Introduction

 

One of the writer's cousins, who has researched our mutual family tree, is firmly of the opinion that we are descended in a line from Edward, the "Black Prince" of fourteenth century English history fame.  Whether or not this is so is immaterial;  what is actually true is set out in the following pages, beginning with an account of the writer's maternal grandparents' home in Redfern before telling of them and their daughter, Elsie, his mother and her family.  The tale continues the story of her antecedents as far as genealogical research has revealed to date.

 

 

                                                                         I

 

                                             164 YOUNG STREET, REDFERN

 

On 6 October 1876 Frederick Thomas Stapleton took up the 79 year balance of a 99 year lease of land at what was to be identified at first as 144 and later 164 Young Street, Redfern.^[42]  The block sloped rather steeply from its rear towards its street frontage, its dimensions being 50x105 feet, and the surrounding areas were mostly sandy paddocks with tracks and considerable natural timber growing thereabouts.  Thomas, as he was generally called, and his wife, Mary (née Woodfield), moved to their new property about 1879 after he had built a house on the block.  In that year they already had their elder son, Frederick (b.1874), their eldest daughter, Maud, (b.1877) and maybe baby Arthur (b. July 1879).

 

According to his youngest daughter, Elsie (b.1889), Thomas divided the land and in November 1889 he sub-leased half of it to an Alfred Richard Glenn.^[43]  The dimensions of each part of the block were then about 25x105 feet. 

 

Elsie said that her father built their house himself using weatherboards.  It was apparently only part-finished when the family took up residence for the rooms were merely lined with calico.  Elsie's earliest recollections have the next-door house already built with a terrace of single-fronted, one-storey small cottages ranged along the opposite side of Young Street.  Also amongst her earliest memories Elsie has the Glenn family living next door on the sub-divided block and later a Bert Evans.  St Saviour's Church (C. of  E.), a little way back in Young Street towards Cleveland Street, was not to be built until 1890.  This became the family church in the affairs of which Thomas took an active part and which the Stapletons attended punctiliously;  members of the family sang in its choir (Elsie had a good singing voice).  Prior to that the family was associated with St Paul's Church of England, located  in Cleveland Street, Redfern adjacent to where it crosses the railway line and now an Orthodox Greek church.

 

When her mother died from tuberculosis on 16 November 1905 Maud took over the management of the house from which she never moved until her last days.  Elsie was then about sixteen and the other children were adults (Frederick, b.1874;  Arthur, b.1879;  Ethel, b.1882;  and Emmy, b.1886).  Maud never married, but there was a story that she had received a proposal of marriage from a man who was visiting Sydney from Brisbane to which he returned.  However, when her brother, Fred, went to Brisbane to track down the non-communicating fiancée it was discovered that the swain was already married with children and the shock of this discovery made Maud lose her voice for some time (a form of hysteria).

 

Maud, an asthmatic, was apparently subject to expressions of emotional stress as this is evident in a letter that Arthur Stapleton (also an asthmatic) wrote to his older brother, Frederick on the eve of their mother's interment the day after her death.  Fred is said to have been living in Cooma at the time and had probably recently married.  A copy of this very moving letter, which is in the hands of Mary's grandson, Len Stapleton, is set out below.

 

                                                                                                                                Friday Evening  17.11.05

                                                                                                                                                      Redfern

            Dear Fred,

                  As you are aware Mother breathed her last and now is but not [sic] a memory.  Her end was anticipated but Death came on with a swiftness unthought of. Dad said to me on Wednesday evening,  Shall we wire Fred.  I replied that I thought Mother would last till Sunday and said wait till Friday and see how she is.  But Friday is here and Mother is past her sickness.  Fred  twas awful her suffering.  The Consumption, as Dr. Said was (a) fist size cavity in the lungs.  Sputum phlegm emerged at night, particularly the last night in a stream making a bib necessary.  Her strength was nil.  The voice was a whisper owing to the larynx of the throat being affected.

This also caused pain in swallowing.  Thus her food remained almost untouched.  She died on Thursday morning at 7.45 a.m.  Maud and Emily were with her.  A mere closing of the eyes as if in sleep and all was over save a rattling of the throat.  Here Maud, who has made superhuman efforts to do every possible thing on her behalf, broke down.  Nervous strain completely prostrated her.  A succession of histerical [sic] fits took place till evening when Dr. Administered an injection to soothe her and produce sleep.  She slept the evening at Mrs Glenn's and has been in there ever since.  Mrs John Forwood has asked to allow her to go to her home at Kogarah.  So she goes tomorrow morning.  We fear some complication to set in as her nerves are very broken up by the strain.  

The funeral was today at the Church.  Rev. H. Taylor offi-

ciated. The organist played the "Dead March" and then to the Necropolis.  Many attended and some 12 beautiful wreaths were sent to Mother -?- at her last resting place.

Time forbids me writing more.  It is now 8 p.m.  I must  catch the late fee at the Railway.  Excuse my scribbling.  Hope it's readable!

 

                                                                                                                                   From  Arthur

                                                                                                  Your telegram to hand at 3.5 pm

 

 

The Stapleton home was double-fronted and set back about fifteen feet from its picket fence with its central gate and brick pathway leading up to the front door.  A common side passage was also picket-fenced back to the front house line and brick-surfaced, serving the adjoining house which was somewhat similar in outward appearance to the family home being described.  When remembered by Jack, Elsie's elder son by her second marriage, the front of No.164 had no garden but it was grassed over.  The house was painted a stone colour and the interior was then lined with weatherboards.

 

A six-foot-wide veranda with a wooden floor ran across the double-frontage.  It was roofed with curved, galvanised, corrugated iron.  The veranda had a gas-box at one end and there was a casement window on each side of the central front door which opened into a sitting room.  There was no hallway.  The sitting room contained a round table and chairs and later Emmy's gramophone in its cabinet with records stored beneath.  There was a large family Bible that was unfortunately not kept after Maud died in 1945. The Bible has been irretrievably lost, apparently having been given to the neighbours, a great pity as it contained many details of the family.

 

The main section of the house consisted of four rooms.  Looking in from the front door there was first a front bedroom on the left (the parents' bedroom) and behind that on the left a second bedroom (where Maud later slept).  Opening from the sitting room was a dining room and off that a small room that was later used as a bedroom by Arthur, Elsie's only child by her first marriage to Albert von Keisenberg.  The extension on the left side of the house consisted of a small porch with entry to a large (and dark) kitchen and behind that was a bathroom-cum-laundry with a tin bath, brick copper and cement tubs.  A small brick-paved area lay behind Arthur's room and the side passage also gave entry to this. 

 

A high stone wall and a flight of about ten steps separated the lower level of the block from the higher level which ran back some yards to a corrugated iron rear fence.  The top part of the backyard contained a free-standing toilet and one weatherboard room that had been built by Thomas to accommodate his widowed mother, Sarah, in her old age.  There was also a corrugated iron woodshed at the back of the yard and a large orange tree that, except for one momentous year in Arthur's memory, gave little or no fruit.

 

Grandfather Stapleton survived until 11 March 1923 when he died at the age of 74, still living in the Young Street house he had built about almost fifty years before.  He died of a cerebral haemorrhage while in the hospice of the nearby St Vincent's Roman Catholic Hospital.  Jack remembers him as an old man with a long white beard who used to lie on a cane lounge in the front sitting room after, it is said, his frequent strolls to nearby Redfern Park.  Jack was less than five years old at the time and recalls being afraid of the old man, who did not seem to talk much and smoked, perhaps, a pipe.  Jack's cousin, Olive, also recalls grandfather Thomas Stapleton as being very kind and taking her as a child to Redfern Park where he used his pocket knife to peel an apple which he shared with her.

 

Olive's younger sister, Edna, also has some memories of Thomas Stapleton.  She says that when her family lived in Archibold Street, Granville, he often came there to visit his daughter, Ethel Hodges.  She recalls him taking her and possibly her two sisters to a matinée performance at the local cinema and complaining of the noise that the enthusiastic audience of children made during the film show.  Edna also remembers her mother telling of an incident that occurred when Ethel was a young woman, probably in her late 'teens.  Apparently, Ethel had been insolent to her father, who had backhanded her for her temerity.  The result was that Ethel developed a black-eye that she felt obliged to explain when she turned up at work the next day.  In recounting this after many years to Edna, Ethel said she thought her father had not intended to injure her so badly.

 

To this memory of Ethel's relationship with her father, Thomas, may be added Olive's recollection of her mother telling her that she (Ethel) would hide her face behind a roller-towel in the family kitchen and poke her tongue out at her father when he had corrected her for one of her indiscretions.  This and the other presented evidence about Grandfather Thomas indicate that he was a firm father, who did not hesitate to check what he thought was unsatisfactory behaviour in his children.  On the other hand, it is true that the grown-up Ethel, the writer's aunt, was firm-minded and no doubt had been a wilful child who had to be corrected often.

 

When Thomas died in 1923 the ownership of the remainder of the lease, the improvements on the land and his few belongings passed to Maud, the sole beneficiary in his will.^[44]  Maud continued living in the house, in her later years sleeping in her grandmother's room at the top of the stone back steps.  She had taken over the upbringing of Arthur when his mother, Elsie, married William Dugdale in 1917, Arthur then being about seven. 

 

With the onset of senility and inability to care for herself Maud was eventually obliged to be moved to Newington Nursing Home in the grounds of Lidcombe State Hospital where she died within a few months in 1945.  The house was let by Arthur until the termination of the ground lease in the mid-1950s.  At that time the property was in very poor condition and the buildings on it were of no value. 

 

With the expiration of the lease the property and its improvements reverted to the Crown, the surrounding properties being in the same position.  During the 1960s the area was cleared and it now carries high-rise, housing commission residential dwellings set in landscaped parkland.

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                          II

 

                                        THE THOMAS STAPLETON FAMILY

 

 

Frederick Thomas Stapleton (the writer's grandfather, b.1849) met Mary Woodfield when he was working as possibly a drayman or as a miner in some copper mines on the Monaro; he followed the former occupation all his life and for many years he drove a dray in Sydney for Crane and Walker, a firm of stonemasons.  Mary was born at "Rosedale" a property near Adaminaby in 1847;  her father was a blacksmith in Cooma at the time of the Stapleton marriage.  Her family was connected by marriage with the Locker family of whom more will be said later.

 

Thomas, as he was known, and Mary were married according to Anglican rites in St Paul's Church of England, Cooma, on 21 July 1873.  The officiating clergyman was Rev. Thomas Druitt and the witnesses to the marriage were H. Thornton and Agnes Woodfield, the bride's sister.  The names, ages, conjugal status and usual places of residence of the newly weds are shown as:

 

Thomas Stapleton, "full age" bachelor, Strawberry Hill, Sydney, usual occupation (copper) miner;

 

Mary Woodfield, "full age", spinster, Cooma.

 

A copy of their marriage certificate and their respective death certificate details are set out on the next page.  Details of the resultant family are:

 

 

PARENTS        Frederick Thomas Stapleton        b.20- 3-1849,     d.11- 3-1923

                           Mary (née Woodfield) Stapleton  b. 8-11-1847,   d.16-11-1905

 

ISSUE       Frederick Leonard            b.23- 7-1874,     d.19-12-1958 aged 84

                  Maud Catherine                b.17- 2-1877,     d.25- 7-1945      "  68

                  Charles Arthur                  b.21- 7-1879,     d. 8- 6-1950

                  Ethel Mary                         b. 6- 2-1882,     d.31- 7-1958

                  Sarah (see note below)      b.1884               d.  1884

                  Emily Grace (Emmy)        b.20-12-1885,   d.26- 9-1944

                  Elsie Martha                      b. 6- 2-1889,     d. 6-12-1978^[45]

 

NOTE:  BDM records show a child, Sarah, born to Thomas

             And Mary Stapleton in 1884 (Reg. Gen. No.10355).

             This child's death is registered for 1884 (R.G. 5217).

             Mary's death certificate shows this birth as occurring

             incorrectly between that of Emily and Elsie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                        III

 

                                          MARY (WOODFIELD) STAPLETON

 

Mary, the writer's grandmother, was the second eldest child of Joseph and Elizabeth Woodfield, née Crawford and her father was a blacksmith on the Monaro, of whom more information is given below.  Her mother's parents (Crawfords) had come from England as bounty immigrant free settlers in 1838 and details of their arrival appear later in this history.  They were Alexander Crawford, his wife Mary and their eight surviving children, the eldest of whom was John, aged nineteen.^[46]

 

It will be shown later that Alexander Crawford was a humble shepherd when                         he left his native Scotland and the evidence below shows that shortly after his arrival in Sydney he left for the Monaro to work as a farm hand.  His name does not appear in the NSW State Archive Authority's index of names appearing in the 1841 census thus indicating that he was not a landed man when the census was taken.  However, further research might discover that he and his family were recorded as part of the establishment of his employer's rural holdings at the time.

                                                                          

Three other families named Locker, Brodie and Brayshaw had apparently arrived in Sydney about the same time as the Crawfords, but not on the same ship, and after their arrival in their new homeland they travelled to Bateman's Bay.  From there, not wholly accurate family legend has it they took bullock wagons (actually, bullock drays) over the Nelligen Mountain to Braidwood where the Brodies settled on a property they named Wangrah.  The others proceeded on to Bredbo and thence to the vicinity of Cooma where eventually they were to establish themselves on holdings on the Monaro.  The Lockers, of whom more later, and the Brodies, Brayshaws and Crawfords were to be linked In marriages over the years as will be shown.

 

In  those early days much of the land was already occupied by squatters and there was a great need for labour on the properties, or "stations".  To meet this need, as elsewhere in New South Wales, convicts were assigned to the owners by means of a certificate of employment and the immigration programs of the day were designed to draw many free settlers to work for the land-holders.  Alexander Crawford was such a free immigrant who took his family to the Monaro almost immediately following their landing in Sydney.  Their onward journey and subsequent experiences are related by his son, Archibald, in a book he published in 1925 entitled Eighty-five Years in Australia.^[47]  It has been said by one of his remote descendents that Archibald dictated the script of this publication to his daughter when he was quite old and when his memories might often have not been quite accurate.  However, his story is full of fascinating detail reflecting as it does the vicissitudes and life-styles of early rural pioneers of the time.

 

As Archibald tells it, just before Christmas 1838 the Crawfords set off from Sydney by bullock dray for Mt Elrington Station, which was owned by a Major Elrington.  It was about 25 km southwest of Braidwood and close to the Shoalhaven River.  The map overleaf shows its location and that of two of the other cattle stations with connections to the Crawfords―Jinglemoney and Arnprior, which will be in mentioned more fully in paragraphs yet to come.

 

Three other emigrant families were in the party en route to Mt Elrington, which had the women, children, luggage and stores riding on the dray and the men walking.  For overnight shelter all they had was a large tarpaulin that was erected as a kind of tent.  Sixteen miles out of Sydney they spent their first Australian Christmas under dreadfully hot weather conditions.   

 

Archibald was then not much more than five and, leaving two of their daughters in Sydney, his father and mother took with them the baby, young Archibald, the remaining girls and John, the eldest of their children.  The other family groups accompanying the Crawfords on their trek were   Anthony Hay, his wife and three children;  Malcolm Mcgregor, his wife and two children;  and Lachlan Cochrane, his wife and one son.  The Major had hired the bullock dray and its driver for their transportation, and this may have been as a back-loading from conveying his farm products for sale in Sydney as Archibald was to tell of similar arrangements later in his book. 

 

The Australian mid-summer weather was very hot and on the journey the "new-chums" were bothered by unaccustomed insects.  Archibald tells of pitching their "tent" one night on a nest of bulldog ants that caused young Willie Hay considerable and loudly expressed distress when he "went to bed early";  the same mistake was never repeated!  It was an exhausting journey and when they arrived at Mt Elrington "the men were footsore and suffering from the heat.  Alexander and Mr Hay stood the journey well, but Mr Mcgregor at one time collapsed altogether."^[48]

 

Upon arrival at Mt Elrington the Crawfords found their accommodation to be very primitive―a slab and bark hut hardly more than 20 x 10 feet in size.  This was divided into two sections comprising a partitioned bedroom and a living/kitchen/dining area, all of which had to be shared with the Cochranes.  John, being adult, was fully employed with his father on the station where the "boss cocky", the Major, treated them with consideration.  However, Archibald tells of floggings on the station, meted out to the convict workers for derelictions of duty.  He says he could not equate this cruelty with the kindness shown to him by the Major,  a tall, red-haired, blue-eyed, sabre-scarred man of military bearing, who was reckoned by others to be a hard taskmaster with a fiery temper.  After a year or so at Elrington the Crawfords moved to Jinglemoney Station, which is still shown on maps about 12 km about w.s.west of Braidwood and is also close to or on the banks of the Shoalhaven River.  In those times it was apparently fairly common in that region for men to be paid their wages in kind and it was at Jinglemoney that Alexander began to acquire his own stock — some sheep and soon a large mob of cattle.  He also gained a head of cattle in lieu of a deposit he had lodged for the purchase of some land and the deal fell through.  Such a growing asset probably led him to move to work at several other stations as the years passed.^[49]  Archibald was ten when they ended up at Dry Plain Station and it was there, through the encouragement of one of the farm employees, a storekeeper called John Mckinley, that he acquired the rudiments of writing and reading.  He also mentions in his autobiography that his mother, Mary, always spoke Gaelic at home although outside it she could use English with reasonable skill.  He remembers that she had a sweet voice and sang songs in Gaelic to them.  Mary also spun wool on a spinning wheel made for her by one of her sons-in-law, William Brayshaw, and she knitted garments for her family.

 

It was about 1843 that Alexander Crawford obtained a property for himself.  In partnership with a Charles Mckeachnie (sometimes Mckeachanie) they purchased the lease of Bobyan [sic] for ₤20 but soon discovered they had to pay a further ₤10 to the Government for previously unpaid land rent on the property where they ran 100 head of cattle.  Mckeachnie was later bought out by Archibald's brother John and William Brayshaw, probably in 1845 for Brayshaw is known to have been at Boboyan in that year.  John's sister Flora had married William Brayshaw at Dry Plains in 1844^[50].  William was to die aged 77 on 19 November 1888 and Flora aged 70 on 10 May 1891.  The graves of each lie side by side in Old Adaminaby Cemetery along with the burial places of other Brayshaws, some Crawfords and Lockers.

 

Another account of unknown source says that the Cowley area around Boyboyan was opened up by a John Gray, a Queanbeyan storekeeper, who employed Charles Mckeahnie there from 1839 to 1844 to superintend a small mixed herd of cattle.  Mckeahnie, an illiterate Scots immigrant, had arrived in Queanbeyan at Christmas, 1848, and took control of Boyoyan when Gray left the district.  After a few years the property passed to Alexander Crawford.

 

Information from other than Archibald Crawford has Bobyan, or Boboyan as it came to be known, as one of several pastoral settlements situated along Boboyan Creek to the south of the Federal Capital Territory of today.  The site of the homestead was north of Cooma on or near the road through Shannon's Flat on its way to Canberra.  As modern maps reveal, this road crosses the Boboyan Divide and then passes over Boboyan Flats.  As Boboyan Station was at "high altitude" (see below) it is likely it was on the "divide" as this is the right distance of about 42 km from Cooma, or 25 miles as Archibald Crawford said it was.  In this region, of the station relating to our ancestor, only the stumps of a couple of ruined chimneys survive according to Steve Brayshaw, one of William's descendents.  There were distinct dwellings there as early as 1839 for records show details of the visit to Boboyan that year by a land commissioner, Bingham by name. 

 

During the 1830s the government of New South Wales had set out to investigate and regularise the activities of the squatters who had settled illegally on the pastoral lands of the colony.  In September-October 1839 Commissioner Bingham had carried out an inspection of parts of the Monaro (then known as "Maneroo").  A portion of his diary reads:

 

Bobyan

 

5 Oct. 1839.  Noise to Bobyan, 30 miles, James Ritchie, owner and superintendent.  13 persons living in slab huts and yards 7 acres.  494 cattle, 11 horses, 1132 sheep, dairy produce 20 cwt butter.  Area 20 sections (14,080 acres).  Mountainous country watered by marshes, timber box, etc.  8 miles to nearest station.  Remarks This country of high altitude.

 

An 1867 directory of rural holdings in New South Wales shows details of Boboyan at that time as being:  rent, ₤10;  assessment, ₤18-15s;  new rent (if any), ₤14;  estimated area, 16,000 acres;  cattle, nil;  sheep, 4,000;  lessee, Crawford & Brayshaw.  This Crawford would have been Alexander's son, John, for his father had already gone to a property in Victoria near Murchison where he had died in 1862.

 

The first recorded instance of white men entering the Monaro was in June 1823 when a party consisting of Captain Mark Currie, another military officer and a seasoned bushman reached a point approximately 35 km north of where Cooma now stands.  The town was originally called Coomer and the 1841 census listed three centres there with a total population of 34 residents, the people living on the stations of William Bradley, James Kirwan and John Lambie.  By early 1849 the village of Cooma possessed the amenities of a store, a school, a lockup, a post office and a blacksmithy.  The latter could well have been the business of Joseph Woodfield, the writer's great grandfather, as it will be shown that that was his trade and he was practising it in the locality at the time.

 

A map of Cooma in 1865 shows that the town had progressed a long way in sixteen years and that Joseph owned a block of land on the corner of Hill and Kerwan Streets, which still exist to the west of today's central business district.  This is undoubtedly where Joseph carried on his blacksmith's trade and it is only a few blocks away from the site then  shown as a "Reserve for Courthouse and Lock up" [sic], which was surely near or congruent with the place of the 1849 lockup.  This is made more likely by the 1865 map showing a considerably larger area off Massie Street that was designated as a courthouse site making the other position as  probably the older one for the lockup.

 

Reverting to the Crawford family history, Archibald tells that his sister Catherine (Kate) married a William Pennington who died within a few years leaving her with one child and pregnant with another so they built a house for her on Boboyan, as it came to be known.  Archibald was fifteen when this occurred, which made it in 1848.  Of his other sisters, Margaret married a John Thomas Brodie, Mary a James Concannon and, having been widowed about 1856, later a John Mcbean.  Archibald himself married an Isabella Mcneill on 20 January 1857 and they had eight children, the last of whom, Janet, died in 1966.

 

Meanwhile, Elizabeth (Betty) Crawford, the writer's great grandmother, had married Joseph Woodfield in 1844, as related below, and she and her husband were living at Arden Prior  (Arnprior?);  this was less than 50 km from Boboyan, which in turn was about 40 km from Cooma and, as previously identified, in the south of what is now the Australian Capital Territory (Canberra).  Arn Prior was located on the Shoahaven River about 25 km from Braidwood.   Its present-day address is Mayfield Road, Labert, a district, not a township, where old stone buildings stand with a modern house nearby within a Sydney Water Board’s water conservation area.

 

A heritage survey of the Pelarang Shire shows the following  further information about Arnprior:

 

 

 

By 1889 there was another Alexander Crawford as truly a man of property, but this was Archibald Crawford's son.  In association with William Brayshaw he held the leasehold of two adjoining blocks of land totalling 18,962 acres officially designated as "Boboyan Pastoral Holding No.276" comprising Boyoyan Run in the Land District of Queanbeyan, County of Cowley, Parish of Boboyan.  The partners were charged an annual rent of ₤58 18s 1d for 8,078 of their acreage and an annual licence fee of ₤42 8s 8d for the 10,184 acres of their holding.  The property was registered in the names of Alexander Crawford and William Brayshaw.  It had been gazetted in the NSW Government Gazette of 31 July 1885 (p.4877). 

 

This property must have been identical or somewhat congruent with the Boboyan that Alexander Crawford and Charles Mckeachanie had acquired c.1843.  Brayshaw had bought out Mckeachanie and apparently John had taken over his father's interest about 1855(?) When he persuaded him to go to Victoria and buy land in the Goulburn River Valley near Murchison. 

 

Alexander Crawford, "landed proprietor", of  Baileston, Goulburn River was to die of a ruptured blood vessel in the lungs at the Caledonian Hotel, Murchison (Victoria) on 17 August 1862, aged 69.  His attending doctor was William D. Taylor, JP, and the event occasioned a magisterial enquiry by "HH" and "DD".  On the 18th of August Alexander's remains were interred in the Murchison Cemetery when the presiding clergyman was Hugh (Ingllies?) With G.S. Stewart and Frederick Tabart witnessing the burial.  The death certificate shows that Alexander's eldest son, John, had registered the death at Beechworth on 20 August, that his father had been born in Campeltown, Scotland to Archibald and Beith-Flora Crawford, that at the age of twenty-seven the deceased had married Mary Mclarty at Killenen? [sic], Argyleshire in Scotland and that at death he had been in New South Wales for sixteen years and in Victoria for six years.^[51]  In actuality, as will be established, Alexander and Mary were married at Killean & Kilchenzie, Argyle, Scotland in August 1818.  Mary, outlived her husband to die at her daughter Margaret Brodie's home at Wangra (Wangrah) on 15 October 1884 at the age of 84. 

 

From Archibald Crawford's account his brother John was not a good manager of affairs and somewhat unethical.  Seemingly, John refused to share his father's estate with Archibald and the others and ended up some years later losing the money in a bad investment.  William Brayshaw apparently eventually acquired the whole of Boboyan and it stayed in his family's ownership for many years.

 

With the advent of the present land laws in 1850 pioneering families were each able to select 40 acres and to lease about 250 acres more.  According to regulations under the land laws, over the years the selectors were able to extend their holdings of free and leasehold titles.  The Crawfords, Brayshaws and  Lockers are associated with early settlements on the Monaro around Braidwood, Cooma, Bredbo and in the rugged mountain areas north of Adaminaby.  The latter area was first settled in 1830 in association with the Kiandra gold rush in 1860;  a township originally known as Seymour developed there to undergo its name-change twenty years later.  The descendants of the families mentioned have properties in those surroundings today.

 

Several Monaro properties are referred to in the story of the squatting families named above—Bolero, Happy Valley, Hazelwood, Boro, Wangrah, Arnprior, Gailhieu, Dry Plain  and Boboyan are among those mentioned.  Bolero, now Bolairo, Happy Valley and Hazelwood still exist within a 10 km radius of New Adaminaby, the first being on the banks of the Murrumbidgee River and the latter two several kilometers apart and a few kilometers from Lake Eucumbene. 

 

Wangrah (Wangra) was in the Parish of Cowra near Bredbo.  A public school had operated there intermittently from early 1886 until late 1927 and, at the beginning until 1892, it was named Bredbo North.  As there were insufficient children in the vicinity to warrant opening a full-time school it had successively ranged in classification from "house-to-house" to "part-time".  As the categories indicate, such schools were tended by itinerant school-masters who shared their services between several localities having similar schools.  These teachers were usually untrained and received board and lodgings on the stations they visited while the government paid their salaries and travelling expenses.

 

Arnprior is mentioned in a Post Office Guide for Goulburn (undated) as being on the Inverary Mail run, which left Goulburn at 4 pm each Tuesday with mail for Mt Elrington and Arnprior.  In 1845, when the newly-married Joseph and Elizabeth Woodfield were probably still there, the proprietor of Arnprior was a  William Ryrie, the property having  been in the hands of the Ryrie family since it had first been allocated to William as a land grant, which he named Arnprior, a year or so after 1825 when his father, Stewart Ryrie, and his family  had arrived in the colony, he to take up the charge of the Government Commissariat in Sydney . 

 

In 1828 Stewart's eldest son, William (aged 23), and his brothers, Donald (18) and Stewart (16), were residing at Arnprior with a workforce of nine assigned convicts, an ex-convict whose sentence had expired and a seventeen years old "free" immigrant youth working as a "milkman".  These facts are paraphrased from page 33 of Netta Ellis's Braidwood Dear Braidwood (1989).    The number  of  those employed at the station would certainly have increased by the time convict Joseph Woodfield had been assigned to it and when he entered into married life with Elizabeth Crawford there on his ticket-of-leave  in 1844.

 

Arnprior was in the Jingera (Gingera) District southeast of Goulburn and later was to be in the Jeringle Electorate. Although it seems never to have attained a village status as some large cattle stations often did, in 1867-68 Arnprior (earlier "Arn Prior") was a large selection with a farmhouse where a part-time school operated from 1868 till December 1869.  Over those early years each schoolmaster in such scattered and remote areas divided his teaching efforts between a number of farm settlements in the Jingera District with as many as four centres in his circuit.  For instance, in 1868-69 Arnprior shared its teacher with Douro, Mulloon and Black Range, all of which must have been within an easy horse or buggy ride from each other in a circuit.  These situations of course did not pertain before the passing of The Public Schools Act of 1866 in New South Wales prior to which the more wealthy squatters would undoubtedly have employed tutors or governesses to teach their children.  However, Archibald Crawford's acquirement of literacy, as described above, would have been more representative of the chance education of poor farm children of the day.

 

The sites of Boro and Gailhieu have not yet been located.  While the proximate situations of most of these stations are known, the exact locations of some of them have yet to be identified and other information on the holdings associated with the Lockers, Crawfords and Brayshaws still requires researching.  The Crawfords were the family from whom the writer's maternal great grandmother came in the person of Elizabeth their fourth eldest child.  She married Joseph Woodfield on 16 January 1844.  Her age at marriage was eighteen and he was twenty.

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                            IV

 

                           JOSEPH  AND  ELIZABETH  WOODFIELD  (CRAWFORD)

 

Joseph and Elizabeth were "joined together in wedlock" by the Rev. William Hamilton, minister in Goulburn of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland.  It is later shown that the wedding took place at Gailhieu, probably a property in the district.  The IGI records the Presbyterian marriage as having taken place in the Bungonia Parish, Bungonia, which is 28 km east of Goulburn, but the exact location is not known.  Their marriage certificate carries her declaration that she was a member or held communion with the Presbyterian Church;  however, Joseph did not affirm his affiliation with any particular religious establishment although it is known that he was, nominally at least, of the Church of England faith.  She was identified as Elizabeth Crawford, spinster, of Arnprior and he as Joseph Woodfield, bachelor, also of Arnprior.  The witnesses to the marriage were Margaret Hamilton and Robert Johnston, but nowhere on the certificate is there a reference to Elizabeth's father, Alexander.^[52]  Did this have anything to do with the fact that his daughter was marrying a man who had arrived in Australia six years previously as a boy convict, as is shown below?

