Ada Whybrew

I wrote about Ada Whybrew when I listed the fourteen children of David and Susan Whybrew back in 2014. Ada was the youngest child in the family, of those who survived infancy. At that time I didn't know much about her. But thanks to the information sent to me by the same family member who provided the photo of Susan, I can now fill in some of the details.

Ada with Joseph Metson,
probably around the time of their marriage

Ada Louisa Whybrew was born to Susan in July 1895, when her oldest sisters, Harriet and Eliza (my great grandmother) were already into their late twenties and married. Susan had one further child after Ada, named Lily, but she died within a few weeks of her birth in 1896. 

So Ada was effectively the youngest child in the family for most of her life. As she grew older, she seems to have been close to her sister Ellen (Nell) who was five years older than Ada. 

Her parents were living in Colchester when Ada was born. Her father David had retired from the army and was working as a watchman. Ada was baptised at St Botolph's church in Colchester on 1 September 1895. She seems to have been the only girl in the family to have been given a second name. Possibly she was named after David's half sister Louisa.

With David retired and settled, and most of her siblings grown up and left, her life was very different to that of Harriet, Eliza and her other sisters and brothers, who had grown up during David's army days.

In later life, Ada recalled her father David being very strict but fair, wanting the best for his family. He didn't like his daughters to go to dances, so Ada would hide her dancing shoes under a hedge.

She also told the story of how, when she was fourteen, she went to work in Cambridge, helping Bill with his fish and chip shop. (Possibly this was her older brother, Bill Whybrew, who was living in Cambridge at this time, although the 1911 census described his occupation as a "carman" for a mineral water company.) She did all the chores around the shop. 

Apparently Susan, her mother, visited to see how she was getting on. When she saw Ada carrying heavy buckets of dripping in the street, she said: “Put that down!”  She took Ada back to the shop, told her to put her coat on and took her home to Colchester. This story is somewhat apocryphal, but it would certainly be in keeping with Susan's character.

Like many of the girls in Colchester, Ada liked to visit the barracks to see the soldiers, and that was where she met her husband, Joseph William Metson. She and Joe married in May 1913, when she was seventeen and he was twenty-four 

After the birth of their first daughter, Florence, in 1914, they planned to go to India. They had their papers signed and themselves vaccinated, ready to go. But war broke out and Joe was sent to fight. He was injured in the heel, and then, after returning into service, suffered a hand injury that put him out of action for the rest of the war. According to the records, he was formally discharged in September 1916.

Ada and Joseph's second child, named Joseph William after his father, was born in Colchester in the same month, September 1916. Joe senior was unable to find work in Colchester, so they moved to Islington in London, where he worked as a caretaker at a school. Their third child, Violet, was born there in 1919. 

The war was still on when they moved to the school. Islington was a target for air-raids by zeppelins. During the raids, everyone in the street would come to the school and shelter in the hall. Ada would play the piano while the raids were on and everyone else would sing.

After Joe was diagnosed with TB, they had to leave the school. Joe died in 1935. For many years Ada lived with her daughter Florrie and her husband. She died in 1980, at the age of 85, while on holiday with her son Joseph, in Devon. 

She is remembered as being short, soft and pretty, someone who was kind but strong. She was always smiling and happy and had a great sense of humour. 

Memories of Susan and David Whybrew

John Street, Colchester

I'd like to share some of the fascinating information that was sent to me recently with the photo of Susan Mason. It was recorded from a conversation with Susan's granddaughter, Violet, late in life. Violet had never met her grandparents, Susan and David. Her memories were based on recollections of what  her mother, Ada, had told her, many years earlier. So the source is rather distant in time. 

Having said that, it gives a wonderful insight into the characters of both Susan and David Whybrew, and also answers some questions that were left unanswered in the book, Susan. 

I've edited the information I was provided a little, and reformatted it to make it flow. But I hope you can still hear Violet's voice in it.

Susan was born in Australia in 1848. Her parents were Irish. She married David Whybrew while his regiment was stationed in Australia. After travelling around the world with the regiment, they returned to England and the barracks in Colchester.

Nell (Ellen) and Ada were the youngest of many children, born in many different places, including Cambridge. Susan was nearly fifty when Ada was born. Only Nell and Ada were still at home when Susan used to go away to work as a midwife. (This explains why Susan described herself as a nurse on the 1911 census, despite having no training as far as I could tell. Midwives then didn't need any qualifications.) 

In those days, midwives used to live in with the family in confinement. Susan used to go away for six weeks; three weeks before the birth and three weeks after the birth. Families used to send their pony and trap for her when she was needed. One particular family she used to attend to had lots of children and they always used to send for Susan.

Susan often used to be paid in kind. On one occasion she had been paid with sausages. As she was walking along, all the sausages were trailing along behind her!

Her husband, David, loved her dearly. He described her as 'the belle of the ball' and said that he loved every hair on her head.

David used to sing to Sue:

Sue, Sue, I’m very much in love with you, 

When your pretty little eyes of blue are smiling,

Few, few, few little girls are as nice as you,

There’s a lovely (lonely?) little part, in the middle of my heart,

Just for you, you, you.

David Whybrew was born in 1839. He was Welsh and a Regimental Sargent Major. He met Susan while with his regiment in Australia.  They married and eventually came back to live in Colchester. 

(My correspondent is unsure why the family thought David was Welsh. All the recorded evidence points to him being from Essex, with both parents English, but there's obviously a story yet to be uncovered.) 

He had retired by the time Ada was born. 

He was very strict but he loved his wife and children dearly.  Everything was done to precision. His rule was "no working on Sundays". Nell wasn’t even allowed to sew on a button. They had their own pew at church and went to church every Sunday.

