One Thousand Years of Jarman Family History
1000 A.D. – 2000 A.D.
Part One
The
First Half-Millennium
Generations
0 to 19
Introduction
The phrase “from humble
beginnings” -- more often used to describe great men and women than family
research – is, surely, the only
appropriate way to begin to explain -- and, I hope, to justify -- this
fifteen-year-long “retirement project”. It began, really, with a long-forgotten
box of old photographs, salvaged, in 1979, from the bottom of a wardrobe in the
Marrickville home unit of my just-deceased grandmother, Hanora (Norah) Ellen
Trathen. The box was promptly consigned to the bottom of another wardrobe –
this time in Blaxland -- where it was just as promptly forgotten, and where it
remained undisturbed until around 1991, when a “new broom” – in the form of its
newest occupant, my wife, Helen – swept through no. 56, Grahame Street, and
brought the photographs into the light of day for the first time in more than
thirty years.
A war refugee from Vietnam,
Helen had fled her home country under circumstances which precluded the
preservation of family heirlooms; to her, that box of photographs and letters,
many nearly a century old, was a treasure chest almost beyond imagining.
Determined to preserve, restore, and catalogue everything, Helen immediately
began questioning me about the identities of the subjects; I, in turn, was
dismayed at the realisation of how little I knew about past members of my own
family, and all through my own fault. Every one of the photographs had, at some
time in the past, been shown to me, and I recall that my grandmother had a
story to tell for every one. I also recall that I was, during her lifetime,
supremely uninterested in both her photographs and the stories attached to
them, so that, by 1992, I could scarcely put a name to a face; and there was,
now, no one to whom I could turn for assistance.
So the photographs and letters
were duly mounted in albums – with, of necessity, most of the names left blank -- and I began
to encounter other people who had much the same tale to tell regarding their
own family history: when the information was there for the picking, they were
too young, too “contemporary”, to absorb any of it, and now that their
new-found maturity – which probably means their awareness of their mortality –
had made them aware of, and acutely interested in, family members who had
already departed, they found that the information they now coveted had departed
also, never to be reclaimed. I also, around this time, found myself with two
new children – making a total of five – and I made up my mind that, whether
they wanted it or not, this new generation would have, after my passing, at
least some kind of permanent record of the generations that had preceded them.
Of course, there wasn’t so
much as a thought then that this permanent record would go back more than three
or four generations. At that time I would have been quite happy just to record,
for posterity, the fact that my grand-uncle had befriended Henry Lawson, and
that my grandmother would routinely take me to the annual Anzac march in the
streets of Sydney
and point proudly to the banners that she had, as a young woman, personally
embroidered.
But, like many projects that
begin small, this one quickly took on a life of its own, and gradually became
an obsession (a term which I would soon hear, again and again, whenever family
research came up in discussion; it seems that every other family has its own
resident fanatic, the person who spends countless hours deciphering
inscriptions on old tombstones and rousing pastors of country churches for an
inspection of dusty parish records – to both of which charges I plead guilty);
every so often I would almost lose
heart and give the whole project away, but then, out of nowhere, would come an
unexpected discovery that would fire the enthusiasm all over again and propel
me toward the next revelation.
For me, the very first of
these was the fact that my great-great grandparents, William Patterson and Jane
Stewart (Generation 5) arrived in Sydney (at Campbell’s Wharf) in 1849 on, of
all dates, May 25; and, moreover, that their baby, William Jr, died just a few
hours later, before they even had a chance to set foot on Australian soil. That
intensely ‘personalised’ discovery was enough to send me down to Campbell’s Wharf (which I
had previously passed a thousand times without so much as a glance) for a fresh
look.
Then there was the
revelation -- after a visit to St
Peter’s Church for what started out as a casual inspection of their records and
from there, far less-casually, to the Public Library for a trawl through the
Sydney Morning Heralds of 1849 -- of the ‘Lack murders’ at Campbelltown. This
discovery, exciting in itself, led to one of the high points of the whole
research project: the day in the State Archives in Globe Street, Sydney, when
the archivist presented me with a pair of gloves, an old box, and strict
instructions on how to handle original documents and relics; and there, for my
perusal, were police and witness statements, hand-drawn floor plans, and court
transcripts. I expect that this was the moment my interest became a true
obsession; without any help from H.G. Wells, I had discovered my own time
machine, and from that day on, there was no stopping me.
Within a few months, I had
discovered that my great-great-great grandfather, Robert Lack, had been a
contractor to Lachlan Macquarie, and that a letter regarding his duties,
bearing the governor’s initials, was still held in the Archives of NSW; and
that his wife, Elizabeth Lack (as Elizabeth Richardson, one of the
‘Campbelltown victims’) was the daughter of two first-fleeters (this discovery,
of course, opened up for my inspection a formidable body of data about my two
convict antecedents; research on First-Fleeters abounds, both in the Family
History section of local libraries, and on the internet. All at once, my humble
research had extended beyond Australian shores, all the way to Fishmonger’s
Alley, St Saviour, and the Court of Assizes in Kingston-Upon-Thames,
Southwark, London).
Even if I had never discovered
the Pottingers – and, for many years, I had not identified the name, as the
only original document to which I had access had misspelled the name as
‘Pettinger’ -- the family research project would have yielded seven
generations’ worth of information and five years’ worth of enthralling discoveries,
far more than I had even dreamed of when it was begun. But, undoubtedly, it would have run down of
its own accord soon afterwards, for lack of pre-18th century
information on what were essentially peasant-farmer families (who, generally,
left few traces), to fuel it. Entries in my ‘pre-Pottinger’ research became
progressively leaner with each generation, until, at one stage, I was down to
as little as three or four, alongside a host of ‘unknowns’.
Annie Georgina Keating
Pottinger (my great-grandmother), however, was the gateway to another thirty
generations, at least. The Pottingers were well-documented, in Australia, India,
Hong Kong, South
Africa, Afghanistan,
and in the United Kingdom.
There were monuments, photographs, newspaper articles, and even whole books: a
monument to Annie’s uncle, Frederick William Pottinger, had been erected – and
long overlooked by anyone in our family – less than a kilometre from our home;
its eventual discovery, and the wealth of half-remembered Australian history that
surfaced as a result of it, constituted another of those defining moments which
reinforced the obsession which this project had produced.
It was the Pottinger research
that, eventually, caused me to undertake a major re-organisation of the
information I had collected; which, in turn, determined the format of the
completed work (not just a genealogical record -- a traditional ‘family tree’--
but a genealogical encyclopedia, which, in spite of its of-necessity
complexity, had first and foremost to be ‘readable’,
which most genealogies I had encountered
most-certainly were not), and
which helped me, eventually, to define realistic time limits for a research
that could, at least in theory, have stretched right back through the Norse
Chronicles and beyond: a Jarman Millennium, going backwards from the beginning
of the third Millennium to the end of the first.
The title – decided on during
the 2000 ‘new Millennium’ euphoria – came after I had realised the breadth and
depth of information I now had at my disposal, but before I had fully
appreciated the enormity of the task such a title implied. A millennium equals around thirty-five
generations; working backwards, each generation contains twice the number of
entries as the one preceding it. Even leaving out Helen’s family entirely
(which would have left just two remaining entries for Generation 2), the number
of entries in thirty-five generations would -- before the ‘unknowns’ (which I
was, of course, anxious to minimize) whittled it down to manageable size --
have amounted to 2, plus 2 to the power of 2, plus 2 to the power of 3, plus….
all the way up to 2 to the power of 34: a number far in excess of the total
number of people in the early second-millennium world, and, of course,
logically impossible, as well as far beyond my power to tabulate.
The obvious solution to the
absurdity of the figure is, simply, that, if one goes back in time far enough,
the same name will appear as an ancestor in two, three, or even more ‘lines’
(King Robert II Stewart of Scotland, who was reputed to have had up to
twenty-five children, is the converging point of at least nine separate
genealogical lines, and, as a result, is recorded in Generations 21, 22, and
23. Similarly, his granddaughter, Mary Stewart – sister of King James I of Scotland
– was married at least four times, and every one of these marriages – to George
Douglas, to James Kennedy, to Sir William Graham, and to William Edmonstone –
began a new genealogical line, of varying lengths, for the family).
Every time two
previously-separate lines merged – and it happened, naturally, with increasing
frequency as the time frame of the research lengthened – I confess to a feeling
of relief: hundreds of prospective entries (for more-distant generations) made
redundant in a single stroke! What rather surprised me was how few generational
‘steps’ one needed to retrace before the occurrence of a ‘merge’: as early as
Generation 12, the twice-married Thomas Curwen occurs as father of Thomas
Curwen in one line and of Agnes Curwen in another. So those two lines, from the
elder Thomas backwards in time, can be treated as one, simplifying the
compilation (fewer entries) but, at the same time, making the organisation of
the information extremely tricky: generations do not, unfortunately, ‘move’ in
equal, synchronised steps; a twelfth ancestor in one line may well be a
different-numbered ancestor in another. Thomas Curwen, a father in Generation
12, is the same man who is a father in Generation 16; how can this be tabulated
without the necessity of hordes of multiple entries as one continues backwards
to his ancestors, while still keeping
the format reasonably clear and, as already mentioned, readable?
Since the format chosen for
this project was markedly different from any I had seen in any other published
family tree, I had no precedent to guide me here, and I make no claim that the
eventual solution decided upon would ever rate as ‘world’s best practice’:
quite simply, the most-recent occurrence of a name was treated as the ‘essential’
occurrence, and the one from which earlier generations were charted.
More-distant occurrences were simply listed with a reference back to the
original (thus, the afore-mentioned Robert II Stewart of Scotland, occurring in three
separate generations, is charted from the ‘most-recent’ occurrence, which is,
in this case, Generation 21).
While this solution was
effective in allowing the fewest possible number of discrete entries, it could
do nothing to “align” the members of the separate lines in order that, for
instance, siblings would occur – as, logically, they ought to -- in the same
generation; in the case of Sir Henry Curwen, his appearance in Generation 16 as
the patriarch of one genealogical line means that a child on that line is
recorded in Generation 15, three generations earlier than Sir Henry’s own
subsequent ‘appearance’ as patriarch of another line in Generation 12. Sir
Henry’s name, therefore, occurs in the same generation as his own
great-great-granddaughter (Mary Lowther) from his ‘other’ family line, and his
two wives (one for each line) are separated by four generational ‘steps’. With
the compilation of each earlier generation, occurrences of this particular
anomaly become more frequent, and the data more complex. This, however, is no
more, nor less, than historical reality; suddenly, the seemingly-impossible
Mathematics associated with twenty or thirty generations becomes
understandable, and reasonable.
Interpretation of the data is,
therefore, not quite as easy as it might first appear, or as I would have
liked; some cross-referencing and jumping between generations is required for
the chronology to make any sense. In return for such effort, however, the
reader will find a virtual treasure-trove of history at its most enthralling
and at its most personal: there is great achievement and great disgrace; there
are kidnappings, discoveries, assassinations, triumphs, failures, political and
romantic intrigues, and even the odd miracle or two. There are tales of
monarchs, statesmen, explorers, inventors, scientists, warriors, executioners,
holy men, law makers, and law breakers. And every one is a direct antecedent of
the present Jarman family.
The question will, of course,
be asked: is any of this really true? Genealogy is, admittedly, a somewhat-discredited
science, more akin to myth than to Mathematics. Researching the data, I soon
despaired at how frequently, in previous studies, I observed conclusions
hastily accepted on the most tenuous of evidence, in defiance of all logic, and
despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary (the saga of Sarah Eggleton and
Sarah Eglinton, in Generation 6, became an amusing and quite convoluted
sidetrack which eventually found its way to the meeting rooms of the Society of
Australian Geneaologists and the First Fleeters Association). It is hard to
take genealogical research seriously when researchers, for want of more
accurate information, blithely record children born a half-century after the
death of both parents, or mothers bearing children at age seven and continuing
to bear at age seventy. There is, regrettably, a lot of misinformation in the
public domain, most of it on the internet, but more than a little in the
‘respected’ sources. I made up my mind that whenever I was unable to resolve
the problems of logic so often “swept under the carpet” by my sources, I would
record ‘Unknown’ for that particular entry, and the particular line would stop
at that point. There are, I fear, a great many ‘unknowns’ in this project.
The above statement may be
read as a claim to some degree of prudence in the compilation of this project,
but not, by any means, to infallibility. To the question, “Is any of this
really true?” I can confidently answer, “Most definitely; nearly all of it”. To
the more-important question, “Is all
of this really true?”, I would have to answer, certainly not. It is, however,
as accurate as a decade-and-a-half of enthusiastic (if inexpert) research can
make it. But even as it is being compiled, new research is uncovering
hitherto-unknown facts which will, of course, invalidate some of the entries,
even those currently accepted in all current research. In two respects, this
project is a work in progress: the “unknowns” cry out for a future genealogist
in the family to continue the research, using sources not yet examined and
discoveries not yet made. The inaccuracies that have undoubtedly crept in –
perhaps even some of the absurdities mentioned above, which have managed to
slip through unnoticed – demand to be corrected in the light of future, more-accurate
research using fresh sources and newly-discovered information: a task, once
again, for a future family researcher.
This is, perhaps, the greatest
gift I can bestow on this ‘Jarman genealogist-of-the-future’, since – as I
have, I hope, made abundantly clear in this introduction – the voyage of
discovery on which this project has led me is an endlessly enthralling,
immensely fulfilling one: it has taken me places I would not otherwise have
visited (the garden of the Council Chambers in Campbelltown, the
Police/Bushrangers’ Dinner at Rooty Hill RSL Club, the field at Bannockburn,
Pottinger’s Entry in Belfast, the cemetery at Steeple Morden in
Cambridgeshire), seen things I would not otherwise have seen (the Rosetta Stone
in the British Museum; the memorial to Major Eldred Pottinger in St Thomas’s
Cathedral, Mumbai; the tribute -- with photographs and artefacts – to Frederick
William Pottinger at McDonald’s, Blaxland), and ‘met’ people I would otherwise
never have known (the names of at least
some of whom are listed in Acknowledgements).
This is a torch that I am proud to pass to present and future family members:
there are many more places to visit, things to see, people to learn from.
On its own, this sense of
fulfilment would, I feel, have been sufficient justification for me to
undertake this project, and to persevere with it for so many years. However,
there is, I have discovered, a quite separate, but equally-compelling, reward
in compiling a work such as this, one which all present and future members of
the Jarman family line ought to be alerted to: one becomes aware, as never
before, of one’s membership in something larger, and of greater significance,
than one’s immediate family and one’s immediate society. A genealogical line is
a continuum stretching a thousand years into the past and ten times as far into
the future, and each person in the line represents no more than a moment (in
this work, a page, or a paragraph, or even a sentence) in that continuum. Yet
every person in the record made, within his ‘moment’, a series of decisions,
from well-considered to wildly imprudent, which, intentionally or otherwise,
inexorably shaped, for better or worse, the lives of every member of the line
who came after, right down to the present day. The Jarman line of the future
turned, again and again, on choices made in the past. As I, perhaps
sententiously (but, I would hope, not insensitively), assessed someone’s life
and significance to his/her descendants in a fifty-word summary, I came to
realise that this, indeed, is the destiny of every one of us: to make decisions
upon which the family line must turn, and to have our contribution, whether for
good or for ill, reduced to a one-paragraph summary by a future member of the
line who knows us only through the impact of our actions on his current
situation.
Just what is to be written in
this paragraph of the future must, as Hamlet said, ‘give us pause’;
fortunately, it is within our power to ‘write’ it now, by life choices we make
in the present.
Alan Leslie Jarman
(Generation 1)
Acknowledgements
While
the compilation of the information presented in The Jarman Millennium
involved a certain amount of original research -- including the acquisition of
Birth, Death, and Marriage certificates in both Australia and the United
Kingdom; the examination and copying of Church records, cemetery inscriptions,
and archival newspaper items in both these countries; and the recording of
anecdotal evidence from family members who had walked many of the paths before
I began -- by far the major portion of the data presented here is assembled
from the standard genealogical works (such as Burke’s Peerage and Complete
Peerage), and, of course, the internet, the vast genealogical resources of
which were first drawn to my attention by my friend and colleague, Brian
Edwards (a minute-long converation with Brian initiated a
decade-and-a-half-long obsession). The number of internet sites ‘plundered’ for
this compilation (but, I hope, acknowledged, as far as is possible, in the
text) is so great that it would be impossible to list all (however, of the
hundreds of internet publishers who have freely offered the fruits of their
genealogical research to the casual browser, John P Ravilious – my respect and
admiration for whom is unbounded – Rosie Bevan, and Douglas Richardson are
names that seemed to crop up again and again, in the most-unexpected places, so
perhaps these should be singled out at this time for special mention); however,
for the future Jarman researcher who seeks to check, correct, and expand on
what I have written here, a few internet websites which are, virtually,
mandatory ‘stopping places’ are listed below, in no particular order:
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=SRCH&db=aet-t&surname=A
http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/search?aop&path=GEN-MEDIEVAL
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET%20&db=jweber&id=I19598
http://lists.rootsweb.ancestry.com/index/intl/AUS/Campbelltown-FHS.html
http://www.stirnet.com/genie/index.php
In
addition, the following ‘amateur’ (in the true sense of the word) family
historians -- many of whom I have not,
even now, managed to meet -- all freely and unhesitatingly shared the fruits of
their own research, with advice, letters, documents, sources, and, in some cases,
meetings and ‘expeditions’. I probably would never have even begun this
research without the encouragement, and practical assistance, of Helen
Paternoster (nee Eggleton), Linda Eggleton, Edgar Penzig, Juliette Hendry,
Joseph Platt, Paul Pottinger, Paul Briggs, Morris Pottinger (the ‘Old Man of
Hoy’), Helen Hanson, Patricia Iseke, Hugh Casement, Peter J Moore, Lynn Epp,
Mary Farek, Alan Shaw, Pat Walters, and – by no means least -- sisters Frances
Hoch and Celia Sheppard (nee Jarman), who were both working on their family
histories (which overlapped with mine in several places) at the same time as I,
but – being a half-world away -- using different resources; having the benefits
of their research, which was unhesitatingly shared (I received one of the first
copies of Celia’s Our Family History, published April, 2012, which was
so well-researched and expertly-compiled that my first impulse was to consign
my own efforts, trivial by comparison, into the ‘cylindrical filing cabinet’;
instead, I consoled myself by plagiarising it!) was a privilege beyond measure;
and it made my task considerably easier!
Without doubt, all of these ‘fellow-sleuths’
– and there are still more, whose paths crossed briefly with my own, who, alas,
remain unrecorded – helped make my task not only easier, but infinitely more
rewarding. It’s the people you ‘meet’ on the way, and not the ultimate
destination, that makes the journey worthwhile; and, in return, each one can
claim ownership of a piece of this research.
Generation 0
JARMAN, Adam John
JARMAN, Emma Louise
JARMAN, Olivia Clare
JARMAN, Paul Andrew
JARMAN, Robyn Eileen
JARMAN
JARMAN, Adam
John B: 25-05-1971, King George
V Hospital,
Camperdown
M: 2-7-1994, Glenbrook, NSW, Catherine Annabel.
M: 2-7-1994, Glenbrook, NSW, Catherine Annabel.
Comments: son (Generation -1), Harrison
Ferris Jarman, born Nepean
District Hospital, Penrith, 5-4-2003; daughter
(Generation -1), Molly
Annabelle
Jarman, born Nepean
District Hospital,
Penrith, 5-10-2006.
JARMAN, Paul
Andrew B: 25-05-1971, King George
V Hospital,
Camperdown.
M: Bonnie Nilsson
Comments:
daughters (Generation -1) Ruby Gagabey Nilsson Jarman,
born
RPAH, Camperdown, NSW, 9-1-2005; Amber Paris Nilsson Jarman,
Katoomba Hospital, NSW, 4-12-2007.
JARMAN, Robyn
Eileen B: 01-11-1977 Nepean District
Hospital, Penrith, NSW.
JARMAN, Olivia
Clare B:
13-02-1992, Auburn District Hospital,
Auburn, NSW.
