find out more information about the Shade family, Frederick Shade has had his DNA tested and stored with FTDNA. The haplogroup is I1 (I-M253). The following information is available in respect of this haplogroup in Wikipedia: "In human genetics, Haplogroup I1 is a Y chromosome haplogroup associated with Nordic ethnicity and occurs at greatest frequency in Scandinavia. The mutations identified with Haplogroup I1 (Y-DNA) are M253, M307, P30, and P40. These are known as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). It is a subclade of Haplogroup I. ...The group displays a very clear frequency gradient, with a peak of approximately 40 percent among the populations of western Finland and more than 50 percent in the province of Satakunta, around 35 percent in southern Norway, southwestern Sweden especially on the island of Gotland, Denmark and northern Germany, with rapidly decreasing frequencies toward the edges of the historically Germanic (especially Viking) sphere of influence."

The layout of this website is in the form of the 4 generations, with supporting data on census transcription pages, photo pages, a complete index of names of everyone mentioned (the "Names" button above), and a page index that leads directly to each individual page in the website (the "Page Index" button above). To start reading from oldest downwards, press the button above ("Family History Next Gen"). The Home Page button takes you to my other family trees.

The direct line to Fred is
(1) John Henry William Shade & Harriet Diment
(2) Theodore Shade & Mary Jane Chinery
(3) Albert Shade & Ada Evenia Johnson
(4) Albert Ernest Shade & Mary Beatrice Chapple.

The name Shade is quite rare. Another Shade family arose on Alderney, Channel Islands in the late 1700s, being from the marriage in 1788 of Thomas Shade (or Schade) to Rachel Picot. Some of the children were christened with French name equivalents (such as Jean Pierre) leading to the conclusion that they initially came from France. This has yet to be confirmed. Some of the descendants moved to Singleton, New South Wales, Australia, and some to Ontario, Canada.

Recent Changes

Photos of Ern and Beatrice Shade added to photo page on 19 Jan 2018