Ada wasn't allowed dancing shoes.  She used to go out, hide her shoes under a hedge and collect them later. He called dancing girls “harlots”.

He did all the sewing and darning. He said that no woman could do it properly! Aunt Nell wanted to borrow some white cotton off him. He gave her some but said: “Don’t ever ask me again. You never lend or borrow, always replenish your stocks, before they run out.”

He used to clean their shoes every day, he even cleaned the soles. He had a piece of wood whittled down and cleaned the edges with it. When the children became fourteen years old, they had to clean their own. Last time he cleaned them was on their birthday. He used to say: “There you are my girl, that is the last time I will clean your shoes”, then he gave them an apple and a penny.

Stories like these are priceless. They say so much about ordinary family life, and they can't be obtained from public records or even newspapers. I'm very grateful to the lady who sent them to me.

A wonderful photo surprise

 

(Click to enlarge)

This stunning image was sent to me by a lady who had just read my book 'Susan'. The original belonged to her grandmother, Ada. When it arrived by email it felt like Christmas all over again. Have you guessed who it is?

Yes, it's Susan Whybrew (nee Mason) the subject of the book. I understand the photo was taken in 1914, when Susan would have been in her sixties and living in Colchester with her husband David. Presumably it would have been in black and white originally and was coloured later. I'm sharing it with the permission of the owner, who has it hanging on a wall at home.

Along with the photo of Susan was one of Susan's youngest daughter Ada, with her husband Joseph (Joe) Metson. That too was a wonderful surprise, the first one of Ada that I'd seen. I plan to write a post about Ada later.

The lady who sent them to me very kindly provided me with lots of information about Susan, David and several of their children, which has been passed down through her family. Some of the stories are of the sort that can't be verified, and some were provided to me in confidence. But once I've gone through them again, I'll share what I can in later posts. 

 

Here are photos of Susan and four of her daughters (cropped from larger photos) so you can see the family resemblances. I don't have photos of David, nor of Rose, Ellen or any of the boys, but they too may turn up one day. I've been so blessed to have people share their family photos with me through this blog. 

(from L to R) Susan, Harriet, Eliza, Alice, Ada.

See The Fourteen Children of David and Susan Whybrew  parts 1 and 2, for more details about this family.

Ellen Whybrew

I was looking again recently at the records I have for the children of David and Susan Whybrew (nee Mason). Of the fourteen offspring born to Susan, I've found the date of death for all but two - Rose, who disappears without trace in America after 1918, and Ellen (known in childhood as Nellie). 

I've written about Rose several times. Here's what I know about Ellen, the Whybrew's eleventh child. Her father David, a soldier, was close to retirement when she was born in 1890 and the family lived in Colchester during her childhood. Of the three children born after Ellen, only Ada (b 1895) survived infancy.

High St, Colchester (2019)

At the age of twenty Ellen married George Frederick Howard, who was five years her senior. He was the son of Alfred and Sarah Howard of Stotfold in Bedfordshire. Sarah died when George was only nine years old, and he and his siblings were brought up by their father, a farm labourer. By the age of fifteen George was also employed as a farm labourer. 

However, sometime before the marriage in August 1910, most likely when he turned eighteen,  George enlisted in the army. On the marriage register in Colchester his occupation was recorded as "Drummer, Bedford Rgt." Strangely, his father Alfred was described as a "baker" on the marriage register. Perhaps this has been incorrectly transcribed. (I don't have the marriage certificate, only the information included on the transcription on freereg.org.uk).

On the night the census was taken in 1911, George was resident in the barracks in Aldershot, as a private in the 1st Battalion of the Bedfordshire regiment. He was described as a drummer and musician. Ellen was alone in a six roomed house in Newport Road, Aldershot.

But she and George must have spent at least some time together over the next few years. Their first child, Alexander George Ernest, was born in 1911, followed by William Edward in March 1913 and Leslie Owen in December 1914. Sadly for Ellen, Leslie died before his first birthday, and it seems likely that William also died in infancy. His name doesn't appear with Ellen's in later records. 

Could William have been adopted by Ellen's brother William and his wife Adelaide? It's a tantalising thought, given that no record seems to exist for the birth of William and Adelaide's only child, William Ronald. (See Did William Whybrew have a son after all? ) But William Ronald is said to have been born on 20 August 1912, according to the 1939 register, which makes him at least seven months older than Ellen's child, so it seems unlikely that they are the same. It's more likely that Ellen's son is the William Edward Howard who died in Colchester at the age of two early in 1916.

With the outbreak of war in 1914, George went from being a drummer with the Bedfordshire regiment to a private with the Royal Sussex Regiment of the 11th battalion. He was sent to France with the British Expeditionary Force. On 4 August 1917, he was killed in action and was buried among the many fallen soldiers in the Etaples Military Cemetery, Pas de Calais, France. Ellen probably never got to visit his grave. Just a few weeks later her father David also died, at home in Colchester.

Etaples Military Cemetery

She received a widows pension, but it must have been difficult for Ellen raising her only child alone. By the time she received George's few possessions from the army in 1919, she had moved to Islington. She married Alfred Lloyd at St Paul's, Canonbury in Islington in September that year. Her sister Ada and Ada's husband, Joseph Metson, were the witnesses.

The last trace I can find of Ellen is in the 1939 England and Wales register, taken just as the second World War began. She and Alfred were living in Merton in South London, along with Alexander, who was still single. Alfred was working as a government messenger, while Ellen described herself as a retired tailoress. So far I haven't been able to determine which of the many death registrations for women named Ellen Lloyd, born around 1890, is the right one for Ellen. 