JARMAN, Emma
Louise B:
08-01-1994, Nepean
District Hospital,
Penrith, NSW.
Generation 1
JARMAN,
Alan Leslie
NGO,
Helen Van
JARMAN, Adam John
JARMAN, Paul Andrew
JARMAN, Robyn Eileen
JARMAN, Olivia Clare
JARMAN, Emma Louise
F1: JARMAN, Alan
Leslie B:
25-05-1942, ‘Lydham’ Private
Hospital, Dulwich Hill.
M: (i) 16-12-1967, Marie Olive Ferris, St Andrews Church of England,
Walcha.
(ii) 21-09-1991. Helen Van Ngo, St Augustine’s Catholic
Church, Balmain.
D:
JARMAN, Olivia Clare
JARMAN, Emma Louise
M1: NGO, Helen Van Truong B: 22-11-1970, Hung Vuon Hospital,
Saigon, Vietnam.
M:
21-09-1991, Alan Leslie Jarman. Balmain, NSW.
D:
Generation 2
JARMAN, Leslie Herbert
NGO,
Huu (Peter)
TANG,
Muoi (Joy)
TRATHEN,
Eileen Margaret
JARMAN, Alan Leslie
F2:
JARMAN, Leslie Herbert B: 01-08-1918, Thirroul,
NSW
M: (i)
23-12-1939 Lakemba, NSW Eileen Margaret Trathen.
Occupation: Refrigeration
Engineer
(ii) (possibly) 1955, Vera Nelson
D: 11-8- 2000, Allora, Queensland
(buried 14-08-2000)
Leslie
Herbert Jarman
Probably
no single person could write a comprehensive biography of Leslie Herbert
Jarman. While he forged friendships easily, these were, in virtually all cases,
transitory; while he could converse comfortably on a wide range of topics, his
own life was seldom, in his eyes, a subject for discussion. He travelled widely
in New South Wales and Queensland, but put down few roots, and
accumulated almost no possessions.
His
longest relationship was with his first (and possibly only) son, Alan (myself);
but this, too, was more in the nature of a series of transient encounters:
there remained, to the end, long periods of his life – thirty years, at one
stage -- of which I had no knowledge, and about which any questions were
perfunctorily sidestepped. Probably all his friends could have told the same
story.
When
asked about his siblings, Leslie invariably dismissed the question, saying that
he had long since broken off with all of them (not entirely true, at least in
the years of his first marriage; I recall, between 1946 and 1949, at least one
visit to his sister Beryl’s home -- possibly in North Belmore) and had no wish
for further contact.
It
is very likely that the breakdown in Leslie’s relations with his family was
caused by his Protestant-Catholic first marriage, to Eileen Margaret Trathen,
whose predominantly-Irish family was equally-opposed to the union and never
accepted him into its fold. The marriage was, understandably, a stormy one,
with break-ups followed by reconciliations. Leslie was employed, during this period,
as a refrigeration engineer; I recall him bringing home large red-brown
containers of Cornwall’s Malt, which I always understood to be
factory-supplied, so perhaps he worked for Cornwall’s (I also recall he had, at
some stage, been involved in a work-place accident with a machine belt which
had damaged the third finger of his left hand, the crushed nail having never
regrown).
In
the early years of the marriage, the couple lived at Ruskin Flats, in Manly;
subsequently (around 1947) they moved to a shared (with Eileen’s cousin, June
Tilney and her husband, Lance) house at 109 Rogers St, Lakemba. Within about two
years of the move, the marriage -- still barely a decade old -- ended, suddenly and tragically, when Eileen
died from a breast cancer which had advanced so swiftly that diagnosis was only
made post-mortem. Notwithstanding that the union had produced a son, seven
years old at the time of his mother’s death, Leslie decided that it was time to
close this chapter in his life; he quietly detached himself from what remained
of his family, and moved on.
When
he returned, just as abruptly (and with no forewarning) thirty years later, he
was able to report that, in the interim, he had resided – for brief periods in
each case – in a large number of country towns in eastern Australia, and had
held a variety of jobs (including installing refrigeration equipment at McRae’s
in Walcha at around the time I was stationed there as a young teacher, and
managing a general store in Willow Tree). Of the relationships forged during
that period, he had little to say, though there were reports that he had
married, briefly, a second time (a marriage, in 1955, of Leslie Herbert Jarman
and Vera Nelson is recorded – registration no. 14365/1955) and may even have
had more children. His wanderings had left him no property and few possessions,
but he reported that he had found the place he wanted to settle: a tiny
southern-Queensland town called Allora, where he had found a peace and
acceptance (and, possibly, lack of curiosity) which had previously eluded him.
He
did not, however, settle in Allora right away; when next heard from, he had, in
his seventies, moved in (as a boarder) to a
coastal (Tweed Heads, NSW) town house owned by a widow, Amy Sholz. In
Amy he had, clearly, found a soul-mate; their relationship matured from
landlady and boarder to caring partners, and for several years there was no
more talk of ‘moving on’.
Amy,
however, died, and all the property they had shared had been retained in her
name; with no possessions except his car and a dog (there was always a dog, and
it was always named ‘Max’), he returned to Allora, where, he claimed, he was
accepted as if he had never left. By this time (early-to-mid 1990s), he was
willing to take short visits with Alan and his new wife, Helen, in Blaxland
(not far from Penrith, where the Lack family had lived; when told of this
present family-history project, he was happy to locate the dairy – since
demolished – which was owned by his uncle Henry, and where he had stayed as a child),
and was content to have established cordial relationships with the elder four
of his five grandchildren; however, he
could seldom bear to be away from Allora for more than a few weeks. It was from
there, in 2000, that he entered Toowoomba
Hospital following a
heart-attack; his insistence, in defiance of advice from doctors, on returning
to his home town resulted in a position being made available for him at the
Nursing Home in Allora, where he passed away peacefully within a few weeks of
admission. His funeral, in Toowoomba, was attended by his son and granddaughter
(Robyn Eileen Jarman), by a few friends from Allora, and by the daughter of Amy
Scholz, who remembered him with genuine fondness.
M2: TRATHEN, Eileen Margaret B:
10-09-1917 (Annandale,
NSW)
M:
23-12-1939 (Lakemba, NSW) Leslie Herbert Jarman.
Occupation:
Seamstress (Strand Arcade, Sydney)
D: 27-12-1949 (Canterbury
Hospital, Canterbury, NSW). The Registry of
Deaths notice (25957/1949) erroneously records her mother’s name
as
‘Lillian’.
Eileen
Margaret Trathen
Members of Eileen Trathen’s
family always claimed she was a “dead ringer” for movie star Gail Russell; she
was a petite, shy, almost-too-thin, brown-eyed redhead. Eileen’s short life,
however, bore scant resemblance to the Hollywood dream: born in the midst of
World War I (which took her father and her uncle before she was even four
months old); embarking on her teenage years just as the Great Depression was
sweeping Australia, on her marriage in the first year of World War II, and on
motherhood in the very week that Sydney came under attack from Japanese midget
submarines (which had entered the harbour less than two kilometres from her
Manly home); and, finally, losing her life barely four years after the war had
ended (just as Australia was on the threshold of hitherto-undreamed of
prosperity), the victim of a cancer untreated
-- indeed, not even diagnosed – by a hospital system still coping with
the diseases and injuries which are the inevitable aftermath of war.
Although a bright student, she
was forced by the circumstances of the time to leave school before completing her
education, finding work as a seamstress (at one stage, in the Strand Arcade,
Sydney). As a young adult, she was interested in music (she kept a note-book in
which she wrote out the lyrics of the song hits of the time; her favourite was
‘Love Walked In’ by George and Ira Gershwin), and collected big-band records by
Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller. She was a debutante, and, with her
uncle Max Powell as partner, was presented at the ballroom above Mark Foy’s, Sydney; a photograph of the
couple appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald at the time.
In a staunchly Irish-Catholic
household, her determination to proceed with marriage to a Protestant must have
been a rare act of self-assertion; neither of the newlyweds was accepted by the
other’s family, and the stresses and strains this placed on the marriage helped
ensure that the last ten years of her life -- juggling motherhood with work in
an era where full-time motherhood was considered the ‘norm’, and living in
various rental accommodation (the last of which was a shared house, with her
cousin, June Tilney, and her husband, Lance) – took their toll on her
already-fragile health. Her mother, ‘Lilly’ Trathen, was frequently called on
for support in looking after their son; Alan’s first school, in fact, was in Hurlstone Park, very near his grandmother’s home
but several suburbs from the family home at 109 Rogers St, Lakemba.
During 1949, Eileen’s health
quite-abruptly worsened, and tuberculosis was feared; on Christmas morning, she
was rushed to Canterbury
Hospital and placed in
the tubercular ward. She died two days later, and was subsequently found to
have breast cancer. She was thirty-two years old.
NGO, Helen Van
F2: NGO,
Huu (Peter) B: 1-5-1943
M: Muoi (Joy) Tang
D: 27-1-1992 (Westmead, NSW, Australia)
Huu
(Peter) Ngo.
Both
Huu Ngo and his future wife, Muoi Tang, lived in the same street in Cholon (the
Chinese Quarter of Saigon): Tran Quy (District 11), where, eventually, their
wedding was held.
Before
his marriage, Huu served with the South Vietnam army during the American War, at
which time he almost lost his life (on a march in a party of 25, he was among
the first five when they were suddenly attacked by North Vietnamese soldiers;
the last twenty, behind him, were gunned down). On returning home, Huu declined
to return to the front, going into hiding in an upstairs room in a house in Tran Quy St. After
his marriage he began a career as a maker of spectacles, which wife Muoi
delivered. During this period their only daughter, Truong (Helen) Van Ngo
(Generation 1) was born, followed by sons Kien (Ken) and Han (Victor) .
In
an alley running off the same street was an upstairs printery owned by Muoi’s
brother, and the arrival of the Vietcong into Saigon
in 1975 necessitated Huu, Muoi and the children moving into this home, from
where Huu continued his work.
Huu
was eventually forced to flee to Indonesia (1978), where he was soon
joined by other family members. At this time the families were split up, some
being accepted into the USA,
others into Canada.
Huu, Muoi, and the three children were eventually reunited and were accepted
into Australia (May, 1979),
living for a time at the refugee camp in Herne Bay
(Riverwood). He applied for -- and was granted -- Australian citizenship, at
which time he dropped his Vietnamese first name, adopting instead the name
‘Peter’.
Peter
worked in several semi-skilled jobs in Australia,
and at one stage owned a take-away food shop in Auburn; but he was never able to resume his
career as a spectacle-maker. For a brief period he was part-owner of a Chinese
restaurant opposite the Capitol Theatre in Haymarket. When this venture failed,
he obtained a part-time job as a kitchen-hand in a restaurant in Westmead, and
it was while travelling there (with son Victor as passenger) from his home in
Lidcombe that he misread the signs announcing new roadworks on the M4 motorway,
and was, consequently, fatally injured in an accident at the site of the new
(and still under-construction) tollbooths. He died at Westmead Hospital
two days later, less than three weeks before the birth of his first grandchild,
Olivia.
M2:
TANG. Muoi (Joy) B:
1-8-1942
M: Huu (Peter) Ngo
D:
4-5-1995 (Lidcombe, NSW, Australia)
Muoi
(Joy) Tang
Youngest
of five children (two brothers, currently living in Sydney,
and two sisters, living in Canada,
and USA), Muoi, as a young
bride, lived with her husband at her brother’s upstairs printery in Cholon, Saigon. Fleeing – with her mother and three children, but
without her husband -- to Australia
in 1978 (the family actually arrived in May, 1979), she was, eventually,
reunited with Huu, and had a fourth child (Michael) in Brisbane in 1980. Finally settling in Swete
St, Auburn, she lost her mother (to tuberculosis) and her husband (in a car
accident) in the same week; she, herself, lived only three more years before
succumbing to lung cancer (the first of the five to die). She did, however,
live long enough to ensure that her five children received a full Australian
education (she herself had been educated to only primary level), and she even
saw two of her grandchildren, the first Australian generation (Olivia Clare,
whom she christened ‘Leh Wah’, and Emma Louise, whom she called ‘Leh Mun’.)
Generation 3
DIEP, Ngan
EGAN,
Hanora (Norah) Ellen (‘Lilly’)
JARMAN,
Arthur Henry
LACK,
Edith Ellen Sara
NGO,
Mun Yong
TANG,
Khoan
TAT,
Linh
TRATHEN,
Norman Percy
JARMAN,
Leslie Herbert
F3: JARMAN, Arthur Henry
B: 20-10-1892, Crown Rd, Pyrmont.
(Reg. no. 3141/1892)
M:
24-12-1913, Penrith, NSW. Edith Ellen Sara Lack
D:
Comments:
no record of death in NSW. His brother, Frederick Leslie
Jarman,
is recorded as having died, 1963, in Burwood, NSW.
M3:
LACK, Edith Ellen Sara B:
1891, Campbelltown.
M:
24-12-1913, Penrith, NSW. Arthur Henry Jarman
D: 1943
Comments:
Edith Ellen Sara Lack’s entry (30530/1943) in the NSW
Register
of Deaths has ‘Erra’ instead of ‘Sara’ for her third Christian name.
NGO,
Huu (Peter)
F3: NGO, Mun Yong B:
M: Ngan Diep
D:
M3: DIEP, Ngan B:
29-1-1915. (Shanghai, China)
M: Mun Yong Ngo.
D: 30-3-09, Ashfield.
Ngan
Diep
Ngan Diep has been a resident
of China, Vietnam, and (since 1977) Australia. She was adopted by her
parents, who subsequently had children of their own (the family of her younger
step-brother still live in Vietnam
and currently reside in the house originally owned by her son’s
brother-in-law).
Having been accepted into
Australia as a war refugee, Ngan Diep lived with her son and his wife in
various homes in Coff’s Harbour, Brisbane, and, eventually, Sydney. When,
firstly, her son, and, soon afterwards, her daughter-in-law died, she continued
to serve as the matriarch in the household of her three grandsons at Lidcombe,
seeing her four grandchildren gain educational and professional success in
their adopted country.
TANG,
Muoi (Joy)
F3: TAT, Linh B:
24-6-1904, China
M:
c 1928, China.
Tang Khoan.
D:
27-7-1963, Vietnam
M3: TANG, Khoan B: 9-12-1908, China
M:
c 1928, China.
Tat Linh
D:
18-12-1992, Auburn,
NSW.
TRATHEN,
Eileen Margaret
F3: TRATHEN, Norman Percy B: 31-8-1887
M: 1914,
Hanora (Norah) Ellen (‘Lilly’) Egan
D:
December 8, 1917, Holdsworthy, NSW. (death
certificate 16270/1917)
Norman Percy
Trathen and his siblings.
Norman Percy Trathen, a
storeman/packer who aspired to join the Police Force, following in the
footsteps of his elder brother, Benjamin (Norman’s name is listed – no. 484 – in
the New South Wales Police Gazette Index, 1911, p. 47; see http://www.unlockthepast.com.au/sites/default/files/samples/AU2103-1911s.pdf)
was born in Orange, NSW, and was living at Rose Cottage, Epsom Rd, Waterloo,
when, newly-married, the Great War put his career aspirations ‘on hold’;
seeking enlistment (27-3-1916) in the Australian Imperial Force, he was
rejected for active service overseas because of a medical problem (noted on his
application as ‘unfit varicocele’), but later (16-7-1916) accepted for Home
Service (application no. 1020) and posted to Holdsworthy Barracks (near
Liverpool, NSW) as a guard of prisoners of war and German-Australians interned
for the duration of hostilities (a hand-carved – by one of the German interns –
wooden box remains a family heirloom).
Norman’s
army service lasted just over a year; while on duty, he contracted
appendicitis, which, owing to a delay in treatment, developed into fatal
peritonitis. His wife (Lilly), mother of a three-month-old baby girl (Eileen
Margaret), was sent for, but he died (8-12-1917) before her arrival at the camp
hospital. He was buried, with full military honours, two days later, on Lilly’s
birthday (10-12-1917). A still-extant plaque and memorial scroll commemorating
his service to his country was issued (9-4-1923) to his widow by the
Commonwealth Government.
Norman’s
brother, Benjamin (died 1929) was a police constable at Redfern when the
following report appeared in the Sydney
Morning Herald, 11-1-1893: “Mr. Giles, D.S.M., presided in Redfern Court. James Day, 21, was fined
£4, with an alternative of three months' imprisonment, for having used language
unfit for publication in Alderson
Street, Redfern. Kate Clarke, 28, and Mary Cleary,
28, were charged with having assaulted, Constable Trathen. They were fined 40s
each, or 21 days' imprisonment.”
(http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/13893085). Benjamin eventually became a
police sergeant, and then an inspector, given command of the station at
Redfern; while in charge, he befriended the poet Henry Lawson (who was
frequently homeless and impoverished) and allowed him to sleep in one of the
cells when he was either drunk or unable to afford accommodation. In gratitude,
Lawson dedicated a copy of his work, To
an Old Mate, to Ben.
Benjamin married Linda Maud(e)
Duff in 1904, in Redfern. On Monday, 10-6-1929, the following article (with
photograph) appeared in The Sydney
Morning Herald:
“INSPECTOR TRATHEN. FOUND DEAD
IN BED. Inspector Benjamin Trathen, officer-in charge of
George-street North police division, was found dead in his bed by his wife at
his residence, Lewin-street, Earlwood, early yesterday morning. Death was due
to heart failure. He had had 37 years' service.
Inspector Trathen was in his
sixtieth year, and was due for long-service leave before retirement in two
months' time. A native of the Orange district,
he joined the police force in 1892. After a period of service at Redfern, he
did traffic duty for some time and was then transferred to Clarence street. The bulk of his service
was at George street North.
Following his promotion to the rank of inspector on July 1, 1927 he was In
charge of the night wireless patrol for about six months, and was then placed
In charge of the George street
North division. He is survived by a widow and three
children.
The funeral will leave the late
Inspector's residence for Rookwood at 1 45 o'clock this afternoon.” (http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/16552404?searchTerm=trathen&searchLimits=)
Norman and Benjamin’s sister,
Emmeline Matilda, after an illness of some eighteen months, committed suicide
(Friday, 3-5-1901, at age 26), “by a
revolver bullet, which is particularly rare on the part of a woman”, according
to the newspaper report in The Sydney
Morning Herald on the following Wednesday (8-5-1901, at http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/64450870?searchTerm=trathen&searchLimits=).
Benjamin was in the house at the time, and heard the shot, upstairs; he reached
her while she was still alive, and her last words, on seeing him, were, “Shoot
me, Ben”. Their sister, Margaret Lilian Trathen, was also present. (Benjamin
and Maude also had a daughter, Emmeline, known as “Emmie”; she lived well into
the 1950s, with her mother, in Hurlstone Park).
M3: EGAN, Hanora (Norah) Ellen (‘Lilly’)
B:
10-12-1889, Brisbane, Queensland (Qld BD&M ref: 1890/
B044990).
M: 1914, Norman Percy Trathen.
D: 5-9-1979, Concord Repatriation
Hospital, NSW.
Hanora
(Norah) Ellen (‘Lilly’) Egan.
The eldest of thirteen children
(one of two – the second being Patrick James (1891) -- born in Brisbane, where
her mother and father had been married in 1888), Hanora was usually referred to
in family circles as ‘Lilly’, short for ‘Elizabeth’, which was the first name
preferred by her mother and used at her baptism. She believed that her
registered Christian name was ‘Norah’, and signed documents with the initials
‘N.E.’; however, her actual registration (in 1890, although she was born in
December, 1889) gives her name as ‘Hanora Ellen’.
Although a bright student,
Lilly’s position in the family obliged her to leave school at age 14 and enter
employment. Her one marriage, at the beginning of World War I, was short-lived,
as her husband enlisted on 16-7-1916 (at which time their place of residence
was 299 Nelson St, Annandale), and died, on service, little more than a year
later (by which time Lilly had moved closer to her family, and resided at St
Elmo, Cronulla St, Carlton), leaving a three-month-old daughter, Eileen
Margaret.