 

The children of Joseph's and Elizabeth's union were:

 

 

ELIZABETH ("Betsy")   b.7-7-1845 at Arnprior , Braidwood;  married John Locker at Happy Valley  in 1868;  d.27-10-1912,          aged 67.  Locker's birthdate was 15-3-1845 and he died on 3-8-1924.*

 

MARY  b.8-11-47 at Braidwood;  married Frederick Thomas Stapleton at Cooma                 on 21-7-1873; 

D. At her home in Redfern on 16-11-1905.

 

   AGNES  b.6-5-1854 at Boboyoyan  [sic], d. 20-11-1891 at  Adaminaby, aged 37;  in           1874 married   George Venables, who was according to the electoral roll a  leaseholder    of  Bolairo in 1870-71, a pastoral  property owner in 1885, and maybe  became a               saddler  with a shop in Queanbeyan.  George was born 28-5-1852 at  Wambrook             Property, Cooma and d. 7-9-1937 at Liverpool.[53]  Their seven children  were: Mary Jardine (1875-1952), George W. (1877-   ),    Joseph Woodfield (1979-1956),  Ada Laura (1881- 26-11- 1890) age 9.  Elizabeth Crawford (1883- 9-8-1968),   Ellen J. (1886-   )   and Violet D.M. (1888-1967).

 

CATHERINE (Kate)   b. 7-4-1851 at Boro, d. 1940 at Cooma;  in 1887                        married Jim Dawson, schoolteacher at Numeralla Siding (he was said to be younger than Kate, possibly b. 1854,  d.  1937(?) A-5-1852 at Wambrook Property, Cooma and  d. 7-9-1937 at Liverpool.[54]   Their seven children  were: Mary Jardine (1875-1952), George W. (1877-   ),     Joseph Woodfield (1979-1956), Ada Laura (1881- 26-11-1890) age 9.  Elizabeth Crawford (1883- 9-8-1968),     Ellen J. (1886-   ) and Violet D.M. (1888-1967).

 

JOHN CRAWFORD  b.  6-7-1856;  d.   At Cooma, aged 2.

 

CHARLES WILLIAM  b. 25-5-1859;  d. 2-9-1938 at Narrabeen, aged 79.

 

 

*Further information on John and Betsy Locker, the writer's great-uncle  by  marriage and his great-aunt, is presented further on in this family  history.

 

 

According to Edith (Locker) Clugston there was also a stepbrother named Harry.  As he is not shown on the above list he presented a mystery until it was disclosed that a Henry Woodfield was born to an Elizabeth Woodfield in Cooma in 1865.  The father of this child was not designated.  Joseph died in 1860 so it seems that Elizabeth had this child illegitimately early in her widowhood.  Edith wrote that in her younger days she kept up a correspondence with Harry and after her marriage he "visited and came (to Hazelwood?) For a few days."  Information from another source gives Henry Woodfield marrying an Annie Allen (nèe Watts?) At Bungendore in 1890.^[55]  Two of their children are known — Agnes V. Was born at Boboyan in 1892 (d.1943) and Roy V. Was born in 1899.  This family apparently lived at Boboyan, raising turkeys, trapping wallabies and running brumbies before they moved to Bungendore about 1902.  Roy served overseas in the AIF in World Wars I and II.  A record of Harry's death cannot as yet be located.

 

Assuredly there is a connection with this Harry Woodfield and a report that appeared in The Cooma Express on 30 May 1894 reporting the death by drowning in Naas Creek of "a boy named Joseph Allen, ten years of age, a stepson of Mr. Woodfield, of Bobeyan [sic]".  This was probably Annie Allen's child, born before her marriage to Henry.  The unfortunate youngster had been "out after the cows" and, on trying to return home by straddling a floating log to cross the swollen current (of Maas Creek, which ran through the property), he was drowned in mid-stream when the turbulence rolled the log "round and round".

 

Of her Uncle Charles Edith recorded:

 

Charles died in Sydney.  He came to an Army home in Narrabeen where he died and was buried in the cemetery at Manly.  John and I were at the funeral.  Everything carried out in a nice manner and the Army chap (chaplain?) Told us of his last days and he carried a New Testament next to his heart which was given to Daisy and Alice of Hazelwood (nieces) also all of his personal effects & money was [sic] left to Daisy and Alice.  It is possible the Testament is still at Hazelwood.  The Army captain had attended to all the needs.

 

 

Charles Woodfield probably never married (there is no Registrar General's record of his marriage up to 1938) and may have spent a good part of his adult life in the army.  He died in 1938 and his unmarked grave is in Section CC, No. 8 in the Church of England division of Manly Cemetery.  According to burial records held by the Manly Municipal Council his grave was "guaranteed" (for payment of costs?) By Daisy Locker of Hazelwood, Adaminaby.

 

 

                                                                             V

 

                       JOSEPH WOODFIELD      b.  9-7-1819 at Bremhill, Wilts., England

                                                                      D. 11-6-1860 at Cooma, "aged 40 years"(?)

 

Joseph Woodfield arrived in Sydney on the Lord Lyndoc 3   from London, mastered by Captain William Stead with "O. Pineo, surgeon and superintendent", on 8 August 1838 as one of the 330 all-male convicts it had Transported from England.  He had been convicted at the Somerset Quarter Sessions, Bath on 26 October 1837 and was eighteen at the time of his trial.  Although he had no previous criminal record he was given a ten year sentence for picking pockets.

 

The Lord Lyndoch was a convict ship of 638 tons.  On her third visit to New South Wales as a convict transport (ie, Lord Lyndoch (3)) she left Woolwich on 28 March 1838 and Portsmouth on 4 April 1838 with a total of 432 souls on board.  As well as Captain Stead and Surgeon Pineo they included Major and Mrs Campbell of HM 51st Regiment and Ensign Dixon.  Travelling steerage were Sergeant and Mrs Ashendon with their two children plus 46 marines and 51 of the guards from several regiments accompanied by eight women and nine offspring, undoubtedly families of some of the soldiers or even wives and children of convicts being transported.[56]  In addition, of course, were the convicts who were categorised as "lading" by the ship's master.  The voyage to New South Wales was uninterrupted by ports-of-call and there was no outbreak of contagious disease (such as cholera) during the voyage.  One isolated death had occurred a month or so after leaving England and, to quote the captain's report on arriving in Sydney on 8 August 1838, "In Scurvy we have 160.  Several have died of it."  This last was not remarkable considering the ship had not refreshed its food and water supplies over the eighteen weeks of its voyage from England.

In those days, detailed medical records had to be kept by the ships' doctors who accompanied convict transports to New South Wales.  Surgeon Pineo was undoubtedly conscientious in this regard for his prescribed journal exists for this voyage of the Lord Lyndoch, as do his embarkation and final reports on the health record of the passage.  His last account ran into eight crowded pages and was tendered to "Sir Wm. Burnett, MD, Physician General, HM Navy".^[57]  The complete chronicle was kept between March 14 and September 6, 1838;  it makes interesting, informative reading to illustrate how the British authorities kept the health and welfare of transported convicts, soldiery, guards and ships' passengers and crew in mind, at least during the first half of the early nineteenth century.

 

During this, the third voyage of the Lord Lyndoch as a convict transport, Pineo maintained a daily log of all cases presented to him for treatment en voyage including references to medicines prescribed, the patients' progress and cures effected.  For instance he noted that he treated sixteen prisoners who had been scalded by boiling tea, of whom one died.  Nineteen prisoners died en route to the colony ? Eight from scurvy and eleven of old age and diseases contracted before embarkation.  After passing the Cape of Good Hope scurvy manifested itself in the prisoners leading to the hospitalisation of 119 of them, although the non-convict complement on the ship seemed to have escaped the complaint.

 

The surgeon explained how he inspected the convicts twice a day, saw that they were kept clean, dry and exercised, dosed them with hot vinegar and chloride of lime on alternate days, wrote that their diet was "generous" and that they were in bed by 8 pm.  The report goes into much more detail than this, indicating that the prisoners were treated as humanely as possible on such a long voyage, even making allowances for the probability that reality was not as benevolent as it was made out to be or as regu-lations insisted it should be.  In any case, young Joseph Woodfield's name did not appear in the enumeration of prisoners falling ill or suffering accident during the voyage.  No doubt his youthfulness and comparative simplicity guarded him against the moral and physical dangers of his voyage to Australia.

 

The only account of Joseph's trial so far discovered reposes in the Guildhall Public Record Office in Bath, Somerset.  The chronicle is very scanty, but it reveals that Joseph had an accomplice in his crime, one Daniel Brown, who may have been younger than Joseph because of the differences in the severity of their sentences.  The two youths were found guilty of "stealing from the person of Frances Wiltshire 2 half crowns, 1 shilling, 1 penny" and "6 half pence the monies of Charles Wiltshire".  Joseph was sentenced to "transportation 10 years" and Daniel to "8 Cal. (calender) Months hard labors [of work?]. 2 whipped one week Solitary" for the victimisation of the Wiltshire couple who might have been husband and wife, brother and sister, or in some other family relationship.^[58]  The destiny of Joseph's pick-pocketing companion is unknown, but there is no appropriate Daniel Brown listed in convict arrivals in New South Wales so he apparently escaped Joseph's fate of transportation.

 

Convict indent records show that Joseph was fifteen when he arrived in New South Wales making 1823 his year of birth.  However, at the time of his death on 11 June 1860 it was said that he was aged 40.  This would have made 1820 his year of birth and thus he would have been round about eighteen when he arrived in Sydney.  On the other hand, when he applied to the Australian authorities to be permitted to marry Elizabeth Crawford and his request was granted on 18 December 1843 Joseph's age was shown as twenty, which would bring his year of birth back to 1823.  However, despite this conflicting evidence, Mormon IGI records show his date of birth as 9 July 1819 which may be taken as definitive.  Perhaps the "15" shown on the convict indent sheets was an error in transcription as that number is easily mistaken for "18" or he may have put his age back at his trial in hopes of leniency in his sentence.

 

The record of Joseph's application to marry shows his "condition" as being a convict on ticket-of-leave and that he and his proposed wife (condition "free") were both residing at Arnprior.  It is thus highly probable that young Joseph was on ticket-of-leave to work as a blacksmith at Arnprior or a nearby property, maybe near or where his prospective father-in-law, Alexander, was working as a farmhand.  This would explain how he (Joseph) came to be on the Monaro five years after his arrival in Sydney. 

 

From the foundation of New South Wales a great many convicts were similarly given over to employers thus providing needed labour in rural and other occupations.  On their arrival in the colony it was government practice at the time to assign suitable convicts to employers and in each case a numbered official Private Employment Ticket was issued setting out the conditions to be adhered to by the employer.  On this were noted the convict's name, ship of arrival, year, native place, trade or calling, date of trial, sentence, year of birth, height, complexion and hair and eye colours.  By way of example such an actual ticket in 1842 showed that the stated individual was

 

Allowed to employ ....(the convict).... For the term of six months from this date …  To lodge in the Savings Bank Sydney 15 shillings per month to the credit of .....(the convict)..... And further provide him with board and lodging;  also to pay him wages at the rate of three shillings and sixpence per week.

                                                                                                          Dated        ..................

 

 

Shortly after his arrival in New South Wales Jospeh, because of his blacksmithing skills, was undoubtedly assigned to a farming property, probably on the Monaro.  The proof of this will probably never be found as the records of assignments from the Lord Lyndoch are missing.  Moreover, the regular publication in the Government Gazette of the names of convicts who had been granted tickets-of-leave do not include Joseph Woodfield in their listings between 8 August 1838 and the end of June 1839.  A further search of subsequent

Gazettes might be more successful in locating proof that such a document was issued to him.  However, a ticket-of-leave for Joseph has been discovered (No.43/2462 dated 11 October 1843).  It was issued on the recommendation of the "Bench" in Braidwood allowing him "to remain in in the District of Braidwood" (note the word "remain") where, of course, he was to enter government-sanctioned matrimony less than three months later.  A copy of this ticket-of-leave appears on the next page.

 

In those days a convict's transportation could be mitigated by pardon or by completion of his sentence.  In the first case his/her name would be so registered in the Government Gazette;  in the second case a certificate of freedom could be issued upon the convict's application and by payment of a fee of a few shillings.  There is no record of Joseph Woodfield terminating his sentence by either means and one can only conclude that he served his full term and did not consider it worthwhile to have his freedom confirmed on a piece of paper, or could not afford the cost of it.

 

With regard to Joseph Woodfield's transportation to the colony (Standing No. 38 1371, Indent 214) his personal particulars are given on the records as:  Age 15;  Education  reads and writes;  Religion  protestant;  Status  single;  Children  nil;  From  Berkeshire;  and Trade  blacksmith's apprentice 5 years.  His height was 5ft 3 ins;  his complexion was "sallow", his hair was brown and his eyes were grey.

 

The records go on to give a full description of any body features that, should it prove necessary, could identify young Joseph as the felon in question.   These were:

 

Particular marks or scars --  scar outside right eye -- mole on left temple -- three under left ear -- two scars on back of neck -- four moles, man and woman (tattoos?) Inside lower right arm -- JWAO* and two moles on upper, mermaid and scars of burn inside lower left arm -- rings (tatoos?) On middle and third fingers of left hand.

 

*"JW" = Joseph Woodfield, but what or who was "AO"  Were they the initials of the "woman" tatooed with the "man" on Joseph's arm?

 

Joseph's parents were Charles and Elizabeth Woodfield;  his mother's maiden name is given as "unknown" on his death certificate, a copy of which is included with these pages.  However, IGI records show a Charles Woodfield marrying an Elizabeth Summers in Bremhill, Wiltshire on 1 January 1800 and these were undoubtedly Joseph's parents.  The same records reveal that husband Charles was born about 1775 in Bremhill and that the progency of this marriage was:

 

Charles,   b. 11- 9-1803 at Bremhill, Wiltshire, England

Isaac,       b.  6-11-1808          ..do..

Joseph,    b.  9- 7-1819           ..do..

              And  George,    b. 29- 9-1822          ..do..

 

 

Brehmill appears on Bartholomew's Road Map of England (1992) as being a village about 32 km due east of Chippenham, which is in turn about 90 km east nor'east of the city of Bath.  The British Automobile Association's Illustrated Guide to Britain (1975) describes Chippenham as a "stone built town on the Avon" and as part of the "the colourful fabric of Weavers' land". 

 

It has so far been described how Joseph Woodfield arrived in Sydney as a young convict in August 1838, was undoubtedly assigned to a property owner on the Monaro because of his blacksmithing antecedents, was granted a ticket of leave in October 1843, in December of that year obtained permission to marry choosing Elizabeth Crawford as his wife and most likely finished his ten year sentence late in 1847. There followed a period for which research has  uncovered an hitherto unknown circumstance in his life that had previously been covered up or became forgotten by his descendents.

 

It will be shown that Joseph acquired a block of land in Cooma in 1851, but it is now known that he became an innkeeper in the township of Boro, which is about 54 km on the road from Goulburn to Braidwood and about ten kilometers south of Tarago.  At this time there were two inns in Boro, but they were probably little more than houses in which accommodation, food, the sale of liquor and stabling for travellers'  horses were provided.

 

It was lately discovered by the writer that there were two pieces of correspondence relating to Joseph Woodfield in the NSW Colonial Secretary's files concerning convicts and surprisingly these had his name amongst those of several others on two petitions from prisoners in Goulburn Gaol, one in 1851 the other in 1852.  Each sought official approval for the named prisoners to be given "task work" that was available for convicts doing hard labour in other gaols rather than the general employment of "cleansing the gaol and other necessary work" such as chopping wood that they did in Goulburn Gaol.  The main reason for this was that "task work" could earn the prisoner some remission of sentence, whilst the nature of their labours did not.  A visiting magistrate, (J.N.?) Shatfield and maybe another in 1852, looked into the matter and as far as can be determined the petitions were not granted.  The convicts' solicitations did, however, show that Joseph Woodfield was serving a two year sentence in Goulburn gaol during 1851 and 1852.[59]

 

A search of the Entrance Book for Goulburn Gaol revealed that Joseph Woodfield, native place Bath, Protestant, ship Lord Lyndoch, "bond" on arrival (in colony), blacksmith, was sentenced to two years imprisonment in Goulburn Gaol and was admitted there on 3 May 1851, but discharged on bail on 2 June 1851.  No subsequent notation of re-entry admission to the gaol could be found in Goulburn's Entrance Book.[60]

 

The circumstances that led to Jospeh's second time of imprisonment in New South Wales were described in full in two columns of The Goulburn Herald of 10 May 1851.  In summary they were:

 

29 April, Tuesday evening:  Joseph Woodfield, the landlord of the Boro  Inn is drinking with his customers.  Woodfield is affected by alcohol and argues with his servant, Thomas Hartneady, aged 23, who had also been drinking, about money that Borak, an Arab lodger at the inn, had placed with Woodfield for safe keeping.  They "had some words", "came to blows" then go outside and begin fighting.  Hartneady strikes Woodfield a "violent blow" over the eye with a stick from the woodheap.  Each knocks down the other and Woodfield allegedly kicks his opponent while he lies on the ground.  Hartneady becomes unconscious and is carried to his bed.

 

30 April, Wednesday morning:  Mrs Woodfield (Elizabeth) goes to Hartneady's room to wake him.  Unable to do so she summons    Woodfield who finds that Hartneady is dead.

 

1 May, Thursday:  Chief Constable M'Alister at Goulburn, on receiving a letter from Woodfield advising of Hartneady's death, takes      Woodfield into custody.

 

2 May, Friday: About midday District Coroner Robert Waugh arrives at the inn, impanels a jury and opens an inquest into Hartneady's             death.  Witnesses give evidence.  Dr John Gerard, medical practitioner, having arrived earlier, gives his evidence arising   from his very comprehensive post-mortem examination with dissections of the body, which leads to his opinion that the victim was already dead when placed in his bed on the Tuesday night and that he had died from suffocation arising from the  injuries he sustained in the fight, etc.  Woodfield makes a voluntary statement, which according to the Goulburn Herald's account was "to the following effect"(part quote):

 

                        ". . . On the previous Tuesday deceased and he .... Came to blows, and both went out and fought.  Deceased threw him (prisoner) down and put his knee upon his chest;  the prisoner's wife pulled him off;  deceased then ran to the woodheap and picked up a stick and struck prisoner a vio-lent blow with it over the eye;  prisoner and deceased then fought after that, but could not say what happened as both had been drinking.  After having washed his face in the kitchen, prisoner and the shepherd [alluded to in the evidence] carried deceased and placed him on his bed;  deceased was alive at that time and an hour afterwards.  The deceased .... Had been about six months in the prisoner's service ....  Prisoner and the deceased had always lived on the best of terms."

 

            After two hours the jury returns and declares Joseph Woodfield is guilty of manslaughter.  The coroner issues a warrant for the committal of the prisoner.  Woodfield is probably taken back to Goulburn police station.

 

3 May, Saturday:  Joseph Woodfield is admitted to Gouburn Gaol to await trial, probably at the next District Court sitting in Goulburn.  Meanwhile he is released on bail on 6 June 1851.

 

Joseph had to wait two months for his trial, which was before His Honor Mr Justice Dickensen at the District Court in Goulburn on 7 August 1851.  The charge was one of wilful murder of Thomas Hartneady on 29 April and his defending lawyer was a Mr Purefoy.  The witnesses were the deceased's sister and a sheep drover who were present during the event and the already-mentioned Dr Gerard who had carried out the post-mortem on the deceased.  The first two were cross-examined by Purefoy who finally "in a powerful address, during which he ably sifted the evidence against Woodfield, confined himself to the minor offence, and called the Messrs Hyland [sic], who gave the prisoner an excellent character."  His Honor then "summed up (and) the jury, after a brief absence, returned a verdict of guilty of manslaughter.  In passing sentence on the prisoner, His Honor regretted that the manner of settling a quarrel which had been resorted to by the prisoner, was very common in this colony, and he would do all in his power to put it down.  He then sentenced the prisoner to two years imprisonment in Goulburn gaol [sic], with hard labour."[61]

 

In all this it is interesting to note that in its initial report on Hartneady's death the Goulburn Herald referred to Joseph Woodfield as "innkeeper", the Goulburn Gaol Entrance Book described him as "blacksmith" and at the court sitting he was arraigned as "Joseph Woodfield, late of Goulburn".

 

In studying these occurrences the question then arose as to when Joseph became an innkeeper.  It could not have been until after his ten years sentence as a convict from England had expired, so that would have been some time following about 1847.  Luckily, the NSW State Records office solved the problem as they had amongst their archives the actual "butts" of publican licenses granted from 1830 to 1849 and the microfilm of these disclosed the following:

 

                50                        Revenue Branch, Colonial Treasury

                                                Sydney    7th June 1848

 

           Licence to Retail Fermented and Spiritous Liquors

           Issued in favour

 

           Of        Jos. Woodfield

 

           Known by the sign of the Boro Inn at Boro

           From 1 July 1848    to    30 June 1849

 

           Amount of duty received   ,30

 

           Certificate of the above-mentioned being a fit Person

           To keep a Public House granted by

 

                     John Murphy, JP           )

                                               )  Justice

           Assembled at Bungonia               )  of the Peace

           On the 18th day of April 1848[62]     )

 

 

Joseph's predecessor as the proprietor of the Boro Inn, whose address was given as Boro Creek, Bungandore, Bungonia was a John Taylor whose last licenceeship year began on 26 June 1847.  Joseph's tenure there undoubtedly extended from 1 July 1848 until he was sentenced by the court in 1851.

 

As he had already spent a month in Goulburn Gaol before he was bailed Joseph's imprisonment of two years, beginning on 7 August 1851 would probably have finished about 6 July 1853 as there is no evidence of his earlier release.  It was after his return to freedom that he eventually took himself and family to Cooma to set up his blacksmithy.  As his land ownership records show (see below) he had probably planned to do that one day in any case following a relinquishment of his Boro Inn licence.

 

The probability of that intention lies in Joseph's acquisition of a block of land in Cooma on 13 February 1851 for the sum of ,12 at a pepper-corn rental for him and his heirs forever, as will be shown later.  Then in the year following his discharge from prison "Joseph Woodfield of Bobyyang [sic]" purchased an allotment in Cooma on 27 July 1854.  His father-in-law was on that Bobyang  property so it was a logical place for him to return to on his release and maybe his wife, Elizabeth, had gone back with her children to be with her parents while her husband was incarcerated in Goulburn Gaol.  His land deal of 1851 seems to have been consolidated by an indenture dated 3 October 1862 to which subsequent paragraphs will allude.  It was on this land that he set up his blacksmithy.

 

Joseph Woodfield died in Cooma of "congestion of membranes of the brain"— Probably a stroke—and was buried in Cooma Cemetery on 13 June 1860 "after inquiry by Robert Danson, police magistrate" on the same day.   On the death certificate Danson is also shown as the official "informant" of the event, indicating that a coronial type investigation of it had occurred. 

 

Unfortunately, although there is reference in an extant index to the inquiry on Joseph's death the details of it have not survived.^[63]  A search of Sydney and local newspapers (Goulburn's were the nearest at the time) revealed no account of this inquest, indicating that it had no particular news value and was thus probably of a routine nature.  The witnesses to Joseph's burial were Thomas Druitt, "Clergyman of the Church of England", George Carter and Charles Walters.  The deceased's birthplace is shown as "Berkshire, England", although IGI records say it was in Wiltshire.^[64]  The two counties are adjoining and Charles Woodfield may have moved his family to Berkshire after Joseph's younger brother, George, was born in 1822.

 

Joseph Woodfield's grave has been located in the old Cooma cemetery which is situated just off Church Road, about 3 km SSE from the business centre of the town.  The cemetery is several acres in size and it contains the  substantial stone-built Christ Church Maneroo, which was the first church on the Monaro.  Now boarded up, it was opened in 1845 and the last regular religious service in it took place in 1872.  The monuments in the cemetery are scattered over the area;  they are identified and described in a book, Monumental Inscriptions ? Monaro (1982).^[65]  Joseph's grave was given as No.79 in this volume, but couldn't be found in reference to this number.  However, a survey in the possession of St Paul's Church of England, Cooma, referred to its location as "M 1".  Several careful searches eventually discovered the tombstone almost completely hidden under a large thorn bush and quite distant from graves "M 2" and "M 3", which were easily found.  The inscription on Joseph's monument reads:

 

                                                                      Sacred

                                                                      To the

                                                                  Memory of

                                            JOHN CRAWFORD WOODFIELD

                                                           Died Nov. 4th 1858

                                                                Aged 2 years

 

                                                                        Also

 

                                                                  His Father

                                                      JOSEPH WOODFIELD

                                                          Died June 11th 1860

                                                               Aged 40 years

 

 

 

It was interesting to find that Joseph's young son was interred in this grave less than two years before the death of his father and that the child bore his mother's maiden surname as his second christian name.

 

Joseph had made a will (Probate No.5155), and the marvel is that he had amassed sufficient worthwhile assets to do so over the twenty years or so since his arrival in the colony as a convict boy.  A transcription of Joseph's rather long and involved settlement follows:

 

                     LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF JOSEPH WOODFIELD

 

No.5155  This is the last Will and Testament of me Joseph Woodfield of Cooma in the Colony of New South Wales Blacksmith First I nominate constitute and appoint my Brother-in-Law William Brashaw [sic] of Bobian [sic] in the said Colony Squatter and Archibald Crawford of Bailestone Goulburn River in the Colony of Victoria Executors and Trustees of this my Will First I give and bequeath unto my dear Wife Elizabeth all my Household furniture and other effects excepting money or securities for money which shall be in and about my residence at the time of my decease Next I request my Executors so soon as conveniently may be after my decease to collect get in and receive all monies which shall be due and owing to me at the time of my decease and thereout to pay satisfy and discharge all my just debts funeral and testamentory expenses and in the next place I give devise and bequeath to my said executors his and their executors administrators and assign all my real and personal estate of what nature or kind soever and wheresoever situated Upon trust to sell and convert the same into money whether by private sale or public auction and in such manner as to the conditions stipulations biddings title evidenceturie expenses in compensation indemnity security for purchase money or otherwise and with full power to buy in or rescind vary or alter any contract which may have been entered into and to resell the same without being liable for any loss or diminution in price to be occasioned by such resale and with full power to compound waive release suspend leave on personal or other security refer to arbitration or otherwise deal with any debts or claims which at any time or times may be owing to or be made on behalf of or against my Estate whether legally provable or enforceable or not And I declare that my Trustees shall stand possessed of the proceeds of such sale after deducting the expenses and all the trust monies hereby to them bequeathed Upon trust to invest the same in their or his names or name upon good security with full liberty to vary the same investments as my said Trustees shall think proper and then Upon trust to permit my said Wife to receive the annual income of my said trust monies or the stocks funds and securities whereon the same shall be invested during her life she thereout maintaining educating and bringing up my said children and immediately after decease as to as well the capital as the accruing income of the said trust fund In trust to pay and divide the same unto and equally between all and every my child or children who shall survive me if more than one in equal shares and proportions and if only one such child then I give and bequeath the same wholly to such only child And I declare that every person who shall or may pay any trust money to the Trustees of Trustee for the time being of this my Will upon their or his receipt in writing shall be exonerated from all responsibility in respect of the application thereof And I declare that each Trustee shall be answerable only for losses arising from his own default And I declare that if any person hereby named as Trustee of my Will be dead or should reside abroad or should disclaim neglect or refuse or be incapable to perform or desire to retire from the office it shall be lawful for the other Trustee to appoint by any writing attested by one Witness or Trustee in the room of such person And that every Trustee appointed under his power shall immediately have all the powers of a Trustee although the trust property be not then vested in him And that the acting executor or administrator of an only Trustee may exercise all the powers of such Trustee not hereby expressly given to his heirs In Witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand this Thirty first day of December One thousand Eight hundred and fifty eight ? ? ? Joseph Woodfield

Signed by the said Testator as his last Will and Testament in the presence of us and present at the same time who at his request in his presence and in the presence of each other have subscribed our names as Witnesses

Charles Walters.  James Hain.

                                                                                               26 August 1861.

 

This day upon Petition Probate of the last Will and Testament of Joseph Woodfield deceased was granted to Archibald Crawford one of the Executors in the said Will named (William Brayshaw the other Executor having renounced by Deed) Testator died 11 June 1860.  Goods sworn at ₤300.  Probate dated the same day granted.

 

 

As has been told, Joseph Woodfield carried on his trade as a blacksmith in Cooma until his death.  In May 1995 the writer visited Cooma to see if anything could be found of his great grandfather's life there.  It appeared that business references of the time have not survived so the location of his smithie could not be determined.  It was subsequently found, however, that NSW State Archives contain a map of early Cooma in 1865 and this showed a block of land there on the corner of Kerwan and Hill Streets which bore the name of J. Woodfield as owner.  The area was possibly the centre of Cooma township at the time and it can be safely presumed that his blacksmith business was located on the delineated block of land which was close to two blocks of land "reserved for Court House and Lockup".