UPDATE: I've now confirmed that Ellen died in 1984 in Bromley, Kent, aged 94.

Sources

Births, deaths and marriages: Ancestry.com.au, GRO index search

Ellen's marriage to George Howard: Freereg.org.uk 

George Howard's military service: Bedfordshire Roll of Honour, Stotfold  

Images: Etaples Military Cemetery: Wikimedia 

Colchester High St: David Martin  on Georgraph.org.uk

        

Jane Mason's daughter, Lizette

In my post about Henry Hartland, I mentioned that I'd received an email from a descendant of Jane Mason. (Jane was a younger sister of my great great grandmother, Susan Mason). She has very kindly provided me with an outline of the story of Jane's daughter, Lizette. Here it is, with some additional information that I've found online.

The Shamrock Hotel (since renamed several times) in 1927

Lizette was born to Jane in March 1879, in Campbelltown, Adelaide. Lizette's father, Thomas Boddington, was the landlord of the Shamrock Hotel in Currie Street. He was also the lessee of a notorious row of cottages on Light Square, known as Boddington's Row, which were let out as brothels. 

Thomas' father, a baker also named Thomas, had been transported to Western Australia in 1851, for receiving stolen goods. The rest of the family followed him to Australia in 1855. They moved to South Australia in 1859 and Thomas senior established a bakery in Rundle Street. His advertisements drew attention to his 'superior style of Wedding Cakes'.

Jane Mason worked as a servant for the younger Thomas Boddington. But sometime in 1877 she lost her job. On a Friday evening, 28 September 1877, she went to the Shamrock and pleaded to be taken back. 

When Boddington refused, she was "overcome with emotion", and grabbed him by the coat. She was charged with disturbing the peace and appeared in the police court the following day. The magistrate, Mr Beddome, made her promise not to return to the Shamrock and fined her 5 shillings plus costs.

The Express and Telegraph, 29 September 1877

Despite this distressing experience, Jane must have had further contact with Boddington (who was divorced from his first wife) since she gave birth to Lizette 16 months later, on 11 March 1879. Sadly, as was often the case in those days, Jane was unable to keep her child, and it seems Lizette was handed over to the care of one of Thomas Boddington's brothers and his family. (The child's name was spelled Lizzette on the birth register and some later records.) 

Jane appears to have died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1886. In 1895, Lizette, still in her teens, gave birth to a boy named Herbert Harry Bartlett. His father was listed as Henry Bartlett on the birth registration. Nothing is known for certain about this Henry, but possibly he was the same Henry Bartlett, MP, who was charged in 1892 with failing to support an illegitimate child. 

Nor is it clear what happened to the baby. But  like her mother, Lizette probably handed him over to someone else to bring up, not by choice but out of necessity.

Lizette travelled to Western Australia in 1901. We next see her in 1912, at the age of 33, when she appears on the electoral roll at Twin Peaks station 'via Yalgoo', east of Geraldton in Western Australia. She is listed as a lady's help, and is living with Albert and Hannah Boddington. Albert was Thomas  Boddington's youngest brother, born in Western Australia after the family arrived from England.

In 1919, Lizette married Edward Charles Atkins, the owner of the sheep station adjoining the Boddingtons. They had two children, who had children of their own. So despite her hard and short life, Jane Mason has descendants who have been successful in ways she could not have dreamed of.

My correspondent, one of Lizette's grandchildren, writes "I feel sorry for Jane as she had a difficult life. I am also extremely proud of her and all the extended family she has produced." I'm delighted that Jane Mason is no longer one of the "unsolved mysteries" in my own family tree.

Henry Hartland - another child of Jane Mason?

Two years ago I wrote a post about Jane and Bridget Mason, the two youngest sisters of my great great grandmother, Susan Mason. I mentioned that I'd come across a child named Naomi, reportedly born in 1881 to a Jane Mason in the Adelaide Railway station. I wasn't sure if this was the same Jane Mason or not.

A couple of weeks ago I was excited to receive an email from someone who is a descendant of Jane Mason. Not through Naomi though, but by another daughter. (More on that in a later post.) That was enough to send me back to do some more research on Jane.

I found a family tree online that included Naomi Mason, one I hadn't seen before. But Naomi's mother was said to be a girl named Sarah Jane Mason, the daughter of Thomas F Mason. The information on the tree was well documented, including a photo of the entry for Naomi's birth in the Destitute Asylum records. There was no doubt that Naomi didn't belong on my tree. So I went back and added an update to the post I'd written in 2018.

Since then I've discovered another possible child of "our" Jane Mason, a boy named Henry Hartland. He was born in Adelaide on 22 August 1873 and was originally registered as Henry Hartland Mason, suggesting he was born "out of wedlock". His father was listed as Henry Hartland.

I can't find any record of Jane Mason marrying Henry Hartland. In fact, I can't find any record of Henry Hartland senior in South Australia, apart from his name being on the younger Henry's birth registration.

What I did find was a newspaper article in the South Australian Register, on 19 October 1872, which described Jane Mason as an employee of Joseph John Hartland, who owned a hotel (the Prince Albert in Currie Street according to other news items);

Sophia Vicary, daughter of Thomas Vicary, was charged with stealing one tablcloth, value 8s., from Joseph John Hartland, licensed victualler, who recognised the article produced as being his. Jane Mason, in the employ of prosecutor, said she placed the cloth upon a line . about 5 . p.m. on Tuesday, and missed it between two and three hours later. Prisoner came to see her that night. Lewis Irving, pawnbroker, said the cloth was pawned by prisoner on Tuesday night. Sentenced to two months' hard labour.