As well as losing her husband
in World War 1, Lilly also lost her younger brother (Jack; actually, ‘John
Joseph’), who was part of the Australian campaign in France (39th
Batallion), having enlisted (after earlier applications were rejected because
of his age) at age 18, on 19-9-1916. He survived until after the Armistice, and
continued to serve in England, where (in Trowbridge), he sought leave to marry
(13-9-1919) an 18-year-old French girl (Yvonne Marguerite Magnier) whom he had
met either there, or earlier, in France, wiring excitedly to his family of the
couple’s imminent arrival in Sydney on the ‘Shropshire’. Jack never reached
home; his war injuries quickly put him in the ship’s hospital, and he died on
board (20-12-1919); Yvonne, also seriously ill, arrived in Australia as a new
widow with a new baby (Jacqueline), and Lilly, with a two-year-old daughter of
her own and a smattering of high-school French, took both mother and baby under
her care until Yvonne’s death -- after which she continued to care for
Jacqueline (Mrs Maurice (?) Lonergan). A second brother, Daniel, also died in
1919 (death certificate 9851/1919); it is not known if this was also as a
result of war service.
A frugal woman, Lilly augmented
the allowance from the government for War Widows with income from employment at
David Jones, one of Sydney’s first major department stores (at subsequent Anzac
Day parades, she was able to point proudly to the various banners on which she
had worked, as an embroidress), and, in 1937, bought (for five hundred and
thirty pounds) a house at 9 Hampden St, Hurlstone Park, where she and Eileen
lived until Eileen’s marriage, and where Lilly continued to reside until 1962.
When her own daughter, Eileen,
died prematurely (1949), leaving a seven-year-old son, Alan Leslie (Generation
1), Lilly, already aged 60, once again undertook the role of child-rearer, and,
in the absence of assistance from Alan’s father, returned to work to support
her new dependant. Her last employment was in a cake shop at Hurlstone
Terminus, on the corner of Old Canterbury and New Canterbury Rds, a short walk
from Alan’s secondary school (Canterbury Boys’ High School).
Fiercely independent, Lilly
insisted on living alone through her seventies and eighties, selling (1962) the
house in Hurlstone Park in favour of a lower-maintenance home unit at 10/30
Ewart St, Marrickville. A series of falls sustained while living there eventually
required her hospitalisation and, ultimately, the amputation of both legs. She
died, at Concord Repatriation
Hospital, a few weeks before her
ninetieth birthday (death notice 2174/1979); she is buried in the cemetery of St Paul’s
Anglican Church, Emu Plains, at the foot of the Blue
Mountains, which was to become the home of all of her
great-great-grandchildren.
There is lot more. My parents are retired school teachers who live in a Hill Station called Mussoorie Uttaranchal, North India. I’m sorry I did not quiz my Mom about Grandma, but this is all I can remember.”
Generation 4
CORRIGAN, Bridget Rose
EGAN,
Daniel Joseph
JARMAN,
Alfred
LACK,
Robert Henry (Harry)
PATERSON,
Margaret
POTTINGER, Annie Georgina Keating
STEWART,
Mary
TRATHEN,
John
DIEP, Ngan
F4:
UNKNOWN B:
M: Unknown
D:
M4:
UNKNOWN B:
M: Unknown
D:
EGAN, Hanora (Norah) Ellen (Lilly)
F4: EGAN, Daniel Joseph B: 1859
M: 11-1-1888, Brisbane, Queensland.
Bridget Rose Corrigan (Qld BM&D
ref:
B012042).
D:
1-3-1906, Liverpool, NSW.
M4:
CORRIGAN, Bridget Rose B: 1867, Burn, County Clare, Ireland.
Arrival in Australia: between 1881 and 1883.
M: 11-1-1888, Daniel Egan. Brisbane, Queensland
D: 6-11-1956, Bexley, NSW (death certificate
31694/1956).
Siblings: Patrick Corrigan, died Randwick, NSW (death
Certificate no.
7090/1933). James Joseph Corrigan, died
Redfern, NSW (death certificate
no. 21346/1955).
Bridget
Rose Corrigan
To her many great-grandchildren
in the 1950s, who dutifully came, at Christmas and on special occasions, to pay
homage to the undisputed matriarch of the family, Bridget Rose Corrigan was,
undoubtedly, a formidable figure, seen always in mourning clothes (she had been
widowed nearly half a century earlier, but had worn only black from then on)
and ensconced in an armchair -- over her lap, a blanket which reached the floor
– from which she was never seen to rise; however, there seemed no physical
justification for the name by which she was always referred to (and addressed):
“Fat Mum”. She was, in fact, quite small, and, although plump, carried far less
weight – one noted with amusement -- than many of the descendants who so
referred to her.
It was not until after her
death, on reflection – and by examining old birth and death certificates, as
well as recalling half-remembered anecdotes from years past – that an inkling
emerged of what the name might have implied. For, at least two of the daughters
and sons who never failed to attend the family gatherings, and were treated as
siblings by the others, were, in fact, not Bridget and Daniel’s at all. Yet
there was no hint of this in family relationships; Bridget, with her Irish
brogue untempered by more than six decades in her adopted home, presided over a
close-knit family whose devotion to her – and each other – never wavered.
According to the records,
Bridget and Daniel had eight children: Hanora (born 1889) and Patrick (1891)
born in Brisbane;
and then, in Sydney, Daniel J (born 1893, died 1919), Michael (born 1895, died
1958), Julia (1896), John J (born 1899, died 1932, always called ‘Jack’), Mary
(1900), and Patrick Joseph (born 1903, died 1975). By the time of the birth
(and death) of Patrick J, she was 36 years old, and near the end of her
child-bearing years; three years later, she was a widow. Yet, in 1909, whern
Bridget was over 40, Alice Agnes was born, with ‘Bridget’ listed as her
mother’s Christian name and no name for the father. And the youngest child – no
birth certificate has been found, so we cannot tell just how much younger, but
she always seemed to belong to a quite-different era – Veronica M (known always
as ‘Bonnie’), was born several years after Alice (‘Bonnie’ was married in 1934,
to Maxwell A Powell, giving her name as ‘Veronica M Egan’).
There is evidence of still more
children in Bridget’s family: Hanora (Lilly), the eldest, always insisted she
was one of thirteen children – fourteen if one counted the (unrecorded) stillborn
twin of Patrick Joseph. Since it is hard to believe Lilly could have miscounted
by three, one can only conclude that there are other children -- unrecorded in
the Registry of Births and not present at the family gatherings of the 1940s
and 1950s -- who were, nonetheless, raised in the home of Bridget Corrigan
(either before or after husband Daniel’s death) as her own (there is, in the
NSW Registry of Deaths, a James J Egan, son of Daniel and Bridget, who died in
1905; possibly, this refers to the ‘Patrick’ born 1891 in Queensland, since he
seems, otherwise, to have unaccountably disappeared from the records).
‘Fat Mum’, then, would appear
to equate with ‘other Mum’: a name coined to describe a woman who, as well as
being a ‘real’ mother to eight, was a surrogate mother to five. That at least
two of these remained devoted to her until her death in Bexley, NSW, in 1956,
says much for the character of Bridget Rose Corrigan, whose full story,
unfortunately, may never be told.
JARMAN, Arthur Henry
F4: JARMAN, Alfred B: 22-8-1871, Tindale’s Hollow, via Bathurst, NSW.
M: 23-4-1892, Sydney, NSW.
Annie Georgina Keating Pottinger
D: 1947, Newtown area (probably Camperdown).
Comments:
two elder sisters (Eleanor and Eliza Ann) born (1861 and 62,
respectively)
in Parramatta,
NSW; elder brothers William Thomas – born
13-6-1863
at Emu Plains, married (1896, Bourke) Louisa Harriet Nowland,
daughter
of Peter Nowland and Louisa Anne Fradgley – and Charles –
born
1865 at Penrith, married (8-7-1893) Lucy Hannah Hammond Harvey
(born
Picton, 12-8-1871) at Petersham. Sister Emma Sarah (born c 1874,
Bathurst) died at
Camperdown, 1949.
William Thomas Jarman (brother of Alfred Jarman) and his
descendants.
The
following information on the life of William Thomas Jarman was provided,
initially, by Frances Louise Hoch (nee Jarman), granddaughter of William,
during a visit (from Cambridge, England) to Sydney
in February, 2010; subsequently, Frances’s
sister, Celia Sheppard (of Somerset,
England),
supplied additional information which has been incorporated in this summary.
William
Thomas Jarman was born in Emu Plains on 13-6-1863. He was the second son of
George Jarman and Emma Starr, and the first to be born in New South Wales. His elder brother, George H
Jarman, was born in England and travelled with his parents to New South Wales
at age 1; two elder sisters, Eleanor (born and died in 1861, and Eliza Jane,
born in 1862, married Sydney Yates in Wellington, NSW, and died 1928) were born
in Parramatta, NSW, within two years of their parents’ arrival in Australia.
William
Thomas married (Bourke, 1896) Louise Harriet Nowland (born 7-7-1876, died
20-3-1950), daughter of Peter Nowland and Louisa Anne Fradgley, and had at
least three sons: Lawrence Jarman (died 1967), William E Jarman (1902-1973),
and Maurice W Jarman (1898-1899).
William
Thomas and Louise Harriet eventually moved to Western Australia, leaving
Lawrence behind to live with Mrs E Smith, in Paddington (son William E
eventually took up residence in Hurlstone Park, close to the home of ‘Lilly’
Egan (Generation 3); it is probable that the ‘other’ Alan Jarman who lived in
Hurlstone Park in the 1950s-60s was part of this family line).
Lawrence
Jarman attended Newtown Superior Public School,
now Newtown High School of the Performing Arts; a
war memorial erected in front of the school (King Street, Newtown)
includes his name as one of the ex-students who saw active service in World War
1. Returning from his naval commission, he trained for the Anglican priesthood
at St John’s,
Armidale, from where he took up appointment with the Brotherhood of the Good
Shepherd, Gilgandra. He eventually travelled to England, where he married Freda
Jarman (this was her maiden name); the coincidence of their surnames does not
imply a family relationship, as Freda was Scottish.
Lawrence
and Freda had three children: twins Adrian Lawrence and Celia Katharine, and
Frances Louise Jarman, who provided this information to Alan Jarman at a
meeting in Newtown (as part of a pilgrimage to photograph her father’s war
memorial inscription) during her ‘family research’ visit to Sydney (February,
2010).
M4: POTTINGER, Annie Georgina Keating
B: 12-12-1873, South Grafton, Clarence River, NSW.
M: 23-4-1892,
Sydney, NSW, Alfred Jarman.
D: 1935
Siblings: Frederick L E Pottinger,
Charles Thomas Curwen Pottinger, Eliza
Harriet Susan Pottinger. Also possibly a half-brother, Clarence Deane
Pottinger (illegitimate, born 1880, after her parents had separated)
Comments: Annie’s uncle (her father’s half-brother) was Eldred Curwen
Pottinger, famed as ‘the Hero of Heart’.
LACK, Edith Ellen Sara
F4: LACK, Robert Henry (Harry) B: 15-2-1862
M: (i) 1888, Mary Stewart (died 1898)
(ii) Mary Mulholland (died 1930)
D: 25-8-1948 (reported in Nepean Times 2-9-1948)
Robert Henry (‘Harry’) Lack.
Reported in his obituary in the Nepean Times (2-9-1948) as “that fine
gentleman and friend of many….a good citizen”, Robert Henry Lack was known to
everyone as ‘Henry’ (ultimately, ‘Harry’), doubtless to avoid confusion with
his elder brother, also Robert Lack (whose equally-complimentary obituary, in
the Nepean Times, 10-3-1917, is at http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/86148421?searchTerm=%22Robert%20Lack%22&searchLimits=).
Born in Campbelltown, Harry
(with brother Robert) took over an outback sheep station at Enngonnia, north of
Bourke, moving back to Campbelltown after the death of his first wife, Mary
Stewart (6-1-1898), reportedly from shock following the illness of one of her
children. While in Campbelltown, he married a second time, to Mary Mulholland
(born c 1856), daughter of Harry and Mary Mulholland, who had, for 28 years,
resided with the Redalls in Campbelltown. (Their son, Harry, known as ‘Bal’,
served in World War I and died as a result).
The Lacks moved, first, to Liverpool, and then to Penrith (approximately 1908), where
they leased Thornton Hall and opened a dairy on the Castlereagh Road. His elder sister,
Sarah, who, as a four-year-old, was the sole survivor of the 1849 murder by
James Richardson, resided with him there. He sent to Enngonnia for his brother,
Robert, reportedly saying, “I have bought a dairy for you”, but when Robert
arrived he found that the ‘purchase’ was, in fact, the licence of the Red Cow
Hotel, which came to be commonly referred to as the Lack Hotel.
Harry Lack was, it was
reported, a community-minded citizen, being an alderman of Penrith Council for
about 6 years, a member of the Penrith General Cemetery Trust (the cemetery in
which he was eventually buried), a patron of the Penrith sub-branch of the
R.S.S.A.I.L.A., and a participant in various public movements. In 1947 he had
his arm amputated in order to stop the spread of the cancer which eventually
killed him (25-8-1948, age 86).
In his memory, a street in
Werrington today bears the name ‘Lack
Place’.
Rhonda Hunter (“My line is
Andrews, Haddow, they were from Werrington/St Marys in the early settlement of
South Creek. Their records are with Penrith City Library in the Local History
Section”) relates this anecdote re the Red Cow Hotel: “My Grandmother Mavis nee
Haddow worked for a Mrs Lack as an upstairs maid for the Red Cow Hotel then
known as Lack Hotel. My Grandfather Leo Robinson boarded at the the Red Cow as
he was a railway worker in Penrith at the time, they met on the stairs one day
on his return from work, he rushed past and cleaned himself up and asked her to
the pictures, the rest is Family History. I remember her telling us that story
when I was a little girl. That was 1927 when my Grandmother was 19 years old.”
Peter Shaw (peteshaw75@hotmail.com), in an email dated 2-2-2011, reports that “my
grandmother, Ivy, was one of Robert Henry Lack and Mary Stewart’s daughters.
The ‘other’ Harry Lack (who died young after being wounded in WWI) was her
brother, and Robert Henry’s son. She also had two sisters, Olive
(nicknamed Lil), and Edith (nicknamed Tot). Her mother, Mary Stewart, died when
she was a small child…she was raised by her grandmother, Ellen Lack…Ivy
married Roland Shaw in 1915. Roland (my grandfather) died after being gored by
a bull on their farm at Cranebrook in 1956 (the year I was born) and Ivy
died in 1983, aged 89. She had four sons, one of which was my dad”.
M4: STEWART,
Mary B: 1869
M: Robert Henry (‘Harry’) Lack.
D: 6-1-1898. Enngonnia
Comments:
The marriage registration for Mary Stewart and Robert Lack
transposes
the names of the mothers of the bride and groom; Robert Lack
should
be paired with Ellen Matthews, and Charles Stewart with Fanny
Williams.
NGO, Mun Yong
F4:
UNKNOWN B:
M: Unknown
D:
M4:
UNKNOWN B:
M: Unknown
D:
TANG, Khoan
F4:
UNKNOWN B:
M: Unknown
D:
M4:
UNKNOWN B:
M: Unknown
D:
TAT, Linh
F4:
UNKNOWN B:
M: Unknown
D:
M4:
UNKNOWN B:
M: Unknown
D:
TRATHEN, Norman Percy
F4:
TRATHEN, John B: circa 1835, Devonshire, UK.
M: 16-12-1862, Margaret Patterson. Candiangullong, NSW.
(Arrival in Australia:
c 1846, Victoria,
with parents and brother, Benjamin)
Occupation: Miner (Candiangullong, 1862: from marriage Certificate).
Storekeeper (Candiangullong 1874: from Birth Certificate of Emmeline
Matilda Trathen). Night watchman (Redfern, 1899: from death
certificate Jessie Theresa Trathen).
D: 1901 (NSW Death Certificate
8092/1901)
Siblings: Benjamin Trathen, B: 1840; M: 1863 (Susan Bailey); D: 16-9-
1885 (Four Mile Creek, via Orange). Walter Trathen,
B: M: 1863
(Ellen Bailey) D: 1910
Benjamin
and Walter Trathen.
The two younger brothers of John Trathen married sisters (Susan and Ellen
Bailey), possibly in a joint ceremony, or very close together, as the marriages
were registered at the same time (in the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages,
the name ‘Trathen’ for the marriages of Benjamin and Walter is misspelled as
‘Trathone’).The parents of Susan and Ellen were George Bailey (born 1806,
Cornwall, UK) and Isabella Bennetts (born 1811, Cornwall, UK; christened
3-6-1811), who were married 10-8-1830. Isabella’s parents were John Bennetts
and Mary Davies, married 8-12-1812. The following information on this family
was extracted from the website http://www.celtic-casimir.com/webtree/9/9874.htm:
“On 27 Feb 1858, Isabella Bailey of Camborne,
daughter of John & Mary Bennett (both dead), housekeeper, and her children
(all born in Camborne) Elizabeth (23), domestic servant, Ellen (21), milliner,
Emily (19), milliner, Louisa (17), domestic servant, Susan (14), domestic
servant, and George (8), arrived in New South Wales, Australia per S. S. Stebonheath. Isabella's husband
George Bailey was already living in the Colony (in Newtown,
Sydney)”.
Walter and
Ellen’s son, Benjamin, died in 1929 (the same year as Benjamin, son of John and
Margaret).
M4: PATERSON,
Margaret B: circa 1846, Isle of Man.
M: 16-12-1862, John Trathen. Candiangullong,
NSW. Edward S Kelly, guardian.
D:
26-10-1916, 3 Rowley St,
Camperdown, NSW.
Generation 5
CORRIGAN,
Patrick
DALY,
Elizabeth
DAWES
(DAWE, DOW), Mary
EGAN,
Michael
JARMAN,
George
KEMP,
Susan
LACK,
Robert
McNAMARA,
Bridget
MATTHEWS,
Eleanor (Ellen)
PATTERSON
(PATERSON),
William
POTTINGER,
Lionel Henry
STARR,
Emma
STEWART,
Charles
STEWART,
Jane (Jessie)
TRATHEN,
Benjamin
WILLIAMS,
Fanny
CORRIGAN, Bridget Rose
F5: CORRIGAN, Patrick B:
M: Bridget McNamara
D:
Comments:
Labourer
M5: McNAMARA, Bridget B:
M: Patrick Corrigan
D:
EGAN, Daniel
F5:
EGAN, Michael B:
M: Elizabeth Daly
D:
Comments:
Labourer
M5:
DALY, Elizabeth B:
M: Michael Egan
D:
JARMAN, Alfred
F5:
JARMAN, George B: c March, 1836 (Steeple Morden,
Cambridgeshire)
M:
5-12-1857, Emma Starr, Wendy Cum Shingay, Cambridgeshire.
D:
1887, Camperdown, NSW (one researcher says 5-12)
George Jarman.
Unlike siblings David
(christened 27-7-1834), John (christened 27-7-1834), Thomas (christened
20-5-1836, buried 17-3-1844), James (christened 18-3-1838) and Susan
(christened 14-3-1847), no birth or christening record is held for George
Jarman (born after John but before James) at Steeple Morden, Cambridgeshire.
His existence is, however, proved by both the 1841 and 1851 Census records for
Steeple Morden ref. nos: for 1841, folio 3B HO 107/63/22; for 1851, Ref. HO
107/1707. While living in Steeple Morden he worked as an agricultural labourer.
His marriage to Emma Starr is recorded in Batch 73311603, sheet 66 0822760.
George and Emma (with son,
George H, born 10-1858) left Liverpool
(13-11-1859) bound for Sydney, NSW, on ‘Fitzjames’ (fare: one pound per
person), arriving 20-2-1860. Their first Australian-born children were
daughters (Eleanor and Eliza Ann, born 1861 and 1862, respectively, in
Parramatta); a son, William Thomas (see Generation 4), was born 13-6-1863 at
Emu Plains; he married (1896) Louisa Harriet Nowland (born 7-7-1876) in Bourke,
and subsequently moved to Western Australia before returning to Sydney, where
he died in 1942 (one of William’s sons, William E Jarman (1902-1973), took up
residence in Hurlstone Park, close to the home of ‘Lilly’ Egan (Generation 3)).