 

A search of the NSW Registrar General's archives brought to light two documents concerning the land that Joseph acquired in Cooma.  The first was a government deed proclaiming that "Joseph Woodfield of Bobyyang [sic] (had) become the Purchaser of the Allotment or Parcel of Land . . . Described for Sum of Twelve Pounds" and that its ownership was his and "his Heirs and Assigns for ever" at a yearly payment to the Crown of a "Quit-Rent of One Pepper-corn for ever, if demanded".  The block of land was "the allotment sold as Lot 6 in pursuance of the Proclamation of 26th July 1854."  It was, as told above, on the corner of Kerwan and Hill Streets and located in the Village of Cooma, Parish of Cooma, County of Beresford.^[66]

 

The second, and more lengthy document was an indenture dated 3rd October 1862.  The recital of this deed shows that the block of land in question had belonged to Woodfield since 13th February 1851, a discrepancy that is unaccounted for.  Could he have had a lease on the property from that date before converting it to freehold some three-and-a-half years later?  However that might have been, the indenture shows that in 1862 Joseph's executer, his brother-in-law Archibald Crawford, sold the land to a Robert Croudage Joplin for the sum of ?22.^[67]  In terms of Joseph's will it will be remembered that the proceeds of the realisation of his estate were to be invested by his trustee;  the annual returns therefrom were to be paid to his widow, Elizabeth, and on her death the remaining capital was to be  disbursed equally to their children.  William Brayshaw had apparently opted out of being one of Joseph's executors and Archibald was reliably doing his duty in the interest of his daughter and his Woodfield grand-children.

 

An examination of local records held by Cooma Public Library uncovered only three references to the Woodfields.  One was Joseph's name on a petition in 1858 addressed to the "Hon. Alexander Hamilton, Esq" of Woolway, begging him to accept nomination as a candidate for Maneroo in the election to the NSW Legislative Assembly;  another was its appearance in an account of a coach hold-up in April 1860 when mail bags were stolen.  Along with the gold they contained was "material" (a parcel or package?) Sent to Woodfield by "Mrs Brodie", his sister-in-law.^[68]  The name of "Elizabeth Woodfield, servant" was in Bailliere's Post Office Directory for Cooma in 1867.  This was probably Joseph's widow who must have taken up duties as a domestic help after her husband's death.  Further details of Joseph Woodfield's background will follow when they have been ascertained.

 

 

 

                                                                     VI

 

                 ELIZABETH WOODFIELD    b.28-11-1827 at Kilmorluag, Scotland

                                  (née Crawford)         d. 5- 2-1880 at Hazel Dell, aged 53 years

 

Elizabeth was the fourth eldest of the eight children of Alexander Crawford and his wife, Mary (née mclarty).  Her parents had married at Killean & Kilchenzie, Argyle, Scotland on 25 August 1818.  They and their children were "brought out" to New South Wales by the bounty agents, Gilchrist and Alexander of Sydney.  Elizabeth was about twelve when she, her two brothers and five sisters and her parents set out from Greenoch on The Portland on 24 October 1838 bound for Sydney.^[69]  Approval for their movement had been given to them by letter from the Colonial Secretary dated 17 January 1838.  They arrived in good health on 28 December 1838.

 

Alexander Crawford, his wife Mary and their immediate relatives were natives of Kintyre, Co. Argyle in Scotland.  When they immigrated, he was a farm servant with the occupation of shepherd and her occupation was given as "living at home", or as we might say, "domestic duties".  His parents were Archibald Crawford and Flora Beeth who had married on 14 December 1778 in Campbeltown, Argyle.  Her parents were John mclarty and Margaret (Peggy) née mcnair whose marriage year was probably 1786 if Mary was their first child.  Peggy might well have been the daughter of Archibald and Margaret (née Galbreath), who was born 8 February 1762 at Campbeltown, Argyle (IGI records).

 

As will be shown, most of the people involved with the Alexander Crawford connections had their roots in the County of Argyle (or Argyleshire), Scotland in either Campbeltown or what was probably the combined villages of Killean & Kilchenzie.  Kilchenzie still stands in the Kintyre Peninsular about six kilometers northwest of Campbeltown on the road to Westport.   Mary's father, John, had been christened at Killean & Kilchenzie on 5 April 1776;  his father was Alexander mcnair but his mother's name was unrecorded.  Mary had been christened (cr.) At Killean & Kilchenzie, on 5 November 1791 as had her siblings, who, as far as IGI records go, were:

 

Niell,       cr. 30- 3-1787

Catherine    cr. 11- 4-1788

Donald       cr. 22- 5-1790

Archibald    cr. 20-11-1793

Ivor,        cr. 13- 1-1796

Janet,       cr. 12- 4-1803

 And   Flora,       cr. 15- 5-1806

 

 

As befitted good Scots, Alexander and Mary Crawford were Presbyterians and each could read and write.  On embarkation he was 40 and she was 38, their registry of birth/baptism being given respectively as 14-12-1799 (his date of birth is shown in IGI records as 14 December 1792) and 8-10-1800.  Each had been attested to for very good health, very good character and "usefulness", Alexander by John Campbell, Duncan clean and John Mcallum, and Mary also by Duncan Mclean, who was a "Minister, Campbeltown".  The children they brought with them were:

 

 

JOHN,            aged nineteen, birth or baptism   10-10-1819,

FLORA,             ...  Seventeen,  ............                 7- 9-1821,

MARGARET,   ...  Fifteen,     ............                  19- 1-1824,

ELIZABETH,  ...  Twelve,     ............                    2-12-1825,

CATHERINE,  ...  Ten,        ............                    20- 1-1828,

MARY,              ...  Seven,      ............                  25- 5-1831,

ARCHIBALD,  ...  Five,       ........... .                  20- 3-1833,     

  And   JANET (JENNY)    infant of eight months .       3- 4-1838

 

There were two more Crawfords to add to the above list, both born in Australia: 

 

EDWARD,     .............................              -1840

 And   ALEXANDER,  .............................   13- 2-1843

 

Prior to leaving Scotland the Crawfords had lost two children, Archibald, who was christened on 11 April 1830 and Hanah (Hannah?), who was christened on 22 December 1835.

 

According to Mormon IGI records, John, Flora, Margaret, Elizabeth and Catherine Crawford were born in Killean & Kilchenzie, Co. Argyle, Scotland where their parents had been married in 1818;  the others, apart from Edward and Alexander, were born in Campeltown, Argyle. 

 

Vol. Locker, a descendent of Flora, who married William Brayshaw, gives the information that she and her sister Elizabeth were born at Kilmorluag, Scotland but on 7-9-1821 and 2-12-1825 respectively as opposed to the dates shown above.  The latter appear on the immigration shipping records where the dates of birth of the Crawford children equate more accurately with their ages on departure from England and, in Elizabeth's case, with the information on her death certificate.  It may be taken, then, that Mr Locker's facts are not correct or that records confuse actual dates of birth with baptismal dates.  It has to be determined where Kilmorluag actually was.

 

Further information on the Crawfords, including many of the facts outlined above, are taken from Mrs Husking's booklet Our Scottish Roots and set out on the following page as a summary of the constituents of the family.^[70] 

 

It has already been mentioned that Alexander and Mary Crawford immigrated from Kintyre, a long rocky peninsula on the west coast of Scotland due west from the mainland coastal town of Ayre.  In that considerable area the largest town is Campbeltown [sic] where Duncan mclean was a Presbyterian minister and obviously knew the Crawfords who might have been of his flock for he testified as their good character, etc.  It would thus not be too hazardous to guess that Alexander and Mary Crawford lived in the vicinity if not in Campbeltown.  Alexander died on 20 August 1862 at Murchison, Victoria.  Mary was to live until 15 October 1884 when she died at Wangrah, her sister Margaret Brodie's home near Cooma.^[71]

 

Alexander's third-eldest daughter, Elizabeth (Crawford) Woodfield, died of "cardiac disease" at Hazel Dell on 5 February 1880 at the age of 53 years.  This condition had apparently manifested itself thirteen months before and she had been treated for it by a Dr Clifford.  Her place of death must have been in the vicinity of Adaminaby for she was buried there three days later.  The undertaker was "John Locker" (her son-in-law's name) and the witnesses to the burial were G..?.. Venables and Joseph Filbert Locker with no presiding clergyman shown on the death certificate.  This omission may indicate that Elizabeth had a civil burial although that would have been unusual for the times, or it could be that she was not interred in the cemetery but on a private property. 

 

The practice in those times of having graves on private rural properties is highlighted by the existence of such at Happy Valley, a Locker station near Adaminaby.  The possibility of Elizabeth Woodfield's interment being thus is made more likely because there is no record of an existing tombstone for her in cemeteries old or new in Braidwood, Cooma or nearby.  Unless her monument was never provided, or has disappeared, the specific place of her burial must remain unclear.

 

Elizabeth's death certificate shows that she had been in Australia for 41 years, her place of birth was "Scotland" and that at death she had one male child living, one deceased and four living female children.  In conformity with the information given above from other sources her parents' names are indicated as Alexander Crawford and Mary Mclarty and the certificate records her marriage to Joseph Woodfield at the age of eighteen at a place that looks to have been called  Gailhieu.^[72]  

 

                              .THE ALEXANDER CRAWFORD FAMILY

 

Alexander CRAWFORD      m.           Mary Mclarty

B. 14 Dec. 1792             25-8-1818        b.  8 Oct. 1800

D. 20 Aug. 1862                                     d. 12 Oct. 1884

A.    69 yrs                                             a.    84 yrs

 

ISSUE:

John CRAWFORD                   Bachelor

Cr.10 Oct. 1819

D. 21 May  1891

 

Flora CRAWFORD          m.           William BRAYSHAW

B.  7 Sep. 1821                 1844          b.         1810

D. 10 May  1891          Dry Plain      d. 19 Nov. 1888

A.    70 yrs                                          a.    77 yrs

 

Margaret CRAWFORD       m.        John Thomas BRODIE

B. 12 November 1822          1841       b.          1805

D. 27 Jun. 1905                                   d. 19 Apr.  1858

A.    81 yrs                                           a.    52 yrs

 

#          Elizabeth CRAWFORD      m.         Joseph WOODFIELD

B.  2 Dec. 1825            16-1-1844      b.  9 July 1819

D.  5 Feb. 1880                                   d. 11 Jun.  1860

A.    54 yrs                                           a. 40 yrs

 

Catherine CRAWFORD      m.       William PENNISTER

                        B. 20 Jan. 1828                   1846      cr. 20 Sep. 1841

D.                                                       D.  C.1848

 

Archibald CRAWFORD    Must have died soon after birth.

Cr.11 Apr. 1830 (i)     

 

Mary CRAWFORD           m.      James CONCANNON

Cr.25 May 1831           (ii)    1853     b.

.                                                      d.   c. 1856

                                                                             (i).  John Mcbean

                                                                               b.     1830

 

Archibald CRAWFORD      m.         Isabella Mcneil

B. 20 Mar. 1833            28-1-1857     b.    Jan. 1833

D. 24 Jul. 1925                                    d. 27 May  1923               

A.    92 yrs                                           a.    90 yrs

 

Hannah CRAWFORD (iii)

Cr.22 Dec. 1835    Died in Scotland before 1838.

 

 

                        Janet (Jenny) CRAWFORD           Spinster

Cr. 3 Apr. 1838

D.  6 Feb. 1900

A.    61 yrs

 

Edward CRAWFORD          m.              Sarah FEENEY

B .         1840                        1863             b. 26 Jan. 1847

D. 22 Feb. 1908            Queanbeyan       d. 12 Feb. 1917

A.    58 yrs                                                    70 yrs

 

NOTES:  b. Born;  cr. Christened:  m. Married;  d. Died;  a. Aged.

              Sometimes b. And cr. Dates cannot be distinguished from each other.

          #   Elizabeth was the writer's great grandmother.

(i)  IGI record for Archibald;  (ii)  IGI;  (iii)  IGI records give her name as                                       "Hanah".      

                                                                        VII

 

                                           THOMAS AND MARY STAPLETON

 

The remains of Thomas, his wife Mary, Maud and the ashes of Elsie are in a grave in the Church of England Cemetery, Rookwood, Section AAA, Graves Nos.755-756.  The tombstone is about one metre high, is well preserved and bears the inscription:

 

Mary Stapleton,  died 16-11-1905, aged 58.

Frederick Thomas Stapleton, died 11-3-1923, aged 75.

 

"He that believeth in Me

 Though he were dead

 Yet shall he live."

 

 

Mary (née Woodfield) was born at Braidwood on 8 November 1847.  Her elder sister was Elizabeth (b. Braidwood, 7 July 1845, d. 5 February 1880) who married John Locker of Hazelwood  near Adaminaby.  This set up the Locker connection with the Stapletons which will be recorded in greater length later in this history.

 

 

 

FURTHER DETAILS OF THE ISSUE OF THOMAS AND MARY STAPLETON

 

1.         Frederick Leonard m. Margaret ("Maggie") Mellon on 16-2-1904 (at Adaminaby).  Frederick b.22-7-1874,   d.19-12-1958;  she, b.29-11-1873,   d. 19-3-1962

 

Issue:  (1) Doreen Mary b.1-1-1906, d.31-1-1994;

m. Charles Buxies Papworth in St John's, Parramatta on 19-12-1932.

He b. 31-5- 1905 in England;  came to  Australia aged six, d.12-6-1995

 

      Children:

 

 (i) Diane,  b. 22-11-1934. 

                                  One deceased ??,  b. ?

                                  Diane   m. Rod Cameron; 

                                  Issue:  Geoff, Margaret, Bruce

                            

 (2) Leonard John   b.7-10-1910 at Cooma, d.7-12-1996  at Berkeley Vale;

                               m. Mary Eugenie d'Este on 8-1-1938 at Rockdale;

                               She b.21-1-1911 at New Lambton,  d. 9-3-1996 at Berkeley Vale.

 

    Children:  (i) John Leonard,  b. 28-10-1940, 

                                  m. 9-2-1967 to Jane Frances Morris at Our  Lady of Fatima Caringbah,

                                        She b. 28-5-1946.

                                  Issue:       

                                  (a) Catherine (Kate) Mary, b.16-11-1967

 

                                  (b) Malcolm Leonard, b.24-9-1969;

                                      M.24-4-94 to Melissa Gaye Castles

                                      At St Mary's, Oxenford, Queensland.                                       

                                      Children:

                                      Jacob Leonard, b. 31-12-1995;

                                      Neve Catherine, b. 28-1-1998;                                                

                                      Imogen Kate,     b. 13-8-2000

 

                                  (c) Andrew John, b. 2-7-1970,

                                      m. 19-6-1993 to Sharron Louise Ireland

                                      at St Joseph the Worker,

                                      Labrador, Queensland

 

                                  (d) Sarah Jane, b. 20-3-1972.

                                     m. 10-6-200 topeter John Kelleher

                                     at St Mary's, Oxenford, Queensland

                                      (She retains Stapleton-Kelleher

                                      as married name)

 

                               (ii)  Janet Mary, b. 21-5-1945,

                                     d. 21-12-1998 at Berkeley Vale

 

                                     m (1)  8-1-1966 to Peter Robinson.

                                     Divorced.

                                     ISSUE:  (a) Lisette, b. 9-4-1971

                                                    (b) Alister, b.27-6-1974

 

                                     m.  (2) 21-7-1993 to Mark Smith                                       

 

  (3) Hannah Margaret (once known as Gloria), b.24-9-1915,

                               m. George Francis Baker (b.29-19-1913) on 2-4-1938

                              ln St John's Church, Parramatta

 

                       Childreb:  (i) Colin, b.18- 6-1944

                                 m (1) Anne Walsham, later divorced   

                                 Issue: Catherine, b. 1-6-197-

                                        Robert,    b.26-9-197[

                                        Andrew,    b.11-4-1979                                        

 

                                 m  (2) to Sandra Duffy, no issue

 

                                (ii) Greg, b.16-11-1947

                                 M. Lynne Graves

                                 Issue: Nicholas,  b.31-7-1974

 

                       Twins:  (iii) Mark, b.26-12-1952

                                 m. Patricia Prendergast

                                 Issue: Matthew,   b.15-4-1983

                                            Claire,        b. 6-8-1987

 

                         And    (iv) Ian, b.26-12-1952

                                M. Bernadette Harris

                                Issue: Fiona,       b.5-10-1975

                                           Elizabeth, b.11-7-1980

 

 

Having left Cleveland Street Superior Public School at the age of fourteen and while still a teenager Frederick worked for a time for the Freeman photography business in George Street, Sydney.  Later he spent some time at Hazelwood near Adaminaby, the family home of the grazing property owned by the Lockers (John Locker had married Elizabeth Woodfield in 1869).  One of the photographs taken by Fred is extant showing the Lockers outside their home (see elsewhere).   He, being the eldest Stapleton sibling, is said to have gone to Brisbane to make enquiries when his sister Maud's fiancée returned there not to be heard of again.  It was then that it was discovered that the "fiancée" was already married with children. 

 

As a young man Frederick worked in the grocery department of Murphy's store in Cooma.  In 1899 he is known to have accompanied a meteorological team headed by Clement Wragg, which went for the winter to the summit of Mt Kosciusko, Fred's job being that of a general handyman.  The party suffered great hardships in frozen conditions.  After his marriage to Margaret Mellon in 1904 he and his wife ran a cafe in Cooma where he did all the baking of cakes, etc.  Frederick later studied by correspondence with ICS and passed examinations to be a local government health and meat inspector, then finally qualified to be an overseer of works.  For a good part of his life he successively occupied those positions in local government in Cooma, Bowral, Newcastle and Merrylands. 

 

2.         Maud Catherine        Spinster.

 

Maud is said to have suffered from asthma.  Jack remembers her as a rather stocky, grey-haired woman who was good-humoured and conversational.  He used to visit her at 164 Young Street from time to time after he came to Sydney to work at the age of almost seventeen;  he was always well received.  With a little hesitation she went guarantee for him to enable him to take up a scholarship for training to be a teacher at Sydney Teachers' College in 1939, a service he has never forgotten.  Maud had a cheery personality and he recalls her singing,  "My eyes are dim, I cannot see, I did not bring my specs with me" and presenting the riddle, "Y Y U R, Y Y U B, I C U R  Y Y 4 Me" (Too wise you are, too wise you be, I see you are too wise for me).  That she was earthy by nature is indicated by her remembered comments when her flatus was audible, "Where ever you be, let your wind go free!"  Maud's health failed her in her early sixties and she was probably suffering from advanced Alzheimer's disease (as it is now known) when she was committed to Lidcombe State Hospital where she died on 25 July 1945.

 

3.         Arthur Charles. M. Theresa Nellie Reiman, 1914 (at Sydney)

Theresa was born in Brixton, England on 22-5-1881 to Gustav Reiman(n),         mother as yet unknown.  She died at Concord West on 18-5-1948.  Gustav was undoubtedly of German origin for he was born on 17-5-1856 on an island near Germany in the Baltic Sea, which he is said to left at the age of sixteen to go to sea.  Eventually he settled in Australia.  He  died in 1928.

 

 

ISSUE:    (1)  Patricia Curtis, b. 22-2-1915, d. 1-4-1988;        

                      m. Victor Francis Bulgin at Sydney in 1939.

                                                   CHILDREN:

                                                  (i) and (ii) d.  at and within a short time of birth;

                                                (iii) Peter, b. 7-7-1946

                                                (iv) Michael, b.        n. Pam

                                                 (v) Janet, b.          m. Roy Weston

                                  

    (2)  Myra, b. 30-4-1916, d. 28-11-1967,  single.

 

               (3)  Phyllis Nerida, b. 13-10-1919, d. 20-1-1990;

                                             m. Frederick Herbert Brooks at Concord West

                                             on 10-2-1945 (he a widower with six children).

                                                  CHILDREN:

                                                 (i) Neil Richard, b.17-9-1946;

                                                    m. Suzan Carroll on 28-10-1965;

                                                    She b.4-4-1947.  Divorced.

                                                    ISSUE:

                                                   (a) Lisa, b.24-1-1965.  Unmarried,

                                                   But one child, Nicholas Ross Brooks, b.26-12-1987;

                                                   (b) Peta, b.16-10-1967;

                                                   (c) Simon Timothy, b.8-11-1968.

                             

 

 

       (4)  Venetia Merla,  b.  8-2-1922,   d.  10-8-1997,

                                                 m. Owen Harvey at Strathfield on 29-1-1944;

                                                 He b.18-6-1922;

                                                       CHILDREN:

                                                      (i) Denise Merla, b.17-7-1946;

                                                      She m. Lance Shaw in January 1965,

                                                      Divorced in 1974.

                                                      ISSUE:

                                                     (a) Belinda Gaye, b. 9-8-1965,   m. Jay Bannister.

                                                           CHILDR: Samantha Rose, b. 21-9-1996;

                                                            Georgina Tara, b. 21-8-1999;

                                                            Bruce Owen,    b. 3-1-1967;

                                                            Lynette Anne,  b. 11-8-1971.

 

                                                      (ii) Phillip Charles, b.30-9-1951,

                                                       m.  Sally Margaret Gardem (nèe Gale)

                                                      at Wynyard, Tasmania on 10-11-1980;

                                                     She b. 3-2-1960.   No issue.

 

 

 

Arthur was a house-painter and decorator.  Like Maud, he suffered from asthma.  He and Theresa lived until their deaths in a weather-board cottage fronting Concord Road, Concord West (No.278) where their daughter, Myra, continued to reside for many years.

 

 

 

4.      Ethel Mary, m. Edwin Joseph Hodges, 6-2-1907 (at Sydney)  Edwin was born in Sydney on 27-12-1882 and died in 1946 at Granville, aged 64.

 

ISSUE:   (1) Olive Mary Woodfield  b.15-1-1908, m. John Amos   Walker at Granville on 14 March 1936;  John was born on 13-6-1907 and died

 on 28-5-1972.   Olive died on  10 April 2007.

                              CHILDREN:

                  (i) Kenneth John, b. 6-6-1938;   m. Rosemary Kathleen Howe at St                               Anne's, Ryde  on 22-8-1964;  she b.8-3-1931 and died of cancer

                  on 18-2-2011.

                                  ISSUE:

                                  (a) Elizabeth Mary,  b. 6-12-1965; m. Michael Roger Bott at Canberra                                      on 9-4-1894;  he  b. 11-6-1967 on Jersey,   Channel Isles, England.

                                           CHILDREN:

                                           Hannah Elizabeth,    b. 5-1-1997(?),                                          

                                           Zoe Claire,                 b.10-4-2000                                      

                                                           ,third child,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,  b.         

 

                           (b) David Alexander Kenneth, b.13-5-1967;  m. Gilliam Claire Desylva                                    at King's  School,  North Parramatta on  1-1-1897;

                                  She b.1-12-1967.    Now two children, names unknown

 

                                  (c) William Edmund John, b.21-12-1968.   Female partner.

 

                             (ii) Colin James, born 3-1-1942,   m. Margaret Ann Smith at Parramatta

                                   on 7-4-1973.   She b.  10 April 1948.

                                         ISSUE:

                                         (a) Kylie Ann,   b.13-12-1974;

                                         m. Benjamin MacKay   on 24 January 2004.  He  b. 11 May 1976.

                                              CHILDREN       

                                               i.  Isabella Alice,     b. 26 December 2007

                                              ii.  Lily May,            b.   2 December 1010                                        

 

                                        (b) Kirran Lee,  b.25- 5-1977.   

                                        Partner,   Stephen Sokolowski,  b. 12 March 1978

 

 

             (2) Dorothy Ethel,  b. 19-9-1909;  m. Albert George Smyth at North  Sydney on 17-10-1936;  Albert was born on 21-6-1910 at St   Leonards to Preston Montague and Clara Smyth and  died on 5-5-1980.

                            CHILDREN:

                            (i) Robert George, b. 28-5-1940;

                             m. Marie Walker (previously married)

                             at Newcastle on 23-12-1974.  No issue. 

 

                             (ii) Valerie Joan,  b. 19-8-1944;

                              m. Lynn Alexander Dornan at Marrickville

                              on 16-12-1967, he b. 31-12-1943

                                     ISSUE:

                                     (a) Thea Megan Alexis, b. 3-6-1982;

                                     (b) Mary Ellen, b. 15-8 (3)

 

            Edna Josephine  b.20-2-1912, m. Ernest Leigh Chapman at Granville on 2-4-1935.                "Ernie" was   born at Granville on 20-6-1909 to Lewis Edwin and Amy Chapman                 (nèe Leigh) and d. 21-10-1997 aged 88.

                               CHILDREN:

                               (i) Geoffrey Leigh, b.6-9-1937,

                               m.Margaret May Kennedy at Maitland,

                               on 31-12-1960;  she b.3-10-1937.

                                          ISSUE:

                                          (a) Melinda Leigh, b.3-8-1968;

                                                m. Filip Joshua Peter Bell

                                               at their home at Deception Bay, Q.

                                               on 9-9-2000;  he b.30-4-1968. 

                                         (b) Murray Leigh, b.10-11-1970;

                                          m. Heidi Elizabeth Swart

                                          at Newstead Park, Brisbane

                                          on 18-4-1998;  she b.15-4-1970.

                                                          CHILD: Natasha Leigh, b.14-3-2000.

                                         (c) Gregory Leigh,    b.5-12-1972.    Female partner.

 

                             (ii) Roger Leigh, b. 26-12-1941.

                             m. Penelope Robin Morrow (neè Tranter)at Burwood

                            on 3-12-1971;    Divorced 8-2-1997.

                                            ISSUE:

                                           (a) Stuart Leigh,   b. 16-11-1974.     Single in 2012

                                           (b) Michael Andrew, b. 16-8-1980.   Single in 2012                                                                  

 

Ethel's husband, "Ted" Hodges, died at the age of 62 in about 1946.  The Hodges can trace themselves back to the arrival of William Hodges in Australia aged 17 as a transported convict on the Royal Admiral in 1800.  He was granted an absolute pardon by Governor Macquarie in 1812.  See elsewhere for more information on these circumstances.

 

 

5.         Emily Grace   Spinster.

 

Emmy, as she was called, was a dressmaker by occupation.  Elsie's son, Jack, has the earliest memory of her sharing a flat in Paddington with another woman named Olive.  There he remembers listening to a wireless set through headphones connected to a cabinet.  When Olive married a widower with two children, Jack Campony by name, Emmy moved with them into a house near Bondi Beach where the writer stayed overnight several times with her.  During World War II Emmy moved into a cottage at Booker Bay (on the corner of Telopea Street and Booker Bay Road) close to the home of the Dugdales—Elsie, husband Bill and sons, Jack and Bill.  She continued to earn a living by dressmaking but on 26 September 1944 she suffered a massive stroke in her Booker Bay home.  She was rushed to Newcastle Public Hospital where she died, or perhaps had died on the way, of a cerebral haemorrhage on the same day.  Her remains were cremated at Beresfield Crematorium, Newcastle, on 27 September.^[73]  At this stage it is not known how her ashes were disposed of.  Jack and Bill were on active service in World War II at the time, but their mother Elsie (Emmy's sister), Emmy's brother Fred and her niece Olive Walker were at the crematorium service, which was conducted by a Presbyterian minister, Charles Keir.

 

 

 

6.         Elsie Martha, m. (1)  Albert Victor von Keisenburg, 14-8-1909 (at Sydney)

 

Elsie and Albert were married in the Whitefield Congregational Church by the Rev. A. Rivett according to the rites of that faith.  As she was under age her father, Thomas, gave written consent to the union, which was witnessed by him and Elsie's brother-in-law, Edwin J. Hodges (husband of her sister, Ethel).  

 

Almost at the end of her life (about 1977) Elsie told the writer, her son Jack, that she first met Albert in the Sydney Botanical Gardens where she and her girlfriends often went and frequently sat on the stone seawall along Farm Cove.  She was with girls of the neighbours’ Glenn family and he was with a male friend or friends.  They got talking.  After that they saw a lot of each other.  Albert was good-looking, medium in size with brown hair.  Within nine months because of her pregnancy they were married, about which her father did not say much, and they went to live in a flat in Paddington.  However, she said she soon found out that he went with other women because, as she said, "He was too fond of the ladies!"  She accordingly left him and returned to her parents' home and soon instituted divorce proceedings.

 

Albert was born in Wellington, New Zealand on 5 June 1888.  His father was Wilhelm Karl  von Keisenberg, a clerk, and his mother was Ada Matilda, née Goodman (deceased in 1900), At an age two months eighteen days short of his twentieth birthday, he arrived in Sydney on 17 March 1908 in steerage class on SS Maheno, which had departed from Wellington..  His wedding record description gave him as motor mechanic residing at Strathfield.  Albert was 21 and Elsie was 20 and worked as a shop assistant.  This marriage was dissolved by decree of the Supreme Court of NSW on 5 June 1914 as a result of Elsie's petition arising from her husband's adultery over a period of almost two years with a certain Dorothy Marks.  Elsie was given custody of their only child, four-year-old Arthur, and "such further and other relief in the premises" as the presiding judge might allow.  In effect, it has been said that Albert contributed very little or nothing to his son's upbringing, nor saw Arthur again. (Copies of the associated divorce court papers and of a photograph of Albert von Keisenberg are included with this history.)^[74] 

 

Albert changed his German name to Vaughan during World War I.  This might have been because of the “von” in his German surname.  Their son, Arthur, was christened "Arthur Leonard" (probably after his Uncles Arthur and Leonard, Elsie's brothers).  Later "Leonard" was given as his surname, allegedly adopted from the pre-marriage surname of his great grandmother, Sarah Leonard.  One main reason for these alterations was that German names were not popular during World War I.  However, Arthur adhered to "von Keisenberg" on the official matters of his first marriage and his death was registered as such.  In his second marriage in 1994 to Patricia Keysell he gave his name as "Leonard".

 

Vaughan became a well-known business man in the car-selling trade and a racing driver who broke records for car trials between Newcastle and Sydney, and Melbourne and Sydney.  He was to have no issue by a second marriage as von Keisenberg to Vida M. Anderson in 1914, which must have been very soon if not immediately after his divorce from Elsie was officially decreed in June of the same year, when he was 27 (she was 25).^[75]  He competed in car races at the Maroubra Speedway and was killed in an accident there on 30 December 1925 when the car he was in left the track and collided with steel stanchions.^[76]

 

ISSUE:    Arthur Leonard von Keisenberg, later known as          Arthur Leonard, b. 5-1-1910;  d. 1-11-1998 of sudden  heart-failure in his Chatswood home aged close to 89.

m.   Leila (or "Lelia" as her birth certificate shows)     Daphne Peterson (b.15-9-1910).  They were married by  the Rev. Albert Edward Rook at St Stephen's Church of England, Newtown, on 30 May 1936.  Witnesses to the   marriage were M. Still (or Stall?) And Tom Robertson.    Arthur was a motor mechanic, bachelor, residing with his Aunt Maud at 164 Young Street, Redfern;  his  father, Albert von Keisenberg, was New Zealand born  to William Karl von Keisenberg.   Leila, a spinster  residing in Enmore, was the daughter of Ruby Muriel Peterson, later Buckman.  Arthur was 26 and Leila was eight  months younger than him when they married.  Leila was  to die of cancer on 29 December 1981.