So it seems likely that Henry senior was related in some way to Jane's employer. I'm still trying to unearth the link between Henry and Joseph John Hartland (usually described as John Joseph).

But how could I be certain that this was the Jane Mason from my family tree? (Once bitten, twice shy!) One clue came from searching through newspapers on Trove for the younger Henry. On 25 April 1884, Adelaide newspapers reported that a boy named Henry Hartland appeared in the police court and was sent to the Industrial School for being an "uncontrollable child". One report helpfully mentioned the name of his aunt, Mary Atkins.

The Express and Telegraph  Fri 25 Apr 1884, p 2

This seemed promising. Jane Mason on my tree had an older sister, Mary Ann, who was married to Henry Atkin (without an 's'). They lived in Currie Street in Adelaide. In fact, Mary Ann and Henry were listed as the next of kin when Susan Mason's daughter Harriet Whybrew was sent to the industrial school in 1882. They had a large family of their own, so if they were responsible for Jane's wayward child too, they would have had their hands full.

Still, there were other Mary Atkins living in Adelaide at this time. Without more evidence, I'm not quite ready to claim Henry Hartland as Jane's son. But I've recorded what I've found because it's an interesting story, and perhaps someone can shed some further light on it.

Poor Henry was only 11 years old when he was sent to the reformatory in Magill. Perhaps it's significant that Jane Mason was in hospital in June 1884, and died from cirrhosis of the liver less than two years later. She may have been too unwell to look after him.

Henry had several further brushes with the courts. He was re-admitted to the industrial school in 1887 for two years. Then in August 1890 he was charged, along with two other boys, with taking part in an assault on a Chinese man. He was sentenced to two months' prison, but was released on the Governors' orders on the grounds that he hadn't been involved.

South Australian Register Mon 22 Sep 1890 p 4

An Assault on a Chinaman. — On August 20 three youths named Bruan, Hartland, and Wynes were sentenced at the Adelaide Police Court to two months' imprisonment for assaulting Way Ching, a Chinaman, in Hindley Street. Efforts were subsequently made to secure the release of Henry Hartland on the ground that he had not taken part in the affray. Enquiries were made, and Mr. W.V. Smith, who acted for Hartland, has just received the following letter from the Under Secretary, dated September 19 : — ' Re assault on Chinese and Hartland. Sir— Referring to previous correspondence and to your letter of yesterday's date I have the honour by the Chief Secretary's direction to inform you that His Excellency the Governor has been pleased to order his release this afternoon.'

For most of his life, Henry worked as a labourer. He married a woman named Emma, and they had at least two children: Henry (1898) and Jean Clare (1920). Strangely, given his past history, in 1910 Henry was also listed in South Australian school admission records as the guardian of a child named Leno Ah Yee, born in 1905.*

In December 1916, at the age of 44, Henry (also known as Harry) enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force. He was sent to France, where he was wounded in the leg in August 1918. After recuperating in England, he returned to France until the end of the war. When Henry died in 1935 he was buried in a soldier's grave in West Terrace Cemetery. 

If you know any more about Henry Hartland, or Jane Mason, I'd love to hear from you. I've removed the contact form from this blog for the time being because messages were not reaching me. Please use the contact form on my web site or leave a comment on this post.

Sources:

* South Australian school admission records, Family Search. In 1916 Charles Ah Chow was listed as Leno Ah Yee's guardian.

Elizabeth Davis

As I mentioned at the end of my last post about Rose Davis, I came across a birth registration for Elizabeth Davis in New South Wales while I was looking for Rose, and wondered if she was also a child of George Davis and Catherine (nee Mason). Now that I've done a little research, I've confirmed that she was.

Elizabeth's birth was registered in New South Wales in 1870. Her parents' names were recorded as George Davis and Catherine (no maiden name mentioned).

Strangely, the birth of George and Catherine's son John was also apparently registered in New South Wales in 1869, (reg no. 1084/1869 1084 VOL 159) although he had already been registered in South Australia the same year (69/574). It suggests this was the year that George and Catherine moved to NSW, soon after John was born. Or perhaps Catherine followed George after the birth.

On 21 March 1891, Elizabeth Davies (sic) married John Douglas at Port Adelaide in South Australia. Her father's name was listed as George Davies. I haven't been able to find out much about John Douglas, but it would seem from the Victorian electoral rolls (on ancestry.com) that he was a mariner. He is probably the John Douglas who died in South Melbourne in 1933. (Elizabeth Douglas appears alone on the electoral rolls after this date.) He was the son of John Douglas, but that is all the information available on the marriage and death records.

When 82 year old Elizabeth Douglas  died in Port Melbourne (Victoria) in 1952, her parents' names were listed as George Davis and Katherine Mason. Her place of birth was Sydney, New  South Wales.

She seems to have been quite a well known figure in her own sphere. This obituary appeared in the Record, Emerald Hill, on 8 August 1952:

Mrs. E. Douglas Dead At 82
Mrs. Elizabeth Douglas, of Raglan Street, South Melbourne, who died last week, aged 82 years, was mother of a family of nine — seven sons and two daughters— one of whom is Mrs. W. L. Smith, Mayoress of Port Melbourne during 1950-51.
Mrs. Douglas lived in South Melbourne, for over 60 years during which she won the love and esteem of a wide circle of friends. She was devoted to the Salvation Army in this district, which she joined in 1896, maintaining an active interest until failing health interfered in recent years.
One of her .sons, John, played football and was connected with the once-famous 'Leopolds' for many years. Max Glass, a grandson, was also well-known as a rover with the South League team.
The funeral left her daughter's home, 93 Pickles Street, Port Melbourne, on Friday last, for Coburg Cemetery, and was largely attended.