Another son, Charles, was born in Penrith in 1865, and, finally, Alfred (Generation
4) near Bathurst in 1871; it is clear that the
family moved gradually westward before, eventually, returning to Sydney, where George died
(Camperdown) in 1887 (death certificate record is 4022/1887).
M5: STARR, Emma B: 1836 (Parish of Wendy, Shingay, Cambridgeshire)
M:
5-12-1857, George Jarman, Cambridgeshire,
UK
D: 1887,
Sydney, NSW.
Comments:
according to the passenger list on the ‘Fitzjames’, Emma Starr
(a
Methodist, as was her husband) could both read and write.
LACK, Robert Henry (‘Harry’)
F5: LACK, Robert B: 4-3-1824, Campbelltown.
M:
25-8-1845, Ellen Matthews, St Peter’s, Campbelltown, NSW.
D: 7-12-1901, Campbelltown. (Buried: St
Peter’s).
Siblings:
Eliza Lack (married William Hannon), Sarah Sophia Lack (3-8-1828
– 20-1-1849), Elizabeth Mary Lack (1831 - 1918).
Robert Lack.
Robert Lack was eight years old
when his father, Robert (Generation 6) died, and ten years old when his mother,
Elizabeth Eggleton (Generation 6) remarried, to James Richardson, the man who
would eventually murder three members of the family and permanently injure
Robert’s infant daughter, Sarah.
His occupation officially
listed as ‘Carrier’, Robert lived, worked, married (24-4-1845), and died in Campbelltown,
and his still-surviving headstone in St Peter’s Church shows him, his wife, and
eldest daughter, Sarah (27-8-1845 – 16-2-1924), buried together.
Sarah
Sophia Lack, sister of Robert.
Baptised by the Rev Thomas
Reddall (5-6-1831, the year of birth of her younger sister, Elizabeth Mary),
Sarah Sophia Lack was just three years old when her father died, and her life
seems to have never recovered from this setback. When Sarah was aged six, her
mother (who had been denounced in a report by the local policeman as a woman of
“bad moral character” after a succession of hasty attempts to find a husband)
remarried, this time to James Richardson, well-regarded sexton of the local
church. The marriage was not a happy one, Richardson’s
attentions to Sarah and her younger sister being later cited as the cause of
frequent arguments. When elder brother Robert married Ellen Matthews (1845), Richardson became sole
male in a family which included three daughters. In 1848, ten months before her
murder by Richardson,
Sarah had a baby daughter; the identity of the father remains unknown, and the
baby was never baptised.
On January 20, 1849, following
a drinking bout, James Richardson, who, by that time, had been ejected from the
one-roomed dwelling on the Sydney Road by his wife and Sarah (the younger
sister, Elizabeth Mary, having been removed from the home by the local
Minister, Thomas Reddall), returned to the cottage, armed with an axe and a
heavy candlestick, and murdered twenty-year-old Sarah, her infant daughter, and
her mother, at the same time seriously wounding (and leaving for dead) Sarah’s
four-year-old niece (Robert and Ellen’s daughter, also named Sarah, who was
staying with her grandmother and aunt at the time). He then buried the weapons,
and, in the middle of the night, still bloodied but now sober and calm, knocked
at the door of the home of the local police constable and confessed to the
crime. At his trial, Richardson’s inappropriate
attachment to Sarah and Elizabeth Mary was tendered as evidence; he, in turn,
blamed the bad behaviour of the girls for the unhappy home conditions, and had,
according to a witness, arranged only days before the murder to desert the
family and embark on a droving position to Adelaide.
Elizabeth Mary Lack, sister of Robert.
Born in 1831, the year before
her father died, Elizabeth Mary, youngest sister of Sarah Sophia, managed, in
1849, to escape the fate of her mother, sister, and niece, thanks to the
intervention of the local minister, Thomas Reddall, who -- apparently aware of
the domestic situation and its potential danger to the seventeen-year-old girl
– had, just three weeks prior to the murder, organised for her a position “in
service” with a family in Sydney.
Following the violent death of
her family, her (possibly unofficial) engagement to mail coach driver James
Fowler was broken off; Elizabeth Mary subsequently returned to the home of her
uncle, William Eggleton (spelled ‘Egleton’ in the 1814 marriage records), the
son of first-fleeters William Eggleton and Mary Dickenson (Generation 7), and
his wife Sophia Rugles (Ruglas, Ruglass), eventually marrying (19-1-1852, in
Dapto) her first cousin: William and Sophia’s son, John Eggleton (John’s
sister, Maria (1828-1908) married (1-9-1846) George Fowler, son of Henry Fowler
and Mary Potterton, who appears to be unrelated to Elizabeth’s ex-fiance, James
(who was probably the youngest son (born 30-10-1824) of William Fowler and
Elizabeth Seymour); coincidentally, the daughter of George and Maria Fowler,
Mary Ann, became Mrs Joseph Millard, and their daughter, Edith Annie, married
David Duff, uncle of Maud Duff, the sister-in-law -- she was married to his
brother, Benjamin -- of Norman Percy Trathen (Generation 3), thus establishing
a prior connection of the two families before the marriage of Norman’s daughter
-- and niece of Benjamin and Maude -- Eileen Trathen (Generation 2) to Leslie
Herbert Jarman (Generation 2), grandson of Elizabeth Mary’s nephew, Robert
Henry Lack).
The daughter of William Eggleton
and Sophia Rugles (and, thus, sister of John Eggleton), Mary Eggleton (spelled
‘Eagleton’ in the marriage records), born 1818, married (1833) John Haydon
(Hayden), born 1807, of Campbelltown, whose elder sister, Ann Hayden (born
1806), married George Simpson, who accompanied John Oxley on two of his
expeditions, and is mentioned in the journal (27-11-1818) of Governor Lachlan
Macquarie.
Having outlived her husband (who
died in 1903), Elizabeth Mary Lack -- regarded by relatives as “the pretty one”
of the Lack girls -- spent the last years of her life in Canterbury, where she
was buried at age 87 (15-10-1918).
M5: MATTHEWS, Eleanor (Ellen) B: 7-8-1825
M: 25-8-1845, Robert
Lack, St Peter’s, Campbelltown.
D:
1910
PATTERSON, Margaret
F5: PATTERSON (PATERSON),
William B: 1820 (Douglass, Isle of Man)
Occupation: Miner
M:
Pre-1849 (Isle of Man). Jane Stewart
D:
M5:
STEWART, Jane (Jessie) B:
1819 (Argyleshire, Scotland)
Occupation: House Servant
M:
Pre-1849 (Isle of Man) William Patterson
D:
William
Patterson and Jane Stewart.
William
Patterson and his wife, Jane, with their children, Margaret (aged 2), and
William (aged 1), boarded the ‘Agenoria’ at Plymouth to migrate to NSW, where,
according to the Immigration Records (28-5-1849) Jane’s sister, Mary Stewart
(not the Mary Stewart, daughter of Charles and Fanny, who married Robert Henry
Lack), was already living. At time of embarkation, William’s parents (Thomas
and Mary) were both living, and in residence on the Isle
of Man; Jane’s parents (John and Jane) were both dead. The
immigration documents spell their name as ‘Paterson’.
Arriving (25-5-1849) at Campbell’s Wharf, Sydney,
they did not disembark immediately, as baby William was near death. He died on
board (26-5-1849), and was buried at St James’ Church the following day (Church
records (no 889, p.10) show that the burial service was conducted by W. H.
Walsh).
Finally given approval to
disembark (28-5-1849), the family took up residence in Kelso, where, on
28-9-1849, their baby William Stewart Patterson was born (375/2280), and
baptised by Thomas Sharpe on November 12 of that year (a second baby, Archibald
Stewart Patterson followed on 13-6-1851. Birth records show the father’s
occupation at that time as ‘servant’, the mother’s name as ‘Jessie’, and their
place of residence as ‘Fitzgerald Swamp’ (near Bathurst).
This child was baptised (16-12-1851) by K.D. Smythe).
POTTINGER, Annie Georgina
Keating
F5: POTTINGER, Lionel Henry B: 10-3-1834
M: 14-7-1869. Susan Kemp
D:
after 1882, probably in Fiji.
Siblings: Eldred Pottinger,
‘Hero of Herat’ (half-brother); John Pottinger
Lionel
Henry Pottinger.
Lionel Henry, born in Carrick
Fergus, Antrim, was the son of Thomas Pottinger and his second wife,
part-Indian Eliza Fulton (Thomas and his first wife, Charlotte Moore, were the
parents of Major Eldred Pottinger, famed as the ‘Hero of Herat’; Thomas’s
younger brother was Sir Henry Pottinger, signatory to the Treaty of Nanking and
first governor of Hong Kong).
Lionel Henry served in the Indian Army in the Dragoons (his entry in
the Bombay Service Army List IOR/L/MIL/ 12/75 1770-1852 states ‘Lionel Henry 28th NI res 22nd Aug 1855’), but resigned
his commission and returned to Ireland, later following his cousin Frederick
William (son of Sir Henry) to NSW (via New Zealand, where he worked for a time
as a policeman on the gold fields), where he joined Sir Frederick as a trooper
in the Southern districts, and took part in the hunt for Ben Hall’s gang (a
photograph of him, taken in New Zealand, appears in two of Edgar Penzig’s books
about the bushrangers of NSW, along with the description of him as “5 feet 8
inches tall….. grey eyes, fair complexion, and sandy hair”).
One of his exploits at this time was reported, on 2-10-1867, in three
separate articles in two Sydney
newspapers. First, in The Empire (at http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/60845468), a letter (dated 13-1-1867) from A. S.
Meares to the Colonial Secretary offers his services in mounting an expedition
to capture the bushrangers Thomas, John and James Clarke, noting that “one of
the persons who would be engaged with me would be Mr Lionel H Pottinger, who is
also writing to you”. In the same publication
(at http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/60845461?) is the reply (1-3-1867)
from the Colonial Secretary (Henry Parker), who accepts “…on behalf of the Government of New South Wales… the voluntary
services of yourself, and of Lionel Henry Pottinger, and James Pye, forming a
party under your direction, to proceed to the district of Braidwood in pursuit
of the bushrangers infesting that part of the country: Thomas Clarke and his
companions….lt is distinctly understood that the services of yourself and
companions are offered to the Government without any remuneration, but that you
are to be supplied with arms.”
Finally,The Sydney Morning Herald (at http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/13157044) publishes the advisory
letter (dated 4-3-1867) sent by Henry Halloran, Principal Under-secretary at the Colonial Secretary’s
Office, to the Superintendent at Braidwood, Mr Orridge, “to inform you of the departure,
this day, from Sydney, for Braidwood, by the way of the Clyde River, of a
special party, consisting of Mr. Alexander Sparke Meares, Mr. Lionel Henry
Pottinger, and Mr. James Pye, in pursuit of Clarke and his associates”.
The success of this mission
notwithstanding, Lionel Henry’s career in the police force did not last long;
like his cousin, he was, eventually, dismissed, but for quite-different reasons
(in Lionel’s case, he had spoken in defence of sub-Inspector O’Neill,whose own
dismissal had, Lionel felt, been unjust). His career abruptly curtailed, he
moved north, marrying Susan Kemp in the Wesleyan Church
in Tenterfield (on which occasion he gave his occupation as ‘gentleman’).
Subsequent news items involving
Lionel Henry Pottinger show a less-heroic side to his nature: within five years,
he was committed for trial at Grafton on two counts of stealing (3-11-1873):
horse stealing, and stealing a gosling (NSW Govt Deposition Registers, page
008, Series NRS 849). He was, apparently, given a gaol term for these offences,
as the NSW Govt record of gaol photographs (Photo 980 p 113, Series NRS 2138,
Item 3/14031 Reel 5098) shows Lionel Henry Pottinger (birth year given as 1837)
in Darlinghurst gaol on 9-3-1874. The Tuesday, 5-8-1873 edition of the Clarence and Richmond Examiner and New England
Advertiser (Grafton, NSW: 1859 - 1889) notes,
on page 2, a further legal proceeding involving Lionel: “Before
Messrs W. Robertson, E. M. Ryan, and J. F. Wilcox, J. P.'s L. H. POTTINGER v
PETERSEN A claim of £1, value of 16lbs butter. The same newspaper reported
(Tuesday, 10-3-1874) on the theft of the gosling in some
detail, as Lionel Henry – possibly to show his contempt for the court
proceedings – appeared without counsel and demanded to be tried by a jury. The
report states:
“STEALING
A GOSLING. Lionel Henry Pottinger was…. arraigned, for that he did, at South Grafton, on the 2nd of November last, steal one
gosling, of the value of 4s. the property of William Gregory. The prisoner, who
pleaded not guilty, was undefended. The Crown Prosecutor, who expressed regret
at having to take up the time of the Court and jury over such a trumpery case,
said it was a right allowed by the law, for a prisoner to elect to be tried by
a jury, and Pottinger had claimed that right. The case was a very clear and
simple one, and he would not occupy their time, but at once call constable
Travers, who proved that about one o'clock, on Sunday morning, the 2nd of
November …. he saw a horse tied up outside the fence with a swag on it, and ….found
there was something alive in the swag; …..he saw Pottinger coming out of Mr.
Gregory's stables with two horse collars, which he dropped when he saw witness;
he then asked him if he owned the horse….. when receiving a reply in the
affirmative, he demanded to know what he had alive in the swag, and insisted on
opening it, when he found a young gosling, which he asked the prisoner, how he
be came possessed of, when he said Tom, Gregory's groom, gave it to him, which
he did not consider satisfactory, and at once arrested him on the charge of
stealing it, when prisoner begged to be let off, stating he would give him £20
to drop it. Augustus Gregory….. identified the gosling, as the property of his
father….. Thomas Engert proved that he never gave the gosling in question to
Pottinger, who denied his guilt; but the jury without leaving the box found him
guilty, a verdict in which his Honor concurred, stating that Constable Travers
had given his evidence in a straitforward, manly way, and evidently was a
witness of truth. There being another charge against the prisoner, he was
remanded for sentence.” (http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/61898410?)
The NSW Govt Deposition Registers record a further offence
by Lionel Henry (1-3-1877), “obtaining money by false pretences, for which he
was committed at Orange for trial at Bathurst (p 038 Series NRS
849)”. By this time, it seems that he and Susan had separated, and in a local
news item (25-2-1876) she is referred to as ‘the widow Pottinger’ (see below).
Lionel Henry Pottinger moved south, stopping first in
Melbourne, where a notice in The Argus
(25-6-1880, at http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/5973688) from the
Attorney General announces an application from Lionel Henry (now ‘land agent’)
and three colleagues (William Piper Monkhouse -- also ‘House and Land Agent’ –
Charles Artlett the younger – ‘mercantile clerk ‘– and Thomas James Thompson –
‘stockbroker’-- “all of the city of Sydney”) to patent an invention “for the
improvement of the illumination and heating powers of gas”, for which purpose “
(they) did, on the seventh day of May, deposit at the
office of the registrar-general, in Melbourne, a specification or instrument in
writing, under their hands and seals, particularly describing and
ascertaining the nature of the said invention, and in what manner the same is
to be performed; and that by reason of such deposit the said invention is
protected and secured to them exclusively for the term of six calendar months
…the said Lionel Henry Pottinger, William Piper Monkhouse, Charles Artlett the
Younger, and Thomas James Thompson have given notice, in writing….of their
intention to proceed with their application for letters patent for the said invention,
and that I have appointed Monday, the nineteenth day of July next….at my said
chambers, to hear and consider the said application and all objections thereto”.
A similar notice appeared (10-6-1880) in the Hobarttown Gazette, (Tasmania),
page 609 (at http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/8985338?) noting that the
application for patent had been filed, in Hobart
on May 28 and would be decided on August 18.
A further news item in The Argus
(8-9-1880, page 10, at http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/5973288?)
describes how the invention operates: “……. They have
devised a peculiar contrivance to be attached to meters or placed in other suitable places in buildings where the gas
supply will pass through it. In its passage through this apparatus, the gas
undergoes a certain process which makes a considerable difference in its
illuminating and heating power. Gas improved by the new process can be burned
far more economically than that which is ordinarily
used. In the experiments that were made yesterday, it was shown that with the
very smallest burner that is now used a flame can be produced with the new gas
fully equal to if not brighter than that given by the largest size burner (No.
6) with the ordinary gas, and that the latter burner would consume in 15
minutes 1ft. of gas, while the smaller burner (giving an equal light) would
take fully 90 minutes to consume the same quantity of gas…. if two Argand
burners be used, both giving a similar light, that burning the patent gas will
consume less than one-fifth of the quantity that the other (burning the
ordinary gas) will consume in a given time. It is further claimed that the
heating power of the gas is materially increased by the new process, and
experiments showed that the improved gas will boil a can of water in about four
minutes, while the ordinary gas takes nearly twice the length of time; which
goes far to bear out the inventor's claim, that under his new process the
consumption of, say, a quarter of a foot of gas will yield twice as great a
heat as double that quantity of ordinary gas. In 24 hours the cost of
continuously burning the improved gas would, it is said, be about 5d., as
against 1s.1d. for the ordinary gas. The cost of procuring and affixing the
apparatus to the gas supply of a house is not very great, and it is said to
merely require replenishing—an operation within the capacity of any household
assistant, while requiring but a trifling expenditure from time to time. The
inventors claim that the general introduction of their process will save
consumers three-fourths of their gas bills, and that the saving in such
edifices as the Exhibition-buildings, theatres, &c., would be enormous. The
experiments conducted yesterday were made by Mr. Lionel Pottinger and two
gentlemen who have come with him from Sydney, to introduce the invention in
Melbourne, and they were witnessed by Messrs. Cosmo Newbery and Mr. J. Hicks,
of the registrar-general's department, both of whom expressed a high opinion of
the invention, and a desire to see it fairly tested by an experiment on a large
scale in Melbourne.”
A further letter of endorsement
(from ‘Inquirer’) was sent to the same newspaper on 15-9-1880: “Sir, In your issue of the 8th
inst. I read a report of some gas experiments conducted by Mr. Lionel Pottinger
and two other gentlemen, in presence of Messrs. Cosmo Newbery and J. Hicks,
which appear to have been very successful, and a lasting debt of gratitude will
be due to Mr. Pottinger if his invention can be made available by the general
public, as it will put a stop to the gross imposition often practised,
particularly in young companies.” (http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/5980818?)
His success as an inventor
notwithstanding, two years later, Lionel Henry was back in Carcoar, NSW; an
entry in the NSW Police Gazette
(1882, pp 224 and 295) records “Lionel Henry Pottinger, charged on warrant with
embezzling 22 pounds, the money of Charles I Garland, has been arrested by
Constable McKenna, Carcoar Police. Committed for trial at Bathurst sessions”;
presumably, this was a separate offence to the similar one – also tried at
Bathurst – for which Lionel Henry had been committed in 1877 (the very next
entry in the Police Gazette, on page 224, refers to Arthur Henry Lack,
“landlord of the National Hotel, summoned by sub-inspector Gawin, Orange
Police, for allowing gambling in his licenced house, has been fined one pound
and one pound three shillings costs. Paid.”)
Lionel Henry’s lifestyle
eventually led him to further travels; he eloped with his wife’s tailoress (Selena
Travis, from Ultimo), and is believed to have died in Fiji.
Lionel Henry’s most famous
sibling is, of course, Major Eldred Pottinger, the ‘Hero of Herat’; his other
(full) brother, John Pottinger, is the father of Lt General Brabazon Henry
Pottinger, born in Bombay
c 1840, who emigrated (24-11-1911) to New York (with his wife, Rosa Stewart
Southey) on the ‘Lusitania’, the ship whose sinking, in 1915, brought the USA
into World War I.