CHILD:  Christopher Arthur, b. 31-10-1944. Did not marry.  In the 1990s he legally  changed his name to  Christopher Arthur  Leonard von Keisenberg.

 

Arthur married a Patricia Anne Keysell (née Cantrill) in a  civil marriage in  his Chatswood home on 5-3-1994 and she was to survive him.  He was 84 at  his second  marriage and she, a  divorcee from William Keysell, was 64   (b. 14-1-1930).

 

At some time in his later ‘teens after he could quit school at the statutory leaving age of fourteen in those days Arthur began working as a trainee motor mechanic in “Cheetham’s Garage”, which was located in Alberta Street, a lane running from Commonwealth Street in central Sydney. There is no knowledge that he perhaps served an apprenticeship with Mr Edward (Ted) Cheethan, the owner, but when Cheetham died in 1936  it was found that he had stipulated that Arthur should have first offer of acquiring the business, which he successfully did;  he owned and ran it unchanged in name, but not in location, for the rest of his working life, his retirement being in the mid-1980s.

 

Elsie Martha, m. (2)  William Harold Dugdale, 1-9-1917 (at Presbyterinn Church, Illawarra /Warren Roads, Marrickville),

            He  had been born in Waverley on 6-10-1892 and was to die at Woy Woy

            on 19- 5-1968 from cancer of the oesophagus.

 

ISSUE:  

(a) John Harold,  b.  19-7-1918;    never married.

 

                        (b) William Frederick, b. 28-8-1920,  d.12-6-1997;

                        m. June Alston Perry at Woy Woy on 15-8-1947,

                             Later divorced;  she b.19-5-1923  and  d.  2006.

                            June re-married to Milton Joseph Moor

                           at Woy Woy in 1973(?).  He died 13-5-1989.

                                     CHILDREN: 

                                     Pre-marriage: John Alston Perry, b.11-8-44

                                     (not adopted by William Dugdale);

 

                                    (a)   Vivienne Irene Dugdale,   b. 3-7-1948;

                                           m. John Raymond Freeman at Woy Woy

                                           on 12-11-1966;  he b. 17-8-1947           

                                                     ISSUE:

                                                    (i)  Larry John, b.30-4-1967;

                                                         m. Jodie Lee Brown at Kincumber

                                                         on 27-4-1997;  she b. 8-6-1973

                                                         CHILDREN: 

                                                              Sean Raymond, b. 5-11-1999

                                                               Charles  ?? 

                                                               Bradley

                                                              Jake

                                                  (ii)  John Anthony, b.3-2-1969;

                                             m. Amanda Elliott Burgess at Woy Woy

                                                        on 28-4-1996;  she b.25-4-1972

                                                        CHILDREN

                                                                John Cydnee Elliott,     b.  8-12-2003

                                                                Star Vivienne Jean,       b.  7- 5-2010

                                               (iii) Kelly Joan,  b. 22-4-1973;

                                                       Unmarried (as at yr.2012)

 

                                 (b) Marilyn Elsie Dugdale:   b. 10-2-1950;                                                                                           ISSUE:

                                              (i)  Kim Leeanne Dugdale,   b. 19-6-1966

                                                  (f. Bruce Neville).

 

                                         m. (1) to Kenneth Finney at Hornsby

                                         on 25 -4-1967;   he born at Salford, England

                                          on 5-4-1947.  Divorced?   Deceased by 2010.

 

                                               ISSUE

                                               (ii)  Tanya Sarah Finney, b. 21-1-1968;

                                               m. Mario Sammit, divorcee with four

                                               children, at Ryde on 15-2-1998

                                               No issue.

 

                                            (iii)  Eden Roy Finney, b. 17-7-1971

 

                                     m. (2) to Wayne Thomas Hackett at Narrabeen

                                               on 28-7-1978;  he b.25-5-1957.  Separated.

                                               No issue                           

 

                       (c) Judith Dugdale (no second name): b. 16-9-1951;

                       m. John Harold Sullivan, b.23-1-1951,  at Woy Woy on 16-9-1972.

                                 ISSUE:

                                 Skye Rebecca,    b. 14-12-1978

                                 Hope Judith,       b.  8- 9-1981                        

 

 

At her marriage June had a child, John Alston (b. 11-8-1944), who was raised as John Dugdale, but later changed his name to John Perry, his mother's maiden name.   It was not until about 2010 that John discovered who his congenital father was, who was by then deceased, but had married and sired children—John’s “step-siblings— whom he was to meet.

 

 

After she died on 6 December 1978 Elsie's remains were cremated at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium on the following 8 December.  Her ashes were interred on 6 February 1979 (which would have been her ninetieth birthday) in the Stapleton parents' grave in Rookwood Cemetery (Grave 756, Sect.AAA) where the body of her sister, Maud, had also been buried.

 

At Elsie's funeral service at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium the following eulogy, written by her son John, was read by the presiding clergyman:

 

Elsie Dugdale has passed on to her Maker at the age of almost ninety years.  She was the final survivor of a family consisting of practising deeply Christian parents and two brothers and three sisters.  She was cherished in a committed Christian atmosphere and she lived in this Faith all her years.

 

Elsie unquestioningly believed that when she died she would be re-united in heaven with her departed loved ones, especially with her husband, Will, who had been taken from her ten years before.

 

To him she had been ever loving and loyal.  In complete fulfilment of her marriage vows she served him in love and honour and in sickness and in health.

 

During her long lifetime Elsie experienced financial hardships and difficulties, but she never wavered in striving to overcome these.  She also shared in fair measure in the better but humbler joys of living.  She never wilfully or knowingly harmed anyone.  She was proud of the fact that she always honoured her debts and obligations.

 

Measured in the ways of the world, Elsie's was not a remarkable life, but it was a dedicated, constructive and worthwhile one for which she could have had no regrets and to which no censure can be attached.

She will be sadly missed by her relatives and friends, especially by her sons, Arthur, Jack and Bill and by her grandchildren,

Christopher, Vivienne, Marylin and Judy.    Rest in peace, lovingly remembered.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                        VIII

 

                                                   THE  STAPLETON  SIBLINGS

 

 

FREDERICK THOMAS STAPLETON (Grandfather) was born in a stone cottage in Glebe Road, the Glebe, Sydney.  He was the third oldest child of William Stapleton and Sarah Stapleton (born Leonard) who were married by banns in the Presbyterian Church in Bathurst on 9 March 1840.^[77]  The children of these, the writer's maternal great grandparents, were in order of age: 

 

Frances Emily .................  b. 14-12-1842,    d.  28-8-1914

William .......................       b. 10- 4-1845,     d. 1922(?)

Frederick Thomas ........... b. 20- 3-1849,     d. 11- 4-1923

Sarah Caroline ...............  b. 10-10-1852,    d.  7- 3-1931

 And    Arthur Charles ............... b. 18- 5-1855,     d.  2- 6-1933

 

 

Frederick Thomas was to become the writer's grandfather and Frances ("Fanny"?) was  to marry a James Richard Hannaford in Sydney on 25-4-1858.  It is known that Hannaford was born in Tavistock, Devonshire, England on 15-1-1841 and came to Sydney with his parents, Richard and Elizabeth (Rowe) as immigrants;  he was to die at Bredbo, near Cooma on 8-4-1897.^[78]  The marriage certificate shows that the union had the consent of the bride's mother, Sarah, so the question is "Where was father William at the time?  Was he away on one of his international horse-trading ventures while his daughter was being married?"  This is a strong possibility for Sand's Street Directory shows that Sarah was the resident head of the household in 1858 indicating that William was not at home.  As the bride's age was four months before her sixteenth birthday and the groom was seventeen or so, her marriage might well have been one of a necessity that could not wait for her father's return.  Fanny was buried in  St Clement’s Church Yard Cemetery, Yass having died in 1914 while visiting her daughter in Albury.  The Hannafords had thirteen children.^[79] 

 

The only marriage of a "Sarah C. Stapleton" appearing in NSW Registrar General  records (No.118) is one to a John Glading at Sydney in 1871.  If this is our Sarah Caroline Stapleton she would have been nineteen at the time, which is logically acceptable.  Charles married an Agnes Leckie in Sydney in 1882 (Reg. Gen. No.727).

 

There was no definitive information on the marriage of William though a brief note contained in the papers of now-deceased Len Stapleton to whom William was a great-great-uncle, observed that William was supposed to have gone to Queensland to live and nothing more had been heard of him.  However, RG records show instances of bridegrooms of similar names marrying as follows:

 

            William Stapleton  m. Elizabeth Tyter at Newcastle in 1869   (No.2993)

                          m. Annie M. Sullivan at Gundagai in 1872   (No.2325)

                          m. Charlotte Emily Boyce, at Mudgee in 1875 (No.3245) 

                  and m. Emma Stanton at Sydney in 1877 (No.1093)

 

It was thought that Emma Stanton could have been the bride in question as this was the only marriage that took place in Sydney and this William's age at the time could have been an acceptable 32.  However, this has proved not to be so as that William Stapleton was from a different family of the same surname. 

 

The problem was solved in 2007 when a contact was made with another descendant of William, Mrs Dale Weaving, who maintains that William and Sarah's son, William, married Elizabeth Tyter in Newcastle in 1869 so the first one in the above list seems to be the right one.[80] The same source says that this William died in Brisbane in 1918.  As far as they can be so far designated his descendants are set out in following pages.

 

William and Sarah's family's descendants are listed in greater detail as follows:

 

 

 

 

 

 

                     DESCENDANTS OF WILLIAM AND SARAH STAPLETON

 

 

(1) FRANCES EMILY         m. 10-4-1858        JAMES RICHARD HANNAFORD

    b. 14-12-1842             at the Presbyterian     b. 15-1-1841, Devonshire, England

       At Bathurst                  Church, Pitt St       d. 8-10-1897, Bredbo.

    d. 7-10-1914                    South, Sydney        Buried Cooma, NSW

       At Albury.

       Buried C.of E. Cemetery, Yass NSW         f.   Richard,    m. Elizabeth Rowe 

                                                                             They arrived in Sydney in 1864

                                                                              from Plymouth on The Lady Kennaway.

                                                                             

 

                                                      -----------------------------------

 

    ISSUE:

 

     (i)  Elizabeth Sarah,  b. 13- 6-1858 at Glebe St, Glebe

                                        d.  1863   aged 5

 

    (ii)  William James,    b. 14-10-1861 at Braidwood, NSW

                                        m . 1919 to Mary M. Couch at Newtown`

                                         d.   1957  in Lithgow   

 

   (iii)  Anstress, *         b.  16- 9-1863 at Broughton St, Glebe

                                      m.   1885  in Cooma to William Stewart

                                      d    13-12-1926  in Randwick .

 

    (iv)  Henry Rowe:   b. 14- 4-1866 at Parramatta

                                     m . 1883 to Ada Ncskinning at Redfern

                                           One child, Ada Elizabeth

                                     d .  3-10-1945 at Queanbeyan

 

     (v)  Frances Emily:    b.  2- 7-1868 at Cooma, NSW

.                                        m    James Hanna 20-7-1888 at Petersham.

                                         He born 10-10-1868 at 25 Botany St,  Surry Hills, Sydney

                                        and d.14-8-1931;   buried CE section, Rookwood..

                                        d  . 20- 6-1928,  Redfern.  Buried Rookwood Cemetery

 

    (vi)  Caroline:         b. 28- 3-1870 at Bombala, NSW

                                     m  . Maybe to a James A. Esplin in 1915

                                     d .  1954 or ‘55

 

  (vii)  Jane:             b. 24- 4-1872 at Cooma, NSW

                                 m  . Maybe to a James Curley in 1891, Queanbeyan

                                  d.   No likely NSW record can be found.

 

  (viii)  Alice:            b. 1875 at or near Cooma, NSW

                                 m  .1895  Edward  Johnson,  Cooma **

He born in London, allegedly on The Isle of Dogs, London.  He died in 1913 in Cooma.  His father was William J. and his mother was Emma.   They had twelve children, one of whom was Lydia Florence, b. 25-6-1905,  the grandmother of Roslyn Adams (née Magill),  b. 5-12-46,  a compiler of her Hannaford family history from whom many of these details were derived/.                                

                                  d.  1858,  Campsie

                                               

    (ix)  Frederick R. Thomas:  b. 1877 at near Cooma

.                               m  . Possibly in 1914 to a Lily M.C. Elliott at Sydney

                                 d.   1958, Parramatta           

 

 (x)  Charles Henry:    b. 1878,  Braidwood

                               m. ([)  1910 to Lily A. Evans,  Goulburn.

                                          One child, Doris May, b. `9`1  Queanbeyan

                                          m. "Bill" Hopkin st Queanbeyan.

                                   (ii)     1927 to Linda  Shannon,  Queanbeyan

                              d    21-2-1935 at Queanbeyan where buried

    

 (xi)  Albert Richard:   b. 1880 at or near Cooma

.                             m   1910 to Maude Australia Kay at Queanbeyan

                              d    13-12-1960  --  registered  Queanbeyan

 

(xii)  Ada:            b. 1882 at or near Cooma

.                            n . 1905 to Thomas H. Waters at Cooma

                             d.   1970,  Balmain

 

(xiii)  Annie A:   b.  1884 at or near Cooma

                            d. . 1885  Cooma

 

 

NOTES  **   One of Alice (Hannaford) Johnson’s children was Lydia Florence  (b. 1905. Cooma  and d.1998)  married a William George Oakley (1898 – 1978) in  Glebe in 1925.   A daughter from this union was Esma Jean Oakely  (1926/27 – 1952)  married a Harold Kenneth Magill (b.1925)  in 1945.  The marriage did not last, but they had a daughter, Roslyn   (b. 1946,  m. Frisby but divorced).

 

                    

                                                    ----------------------------------

 

(2)  WILLIAM STAPLETON              m. 1869                    ELIZABETH TYTER

     b. 10- 4-1845                                   Newcastle                  b. 1844, Newcastle

     d. 13-11-1918                     St Mary's RC Church          d. -11-1917 (?)

     Mater Hospital,                                                                  Buried 7-11-1917**

     Toowong, Brisbane*    

 

    *     William's body was interred with that of his son,

           Albert William, who had died in 1912.

    **   There is some uncertainty about this date of death of   Elizabeth and this body shares               its  grave with a so-far  unidentified Lavinia Stapleton.

                  

    

    ISSUE:  Six children, last four born in Queensland.

 

            I.  WILLIAM JOSEPH, b. 5-1-1870 in Newcastle 

                          d. 3-5-1953 at Cornelian Bay, West Hobart

 

                        m, (1). 7-11-1891 to Mary Ann Mcaulifff

                                  At Chartres Towers,

                                 Queensland.  She b. 19-2-1873,   d. 9-10-1917,

                                 Charters Towers

 

                               CHILDREN:  Elsie Myra,        b. 27- 8-1892

                               Claude Augustine,   b. 13- 3-1894, d. 2-1-1974

                               Eileen (Ileen) Francis,  b.  3- 6-1896

                              Albert Roy Archillies,   b. 11- 4-1898

                              c. -1-1980, buried at Nambour 13- 1-1980

                                  m. 1921 Lucy Emily Boyce,

                                  She b. 11- 2-1900,  d. 10-12-1983. 

                                  Seven children.

 

                      m. (2). 1919 to Maisie Alice Murphy.  She b. C.1897,

                               d. 8-1-1968 at Cornelian Bay.

                               Children:  Thomas Alan, b. 1919

 

        Ii.  JOHN CHARLES D.  Known as "Charlie", b. 1871 Newcastle, NSW

                       d. 10-11-1948 at "Eventide", Charters Towers.

 

As a young man, Charlie was severely injured when a premature explosion occurred at 4 am while he was setting it at the Jubilee Consols Mine at the Twelve Mile, Western Australia.  He was completely blinded and his right hand was destroyed.  Nevertheless, he went on to establish and run a successful business, "C.D. Stapleton, Tea Merchants", in Charters Towers with a market throughout northern Queensland, which he serviced by means of a hired car driver.  It is assumed that he never married, perhaps because of his disabilities.

 

     Iii.  ARTHUR JOHN  b. 30- 8-1873,  d. ..-10-1944

           (buried 21-10-1934 in Toowong, a suburb of central  Brisbane).

                      m. 1- 7-1903 to Margaret Ann Glasgow

                     She b. ..?..,  d. ..1-1968 (buried 22- 1-1968 In Toowong).

 

    Iv.  ELIZABETH MAY  b. 20- 5-1876,  d. ...?...

                      m. Matthew Fox, a journalist, on 25-11-1897

                         He b. C.1876.

 

    V.  CLAUDE THOMAS  b. 8- 5-1879,  d. 12- 5-1879.

 

    Vi.    MYRA (or Mira) FRANCES  b. 7- 5-1881, 

                      d. ..-7-1960 (buried 20- 7-1960 in Lutwyche  Cemetery, Hedron, Brisbane).

                      m. 26- 6-1912 to James Mckerr, he b. 6- 2-1883.

 

 Vii.  WILLIAM JOHN    b. 21- 3-1882,  d. ..11-1918 (buried Toowong  Cemetery

                     in 14-11-1918)

                     Records show Elizabeth Stapleton as his mother,

                      But no father is shown.     m. 6-10-1904 to Elizabeth Mahoney (or Mahony)

 

 Viii. ALBERT WILLIAM  b. 7-12-1883,  d. 20- 2-1912. 

           His father, William's body was interred

           tn the same grave in 1917.    m. 22- 1-1906 to Elizabeth Toye in Queensland.

 

ADDITIONAL NOTES TO THE ABOVE:

 

Albert Roy Archillies Stapleton and Lucy Emily Boyce had seven children, one of whom was Florence Eileen, b. 2- 2-1928.  She married Cecil Edward Muller in 1945, one of whose children was Dale Leslie Muller, b. 1948.  She married Barry James Weaving in 1970 and as at 2007 they had two children.  As attributed before,  Mrs Dale Weaving is the source of most of the above information about the hitherto elusive William Stapleton (b. 1845).

 

 

                                                   ---------------------------------

 

 

 

 

(3)  FREDERICK THOMAS STAPLETON:            m.              MARY WOODFIELD

      b. 20- 3-1849                                                     21-7-1873         b.  8-11-1847

      d. 11- 4-1923                                              St Paul's C.of E.    d. 16-11-1905

        At Redfern*                                                     Cooma             at Redfern*

             *Both buried Rookwood Cemetery (same grave)               

 

     ISSUE:    Full details are set out elsewhere in these pages of 

 

     (i)  Frederick Leonard            b.23- 7-1874,    d.19-12-1958 aged 84

    (ii)  Maud Catherine                b.17- 2-1877,    d.25- 7-1945   "  68

   (iii)  Charles Arthur                  b.21- 7-1879,    d. 8- 6-1950

    (iv)  Ethel Mary                        b. 6- 2-1882,    d.31- 7-1958

     (v)  Sarah (see note below)     b.1884   d.        1884

    (vi)  Emily Grace (Emmy)       b.20-12-1885,  d.26- 9-1944

   (vii)  Elsie Martha                     b. 6- 2-1889,    d. 6-12-1978^[81]

 

NOTE:  BDM records show a child, Sarah, born to Thomas

             And Mary Stapleton in 1884 (Reg. Gen. No.10355).

             This child's death is registered for 1884 (R.G. 5217).

             Mary's death certificate shows this birth as occurring

             Incorrectly between that of Emily and Elsie.

 

                                                     ------------------------------------

 

 

 

 

(4)  SARAH CAROLINE                m.                      JOHN GLADING

        b. 10-10-1852                        3- 2-1871                 b. 1849, at Redruth,    

        At sea on the                  Presbyterian Ch.        Cornwall, England.  

        Asa Packer.                     Elizabeth St,             d. Sept. 1908, Waverley, 

       d. 7- 3-1931  Sydney          

 

              ISSUE:   Note:  All born in Balmain.

 

            (i)  John,          b. 1871,  d. 1871

 

          (ii)  Sarah C.,      b. 1873

                                      d.   No NSW record of  m.  or  d.

 

        (vi)  Ethel M.,      b. 1880. 

                        d. No NSW record found.

                        m. No NSW record found.

                             

  (vii)  William George,    b. 1883. 

                        d.  1937 (?),  Marrickville 

                       m. 1903 to Elizabeth Litto at Balmain North

 

 (viii)  Un-named child,   b. 1885,  d. 1885

 

   (ix)  John H.,       b. 1886. 

                        d.  1918 at Balmain North

                        m. 1903 to Jane Morrison at Sydney

 

    (x)  Edward C?,     b. 1888

                        d.  1972,  Sydney

                       m. Possibly 1911 to Rene Barr at Broken Hill

 

   (xi)  Ernest H.,     b. 1889

                        d.  1947,   Marrickville

                       m. Possibly in 1915 (to whom?)

 

  (xii)  Sydney Herbert,     b. 1892

                      d.  1979 .   District not given.

                     m.  No record found

 

 (xiii)  Walter D.,     b. 1894

                    d.   No NSW record found

                    m.  No record found

 

NOTE:    The accuracy of some of the Glading marriage and death dates is not assured.

 

 

                                                    -------------------------------------

 

(5)  CHARLES STAPLETON             m(1).           AGNES RUBINA LECKIE

     b. 18- 5-1855                                24-5-1882        b. 1850, Glasgow, Scotland

     d.  2- 6-1933                            at 30 Regent St    d. 30-6-1909 at Randwick

                                                             Sydney

                  Both buried at Rookwood Cemetery.

 

                              m. (2),        Ellen Bell

                              1913          b.  9- 5-1867 at Nimmitabel

                                                d. 15-12-1945 at Randwick.

                                                No issue. Buried Botany Cemetery                                                       

                ISSUE from m(1):

 

               (i)  Agnes Leckie,   b.  4- 4-1883,  d. 2-7-1969. Crem. Woronora.

                             m. William Cunningham Gemmel 1881.    He d.  c.1940.

                                   Four children.

 

           (ii)  Sarah Caroline, b. 24- 8-1884,  d. 31-5-1961.

                            m. Edward S. Wanless, c.1881.  He d. C.1950.

                                 Three children.

 

        (iii)  Robert Charles, b.  2- 2-1887 at Redfern

                          d.  21-10-1973.

                         m.  5-7-1911 to Nina Gertrude Crowhurst

                             at St Barnabas, Sydney.

                             She b. 15-1-1888 at Redfern,  d. 15-2-1969.  Both cremated at Northern                                           Suburbs  Cremetorium.

                            Children: (1) Keith Robert b. 18-5-1916 at (?),  Sydney.                                                                                 d.  5-5-1993 at (?) Berry

                                                     m.  (1) 18-11-1033 to Joan Winterton

                                                    at St Luke's, Mosman

                                                    Divorced c.1942.  No issue 

 

                                                   m.  (2) 1942(3?)  to Kathleen Thorley.   She d. C.1965 .

                                                   Issue:       (1) Joanne Beryl, b. 21-9-1043

                                                                    (2) Carol June, b. 2-6-1947

                                                                    (3) Sandra Fay, b. 4-3-1949                                                                                                        (4) Gary Kevin, b. 31-3-1952

                                                 m. (3)    Marjorie Reinhard (she b.1917)

                                                          No issue.  She a widow with children.                                                                                                                                           

                                                        (2) Sister b.(?) 1917 to 1922, probably

                                                         d. in infancy

                                

                                                      (3) Ronald Charles, b. 22-7-1923 

                                                           m. (1) 1947, div. 1976.  One daughter,                                                                                                                           Wendy Gai, b.1950

                                                          m. (2) 1976 to Judyth Ann Shaw,                                                                                                                                   b.1934.  No issue

 

 

 

                                                           

                                                                    I X

 

                   GREAT  GRANDMOTHER  SARAH  STAPLETON  (LEONARD)

 

Great Grandmother Sarah, mother to Frederick Thomas (called Thomas) was one of seven sisters, six of whom came to Australia at different times, some accompanying each other.  Four of them are remembered by their married surnames:  Aunt Sutton, Aunt Jaggers, Aunt Kirkland and Aunt Wakefield.  The Wakefields are said to have owned an hotel in Queenscliff in Victoria, but it will be shown that this was somewhat less than that.   Sarah also had two brothers, William and Edmund.  There may have been more than ten children born to this London Leonard family, of which known details are shown below. 

 

A Mrs Julia Sigsworth, a family historian of the John Jagger's lineage, says that the Aunt Kirkland mentioned above was not a Leonard, but that the name Kirkland came into Jaggers's line when their daughter, Elizabeth Ann, married James Henry Kirkland in Cooma in 1855.  Mrs Sigsworth also says that her findings have Emily Amy Leonard as being named "Emily Mary Augusta" who married Peter Sutton in Sydney on 16 June 1852 at St Phillip’s, Sydney. 

 

Mrs Sigsworth said that Emily is thought to have married Edward Charles Arnold some time before 1859 in which year she signed her name as "Arnold" as a witness at her sister Caroline's wedding.^[82]  This is wrong, for the IGI shows Elizabeth Leonard marrying hm in Bathurst on 27 November 1840.  Moreover, there is no NSW or Victorian records of such a second marriage and when Emily died in 1898 (Reg. No. 3772), leaving an estate valued at ₤857, her name was registered as Emily A. Sutton, father Thomas, mother Mary.  Peter had pre-deceased her in 1889 (Reg. No.5419). 

 

It will be shown later in these pages that Caroline Martha Jessie Leonard married a Charles Wakefield on a rural property near Melbourne in 1859 and more details will be told of them in subsequent pages.

 

The Suttons engaged in a carrying business which came to be operated under the name of Sutton and Sons.   At Peter’s death this firm had grown considerably as witness an advertisement on page three of the Sydney Morning Herald on May 21, 1889, which listed its many assets for sale.  These included 96 draught horses, much equipment, many carts and drays and  large premises in Thurlow Street, Redfern.

 

Sarah (Leonard) Stapleton was born on 5 February 1817 and christened at Westminster St Martins in the Field, London, eight days later.  A family historian, Douglas Parbery, has recorded that Sarah and her sisters were taught "competence in dressmaking" by their mother, Mary (née Stubbs).  Her father was Thomas Leonard, at one time an Internal Revenue Officer working near London.  Thomas and Mary were Presbyterians and had been married on 3 June 1810 at St George's Church, Hanover Square, London.  Mrs Sigsworth gave part of the following information about them and their subsequent family.^[83]

 

 

 

                                                                    X

 

                                                   THOMAS LEONARD

 

Born:                 1785 , London

Married:           Mary Stubbs, 3 June  1810

Died:                 5 February 1857 in London, aged 72 years

Buried:             Kensal Greem Cemetery, London

Occupations:   1810? Internal Revenue Office, working near London

                         1816  Revenue Officer, St Martins in the Field Register

                         1817-19    Hatter

                         1819  Labourer for a few years

                         1839  Revenue Officer, Her Majesty's Customs House;  civil servant.

Addresses:      1815-1819  Hungerford Market

                        1839            Stoke Newington

Parents:         Father, Thomas? "poor gent" Clergyman

Religion:        Presbyterian

Children:       Ten as listed below;  there could have been more.

 

When Thomas was 61 Mary died.  Five years later, in 1851, he arranged for his three youngest daughters to join the three eldest in Australia.  According to one family account he accompanied them to NSW, but there is no evidence for this.  There is also a suggestion that one of the three later immigrants, Caroline, returned to England to care for Thomas before his death in 1857 and then she returned to Australia to marry Charles Wakefield in May 1859.

 

 

 

                                                                       XI

 

                                          MARY (née STUBBS) LEONARD

 

Born:             Wales, 1794;  (from another source, 14 February 1791)

Married:       Thomas Leonard, 1810

Died:             6 December 1846 at 10.30 am.  (8 December 1846 ?)

Buried:     Kensal Green Cemetery, London^[84]   The writer has visited the Kensal                                         Cemetery graves, which  are quite separate.

Occupation:    She practised dressmaking skills.

Religion:      Presbyterian

Parents:       Samuel and Mary Stubbs, born in the 1760s.  They had eight children of whom                     Mary was the  eldest.  He is said to have been a relative of George Stubbs, a                            famous painter, particularly of   horses.  Stubbs is credited with having done                        for the first time in England a painting of a   kangaroo, his model being the skin                    of one brought back to Briain by Joseph Banks.

 

Paraphrasing from Julia Sigsworth:  Mary was well educated and considered a class above her husband, Thomas, but she mixed with his friends—Morgans, Llewellyns and Kanavans —and would often holiday with well-to-do relatives and farmers.  It is speculated that she might have died of typhoid fever as her death coincided with the onset of one of the worst epidemics of that disease ever experienced in London when more than a quarter of the population was affected.

 

 

 

                                                                    XII

 

                         THE CHILDREN OF THOMAS AND MARY LEONARD

 

 

MARY:         

Born:             16 May 1811, London

Married:       John Jaggers, 30 May 1830 at St George's Church, Hanover Square, London.