The mention of Elizabeth's association with the Salvation Army is intriguing, given that her cousin Eliza Whybrew (Susan Mason's daughter) was also a member of the Salvation Army in England all her adult life. I wonder if they ever communicated with each other, or even knew of each other's existence?

Rose Davis - another Rose in the Mason family

It's always exciting to receive a comment or a message from someone who has found a link to their own family history on my blog. This week I heard from a descendent of Susan Mason's sister Catherine, and discovered another Rose in the family that I hadn't come across before.

Port Adelaide c 1870.
Image from State Library of SA

Catherine (sometimes spelled Katherine in records) was John and Catherine Mason's third daughter. She was born in Sydney in March 1844, before the family moved to Adelaide. She would have been 12 years old when her father John died, in January 1857. When her mother applied to the Destitute Board for relief in July 1857, Catherine was already employed outside the home, probably as a servant girl.

On 5 June 1865, at the age of 21, she married George Davis (or Davies), who was almost ten years older than her. It wasn't always a happy marriage, but they appear to have stayed together until George's death in 1903.

Until recently I hadn't much information about George, except that he was born about 1831. But a few weeks ago I was contacted by another researcher on Ancestry, who told me about an entry in the South Australian State Records index of hospital admissions (GRG 78/49) which appears to mention George.

On 13 October 1902, George Davis, aged 68, was admitted to the Royal Adelaide hospital. The index shows that he was a wharf labourer, a protestant, born in Wales. He was said to have been in South Australia for 40 years, though this may be a rounded figure rather than exact. The ship he arrived on isn't listed.

George and Catherine were married in Port Adelaide, and their first three children were all registered there: Catherine (1866), George (1867) and John (1869). The next child on my list was Hannah, whose birth was registered at Nile in South Australia in 1874. There were at least another five children after Hannah, registered in various places around South Australia, so it seems George and Catherine moved around.*

What I learned from my correspondent was that between John and Hannah, Catherine gave birth to a child named Rose. The reason I hadn't come across her before is that her birth seems to have been registered, as Rosey Davis, in Newcastle in New South Wales, in 1872. I have no idea what Catherine and George were doing in Newcastle. If George was a wharf labourer, perhaps he moved around looking for work.

Rose Davis married Robert Carnie in Victoria in 1895. They lived in Coburg in Victoria. I might have questioned whether Rose was a child of the same Davis family, given that all the other children were born in South Australia. But when Rose Carnie died in 1946, her mother's name was listed as Catherine Mason, and her father as George Davis. This notice appeared in the West Australian newspaper on 18 July 1946:

Rose's sister Margaret Davis (born 1876) was married to Arthur Massey, so it seems to confirm  Rose's place in the Davis family. I'm intrigued by the line at the end of the death notice: "Some day we will understand".

Having discovered Rose, I'm now wondering whether the "Elizabeth Eliza Davis" born in Sydney, New South Wales in 1870, to parents named George and Catherine Davis, also belongs to the same family. John Davis was born in January 1869 and Rose in 1872, so it's possible, although Catherine's other children were all spaced two years apart. Time for more research on this family!


*The other children of Catherine and George were:
Margaret 1876, registered in Glanville,
James 1878, in Le Fevre Peninsula,
Mary Ann, 1880, in Farnham,
Thomas 1882, in Alberton and
Naomi (or Nahomie) 1884 in Glanville.

====================================

For more details about the Mason family, see my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool. It's available on Amazon and other online books stores. To read a preview of the first chapters, click on the cover image.

Limerick

One of the main characters in my upcoming book, The Edward Street Baby Farm, was born in Limerick in 1855. Harriet Lenihan moved to Australia in the 1880s and eventually came to Perth. Her father, Maurice Lenihan, was owner and editor of the Limerick Reporter, and was Mayor of Limerick for several years. He had connections with many of the leading political figures in Ireland. Harriet was very proud of the fact that her father had written a history of the city, which was widely acclaimed, though it never made its author any money. It had even received a commendation from the Pope.

As far as I know I’m not related to Harriet Lenihan. But I am related to another outcast from Limerick, John Mason, whose story I’ve told in several posts here. So I feel an attachment to Limerick despite never having been there.

John Mason’s convict records describe him as a ‘native’ of Limerick. He was certainly arrested, tried and transported from that city but I’m not entirely sure that he was born there.

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, the records of the Destitute Board in Adelaide, where he eventually finished up, describe him as English. Possibly he migrated to Ireland, or came from an English family living in Limerick. Whatever the case, at the age of eighteen he was working in Limerick as a boatman.

He must have been one of many boatmen in the water-bound city. Limerick sits some way inland, at the head of estuary of the Shannon river, and is accessible by ocean-going ships. Another waterway, the Grand Canal, makes it possible to navigate from Limerick in the southwest all the way to Dublin on the east coast.

A brief history of Limerick

As the much smaller Abbey River meets a loop of the Shannon, it creates an island, known as Kings Island. The Vikings established a settlement there in the 10th century. They maintained trade links with other settlements in Ireland and Europe and eventually integrated into the Irish population.

In 1195 the Normans from England captured Limerick, and Lord John (later ‘bad’ King John) built a castle on Kings Island and erected walls around the city. Although the city was nominally under English rule, it was fairly independent. In 1413 King Henry V granted it a charter as a city-state.

Henry VIII changed all that. He abolished the Irish monasteries, gave land to his supporters and by 1603 controlled the whole of Ireland. Limerick lost most of its independence.

Limerick in 1587, source unknown

In the seventeenth century the city was besieged four times, in 1642, 1651, 1690 and 1691. The final siege was carried out by the troops of the protestant William of Orange against the supporters of catholic James II, who were holed up in the city. After the Williamites broke through, a treaty was signed.