Major
Eldred Pottinger, the ‘Hero of Herat’
Half-brother to Lionel Henry,
Eldred was the son of Thomas Pottinger and his first wife, Charlotte Moore. He
had a distinguished military career and is the subject of several biographies,
including The Judgment of the Sword: The
Tale of the Kabul Tragedy, and of the Part Played Therein by E. Pottinger
(1913, Maud Diver); The Hero of Herat:
Eldred Pottinger (1912, Maud Diver); and The Afghan Connection: The Extraordinary Adventures of Major Eldred
Pottinger (1983, George Pottinger). Several chapters of Peter Hopkirk’s The Great Game and Sir John William
Kaye’s History of the War in Afghanistan
are devoted to his exploits, which resemble those of T.E. Lawrence in Arabia
(Eldred Pottinger, himself, wrote a detailed report outlining these exploits,
but the original, on loan, was destroyed in a fire, and only fragments
remain).
Deputy to James
Abbott in Hazara, Mr Vans Agnew of the Civil Service, said of Eldred, “All those that know him tell one
story – their admiration is unqualified.” Sir Henry Lawrence, described by Karl
Ernest Meyer (Tournament of
Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia) as the “hero-martyr of the siege of Lucknow”,
wrote as follows: “India, fertile in heroes, has shown, since the days of
Clive, no man of greater or earlier promise than Eldred Pottinger… at Bamian
his genius appeared to rise…. he seems to have been unanimously elected leader
and to have effected what thousands of troops could not have done.”
A monument -- visited on August 30, 2008, by
Olivia and Emma Jarman (Generation 0) and Alan and Helen Jarman (Generation 1)
-- to the memory of Eldred Pottinger stands in the south-west corner of St Thomas the Apostle
Cathedral, the first English church in Mumbai (opened on Christmas Day, 1718).
Its inscription reads: “This monument,
erected by public subscription, to the memory of Major Eldred Pottinger, C.B.,
of the Bombay Regiment of Artillery, is placed in the Cathedral Church of
Bombay, in token of the admiration and respect, in which his character as a
soldier, and conduct as a man, are held by his friends in this presidency.
Major Pottinger’s successful defence of Herat, his gallant bearing and judicious
counsel, throughout the eventful period of the British reverses in
Affghanistan, are recorded in the annals of his country, and need no elogium
here; but the recollection of those services, must add to the regard
universally felt, that one, whose early career gave such promise of future
eminence and distinction, should have found a premature grave. Compelled by
long continued exertion, anxiety and fatigue, in the discharge of his public
duties, to seek a change of climate for the recovery of his health, Major
Pottinger was returning to England
via China,
where he was attacked by a malignant fever at Hongkong, where he died on the 15th
November 1843, aged 32 years.”
M5: KEMP, Susan B: c 1853
M:
(i) 14-7-1869, Lionel Henry Pottinger, Tenterfield, NSW
(ii) 1889, Robert Graham Middleton
D:
25-3-1932, Chatswood.
Susan
Kemp
No birth certificate exists for
Susan Kemp, daughter of Charles Kemp and Susan. There is, in fact, a Susan Kemp
born in the Tenterfield area in 1862 – the birth certificate lists her parents
as ‘Charles Kemp’ and ‘Hannah’ – but, although some sites accept this as
referring to the wife of Lionel Henry Pottinger, the dates make such an
interpretation quite impossible. Her marriage to Lionel took place on 14-7-1869
(this is not disputed), and the news item mentioning her (quoted below) reports
her as giving evidence in a police court in 1866. Her second marriage, and the
birth of her last child in 1890, indicates a date of birth no earlier than
1853, which would make her 13 years old, at most, when her evidence was heard.
From this data, it would seem that her date of birth can be reliably estimated
as 1853-4.
In a Tenterfield Police Court
case involving the disputed ownership of a cow and calf originally belonging to
her parents (and branded ‘SK’), as reported in the Clarence and Richmond Examiner and New England Advertiser,
25-9-1866, page 2 (reprinted at http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/61887203?searchTerm=&searchLimits=l-publictag=Susannah+Kemp+nee+Chandler),
it is stated that “Mrs Kemp swore that her husband sold the cow to (the defendant)
Leis… and certified to the receipt being in her husband’s hand-writing. Susan
Kemp, the daughter, also gave similar testimony”.
Susan
Kemp seems to have been mentioned – this time under her married name -- one further time in the Clarence
and Richmond Examiner and New England Advertiser, on Tuesday 25-7-1876, at
which time she had returned to the family home, having, it seems, separated
from Lionel Henry (although whether the statement that she was, in fact, his
widow was a deliberate misrepresentation of her status or a simple error of
reporting cannot now be determined). The very-brief entry, reporting on a local
flood, notes that “Mrs.
Pottinger, a widow, had to take refuge in Mr. O'Neill's, her own house, with
all its contents, being swept away, leaving her homeless and destitute” (http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/61905810?).
The following information on
the life of Susan Kemp is submitted by Michael Drew (31-12-2011, at http://genforum.genealogy.com/pottinger/messages/212.html):
“Lionel Henry Pottinger's wife, Susan Kemp, had 6
children, probably to three different men, spread over 21 years. She was
married to Lionel first and had …. four children ….. between 1869 and 1873. Then
she had an illegitimate child, Clarence Deane Pottinger in 1880, no father
listed. Lionel is still alive (applying for patents in Victoria
and Tasmania).
In 1889, she married again, to Scotsman Robert Graham Middleton. They had one
child in 1890 - Archibald Graham McKinnon Middleton”.
The death, in South Grafton, of Susan’s sister, Ruth Avery (26-9-1831 - 26-9-1871), is reported on the Toomey and Jackson Family History website (http://www.ezitree.com.au/html/IND00001/F00001850.htm); in this entry, her mother’s maiden name (‘Chantler’) is spelled ‘Chandler’.
STEWART, Mary
F5: STEWART,
Charles B:
M: Fanny Williams
D:
M5: WILLIAMS, Fanny B:
M: Charles Stewart
D:
TRATHEN, John
F5: TRATHEN, Benjamin B:
M: Mary Dawes, Dawe or Dow
D:
Comments:
Arrived in Victoria
circa 1846. Possibly came from Nelson,
New Zealand:
a Benjamin Trathen, husband of Mary Dawe, is referred to
(on
soc.genealogy.australia+nz, 6-2-1998) as having ‘settled’ there after
leaving
the UK.
A Benjamin Trathen, son of James Trathen and Eliza
Unknown,
is recorded as having died in 1886.
M5: DAWES (DAWE, DOW) Mary B:
M: (i) Benjamin Trathen
(ii) Edward Miners
D:
Comments:
a ‘Mary Miners’ daughter of Richard and
Ann, died at
Braidwood
in 1874.
Generation 6
BURROWS (BURRACE), Lydia
CHANTLER
(CHANDLER),
Susan
COOPER,
Faith
CORRIGAN,
Unknown
DALY,
Unknown
DAWES, Unknown
EGAN, Unknown
EGGLETON, Elizabeth
FULTON, Eliza
JARMAN, Henry (Henery)
KEMP, Charles
LACK, Robert
MacNAMARA, Unknown
MATTHEWS, John
PATTERSON, Thomas
POTTINGER, Thomas
STARR, William
STEWART, John
STEWART, Unknown
TRATHEN, Unknown
WILLIAMS, Unknown
WILLMOTT, Hannah (Anna)
CORRIGAN,
Patrick
F6: CORRIGAN, Unknown B:
M: Unknown
D:
M6:
UNKNOWN B:
M: Unknown Corrigan
D:
DALY, Elizabeth
F6: DALY, Unknown B:
M: Unknown
D:
M6: UNKNOWN B:
M: Unknown Daly
D:
DAWES
(DAWE, DOWE), Mary
F6: DAWES, Unknown B:
M: Unknown
D:
Comments:
possibly ‘Richard’
M6: UNKNOWN B:
M: Unknown Dawes
D:
Comments:
possibly ‘Ann’
EGAN,
Michael
F6: EGAN, Unknown B:
M: Unknown
D:
M6: UNKNOWN B:
M: Unknown Egan
D:
JARMAN, George
F6: JARMAN, Henry (Henery) B: c 1802 (no birth or christening record; Steeple Morden)
M: 1832, Lydia
Burrows (Burrace, Burrage).
D: 1847 (buried 25-7-1847, Steeple Morden)
Jarman,
Henry (Henery)
The following information on Henry (Henery) Jarman is extracted from the
1841 census of Steeple Morden:
“Occupation: Agricultural labourer. Born in County: yes. Children
listed: David, 8; John, 7; George, 5; James, 3; Thomas, 2 months. (Folio 3B HO
107/63/22).”
M6:
BURROWS (BURRACE), Lydia B: 1809 (christened 15-1-1809,
Great Chishall, Essex)
M:
(i) 1832, Henry (Henery) Jarman
(ii) 26-11-1864, Thomas Betts
D: 1900, Chelsea
Lydia
Burrows (Burrace, Burrage)
The Banns of marriage read at Steeple
Morden (15-1-1832) list Lydia
as ‘Lydia Burrace’ of Little Chissell (sic).
The
1841 Census of Steeple Morden notes that Lydia was not born in the county.
Further information, extracted from the 1851 Census of Steeple Morden, states:
Marital status: widow. Occupation: pauper. Where born: Essex,
Chishall (Chissle) Great. Children listed: George, age 15, agricultural
labourer; James, age 13, agricultural labourer; Thomas, age 10, agricultural
labourer; Susan, age 4, scholar. P.R.O. Ref. no. HO 107/1707.
After
the death of her second husband, Lydia
moved to London, and lived with her daughter,
Susan, until her death in Chelsea
(1900).
KEMP,
Susan
F6: KEMP, Charles B:
M: Susan Chantler (Chandler)
D:
Charles
Kemp
Compiling a biography of Charles Kemp, father of Susan, is
made more-complicated by the multiple occurrences of the name: another Charles
Kemp -- “a very familiar figure in the
community” -- living around the same time, and around the same area
(specifically, Glen
Innes; 90 km from
Tenterfield) is extensively-recorded (his detailed biography having been
published, as an obituary, in three major Australian newspapers, on the
occasion of his death in 1925, ‘within four months of ninety years of age’),
and is easily confused with Susan Chantler’s husband (especially so because not
one of the three newspaper reports mentions the Christian name of his wife,
which – as an examination of other records reveals -- is ‘Sarah’). Nor is
Charles Kemp, husband of Sarah, the only other person of that name in the
records: between 1875 and 1925, a total of four ‘Charles Kemps’ are recorded as
having died in the Clarence district (the other three being ‘son of Thomas C
and Margaret’ (1875); ‘son of Henry and Mary’ (1882); and ‘son of Jabez and
Catherine’ (1905).)
Given that Charles, husband of Sarah, is not ‘our’ Charles
Kemp (the obituaries report that Sarah’s husband “is survived
by the following sons and daughters: Mesdames Debenham (Kempsey), Barton (Glen
Innes), Miss Agnes Kemp (Glen Innes), Messrs. James, Charles, Joseph (Glen
Innes)” -- no mention of daughter Susan,
who lived until 1932, nor of her sister, Ruth – then which of the remaining
three belong in this genealogy? Neither Susan nor Ruth have NSW birth
certificates; there are, however, birth certificates for two daughters of
Charles Kemp and Susan -- Elizabeth (1847) and Agnes (1849) -- and death
certificates for two sons: Caleb Kemp (1892) and Joseph Kemp (1899). Clearly, a
Kemp family in the Tenterfield district with at least six children is readily
shown, even with the lack of a marriage certificate for Charles and Susan. The
incomplete records, however, make it impossible to establish whether Charles’s
parents were Thomas C and Margaret, or Henry and Mary, or Jabez and Catherine….
or, indeed, a different set of parents altogether (there is, for instance, a
Charles Kemp born to Charles Kemp and Mary Anglesey, in Queensland, in 1871).
My guess – with, however, no
other ‘evidence’ than the expectation that a man named ‘Jabez’ might have
grandchildren named ‘Caleb’ and ‘Ruth’, and the fact that Jabez had a sister
name ‘Elizabeth’ (born
20-11-1782), a name repeated in Charles’s daughters – would see Charles’s birth details (from the
Kemp family website, at http://www.kempfamilyhistory.com/getperson.php?personID=I43360&tree=adkemp)
as: ‘15
March 1825, Hinxton, Cambridgeshire’ (this interpretation, according to the
same website, would give Charles yet another daughter: ‘Hannah Smith Potterill, born Abt
1830, St Chesterfield, Essex…. Married 10 May
1851 Warwick, Queensland’; I can find no record of this
marriage; however, a ‘Hannah Potterell’ is recorded in the Queensland
Register of Births as wife of Charles
Kemp, and mother of Sarah (born 1858), and also as mother of William (died in
Queensland 1921). An ‘Anna (sic) Pottrell’, wife of Charles Kemp, is mother of Adelaide (born 1854);
‘Hannah Kemp’, nee ‘Potrell’ (sic), died 1902).
According to Kathy Geyer,
20-6-1999, at http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/KEMP/1999-06/0930307910,
Jabez Kemp was a son of “Richard Kemp born 1754, married 9 November 1778, in
Hinxton Cambridge England, Ann Hills, born 1755, died
April 1837, Hinxton, Cambridge, England. Richard died
March 1833, Hinxton, Cambridge”;
Jabez was the sixth child; his wife’s name is specified as Catherine Howard.
Further
research into the ancestry of Charles Kemp, father of Susan,
is desirable.
M6: CHANTLER (CHANDLER), Susan B:
M: Charles Kemp
D: possibly 1897, Grafton
Susan
Chantler (Chandler)
Susan
Chantler (or Chandler)
is, traditionally, given by Kemp family researchers as the wife of Charles
Kemp, even though there is no marriage in NSW registered for this couple. At
least one site calls her ‘Hannah Unknown’, due tio a birth certificate for a
Susan Kemp born in Tenterfield in 1862; however, this actually refers to a
different, younger, Susan Kemp.
There
is, however, mention – but not by Christian name -- of Charles Kemp’s wife (and
daughter, Susan) in the local press of the time.The Clarence
and Richmond Examiner and New England Advertiser, 30-8-1864, page 2 (at http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/61894524?searchTerm=&searchLimits=l-publictag=Susan+Kemp)
reports, apropos the inquest into the death in childbirth of Mary Niland: “…..during
the night deceased complained of great pain…..witness then proceeded to Grafton
for medical aid, and after dark called upon Dr. Balinfante, who declined to go
as the roads were bad and it was dark; the Doctor would have had to cross the
river at Grafton, and then go eight miles through the bush to his house; Dr.
Belinfante referred witness to Dr. Smith; he saw Dr. Smith, who declined to go,
as he had a similar case that required his attention; witness then went to Dr.
Berini but could not find any one at home; failing to get a medical man, he
tried to induce Mrs. Kemp, a midwife to go out but she also refused.”
The Clarence and Richmond
Examiner and New England Advertiser,
25-9-1866, page 2 (reprinted at
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/61887203?searchTerm=&searchLimits=l-publictag=Susannah+Kemp+nee+Chandler)
reports
the following item from the Tenterfield Police Court: “Detention of a
Cow and Calf. Charles Leis was summoned before the Court…. for illegally
taking
possession of a cow and calf…. Messrs Davison and Penny, at Sheriff’s
sale,
conjointly bought some cattle, and amongst the number one red cow
branded SK on
rump… Leis swore he made a dray for Mrs Kemp, and he purchased the cow
for 5
pounds 10s and for which he produced a receipt. Mrs Kemp swore that her
husband
sold the cow to Leis… and certified to the receipt being in her
husband’s
hand-writing. Susan Kemp, the daughter, also gave similar testimony… the
Bench
dismissed the case.”
A
‘Susan Kemp’ is recorded in the NSW register of deaths as dying, in Grafton, in
1897.
LACK,
Robert
F6: LACK, Robert B: c 1775, Parish of Lynn, Norfolk, Middlesex, England.
Convicted:
1797, Sussex, UK.
Arrival in NSW: 1801, ‘Canada
1’
M:
(i) Unknown
(ii) 20-3-1826, Elizabeth
Frasier, born Elizabeth Eggleton.
D:
12-4-1832, Campbelltown, NSW (Death Certificate no. V18321759
16/1832; no
parents’ names entered on certificate).
Robert Lack.
Robert Lack enlisted (7-7-1795)
in the British Army at Warley Camp (Essex), during the time it was under the
command of Colonel Sir Charles Asgill (who, in 1782, had been chosen, through
the drawing of lots, by George Washington as the token captured military leader
for execution as a show of retaliation; he was, however, subsequently released
by an act of Congress and returned to England).
Having been convicted of the
crime of robbery (from the Norfolk Military),
Robert Lack was discharged (27-5-1797), and sentenced
(August, 1797, at Sussex Assizes) to transportation for seven years. His ship,
the ‘Canada 1’, (393 tons, built at Shields in 1800), sailed (under the command of Captain William
Wilkinson), possibly on its maiden voyage, from Spithead, England on June 21,
1801, in company with two other transport ships (the ‘Minorca’ and the ‘Nile’),
eventually arriving, after 176 days at sea, in Port Jackson (by way of Rio) on
December 14 of that year. (‘Pastfinders.net’ holds an indictment file on Robert
lack’s offence, including names of his co-accused: ref. nos UC0053;
UC4005; UC4007. Website: http://www.pastfinders.net/unclaimedconvictsl.htm)
A considerable amount of
documentation exists to allow researchers to trace Robert Lack’s subsequent
history in his new home, which, it seems, he recognised as offering him a
‘second chance’: the granting of his Certificate of Emancipation (1-2-1811);
his joining the Loyal Sydney Volunteers under Governor Bligh; his acquisition
of several parcels of land in the greater Sydney area, and employment of
newly-arrived convicts on these properties (NSW Govt Records of CsreLand, Item
2/7802, Reel 1150, date 1830 and 1831); his rise to respected citizen and
employee of Governor Lachlan Macquarie; and his death in Campbelltown (1834),
where he is listed in the Pioneers’ Register (there was, possibly, one further
incidence of theft , during the very early years of his settlement in the new
colony: a news report in the Sydney Gazette (at http://ndpbeta.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/page/5963?zoomLevel=1)
records (19-8-1804) the arrest and
punishment, for theft of corn from a boat, of “five men employed in a
government boat”, one of whom is named Robert Lack).
At first entrusted by Lachlan
Macquarie with keeping “in good perfect Substantial and proper repair” the road
from “the Toll Gate Opposite the Factory in Parramatta to the Howes Bridge
Windsor”, for which he was paid in rum (a contract -- dated 28-2-1815, signed
with an ‘X’ by Robert Lack, and witnessed by four government officials,
including D’Arcy Wentworth -- and authorisations of payment -- dated 2-6-1815,
4-9-1815, and 16-4-1816, and signed by ‘L.M. His Excellency, Governor
Macquarie’-- still survive), he subsequently became an employer of convicts,
for which service he was granted additional land, as is evidenced by a
surviving letter (29-11-1825) from Robert Lack to Surveyor-General John Oxley
requesting “one such quantity of Land as I may be entitled to” in return for
maintaining convicts “free of expense to the Crown” (researcher Shirley White
mentions a grant “of 60 acres at ‘Botany Bay’, later Peakhurst”; the 1822
Muster records William Eggleton (Generation 7) as being an employee of Robert
Lack in Liverpool; he also employed William Thompson on this site, and William
Dyson on still more land, in Campbelltown, of which Shirley White notes that
“he must have bought because he didn’t receive it in the form of a grant” ).
Robert’s various occupations
are listed as baker, farmer, and candlemaker (The Economic History of Campbelltown records that, in partnership
with Paul Huon, Robert Lack had a candle factory in Airds in 1831, the year
before his death). He eventually settled on his land in Campbelltown, marrying
(20-3-1826, at St Peter’s Church of England, Campbelltown) his housekeeper,
Elizabeth (widow of John Frasier, and daughter of his employee, William Eggleton,
who settled in the area around the same time). Researcher Lesley Uebel (16-8-2003,
at http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/AUS-PT-JACKSON-CONVICTS/2003-08/1061025004)
records this as Robert’s second marriage, although with no mention of, or
evidence for, an earlier union; she also notes, with regard to a land grant to
Robert, “he was
granted 50 acres at Botany Bay by Foveaux in 1809,which had to be surrendered but was re-granted by
Macquarie in 1810.”