Died:             At Bega, NSW, 23 January 1892

Children:      Louise,  b. 4-3-1831, London;  d. 16-9-1898, Narooma NSW

                                    m.  John Nangen 16-1-1819

                      John Charles Frederick Head,  b. 25-3-1832, London;

                                   d.19 January 1833 aboard Prince Regent

                      Mary,  b. 25-1-1833 aboard Prince Regent on the latitude

                                  of the Cape of  Good Hope;  d. Four hours later

                      Elizabeth,  b. 19-12-1833, Parramatta;  d. 29-12-1833

                     John Booral, b. 29-12-1834, Stroud NSW;  d.1870, Trunkey Crk, NSW

                                  m.  Jane Frances Hearn  1865

                     Elizabeth Ann:  b. 17-5-1837, Booral NSW;  d. 1923

                                 M. James Kirkland 1855

                     Thomas Henry:  b. 7-11-1839, Bathurst NSW;  d. 21-1-1919, Ballina NSW

                                M.  Annie Caldwell  20-1-1880.   Then Elizabeth Miller 

                     Charles Leonard:  b. 18-2-1842, Bathurst;  d. 15-1-1923, Bega

                               m.  Agnes Wright  26-3-1866

                     Mary:  b. August 1844, Bathurst;  d. The same day

 

                     Mary Charlotte:  b. 15-8-1845, Bathurst;  d.1902, Bega NSW

                             m.  Henry Underhill 1865

                     Frederick Arnold: b. 24-3-1848 Bathurst;  d. 14-7-1853, Double Creek

                     Joseph William:  b. 31-8-1850, Goulburn;   d.  1931, Richmond

                              m.  Elizabeth Ann  Leemon  1883

                    George Herbert:  b.14-10-1853, Double Creek;  d.7-2-1942,  Canberra.

                             m.  Martha  Heigh  26-12-1878

                    Emily Caroline:  b. 6-12-1856, Bega;  d.1925, Sydney

                            m.  Richard  Parberry  1875

 

WILLIAM THOMAS:   b.1813

 

EDMUND:        b. 1815;  christened 4 March 1815, St Martins in the Field   in Westminster  at the same time as William Thomas.

 

SARAH:         b. 1817;  christened 13 February 1817, St M. in the Field..  Died in Manly, 16 July 1893 while staying with her sister, Emily, and buried in Manly Cemetery.   See elsewhere for further details on Sarah, the writer's  great grandmother, wife of William Stapleton.

 

ANN:           b.1819;  christened St M. in the Field. 18 April 1819.    m. ?,  d. ?

 

ELIZABETH:     b.  6 June 1821; christened St M. in the F. 24 June 1821.   

m. 27 November 1840 to Edward   Charles Arnold at Bathurst  Presbyterian Church by Rev. Kirkpatrick Dickson Smythe.    Died  prior to 1857/58?   Was a dressmaker.  Arrived  in Australia at age of 18 with  sister Sarah.

 

WILLIAM  MILES: b.1827 in Westminster;  christened St M. in the F. 30 December 1827;

Must have been Emily's twin.  Married Martha Oakley in 1853 (she born 1830) with a second marriage to Sarah  ……..   ……….. in 1880 (she born 1841).  He had one son and one daughter, most likely out of his first marriage.   He practised the profession of photographer with his first known studio at 246 High Holborn, Holborn in 1856.  He occupied several London addresses as a photographer, the last known being 3 Tanfield Court, Inner Temple, City of London from 1881.  He died in the City of London in 1893.

 

EMILY MARY AUGUSTA (Emily Amy?):  b.1827, Lambeth;  m. Peter Sutton at St Phillip’s in the Anglican Parish of   St James, Sydney on 16 June 1852 by William Cowper, Eliza Morgan and Joseph Berry, witnesses.   Arrived in Sydney on Malacca accompanied by sisters Caroline and Louisa on 11 August 1851  (Archives ref.4/4921) having left London on 18-4-1851.   The trio of Leonard  young women had  expected to join their sister, Mary, and  John  Jaggers in Molong but the Jaggers were either in  Sydney  or on their way to  Bega;   Emily  d.1898

                According to a letter from her sister, Mary Jaggers (see elsewhere in these pages) Peter Sutton   arrived also on Malacca at the same time.  Peter may well have been the son of a Thomas and Mary  Sutton who are listed in the UK census of 1841 with a son, Peter, aged 14 when they were residing in  Hillmorton, Warwickshire, then a village but now a suburb of Rugby.  

             Peter established a successful carrying and contracting business in Redfern         Sydney, “Sutton and Sons”.

            Peter died on 30 April 1889 at which time, according to his death and funeral  notices in the Sydney Morning Herald (respectively on 1^st and 2^nd May 1889), his residence was  Hillmorton, Chelsea and Bourke Sts, Redfern   His death notice in that newspaper said that he was   “late of Newman, Coventry, Oxfordshire, England” and that he was 65 at death;  if so he had been  born c.1824.

 

CAROLINE MARTHA JESSIE:  b. 1831, Clapham, England;  m. Charles Wakefield, a   tradesman? painter, 24 May 1859   at Pulcumbah, a property owned by a Thomas Parnell, by Rev.  Edward Williams with Edward Arnold  and Emily “Arnold?” as witnesses;  d. 1906 in Clifton Hill, a Melbourne suburb adjacent to Fitzroy.   It is conjectured that  Caroline might have returned to  England for a time to nurse her father until he died in 1857 and then returned to marry Wakefield, but there is no proof that this was so.

 

Charles Wakefield , "contractor", died 22-1-1877  and was buried in Melbourne Cemetery.  The Argus of 23-1-77 says he died at his residence, 245 Gore Street,    Fitzroy, gave his occupation as "trade assignee" and says he was 45 (so born about 1832) and came  from Islington, England.   His father was Charles and his mother was Jane Shore.  Charles left a will, which was granted on 22-2-77 with  his wife, Caroline, as its apparently sole beneficiary. [85] 

 

According to the Sands MacDougall Directory, Charles Wakefield was living at 246 Gore St, Fitzroy in 1875.

 

The Victorian Govt. Gazette in 1877 (p.889) lists two sets of contracts owned by Charles Walkefield, which  on 8 May 1877 were  transferred to his widow, Caroline M.J. Wakefield.  One was for emptying cesspits and dustbins and the other for cleaning chimneys and flues.     

 

The same publication in 1878 (p. 1831) records that a licence was granted on

1 June 1878 to Caroline M.J. Wakefield for the lease of a 20 perch  site— about 106 square metres—for the establishment of a refreshment business  in the town  of Queenscliff, for ₤2 per year, payable ten shillings quarterly in advance at a government office  (the “Receiver of Revenue”) in Geelong.  A warning was included saying that if the site was used for any other purpose the licence would be cancelled.  (Writer’s  note:  this was in the year after Charles died).  A volunteer researcher at the Queenscliff  Historical Museum, Ms Rae Hill, provided the following information about this projected business enterprise of Caroline’s,  much of it coming from a transcript of Section 4, Histories of the Allotments [at Queenscliff ] under a sub-heading entitled  Part B.  Mrs Wakefield and Allotment 1, Section 3A. [86]

 

The grant of her licence had resulted from  Caroline’s letter dated 10 May 1878 to the Commissioner  for Crown Lands asking that she be granted a site of half an acre or more of land in the Fishermen’s Reserve at Queenscliff  “as near the jetty as possible” for the establishment of a small store.   In her eloquent well-written letter she pleaded, “I am a widow with three children dependent on me for support . . . but owing to unavoidable misfortune I find myself left entirely on my own resources.”  As a result she was granted Allotment 15, Section  1A in Queenscliff for her “refreshment purposes”-only enterprise.

           

Queenscliff is a seaside resort town in Victoria near the entrance to Port Phillip

31 kilometres east of Geelong.   The place of Caroline’s granted site was in an area known as Fishermen’s Reserve, which apparently had been dedicated or was traditionally for the housing and use of people genuinely connected with the fishing industry in that town.  This grant excited the animosity of nearby landholders with reference negatively to the value of their properties or because the proposed refreshment room was not a fisherman’s business or house.  The local bona fide fishermen petitioned strongly with fifty signatures against the licence.  There was also a “storm of protest” from local citizens and strong opposition from the Queenscliff Borough Council and Caroline’s licence was recalled.   As a result of her letter of  12 December 1878, however, in which she asked for a refreshment room site closer to the jetty, her licence was “renewed”,  but for Allotment 1  at the southern end of Section 3A, presumably outside the Fishermen’s Reserve.   This was  No. 8 Wharf Street.

 

            With reference to Caroline’s application for her first Queenscliff allotment is a note dated 21 June 1878 on a related Lands Department file, which reads, “Mrs Wakefield has only  resided in Queenscliff recently, and has opened a Store (rented) in the main street, but thinks the Reserve Site would be better for her business.”  It is thus of interest that Caroline must have gone to Queenscliff  considerably less than eighteen months after husband Charles’s death.

 

According to the rate records of the Queenscliff Borough Council Caroline M.J. Wakefield’s listing as the annual rate-payer for this property extended from 1879 to 1898, but for seven of these years the owners (occupiers?)  were shown as a Mrs Kearney for 1881-82  and  Otto or Mrs Otto Sievers for 1883 through 1887.   Caroline  had apparently secured the Commissioner’s approval  for these changes of occupancy or management of the property, perhaps the latter, on her behalf.   A note on the government file dated 22 January 1884 mentioned that Mrs Wakefield had been in Melbourne “for the last three years”.

 

 During around 1882 and in March 1883  Caroline was asking the Lands Department for permission to sell her allotment.  In September 1892 she was also seeking official permission and had gained in-principal approval to sell her Wharf Street holding by auction, which was to present difficulties because a new railway line extension had reduced about one third the size of its northern end.   It apparently  remained unsold by  29 July 1893 when a Lands Dept. appraisal of the value of the house (including shop), fencing and garden was ₤175.  The building  improvements then consisted of “a seven-room house, of weather-board,  with an iron roof and no inside lining.  One room, 40 feet by 12 feet, was used as a dining room. . .”

 

The property was put up for auction in Melbourne and was sold as a freehold allotment to  “C.M.J. Wakefield” on  1 August 1893. 

 

During Caroline’s occupancy or use of her Queenscliff site it had gone variously through the titles of refreshment room, general store, rural store and there was one later enquiry about its possible use as a boarding house, which was denied.  In actual fact, long after Caroline’s association with it, by at least 1901 the property had become a guest house named le Quarmby  and afterwards it was Seafarers’ Restaurant.

 

According to Electoral Rolls for 1903 there was a Caroline Wakefield living in the District of Bourke, Sub-district of Clifton-Fitzroy.  This was probably Catherine Martha as her daughter, Caroline Rebecca had married in 1884.

 

            Caroline’s death was probably about 1^st or 2^nd September 1906 as she was buried in Melbourne Cemetery on the fourth of that month, but strangely, under the name of Catherine.

 

           The Wakefield known children were:

                        1860   Mary Jane  Registered at Collingwood,  died aged seven weeks,            

                        1861   Charles Nathaniel   Reg. at Collingwood,  d.  24-7-62 aged one.

                        1862    Charles Frederick   Reg.. Fitzroy,  died in 1863  age six months.

                        1863    Caroline Rebecca   Reg. Fitzroy. 

Marriage (1) tp Archbald Nicol in 1884

Marriage (2 ?)  to  Dunkeld. 

     Children from this union:

Jessie (1886),  Ethel Anderson (1887), 

Archbald Charles  (1888,  d. 1898),  Alexander (1891), 

Carol Amy (1892),  William James (1899,  d. 1970)

                        1863    Infant son, died 30-1-63  (Argus 2-2-63)

                        1865   Jessie Mary   Reg. Fitzroy.   Died 1865  age seven months.

                        1867   Mary    Reg.  Collingwood.   Died  1867  age twenty-three days.

                        1867   Jane       "             "                     “      “     age twenty-one days.

                        1868    Jessie Louisa   Reg. Fitzroy.   Died  1868, age four months.

                        1869    Augusta   Reg. Collingwood.   Died  1935,  aged 66.

Marriage (1) to Thomas John Conway, 1894,  

He b. about 1867, died 1898  aged 31.  

Marriage (2) to Carl August Schwartzkoppf Blake in 1900.

     Children from the Blake marriage:  

Zelma Augusta Caroline (1901 - 1967),  m. Edw. Brindle 1924,    Leonard Ferdinand  (1904 - 1975),  m.  Msy Golley 1935.    

                        1870    William    Reg. Collingwood.   Died  1949  aged 78. 

Marriage to Rhoda Horne 1892.   She b. 1864,  d. 1946

     Children:  

William  (1894 - 1977),  m. Dorothy Peart 1919.

John Frederick  (1895 - 1981),  m. Clarice Moore 1920.    

Carol Rhoda  (1897),   m. Stanley  McKenzie 1922.

                        1873    daughter,  d. 24-12-73  aged two months.  (Argus  10-1-74)

                        1873    Daisy,   died 6-1-74  aged two months one week.

 

 

LOUISA MARY ANN:  b.1833, Clapham;  m. Fred Arnold c.1853;  d.   ?   There is no MSW record of this marriage, nor can any children be found for this couple.   They are supposed to have moved to Victoria.

 

 

On 12 September 1839, at the age of 22, Sarah arrived in Australia on the Lady Raffles as a bounty emigrant accompanied by her sister, Elizabeth, who was eighteen years old.  Sarah's "native place" was Stoke Newington, near London.  She could read and write.  They had sailed from Plymouth on 13 May 1839, had travelled under the care of a Rev. W. Morse and were met in Sydney by their brother-in-law, John Jaggers.  Jaggers had arrived in New South Wales with his wife, Mary (Sarah's oldest sister), on 19 February 1833  having left London on the Prince Regent on 7 October 1832 with their two-year-old daughter, Louisa, and their baby son, John Charles Frederick, who died at sea.^[87]  Jaggers was a butcher by trade and practised as such in Sydney, Bathurst and Goulburn.  Also, a NSW State Archives Authority index shows a John Jaggers as having been granted a licence for the Queen’s Arms Inn, Bathurst on 27 April 1840 at an annual license fee of ?30.^[88] 

 

John Jaggers was a most versatile and enterprising man, including in his activities in Australia such various occupations as butcher, innkeeper and publican, police constable, storekeeper, bank teller, postmaster, English tutor and correspondent for The Illawarra Mercury.  Also, John and his wife, Mary, were schoolteachers together at the Church of England school in Kelso from mid-1837 through 1838.  He is also said to have been a devout Christian, as was Mary, who put his faith into his dealings with others, particularly the less fortunate. 

 

During his lifetime he took his family to such locations as Sydney, Parramatta, Port Stephens, Bathurst, Rydal, Goulburn, Kameruka Estate (South Coast?) And Bega.  He died on 14 January 1877 and was buried in Bega Cemetery.  Mary outlived her husband to die from a stroke in Bega, aged 81 years on 23 January 1892.

 

One of the Jaggers  granddaughters, Ellen Alice Mcnaught, at some time compiled an interesting and extensive memoir of her antecedents, which was obviously derived from discussions with her relatives.  Her descriptions of John and Mary (Leonard), being firsthand, follow:

 

            “My Grandmother, who had been Mary Leonard was the sweetest, most-refined, most warm-hearted, hot-tempered little old lady that anyone could call "Grandma".  I remember her soft snowy hair showing thro the soft lace cap with a band of pink ribbon right across her head —pink until Grandfather died, black always after.  Over each ear the cap had a cluster of loops of narrow pink and black . . . Ribbons and a bow tied under the chin.

 

“Grandfather was Fair, blue-eyed, sharp-featured, light brown hair, gold-coloured whiskers, moue shaved off his top lip, his hair worn long just curling above the coat collar.  But Grandma was the one we loved and who loved us.  We get our hazel eyes from her.  She was brunette, brown-eyed, rosy, a dear, loving, gentle body.”

 

 

Round about 1840 Mary is said to have became Matron of the Bathurst Female Factory, a "two to three storeys high building enclosing paved yards.  There was a pump and the water was pumped from a well".  However, examination of the public service Blue Book for 1840 does not show Mary as matron of the "factory" over the period 1-12-1838 to 30-6-1840 when a Sarah Keenan occupied that position, after which it was to be taken up by an Emma Corey from the 1st July.  The succeeding year's Blue Book shows no particular name for the matronage of the Bathurst Female Factory in 1841.  Further research will perhaps establish that Mrs Corey did not hold the post for long and that maybe Mary Jaggers stepped into her shoes.  Perhaps she was employed in a lesser capacity than matron at the gaol and took over the matronage in an acting capacity during the second half of 1840;  if so, it would not have been for long as the story below reveals.  This possibility would account for Mary Jaggers's name not showing up in the Blue Books of those times.

 

The matron's emolument was then ₤40 per year and keep for herself and family. "Part of her duties was to see the women served additional sentences bestowed upon them when they were 'turned in', to ensure they were locked in their dormitories at sundown and the keys were all on 'the big ring'."^[89]  During this employment Mary was involved in a disturbance at the factory, appeared before a Magistrate's Court and had to resign her position.  The incident is said by Mrs Sigsworth to have been as follows:

 

. . . On a Sunday morning some women prisoners obtained rum and a big Irish woman named Rose Clancy demanded the keys from Mary Jaggers, who refused to hand them over.  Clancy grabbed the keys from Mrs Jaggers holding on to her wrist in one hand and her forearm in the other, lifting her above a table corner, threatening to break her arm.  Another of the inmates to whom Mary had been kind bit Clancy's shoulder and released Mrs Jaggers.  Bathurst's only policemen, Micky Delaney and Mary's husband, John Jaggers, came to her rescue and both were attacked by the women.  Jaggers was stripped of his clothes and Delaney was taken out to the pumpyard and thrown on his face.  The women then sat on his head and feet, beating him with his own sword.  Many of the women prisoners escaped and only a few were caught.  Some did give themselves up and others were taken prisoner by bushrangers.^[90]

 

 

Three other Leonard sisters, Emily, Caroline and Louisa, also travelled to New South Wales;  they arrived together in Sydney on Malacca on 11 August 1851.  Emily married Peter Sutton in 1852.  Caroline married Charles Wakefield in 1859 in Victoria;  Louisa is said by Mrs Sigsworth to have married Fred Arnold in Victoria in 1853.    All the Leonard brothers were apparently not as adventurous as their sisters and stayed closer to home although, as has been shown, one, William, became a successful commercial photographer in London.

 

With regard to the three Malacca passengers it seems that their passage was either paid  for or subsidised by a British organisation called The Society for Promoting Female Emigration, which was formed  some time before 1840, a year in which they raised £22,000 for their charity work.  Their aim was to enable worthy women to travel to Australia to engage in honest domestic work, such as seamstresses, cooks, and so on.  That her sisters travelled under those auspices is shown by the letter that Mary Jaggers wrote to the society’s lady leader, Mrs Herbert, in 1852   The un-edited text of this letter, as it appeared in the London Morning Post on January 3, 1853 (p.3) follows.

 

                                                                                                                                      Sydney,                                                                                                                             January 20,  1852

 

Honoured Madam, —Finding my sisters have neglected writing as you desire  (which I am surprised and annoyed at)  I take  the liberty of doing so and informing you of their prosperous voyage and comfortable circumstances since they came to the colony.

            I have been out here many years.  My husband and I self-emigrated in 1832.  I have always loved my adopted country, and feel the deepest gratitude to any influential persons who interest themselves in its welfare.  But I cannot express my feelings of love, reverence and admiration which I feel towards those philanthropists (excuse me, madam) who are means of sending some of the many distressed females from England out here, where they are so much needed. There is plenty of room for hundreds yet.

             My three sisters, Emily, Caroline, and Louisa L———, whom you sent out  in the Malacca last year got situations immediately on landing;  Emily and Caroline at ₤20 a year as cooks— not as professional cooks   for that they were certainly not — but merely to do their best;  Louisa as nurserymaid at ₤16 a year, plenty of everything in the way of good living, and a holiday out every other Sunday.  I am sorry to say they soon left their situations, but there were plenty of others too glad to get them, and at higher wages.  Emily has been in a situation in the last six months in an  upholsterer’s shop, to attend in the shop, and do a little needlework now and then.  She came home every evening at seven, and went at eight in the morning;  Her wages were 16s. a week , besides breakfast, dinner, and tea.   Last week she was married to a very respectable young man who came out in the same vessel, and is in a good line of business. 

             In every other window in George-street  and other streets, here are notices or papers to the effect — “A female servant wanted;”  “Wanted, a cook;”  “Wanted,. a girl to nurse a child “ &c &c.  The lowest wages are from 8s. to 10s. a week.

             Since I have been in the country I have seen many reverses, not the fault of the country, but drunkenness or idleness.  I have often had to work hard and exert myself to support our  large family. I am a dressmaker, and, although my appearance has been, through want of means, often against me, yet I have got as much work as I can possibly do, and I can earn as much as 18s. to 25s. a week, with the assistance of an apprentice.  I hope you will forgive this liberty, dear lady;  I trust we will meet in that blest place where differences of station will be removed .  And, may I beg of you to recollect,  that however grieved, and in some instances troubled, with your great undertaking, you may be, yet, that it will be the means of saving hundreds from ruin in this world;  and in the world to come you will be amply rewarded for your labour.  The Lord will hearken to our grateful prayers for you and yours.  Dear lady, allow me once more to express my own and my sisters’ thanks for all you have done for us.                                                                                                                                                               M. J.

 

 

Close to six months after her arrival in New South Wales Sarah Leonard married William Stapleton, whose story appears below.  They were joined in matrimony in Bathurst by a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Kirkpatrick Dickson Smythe;  the witnesses to the wedding were her sister, Elizabeth, and her brother-in-law, John Jaggers.  She was to die on 16 July 1893 while living with her sister, Emily Sutton (Arnold?), at Manly.  She was buried in the Wesleyan Section 80-S of Manly Cemetery (no grave number unless it is "80") where her tombstone still stands in good condition.  The inscription on it reads:

 

                                                          In Loving Memory of

                                                        SARAH STAPLETON

                                                       Who died 16th July 1893

                                                                Aged 74 years

                                                  WE PART TO MEET AGAIN

 

Sarah did not leave a will and there is no probate evidence of one from her husband, William.

 

As a conclusion to this section of the Stapleton Family History the arrival in Sydney of the six Leonard sisters who are chronicled above is re-iterated thus:

 

1833,  19 February on Prince Regent, which had left London on 7-10-1832, 

           Mary, aged 22  with and already married to John Jaggers.

 

            1839,  12 September on  Lady Raffles, which had left Plymouth on 15-3-1839, 

                      Sarah (20) and Elizabeth (18).

 

            1851,  11 August on  Malacca, which had left Plymouth on  15-5-1851,

                     Emily Mary Augusta (24),  Caroline Martha Jessie (20) and Louise (18).

 

 

                                                                   XIII

 

                             GREAT GRANDFATHER  WILLIAM STAPLETON  

 

 

The researches of Len Stapleton, a cousin of the composer of this chronicle, John Dugdale, have resulted in the following facts and hypotheses:  The IGI (International Genealogical Index) of the Morman Church for 1976 shows a William Stapleton

 

Baptised       1 November 1818

Town            Greenwich

Parish           St Alphage (C.of E.)

Parents        William, Charlotte

 

The entry shows no second Christian name for this child and neither do any other surviving records of William's known lifetime.

 

For many years it was thought that this William Stapleton was the one of interest for this family " with another researcher of Stapletons, not necessarily those of this story, was a Jill Dixson history.[91]  However, a chance connection through an English genealogical resource known as Genes Reunited,  who provided information, which if true, removes the St Alphage child from this story.  Ms Dixon maintained that the above 1818 William Stapleton died in November of that year, which must have been soon after, or even before, he was baptised.  His sister, Anne, who had been baptised in Reading in 1813, as following accounts will tell, had already died in 1817 and their mother, Charlotte, died in 1819.  Their father, she says, re-married and in 1823 had a second son, William.  Father and son William are recorded in the British census of 1841 and a married William in the 1861 census so he was not the William Stapleton who arrived in Australia in 1837.  Nevertheless that which follows deals with the results of searches that have been made looking for our William Stapleton, truly a man of mystery as the unfolding story will show.

 

The Mormon genealogical records show a baptism at about the same time for another William Stapleton in St Alphege (Church or Parish?), Canterbury.  The second of these IGI records could refer to our William as both were geographically consistent with Stapletons living twenty miles out of London and this may have been the second William mentioned above, but the fact is that the Canterbury birth took place in 1823, while further evidence states that previously thought to be our young William was born on 3 June 1818 to a William and Charlotte Stapleton.  The baptismal date of 1 November 1818 in St Alphage Greenwich is thus compatible with the subject child, William's birth some five months earlier.[92]  

 

Mormon IGI records show a couple with the names William and Charlotte, her maiden name being Watkin, who had married in the cathedral at Manchester on 10 December 1813.  At least four of their children were christened in the same cathedral who were baptised on 9 August 1918, the oldest one named William Thomas who was born in 1815 with two of them possibly twins.[93]  The Greenwich Stapletons were therefore not the Manchester ones.

 

The same records list a William Stapleton and a Charlotte (given as née  Berkshire) having married in St Gile's Church, Reading in Berkshire on 1 March 1813 with a child, Ann or Anne, probably theirs, having been christened in the same church on 18 July of the same year.[94]  As yet, her date and place of birth have not been discovered, but it could well have been in the vicinity of Ampthill, Bedford, Bedfordshire if the Stapletons later mentioned below have any relationship to her.  Charlotte's surname was probably not "Berkshire";  maybe it only indicates she had been born in that county though no IGI record of such a birth can be found. 

 

The only once-supposed connection with the Reading family and the William who was born in Kent about five years later was that the Ann Stapleton of Reading and the William Stapleton of Greenwich had parents William and Charlotte.  It is thus almost certain that this William had an older sister, Ann, who was initially thought to be perhaps the "great-aunt" who visited the Stapleton family in Sydney in the early 1900s. (about which see later). 

 

The Mormon records indicate that a William Stapleton had been christened on 2-6-1780 in Ampthill, Bedford;  his father was William and his mother was Elizabeth.  This was the only record shown that could possibly relate to the William who was the father of the Greenwich-born William and almost certainly the Reading-christened Ann Stapleton. 

 

The summary of the now-discredited relationship belief concerning the Greenwich birth of a William Stapleton in 1818 is:

 

            1780, July 2. William Stapleton, son of William and Elizabeth    Stapleton, christened  at Ampthill, Bedford, Bedfordshire.

            1812? Ann or Anne Stapleton born to William and Charlotte  Stapleton.

            1813, March 1.  William Stapleton and Charlotte "Berkshire" marry in St Gile's   Church of England, Reading, Berkshire. 

            1813, July 18. Ann Stapleton christened at same church

            1818. June 3.  William Stapleton born in Greenwich.

              November 1.  William Stapleton baptised in St Alphage Church of England,    Greenwich. However, as has been shown, this is  not our William Stapleton for the baby   died before or soon  after his baptism.

 

There is no certainty as to when Great-Aunt Stapleton died.  IGI records show an Ann whose death on 20 April 1897 at the age of 85 was registered in Ampthill, Bedford in the same year.  As this Ann could thus have been born in 1812 she could have been William's sister who returned to Ampthill, her father's possible place of birth.  The only contradictory point on this is that that Ann Stapleton was recorded in the 1881 census as being a widow.  Official  UK BDM records from 1837 show only one Ann Stapleton registered as marrying in Ampthill, that in 1861 and census material displayed below shows a person of that name as a widow, possibly becoming of such status between 1872 and the 1881 census. However, she could not have been the one this history seeks even she had married say a Stapleton cousin or had reverted to her maiden name upon the death of a husband for she died in 1893 and family legend says our William's sister had visited relatives in Sydney after 1900.  The search must continue.[95]

 

Turning again to William, it was once supposed that to add more (but small credence) to the probability that the St Alphage child was our William Stapleton is the fact that one of the writer's great-grandfather William's eventual nieces was given the Christian names Mary Charlotte.  This was the youngest child of Mary (Leonard, ie, William's sister-in-law) and John Jaggers, who had met William's future wife, Sarah, on her arrival in the colony in 1839.  Alas that hypothesis is now discarded.

 

When the 1841 census was taken there was a labourer named John Stapleton, aged 30, residing in Dock Street, Greenwich.  His wife was Mary (30) and his two children were John (5) and George (3).  Could these Stapletons have been related, John perhaps being William's brother?  This, on all the other evidence, seems unlikely.

 

In November 1992 the writer, William's great-grandson, visited St Alphage's Anglican Church, Greenwich, an impressive though not particularly beautiful large structure located in the High Street of Greenwich.  Churches on this site date back to the eleventh century when the ground was hallowed by Alfege, Archbishop of Canterbury since 1006, who was martyred there on 19 April 1012.  The invading Danes assassinated him for refusing to pay hostage money of ,3,000, a sum, he said, that was impossibly large for his congregation to raise without hardship.

 

All that apart, as delineated at the beginning of this section the St Alphage William Stapleton was obviously not the one pertaining to this story whose actual birth details now have to be discovered if possible.

 

According to Hasted's History of Kent, a Sir William Stapleton, Bart, followed by his son Sir Thomas, Lord Le Despencer among his other entitlements successively owned Mereworth and occupied it in the eighteenth century.  Their descendent, Francis-Jarvis Stapleton, became in line the seventh Baronet of the Leeward Isles on 3-10-1831 with the death of his father, Thomas Lord Le Despencer.  Francis had been born on 6-8-1807 and he married Margaret, daughter of Lt. Gen. Sir George Airy on 17-5-1830.  They had four children, Francis George (b.19-3-1831), Richard-Talbot Plantagenet (27-4-1834) and twins Catherine Elizabeth and Florence Maria, who came next in the family but whose date of birth may have been considered unworthy of recording in Debrett because of their gender.  As our William Stapleton was born in 1818 he was obviously not of this family, but may have been related in some way.

 

Another source of information on these Stapletons can be found in the publications of the Kent Archeological Society.  In the 1961 edition of its Archeological Cantiana (pp.169-79) is a detailed account of the financial affairs of Sir Thomas Stapleton who became Baron Le Despencer in 1788 when he succeeded to the principal residence, Mereworth Castle, and to other large estates in Kent and lands in Oxfordshire, Yorkshire and Devonshire.  Because of the prodigal life of the previous owner the inheritance was rundown both financially and physically and Thomas acquired its bankruptcy and crippling debts.  The inheritor, and in turn his son, were as profligate as their predecessor, as was Sir Thomas's young brot Rev. J.H. Stapleton.  At one stage, because of debts of ?4,200 this clergyman had to be somehow bailed out of debtors' prison by Thomas.  In 1813 Despencer's own debts totalled £86,996.  Over the years he had undoubtedly been cheated of many thousands of pounds by his professedly "loyal" steward (who fled to Europe when at last accosted);  but in 1815 complete ruin faced Thomas and his family.  He decamped to Brussels, his remaining assets were sold and Mereworth Castle was let.  Sir Thomas was forced to live abroad as a humble gentleman on an annual income of £800  for the remaining years of his life until 1831.  On that demise our William Stapleton would have been about thirteen.