Under the Treaty of Limerick, James’ supporters were allowed to leave Ireland, in what was referred to as the Flight of the Wild Geese. Alternatively, they could join William’s army. Civilians were allowed to keep their land and property, provided that they pledged loyalty to William.

But the treaty was soon broken. Laws passed by the English and Irish parliaments, known as the Penal Laws, put Irish Catholics at a great disadvantage. Limerick became known by many as the City of the Broken Treaty

The city itself gradually expanded and the walls were dismantled and rebuilt to allow it to grow. The oldest part of the city on Kings Island became known as Englishtown, while the expansion to the south of the Abbey River was known as Irishtown. The two were joined by a bridge, the Baal bridge. In the eighteenth century there was a further expansion to the south, with a planned grid of wide streets, named Newtown Pery after its founder, landowner Edmund Sexton Pery. This area, with its Georgian architecture, became the city’s CBD.



When John Mason was born, in about 1814 or 1815, Limerick was a city undergoing great changes. A port was constructed to serve the growing agriculture and manufacturing industries. New bridges crossed the river. Many churches and schools were being built, along with hospitals, a court house and a gaol. (John Mason would see the inside of both the courthouse and the gaol.) Gas, water and sewerage services became available for the first time.

Limerick in the 1830s
Painted by French artist Alphonse Dousseau.

But in the 1830s, in the poorer Catholic areas, and the rural areas around the city, there was unrest. Not everyone benefited from the growing wealth of the city, and the new bridges tended to divide rather than unite the different economic areas. The wealthy moved to the new suburbs of Newton Pery, while in the old parts of the city many were destitute.

Food prices had been rising across southern Ireland as a result of potato crop failures. In 1830 merchants raised the price of oatmeal in Limerick by 25 percent. For many people, oats provided their only food supply. A riot broke out on 25 June 1830, and the mob raided warehouses, shops and factories. Although the troops were called in, the authorities also set up a relief fund to ensure that food was made available at a fair price to those who needed it and work was provided for the unemployed.

Leaving Limerick

This then, was the city in which John Mason lived in the early 1830s. Without knowing where John was born, it’s difficult to trace his background or his life in Limerick. Mason was not a common name in the county. A family named Mason had a property of 772 acres at Cappanihane in County Limerick in the early 1800s, but I haven’t found anything to suggest that John was related to them. The newspaper reports of John's trial say nothing of where he was from. My guess is that if the son of a local landowner had been arrested and brought to trial for stealing, the newspapers would probably have mentioned his family background.

Someone once told me that boatmen in Ireland were employed by the government as coastguards. They were often recruited from England so that they had no local ties that might lead to corruption. It’s possible that John or his father came from England in this way. The National Archives UK website has PDF images of the coastguard records of service available for download. So far I haven't been able to find any mention of anyone named Mason in these handwritten records from the 1800s, but I have many more files still to search through.

In the 1830s, many people from Limerick chose to migrate to Australia, some with assistance from the government or their landlord. John Mason wasn’t given a choice when he was given a one-way trip to New South Wales. He was transported in 1833 for stealing a length of muslin cloth.

I've described in another post (Muslin by the yard) my reasoning for thinking that the cloth that John stole came from a haberdashery shop in George Street, belonging to Thomas Evans and his family. George Street, now known as O'Connell Street, is the main street in Limerick, running from the bridge at the southern end of Kings Island through the Newtown Pery district, parallel to the Shannon.

According to the Limerick Chronicle, John broke a pane of glass to grab the cloth, while the owner's two sons were behind the counter. It seems a rather brazen thing to do, and he was easily caught. Could he have deliberately committed a crime to get himself transported? If so, he certainly wouldn’t have been the only person to do so.

The story of John Mason's life after he left Limerick, and that of his family, appears in other posts on this blog. It's also told in more detail in my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool. It's available on Amazon and other online books stores. To read a preview of the first chapters, click on the cover image.









General references:

Roots Ireland - A brief history of Limerick
Limerick.ie - Our history
Irish walled towns network - Limerick
Wikipedia - history of Limerick
Liam Hogan - The 1830 Limerick Food Riots

Sydney in New South Wales

On 2 March 1834, the Parmelia sailed through the sandstone heads of Port Jackson in New South Wales. Author Thomas Keneally describes the Parmelia's voyage and arrival in his book, The Great Shame: A Story of the Irish in the Old World and the New. Hugh Larkin, one of Keneally's wife's ancestors, was one of the 200 or so Irish prisoners on board. John Mason, my great great great grandfather, was another.

They had been cooped up in the crowded, creaking ship since they left Cork the previous October, so everyone was eager to catch a glimpse of land and the penal colony which was to be their home and prison for the next 7 years, 14 years or even a lifetime. From the decks they could see the coastal hills, with their strange (to their eyes) drab vegetation, the sandy beaches and the lighthouse, signal station and shacks around South Head. Sydney Town itself was hidden from view.

But the ship didn't immediately head for the docks in Sydney. According to Keneally, the soldiers of the 50th regiment, who had been the guards aboard the Parmelia, were landed four days after they reached Port Jackson. The convicts were given health checks and assessed for their fitness for work. It was not until 18 March that they were disembarked upstream at Sydney Cove.

Map from Museums Victoria

Sydney's history

People had been living in the area that would become Sydney for 30,000, perhaps even 50,000 years. It's estimated that the Aboriginal population was between 4000 and 8000 before the First Fleet arrived in 1788. Their descendants remain to this day, but initially their numbers declined as their traditional food-gathering areas were taken over by settlers, and they succumbed to previously-unknown diseases such as smallpox and measles. Violent confrontations also occurred.