After the birth of four
children (the youngest of whom, Elizabeth Mary, lived until 1918, dying in Canterbury), Robert died
(12-4-1832) and was buried in the original part of St Peter’s Church cemetery
(exact position no longer identifiable). According to Shirley White, “in 1834,
in the Monitor paper, Robert’s property….. was put on the market for auction.
For some reason the property remained in the hands of the family because the
children finished up with same. It is probable that Robert held other property
not mentioned in Auction, as acreage at ‘Botany Bay’, and perhaps that was sold
to satisfy the need” (Lesley Uebel also mentions this grant of “50 acres at Botany Bay by Foveaux in 1809, which had to be surrendered but was
re-granted by Macquarie in 1810”).
While indications are that he
provided well for his wife and children, Elizabeth appears to have badly
mismanaged both the family finances and its reputation after Robert’s death; a
report (7-1-1833) on “the circumstances stated by the executor of the late
Robert Lack” (Colonial Secretary’s Files 1833/328) denounces her as “since her
husband’s death…. a woman of bad character”; later reports on her murder by her
third husband show her and her daughters as living in a one-room shack close by
the main roadway to Sydney, her occupation after Robert’s death being described
as ‘shopkeeper’.
Two newspaper reports
concerning the disposition of the propert of Robert Lack following his death
are on-line:
(i) at http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/12846075,
from The Sydney Herald, 14-1-1833: “NOTICE. PROBATE of
the last Will and Testament of ROBERT LACK, late
of Campbell Town, deceased, having been granted to Thomas Rose and others, the
Executors; all persons having claims on the said Estate are requested to
present the same to Mr. THOMAS ROSE, one of the Executors, for liquidation; and
all persons indebted to the said Estate are required to pay the same to him.
Appn, Jan. 1, 1833.”
(ii) at http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/2216421, from The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, l7th June, 1834: “SALE OF LAND. At Eleven o'Clock of Friday the 10th Day of October next, the Collector of Internal Revenue will put up to AUCTION, at the Police Office, Sydney, the undermentioned PORTIONS OF LAND, on conditions authorised by Government: …No. 624. By Jemia Jenkins, gentlewoman, Eaglevale, Campbelltown, to 100 acres, promised to Robert Lack, now forming part of memorialist's estate of Eaglevale, county of Cumberland.”
The
1788-1820 Pioneer
Association Inc. has constructed a web page for Robert Lack, at
http://www.the1788-1820pioneerassociation.org.au/Robert%20Lack.html
M6: EGGLETON, Elizabeth B:
18-2-1796, Sydney, NSW (baptised 5-3-1796).
M:
(i) 4-11-1811, John Frasier (Frazier), St Phillips,
Sydney
(died by drowning, 12-2-1823).
(ii) 20-3-1826, Robert Lack, St Peter’s,
Campbelltown.
(iii) 25-8-1834, James Richardson, Sydney
D:
20-1-1849.
Elizabeth Eggleton
Just three years old when her
mother died, Elizabeth (from family anecdotes, usually called ‘Betsy’) Eggleton
married for the first time at age 15, to John Frasier, or Frazier (born
18-2-1789), son of convicts William Frazier and Eleanor (Ellen) Redchester.
John Frasier drowned (12-2-1823) at Concord (researcher Shirley White cites a
document which describes his death as being the result of “bathing in a river
while in a hot sweat”) after eleven years of, apparently, turbulent marriage
(in an entry in the Sydney Gazette (1813), John disclaims further
responsibility for debts incurred by his wife; the next year, the 1814 muster
refers to her as living, not with her husband, but with her father, William
Eggleton, and her brother, William, in the Windsor area).
Two sons – John, baptised
1-11-1820, and Daniel, born 1823 – are recorded for the marriage; while the
Baptismal record of John records his mother as ‘Elizabeth Frazier’, researcher
Shirley White records that the actual mother of both boys was “Elizabeth
McGrath nee Sommerville, also born in the colony… Mrs McGrath cohabitated with
John Frazier while her husband, Michael McGrath was serving a Colonial Sentence
at Maitland. After the deaths of Michael and John she then married James
Ward….. it seems that Elizabeth (Eggleton) refused to live with John Frazier,
retained her maiden name, and continued to live with her father and brother”.
Certainly, there is no
indication that Elizabeth had any involvement in rearing the two Frazier boys,
still infants at the time of their father’s untimely death (by which time
Elizabeth, still a young woman of only twenty-six, was already involved with
her second husband; by 1822 Elizabeth and her father, William Eggleton, are
listed as residing on the property of Robert Lack ‘near Liverpool’. Elizabeth is officially
listed, at this time, as ‘housekeeper’ to Robert Lack; the two would marry
(20-3-1826) when their son, Robert, was already two years old).
Robert Lack appears to have been
upwardly mobile, socially, in the new colony, and on his early death
(12-4-1832) had provided well for his family, by this time numbering one son
and three daughters. Elizabeth, however, did not fare well after Robert’s death
(although Shirley White points out, in defence of ‘Betsy’, that she “was quite
capable of conducting her deceased husband’s affairs as she is recorded as
having supplied grain to Government stores and also applying to open another
store – one hesitates to say a liquor store!”). There were at least two
unsuccessful attempts at a third marriage, which she sought “as a considerable
acquisition to her in her present occupation” (as shopkeeper), and for which
she was obliged to seek approval from the executors of her husband’s estate;
one of these liaisons -- to Thomas Phillips, holder of a Ticket of Exemption --
resulted in her being branded (by the local police officer) ‘a woman of bad
character’ whose involvement with the ‘otherwise-good’ Thomas was terminated by
the strategy of re-locating him to a ‘remote’ (in actuality, the Hunter)
district (Colonial Secretary’s File 1833/328, dated 7-1-1833).
Elizabeth
eventually succeeded in marrying (25-8-1834, in Sydney, “in the Presbyterian rites”, a
decision which, according to Shirley White, led a furious Rev. Thomas Reddall
to vent “his feelings in writing to the authorities…. because they had married
out of the parish and out of their religion”) the sexton of St Peter’s Church
(Campbelltown), James Richardson. Richardson was
an ex-convict who had served his sentence working for Rev. Reddall and, at the
time of the marriage, was employed by John Haydon, of ‘Sugarloaf’ (husband of Elizabeth’s niece, Mary).
The marriage was a troubled one, James’s attentions to the two daughters (Sarah
Sophia and Elizabeth Mary) still living at home being a main cause of the
conflict. Elizabeth Mary was removed by intercession of Thomas Reddall, who
located for her a position as a domestic in Sydney; a problem still existing
between Richardson and Sarah Sophia (by this time the mother of an infant
daughter, unnamed, whose father remains unrecorded), Elizabeth eventually
ejected Richardson from their Campbelltown (Sydney Rd) home.
On January 20, 1849, Elizabeth – along with daughter Sarah and Sarah’s unnamed
infant daughter (aged 10 months) -- was murdered in her home by her estranged
husband, who, on the eve of his intended departure to Adelaide on a cattle drive, had returned to
the cottage after a drinking bout. A fourth victim, Elizabeth’s four-year-old
granddaughter, Sarah (born 1845), daughter of Robert and Ellen Lack (Generation
5), was left for dead, but survived with, apparently, serious head injuries
(she never married, living for the remainder of her life with family members,
notably her brother, Robert Henry (Harry) Lack, until her death (17-2-1924) at
‘The Cedars’ Private Hospital, Holden St, Ashfield).
James
Richardson subsequently confessed to the crimes, pleading extreme provocation
(his wife’s suspected infidelity, and the behaviour of the children toward
him). He was tried in Central Criminal Court, in Sydney, in March 1849, found guilty,
sentenced to death at Glebe (6-3-1849 -- see The Sydney Morning Herald, 7-3-1849), and executed April 7 (The Sydney Morning Herald, 26-4-1849).
Elizabeth Eggleton’s older sister, Sarah
Eggleton, and her ‘alter-egos’ (Sarah Eglinton and Sarah Pearson).
(This is a revised and
corrected version of a document submitted in 2007 to the
Fellowship of First Fleeters, Sydney)
Sarah
Eggleton (Ref: NSW BDM No.V180242 4) – first-born child of William Eggleton and
Mary Dickenson, and elder sister of Elizabeth Eggleton (Generation 6) – is not
a direct antecedent in this genealogy; she has, however, been the subject of
such a volume of research by other family historians that, in researching
Elizabeth, it became impossible not to become involved in the
popularly-accepted history of her elder sister, as pieced together by previous
researchers into the Eggleton line. In current interpretations of the data, Sarah
(through her alleged ‘marriage’ to Thomas Pearson – an already-married (in
England) convict who had arrived on the ‘Ganges’
in 1797 -- and the supposed first-born daughter of this union, Rosetta Pearson)
is the source of a considerable number of families claiming Eggleton
antecedents: the Fifield, Kemp, Martin, Connolly, Costello, Dalley, Campbell,
Fairley, Hughes, Wooton, Morris, Mules, White, and Jacob lines, to name just
some I have encountered. All have researched Sarah Eggleton, and all have claimed
her (and, it follows, first-fleeters William and Mary) as their ancestor, based
on an over-optimistic interpretation of the facts which, ultimately, fails to
stand up to even cursory examination.
The
universally-accepted theory posits a single Sarah who was, at different stages
of her life, Sarah Eggleton, Sarah Pearson, Sarah Solomon, and (at least in a
‘de facto’ sense) Sarah Summers. Conceived, born and baptised in the colony in
1788 (even though she later, unaccountably, claimed to have come free on the ‘Ganges’ in 1797), she had her first
baby at age 12 to a man some 22 years her senior and who was already married
(to another Sarah, whom he had, it is assumed, left in England upon being
transported, and to whom he may have returned, abandoning his Australian Sarah
and their baby, Rosetta), saw her daughter married, at age 19, in 1819, when
she herself was only 30 years old, and was eventually (in her forties)
romantically linked with a farmer some four years her junior. A very busy lady
indeed! Yet, upon her death in 1842, no one could be found to organise or
attend her funeral.
This
same scenario sees one (and one only) Thomas Pearson, husband of Sarah Pearson,
who, having been convicted in London and sent to the ‘Ganges’ in 1796, arrived in New South Wales in 1797 (at which time
his supposed bride-to-be, Sarah Eggleton, was a child of eight), bigamously
married and impregnated a girl of eleven or twelve, falsely claimed to have
come free on the convict ship in which he was transported, and either returned
to England (possibly to bring his first wife back to the colony with him) or
stayed on to be admitted to a benevolent asylum, during which period his second
wife left him to marry (and have a son by) another man, of whom she later –
unaccountably -- described herself as an employed servant.
This
reconstruction of the life of Sarah Eggleton and Thomas Pearson has, it seems,
always been regarded as problematic; several early researchers have expressed
some doubt about its veracity. A hand-written, undated, and unsigned report,
written under the letterhead of the Fellowship
of First Fleeters -- having evaluated the Family Record by Rosetta
Pearson-descendant Robert Hodges, entries in Dr Craig James Smee’s Pioneer Register, and the research of
Shirley White and Yvonne Browning -- concedes that the generally-accepted
interpretation is “unlikely”, concluding, with regard to ‘the Sarah who came
with Thomas’ (i.e., his English wife) that
“I don’t
think these had anything to do with the other family”.
Further,
the same author, citing Yvonne Browning, notes that
“she admits to a lack of knowledge or any
proof in almost every paragraph”.
Eggleton
descendant Helen Paternoster has a detailed (but without authorship)
eleven-page treatise on descendants of William and Mary Eggleton which states:
“there
seems to be a great deal of mix-up and confusion with the life of Sarah
Eggleton…..I have put Sarah Eggleton in my ’too-hard basket’ for now”.
Yet,
for want of a more-convincing analysis, both the above researchers – and, it
seems, just about everyone else -- continue to concede that Sarah Eggleton
must, somehow, have married Thomas Pearson, and that Rosetta Pearson was, in
fact, their first-born daughter (born either in 1800, 1801, 1802, or 1807,
depending on which report you read); the genealogical lines are then
constructed with this relationship treated as fact, and -- as a consequence --
the line to William and Mary Eggleton
decisively, if uncomfortably, established.
However,
when one goes back to the sources, and examines, not what someone else has
already written, but what is actually there in the records, one finds that
there is only one primary source and one secondary source that in any way links
Sarah Eggleton with Thomas Pearson. The primary source is the 1823/4/5 muster,
which lists the wife of Thomas Pearson as Sarah Eggleton, who came free to NSW
on the ‘Ganges’ in 1797 (the ship
that also brought Thomas Pearson as a convict). The secondary source is a typed
death certificate, based on information provided after the event by third
parties, for Rosetta Pearson (date of death 11-1-1866), which states that she
was born in Parramatta and lived for 68 years in NSW, having married Edward
Devine at age 19 (this marriage took place on 18-8-1819), and gives as her
parents the names Sarah Eggleton and Thomas Pearson.
These
two entries have to be wrong, whichever way you look at them; we know that
Sarah Eggleton did not come on the ‘Ganges’ in 1797, or at any other time;
her parents having been married in Sydney on February 17, 1788, Sarah was born
in the colony very late that same year (and baptised on 25-12-1788). When the ‘Ganges’ arrived in Sydney, she was a child of eight. If Rosetta
Pearson lived for 68 years in NSW, dying in 1866, her date of birth must have
been around 1798; and her age at marriage, instead of 19, would have been
around 21 (with her ‘mother’, Sarah, 30 years old at the date of this marriage,
a mere nine years her senior).
While
researchers seem willing to overlook discrepancies in the dates and the factual
information in those two records, no one seems willing to consider that the
errors may, in fact, stem from misspelling of the names rather than from
misdating; the assumption has been that those two occurrences of the spelling ‘Sarah
Eggleton’ must, by themselves, prove the case, and all the difficulties
emanating from these must be consigned – to again quote Helen Paternoster’s
offering – to the “too-hard basket”.
Yet
spelling inconsistencies abound in all family research, and the Eggleton line
seems to have more than its share: for Sarah, wife of Thomas Pearson, as well
as these two instances of ‘Eggleton’, I have found, in primary sources, six for
‘Eglinton’ and one for ‘Eglenton’ (Shirley White’s account adds yet another variation:
‘Eglington’). In the Eggleton family, the spellings ‘Eagleton’ and ‘Egelton’
are used, and ‘Dickenson’ occurs as ‘Dickison’. ‘Pearson’ is written as both
‘Pierson’ and ‘Peirson’; ‘Devine’ is, on at least one occasion, spelt ‘Divine’.
It is clear that the spelling of proper names is consistent only for its
inconsistency; two cases of ‘Eggleton’ when another spelling was intended is,
surely, not too far-fetched to accept.
My own
explanation for the saga of Sarah Eggleton and Thomas Pearson is grounded in
the conviction that we are dealing with, not one, but three distinct Sarahs:
Sarah Eggleton (born in the colony in 1788); Sarah Eglinton (born in England),
who married, firstly, Thomas Peirson (emigrating, shortly afterwards, to New
South Wales as a free settler on the ship in which her husband was
incarcerated) and, secondly, Samuel Solomon; and Sarah Pearson (born in
England), daughter of Thomas Peirson and Sarah Eglinton, who, having
accompanied her mother and elder brother on that same ship, eventually married
her brother’s friend, becoming Sarah Summers. This theory posits not one, but
two Thomas Pearsons: the first, originally spelled Peirson (born in England), was transported to Australia on the
‘Ganges’; the second, Thomas Pearson,
was his son, born in England and a free passenger on that same ship (with his
mother, Sarah Eglinton and his younger sister, Sarah Pearson).
In my
interpretation of the facts, Sarah Eggleton never married, or had any kind of
relationship with, Thomas Peirson/Pearson. She never gave birth to Rosetta
Pearson. In fact, she didn’t do anything (at least, in the primary sources)
after she was baptised on December 25, 1788. For all we know about her, she
could have died the same day! Her ‘biography’ has been hopelessly intertwined
with that of the two English Sarahs (Sarah Eglinton, born London c 1772; and
Sarah Pearson, born in London at the end of 1795 or the beginning of 1796),
both of whom – along with the infant Thomas Pearson, Jr -- arrived in Sydney as
free settlers in 1797. The elder Sarah subsequently had at least four more
children – ‘Rosetta’ (born, perhaps with a different Christian name, within
about two years of their arrival in the colony), John (who died at age 17 on
6-6-1817), Elizabeth (born 1805) -- all fathered by Thomas Pearson -- and
Samuel, who died at ten years old (in 1820) and was fathered by Samuel Solomon.
Her daughter, the younger Sarah, worked as a servant to Samuel Solomon from her
early teens (around 1808) up to at least 1822, following which she married her
brother Thomas’s long-time friend, Thomas Summers, and leased (around 1831) a
farm in Richmond from her sister, Elizabeth (married to James Hill),
subsequently employing their brother, Thomas, to farm there. These facts can
easily be gleaned from the original sources without ever needing to involve
Sarah Eggleton.
I wish
I could say that I can “dot all the ‘i’s and cross all the ‘t’s” in this
reading of the facts, by providing original documents to prove every point.
That, alas, cannot be done. There is, for a start, no surviving list of the
free passengers who arrived on the ‘Ganges’ on 2-6-1797; all we have remaining is the
list of male convicts. The sceptic may, therefore, dismiss all my conclusions
solely on this one point-of-order. However, it is easily proved that there
were, indeed, free settlers who arrived on the ‘Ganges’ in 1797; the 1811 census contains no fewer than ten
entries of people (mainly women) identifying themselves as having come free on
that same voyage, and a cross-check of their surnames with the names of the
male convicts on the ship shows that they were, in the main, wives and children
of the men being transported (one of which, of course, was Thomas Peirson, a
fact which is not in dispute; there has been mention of a Thomas Pearce
arriving in 1802 on the ‘Coromandel’,
but he is not generally considered, with any seriousness, as a partner for
Sarah Eggleton).
It is
undisputed that Thomas Peirson/Pearson, having been arrested and tried in London at age 30, was sent to the ‘Ganges’ (17-2-1796). Helen
Paternoster’s research mentions the existence of his wife, Sarah, who
“stayed in England. If this be the case,
Thomas Pearson now has two wives named Sarah. Various records…. confuse the
matter more by showing that both Sarah Pearsons (i.e. the original wife from England
and Sarah Eggleton) as having the same children. It is not known for certain
whether 1st wife Sarah perhaps followed Thomas Pearson in the years following
his arrival”.
(Peter
J Moore’s research, faced with the paucity of actual evidence for Sarah
Eggleton’s marriage to Thomas Pearson, and the sudden appearance on the scene
of Sarah Pearson, decides to have a bet each way, stating that “Thomas didn’t marry Sarah (Eggleton), and
when he obtained his freedom he went back to England and brought his wife and
child to Australia”. He may be referring to a departure from Sydney –
announced in the Sydney Gazette for
the ship, ‘Harrington’ in December,
1806, and cited by Shirley White – of, supposedly, a Thomas Pearson; however, a
check of the original source reveals this to be neither ‘Peirson’ nor
‘Pearson’, but ‘Pearce’.)
The
coincidence of two wives with the same first name is not, by itself, too much
for the mind to encompass; however, an examination of four original documents
(a set of two handwritten cards recording either a marriage or an impending
marriage at St Andrews Church, Holborn, (about four kilometres from Shoreditch,
London), dated 1792, (see ancestrylibrary.com), and entries in two Church
registers, dated 2-6-1792 (Source citation: Guildhall, St Andrew Holborn,
Register of Marriages by Banns, 1787-1793 p. 69/AND2/A/01/Ms6670/7) and
13-4-1783 (St Leonard Shoreditch, London, Hackney; source citation: Guildhall,
St Leonard Shoreditch, Register of marriages May 1791-June 1793, p.