 

Perhaps associated with these melancholy events, it may be of passing interest that Pigot & Co's National and Commercial Directory . . . Of Kent for 1851 shows on p.70 that a Rev. Sir Francis Stapleton, Bart and an Honourable Mrs Stapleton (his wife?) Had Mereworth as their address.  An informant who comes from Kent told the writer that the "Rev." had been the vicar of St Lawrence, the Anglican church in Mereworth near Mereworth Castle.  Illustrations of these buildings accompany this account.  

 

Mereworth Castle, is in the Parish of Mereworth about ten miles west of Maidstone, Kent;  it is an 18thc. Italianate edifice that is still a private residence.  The neighbouring village of Mereworth is unprepossessing but is noteworthy for its unusual church building ("a conspicuous ornament to all the neighbouring country" (Hasted, see footnote), which was re-built in neo-classical style in the eighteenth century to match the nearby castle whose history dates back to before William the Conqueror and is mentioned in the Domesday Book.^[96]

 

The writer made a visit to Mereworth in September 2001 and looked in at its ancient-looking but beautiful St Lawrence Church with its surrounding graveyard.  He had no time to explore the latter to see if any Stapletons had been interred there but a plaque inside the church disclosed that at least three vicars in its history had been Stapletons.  They were:

 

1827-1830  The Hon. Miles John Stapleton,

1851-1874  The Hon. Sir Francis Jervis Stapleton

  and    1874-1892  Eliott Henry Stapleton.

 

Mereworth Castle is now owned by Saudi arab princes and is  totally closed to visitors and to the local residents of the area.  It is said to be currently used as a storehous for its Semetic owners' works of art and other goods.   However, the grounds are opened up once a year to local gentry for a clay pigeon shoot.  The writer was able to look through the large padlocked iron gates to the tree-lined drive that led up to a distant, rather forloon-looking domed building with its pillared portico..^[97]  It was said that a one-time owner-resident of Mereworth Castle had had the church rebuilt outside its grounds and closer to the village because the sound of its bells annoyed him!

 

A search of records relevant to Greenwich has no Stapleton marriage listed there between 1812 and 1817 and no further births to Stapletons following 1813 up to 1824.  William and Charlotte may have been married elsewhere than at St Alphage's (say St Gile's in Reading).  There is questionable evidence of another child from their marriage, but if William had younger or older siblings they could have been born while the parents were at other addresses.

 

When the 1841 census was taken there was no William Stapleton living in Queens Street, Greenwich, but there was a labourer named John Stapleton, aged 30, residing in Dock Street, Greenwich.  His wife was Mary (30) and his two children were John (5) and George (3).  Could these Stapletons have been related, John perhaps being William's brother?  This, on all the other evidence, seems unlikely.

 

In November 1992 the writer, William's great-grandson, visited St Alphage's Anglican Church, Greenwich, an impressive though not particularly beautiful large structure located in the High Street of Greenwich.  Churches on this site date back to the eleventh century when the ground was hallowed by Alfege, Archbishop of Canterbury since 1006, who was martyred there on 19 April 1012.  The invading Danes assassinated him for refusing to pay hostage money of ?3,000, a sum, he said, that was impossibly large for his congregation to raise without hardship.

 

According to a great-aunt who visited Australia in the early 1900s William came from a long line of Stapletons whose identity dates back to the time of Edward, the Black Prince (son of Edward III of England, 1312-1377).  There was some connection between the Black Prince and the Stapleton family which came to include a baronetcy.

 

As Len Stapleton has recorded it, the Stapletons appear to have arisen as "de Stapleton" in England about 1200 the "de" ("from") referring to the town of Stapleton on the River Tee about two miles south of Darlington.  Len writes, "Working through three Nicholas', several Miles, Gilbert and Giles, we come to Brian de Stapleton who is recorded as being sent to help the "Black Prince" at Acquitaine in the 1300s.

 

"From somewhere about this time the family seemed to develop into two or more lines.  One line which still exists is the 10th Baronet, Sir Alfred Stapleton, of the Leeward Isles and which still holds Mereworth Castle between Dover and London.  The other line seems to come through the Stapletons of "Wighill" in Yorkshire.  The Leeward Island and Mereworth Stapletons do not seem to fit as the Barony is still in existance and there does not seem to be any other suitable males to have produced our William.

 

"The "Wighill" line seems promising as it proceeds through Sir Robert and Sir Miles and the eldest brother Gilbert was created a Baronet in 1661.  On his death in 1707 the Baroncy became extinct.  He had three sons who had all died in infancy but it seems probable there were other Stapletons in the Wighill line.  (Sir Philip Stapleton or Sir Richard and Sir Robert Stapleton in about the 1660s)."^[98]

 

Len Stapleton speculates:  "It seems possible that the map [see next page] shows the Manor House on the (old?) Dover Road (?), 20 miles out of London as a Historic Building" near the village of Cobham on the B2009 off the A2 (a Roman Road), Kent.  There are two old buildings near Cobham, one Owletts and the other Cobham Hall which is now a girls' school.  Mereworth Castle is an 18C privately owned residence near the A26 just outside Meredith Village WSW of Maidstone.  The association of these great houses with the Stapletons is problematical, their only connection perhaps being that they are in Kent and about twenty miles out of London and on the Dover Road.^[99]

 

Another version of the William Stapleton story was given orally by his eldest grandson, Fred, to John Dugdale about thirty years ago.  According to this the Stapletons came originally from Kent, England where, it is said, many of that name still reside in a region only twenty miles south from the heart of London.  The family was said to have resided there for hundreds of years and the family home was known as The Manor.  Fred and his wife, Margaret, recalled a visit from some unremembered family connection (the 1900s already mentioned?) When they were shown a family tree.  This, it was alleged, showed the descent of the Stapletons from the time of the Black Prince.  Some members of the family spell their names other than "Stapleton", eg, "Stapylton" etc.

 

^{Concerning  the unremembered family connection, said elsewhere to have been with regard to William Stapleton's sister's visit in the early 1900s, it is a fact that a woman named Stapleton did arrive in Sydney in the lowest class on 22 December 1906.  She came from Liverpool, England on a large vessel named Afric whose master was Frank A. Howarth.   However, she is only shown on the ship's passenger list as "Mrs Stapleton, female, adult" and no age or occupation are given.  The "Mrs" could have been an error or an assumed marital status to safeguard a single woman travelling alone.  According to an English data base of travellers leaving England this was the only passenger named Stapleton who went to Sydney between 1895 and 1910 so it could very well have been the lady in question.}

 

The family legend, according to Fred, was as follows:  William left "The Manor" at an early age and went to sea.  As a young man he was said to have travelled to California where he set up tent-shops on the goldfields, perhaps selling mining hardware.  His shops were destroyed in the first and second great fires of the Californian diggings.  In 1837 he arrived in Australia and continued his adventurous life by eventually running horses to India in a vessel that he owned, the Asa Packer.  There is a doubtful and contradictory legend that he lost this vessel during the Crimean War (March 1854-June 1856) when it was commandeered by a privateer.  Somewhat allied to this account was supplied to this author by one of Fred's grandsons, Colin Baker.  He remembers been told by his grandfather that William was executed by privateers while he was taking horses to India for sale to one of its princes who was fomenting the Indian Mutiny (1857-58) by the Sepoy soldiers of the British Army who were employed by the East India Company.  Another version says that William was made to walk the plank when the vessel was overcome by pirates while en route to India with a cargo of horses for sale to the Indian Army.  As it is known that this vessel sank in a storm while leaving Port Phillip Bay in the sixties the

 pirate story seems to be illogical (see elsewhere for the full account of this event).  Of course, William could have been on another vessel with his horses, but the Asa Packer did leave Sydney for Calcutta in October 1856.

 

The existence of a trading of horses with India is authenticated by the fact that there really was a brisk sale of Australian horses to the British army in India.  Their first shipment was made between Sydney and in Calcutta in 1857, the year after William Stapleton relinquished his licensee-ship of the California Hotel Sydney (see following pages).  Confirming this is part of an Internet web page on the history of the Australian thoroughbred horse, a breed known as a "Waler" (because they were said to have been bred originally in New South Wales), which includes the following statement:

 

The hardiness of the Waler made him a natural mount for the cavalry and when the British found themselves under-mounted at the time of the Indian Mutiny, the Waler came to the rescue.  The earliest shipment to India was in 1857 when 29 horses were sent from Sydney to Calcutta.  They proved superior to the local breeds and the remount officers were commissioned to buy more.  They ultimately chose 250—a small number compared with later purchases.  During 1858, 2,500 were sent to India.^[100]

 

The romantic stories about William Stapleton's activities are thus borne out by such facts as can be ascertained and it will also be shown that he did indeed travel to the Californian goldfields, but not as depicted above.  William's death seems to have been unrecorded, but it could well have been, or may have been during the early 1860s when he disappears from the scene seemingly without trace.  Fred's and Margaret's son, Len Stapleton, has researched William's life deeply and has arrived at the following facts:

 

William Stapleton arrived in Australia as a single man "'Free in 1837' ― Religion Protestant ― Native place KENT".  From where and on what ship remain to be discovered definitely.

 

As his name cannot be found in records showing the arrival in Sydney of ships' passengers during 1837 the possibility is that he came as a crew member.  However, a search of records in the Kew Public Record Office in London does not reveal any relevant William Stapleton as leaving England at this time as a seaman.  Perhaps he came to Australia as a steerage traveller,  the individual names of whom were often not given in Sydney arrival records.^[101]  

The chance that William Stapleton came into Australia via Port Phillip in what is now Victoria cannot be checked as records of passenger names arriving there do not pre-date 1846.  However, the only passenger on Success, which arrived in Sydney from Port Phillip on 2 January 1839 was listed merely as "Mr Stapleton".  This vessel had left Port Phillip on 26 December 1838 with a cargo of 22 bales of wool and passengers Mrs Watt, Mr Stapleton, one constable and four prisoners.  Maybe the other passengers had left the vessel at an intermediate port of call by the time she reached Sydney.. 

 

That there was a William Stapleton in the embryonic town of Melbourne in 1838 is shown in the census of the Port Phillip District that took place there on September 12 of that year. He was shown, along with a M. Anne Collins, as part of the household group of (Edward) William and Mary Ann Humphilby (or Umphelby), who ran a hotel, The Angel,  in Queen Street at the time.  Perhaps this Stapleton and M. Anne Collins were included in this item because they were guests at the hotel on this census night and relevant to the idea see a following paragraph regarding an illegitimate child and mention of a William Stapleton who was a surveyor in early New South Wales.

 

The Humphilbys had come from Launceston and the census could indicate that William Stapleton and Anne Collins were their servants, maybe even in Tasmania and possibly one or both came with their employers to Melbourne.  This assumption is strengthened by the fact that our William Stapleton became the licensee of the Hope Inn in Kelso, Bathurst in 1841 and plied that occupation at the Weatherboard Inn at what is now Wentworth Falls, NSW in 1845 and as licensee of the California Inn, "Parramatta Street" (ie., Broadway) Sydney from 1853 to 1856.  It seems natural that a twenty-year-old William Stapleton, having had a taste of the occupation in 1838, and possibly earlier after his arrival in Australia the previous year, would have entered the trade on his own behalf after his marriage in Bathurst in 1840.

 

There is a dis-quietening note relevant to the above suppositions, however.  Another Stapleton family researcher has uncovered the following facts relating to a certain Granville William Chetwynd Stapylton (b.1800, d.1840) of Irish peerage lineage.  When he came to Sydney in 1829 he was appointed Assistant Surveyor under Surveyor-General Mitchell in New South Wales. He became the father of an illegitimate child by a Mary Ann(e) Collins on 25-12-1837;  this child was baptized William Harrison Collins at St Michael's Church of England, Parish of Wollongong, NSW on 4-2-1838.  The question is, "Was the Wm. Stapleton shown in the Melbourne census of September 1838 immediately after the name of M. Ann Collins in the Humphilby household the above child?"  if so, it puts paid to a verifiable assumption that this was our William Stapleton in Melbourne in 1838!  The only saving grace in this conundrum is why was the child not registered in the census by his baptismal name of Collins?  And how and why did M. Anne Collins get to Melbourne with her baby by the date of the September 1838 census?  Unfortunately this record does  not show the ages of those it registered, merely their gender and probably the household groups of their residence at the time.

 

This still leaves the mystery of the details of William's arrival (by what ship? On what date?) in 1837, this year being given in other evidence that will be discussed later.  Melbourne at that time being only a peripheral town did not have many, if any overseas shipping arrivals.  Such arrivals in Hobart, then a well-established convict based centre, would have been perhaps more likely.  Recordings of passengers arriving in those ports were also scant so that no mention of William Stapleton's actual arrival can be found.  There is a possibility that he first landed in Tasmania, even possibly as a crew member who deserted his ship there, and made his way to Port Phillip with the Humphilbys.

 

The vessels arriving in Sydney in 1837 that did not specifically particularise their steerage complement were Fairlie (Captain Ager, left London 29-8-36, arr. Sydney

13-2-37), Brothers Captain Robertown 20-11-36, 8-4-37), Margaret (Captain Canning, 24-1-37, 30-5-37), Earl Durham (Captain Cabel, 14-5-37, 31-8-37) and Duke of Edinburgh (Captain Valentine Ryan, 2-5-37, 31-8-37).  In each of these cases the respective captains had made a note on their submissions to the "colonial secretary" that a list of their steerage passengers would be forwarded later;  if this material survives its whereabouts is unknown as it does not appear to be mentioned in the archival index to the correspondence to the colonial secretary's office.   

 

One item in the above information may have significance, however─that the captain of Brothers was a Robert Towns.  This would have been the same Robert Towns who later was a shipping agent in Sydney and from whose wharf the Asa Packer departed in the late 1850s with its several cargoes of horses bound for Calcutta;  these were under the supervision of William Stapleton, as will be related further on in this history.  The question is:  did William come to Australia on Brothers in 1837 amongst its 76 un-named steerage passengers, or as one of its crew, whereon he and its Captain Towns may have become first acquainted?  If so, it seems logical that William would have turned to a person he already knew to be agent for his horse-shipping enterprise almost twenty years later.  This is only an intriguing possibility, but it would point to the Brothers as his arrival ship, a matter that will probably never be resolved with certainty.

 

 

                       AN OCCULT ADDENDUM TO THE STAPLETON TALE

 

A lead to the possible ship that might have carried William Stapleton to Sydney in 1837 indicates that it might have been Fairlie.  Under the command of Captain H. Agar this barque of 756 tons left London on 29 August 1836 bound for Sydney via the Cape of Good Hope to call in at Hobart Town, which she left on 5 February 1837, to arrive at its destination port on Febuary 12.  She carried merchandise and cabin passengers Captain H. Smyels, Misses(?) Stevens, Mrs Discavilla, Miss Needham and a  Mr Bates.  There were also fifty passengers in steerage, the names of whom are not yet known, and these probably included most of the 39 females over the age of twelve indicated in the captain's arrival manifesto (there were no males in this category of "children" as passenger, nor any males or females under age 12).  The 39 adolescent girls provoke a query as a side issue;  were they largely a contingent being brought to Australia for employment as domestic servants, a procedure known to have applied to Irish girls around this time?

 

As it has been suggested below that William Stapleton travelled to Sydney under an assumed name and that he was not an impoverished young man, there is a possibility that he was the "Mr Bates",  one of the cabin class passengers mentioned above.  At the present stage this is purely speculative for he might have been incognito as a member of the Fairlie's crew or amongst its steerage passengers.  Possible answers to these questions must await further research.  However, at this point, for what it is worth a rather bizarre account is inserted in this story. 

 

With all the uncertain complexity about the arrival details of William Stapleton and his disappearance the writer decided to see what would emerge from a séance he could arrange with a medium who claimed she could communicate with the hereafter.   Accordingly,  at an appointed time the occult meeting took place and the medium made these observations, which were transcribed by the writer in note form as the incident unfolded:

 

(Notes of observations made in reference to William Stapleton by a medium, "Sue", in a "seance" conducted in the home of John Dugdale between 7.30 and 8 pm, April 5, 2003)

 

Sue:  Does the name Peter mean anything to you?  (See later note)

 

Did not drink(?)  A man of his word   (Q?) Yes, was related to an aristocratic family  had an older sibling   drifted apart   no communication with sibling    was a bit of a rebel    wanted to risk his own money   to establish his own name   was a lady's man handsome  "a catch"    a man of his word

 

Arrived in Australia on a ship associated with the name-sound  "Phillip"  came with money   did not travel in a "low" class   established himself quickly

 

(?) Was he a sailor?   Yes (strong emphasis)    wasn't planning to remain one  wanted that as an adventure   might have signed up for trip to Sydney only or strong possibility deserted ship there   

 

(The only five ships to arrive in Sydney in 1837 without showing their steerage passengers' were named The Brothers,  Fairlie,  Margaret,  Earl Durham and the Duke of Edinburgh.)

 

(Q?) Was it The Brothers?  Definite "No".

 

Left Australia    ship with an "f" in its name    strong possibility it was to go to Britain to visit relatives or for business   maybe some travel through Europe   knew he would return from long journey

 

Quick murder    premature death    money or something    murdered prior to leaving England for return journey    age 46 came through very strongly as age at death    (death) not connected with Asa Packer    wife very distressed at his murder

 

(April 7 -- Results of a subsequent telephone call to "Sue" who had promised to check out the ships mentioned above for a definite "Yes" or "No" as to William's arrival ship.)

 

He was laughing  "Fairlie" came through   did not want his family to know about it (his movements) so travelled "incognito"   a rebel    "whatever he touched turned to gold"   (in reference above to "Peter")  "a dear friend"

 

In this unlikely material mention is made of "Peter".  As will be shown later, a Peter Sutton was William Stapleton's brother-in-law and, for the sum of ten shillings, became the prospective owner of all William's possessions in the event of the latter's death when they would be made over to his then widow, Sarah with shares of it conditionally allocated to their children.

 

The medium said that William came from an aristocratic family and this history shows that some Stapletons were definitely associated with Mereworth Castle in  Kent about twenty miles from Greenwich.  The family legend also has it that he came from a manor house in the same region. 

 

The medium also said that William had an older sibling.  In fact this was so;  it was once thought (now not so) that this was a female named Ann who had been baptised in St Gile's C.of E., Reading in England in 1813 where her parents, William and Charlotte, had been married in the same year.  She was thus about five years older than William and the elderly great-aunt who visited the Stapletons in Sydney probably towards the end of the 1800s (see account elsewhere in the Stapleton story).  

 

The occult message said that William was 46 when he died, making the year of his death 1864, which equates with his birth being in 1818 and his "disappearance" after July 1860 the time he signed a deed of sale over his Sydney house.  A search through the indices of The London Times for the period concerned revealed no mention of a murder of a William Stapleton in the early 1860s.  

 

An additional search of the index of deaths in England between 1860 and 1864 revealed that many men so named had died there during that period including one in Kent and one in west London.  As William had allegedly come from Kent and was said (by the medium) to have been visiting his relatives at the time of his robbery and murder (?) these two deaths were investigated.  However,  according to the English authorities neither was of the man relevant to this history.

 

The medium's mention of "Phillip" in association with William's ship arrival in 1837 is interesting in that "ship's name starting with 'f'" for his departure vessel in 1860 and the alleged "Fairlie" for his arrival one agree with the initial phonetic sounding of the two ships' names.

 

A second look at NSW archival records of shipping arrivals in Sydney during 1837 revealed that the Fairlie's cabin class passengers were as indicated above indeed limited by names to an (army?) Captain, three or four women plus a "Mr Bates".  No further details were given of this last-named person and if this venture into the occult has any verity the intriguing possibility is that he was William Stapleton incognito!

 

Given that William arrived on Fairlie, and the possibility was that this was as a sailor, the writer commissioned an English genealogical  investigator to search at London's public record office for the crew list for this vessel's departure from London in October 1836.  Unfortunately, the only records found for this ship's sailings began in 1839 so this possibility remains only a likelihood at present.

 

With all this the sayings of the medium with regard to William Stapleton had some interesting agreements with the known facts of his existence, but offered no definite proof of his arrival ship in Sydney nor of the circumstances of his death.

 

The Californian gold rushes were touched off in 1848 and the only references to "great fires" that can be found on that goldfield are those that occurred in San Francisco in 1850-51 when the shanty city was razed on four occasions.^[102]  As William's age was only about nineteen when he arrived in Australia in 1837 his alleged entrepreneurial venture in running a tent-shop there would hardly apply at that time.   However, as will be shown, he did visit San Francisco, but round about 1851.

 

It is not known exactly when William went to Bathurst;  it may have been via Port Phillip early in 1839 as related above or it may have been via Sydney immediately on his arrival in the colony in 1837.  At the time his future brother-in-law, John Jaggers was established there where he and his wife, Mary, were employed as teachers in the Church of England School in Kelso.  Just after his marriage to Sarah in 1840 William became an innkeeper in Kelso, the original site of Bathurst and a mile or so east of the present city.

 

Dale Weaving has raised a possibility that William and Sarah might have known each other before he came to Sydney in 1837, particularly as they married within a few months of her arrival in Bathurst in 1839.  Even John Jaggers might fit into this equation for he was born in Scotland Yard, London on 25-9-1808 and christened in St Martins-in-the-Field  on 11-10-1808.   He married Mary Leonard and she and her sister, Sarah Leonard ,and most of their siblings  were christened in the same church.  Also there was a William Edward Stapleton christened in St Martins on  24-12-1820 whose father was Samuel and mother Lucy.  There are thus interesting grounds for a supposition  that a relationship could have arisen from the consanguinity of them and their families being in association with the same church, St Martins-in-the-Field, in London.  This speculation will be followed up.

 

Since the above was written further information has come to hand with regard to the origins of William Stapleton.  It arose from consulting members of an English Internet group known as rootschat who were happy to look into available genealogical data bases in their own country.

 

 Perhaps pertinent to what follows, according to the IGA a Samuel Stapleton, possibly the above, was born on 26 November 1784 and christened at St Sepulchre's, London on the third of the following January.  His parents were John and Mary Stapylton.  At the time of his marriage to a Lucy Napper at St Bride's, Fleet Street, London on 2 April 1809 she was aged 23 thus giving her birth year as c.1786.  She could well be the Lucy  who was christened at St Andrew's, Holborn on 16 November 1791, whose father was Edward and whose mother was Mary or possibly Margaret. 

 

Dale Weaver has secured a copy of the relevant page of Samuel’s and Lucy’s marriage, which was apparently a conventional one as banns were read for it.  The presiding clergyman was curate J.M. Jones and the witnesses were Thomas Bradley and John Wightman.  Samuel’s clear, strong signature showed that he was educated, but Lucy was illiterate and signed with her “mark”.  They were to have four children and these are listed below.

 

No definite date of Samuel's death can be established, but English BDM records show a Samuel Stapleton dying in the second quarter of 1844.  At his death he had been living in the Strand, which, being in the neighbourhood of the residences of Stapletons of the previous paragraph, could  identify this death with the above Samuel and Lucy couple.  Lucy may have pre-deceased her husband for such an one was buried in the St Clements Dane Cemetery on 19 January 1833.  Her address had been given as a workhouse and her age at death 47, which equates with the probable birth year of the Lucy Napper who married Samuel Stapleton in 1809. 

 

With regard to this chronology, if they relate to our Stapletons the question arises as to why the above Lucy was living in a workhouse at the time of her death.  Had husband Samuel  pre-deceased her and was thus not that of the 1844 death or had they separated and she perhaps was indigent or employed at the workhouse?   This may have been so if a recent finding by Dale Weaving is correct.  She has uncovered a death reference for a Samuel Stapleton aged 53 of Saint John South Road whose burial service was conduced on 5 March 1826 by a Rev. Baylie.  For what it is worth in throwing light on this question the British census for 1841 did not reveal any Samuel or Lucy Stapleton in London when it was taken. It certainly showed no William (perhaps because he was already in Australia?), nor did it show Mary Anne (but she may already have married.   A possible John Stapleton does not appear on any found census results until 1861 and this will be enlarged upon below.

 

The burial in St Clements Dane Cemetery of a Lucy Stapleton, address “Workhouse” took place in 1833.  Her age at death was 47, which would have her  born about 1784,  perhaps in the same year as the Samuel who married a Lucy in 1809.

 

It appears that parents Samuel and Lucy Stapleton had three of their children christened in the Anglican church St Martin-in-the-Field adjacent to Trafalgar Square in central London  and a second child, Lucy, christened in St Andrews, Holborn, London in 1818.  They were:

 

            John, christened 2-6-1816 at St Martins in the Field.  Abode 8 Hewits Court. 

                       Father's occupation "Gold and Silver Wire Drawer".

 

            Lucy.   b.  27-12-1817,   christened  23-3-1818  in  St Andrews,  Holborn.

                      Abode, Hollis (?) Street.

 

            William Edward, christened 24-12-1820.  Abode 41 Monmouth St.                   

                      Father's occupation "Wire Drawer".

 

            Mary Ann, christened 20-4-1823.  Abode 8 Hewits Court.

                      Father's  occupation:  Silver Wire  Maker..

 

Hewits Court is not listed in the index to a modern copy of London (New) A-Z, but there are several Monmouth Streets, the main one in central London running south from New Oxford Square and not too far from present Covent Garden underground station.  Monmouth Street leads directly to its south into St Martin Street and these Stapletons would have been less than half a mile from St Martin-in-the-Field and undoubtedly within its parish.  It is likely that Hewits Court was also in this vicinity.

 

If the "Edward" above was "our" William he must have dropped it in his later life for nowhere in extant Australian records of him does it appear in the actual William Stapleton's signature on documents.  The "Mary Ann" equates with his alleged sister who visited the Australian Stapleton family in the early 1900s and with the "Mrs M. Stapleton" who arrived in Sydney from Liverpool  on Afric in 1906.  The "Mrs" presents a problem, but it could have been a protective assumption for an elderly single lady travelling abroad.  But was it actually "Mrs" and could she have been the 1816-christened John Stapleton's wife and in this scenario William Stapleton's sister-in-law?  The two assignations could have been easily blurred in distant relatives passing on the story of the Stapleton visitor from England.  This supposition is supported by the enumeration in the next paragraph. 

 

Finding "John" was a surprise.  Dale Weaving has  located an 1861 census record for a John Stapleton and his family, thus:

 

Address in London,  5 Spillear (?) Court, Parish of St George.   Head, aged 46, a bedstead maker by  trade who had been born in Middlesex and

            Mary Ann, wife, aged 38, occupation laundress.  Born …………***…………………

Mary Ann, daughter, aged 18,  ……***……… Dealer,  born Southwark

Lucy, aged 16,  ………***…………. Dealer,  born ………***………………………..

Eliza, aged 13

William, aged 10,  scholar.                       ***  Indecypherable on census paper copy.

 

This John Stapleton’s birth would have been  c. 1815  and, given daughter Mary Ann’s age of 18 in 1861, his marriage would have been when he was about eighteen or somewhat more in 1833 or so.

 

There was a John Stapleton who married a Mary Caney in 1855 in St Gile's Crippingate, London.  The 1881 census shows such a person as "Head" aged 66, a Mary as "Wife" aged 59, an unmarried daughter named Elizabeth aged 20 and a granddaughter named Lucy Seymour, aged 4 all living at 11 Coburg Row or Street, St Margaret and St John the Evangelist, Westminster, London.  John was a cabinet maker and the two women were laundresses.  This John's declared age of 66 in 1881 indicates that he was probably born in 1815, close enough to the John Stapleton christened in June 1816. 

 

To be determined is whether or not these two Johns are the same person.  They shared  all but the same birth year. A bedstead maker and cabinet maker are not so far apart in occupations and if so did his first wife, Mary Ann, die?   However, each was about the same age  with birth years around 1822.  Respective daughters Eliza and Elizabeth do not equate in such a supposition.

 

The life of Samuel’s and Lucy’s daughter, Mary Ann has been virtually impossible to elucidate as Mary Ann was a very common Christian name in those days.  She probably married and there is a distinct possibility that the Mary Ann Stapleton who married an Absalom Solman on 13-5-1835 in St Martin-in-the-Field was the above John Stapleton’s sister.  The 1841 English census records a couple of that name living in Little Albany Street, St Pancras with their daughter Elizabeth, 6, their son, Charles, 2, and a Robert Solman, 20, who was Absalom’s  brother.  For some reason the census did not record a son, Absalom Edward, who was baptized on 14-6-1837.   Household head Absalom was aged 30 and a “cab proprietor” and Mary Ann his wife was aged 25 to 29.  IGI references show Elizabeth was born on 20-9-1835, her baptism was in St Margaret’s, Lee, Kent on the following 25^th October and Charles, who had been born in St Luke’s “lying in” Hospital, Middlesex on 6-5-1839 had been christened on May 8 of the same year.  Absalom Edward was also born in St Luke.  Charles was the Private Charles Solman who was killed in the Battle of Belmont on 7-11-1861 during the American Civil War while fighting on the Union side with the 22 Illinois Infantry, Company B.  He was unmarried.  Apparently Absalom Solman (afterwards “John Soulman”) and his three children, together with his brother, Robert, had migrated to America to live in Pocahontas, Bond County, Illinois some time between 1841 and 1850, but Mary Ann was not shown as being with them, perhaps having died or left them after the 1841 English census.

 

Further research has so far provided no more  information about the lives or deaths of these Solmans although the 1861 British census shows a Mary Ann Solman aged 58 living in Maidstone, Kent.