John Mason had come from Limerick, a port city of elegant buildings but dire poverty. Food riots had broken out among the destitute there in 1830. In some ways, Sydney, with its bustling port, might have seemed familiar to him, though it was much smaller than Limerick. In the 1820s, Governor Lachlan Macquarie had set about constructing many grand public buildings and laid out the future city with a botanic garden and public open spaces.

Vue de George's Street a Sydney 1833
By Alexis Nicolas Noel 
Contributed By National Library of Australia  [nla.pic-an8148364]

Macquarie had also insisted that those who had served their term ('emancipists') should be treated as free citizens and be allowed to buy land, establish businesses, and be appointed to government posts. Many had done well for themselves. The port had become a busy trading centre. Those with money or power kept up a social life as similar to their English counterparts as they could, in the heat and dust.

Advertisement in the Sydney Gazette, 9 March 1833

But Sydney was still a town built by, and for, convicts. Although many women had arrived, either as convicts or free settlers, men still heavily outnumbered them. Crime, drunkenness and prostitution were rife. Convicts were provided with food, clothing and shelter, but their lives could be very harsh, depending on where they were allocated to work. Public floggings and hangings took place regularly. In 1833, there were 1,149 floggings in NSW, with 247 convicts receiving 9,909 lashes between them.

John Mason, convict labourer

Nineteen-year-old John Mason was initially assigned to work for Alexander Fotheringham, a prominent local business man and shipwright. By 1837 he had been re-assigned to Wright and Long, a shipping company with a wharf at Millers Point on Darling Harbour. He may have helped to build the store building on the wharf at the Point, eventually sold to Captain Joseph Moore, using sandstone quarried on-site. Working alongside John was another convict, William Doody, who would later migrate with John to South Australia.

By the time twenty-year old Catherine Murphy arrived in Sydney aboard the Mary Ann, in August 1840, the town had a population of 35,000, and had its own City Council. New South Wales was in an economic depression, and transportation of convicts to NSW had been suspended, but settlers continued to arrive. Decent accommodation was in short supply. Perhaps Catherine was met on the wharf by Mrs Caroline Chisholm, who endeavoured to make sure that newly-arrived single women had accommodation and found employment, rather than drifting into prostitution.

Caroline Chisholm

John and Catherine's marriage

Catherine came from a farming family in Monaghan, Ireland, and was hoping to find work as a farm servant. It seems, though, that she probably stayed in Sydney. On 2 February 1841, her twenty-first birthday, she married John Mason in St Mary's Roman Catholic church. John had received his Certificate of Freedom on 18 July 1840.

Hyde Park and St Mary's Cathedral, c1842
by John Rae. Image from State Library NSW

John and Catherine made their home in Elizabeth St, near the harbour, and their first child, Rosanna, was born there 10 months later in December 1841. Andrew and Mary Goodwin, an Irish couple who had been the witnesses at their wedding, became Rosanna’s baptism sponsors (similar to god-parents). One of John’s former mates from his days at Wright and Long’s shipping company, Timothy Rourke, along with his wife Mary, were the sponsors at the baptism of the Mason’s second child, Mary Ann, in October 1842. John’s friend William Doody and his wife Bridget (nee Murnane) were sponsors at the baptism of the Mason’s third daughter Catherine in 1844.

In 1843 John and Catherine were rocked by the death of little Rosanna. Such deaths were tragic but common in the colony as childhood diseases such as measles, whooping cough and scarlet fever arrived with the children of free settlers and spread in the overcrowded conditions in the city. Infants made up thirty percent of deaths in the colony in the 1840s.

Millers Point Sydney c1845 by Joseph Fowles.
Image from State Library NSW

Leaving for Adelaide

The Mason family remained in Sydney until December 1844. Then they sailed for Adelaide aboard the Dorset, along with several other Irish Catholic families. Did they feel any sadness at leaving the former penal colony? Somehow I doubt that they did. It wasn't a place of happy memories. Today, much of what they left behind has disappeared and the city would be unrecognisable to them.


General sources:
Wikipedia, History of Sydney
Webster World Encyclopedia of Australia
Convicts and the Colonisation of Australia
NSW State Records and Archives

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For more details about John Mason and his family, see my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool. It's available on Amazon and other online books stores. To read a preview of the first chapters, click on the cover image.

Adelaide in South Australia

We now leave the villages and towns of Essex so familiar to my great grandfather William Beales, and travel to Adelaide, the birthplace of his wife, Eliza Whybrew.

Rundle Street, Adelaide in 1845, by S. T. Gill.
 (Image from the State Library of Victoria.)

Eliza's grandparents, John and Catherine Mason, arrived in South Australia in December 1844, when the colony was less than a decade old. The main streets of Adelaide already contained some impressive civic buildings, churches, shops and hotels, along with a smattering of houses built of brick or the local stone. But most of the settlement's European population of around 10,000 people lived in single-story structures built of wood, tin or pise (a form of wattle and daub).

Adelaide and its surrounding farmland was the brain-child of Edward Gibbon Wakefield. While in prison in Newgate (for abducting a young heiress) he put forward the idea of populating a new Australian colony by selling land to the wealthy, then using the proceeds to pay the fares of labourers and artisans, who would provide a labour force for the land owners. The labourers' incentive to work hard would be that they could eventually save enough money to buy their own land. This would, he believed, avoid the social problems experienced in most of the other colonies, where land was granted freely to settlers while transported convicts provided the labour force. The "taint" of convict life would be absent.

The British Government passed the South Australia Colonisation Act in 1834, and in  February 1836 a convoy of ships full of eager settlers left England for the new colony. The first task of the Surveyor General, Colonel Light, was to work out where to actually put the new settlement. Light favoured one site on the Torrens River, while the Governor, Hindmarsh, favoured another, closer to the coast. It took a public meeting and a show of hands by the frustrated settlers, on 10 February 1837, to agree on the site favoured by Colonel Light.

William Light's map of Adelaide, 1837.
Image from Adelaidia website

By March 1837, the future city, with its grid of streets, open squares and surrounding parklands had been surveyed. It didn't take long for land prices to soar as new settlers continued to arrive. The Kaurna people, who had lived on the land for tens of thousands of years, and whose fire-stick farming practices were responsible for the park-like landscape so admired by the settlers, were gradually displaced.

What brought the Masons to Adelaide?

As an Irish ex-convict, John Mason (my great great great grandfather) was not exactly the sort of settler that Edward Gibbon Wakefield had envisaged for his new colony. In 1834 the 19-year-old John had been transported from Limerick in Ireland to New South Wales for stealing several yards of cotton material from a shop. 

After serving his seven-year sentence in Sydney, John married a newly-arrived Irish girl, Catherine Murphy. In December 1844 they and their two surviving daughters, Mary Ann and Catherine, left Sydney on the brig Dorset. They seem to have been travelling as part of a group with John's friend and fellow ex-convict William Doody, William's wife, Bridget (nee Murnane) and her sister and brother-in-law, the McCormacks. 

Sydney Morning Herald, 23 Dec 1844

For John Mason and William Doody, Adelaide offered the opportunity to leave behind the taint of being a convict, although they would have to keep that motivation to themselves. Bridget Doody's parents had settled in South Australia a few years earlier. William Doody, a country man, may have been attracted by the chance to buy land. News about the riches to be made at the recently-opened copper mines in South Australia might have been an attraction. Or, as good Irish Catholics, the group may have been following the Sydney priest, Father Francis Murphy, who had just been appointed the Bishop of Adelaide.

The Bedford Hotel, Currie St, c1891
Formerly named the Ship Inn, and now demolished,
it stood almost opposite the Mason's house.

John and Catherine rented an assortment of small cottages around Adelaide as their family grew to include eight daughters. They eventually settled in Currie Street, to the west of the city centre. Their sixth daughter, Eliza's mother Susan, was born in May 1848. It's clear from the girls' baptism records that the family were part of the community of Irish Catholics in Adelaide, a small and sometimes unpopular minority in the largely English and Scottish protestant colony.

John found work as a labourer. As immigrants continued to arrive, there was plenty of work for builders' labourers and the like. So much so, that land owners often had difficulty attracting labourers for their farms. In time John established himself as a member of the wider community, becoming a member of the Ancient Order of Forresters, a mutual aid organisation.

But in 1856 he became bed-bound and was unable to work. In January 1857 he died, leaving Catherine and her daughters destitute. She was able to get some support from the Destitute Board, a body which, like the police force and the prison, had not been envisaged by Wakefield in his original plans for Adelaide. The older girls also brought in a small amount of money.

Currie Street, looking west, 1872.
Image from the State Library of South Australia

By the time Susan Mason was in her teens, Adelaide had grown to a sizeable place. In 1866 the non-Aboriginal population numbered 163,452. This included over 5,000 Germans who had established a wine growing industry in the hills around Adelaide. It also included thousand of single women from Ireland who arrived during and after the great famine. Many of these found work as servants or farm labourers, but some joined the growing number of prostitutes around the city. Susan included several of them among her friends.

The Whybrews leave South Australia

By the mid 1850s, South Australia had been granted its own parliament, though initially only land-owning men could vote. By 1861 property-owning women had been given the right to vote in municipal elections. Despite some ups and downs, the colony was faring well. Much of its wealth came from exports of wheat and wool, and from copper mining.

Yet it was also very isolated, leading to a sense of vulnerability among the population. Most residents were happy that the British government continued to station troops in Adelaide to protect them from real or imagined threats.

Members of the 50th regiment in 1850
Image from the National Army Museum

In 1868 it was the turn of the 50th (Queen's Own) regiment to be stationed in the barracks near the Torrens River. The red-coated soldiers of the 50th would provide husbands for both Susan and her sister Eliza. Ironically, the same regiment had acted as guards on board the ship that had transported their father to Sydney. Susan Mason and David Whybrew were married in Adelaide in May 1869, after some interesting escapades and the birth of their first daughter, Harriet, in 1868. Their daughter Eliza was born in December 1869.

When David's regiment was called back to England in 1870, Susan went too, taking baby Eliza with her, but leaving Harriet behind in the care of another family. As far as I know Eliza never went back to Australia, so had no memory of her birth place. Harriet, on the other hand, remained in Adelaide until her teens, when she suddenly reconnected with her family in England.

Several of Susan's sisters married in Adelaide and some of their descendants no doubt still live there. I've yet to discover where John and Catherine Mason are buried, although it is probably somewhere in West Terrace cemetery.

St Luke's church, Adelaide, where Susan
and her sister Eliza both married 

My own family arrived in Western Australia from the UK in 1969 and I visited Adelaide several times over the following decades. One of my daughters studied at university there. I always liked its leafy, old-but-trendy atmosphere. But until I began researching my family history I had no idea that three generations of my father's family had lived there. Now, when I have chance to visit, I see it in a different way, with various landmarks around the city having associations with "my" Adelaide family.

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You can find out more about the Mason and Whybrew families in Adelaide in my book Susan: convict's daughter, soldier's wife, nobody's fool.
It's available on Amazon and other online books stores