91/LEN/A/01/Ms7498/17), and a baptismal certificate (11-1-1796) for St Andrews
Church, does, indeed, take the coincidence of Thomas as the husband of both
Sarahs to a new level.
The
marriage announced is for Thomas Peirson (sic) and Sarah Eglinton, and the 1796 baptism is for their first daughter, Sarah
Pearson. Young Sarah is, it seems, the couple’s second child; records of the
Church of Latter Day Saints show two children of Thomas Pearson and Sarah
Eglinton, the elder being son Thomas, born in London ‘about 1794’ (an
indecisive entry which may actually have been arrived at by working backwards
from the 1828 census of NSW, in which Thomas Pearson, age 34, is recorded as
having come free, on the ‘Ganges’,
and living with Thomas Summers at Evan). LDS also documents a marriage – 13-4-1793,
at St Leonard’s Church, Shoreditch, London -- between Thomas Peirson (sic) and
Sarah Eglinton, an entry repeated in Hawkesbury
Pioneers Register, Vol 2; while it is possible that the June, 1792, Holborn
record and card refers to a different couple in the same neighbourhood, the
addition of the capital letter ‘B’ next to the Holborn imprint on both cards
suggests that the Holborn records may have been in the nature of published
banns, as the title of the Holborn register indicates.
The
existence of a second, younger Thomas Pearson clears up several inconsistencies
in the NSW records, in which Thomas Pearson is listed both as a convict and a
free man on the ‘Ganges’, and as a
labourer, inmate of a benevolent asylum, and lessee of his daughter’s property:
quite a biography, and surely more likely if shared between two.
The
1828 census is not the only extant record of the younger Thomas Pearson’s free
status: he is also listed in the 1814 muster (at which time he would have been
about 19), employed as a labourer. In turn, his sister, Sarah Pearson,
positively attests to her own status as a free settler (via the ‘Ganges’) in the muster of 1822, in
which she is listed as a ‘servant’ to Samuel Solomon (who, by the time of the
1828 census, at age 69, is, himself, employed by Sarah’s sister, Elizabeth
Hill, as a labourer; three years later, Elizabeth would install Sarah and her
husband on a farm and employ their brother, Thomas).
The
one remaining person who must attest to her arrival on the ‘Ganges’ as a free
settler is, naturally, Sarah Eglinton (who, since her marriage, is actually
‘Sarah Pearson’; however, she seems to have used the surname ‘Eglinton’ in
several records between her arrival in NSW and her death, at age 70, on
22-5-1842). And, of course, Sarah Eglinton does
so attest, in the 1823/4/5 muster, which shows her living with her daughter’s
employer. However, the spelling mistake – the name is written as Eggleton – has resulted in this being
attributed to the daughter of William and Mary Eggleton, in spite of the fact
that this must, logically, make the rest of the entry a fiction. No one seems
to have questioned the improbability of Sarah Eggleton -- born in the colony
and whose father was still living here at the time of the census – falsely
claiming to have emigrated from England
as a free settler (at age eight?). Prior to this illogical declaration, we had
no information about Sarah Eggleton subsequent to her 1788 baptism; now, as a
result of the acceptance of the entry which is almost-certainly a simple case
of misspelling, previously-forgotten Sarah suddenly reappears in all the
records as the wife of Thomas Pearson and Samuel Solomon, as the partner of
Thomas Summers, and as the mother of Rosetta Pearson, John Eglenton, Thomas
Pearson, Elizabeth Pearson, and Samuel Solomon, Jr.
In the
case of – particularly -- Rosetta (and this first name becomes very
significant), the date of her birth has been moved around to accommodate the
awkward chronology necessitated by this scenario. Shirley White has her born
“circa 1800 Parramatta claiming Thomas Pearson as father…. mother Sarah
Eggleton was only twelve years at Sarah’s birth” (in fact, since Sarah was born
in the last weeks of 1788, she would have been eleven years old for all but the
last few weeks of 1800, making this already-unlikely scenario practically
impossible). Peter J Moore amends the date to 1801 (a little less-improbable),
Robert Hodges to 1802 (better still… in this case, Sarah would have been
thirteen), and St Peters, Richmond: the
Early People and Burials as late as 1807, which would be even more
desirable (making Sarah eighteen at the time of her daughter’s birth) if it
wasn’t patently impossible when set against the date of Rosetta’s marriage to
Edward Devine (in the register, spelled ‘Divine’; according to Dr C. J. Smee,
he was christened Edward Doyle, and was the son of first-fleeter Philip Devine
and Ann Doyle), which is decisively dated – without, however, listing the names
of either parent -- in the original St Peter’s Marriages Register (with the
spelling ‘Peirson’ for Rosetta’s last name), at 18-8-1819, with Rev Henry
Fulton performing the ceremony, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was
officiating at the marriage of a twelve, or even eleven-year-old (in addition,
this later date of birth makes nonsense of Rosetta’s own statement of her age
in the 1822 muster and of the statement in the Church register regarding her
age at death, which, interestingly, agree with each other).
While
Hodges’ date for Rosetta’s birth – 1802, making Sarah a mother at thirteen, and
Rosetta a bride at 16 or 17 -- is an easy-to-accept compromise, the fact is
that there remains not a shred of evidence to prove that Rosetta Pearson was
actually born in 1802, in Parramatta
or elsewhere. Rosetta – under that name -- was never registered in New South Wales, does not appear in the Mutch Index, and
is not mentioned in the records of St John’s
Church of England,
the only church operating in Parramatta
at the time. The two primary sources which give an indication of Rosetta’s age
– the 1822 muster, which records her as aged 24, and the St Peter’s (Richmond)
record of her burial (died 11-1-1866, buried 14-1-1866), at aged 68 – suggest a
date of birth as early as 1797 or 1798, within about a year of the arrival of
the ‘Ganges’… at which time her alleged ‘mother’, Sarah Eggleton, was no more
than nine years old.
The
choice – surely an unusual one for a member of the Eggleton family to give to a
first daughter – of the name ‘Rosetta’ has long intrigued me. There are no
other ‘Rosettas’ immediately before it – or, for that matter, at any time since
-- in this family, which is, otherwise, particularly scrupulous in keeping to
traditional names: several ‘Williams’ and ‘Elizabeths’, and some ‘Sarahs’. I
wondered whether, perhaps, I could find the name ‘Rosetta’ in the church
records of the Peirson/Pearson or Eglinton families back in England. At first, the search was
fruitless; I searched both ‘Peirson’ (with its several spelling variations) and
‘Eglinton’ in the English records, without coming across even a single
occurrence of the name. Desperate, I decided to identify (using Pallot’s Baptism Index for England, and Pallot’s Marriage Index for England --
both 1780-1837 -- plus available British census records) every ‘Rosetta’ in England
over a seventy-year period, from 1780 to 1850. Suddenly, I had scores of
‘Rosetta’ baptisms, and literally hundreds of marriages (not so unexpected, as
each ‘Rosetta’ marriage had at least two listings: under the surname of the
groom as well as the bride). A perusal of these entries showed some remarkable
trends: for baptisms, there were very few before 1800, and, comparatively few
after 1830; however, for the thirty-year period in between those dates there
was, unaccountably, a distinct surge in ‘Rosettas’. A comparable surge in
‘Rosetta’ marriages occurred between 1813 and about 1850, after which
occurrences of the name, again, dwindled. Even more remarkable, the occurrences
seemed strictly regionally-based: nearly all the ‘Rosettas’ were baptised, and
married, in the Greater London area, the overwhelming majority in the same
half-dozen churches in one relatively-small district: Holborn/St Pancras, the
very district in which Thomas Peirson and Sarah Eglinton were married, and
where their daughter, Sarah, was baptised.
Intrigued,
I ‘tightened’ the time-frame of my inquiries, researching baptisms of ‘Rosetta’
from 1800 to 1830, and marriages from 1812 to 1852. There were 71 baptisms for
‘Rosetta’ in England in that thirty-year period, 46 of which were celebrated in
just four London churches: St Martin-in-the-Fields (one), St Anne’s, Soho
(ten), St Andrew’s, Holborn (twelve, all in the twelve-year period 1800-1811),
and St Pancras (twenty-three). The whole of the rest of England accounted for just
twenty-five baptisms of ‘Rosettas’ in thirty years.
I
found, altogether, 357 entries for marriages (for a total of some 175
Rosettas), and this time Bethnal Green accounted for seven; Shoreditch (identified
as the church where Thomas Peirson and Sarah Eglinton were married in 1793) for
eight; St Andrew’s (Holborn), St Pancras, and St Anne’s (Soho) for ten each; St
Marylebone for thirteen; and St Martin-in-the-Fields for no less than
twenty-seven. I had already ascertained that Shoreditch and Holborn were
neighbouring parishes; now, I cross-referenced ‘Holborn’ with the other names,
and found that each of these churches is within a few kilometres of St
Andrew’s, Holborn (and, therefore, from each other). ‘Rosetta’, it seems, was a
preferred name-choice only in the
district where Thomas Peirson and Sarah Eglinton were married, and only for the
period from, roughly, five to thirty-five years after their marriage.
Clearly,
all this was far more than mere coincidence. I knew I was ‘on to’ something,
but couldn’t work out exactly what. Finally, I cross-referenced ‘Rosetta’ and
‘Holborn’, and, suddenly, all became clear.
The
Rosetta Stone was discovered (at el-Rashid, by soldiers in Napoleon’s army) in
1799, shortly before Napoleon’s defeat by England. Under the
terms of the Treaty of Alexandria (1801), the stone (together with other
Egyptian antiquities uncovered by the French) was ceded to England, and brought to London
for exhibition at the British
Museum. And the British
Museum is at Holborn. It is within easy walking
distance of St Pancras, St Marylebone, Shoreditch, St Martin-in-the-Fields, and
the other churches listed above.
It
must have been quite a ‘coup’ for residents of the Holborn district – or those
who originally came from the area -- to know that this famous antiquity (even
today, arguably the most popular exhibit in the museum, invariably surrounded
by a cluster of admirers still mesmerised by its significance; when I visited,
in May, 2010, it was the most difficult exhibit to photograph, or even inspect,
because of the crowds surrounding it) was to be housed right in their
neighbourhood; they celebrated this in a perfectly normal way, in the naming of
their daughters born around the time of the exhibition. If Thomas Pearson and
Sarah Eglinton heard about it, from family back home, when their baby was born
in the last two or three years of the 18th century, how natural for
them to choose this name for their new daughter, as so many other people were
doing in their old neighbourhood, or – more likely, I think, but still to be
proved -- to have begun using this ‘special’ name for their daughter around
1801, even if she had previously been given a different Christian name.
However,
Mary Dickenson and William Eggleton came, not from Holborn, but from Southwark,
on the other side of the Thames. How many
‘Rosettas’ could I find from that area in the same period? I found no recorded
baptisms, and just three marriages, one – the 1835 Wheeler/Cole marriage –
having been celebrated at St Saviour and St Mary Overie (‘over water’), local
church for William and Mary; away from the Holborn district – even a mere
two-and-a-half miles over the London Bridge -- the name ‘Rosetta’, it seems,
never quite “caught on”. While this statistical information hardly constitutes
proof of parentage, taken with all the other evidence it constitutes a
compelling case for Rosetta Pearson to have a ‘Holborn connection’, and this,
surely, is of significance in establishing her likely parentage.
For
the supposed granddaughter of William and Mary Eggleton and the niece of
Elizabeth and William Eggleton, Rosetta’s choice of names for her own children
is, in a society which favoured continuity of Christian names across the
generations, somewhat bizarre: there is (as one would expect) a Thomas and a
Sarah, but her other children are Philip (named after Edward’s father, Philip
Devine, who, like William Eggleton, arrived on the ‘Alexander’ on 26-1-1788),
Rebecca, Matilda, Edward, and Joseph. Not one of these names had occurred up
until that time in the colonial Eggleton family. Once again, not, by itself,
proof of different parentage…. but also very suggestive. It is hard to believe
that the researchers who have accepted Rosetta as the grandchild of William and
Mary have not been, at least, somewhat suspicious of all these ‘non-Eggleton’
names for Rosetta’s children, especially given the presence of Rosetta’s
alleged grandfather right there, in the colony, until Rosetta was around thirty
years old. Four sons, and not one named after the still-living Eggleton
patriarch?
Thomas
Pearson Jr – born in London and subsequently
attesting to his arrival on the ‘Ganges’ and
free-man status – has also been the subject of some misrepresentation in order
to make the facts fit. According to Shirley White, he was born 15-12-1802, and
died at age 14, on “9-6-1817, buried at St Peter’s as an Eglington (sic)”. The
Mutch index does, indeed, record a ‘Thomas’ born 15-12-1802; it is Thomas
Pearce, whose mother is recorded as ‘Reynolds’; a different family altogether,
surely, even allowing for a spelling mistake as gross as ‘Pearce’ for
‘Peirson’. The death (6-6-1817, buried 9-6-1817) at St Peter’s, Richmond, was
not of Thomas but of “John Eglenton, son of Thomas Pierce and Sarah Eglinton”
(again, spelling by Rev Henry Fulton), and his age was given as 17 (making his
date of birth prior to 6-6-1800 -- quite close to the likely birth date for his
sister Rosetta, unless that name was given to her some time after her actual
birth -- at which time Sarah Eggleton was not yet twelve). Note that, even
though the entry abounds with spelling errors, there is nothing there to
implicate Sarah Eggleton, but much indicating Sarah Eglinton.
Sarah
Eggleton’s supposed third child is recorded as Elizabeth Pearson (according to
the St Peter’s register, born 7-10-1805, baptised five years later on
14-10-1810); this record, however, shows her parents as ‘Thomas Peirson and
Sarah Eglinton’, duplicating exactly the
spelling for the Holborn and Shoreditch notices regarding the 1792/3 marriage
and the 1796 baptism (Elizabeth eventually -- 21-8-1822 -- married James
Hill at Christ Church, Castlereagh). Once again, there is nothing in the
records to implicate Sarah Eggleton.
The
fourth child assigned to Sarah Eggleton is identified only by his early death:
Samuel, son of Samuel Solomon and Sarah Eglinton, on 17-1-1820, aged 10.
According to Shirley White, “Samuel Solomon…. is buried at St Peter’s, Richmond, as an Eglington
(sic)”; however, I can find no record of this. Shirley claims, further, that an
entry in the St Peter’s register of marriages shows that Samuel Solomon and
Sarah Eglington (sic) -- she does not, in this case, go so far as to suggest
‘Eggleton ’-- married shortly after this death, on 18-6-1820 (a marriage which
was never registered); I was unable to find evidence of this, either in the
records of St Peter’s or of those of the two neighbouring churches at Windsor
and Castlereagh. Assuming that the marriage actually took place -- and,
certainly, the citing by Shirley White of an exact date indicates she is
relying on hard evidence and not mere hearsay -- it seems strange that the
family researchers should accept the fact that, two years later, the 1822
census should record Sarah as ‘Pearson’ (not ‘Solomon’ or her usual ‘Eglinton’)
and as employed as a servant to her own husband, with whom she had been living
for some twelve years! It seems almost certain that this entry refers to Sarah
Eglinton’s daughter, Sarah Pearson, who would have been, by that time, around
26 years old, and that, in 1822, she, like her mother, was dependent on Samuel
Solomon (according to the 1822 muster, Thomas Pearson was, at that time, a
patient in the Hawkesbury Benevolent Asylum). If, as has been suggested, Sarah
Eglinton was co-habiting with Samuel Solomon from around 1808 – having his
child in 1809 (at the very upper limit of her childbearing range, suggesting
that it is possible that she is the step-mother, rather than the birth-mother,
of Samuel Solomon) – it would seem hard
to believe that Sarah Pearson – in 1808, just twelve years old – would be able
to live anywhere else but with her mother and younger siblings, remaining there
for the birth – and eventual death, in 1820 – of her half-brother.
Researchers
who continue to assert that Sarah Eggleton, Sarah Eglinton, and Sarah Pearson
all refer to the same person credit the daughter of William Eggleton and Mary
Dickenson with yet another romantic liaison, this time with Thomas Summers
(born 1793), a farmer at Evan (Penrith). Summers, in fact, features in several
primary sources in connection with the Pearsons (already mentioned is the entry
in the 1828 census of NSW, recording that Thomas Pearson, aged 34, having come
free on the ‘Ganges’, was living with
Thomas Summers at Evan; since these two men were born in successive years, it
is easy to envisage a long-term friendship and/or working partnership). A
further source linking Summers with the Pearsons is the already-mentioned entry
in Hawkesbury Pioneers Register, Vol 2:
on 9-8-1831, James and Elizabeth Hill (Thomas’s sister) purchased ‘Smith Farm’,
North Richmond, in the name of their
eight-year-old son, William, and subsequently leased it for life to Sarah
Pearson and Thomas Summers.
While
it may be argued that, in this case, ‘Sarah Pearson’ refers to Sarah Eglinton,
now restored to her married name (which, however, should, if Shirley White’s
report of the 1820 marriage is correct, have been ‘Solomon’), the likelihood is
that it refers to her daughter, Sarah (sister of Elizabeth Hill and Thomas
Pearson, Jr), who would have been just two years younger than Summers (whereas,
at around sixty years of age, Sarah Eglinton would have been more than twenty
years his senior, a somewhat-improbable situation for a domestic relationship),
no longer a servant to her mother’s partner but now living, with her own
partner, as a tenant on her sister and brother-in-law’s farm (where her
step-father had already been employed for at least the previous three years, indicating
that the girls’ mother, Sarah Eglinton/Solomon, may have taken up residence
with the Hill family). In either case, there is no evidence to connect this
partnership with Sarah Eggleton (who, in 1831, would have been 42, some four
years older than Summers); in this instance, Sarah Eggleton – so often credited
with events in the life of Sarah Eglinton – is clearly being confused with that
woman’s daughter, the young Sarah).
There
are no subsequent references to ‘Sarah Eglinton’; in the 1828 census, she is,
once again, Sarah Pearson (aged 57), the name by which she is entered in the St
Peter’s, Richmond,
Burial Register (aged 70, on 22-5-1842, having died at Curryjong on May 19).
This unique (in this register) entry has an annotation: “no service performed
in consequence of the parties interested not having attended on either of two
occasions appointed by the Clergyman” (Henry T Stiles). The age entered in this
record makes this most unlikely to be a reference to either the 1796-born Sarah
Pearson -- partner of Thomas Summers – who would have been forty-six, or to
Sarah Eggleton, who would have been fifty-three, both unrealistic disparities
(admittedly, less than that allowed by researcher Peter J Moore, who identifies
the daughter of William and Mary Eggleton as the Sarah Eggleton who died, age
60, at Temora in 1886, without offering any explanation for a 97-year-old woman
being mistaken for a woman of 60, and living alone in Temora, still using her
maiden name, while the rest of her family were centred around Campbelltown,
Bargo and Tumut).
There
is, however, one further reference to Sarah Eggleton connecting her with the
Pearson family. The Registration of Death (11-1-1866) for Rosetta Pearson lists
her father as Thomas Pearson and her mother as Sarah Eggleton. This is a
recent, typed, document, based on information provided after the event by third
parties. It also mentions Rosetta’s place of birth as Parramatta, and her age
at marriage as 19 (which, given the date of the arrival of the Rosetta Stone at
Holborn, would seem a year too old, but, when set against her own testimony on
the 1822 muster, would appear to be around two years too young; this, I feel,
is another indication that ‘Rosetta’ may have been a name attached to the baby
a year or two after she was born). A comparison of this secondary source with
the primary source at St Peter’s, Richmond
(Register of Burials, 14-1-1866), reveals one important difference from the
later document: it identifies only the name of her father, Thomas.
With
all the primary sources at our disposal, we can, I believe, construct a fairly
full and accurate picture of the lives of Sarah Eglinton and Sarah Pearson
(and, incidentally, of Thomas Pearson, Jr, who -- having been summarily “killed
off” by Shirley White at age 14 -- has sometimes had to suffer events from his
own life being credited to his father).