 

Since discussing the above, Dale Weaving has discovered that there was a William Stapleton who died in Melbourne on 22 January 1876 and was buried in Melbourne Cemetery two days later.  A copy of his death certificate reveals some interesting and probably relevant information about this man and the question as to whether he was our William, who, it will be remembered, disappeared from Sydney in July 1860.   The challenging entries on this death certificate are set out below with comments arising from them.

 

WHEN AND WHERE            22 January 1876                                         Note 1

DIED                                        Bedford Street

                                                  East?  Collingwood

                                                  Bounty Bank  (?)  (house name?)                                    

 

NAME AND SURNAME       William Stapleton                                       Note 2

RANK OR PROFESSION     painter  (?)

 

SEX AND AGE                      male   56  years                                            Note 3

 

CAUSE OF DEATH             spoplany (?) of brain  (stroke?) 

                                                coma      exhaustion

 

DURATION LAST ILLNESS        5  or  25 (?)   days

MEDICAL ATTENDANT             Dr Whitewoods (?)

BY WHOM CERTIFIES

AND WHEN                                   24 January 1876

 

NAME AND SURNAME              not  known                                           Note 4

OF MOTHER AND FATHER

IF KNOWN

 

SIGNATURE,                      Caroline  Wakefield                                     Note 5

DESCRIPTION                                niece

AND ADDRESS                  Bedford  St

OF INFORMANT               East Collingwood

 

SIGNATURE OF                      Adam Anderson  

DEPUTY REGISTRAR   

DATE AND                               24  January  1876

WHERE REGISTERED         Collingwood

 

WHEN AND WHERE      24  January  1876

BURIED                             Melbourne  Cemetery

UNDERTAKEN BY         Cha (?)  Wakefield                                            Note 6

 

NAME AND RELIGION                    none given

OF MINISTER               

OR NAMES OF WITNESSES           M.  Beauman(?)

OF BURIAL                                         J.  Howes(??)

 

WHERE BORN AND                        Herefordshire,   England                  Note 7

HOW LONG IN AUSTRALIAN               36  years                                    Note 8

COLONIES   STATING  WHICH   New South Wales

                                                              and  Victoria  each  midpoint

 

IF DECEASED WAS MARRIED    not married                                        Note 9

                         (so no dates or children itemised in required columns)

 

 

NOTES TO THE ABOVE:

 

1          The street name is the same as that of his “niece”, Caroline Wakefield.  Was she living with her ”uncle”  and away from her parents at the time of his death?  See Note 5.

 

2,         Rather than being an artist, it is more likely that he was a house painter or such.

There is no identification with William, husband of Sarah, in this occupation, but it is one he could have easily undertaken in starting a new life in Melbourne.  

 

3.         Age 56 at his death equates him approximately with what would have been Sarah’s William at the time and a birth year for the dead William of c.1820 , Sarah’s William’s being c. 1819.

 

4.         Given the facts set out in Note 5 below it is difficult to know why the names of the dead William’s  parents were “unknown”  unless he was not Sarah’s William, but perhaps a Stapleton relative.

 

5.         Sarah’s sister, Caroline Leonard married Charles Wakefield in Melbourne in 1859.   They had seven surviving  children,  the first  one being Charles, who was born in 1862 and then came Caroline  in 1863..   It is a puzzle  why a 13 to 14 year old  girl would or could be the informant for this death?   If it was for Sarah’s William, why was the informant not young Caroline’s mother or father, Caroline Martha or Charles?    Were they away at the time or did they wish not to have anything to do with the dead William for reason of dispute or thinking badly of him or not wishing to be publicly associated with him?   As to the parents, when Charles Wakefield died in 1877 his funeral notice gave him as a contractor in Collins Street.   It is of great interest that on his marriage to Caroline Leonard in 1859 Charles’s occupation was given as “painter”.  As contractor, perhaps connected with building in 1877 had he given Stapleton a job as painter?

 

6.         Who was this “Wakefield” who was associated with the burial?   The fore-name looks like an unclear abbreviation, which could be “Chas.” for “Charles”.   Niece Caroline’s brother, Charles, would have been but a boy in 1876.  Was it her father?

 

7.         With regard to “Hereforshire” the IGI gives a Job and Mary Stapleton (née Everett) married in Hemel Hempstead on 23 April 1807—he b. 1791— with four children christened in Hemel Hempstead, Hertford:   1807 Esther,  1815 Ann,  1819 William and 1824 Eliza.   The IGI shows a William Stapleton marrying a Sarah King at Wicksmanworth, Hertford on 12 April 1835 when he would have been around sixteen, but relevancy is uncertain.  This equates with the above dead William being 56 at death.  Esther died in 1818.  Ann married  a William Sells in 1847  and thus would not be the Mrs Stapleton who came to Sydney in 1909 to visit our William’s descendants as mentioned before.

 

8.         The deceased William allegedly spent 18 years in New South Wales and 18 in Victoria —36 years in all.  In 1876 Sarah’s William’s years in Australia would have been 39 or so with about 29 known years up to his disappearance in 1860 for he definitely arrived in Australia in 1837.

 

9,         If this “unmarried”  was true the 1876 death was not that of our William Stapleton,   If it was untrue the dissembling and the positive similarities enlarged upon above would infer the possibility that our William Stapleton had been involved in some cover-up when he disappeared in July 1860 and that he may have died in 1876 after fifteen years separation from his wife and family in New South Wales.  The probability of this is not strong.

 

Another factor that strengthens the likelihood that the above William Stapleton was not Sarah’s husband, who went missing in 1860 is that the Victorian Government Gazette for the week ending 8 November 1859 has on its page 2286  a William Stapleton’s name in a list of persons for whom there were unclaimed “ship letters” in Melbourne.           

           

This series of events  may establish the background to the progenitor, William Stapleton, of this family history, but of it one can currently speculate that it is only a possible one.  It is particularly so in the case of the Parish of St Martin-in-the-Field’s association with the Leonard, Jaggers and Stapleton families who for this reason may have been acquainted with each other before members of them migrated to Australia.

 

Out of all the above the following is reiterated:  Dale Weaving raised the possibility that William and Sarah might have known each other before he came to Sydney in 1837, particularly as they married within a few months of her arrival in Bathurst in 1839. Even John Jaggers, who was born on 25-9-1808 (Scotland Yard, London), might fit into this equation as he too was christened in St Martins-in-the-Field on 11-10-1808 and was in Bathurst with his wife, Sarah's sister Mary Leonard, when William arrived in Sydney and went to Bathurst. There was a child, William Edward Stapleton born to a Samuel and Lucy who was also christened in the same church in 1820.  Although the second forename, Edward, never appears on William's signatures in New South Wales he could have "dropped" it as an adult.  There is thus a logical supposition of consanguinity of the three families in London and as they and their families were in association with the same church, St Martins-in-the-Field—at least in christenings —and undoubtedly lived within its parish. This speculation is associated with the following information, which, however, cannot at this time be definitely related to the William Stapleton of this history, but may prove to be relevant.

 

There was a Samuel Stapleton living with his wife, Lucy, at 8 Hewitt's Court, London when their first surviving child, John, was baptised at St Martins in the Field on 2 June 1816.  The father followed the trade of a gold and silver wire drawer. Their next child was Lucy, who was born on 27 December 1817, christened on 23 March 1818 at St Andrew's, Holborn and may have died.  Then came William Edward who had been baptised at St Martins on 24 December 1820 while they were living at 43 Monmouth Street, which was a few blocks from the church, and Samuel's trade was given as "wire puller".  Their third child, Mary Anne, was baptised at St Martins on 20 April 1823 by which time the family had moved back to 8 Hewitt's Court.[103]                

 

According to the IGA a Samuel Stapleton, possibly the above, was born on 26 November 1784 and christened at St Sepulchre's, London on the third of the following January.  His parents were John and Mary Stapylton.  At the time of his marriage to a Lucy Napper at St Bride's, Fleet Street, London on 2 April 1809 she was aged 23 thus giving her birth year as c.1786.  This could well be the child of the same name who was christened at St Andrew's, Holborn on 16 November 1791, whose father was Edward and whose mother was Margaret.  No definite date of Samuel's death can be established, but English BDM records show a Samuel Stapleton dying in the second quarter of 1844.  At his death he had been living in the Strand, which, being in the neighbourhood of the residences of Stapletons of the previous paragraph, could  identify this death with the above Samuel and Lucy couple.  Lucy may have pre-deceased her husband for such an one was buried in the St Clements Dane Cemetery on 19 January 1833.  Her address had been given as a workhouse and her age at death 47, which equates with the probable birth year of the Lucy Napper who married Samuel Stapleton in 1809. 

 

With regard to this chronology if they relate to our Stapletons the question arises as to why the above Lucy was living in a workhouse at the time of her death.  Had husband Samuel pre-deceased her and was thus not that of the 1844 death or had they separated and she perhaps was indigent or employed at the workhouse?  For what it is worth in throwing light on this question the British census for 1841 did not reveal any Samuel or Lucy Stapleton in London when it was taken. It certainly showed no William (perhaps because he was already in Australia?), nor did it show Mary Anne (but she may already have married), nor any  certain John Stapleton.  The latter does not appear on any census results until 1881 when such a man is recorded, a cabinet maker, living at 16 Coburg Row, St Margaret and St John the Evangelist, Westminster.  His birth year was shown as 1816, his birthplace as St Martins and his age as 66, all equating him to Samuel's and Lucy's firstborn.  His wife was Mary, aged 59, occupation laundress, born in Somerstown, Middlesex and there was one daughter, Elizabeth, aged 20 also a laundress, who had been born in Lambeth, Surrey.  She was living at the same address with her daughter, Lucy Seymour, aged 4, who had been born in Battersea, Surrey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                             XIV

 

                                 PRINCIPAL  KNOWN  EVENTS 

                     IN  THE  LIFE  OF  WILLIAM  STAPLETON

 

 

The principal steps in William Stapleton's life and business ventures in Australia have been summarised by his great grandson, Len Stapleton, (with considerable amplification by the writer, also a great grandson) as follows:

 

1837  ― William Stapleton arrives in the colony as a free man.

 

1839 ―  Sarah Leonard arrives in Sydney on The Lady Raffles.

 

1840  9 March ―  William and Sarah marry at Bathurst.

 

1841  30 June ― William is granted a publican's license for the Hope Inn at Kelso.  The previous licensee had been John mcdonald  (1839-40).  The site of the Hope is unknown, but Kelso already boasted at least three other inns around this time:  The Dun Cow (from about 1824), The King William and The Golden Fleece.  From 1832 the latter was run by a Mrs Dillan who provided a comfortable stopping place for visitors to Bathurst and travellers from Sydney.  The great drought of 1837-40 could have contributed to William's subsequent insolvency as proprietor of the Hope Inn.

 

1842    22 February ― Registry of Bankruptcy ― sequestration, Wm. Stapleton of Bathurst, innkeeper.  Apparent debts ₤307 2s 6p;  assets ₤120 8s;  deficiency ₤186 14s 6p.  Lost licence.  Threatened with debtors' prison, but allowed to trade out of his debts.  Arrested shortly afterwards and on 28 July 1842 was confined in prison to await his trial.  On 23 August 1842 he was committed and on 27 September 1842 he was tried before His Honour Mr Justice Stephens at the Circuit Court in Bathurst.^[104]  He was found guilty of "fraudulent insolvency" having withheld an asset of ?30.  Although his jury recommended him "to" mercy, for his crime William was sentenced to twelve calandar [sic] months of "hard labor" in Parramatta Gaol, but at his request was allowed to serve his sentence in Bathurst Gaol.^[105]  Unfortunately, the box containing the Supreme Court papers on William's trial has been lost or misplaced by N.S.W. State Archives.  However, the "Description Book" for Bathurst Gaol has survived and for 1842 it shows the following facts about prisoner William Stapleton:

 

Entry No. 142

Ship                 "Free"*

Arrived            1837

Yr of Birth      1819

Height             5 feet 5? Inches

Make               stout

Complexion     fresh

                                                Hair Colour    dark

Eye Colour     dark

                                               General Remarks:    "Scar between fore [sic

           I.e. Four?] Middle fingers of

           Left hand."

Occupation     Licensed Victualler

 

* As a free man.  Had he come to Australia as a convict the name of his prison  ship would have been written in here.

 

8 December ― William's letter to Governor Sir George Gipps humbly begging him "to take into (his) humane consideration, the wretched situation of himself, and his poor wife:  and be graciously pleased to Grant him a mitigation of Sentence which would enable him, by pursuing an honest course, to repair in some degree his damaged character, and also to raise the means of supporting his wife and expectant child, in a lawful and industrious application of his exertions".^[106]  William gives his reasons for his petition as being that "close confinement" has affected his health "aggravated also by the additional Calamity of Petitioner's wife being near her confinement". 

 

12 December ― following a request to the visiting justice of the Bathurst Gaol, Thomas (H. Or O.) Busby reported that the prisoner was in good health and had never reported himself as being sick while he had been in prison.  Busby apparently supported his statement with a doctor's certificate ? By "a medical gentleman in charge of the Gaol."

 

             14 December ―  birth of William's first child, Frances Emily in Bathurst.

 

1843  9 January ―  Above Governor General G.G. Gipp's signature is the direction on the above   correspondence "Let the Police Magistrate   be directed to inform Stapleton    that I regret I can see  nothing in his case to authorize a mitigation of the sentence  pronounced upon him."  William  apparently received this decision on or about 9  January.[107]

           

        9 June ―  William's wife, Sarah, wrote to the Honorable James Dowling, Knight,   Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New South Wales in the following        terms:

 

                                   "The Humble Petition of Sarah Stapleton,

                                     Sheweth,

              . . . . That (William Stapleton) has been confined in the Gaol at Bathurst amongsthe worst of characters during the last six months and under confinement for three months Before his Trial.

 

That he is now in Ill health in consequence of such  confinement and the state of the Gaol your Petitioner  having an infant has been obliged to part with all she possessed to   maintain her, and will be destitute if  longer deprived of her  husband's assistance.

 

            And humbly prays that his case be recommended for a  mitigation of sentence.

 

                                                                                                 (Signed)  Sarah Stapleton"[108]

 

            Sarah's submission was supported by the Bathurst Gaol chaplain, Rev. Thomas Sharp, who affirmed that William had always conducted himself "with great propriety" as a prisoner and by Rev. Charles Woodward, BCL, chaplain at Kelso.  As well, both  I.T. Morisset and Alfred Staples, possibly officials at the gaol, the latter possibly its governor, spoke well of William and each recommended favourable consideration for Sarah's plea.  Staples "humbly recommend(ed)" a pardon for William Stapleton.

 

            12/13 June ―  The Colonial Secretary, E. Daas Thompson sends a letter to the Visiting Justice of the Gaol, Bathurst saying "In consequence of a report by His Honor Mr Justice Stephen . . . I am directed by His Excellency the Governor to inform you, that He approves of the residue of Stapleton's sentence being remitted accordingly;  such to request that you will cause him to be discharged."[109]

 

            17 June ― William released from prison in Bathurst.  In September his financial situation was:  assets ,225, expenses ,150, leaving him ,75 in the clear.

 

1844   12 September ―  Bought three 2 rood town allotments,

            Section 31, Nos. 6,7 and 8 in Bathurst at a cost of ,4 each.  By means of a certificate issued on 2-10-44 William was discharged from insolvency following his letter of application to that end dated 16-9-1844, a photo-copy of which appears on the next page.[110]  The NSW Government Gazette of 13 August of that year shows that this discharge was as from 19-9-1844.

          

1845  10 April ― Second child, William, born in Bathurst.  3-6-45 purchased more land in Bathurst, Lot 12, Sec.31 for ₤8-13s-4d and 2 roods, Bathurst Estate Lot 9, Sec.31 for ₤12-13-4d.  An early map of Bathurst, date unknown, shows five blocks of land, lots 6, 7, 8, 9 and 12 in Section 31 as belonging to "W. Stapleton".  These properties were bounded by Rankin, Lambert, George and Piper Streets, only one block from the centre of modern Bathurst.

 

 

 

 

            A reference to a William Stapleton in the NSW State Archives gives him as being granted a publican's licence for The Bathurst Traveller at The Weatherboard, Bathurst Rd.  The licence was granted by a Justice of the Peace sitting in the courthouse at Hartley on 28 August 1845.  The licence fee was ?26 5 0 pa.  "Weatherboard" was the original name for Wentworth Falls.^[111]

 

By the mid-1820s a well-known inn known as The Weatherboard was plying its trade on the western road where it crossed a creek sixty miles from Sydney.  Allan Cunningham, the explorer, described it then as 'a very good mountain inn'.  It was later described as having three parlours, seven bedrooms (and) stabling for seventeen horses.^[112]  In effect, as will be shown below, over the years The Weatherboard,  The Bathurst Traveller and The Weatherboard Inn  were the names given to the same hostelry.

 

In her The Rankens of Bathurst Mrs W. Ranken says that Governor Richard Bourke and his entourage, accompanied by Surveyor General Thomas Mitchell, stayed overnight at The Weatherboard on Monday, 21 October on his excursion to Bathurst in 1832.^[113]

 

The Bathurst Historical Society's research officer has informed the writer that The Bathurst Traveller  was in the Licensing District of the Vale of Clwydd (Lithgow area) in 1838 when the licensee was an Abraham Joseph Levy.  The research officer of the Lithgow & District Family History Society has also supplied a detailed account of the inn taken from one of its journals. To quote, this says:

 

"A man named John Mills was the second indivdual, after Pierce Collits, to commence the erection and establishment of an inn, in the year 1826, at Jamieson Valley.  Mills had been in the colony 14 years and had held various (positions) as clerk in the Commissariat, and later conducted the Swan Inn at Penrith, though (it was) not his property.  At the stage where he had erected a temporary bark building for his family, with the framework for additional apartments for the public, he became embarrassed for money, and his title to the premises as they stood were sold by auction by the sheriff.  Alexander Frazer became the purchaser thereof for ?250.  He subsequently completed the public accommodation;  a house containing 4 bedrooms, 2 servants' rooms or sitting rooms, a house for the host and family, an 8 stall stable, store, stockyards, etc at an outlay of capital at least equal to the originaal purchase money.  These he advised completed by the 19th January 1830.  It became licensed as "The Bathurst Traveller", Weatherboard;  known later as "The Weatherboard Inn", and the last licence record we have is Richard Norris in 1868.  The inn was of timber construction and plastered on the inside walls.  No trace of the inn remains."

 

The research office also writes:  "The BATHURST TRAVELLER, later known as THE WEATHERBOARD, was situated at Jamieson Valley (near Wentworth Falls) in the District of Evan.  I believe it was recorded to be registered at the Vale of Clwyd [sic], which is/was a "suburb" of Lithgow. . . William Stapleton is recorded as the licensee in 1845." ^[114]

 

1846    9 July ― William sells Lot 8, Sec.31 in Bathurst to a Patrick Donnelly for £50.

             11 November —  purchases Lots 23, 24 and 25 (Section 31 Bathurst?) For £12.

1847   28 August ― Wm. Stapleton still Licensed Victualler of the Bathurst Traveller at    The Weatherboard   as Wentworth Falls was then known.

 

184-?   Bought a stone house in Glebe for ₤1200, Lot 14, DP980532, a Glebe Street frontage through to Crown Street (a lane), now two dwellings, 27 and 29 Glebe Street.  These properties are still standing as private dwellings.  The writer of these words visited them in October 1993 and took some photographs of their exteriors and the interior of No.29.  From the roofline and facade of the two storeyed semi-detached houses they looked as if they had always been separately occupied, maybe one by William, Sarah and family and the other as an investment.  The occupants of No.29 were a young couple who kindly invited the writer inside their home and through it to their backyard.  The atmosphere is now considerably modernised and "yuppified".  The internal staircase is fine and a large sundeck has been built out from what may be an upstairs back bedroom.

 

1949     ― William now a “dealer” living in Glebe.  Third child,  Frederick Thomas

              (the writer’s grandfather) born  20-3-1849.

 

            17 August ─  “Mr Stapleton”, his wife and two children depart Sydney for Adelaide

            on the brig Phantom.  Third child, Frederick, a baby in arms not counted.  See next.

 

1850    19 February― William, his wife Sarah and their three children depart  from Adelaide on the barque Robert Henderson bound for California.  The vessel of 368 tons, mastered by Captain Toohig, was carrying a cargo of "6,000 palings" and 199 passengers.[115]     As will be shown below their eventual return journey took a little over seven weeks so they probably arrived in San Francisco about mid-April, 1850.

 

            A contemporary weekly newspaper, The Shipping Gazette was published between

             23-5-1844 and 31-12-1860 and it showed the names of passengers arriving in and departing from Sydney on the various sailings.  Those bound for San Francisco, as researched for possible years of William's departure, did not include the Stapleton name amongst their passengers.  However, the newspaper did show a Mr and Mrs Stapleton and their two children leaving Sydney for Adelaide on the brig Phantom on 17 August 1849.[116]  The Hodge Index of passengers arriving in Adelaide in those times had Phantom arriving there with the Stapleton family on the 31st of that month. The count of "two children" did  not  include Frederick Thomas, the writer's grandfather, as he was then only a five months old babe in arms.  Assuming this, it meant that the family spent well over five months in Adelaide before sailing for San Francisco and the questions arise as to why they left from there and not Sydney and how they occupied themselves while waiting for eventual departure. 

 

            A feasible explanation might arise from the fact that the Hodge Index also shows a "Mr Stapleton" arriving in Adelaide on Phantom from Sydney on 16 April 1849.  If this was our William did he go to Adelaide at that time to investigate business opportunities in the new South Australia, which had been founded in 1834 as a province entirely separate from New South Wales?  Seeing business potential there did he decide to relocate in the very young settlement?  Having returned to Adelaide with his family at the end of August 1849 did he then decide for some reason (lack of business success or the lure of opportunities on the Californian goldfields) to take himself and family to San Francisco?  It will be recalled that legend had him there in a tent shop selling mining implements and William Stapleton's record shows his entrepreneurial nature was such that these speculations are logical.

 

            Unfortunately, this hypothesis falls because no evidence could be found of a "Mr Stapleton" returning to Sydney by sea between 16 April and the two Stapletons with three children leaving Adelaide for San Francisco on Robert Henderson on 19 February 1850!  Maybe this "Mr Stapleton" was the William in question and he stayed in Adelaide and his wife, Sarah, and their three children sailed to that city to join him prior to their departure for America?

 

1851   5 June 1851 ―  The indenture "made the fifth day of June in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty one" drawn up for deeding William's property in Crown Street, Glebe to Peter Sutton, his brother-in-law, to be held in trust for Sarah or, on her decease, to their children upon their attaining the age of 21 with other arrangements made for any of their daughters who might marry before that age.[117]  The settlement seems to have been made for a year and Sutton paid ten shillings in the process, no doubt a "peppercorn" purchase price.  William was described as "a merchant" and Sutton as a "drayman" in the papers for the conveyance, the indenture for which was signed (but see the next paragraph) before Peter Macpherson at Sydney on 14 June 1856.[118] 

 

            There is a strange anomaly here for William and his family were in California in 1851.  The deed itself shows it was drawn up on 5 June 1851, but a closer examination shows his genuine signature only at the bottom of the first of its two pages with what appears to be his, Sutton's and Sarah's names in identical handwriting, but not William's, as signage at its close.  Each of these three terminal signatures has a bracketed entry of initials like "LQ" after it (ie, "per", or signing on behalf of) indicating they were written by someone else, which in this case looks like the same person.

 

1852   11 December ―  William, his wife and children, two boys and two girls, arrive in Sydney on the Asa Packer, a vessel of 391 tons registered in Philadelphia, USA.  She had left San Francisco on 29 September 1852 and had called at Tahiti.  Her master was "W.S. Crothus", who had died six days before arrival there, and her lading was "merchandise".  The agent was a "Mr Reid".  The Stapleton family had travelled "cabin (first?) Class" and there were 38 other passengers, including another child plus nine men and one woman in steerage.[119]

 

            At this point the "peculiar circumstance" previously adverted to requires amplification.  A later examination of the list of passengers on this Asa Packer voyage showed a "Mr Bates" among them as well as "Mr Stapleton, wife and four children" when their ship docked in Sydney.  It will be recalled that "Bates" might have been William's pseudonym in his first arrival in Sydney possibly on Fairlie in 1837.  Is this purely coincidental?  Could Sarah Stapleton and the three children they had with them on their departure from San Francisco have travelled cabin class while William, as a matter of saving cost, voyaged in a lower class under the name of Bates?  This might have been to avoid an embarrassing question as to why William did not travel in the cabin with Mrs Stapleton and her three children.

 

During this voyage the Stapleton's fourth child, Sarah, was born on 10 October 1852.  She was to be later baptised at Christ Church St Lawrence (near present Railway Square in Sydney).  William's address is given then as licensed dealer living with family at Parramatta Street, George Street West, Sydney.

 

1853    28 May ― William was granted a "General Publican's License" [sic] to become Publican, Licensed Victualler, for "the House known by the Sign of 'the California Hotel'" (or Inn), corner of Parramatta and Kensington Streets, Sydney.  At that time the address of this inn or hotel was 15 Parramatta Street (now "Broadway"), as shown in Sydney City Council rate notices of the time.  The licence was granted until 1 July 1854 and his sureties for it were Thomas Frost of Parramatta Street and John Walton of the City of Sydney.  William and his sureties lodged the sum of ?50 each in recognisances for his reputational fitness for the licence.  The California Hotel was adjacent to where the Carlton Kent Brewery until recently stood or stands today in Broadway.  A hotel, The County Clare Inn (previously The Kegworth Tavern still stands on the corner where Kensington Street meets Parramatta Road, Broadway (see photograph);  this was definitely the site of The California, as shown in Waugh & Cox's street directory of Sydney in 1855 where it is given that No.15. Was occupied by William Stapleton, innkeeper.

 

1854      Licensed victualler, California Hotel.

 

1855  18 May ― fifth child, Charles, born.  He was the last of Sarah's and William's  children. 

 

31 July ― William buys a Glebe Street property (County of Cumberland, Parish of Petersham, NSW) from a George Wigram Allan and William Goodwin, a transaction recited in the indenture of 1860 mentioned below.  The purchase price was ₤1000 plus ₤100 outstanding interest owed by Goodwin to his mortgagor of the property.

 

1856  14 June ― The indenture made between William Stapleton, Peter Sutton and Sarah Stapleton that was drawn up in 1851 apparently became operative with its signing by the three parties in the presence of a Peter Macpherson, "Clark" [sic], on this date.  William still holds licence for the California Hotel  until April after which a George Walkley assumes ownership in July 1856.  Thereafter, no mention of  William in connection with the licence of this hostelry.

 

1857  13 May ― The Asa Packer departs bound for Calcutta.  The Master was named Jones and the agent was "Towns".  A section devoted completely to the ascertained movements and fate of this ship appears later in these chronicles. As has been already mentioned, the first shipment of "Waler" horses left Sydney for Calcutta in 1857 so this could well have been on Asa Packer accompanied by William.

 

1858  Sand's Street Directory shows a Sarah Stapleton as head of the household residing at Glebe Street, Glebe.  This would indicate that William was absent from his home, probably on one his overseas ventures, when the directory was drawn up in 1858.

 

1859  21 December ― William Stapleton borrows ₤110 from William Woodford on mortgage at an interest rate of 10% pa, the principal to be repaid on 21 December 1861.  The loan security was the Glebe Street property.  Recited in the 1860 indenture described below.

 

1860  14 July ― An indenture signed by William Stapleton wherein he disposed of his   Glebe Street property  (or part of it?) To Sidney  Charles Burt, an auctioneer, for  ₤170.^[120]

 

After July 1860 William Stapleton disappears from the records so far found  except for a remote possibility that the William Stapleton whose death took place in Melbourne in 1876, which has been discussed already in these pages,  might have been the same person.  There is no will from him in the NSW Probate Office and his death certificate, if there was one, has yet to be discovered.  His name does not appear in a NSW State Archives index of those who died intestate between 1818 and 1914, which could indicate that he died overseas and that his death was not officially recorded in this State.  Also, through the regular issues of Sand's Street Directory, which began publication in 1856, Sarah Stapleton's name appears from time to time but there is no mention of William, viz:

 

1858    Stapleton, Sarah, Glebe St, Glebe.

 

1867  Sarah Stapleton, 9 Albert St.  Current street directories do not list an Albert Street in Glebe, but there is one in Redfern (most likely) and such-named streets in Forest Lodge and Newtown.

 

1868  Mrs Sarah Stapleton,               do

 

1875  Thomas Stapleton, carter, 661 Crown St (Sarah's son, our maternal grandfather was a carter, or drayman).

 

1876  Mrs Stapleton, Nicholson St (Palmer to Dowling Sts).

 

1877  Mrs Sarah Stapleton, off Bourke St.

Thomas Stapleton, 661 Crown St.

 

1879    Sarah Stapleton, "Chester Villa Terrace", 11 Esther St.

Thomas Stapleton, Young St, Redfern.

 

1882  Mrs Sarah Stapleton, 3 Esther St.

Thomas Stapleton, Young St.

 

1883}  

 To } Thomas Stapleton, 144 Young St.

1885}

 

1890    Thomas Stapleton, 164 Young St, Redfern.

            (Note:  144 and 164 are the same property)

 

 

From the above chronology it might well have been in 1882-83 that Sarah moved into the room that Thomas built for her at the rear of his home at 164 Young Street, Redfern.

 

 

 

As has been reported elsewhere in these pages, Sarah was to die in 1893 and in a Family Affairs section  of The Sydney Morning Herald of 18 July of that year on page 1 appeared this death notice::

 

            STAPLETON.  July 18  at the residence of her sister, MRS PETER SUTTON,                       MARUNYA,  George Street, Manly Beach, SARAH, relict of the late William                         Stapleton, aged 75 years. 

            Safe in the arms of Jesus.

 

This reference is of great importance as it is the only confirmed reference that shows that William Stapleton had indeed died sometime between July 1860 and 1893 and other inferences would lead to the assumption that his death was between July 1860 and 1867.