Sarah
Eglinton:
born London c 1772.
Married London (Holborn/Shoreditch area), 1792 or
poss. 13-4-1793. Husband: Thomas Peirson.
First child: Thomas Pearson, born
1794, London.
Second child: Sarah Pearson,
baptised January, 1796, St Andrew’s, Holborn (London).
Husband tried and convicted 1796,
transported. Sarah and two children emigrated on same ship (‘Ganges’).
Arrived Sydney Cove 2-6-1797. Permitted to reside with husband while he served
out his remaining sentence.
Third child (Rosetta) born NSW
between 1797 and 1800.
Fourth child (John) born before
June, 1800.
Fifth child (Elizabeth) born
1805.
Cohabits with Samuel Solomon,
from c 1808. Possible (unrecorded) marriage in 1820.
Sixth child (Samuel), father
Samuel Solomon, born 1810 (died 1820).
On 1823/4/5 census uses name
‘Eglinton’, but is misspelled as ‘Eggleton’.
Resumed last name ‘Pearson’ c
1828.
Died 22-5-1842, age 70, at Richmond, using name
‘Pearson’.
Sarah
Pearson:
Parents: Thomas Peirson (Pearson)
and Sarah Eglinton.
Baptised January, 1796, Holborn, London.
Travelled on ‘Ganges’ with mother
and brother (Thomas) to Sydney.
Arrived 2-6-1797.
Lived with mother and Samuel
Solomon from c 1808.
Listed in 1822 as ‘servant’ in
home of Samuel Solomon.
Married friend/workmate of
brother Thomas, Thomas Summers.
Leased (with Thomas Summers) farm
belonging to sister Elizabeth Hill from 9-8-1831.
Employed brother Thomas to work
on farm (‘Smith Farm’, North Richmond).
There
is nothing in either of these biographies to even imply the existence of Sarah
Eggleton. There is no real evidence of any contact between the Pearson family
and William Eggleton and his descendants. On the death of Sarah Eglinton, no
one from the Eggleton family (living, in the main, in not-too-distant
Campbelltown) took any interest in organising or attending the funeral.
In
short, while we have a logical and convincing biography for Sarah Eglinton and
Sarah Pearson – with, it must be admitted, a few minor points unable to be
verified – we have no information of any sort about the life of Sarah Eggleton,
daughter of William Eggleton and Mary Dickenson, beyond the fact of her baptism
– the last one performed in the colony in its first year of existence – on
25-12-1788.
MATTHEWS,
Eleanor (Ellen)
F6: MATTHEWS, John B: 1793
M: 29-2-1823, St Luke’s, Liverpool (NSW), Faith Cooper
D:
Comments: arrived (as convict, sentenced to
transport for life) in Sydney 28/7/1814, on ‘Surrey’. Permission to marry Faith Hearn at Liverpool
NSW 2/4th Oct 1822 reel 6009 4/3506 p310.
M6: COOPER, Faith B:
c 1802
M:
(i) 1821, John Hearn (Hern). He died in 1822, aged 43
(ii) 29-2-1823, St Luke’s, Liverpool, John Matthews. Marriage
registration
no.: V18233083 3B/1823
D: 19-3-1851,
Prospect, NSW.
Faith Cooper
“Faith was one of three daughters of Robert Cooper
and his wife Ellen. Robert was one of the 1/73 Regiment and they arrived in Sydney per ship Ann on the
27th February 1810. Faith's first child John was born in 1820 with no father
named but he used the name Hearn. Faith married John Hearn in 1821 and had a
daughter Jane Hearn with John in 1821. John died in 1822 and in 1823 Faith
married John Matthews. Towards the end of the 20's John and Faith were having
some difficulties caring for all their children and so Faith arranged for Jane
and John the be placed in the Orphan School. When she and John were back on
their feet she did get them out again.” (http://magni.webcity.com.au/~rnb47409/families/whalan.html)
McNAMARA,
Bridget
F6:
McNAMARA, Unknown B:
M: Unknown
D:
M6:
UNKNOWN B:
M: Unknown McNamara
D:
PATTERSON,
William
F6:
PATTERSON, Thomas B:
M: Mary Unknown, Isle of Man
D: Post-1849.
M6:
UNKNOWN, Mary B:
M: Thomas Patterson
D: Post-1849.
POTTINGER, Lionel Henry
F6:
POTTINGER, Thomas B: 1783
` M:
(i) Charlotte Moore (only
daughter of James Hamilton Moore
(Irish, but spent most of his life
in Copenhagen, died 1808) and
wife, Jane (died 1814); Charlotte was mother of
Eldred Curwen
Pottinger, famed as the ‘Hero of
Herat’.
(ii) 7-6-1814 (Calcutta) Eliza Fulton
D: 1845
Thomas Pottinger
Thomas Pottinger – described by
his son, Thomas Jr, as “a man of such splendid talent and excellent sense (who
is)… easily gulled by every fool or knave he comes across” (in a letter cited
by George Pottinger, 1997, Sir Henry
Pottinger, First Governor of Hong Kong; all quotes in this biographical
entry come from this same work) -- was
one of five sons sent by his father to India from Ireland, “to make their
careers -- and often to end their lives”. He served with success in the British
army in India
(8th Light Dragoons) before returning to Ireland, where he lived in
Kilbride House, County Clare; however, his “casual, irresponsible way of
looking after his affairs” alienated him from his younger brother-- the
more-successful Henry, who thought him “feckless” (Thomas had asked Henry to
‘bankroll’ a get-rich scheme, which request Henry had emphatically
rejected -- and from his sons, Eldred
(soon to become famous as ‘the Hero of Herat’) and Thomas, Jr., both of whom
actively tried to discourage him from proceeding with a scheme which “after
dissipating his second wife’s dowry…. (would) recoup his finances in India”
(the plan was for him to become “an agent for the Asphalt Association, which is
some damned speculation for covering roads with Asphalt, etc.”, wrote Thomas to
Eldred, who, in turn, wrote to his father pleading for him to abandon the idea:
“I cannot see any advantages in your coming out to this country… to do so in a
mercantile situation will… grieve me much….. as you have so often already done,
I have not the least doubt you will throw up your appointment…… (I pray) that
you will leave the pushing on in the world to your children and will yourself
sit down quietly”). Their sister, Anne,
who had gone to India
in 1839, joined the chorus of disapproval (“I do hope that Papa will not ask
Uncle Henry to do anything to serve him”), and Thomas reluctantly abandoned the
scheme.
Thomas Pottinger’s second
marriage (7-6-1814), to the eldest daughter of John Williamson Fulton, also
sparked controversy: it was suggested in the will (written 4-7-1818) of Eliza’s
aunt, Eliza Overend Fulton, of Lisburn, that Thomas had married Eliza (who
must, at the time of the marriage, been in her mid-teens, since their son,
Lionel Henry Pottinger, was born almost twenty years after the wedding) in
order to restore the family fortunes.
A short biography of Thomas’s more-celebrated brother, Sir Henry
Pottinger, Baronet (1785 – 18-3-1856), is provided below.
Sir Henry Pottinger
Author, soldier, adventurer,
and diplomat, Henry Pottinger -- brother of Thomas (Generation 6) and uncle to
Lionel Henry (Generation 5) -- had a most distinguished, and
thoroughly-documented, military and political career, detailed in A Geographical Memoir of the Persian Empire
(John Macdonald Kinneir, 1813); The Great
Game (Peter Hopkirk, 1990) and his biography by George Pottinger (1995). As
“Lieutenant Henry Pottinger of the Honourable East India Company’s Services,
Assistant to the Resident at the Court of His Highness the Peishwa, and Late
Assistant and Surveyor with the Missions to Sinde and Persia”, he is the author
of Travels in Beloochistan and Sinde,
Accompanied by a Geographical and Historical Account of those Countries, With a
Map (1816, currently in Rare Book section of University of Sydney), an
account of his early exploits, during which he explored (1809-1811) the country
between India and Persia while disguised as a native.
From a cadetship in the Indian
Army (1804), Henry rose to the position of political agent in the Sind
(1836-1840), following which he was appointed envoy to China, with a mandate to
end the so-called ‘Opium War’ (not just about the trade in Indian-grown opium
imported and sold – in defiance of the policy of the Cantonese government -- by
British merchants to an eager Chinese population, but more about the British
government’s outrage at China’s treatment of the merchants and the denial of
any concept of trade being conducted between equals; the British, enjoying
superiority in India, were unwilling to accept a position of subservience to a
neighbouring oriental government, and were convinced of the need to acquire,
for a commercial centre – in place of Canton, where they had no jurisdiction –
an off-shore island, such as Lantau, Formosa, or – the eventual choice, made by
Sir Henry – Hong Kong).
While the conciliatory attitude
of Sir Henry’s predecessor (Captain Charles Elliot) had displeased the British
Foreign Secretary, Sir Henry, by contrast, pursued English interests in China
with the energy and decisiveness – not to mention an unwillingness to
compromise – that the British government saw as essential to a successful
outcome; arriving at Macao in August, 1841, he brought hostilities to an end
within twelve months, taking – in short order – Amoy, Tinghai, Chusan Island,
Chinhai, and Ningpo. Convinced that Hong Kong should be retained by Britain,
free from Chinese domination, as the new centre of trade, he moved the
headquarters of the Superintendancy of Trade there from Macao (March 1842), at
the same time declaring it a free port. When, that same month, the Chinese
renewed hostilities, Sir Henry led attacks on Shanghai, Chinkiang, and – most
significantly – Nanking, where the Chinese government, to save the city,
accepted all his terms and agreed (29-8-1842) to the Treaty of Nanking, to
which Sir Henry was signatory on behalf of the reigning British monarch, Queen
Victoria, who rewarded him with a baronetage – Knight Commander of the Order of
the Bath -- and the triple-position of Plenipotentiary and Minister
Extraordinary, Chief Superintendent of the Trade, and first Governor and
Commander-in-Chief of Hong Kong (which had been ceded, at Sir Henry’s
insistence, as part of the treaty conditions; “the retention of Hong Kong”, he
later wrote, “is the only single point in which I intentionally exceeded my
instructions”).
While Sir Henry, the
‘conquering hero’ with a genuine regard for his conquered land (which he
described in a letter, as ‘a superb country’) created the structure of Hong
Kong’s administration, applying a British system of government to an
overwhelmingly-Chinese population, and precipitating the colony’s development
into a major trade centre (to his credit, the first ordinance passed in Hong
Kong under his jurisdiction was one forbidding all forms of slavery in the
colony), he was less-popular – and, by all accounts, less-content -- as an
administrator than he had been as a military officer and adventurer. G.B.
Endacott (A History of Hong Kong, Oxford
University Press, London, 1958) writes that “he was alone in upholding the
public interest in the infant colony .... his stand involved him in a series of
conflicts in which his great popularity vanished and he was driven into social
isolation”. The 19th century Sinologue, Rev. James Legge, summed up
Sir Henry’s achievements in China thus: “he was a good man, people said, to
conquer China, and a bad man to rule Hong Kong” (cited by Cameron, Nigel
(1991): An Illustrated History of Hong
Kong, Oxford University Press, Hong Kong).
Sir Henry followed the
governorship of Hong Kong (from which position he resigned in May, 1844) with
equivalent appointments in the Cape of Good Hope (“a sad colony to deal with”,
he wrote, noting that his peace-making efforts were not welcomed by the
colonists, who were eager for hostilities to continue), and, finally, in his
beloved India once more, as Governor of Madras, during which appointment he
played an important part in the Second Sikh War and the Second Burmese War
(while Sir Henry himself considered his role in Madras as the pinnacle of his
career, his biographer, George Pottinger, notes that “in the Presidency he did
not repeat his master-stroke at Hong Kong, or his modest achievement in the
Cape”).
In poor health when he returned
to England after relinquishing
this last position, he sought a warmer climate in Malta,
where he died (18-3-1856), and was buried in the Maida Bastion
Cemetery. A memorial
tablet (erected by his brother, William) in St George’s Church, Belfast, states
that “from midshipman to general, he filled many of the most prominent offices
under the Crown, with distinguished advantage to his country and great credit
to himself, and his unbending integrity, high sense of honour, and generosity
of character and disposition secured him the unbounded respect and esteem of
all.”
Sir
Frederick William Pottinger
The baronetage which Queen
Victoria bestowed upon Sir Henry “for his services to the British
Empire” allowed an extension to the family Coat of Arms. His son,
Frederick William Pottinger, inherited the title and migrated to NSW, where he
had a controversial career (during which time he was scrupulous in keeping
secret his distinguished title) in the NSW Police Force, ridding much of the
western district of bushrangers (the capture of Ben Hall and his gang being his
principal goal) with a zeal and single-mindedness that has made him the subject
of books and movies (in ‘Robbery Under
Arms’ his name was, unaccountably, changed to ‘Monninger’).
Eventually his zeal proved to
be his downfall; recommended by the Executive Council for dismissal from the
force for a breach of regulations (he allegedly took part in a public horse
race (January 5 and 6, 1865) as a strategy to lure his nemesis, Hall, out of
hiding; while the ruse was, it seems, successful, Sir Frederick failed to
apprehend or even recognise his quarry, thus introducing into the Australian
vernacular the expression ‘Blind Freddie’), he travelled from Forbes to Sydney
to argue the case for his reinstatement. On the return journey (5-3-1865) he
left the coach at a scheduled stop at Wascoe’s Inn, Blaxland (currently a
McDonalds restaurant featuring, at its entrance, a display – prepared by
locally-based historian and bushranger expert, Edgar Penzig -- commemorating
his career), and, reboarding as it pulled away, was seriously – and, in the
long term, fatally -- wounded when the gun on his belt accidentally discharged,
shooting him just below the ribs. His detractors subsequently fabricated an
attempted suicide, and in at least one account he is depicted as holding the
gun to his forehead in an attempt to eradicate his public disgrace; however,
his death (in Randwick) a month later, as a result of his injury, was reported
as the passing of a hero, and his funeral (Tuesday, 11-4-1865) was attended by
many state dignitaries, including the Premier of NSW, the Minister for Public
Works, and the Surveyor-General.
Newspapers with articles
mentioning Sir Frederick
William Pottinger include The Sydney
Morning Herald (25-6-1853, at http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/28621253?),
and The Empire (27-8-1863, at http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/60547410?).
Anil Edwards submitted the
following anecdote regarding the Pottingers in India: “My mother, Dorcas Singh,
was adopted by Alice Potenger, in 1924. Her father was Gerald Potinger, an East
India Company Lawyer, who married a ‘Kema’, her family were Armenians, they
owned a jewelry store in Calcutta, Grandma had 2
sisters, both died in a Cholera epidemic that swept India in the 1920s. She became a
missionary and ran a clinic in a village called Bullandhair United Provinces, India….where
she adopted my mother after her own died during child-birth. She often referred
to an uncle Henry Potenger, who I discovered was the 1st Governor General of
Hong Kong, we had a few artefacts that were given to her as a young girl,
brought back from China during Henry’s duration in China during the the Boxer
revolution, but were all stolen after her death in 1958 in Lucknow, India….
There is lot more. My parents are retired school teachers who live in a Hill Station called Mussoorie Uttaranchal, North India. I’m sorry I did not quiz my Mom about Grandma, but this is all I can remember.”
M6: FULTON, Eliza B: c 1799
M:
7-6-1814 (Calcutta)
Lt Thomas Pottinger, widower. (Reported in
Belfast Newsletter,
10-1-1815).
D:
Eliza Fulton.
Eliza Fulton (granddaughter of
John Fulton ‘of Calcutta’, and a distant cousin of the American inventor of the
steamboat) was one of three children (others were Joseph, born 12-8-1800, and
Francis Graham, born 31-3-1803) of John Williamson Fulton’s first marriage to
an unknown woman of Indian or anglo-Indian origin (possibly she was John
Williamson’s mistress; but since it is likely that she is the ‘Beebee Poll’
referred to in his will (‘beebee’ being a term usually designating a wife, and
‘Poll’ possibly an abbreviation of ‘Polly’), and since Eliza and the other two
children were accepted by the family in Ireland, it is probable that Eliza’s
mother was, in fact, legally married to John Williamson).
Eliza’s date of birth is
uncertain; some sources record her as the third child of John Williamson
Fulton, which would put her date of birth as after that of Francis Graham (born
1803). Under this interpretation, her marriage to Thomas Pottinger (7-6-1814,
reliably reported in the Belfast Newsletter of 10-1-1815) woulds have taken place
when she was no more than ten. The Scots Magazine and Edinburgh Literary Miscellany website (at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~fultondata/MARR01.htm) records her as the eldest child, which allows
more-comfortable dating (nonetheless, she still, certainly, married young: her
youngest son, Lionel Henry Pottinger (Generation 5) was born almost twenty
years after the wedding).
Eliza was Thomas’s second wife,
his first wife, Charlotte Moore (mother of Eldred Pottinger, the ‘Hero of Herat’),
having predeceased him. Eliza and Thomas had a possible seven children: sons
John (born 7-5-1815, retired 1863, died in Ireland);
Thomas (died 1842 in the retreat from Kabul);
Henry (born 2-3-1818 in Carrickfergus, near Belfast,
died 29-6-1843); and Lionel Henry (born 10-3-1834, resigned in India
22-8-1858). In addition, there were
three daughters: Harriet, Fanny (unmarried), and Georgiana, who married Sir
Lionel Smith-Jordan. The marriage was not well-regarded by either family: it was suggested in the will (written
4-7-1818) of Eliza’s aunt, Eliza Overend Fulton, of Lisburn, that Thomas had
married Eliza mainly to restore the family fortunes, and Thomas’s own sons,
Eldred and Thomas Jr, accused him of “dissipating his second wife’s dowry”.
Researcher Hugh Casement, in a
paper researching the family of Newcomen of Saltfleetby, refers to Eliza Fulton
as half-sister of John Williamson Fulton; it is important to remember that the
name ‘John Williamson Fulton’ was used in at least three generations of this
family, and the reference, in this case, is to the son of John Williamson
Fulton and Anne Robertson, who was born the same year Eliza was married. (REF.:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~usher/usherirl/docs/Newcomen.doc).
Eliza’s parentage is discussed, at http://www.ashbourne-derbyshire.co.uk/Herat.htm,
as part of an on-line biography of her step-son, Major Eldred Pottinger.
Eliza should not be confused with her aunt, John Williamson Fulton’s
unmarried half-sister, Eliza Overend Fulton
(1771-1819),
of Lisburn.
STARR, Emma
F6: STARR, William B:
before 25-12-1810 (Christened 25-12-1810, Bassingbourn, Camb.)
M: 12-11-1829, Hannah (Anna) Willmott
D:
Comments: Labourer. Place of residence: Shingay,
Cambridgeshire.
Siblings: Sarah (before 7-7-1799 – before
8-3-1843); Elizabeth (born
before 12-7-1801); Stephen (born before 20-2-1805);
Ann (born before 7-
2-1808); Mary (born before 9-4-1815).
M6:
WILLMOTT, Hannah (Anna) B: c 1811, Litlington,
Cambridgeshire.
M: 12-11-1829, William Starr
D:
Siblings: Thomas (D.O.B. before 2-5-1830); Alfred
(D.O.B. before 21-9-
1834;
Sophia (born 1840).
STEWART,
Charles
F6:
STEWART, Unknown B:
M: Unknown
D:
M6: UNKNOWN B:
M: Unknown Stewart
D:
STEWART,
Jane (Jessie)
F6:
STEWART, John B:
M: Jane Unknown
D: Pre-1849.
.
M6:
UNKNOWN, Jane B:
M: John Stewart
D: Pre-1849.
TRATHEN,
Benjamin
F6: TRATHEN, Unknown B:
M: Unknown (possibly ‘Eliza’)
D:
Comments:
possibly ‘James’
M6: UNKNOWN B:
M: Unknown Trathen
D:
Comments:
possibly ‘Eliza’
WILLIAMS,
Fanny
F6: WILLIAMS, Unknown B:
M: Unknown
D:
M6: UNKNOWN
B:
M: Unknown Williams
D:
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