 

An unrelated researcher on a topic connected with this family history, John Williams of Perth and the writer have found the following information about William and Sarah Stapleton in early Australian newspaper data bases.  There is no certainty that some of this is relevant to this family history as there was more than one William Stapleton in New South Wales in these times;   however it may have some value

 

As an introduction to these newspaper references to William Stapleton, and purely for general interest about him  the Sydney Monitor of 2 February 1828 has him in, in a list of many donors, giving five shillings in Bathurst towards the cost of erecting in Sydney a memorial stature to Governor Bourke.  William had been but around twelve months in Australia when he made this for the time comparatively substantial payment and it is confirmation of his arrival in 1837 according to his Bathurst Gaol record.  It also lends credence to a claim mentioned elsewhere in this story that he was by no means poor when he came to Australia.

 

It appears that in 1859 there may have existed two California Inns.  George Wakely had applied for the license for Paramatta and Kensington Sts, and Richard Briant applied for one in Glebe (Ultimo and Athlone).  Looking further back William Stapleton had transferred his license in December 1855 to a Harriet Clark (Ultimo street), and Harriett had applied for renewal in April 1856.

 

William Stapleton seemed to have had a disagreement in a "partnership" in July 1855, with the lease on Paramatta Street property expiring and in a Licensing Court case he was successful in transferring  the license from Paramatta Street to Glebe as the following transcript indicates.

 

The Sydney Morning Herald,  Saturday 7 July 1855,  pp.4. 5

 

Licenses.   At noon yesterday a Court of Petty Sessions was held at the Central Police Court to consider matters to be brought before it under the Publicans’ Licensing Act.  William Stapleton applied for leave to remove his license from a house in Parramatta-street known as the California Inn to one situated at his house at the Glebe.  Inspector Connor had filed an objection, setting forth that another public-house was not required at the Glebe;  and that at the annual licensing meeting, William Stapleton and William Wakely were applicants for a license to be granted for a house then in the occupation of Stapleton, whose lease, it was alleged on the other side, would transpire before the license could come into operation.  The Bench granted a certificate to each, leaving the right to the house to be decided by another tribunal or the parties concerned,  as by that means they would not increase the number of public-houses then in existence.  Stapleton’s lease had now expired.  Wakely was entitled to the house and Stapleon asked permission to remove.  Mr Nicho’s appeared on behalf of the applicant.  The Bench considered for some time, and finally resolved on granting the application, under the circumstances, though of opinion that the vicinity of the Glebe was already sufficiently supplied with public-house accommodation.

                                     

On 9 January 1856 William Stapleton has an auction company sell a Grand Pianoforte for him, and coincidentally a Mr W Stapleton heads off to Melbourne on the steam ship Wonga Wonga the same day.  Note that the Melbourne William Stapleton dissolves his partnership around the same time. 

 

By March 1856, the Sydney shipping agents Church & Molison (cargo and passengers) are looking for William to come and see them at their offices, Custon House.

 

In August 1858 a William Stapleton advertises for the return of two pointer pups, lost from Pitt street, Redfern.  This William seems to be associated in some way with a W. Kennedy of Pitt street, and Furlong and Kennedy's Flour Mill, Bathurst street west.  This is notable, as a Sarah Stapleton applies for a license to the Royal Oak Inn, Pitt-street in April 1860.  The license was transferred to E. Allen in September 1860.

 

Despite the 1858 reference, Sarah Stapleton seems to still be in Glebe in May 1859, as she advertises to let the property at 19 Glebe-street, Glebe, and a couple of weeks later advertises for the return of 8 ducks lost or stolen from her on Mr Allen's land.

 

            Another possibility concerning William's "disappearance" has to be considered, that he could have left his family after July 1860, either on a planned limited visit to his forbears in England during which he died, he might have returned to America on business, or perhaps he abandoned his wife and children.  From the known facts the latter would have been out of character for William as the industrious, entrepreneurial apparently religious person he seems to have been.  For the same reason, the previously expressed thought that had "jumped ship" on arrival in Sydney is an improbable one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

APPENDIX  A

 

                                                          THE ASA PACKER

 

This vessel has been designated as having some connection with the activities and possible fate of great grandfather William Stapleton.  It is known that there was a ship named the "Asa Packer" plying between Australian coastal ports and internationally to and from Australia in the 1850s.  It was a barque of 286 tons that was registered in Philadelphia, USA, but never registered with Lloyds of London.  An assuredly the same American vessel named Asa Packer, a barque of 329 tons ― note discrepancy in stated tonnages here and below ― was certainly wrecked on 23 May 1861.  Her dimensions, in feet were 91.2 x 23.7 x 11.7 and her rudder was broken when she was driven against the rocks.  That event took place on a reef in The Rip off Point Nepean while the vessel was attempting to leave Port Phillip, Victoria against the advice of the pilot because of SW gales.  She was under the command of Captain J. Cardey, loaded with ballast and bound for Newcastle.  A lifeboat manned by the combined crews of the Customs and Health officers' boats put off to rescue the crew but could not breech the seas that were breaking over her and the men, who were seen clinging to the rigging.  At a second attempt all thirteen on board were saved;  they were referred to as crew members and apparently the vessel was not carrying passengers at the time.^[121]

 

An enquiry made of the US Library of Congress elicited the following information on the Asa Packer, a barque of 391 38/95 tons with dimensions 130.6 X 27.1 X 12 feet with one deck and three masts.  She was built and first registered in Philadelphia on 30 September 1850 and then "permanently" there on 18 December 1851.  The owner was a certain " Packer, [of] Mauch Chunk" on the Upper Lehigh River and the master was William L. Grothan.^[122]  (In passing, it is noted that Asa Packer's master when William Stapleton and his family travelled on her from San Francisco to Sydney in 1852 was W.S. Grothus, most likely the William L. Grothan named above!)

 

To summarise the above and related dates the Asa Packer:

 

30- 9-1850- First registered, Philadelphia after building.

 

18-12-1851- Permanently registered, Philadelphia.

29- 9-1852- Left San Francisco with Stapletons on board in cabin  class.

 

11-12-1852- Arrived Sydney.

 

The movements of the Asa Packer have been determined from NSW state archives as far as its records go.^[123]  The Asa Packer?

 

 1- 1-1854? Left Melbourne for Sydney arriving 10-1-54 and left Sydney for Melbourne on 28-1-54.

 

 3- 3-1854? Left Melbourne for Sydney arriving 20-3-54.  No record of  departure from Sydney.

 

 2- 6-1854? Left Morton Bay for Sydney, arriving 19-6-54.

 

           12- 7-1854? Left Sydney for London.

 

           21- 6-1855- Arr. Sydney from London, Master: M. Broomfield plus 12                                                                      crew and 24 passengers.

 

**     25- 8-1855? Left Sydney for Calcutta (tonnage 360),    Master: Patrick;  Agents: Towns.

 

        22- 9-1856- Arr. Sydney from Calcutta, Master: Joseph Torenson(?)   Plus 13 crew

                            And  passenger W. Stewart.

 

**   22-10-1856? Left Sydney for Calcutta (t.327),   Master: Jones;  Agents: Towns.

 

        1- 4 1857- Arr. Sydney from Calcutta, Master: M. Jones plus 14   crew, no  passengers.

 

**    13- 5-1857? Left Sydney for Calcutta (t.373), Master: Jones;  Agents:   Towns.

                         Four adult passengers and ten children.

 

        13- 8-1857? Left Calcutta for Sydney; arrived Sydney 28-10-57,

        Master: Jones;  Agents: R. Towns & Co. 

        Passengers:  Mr (or Mrs) Steavans? And Mr Brown.

 

       27-11-1858? Left Sydney for "Anatam" (t.328). 

       Master: Gold;  Agents: Towns.

 

Note 1:  Anatam, cannot be found in modern atlases nor is this                             name in the index of Black's General Atlas as published   1854.^[124]  There is, however, Anataham Island in the Mariana  Island Group, a USA trust territory in the Pacific Ocean between New Guinea and Japan (16.21.5^o N 145.40.5^o E).  For some reason               Anataham was a popular destination for ships with   passengers leaving Sydney in the mid-1800s.  Could this have been a staging point for Australians bound for the Californian         goldfields for which, at this time, many ships were leaving   Sydney for San Francisco with large passenger lists?

 

  18-5-1859  Arr. From Melbourne, Master:  Alexander Gold plus

                   13 crew, no passengers.

 

  9- 6-1859? Left Sydney for South Sea Islands (t.319),    M: Gold;  A: Towns.

 

             25-4-1860  Arr. From (South Sea Islands??) With crew of 13

             And no passengers.

 

            12-8-1860  Left Sydney for Newcastle.

 

           15-3-1861  Arr. From Adelaide, Master:  Henry Miles??

           Plus crew of 12 and no passengers.

 

           13-5-1861  Completely wrecked leaving Port Phillip Bay.

            Bound for Newcastle, NSW. Master:  J. Cardey.

            See above for full details.

 

Note 2:  According to Sands Street Directory of Sydney for

1858-59, "Towns" was "Robert Towns & Co.", a "merchant" whose address                         was "Towns Wharf, Moores Road" off Victoria   Street.  Modern street                                  directories do not show this wharf or  road as the relevant area at Millers                               Point has been entirely rebuilt.  However, an 1855 map of Sydney (see next                            page) clearly shows the road and the wharf which is to the west of the bay                              between Dawes and Millers Points.^[125]

 

Note 3:  Was the variation in tonnages as given for this vessel based on                                     measured laden displacement on each of its several  above voyages?

 

Note 4:  William Stapleton's name does not feature in any of these notes of                             sailings of Asa Packer.

 

 

Len Stapleton speculates that William took ship with his horses on 13 May 1857 when the ship set sail for Calcutta;  it could have been as early as    25 August, 1855 as shown above, the year before he was free of his publican's licence at the California Hotel, which was on 1 July 1856.  However, it is unlikely that William would have begun his horse-shipping enterprise while he was still the licensee of the California Inn.  As his deed transferring his assets for holding by Peter Sutton on behalf of Sarah Stapleton did not become operative until 14 June 1856 it is more likely that William's new activity began on 22-10-1856 when the Asa Packer next left Sydney for Calcutta (see above).

 

APPENDIX  B

                                              

ARTICLE APPEARING IN HERITAGE, JOURNAL OF THE AUSTRALIAN                                     GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY IN 1998  (by  JOHN  DUGDALE)

 

 

                        WILLIAM STAPLETON, INN-KEEPER and "DEALER"

 

 

Whatever else he may have been, great grandfather William Stapleton was an enterprising man for his known history comprises several periods when he was "a dealer", the licensee of different inns during the period between 1 July 1841 and 30 June 1856 or engaged in shipping horses to the British Army in India.  The inns concerned were The Hope in Kelso, The Bathurst Traveller at The Weatherboard (Wentworth Falls) and the Californian Inn in Parramatta Street (ie, Parramatta Road) in Sydney.  Except for the last, which was near modern Railway Square and must have been of some substantiality, very little is known about the nature of the two other establishments for which he had gained control as a licensed victualler.  Chronologically speakingy, as these three establishments were respectively at the end, the middle and the beginning of the Sydney-Bathurst road, and as William was closely associated with Bathurst in his early days in Australia, this section of the history of the Stapleton line appears in these pages.

 

Before beginning the story, an acknowledgment must be paid to another descendent of William Stapleton, great grandson Ronald Charles Stapleton, of Robina, Queensland, who has done detailed genealogical research on the family, its historical settings and matters associated with its consti-tuents and their times.  When Ron Stapleton's work contributes specifically to this section it will be indicated in the text by his name or thus: (RCS).

 

 

The Early Days of Bathurst

 

It will be known to those acquainted with the colonial history of Australia that the earliest settlers were first able to break away from the Cumberland Plains surrounding Sydney when a passable route across the confining Blue Mountains was discovered.  On 11 May 1813 Gregory Blaxland, William Charles Wentworth and Lieutenant William Lawson crossed the mountains as far as Mt York and glimpsed the fertile territory beyond to the west.  They then proceeded further on to Mt Blaxland before returning to report their findings to a delighted Governor Lachlan Macquarie who had commissioned their journey.  On 11 November of the same year the Governor despatched George William Evans, the government's deputy surveyor of lands, with two free men and three convicts to continue exploring west from Mt Blaxland.  In three weeks they got as far as the stream that Evans named "Macquarie River" near where it now divides the present city of Bathurst from the adjoining town of Kelso.  The party ventured approximately another thirty miles down the river before turning back to Sydney where Evans reported enthusiastically to Macquarie on the fine agricultural country he had traversed.

 

In 1814 the Governor commissioned William Cox, a magistrate and landholder of Clarenden, Windsor, and supplied him with a band of twenty-eight men, who were mostly convicts (who were all of Ticket-of-Leave status), and six soldiers to construct a road from Emu Ford on the Nepean River by following the Blaxland-Evans route.^[126]  The selected convicts had to be volunteers of trustworthy character, of good work ethic and for their satisfactory contributions were promised emancipation at the conclusion of the project.  The total length of the road proved to be 101 miles and Cox's journal recounts the physical barriers to be overcome, provisioning problems, bitter weather and illnesses and accidents that overtook the party during the road's construction.

 

For the organisation of his work Cox had depôts built along the way.  The first was near present-day Blaxland about 5-6 miles (RCS) west from Emu Ford, the beginning of the road.  The second was at what is now Wentworth Falls, which came to be known as The Weatherboarded Hut  or The Weatherboard Hut  because it was constructed of such timber.  Its location had a rivulet of fine spring water running through it and William Cox described it thus:

Friday to Saturday, 1st October -- Began this day to erect the building for the second Depôt, the situation is pleasant(?), being on a ridge high enough in front which is due east, to overlook the standing timber altogether, and at the back there is a considerable quantity of ground without a tree.  There is a grass tree and other coarse food which the bullocks eat.  The building is 17ft by 12 [with 3ft sides], the whole weather-boarded, gable-ended, and with the door at the east end.^{[127]      [128]}

 

Beginning on 18 July the road was completed on 21 January 1815 after almost six months of arduous labour.  Governor Macquarie, accompanied by his wife and a retinue of thirty-seven men, was thus able to set out on 15 April to ride the length of the new road, a journey that took them nine days.  It is recorded that Macquarie and his entourage camped overnight near or at the Weatherboard Hut site on 27 April 1815 on his way to Bathurst and on his return journey on 16 May.  While there the Governor named several landmarks including The King's Tableland   and  Pitt's Amphitheatre, changing the last to Jamison's Valley on the way back to Sydney.  He noted that "A good store has been built here, in which we dined."(RCS) 

 

On 7 May 1815 the Governor fixed a site for the town of Bathurst where Cox had built a terminous depôt adjacent to the Macquarie River.^[129]  A general plan of the future town was laid out by Deputy Surveyors Evans and Meehan, who were with the vice-regal party along with Surveyor-General Oxley.  However, in order to bring orderly settlement to the newly discovered area, on 10 June 1915 Macquarie placed restrictions on travelling to Bathurst, government permission being necessary to do so.  These limitations continued to be enforced until into the 1820s leading to little roadside development along the Western Road until the controls were eased to be finally lifted by Governor Major-General Sir Richard Bourke after his arrival in New South Wales on 3 December 1831.  At his direction Surveyor-General Thomas Mitchell prepared a new plan for Bathurst in 1832;  the town was gazetted on 23 January 1833. 

 

The settlement at Bathurst had been at first on the north-eastern side of the Macquarie River. It soon extended to its south-western bank, however, but Kelso was not differentiated from Bathurst until about 1825 when it was named thus by Governor Major-General Sir Thomas Brisbane, supposedly because his wife had been born in a Scottish village of that name.  In the meantime, in 1824 a daily coach service was inaugurated between Bathurst and Parramatta by James Smith and Thomas Fuller.  Cobb & Co opened up a service in 1861 when the journey took twenty-four hours with stages every 12-15 miles. The railway linking up Parramatta and Bathurst was opened on 4 April 1876.

 

Reverting to the subject of earlier days, once the mountains had been passed several variations evolved in the way to Bathurst, one of which was Mitchell's "high road" west of Mt Victoria.  He had begun planning this just after he first came to Sydney in 1828 and by 1830 it was in popular use.  However, it was not until Mitchell's  Pass of Victoria  (orignally known as Vittoria) was opened on 23 October 1832 that the problem of the difficult descent from the tableland escarpments of the Blue Mountains was satisfactorily solved.  Mitchell had built his pass against the opinion of the Governor and Colonial Secretary of the times, but its success is evidenced by Victoria Pass's continued viability in modem times in the passage from Sydney to Bathurst and westward.

 

Mitchell was also instrumental in re-routing the original road as it climbed steeply up Lapstone Hill on the eastern flank of the Blue Mountains.  Via what is now known as Mitchell Pass it took a new, easier way over the Lennox Bridge (completed by David Lennox on 28 June 1833), still standing as the oldest road bridge in continuous use in mainland Australia.  Governor Bourke opened this road on 22 March 1834 and it was not until 1926 that the latest route came into being.   

 

Once the Western Road could be used freely those who traversed it were catered for by the establishment of inns at the staging posts along the way.  Many of these early inns in New South Wales were rather primitive affairs, at least in their beginning years.  When they first operated some might have been little more than huts with provision for eating, sleeping and stabling for horses.  This would have been so, particularly during early nineteenth century times on the Sydney-Bathurst road.  For instance, William Cox's rough secure hut, built of weatherboards for the storage of supplies at a point of his road, was soon called  The Weatherboard Hut, shortened to  The Weatherboard.  This evolved into a popular overnight stopping place for weary sojourners across the mountains until, Cox's hut having been destroyed by fire, between June 1826 and February 1829 a man named John Mills built an inn a little distance away on the opposite side of Jamison Creek.  From 1870 the area was known as Wentworth Falls.

 

Of the great number of travellers, be they ordinary or important, who crossed the Blue Mountains to Bathurst and beyond in those pioneering days one was the young naturalist, Charles Darwin of later fame as the author of "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection" (1859).  Darwin spent the second night of his journey at The Weatherboard and over-nighted there on his return tour. 

 

When HMS Beagle anchored in Sydney Harbour on 12 January 1836 she carried with her the then almost twenty-seven years old Charles Darwin.^[130]  He had been selected by the British Admiralty to be the naturalist on board for undertaking general and specific scientific investigations during Beagle's five-year voyage and incidentally to be companion to the ship's Captain fitzroy, a future governor of New Zealand (but not the same man who became Governor of New South Wales some ten years later).  Darwin was on the ship as a civilian and thus had the freedom arising from not being a member of the navy.  Accordingly, he was able to manage his own movements while The Beagle was in Sydney for two months to check and adjust its chronometers when there was apparently no impediment to his undertaking a ten-day excursion on horse-back to Bathurst. 

 

With "a man and two horses" (RCS) Darwin began his ride on 16 January and, having ridden 55 km he spent his first night in "a very comfortable Inn at Emu Ferry, possibly The Governor Bourke Inn on the eastern bank of the Nepean River a mile north of the present railway bridge.^[131]  From there he traversed the initial ascent of the mountains by Mitchell's new road and his second night's stay was at The Weatherboard Inn.  In his diary he described it as "Weatherboard  Hut, a very good mountain inn, on a fine stream that forms a cataract at a short distance to the southward."  He noted that this was 58 miles from Sydney, undoubtedly from Macquarie Place.^[132]  An evergreen oak tree was planted in 1936 in what is now Pitt Park, Wentworth Falls to commemorate the nearby site of The Weatherboard Inn of which nothing remains except a gravel pit where its foundations were once exposed (See accompanying photograph).  Darwin arrived in Bathurst "half roasted with the intense heat" on 20 January 1836, the year before William Stapleton's arrival in that township.

 

Conditions in Bathurst at that time were primitive.  As Darwin noted in his diary:

 

Bathurst has a singular, & not very inviting appearance;  groups of small houses, a few large ones, are scattered pretty thickly over 2 or 3 miles of a bare country divided into numerous fields by lines of Rails.  A good many gentlemen live in the neighbourhood & some have good houses ─ there is a hideous little red church standing by itself on a hill;  Barracks & Government buildings.^[133]

 

Darwin doesn't mention it specifically, but there already was a Government House in the township where Governor Macquarie had stayed when he revisited Bathurst in December 1821.  A courthouse, a government storehouse and a flourishing garden are mentioned with reference to 1822 and a hospital was established in 1824, mainly for the use of prisoners and soldiers;  severe rules were laid down to prevent malingering by those of them who presented themselves for treatment.  In the muster of 1821 the population of the district was given as 287 including convicts to the number of 209 male and one female.  In 1822, when Mrs George Ranken travelled with her husband from Petersham to their homestead on his land, Kelloshiel (2000 acres which he had selected and named thus near Bathurst in 1822) there were only two other "free" women, or "gentlewomen" living in the district.^[134] 

 

It was to be another fourteen years before the first church was opened on the Bathurst side of the Macquarie River;  this was St Stephen's "Old" Presbyterian Church.  One more year was to pass before Holy Trinity Church of England was to be occupied on the Kelso side.  Details about these two churches are set out on following pages.

 

Macquarie had reserved the land on the far side of the river for government purposes and all the town settlement had taken place on the Sydney side in what is now Kelso.  As Surveyor Mitchel wrote in 1830:

 

A vast tract has been reserved as a township, but then no streets having been laid out allotments for building could neither be obtained by grant, or purchase.  The site for the town was only distinguished by a Government House, jail, Court House, post office, barracks, while the population had collected in 60 or 80 houses, built in an irregular manner on the Sydney side at a distance of a mile for [sic] the site of the intended town.^[135]

 

It was not until after the newly arrived Governor Major-General Sir Richard Bourke visited Bathurst in October 1832 that he put work in hand for developing the south-western bank of the Macquarie River for general settlement.  He ordered Surveyor-General Mitchell "to make arrangements `for opening up the town without delay'".  Bourke approved of Mitchell's plans and the assistant surveyor at Bathurst, J.B. Richards, was instructed to lay out the future city accordingly.  It is generally believed that Mitchell allocated the names of the streets, but there is no distinct proof of this.  Be that as it may, free settlers were then flocking into Australia and the population of Bathurst was growing. Once surveyed, the blocks of land in the new town were put up for public auction by the government and, as has been shown, in 1844-45 William Stapleton was able to buy five town allotments very close to the city's present central business district.  A financial house known as the Bathurst Bank was opened on 1 January 1835 but it was dissolved four-and-three-quarter years later and its assets were taken over by the Union Bank (of Sydney?).

 

One of the first public buildings to be constructed in Bathurst was the police station with its lock-up for miscreants.  However, with the increase in population a gaol was needed and one was built adjacent to the site of the present Machattie Park.  Construction with its adjoining courthouse began in 1838 and the prison was opened in 1840.  This was ironic for William Stapleton because, between 28 July 1842 and 17 June 1843, he was to be a prisoner in the brand new gaol having come to financial grief in his first eight months or so as the licence holder for The Hope Inn in Kelso.  He had held its licence from 1 July 1841 until he suffered bankruptcy in February 1842, was allowed to trade out of his debts, but was later imprisoned in Bathurst Gaol for a year for the crime of "fraudulent insolvency" — at his bankruptcy hearing he had withheld ₤30 from his declaration of assets.  William had not been the first licensee of the Hope, more details of which will be given separately further on in this article.

 

William had arrived in Sydney from England in 1837 and had probably gone to Bathurst almost immediately to join John and Mary Jaggers, his future brother and sister-in-law.  A good description of the Bathurst of 1840 is given by a Mrs Charles Meredith (Louisa Ann) who had journeyed to the young township with her husband in that year.  The Bathurst that William Stapleton thus knew was described by Mrs Meredith when she arrived there as follows:

 

At length a few straggling houses and a Church showed as we approached the settlement;  but as this is divided in two portions about a mile asunder with the deep channel which is sometimes (water permitting) the River Macquarie between them, we had yet further to go.  The second division of the township contains the gaol, police office, female factory, barracks, Scotch chapel and bank, with several stores and general shops where you may find writing paper, blonde lace, crockery and various other commodities, though very rarely the articles you required.  The private dwelings are of all grades, but chiefly of the smaller class;  the public houses, as compared with the others, are very numerous.^[136]

 

 

 

The Churches and Schools in Early Bathurst

 

William and Sarah Stapleton always acknowledged their religion to be Church of England, or "Anglican" as would probably be said today, but they were married on 9 March 1840 in the Presbyterian Church in Bathurst by its chaplain, Rev. Kirkpatrick Dickson Smythe, AM.  This is a minor puzzle for by then there was already an Anglican church on the Kelso side of the Macquarie River.  This was Holy Trinity, which was consecrated on 3 December 1836.  However, "Old" St Stephen' Presbyterian Church (pictured) was the first one to be fully established west of the Blue Mountains;  it was opened in 1835 and became the place of William's and Sarah's marriage five years later.  Why did the couple marry "outside" of their religion?  Maybe William and Smythe, its clergyman, were well acquainted by this time;  maybe the Jaggers family of whom husband John was Sarah's brother-in-law and had been in Bathurst longer than the bride and groom, had made connections with St Stephen's;  or perhaps its location was more convenient. 

 

A more certain answer to this conundrum is probably found in Ron Stapleton's record of the Presbyterian religion in Bathurst when he writes of Old St Stephen's,  "The church was available to both Wesleyans and Anglicans on Sunday afternoons, and often Rev. F. Lewis (Wesleyan), Rev. J.E. Keane (Anglican) and Rev. K.D. Smythe were all present at these services."  Mitigating against this solution is the fact that William and Sarah were married on a Monday (9-3-1840) and definitely by the Presbyterian minister, Rev. K.D. Smythe.  To add to this denominational conundrum is the fact that the baptismal registration of the Stapleton's first child, Frances, recorded she was baptised by "Wesleyan Methodist" rites (maybe in St Stephens on a Sunday?);  several years later she was re-baptised in the Church of England indicating that religious tolerance was more apparent in those days and specifically so in the Stapleton household!

 

A more complete chronology of the history of early churches in Bathurst follows:^[137]

 

1815  7 July.  Bathurst proclaimed by Governor Lachlan Macquarie and first Christian service held on the site on the north-eastern (later Kelso) side of the Macquarie River.

 

1820    First Methodist service held by a visiting minister, Reverend W. Lawry.

 

1825  6 July.  Church of England Parish of Holy Trinity established in Kelso and first permanent clergyman appointed, Reverend John Espy Keane, MA., who occupied the position until 1837.(RCS).  Greaves says that the Reverend Thomas Hassall (see immediately below) was the first clergyman to be appointed to Holy Trinity and that Keane succeeded him.^[138]

 

1826  Reverend Thomas Hassall built (on leased land?) "a place of worship" at Kelso that              was also used as a schoolroom.  This was a "`rudely constructed barn' which was                  still in use for parochial purposes in 1923."(RCS)

 

1832  18 January.  Presbyterian Parish of Bathurst founded at a meeting over which Rev. John Dunmore Lang presided.  Lang was the first Presbyterian minister to conduct his sectarian service in Bathurst,  this in a public house, the home of its publican, Tom Kite, in Kelso.(RCS)

 

Reverend J. Orton begins Methodist services in a permanent place, Orton Park, a                 W. Lane's home, named after this clergyman. 

 

1833  9 August.  On behalf of the Bathurst Presbyterians, Mr J. Busby (of Sydney's                         "Busby's Bore" fame) purchased two two-rood blocks of land in Bathurst for £1                    each, when public auctions of allotments were first held at the Police Office, Sydney.             Ron Stapleton opines that the Government might have remitted this cost.  

 

1834  February.  Foundation stone of Holy Trinity Church, Kelso laid by Archdeacon                    Broughton.  "The cost [of the church] amounted to £1000 ultimately, half of which               was advanced by the Colonial Govern-ment."(RCS)

 

1835  Ron Stapleton notes that the first service in Holy Trinity was conducted on Easter                 Sunday, 1835 by Rev. Samuel Marsden, Senior Chaplain of the Colony.

 

St Stephen's Presbyterian Church built.  Foundation clergyman was the Reverend Thomas Thomson;  his successor, Reverend K.D. Smythe, saw to its completion.  This was sold in 1872 when a new church was built on the corner of Howick and George Streets.

 

1836  3 December.  Holy Trinity Church, Kelso consecrated.

 

1837    October.  First Methodist chapel opened in a still extant building on

            A land grant in William Street.  Main church building began in 1850 and was                         finished in 1860.

 

1838  July.  A permanent Roman Catholic ministry begins under Fathers O'Reilly and                    Slattery.

 

1839  Construction begins of St Michael's Roman Catholic Church's small building at the              corner of George and Keppel Streets on land granted by the government. 

 

1840  Church of England Parish of All Saints established for Bathurst area.

 

1841  Reverend Thomas Sharpe appointed as first rector of All Saints Anglican Church.

 

St Michael's Roman Catholic Church completed.  The fist Mass was celebrated on                11 April 1861 in a larger church, the cathedral of SS Michael's and St John's.

 

1845  23 January.  All Saints Cathedral Church's foundation stone laid.  The  cathedral                 was officially opened in 1849.  In 1852 the tower was increased in height and in                     1855 a peal of bells was installed.  Other alterations and extensions were completed              between 1855 and 1874. 

 

 

Associated with the churches were the earliest schools in Bathurst for, prior to the establishment of National Schools in New South Wales in 1848, the education of the young was the traditional prerogative of ecclesiastic authorities or of establishments run by private individuals.  The Church of England, virtually the established church in New South Wales in its beginning decades, provided the first educational opportunities for the children of Bathurst.  In 1826 a school with an enrolment of seventeen pupils was begun by the Reverend Hassall.  After him, the Reverend Keane went on to oversee the village school for many years.  Apparently, he also planned to conduct a private school within his home, as indicated by Greaves in his History of Bathurst  (reference not specified):  "In a paragraph headed `Public Notice', the editor of the Sydney Gazette gave the reverend gentleman a free advertisement, which read: