DARVALL
Anthony Darvall was born in 1650 and was a member of the landed gentry in Lincolnshire.
He married aa Miss Monke and had a son, Anthony
Darvall. This son, Anthony Darvall, first married Mary Anther.
Mary Anther was the daughter of John Anther of Beverley, and was sister to the Reverend J. Anther.
Mary Darvall, neé Anther, died in
1774. Anthony Darvall remarried, this time to Mary Tolson. Mary Tolson was born
in 1718. She died in 1788, aged 70.
Children from the union of
Anthony Darvall and his first wife, Mary Anther, were:
1 |
Joseph
Darvall |
2 |
Mary Darvall |
3 |
Eliza
Darvall, |
4 |
a son, whose
name is not known, but who died at Bencoolen. |
Joseph Darvall was the first
born, and only son, of Anthony Darvall and his first wife Mary Anther.
Joseph Darvall was born in 1726.
He was to be married three times, bearing children by his first two marriages.
His first wife, whom Joseph
Darvall married in 1750, was Elizabeth Goodwin.
Elizabeth was the daughter of
Richard Goodwin of St. Helena. She was married at Bencoolen and was to die
there, five years later, in 1755, but not before bearing a son, Roger Anthony
Darvall, in 1751.
Joseph Darvall, now a widower,
was to remarry. In 1762, he married his second wife, Anne Owen.
Anne Owen was the niece by
marriage to Laurence Sullivan MP, who was eight times chairman of the British
East India Company, the rival of Clive, and patron and friend of Warren
Hastings.
Joseph and Anne Darvall, neé
Owen, were to have a son and a daughter. The son was Joseph Laurence Darvall,
and the daughter was Eliza Darvall.
Anne Darvall, neé Owen then died.
Her twice bereaved husband,
Joseph Darvall, remarried, for a third time, in 1771, Eliza Salmon, but had no
further children.
Eliza Salmon was the sister of
George Salmon, a Member of the Council at Bencoolen.
Joseph Darvall was to die himself
in 1772, a year after his third marriage in 1771.
His widow, Eliza Darvall, neé
Salmon, remarried, to William Broff, Governor of Bencoolen.
During his lifetime, Joseph
Darvall was Second in Council at Bencoolen, having been made a Member of the
Council in 1755.
Joseph Darvall made a Marriage
Settlement before his second marriage, to Anne Owen. The Trustee under the Deed
of Settlement were Sir W. Falk, Baronet, Governor of Madras, and C. Bowichier,
Governor of Bombay.
There was a tradition that Joseph
Darvall was one time Governor of Pondicherry.
Darvall Bay in North East Borneo
was named after Joseph Darvall.
When Joseph Darvall died in 1772,
he left a Will whose Executors were Laurence Sullivan MP, Stephen Sullivan,
General J. Wood the British resident at Tanjarr (his brother in law) and
Governor Carter.
Joseph Darvall had two sisters,
Mary and Eliza.
Mary Darvall was the eldest
daughter of Anthony and Mary Darvall (neé Anther).
She married C. Watson.
They had a daughter, Penelope
Watson, born in 1758.
Eliza Darvall, second daughter of
Anthony and Mary Darvall, neé Anther,
married J. Anther, presumably a cousin.
NEXT
GENERATION
Roger Anthony Darvall was the
only son and issue of Joseph Darvall and his first wife Elizabeth Goodwin, whom
he had married in 1750.
Roger Anthony Darvall was born in
1751.
At age 21, he, in 1772, married
Orme Bigland.
Orme Bigland was from the Bigland
family.
Orme was the daughter of Edward
Bigland of Long Whatton and Peterboro. She was descended from the Biglands of
Bigland, County Lancashire.
Sir Edward Bigland (Byglande) of
Byglande Hall in the Parish of Cartinel, County of Lancashire, England, lived
in the reign of Henry VII.
Sir John Bigland died at
Chelmsford, Essex, in 1559.
Edward Bigland was M.P. for
Nottingham. He died in 1704. His son, Henry, married Orme Wyngate, who was a
lineal descendant of Sir Humphry Orme of Peterboro.
Henry Bigland, and his wife,
Orme, neé Wyngate, had a son, Edward Bigland. This son, Edward Bigland, had a
daughter, Orme Bigland, who married Roger Darvall.
Orme Bigland's niece, Mary Ann
Squire, married Sir Charles M. Clarke, Baronet. Her great niece, Fanny Squire,
married George Murr of Hemmingswell, in the County of Suffolk, first cousin of
George, 4th Earl of Glasgow.
Mrs. Wilberforce, wife of the
Bishop of Winchester, is said by Burke’s Peerage, to be a representative of the
Ormes of Peterboro.
Orme Darvall, neé Bigland, was
first cousin of John Bailey of Elton, father of Sir John Bailey, Baronet, a
Judge.
Her sister, Mary Bigland, married
her first cousin, Isaac Bayley, uncle of the Judge.
The office and title of Garter,
King at Arms, was hereditary in the family of Bigland.
A later possessor of Bigland Hall
was Wilson Henry John Bigland.
Wilson Henry John Bigland was
born in 1824, the son of Vice Admiral Wilson Braddyl Bigland K.H.
The Arms of Orme Bigland, wife of
Roger Darvall, were Azure- two ears of wheat, or Crest- Lion passant, Regardant
Gurles, holding in his fore-paw an ear of wheat, quartered with the Darvall’s
own arms.
In Gloucester Cathedral, there
was a tablet inscribed:
“This are deposited the remains
of Ralph Bigland, Garter Principal King of Arms descended from the family of
Bigland of Bigland in the County Palature of Lancaster. He was the only son of
Richard Bigland late of Grey’s Inn, by Mary, third daughter and co-heiress of
George Errington of Errington in Northumberland and Jane his wife only daughter
and heiress of Robert Babington of Babington in the said County. He was born 29
January 1711. Married Anne daughter co-heiress of John Wilkins of Frocester in
this County, by whom he left one son only, Richard Bigland of Frocester. He
died at Heralds Office, London 27 March 1784. Appointed Blue Mantle pursuivant,
23 February 1757 Somerset Herald 15 January 1759. Created Norry King of Arms 27
March 1773, Clarence King of Arms, 12 September 1774 and Garter, Principal King
of Arms, March 1780."
Roger Anthony Darvall married
Orme Bigland in 1772.
They were to have two children,
Edward Darvall, born in 1775, and a daughter, Cathrine Darvall.
In January 1773, Roger Darvall
was Collector of the Northern Division of Jaqhire.
In July 1773, Roger Anthony
Darvall was a Junior Member of the Board of Trade, and Superintendent of the
Export Warehouse. He was also a Member of the Council of Madras.
Upon his return to England, Roger
Anthony Darvall resided at York, and had an estate at Green Hammerton. We shall
turn to his offspring Edward Darvall and Cathrine Darvall, but before doing so,
study his half brother Joseph Laurence Darvall and half sister Eliza Darvall.
This is a continuation of the
same generation of Roger Anthony Darvall.
Recapitulating, Roger Anthony
Darvall was the only son and issue of Joseph Darvall and his first wife
Elizabeth Goodwin, who he had married in 1750.
Joseph Laurence Darvall and his
sister Eliza Darvall are the issue of Roger Anthony Darvall by his second wife
Anne Owen.
Joseph Darvall married his second
wife, Anne Owen, in 1762.
The son, Joseph Laurence Darvall,
was to marry twice.
His first wife was Maria Wilkenson,
his second wife was a Miss Kingsbury.
Maria Wilkenson was the daughter
of J. Wilkenson of Roehampton Park, in the County of Surrey.
Roehampton Park belonged in the
time of Charles I to the Earls of Portland, and afterwards, to Georgina, Duchess
of Devonshire.
Maria Wilkenson was married to
Joseph Darvall in a private chapel attached to the House at Roehampton Park, in
1790.
Upon the death of her father, her
mother remarried to J. Davison of Beamish, County Durham.
Her mother was the niece of Lord
Auckland.
Maria Wilkenson's sister, Anne Wilkenson, married Dr. R. J. Carr, Bishop of Chichester and Worcester. Their only son was Colonel G. Carr Lloyd of Lancing Manor, Sheriff of Sussex, 1869. Their daughter Maria married J. Lashett of Aborton Hall, M.P. for Worcester.
Maria Wilkenson's brother, the
Reverend Marmaduke Wilkenson, married Eliza Danvers, daughter of Sir Charles
Danvers, Baronet, and niece of Frederick August, 4th Earl of Bristol
and Bishop of Derry.
Maria Wilkenson's brother, Jacob
Wilkenson, of Springfield, near Bath, M.P., married Olivia Stephen, niece of
Admiral Sir John Rowley, Baronet, and cousin of the Countess of Kinnoul and of
Sir James Stephen the Historian.
The Wilkensons were also
connected to the Earl of Buckinghamshire, Duke of Somerset, Lord Gardner, Sir.
J. Andrey, Sir L. Verstwince, Lord Ravensworth, the Marquis of Anglesea, Sir.
J. Osborn, Baronet, and Sir H. Cumming.
Bishop Carr's brother, Sir Henry
Carr, K.C.B., was a Colonel in the Guards and was desperately wounded at
Orther. He married the widow of the Right Honourable Spencer Percival,
Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister, who was shot by Bellingham in
1812, she being the daughter of Sir T. T. Wilson, Baronet.
Bishop Carr's sister married Sir
James Martin Lloyd, Baronet, of Lancing Manor.
Maria Wilkenson was the first
wife of Joseph Laurence Darvall.
They had three children:
1 |
Joseph
Darvall |
2 |
George
Darvall |
3 |
Maria
Darvall. |
After the death of his first
wife, Maria, neé Wilkenson, Joseph Laurence Darvall married the daughter of the
Reverend William Kingsbury.
Of the Kingsbury family, W. J.
Kingsbury married, in 1859, Caroline, daughter of the Honourable Reverend H. E.
Bridgeman, brother of the Earl of Bradford (deceased), and first cousin of the
Duke of Bedford, Earl Russell, Duchess of Buccheuch, Marquis of Bath.
The offspring of Joseph Laurence
Darvall and his first wife, Maria Wilkenson, were Joseph Darvall, George
Darvall and Maria Darvall.
Each of these survived to
adulthood and married.
Joseph Darvall married F. Hall.
George Darvall married E.
Aberdein, bearing three sons and a daughter,
Mary Darvall, who married
Nichols.
Maria Darvall married W.
Wakeford.
Joseph Darvall and his wife F.
Hall had at least two daughters.
Joseph Darvall lived at Reading
and died in 1859, survived by two daughters, Adelaide and Eleanor.
Adelaide was married to the
Reverend W. J. Newham, Vicar of Barrow on Soar, Leicester, late Fellow of St.
John's college, Canterbury, where he took a double first class honours.
Eleanor married A. Graham Hogg, a
merchant at Hong Kong, cousin of Sir Archibald Galloway (deceased), and lineal
descendant of Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundas whose signet ring came
into the possession of Mr. Hogg.
The second son of Joseph Laurence
Darvall and Maria Wilkenson, namely George Darvall, married E. Aberdein.
E. Aberdein was a relative of Sir
R. Puisant of Burton Puisant, who left his estate to William Pitt.
Her brother R. H. Aberdein, was
Commissioner of Titles for Devon and Somerset, and was for thirty years Coroner
for Devon. His daughter Mary (Aberdein), married Major P. McPherson of the 17th
Regiment, eldest son of General McPherson, C. B., Colonel Commanding the 13th
Foot.
The head of the Aberdein family
at the turn of the century was Frank A. Aberdein of Keithlock House,
Perthshire, who married Julia, daughter of General Cunningham of Newton and
Huntingtower, County of Perth.
The Aberdeins were also connected
with the Carnegie family, Lord Southesk, and Captain Dingwall Fordyce of
Brucklay Castle, M.P. for Aberdein.
The only daughter of Joseph
Laurence Darvall and his first wife, Maria Wilkenson, was Maria Darvall.
Maria Darvall married W.
Wakeford.
W. Wakeford was from East
Titherby Park, Hants.
East Titherby Park later fell
into the hands of Sir F. D. Goldsmith, Baronet. Of the Wakeford family, Henry
Wakeford was Comptroller General of Western Australia, and William Wakeford was
a Parliamentary Agent of Palace Chambers, Westminster.
Eliza Darvall was sister to
Joseph Laurence Darvall, and step-sister to Roger Anthony Darvall. She was the
second child of Joseph Darvall by his second wife Anne Owen, Joseph Laurence
Darvall being the first and eldest.
Eliza Darvall married J. Holland.
J. Holland was a merchant in London and left a fortune of £200,000 to his son, George Holland.
THE OFFSPRING OF ROGER ANTHONY
DARVALL AND HIS WIFE ORME BIGLAND
EDWARD DARVALL
Edward Darvall was born in 1773,
the only son of Roger Anthony Darvall and Orme Bigland.
He was born at Masulipatam in
India in 1773.
He became a Lieutenant in the 19th
Dragoons in 1794.
He was present at the storming of
Seringpatam in 1799.
He was promoted to Captain and
later, Major.
He commanded a troop of the 9th
Light Dragoons in 1800, was brigaded under Lord Paget on the Sussex Coast in
1802, and commanded a Squadron on King's Duty at Windsor Castle between 1803
and 1804.
In 1805 he married Emily
Godschall Johnson.
EMILY GODSCHALL JOHNSON:
Emily, was born in 1788 in Bloomsbury,
the second daughter of Godschall Johnson, Army Officer and Consul to Brussels
and his wife Elizabeth Jane Hodges, of Oakley House, Bedfordshire. Her mother
died shortly after her birth.
On her father’s second marriage
to Mary Francis in 1792, the daughters by the first wife, Elizabeth Hodges,
were brought up by their aunt, Sarah Hodges, formerly Eyre, neé Johnson, and
their great aunt Mrs. Fullerton (Sarah Johnson, wife of Dr. Fullerton), who
lived at Richmond.
A very entertaining series of letters,
published in the Francis Letters from Elizabeth Johnson to Catherine and
Elizabeth Francis, daughters of Sir Phillip Francis, were written from Boulney
Court 1804, describing their aunt, Sarah Hodges, and her very lively young
sister, Emily Johnson, then aged 15 years.
From these letters it was said
that, when Emily was just 16 years, she fell in love with a handsome and
dashing young officer stationed at Richmond.
He was Captain Edward Darvall.
Her great aunt Mrs. Fullerton, was accused of fostering the romance.
Emily’s father was dead, and the
consent of her stepmother and brothers was sought, but was refused, upon
grounds of her extreme youth and irresponsibility, and that no one knew
anything about Captain Darvall’s family. It was decided, therefore, to remove
Emily to her brother Godschall’s house at Halliford-on-Thames, as Captain
Darvall was stationed at Richmond where she had been staying with Mrs.
Fullerton.
At the beginning of June, after
staying at Halliford for a month, Emily eloped with Captain Darvall.
A vivid account is given of their
pursuit by Emily’s brothers and a Rev. Runner. The runaway couple got a good
start. They were accompanied by two of Captain Darvall’s fellow officers, and
took the road to Oxford, changing horses at Henley. They were 16 hours ahead
and were presumed to be heading for Holyhead and Ireland, but were eventually
found several days later at Carlisle, where they were staying after what was
called a mock ceremony at Gretna Green.
The young couple were quite
unrepentant, and blamed Emily’s family for their opposition. There was a later
marriage ceremony in London, at the end of June. After a time, Captain Darvall
was accepted into the family, and was found to be a very desirable husband for
the headstrong Emily.
Edward retired from the army in
1806.
He and his wife, Emily, resided
at Nunnington Hall, Yorkshire, for many years and raised seven children,
although three others died in infancy.
In 1839 the family decided to
emigrate to the Colony of New South Wales, aboard the Alfred, where they
purchased an estate at Ryde.
His wife, Emily, died in 1841 and
he remarried Jane McCullough.
Edward Darvall died at Ryde in
1869.
His children by Emily Godschall
Johnson were:
1 |
George Edward
Darvall, born 1809, |
2 |
John Bayley
Darvall, born 1816, |
3 |
Frederick
Orme Darvall, born 1816, |
4 |
Emily
Darvall, |
5 |
Eliza
Darvall, |
6 |
Rose Darvall, |
7 |
Horace
Darvall. |
We shall return to the subsequent
lives and careers of these offspring, but meanwhile, will dwell upon Edward
Darvall’s sister, Cathrine.
Cathrine Darvall was the second
child and only daughter of Roger Anthony Darvall and Orme Bigland.
Cathrine married the Reverend J.
Suttle Wood of Wood Hall, Yorkshire.
Known children were:
1 |
James Wood, |
2 |
George Wood, |
3 |
Olivia Wood, |
4 |
Charles Wood,
et ors. |
James Wood, like his father,
entered the Church and became Vicar of the Xt. Church at Bath and Rural Dean.
The Reverend James Wood married
Sofia Hill.
George Wood became a Doctor and
married H. Pinchency.
Olivia Wood married C.
Waterfield.
THE CHILDREN OF EDWARD AND EMILY
DARVALL (Neé GODSCHALL JOHNSON)
GEORGE EDWARD DARVALL
George Edward Darvall was the
first born son of Major Edward Darvall and his wife Emily Godschall Johnson.
He entered the Indian Service and
became a Colonel in His Majesty's 107th Foot, then Lieutenant
Colonel in the 57th Infantry and 3rd Bengal European
Regiment, rising to the rank of General.
He earned two medals and a clasp
for Indian services.
George Edward Darvall married
Sofia Docker in 1841 in New South Wales.
Sofia was the daughter of the
Reverend J. Docker (second cousin of Lord Ellenboro), and Rebecca Ives. The
Reverend Docker's mother, Agnes Law, was the niece of Dr. E. Law, Bishop of
Carlisle, first cousin of the first Lord Ellenboro, of Dr. Law (successively
Bishop of Clonfust, Killala and Elphin), of Dr. E. H. Law (Bishop of Bath and
wells), and of Ewan Law who married Henrietta, daughter of Dr. Markham,
Archbishop of York.
Rebecca Ives was connected with
the Irby family, Lord Bostons; George, third Lord Boston married Rachel Ives,
daughter of W. Drake, of Amershand, and his brother Admiral the Honourable F.
Irby married her sister Emily Ives Drake.
2. JOHN BAYLEY DARVALL
John Bayley Darvall was the
second son and child of Major Edward Darvall and his wife Emily Godschall
Johnson.
John Bayley Darvall was born in
1809.
He started off what could be
described as the Sir John Bayley Darvall lineage.
John Bayley Darvall was several
times Solicitor General and Attorney General of New South Wales, and a Member
of the Executive Council.
He married Elizabeth Flora
Shapland, daughter of Colonel John Shapland on 27 September 1837 at Tewkesbury,
Gloucestershire.
They had four sons and three daughters,
which included:
1 |
John F.
Darvall born 1843, |
2 |
Edward E.
Darvall, born 1844, |
3 |
Francis R. F.
Darvall, born 1845, |
4 |
Edwin B.
Darvall, born 1847, |
5 |
a female
child, born 1857. |
John Bayley Darvall died in 1883
at London, England, having left the colony in 1865.
He is mentioned in the Australian
Dictionary of Biography:
“Darvall, Sir John Bayley
(1809-1883), barrister and politician, was born on 19 November 1809 at
Felixkirk, Yorkshire, England, the second son of Major Edward Darvall and his
wife Emily Godschall Johnson, an heiress with whom he had eloped in 1805. John
was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge (B.A. in 1833, M.A. in
1837). On 15 June 1833 he was admitted to the Middle Temple. He became articled
to his Uncle Sir John Bayley, and was later Marshall to Lord Bayley. In 1838 he
was called to the Bar. On 27 September 1837 at Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, he
married Edith Flora Shapland, daughter of Colonel John Shapland. In August 1939
they arrived at Sydney in the Abberton. His parents, two brothers and
three sisters arrived in the Alfred in January 1840, accompanied by
friends with Indian connections. Darvall became ‘intimately connected with the
monied and pastoral interests of the colony', and was appointed a director of
the Sydney Banking Co. and the Australian Banking Co. He was also involved with
other companies which collapsed in the slump of the early 1840s. In 1842 he
joined an association formed to petition for permission to introduce Indian
coolies in place of convict labour. On 16 September 1839 he was admitted to the
colonial Bar and soon had a flourishing practice. In December 1846 his opposing
counsel in a Supreme Court case was Richard Windeyer who charged him with
unfair conduct and called him a liar. Darvall promptly struck his opponent and
was committed to gaol for fourteen days for ‘contempt and outrage’, while
Windeyer received twenty days.
In July 1844 Darvall was
nominated to the Legislative Council, where he loyally supported the government
until he resigned in 1848, unable to reconcile his conscience with nomineeism.
Later that year he was returned for Bathurst by one vote; in 1850-56 he
represented Cumberland. In public speeches he seemed indifferent to what others
thought of his words and actions, and often appeared eager to provoke
opposition; one speech led George Macleay to comment: “Is not Darvall an
extraordinary fellow! perpetually out-Darvalling himself”.
In 1850 he had become a
foundation fellow of the Senate of the University of Sydney, in 1851 declined a
judgeship in Victoria, and in 1853 was appointed a Queen’s Counsel. He was also
a founding director of the Australian Joint Stock Bank, a member of the Sydney
Chamber of Commerce, a trustee of the Sydney Club and served on many charitable
and public committees.
With his aristocratic connections
and intellectual pride Darvall was detached in colonial politics and never a
strong party man. He aligned himself with Charles Cowper, J. D. Lang, and Henry
Parkes, and the popular opposition to Wentworth’s Constitution Bill. In 1853 he
attacked the proposal for a nominated upper house and ridiculed Wentworth's ‘Botany
Bay aristocracy’ and the putting of legislative power ‘into the hands of people
yet unborn, and of merit yet untried’.
He also wanted a redistribution
of electorates and in 1854 moved resolutions in the Legislative Council
condemning the Constitution and praying for the intervention of the Imperial
Government, maintaining that the constituents wanted ‘a representative
legislature and a just distribution of the elective franchise’; he also
condemned the two-thirds majority clause required for constitutional
amendments. The resolutions were rejected by 24 votes to 10 but later the
hereditary clauses were withdrawn, the nominee appointments limited to five
years and the two-thirds clause nullified by the Imperial Parliament.
In April 1856 Darvall was elected
for the North Riding of Cumberland to the first Legislative Assembly and in
June took office as Solicitor-General in the first Ministry under Stuart
Donaldson. Condemned by the liberals for deserting their cause, Darvall claimed
that an attack by the Empire `transgressed the limits of party warfare
by misrepresenting my political opinions...I took office to assist in carrying
out those ideas at the earliest convenient period'. This letter alarmed W. M.
Manning who warned James Macarthur: `I am afraid that electioneering interests
are leading both Donaldson and Darvall to break faith with me- and I think with
you. We must be on our guard'. The ministry was reconciled but the Assembly
proved obstructive; urged by Darvall, Donaldson resigned on 25 August. Darvall
was Solicitor-General in H. W. Parker's ministry from October 1856 to May 1857,
and then Attorney-General until September. Darvall resigned in November but was
elected for Hawkesbury on 25 June 1859. Disturbed by the land question and the
apparent results of manhood suffrage, he joined the conservative Constitutional
Association. For opposition to free selection before survey he was received
with hostility in the 1860 election and, taunted with inattention to `roads and
bridges', retired from the contest in disgust.
Alarmed at the democratic
pressure which led Governor Young to `swamp' the Legislative Council, Darvall
was more than ever convinced that the Upper House should be elective. Pledged
to its reform, he was nominated to the Council in June 1861. In the debate on
the Legislative Council bill in December he created a sensation with his bitter
remarks on rampant democracy which would `if unchecked, bring the fine colony
to ruin', but he still demanded that the Council should be representative,
refrain from amending money bills and yield to the Assembly in any clash of
opinion. He also advocated G. K. Holden's plan to introduce the Hare system of
proportional representation for the Council. Throughout 1862 Darvall sat on the
select committee on the Legislative Council bill but did not attend any debates
in the next session. In June 1863 he resigned to contest a by-election for East
Maitland. Although he had opposed the separation of Moreton Bay and the
restrictive anti-Chinese legislation which he considered `cruel, unkind and
disgraceful', and had equivocated over the abolition of state aid to religion,
he called himself a `liberal' and, supported by the Maitland Mercury,
was returned in June. In August he became Attorney-General under Cowper. For
this about-turn he was severely criticised and his ministerial re-election was
fiercely contested by Parkes. Darvall maintained that `The Colony must have an
Attorney-General, and the Government had chosen him'. He believed that `their
policy was one which he could conscientiously uphold'. He wrote to Parkes:
`before you lend yourself to the very unusual course of opposing a re-election
on taking Office I beg you to consider that you are the last man from whom I
could expect such exhibitions of ill-will'. When Darvall won the hard-fought
contest by 59 votes Parkes declared that his opponent and friends had solicited
votes `with the electoral roll in the right hand and the grog bottle in the
left'.
Cowper's government fell in
October. In November 1864 Darvall was returned for West Sydney and next
February became Attorney-General under Cowper. In May he outlined proposed
reforms in the administration of justice but in June 1865 he resigned. A week
later the Sydney Morning Herald was regretting his departure for
England. He was praised for his `inimitable charm' and `perfect control of
temper', but William Walker commented that he was `too fond of ease and
elegance, with his comfortable circumstances, to be a successful or persevering
politician in a democratic country like this'. Yet to Governor Young he was
`the most accomplished speaker in New South Wales'. Certainly he was a
commanding figure in the courts and legislature.
In England, Darvall practised at
the Bar and enjoyed `a little of that cultured ease that the colony failed to
afford'. In 1866 he became a director of the Bank of Australasia and was
appointed C.M.G. in 1869 and K.C.M.G. in 1877. Almost blind in his last years,
he was visited by Parkes, who described him as always a `gallant-hearted man'.
He died on 28 December 1883 at his home in London, survived by four sons and
two of his three daughters. He left an estate of 60,000 pounds in England and
20000 pounds in New South Wales.
3. FREDERICK ORME DARVALL
Frederick Orme Darvall was the
third child and son of Major Edward Darvall and his wife Emily Godschall
Johnson.
Frederick Orme Darvall was born
on 24 February 1816.
Frederick Orme Darvall held a
Commission in His Majesty's 41st
regiment and went to India in 1831. He served there for 8 years.
It is believed that he met and
married his wife Lucy Shapland there.
Lucy Shapland was born in 1822
near Calcutta.
Lucy Caroline Shapland was the
fourth child and third daughter of Colonel Shapland C.B.
After eight years in the Indian
Service, and with a new wife, Frederick Orme Darvall sold his Commission and
emigrated with the rest of the family to New South Wales.
He subsequently held the post of
Auditor-General for the new State of Queensland after separation from the State
of New South Wales in 1859.
One of the stories that Frederick
told concerned when he was a child of six at Brussels. He fell down the hotel
stairs and was picked up by a gentleman who asked him questions and what was
his name. The gentleman ended by saying that Frederick was to tell his father
to write to him as soon as he, Frederick, was old enough, and he would give
Frederick a commission in the Army. This gentleman was the Duke of Wellington.
Major Edward Darvall did so write to the Duke of Wellington at the appropriate
time, and the Duke kept his promise and arranged a Commission for Frederick.
Frederick Orme Darvall and his
wife Lucy Shapland had four children:
1 |
Lucy
Elizabeth Darvall, born 17 January 1843, |
2 |
Edith Flora
Darvall, born 1844 in NSW |
3 |
Frederick
Orme Francis Darvall, born 1844 at Penrith in NSW, |
4 |
Ralph
Shapland Darvall, born 1853 in NSW. |
We shall return to these.
For a contemporary description of
the Frederick Orme Darvall, we must turn to the iconic Queensland history,
Reginald Spencer Browne A Journalists Memories (1927. Brisbane. Read
Press):
“In the early eighties the Treasury offices occupied part of the site of the present Treasury buildings...of the Treasury staff (that I knew or remembered)...F. O. Darvall was a tall, florid, raw-boned Australian who was a good cricketer and a capital shot in the field with a special weakness for the rise of the snipe on the flats at Mayne in October or November. He left a considerable family of sons, one of whom, Major Darvall, of the Militia Artillery, married a Miss Morehead, but died young, as his father did. Another son was Colonel "Joe" Darvall; another is a lawyer at Boonah, and another served in the Big War and has a rattling good position with one of the great engineering firms of the United Kingdom. I saw him last in St. Paul's, London, in 1917, with Cassidy of Dalgety's, and they were having a little respite from the mud of Flanders and the attentions of the Hun...”
Frederick Orme Darvall died in
England in 1886.
The fourth child and eldest
daughter of Major Edward Darvall and his wife Emily Godschall Johnson, was
Emily Darvall.
Emily kept a diary of her
experiences aboard the Alfred in 1839 on the voyage out.
In 1840, shortly after her
arrival in the Colony of New South Wales, Emily was snapped up by Robert
Johnstone Barton, a grazier.
Robert Johnston Barton was born
on 30 June 1809, the son of General Charles Barton and Susannah Johnstone.
Charles Barton was born in 1760
and was to die in 1819. Susannah Johnstone, his wife, was born in 1775 and was
to die in 1847. They married in 1798 in London. General Barton rose through the
ranks from Major then Lieutenant Colonel of the 2nd Life Guards; he
had a brother Lt. Colonel H. W. Barton also of the 2nd Life Guards
of Waterfoot, County Fermanagh. The Barton family were well connected,
including to the Earl of Spencer.
They were also connected to the
Dukes of Leinster and Devonshire, Earls of Meath of Dononghimore, Bessborough,
Spenser, Mayo, Charleville, Carrick, Fitzwilliam, Lords Plunket, Annerley,
Guillamore, Langford, Mt. Morris, Posonby, Erskine, Dunnolly, Duchess of St.
Albans, Marchioness of Headford, Baroness Rayleigh, Sir. D. Barclay, Sir C.
Fitzgerald, and Sir H. Johnson.
Robert Johnstone Barton had been
a commander in the East India Service, captaining a warship which protected the
merchant fleet of the East India Company from pirates in the Indian Ocean. He
left that employment when the East India Service ceased to exist, having been
taken over by the operations of the official East India Squadron of Her
Majesty's Imperial Navy.
He had twenty thousand pounds
retirement funds, with which he bought the landed property at Boree (Nyrang) in
mid-western New South Wales, south-west of Molong, around about 1830. With the
run came a number of sheep, cattle and horses, but, a few years after purchase,
suffered a considerable loss when the value of livestock plummeted.
As a result of this drop in
prices, sheep and cattle had to be boiled down for hides and tallow. Twice a
year, tallow, hides and wool were transported by bullock-team to the wharves in
Circular Quay, Sydney, returning to Boree with necessities for the run. Despite
this, Emily was said to never have left the run for 20 years. They had no neighbours, save Mr. Henry
Kater, 25 miles away (near Cargo), and no doctor within 60 miles, and only
assigned convict servants for company, yet Emily managed to educate, clothe and
look after 9 children.
Robert Johnstone Barton and his
wife Emily M Barton, neé Darvall had children:
Emily Susannah Barton, (born in
1841, and who married John Paterson in 1859),
Robert Darvall Barton, in 1843,
Mary J Barton, in 1844, and a
Rose I Barton, also in 1844, who
must have died,
for in 1845 they christened
another child Rose Isabella Barton, (who was later to marry Andrew Bogle
Paterson, brother to John Paterson, and parents of Banjo Paterson),
Norah C. Barton in 1846,
Charles Hampden Barton in 1848,
Edward W Barton in 1850, and
Emily M Barton in 1852,
Henry Francis Barton in 1853 and
Arthur S. Barton in 1856.
Norah Barton married Thomas Lodge Murray Prior at Ryde in 1872. It was his second marriage. Thomas Lodge Murray Prior was of a family claiming royal lineage. He accompanied Ludwig Leichhardt to Queensland, was co-owner of Bromelton station in southern Queensland, later bought Hawkwood in the Burnett District, then after the second worst black massacre of whites on Hawkwood (of the Fraser family, women and children), sold out and purchased a banana plantation at Ormiston, southeast of Brisbane. In 1864 he purchased the property Maroon in the Boonah district. He served as Postmaster General of Queensland in a Palmer Government, and later went on to live at Montpelier at Kangaroo Point, Brisbane.
Thomas Lodge Murray-Prior had
numerous children:
by his first wife, Matilda Harpur whom he married
in 1846 at Cecil Hills-
Thomas de Montmoressi
Murray-Prior (1848),
William Augustus Murray-Prior
(1849-50),
Rosa Caroline Murray-Prior
(1851)(who married Campbell Praed and became a novelist),
Morres Murray-Prior (1853-1897),
Elizabeth Catherine Murray-Prior
(1854), Hervey Morres Murray-Prior (1856-1887),
Redmond Murray-Prior (1858),
Westa Sophia Murray-Prior
(1860-1860),
Hugh Murray-Prior (1861-1897),
Lodge Murray-Prior (1863, died
young),
Matilda Murray Prior (1865-1865),
Egerton Murray-Prior (1866)...
by his second wife, Norah Clarina Barton, whom
Thomas Lodge Murray-Prior married in 1872 after the death of his first wife in
1868:
Matilda Aimee Murray-Prior
(1873),
Emmeline May Murray-Prior
(1875-1876),
Dorothea Catherine Murray-Prior
(1876),
Alienora May Murray-Prior (1878),
Frederic Maurice Murray-Prior
(1880),
Robert Sterling Murray-Prior
(1881),
Julius Orlebar Murray-Prior
(1884), and
Ruth Angela Murray-Prior
(1885)...
By women with whom he appears to
have associated:
by Emma Gale- a daughter, Jane
Anne Quinn (1848)...
by Annie Smith- a daughter
Catherine Smith (1861)...
by Clara Van Zuethem- a son,
Henry Thomas van Zuethem (1864)...
by Mary Ingoldsby- a daughter
Annie Ingoldsby (1867).
Reginald Spencer-Browne said of
Thomas Lodge Murray-Prior:
“Thomas Lodge Murray-Prior was of
the purest Merinos, and a handsome and cultured man, with a beautiful home at
Maroon, out from Boonah. Murray-Prior on an occasion showed his resource by
driving his own bullock team to Brisbane, and more than holding his own with a
"bullocky" who derided his polite words of encouragement to
Strawberry and Bluey and others at a nasty crossing on the way to Ipswich. He
was the father of Mrs. Campbell Praed, the novelist, of Hervey Murray-Prior, a
barrister, and of other good Queenslanders. When he came down to Parliament he
always wore a frock coat, light trousers and a top hat...
The Murray Priors were a brainy family...all were of charming temperament, but the head of the house, I remember best- Thomas Lodge Murray-Prior- and don't you forget it. It was he who, when driving his own bullock team into Ipswich, was coarsely chaffed by a "common bullocky" whom he fought, and really fair "go", and badly walloped him "for your obscenity, dam' you"....
Dick Barker, son of William
Barker of the Logan, owned Eungella Station...my contemporaries of the Barker
family in Brisbane were Harry and Fred...Harry Barker married one of the
beautiful Macdonald sisters, the other becoming Mrs. Hervey Murray-Prior, and
later Mrs. Charley Smythe.”
The Australian Dictionary of
Biography dedicates a passage to Thomas Lodge Murray-Prior:
“Murray-Prior, Thomas Lodge
(1819-1892), pastoralist and politician, was born on 13 November 1819 at Wells,
Somerset, England, son of Thomas Murray-Prior, officers of Hussars at Waterloo,
and his wife Elizabeth Catherine, neé Skynner. Educated at Brussels under Rev.
William Drury and in England by private tutors, he served in H.M.S. Donegal in
1837-38, but resigned and on 24 May 1839 left for Sydney. While acquiring
colonial experience at Dalwood near Maitland he met Ludwig Leichhardt, and in
June 1843 travelled with him to Moreton Bay. From August 1844 to 1850 he held
Bromelton in the Logan District in partnership with Hugh Henry Robertson
Aikman. Bromelton was the first run taken up on the Logan River. John Campbell
was the first settler on the Logan. His friend Walet Smith required a run and
Campbell accompanied him to the Logan River in 1842. Walter Smith took up
Bromelton, which, as his stock did not arrive as expected, he afterwards sold
to Hugh Aikman. After marking trees upon this run, the party went up river and
Campbell marked Tamrookum for himself. Campbell knew that the Mocatta party
were out looking for runs in the area, so he hastened to Brisbane where Dr. S.
Simpson, the Crown Lands Commissioner, granted the runs to Smith and Campbell,
the first on the Logan River. George Mocatta ended up with Telemon, south of
Tamrookum. In 1848 Bromelton was owned by Hugh Aikman and Thomas Lodge
Murray-Prior. One source (Coote) says that Murray-Prior subsequently owned
Rathdowney.
On 3 September 1846 at Cecil
Hills near Liverpool he had married Matilda Harpur.
Murray-Prior sold Bromelton in September 1853 and in 1854 bought Hawkwood in the Burnett District. Hawkwood had been taken up in the late 1840s under a depasturing licence until transferred to John Walker in 1849 and later, in 1854, to H. A. Thomas, who sold it the same year to Thomas Lodge Murray-Prior.
Thomas Lodge Murray-Prior made a loss on it; he lost 8000 sheep from scab and in 1858, worried by the massacre of the Fraser family at Hornet Bank station, he sold out to Ramsay and Jopp. Later it was Ramsay and Hope who owned it. Ultimately Hawkwood came into the ownership of the de Burgh Persse family where it remained for 52 years.
Thomas Lodge Murray-Prior then took up a banana plantation at Ormiston near Cleveland.
In November 1864 he bought Maroon station in the Fassifern district where he settled. Maroon was originally called Melcombe and was originally occupied by John Rankin, son in law of John Cameron, first owner of Fassifern, and with Telemon, was acquired by Captain Robert Collins who transferred Maroon to his son, James Carden Collins. James Carden Collins sold it to Thomas Lodge Murray-Prior in 1864 and it remained in the Murray Prior family until 1914, when it was subdivided for closer settlement.
He failed to win election for East Moreton in 1860 and joined the public service as postal inspector in 1861 and as postmaster-general in 1862. When that office was transferred to the political arena he was nominated to the Legislative Council on 10 April 1866. He served as postmaster-general in the Herbert ministry from July to August 1866, under Mackenzie from August 1867 to November 1868, and Palmer from 1870 to 1874.
In 1863 Rachel Henning (see The Letters of Rachel Henning, D. Adams Ed. Sydney 1963), had written:
"I suppose it does not require any great talent to be Postmaster-General. I hope not, for such a goose I have seldom seen. He talked incessantly and all his conversation consisted of pointless stories of which he himself was the hero".
In November 1868 Murray-Prior's wife died and on 18 December 1872 in Sydney he married Nora Clarissa Barton, aunt of the poet A. B. Paterson. Murray-Prior died at Whytecliffe in the Nundah district on 31 December 1892, survived by seven of the eleven children of his first marriage, and by seven of the eight children of his second. His eldest daughter Rosa Caroline (1851-1935) married Arthur Campbell Mackworth Praed in 1872 and won literary fame.
Described as suave, courtly and cultured, Murray-Prior collected pictures, some of which are in the Brisbane Art gallery. He was noted for his strong loyalty to the throne probably because of his claim to be descended from the Emperor Charlemagne and the Plantagent dynasty of English kings.
The other notable in the Murray-Prior family was Rosa Caroline Murray-Prior, known as Mrs. Praed. Of her, Spencer-Browne had quite a bit to say:
“I was in Brisbane when Mrs. Campbell Praed's book "Policy and Passion" came out, and wrote a review for the Observer. It was considered then rather a hot 'un...it was a fine work, and it had a local habitation, if not a name. Leichhardt's Land did not attempt to disguise the fact that it was Queensland, and the local colour was very strong, but not as strong as some of the yarn. Mrs. Campbell Praed was a daughter of Thomas Lodge Murray-Prior of Maroon, between Boonah and Beaudesert, who was a member of a Palmer Government...as Postmaster-General. He was a very fine man of the good old "pure merino" type. Mrs. Praed, after her marriage, lived mostly in England, a charming woman with a beautiful mind. That was how a mutual friend described her. Another of her books was "Nadine", which was a very vivid thing with a lot of sex in it and which girls were not supposed to permit their dear mammas to read. Still another book was "Christina Chard"... Mrs Campbell Praed puts lots of Australian and Queensland colour into her work.”
Robert Johnstone Barton, died on
4 October 1863 in Sydney. He had struggled for thirty years to make his run
Boree, a paying proposition, only to sell it for a loss, a price of only 15000
pounds, (having bought it originally for 20000 pounds), at the end of the
1850's, retiring with ill health to Sydney. Only a small portion of the
property was retained from the sale, and a few head of cattle, which his son
Robert Darvall Barton managed till his father's death shortly thereafter.
Emily, now a widow, continued to
live on the Parramatta River at Gladesville.
Robert Darvall Barton married
Fanny Blanche Smith at Bathurst in 1873 and they had children: John a' Beckett
Darvall Barton in 1874, Roger Furnwall Darvall Barton in 1875, Claude N. H.
Barton in 1877 (died young in 1882), Edward M. M. Barton in 1878 at Bathurst,
and Emily Mary Barton in 1879 at Coonamble, Norah Margaret Darvall Barton in
1881 at Coonamble and Alan Sinclair Barton in 1886 at Coonamble. By 1902 he was
running Burren and Esrom Stations near Narrabri.
Charles Hampden Barton married
Annie Smith in 1877 and had children: Edith Marjorie Barton in 1881 at
Bathurst, Ursula S Barton in 1882 (West Macquarie), and Robert C. B. Barton in
1884 (West Macquarie). He published a book Outlines of Australian Physiography
in 1899.
Arthur S. Barton married Lucy J.
Smith in 1884 at Dubbo.
Edward Barton married Mary Ann
Phillips in 1875 at Mudgee and had children: Lillian Barton in 1876 at Mudgee,
Edward H Barton in 1878 at Mudgee, Lillian Barton in 1880 at Mudgee and Mabel
Aslen Barton in 1880 at Mudgee.
Henry Francis Barton is said by
the Australian Dictionary of Biography to have married a Miss Macansh
(see later herein for other references to the Macanashs), then a Miss Windeyer.
The short note in the Australian Dictionary of Biography says that he
was born in 1853 the son of Robert Johnstone Barton and died Sydney in 1902,
educated at Sydney Grammar School, and Sydney University, studied for the Bar,
Master in Equity 1884-1902, brother of Robert Darvall Barton.
Robert Darvall Barton wrote a
book on his pioneer life called Reminiscences of a Pioneer, published in
Sydney in 1917.
He too is mentioned in the Australian
Dictionary of Biography:
“Born Boree 1843 son of Robert
Johnstone Barton, died Sydney 16 August 1924, married Miss Smith, Educated
Kings School, Parramatta, jackerooed for J. P. Macansh, part-owner Nellgowrie
near Coonamble 1871, bought Conimbia 1876 and numerous other stations later,
brother of Henry Francis Barton and father of Alan Sinclair Darvall Barton.”
Alan Sinclair Darvall Barton is
mentioned in the 1891-1939 later edition of the Australian Dictionary of
Biography: (1886-1950), medical practitioner, was born on 12 March 1886 at
Bathurst, New South Wales, son of Robert Darvall Barton, grazier and author of Reminiscences
of an Australian Pioneer (Sydney 1917), and his wife Fanny Blanche, a
daughter of John Smith, sheep breeder; he was first cousin of A. B. Paterson;
educated at All Saints College, Bathurst, and the University of Sydney, he
became resident medical officer and registrar at Sydney Hospital in 1910-11.
Two years later he began private practice at Coonabarabran.
When World War I broke out, Dr.
Alan Sinclair Darvall Barton enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force and was
commissioned Captain, Australian Medical Corps, in 1914; he was posted to the 2nd
Australian General Hospital and sailed for Egypt. After serving with the 1st
Australian Division at Mena Camp, he served with honour and distinction as a
medivac officer and surgeon in the final Allied evacuation from Anzac Beach,
Gallipoli, and in France at the Battle of Fromelles. After discharge he married
Dorothy Ellena Duffy in 1919 in Sydney, settled in Singleton and built up an
extensive private practice. He had a son and three daughters and died in 1950.”
In 1859, Emily Susannah Barton
married a John Paterson at Molong.
In 1863, her sister, Rose
Isabella Barton married Andrew Bogle Paterson at Molong.
Andrew Bogle Paterson is
described, in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, as a lowland Scot
who had emigrated to New South Wales about 1850 taking up Buckinbah Station at
Obley in the Orange district.
In fact, Andrew Bogle Paterson
was the third of four children born to John Paterson and Ann Howison. John Paterson
married Ann Howison on 17 February 1829 at Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire, Scotland
and bore- James Paterson, born 2 December 1829 at Edinburgh, and baptised 2
January 1830 at Lesmahagow,
John Paterson, baptised 2 January
1832 at Lesmahagow, (who later married Emily Susannah Barton in 1859 in New
South Wales and died 1871),
Andrew Bogle Paterson born 1833
and
Jessie Howison Paterson, born
1834.
Andrew Bogle Paterson and Rose
Isabella Paterson, nee` Barton, had seven children, the eldest, born on 17
February 1864 at Narrambla near Orange, being Andrew Barton Paterson.
Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson.
Young Barty, as he was known to
his family and friends, enjoyed a bush boyhood. When he was seven, the family
moved to Illalong in the Yass district. Here, near the main route between Sydney
and Melbourne, the exciting traffic of bullock teams, Cobb & Co. coaches,
drovers with their mobs of stock, and gold escorts became familiar sights. At
picnic race meetings and polo matches, young Barty saw in action accomplished
horsemen from the Murrumbidgee and Snowy Mountains country which generated his
lifelong enthusiasm for horse and horsemanship and eventually the writing of
his famous equestrian ballads.
After lessons in his early years
from a governess, once Barty was able to ride a pony, he attended the bush
school at Binalong. In 1874 he was sent to Sydney Grammar School where in 1875
he shared the junior Knox prize with (Sir) George Rich, and matriculated aged
16. After failing a University of Sydney scholarship examination, Andrew served
the customary articles of clerkship with Hugh Salway and was admitted as a
solicitor in August 1886. For ten years from about 1889, Andrew Paterson
practised in partnership with John William Street.
As a young man Andrew joined
enthusiastically in the Sydney social and sporting scene, and was much sought
after for his companionship. Norman Lindsay in Bohemians of the Bulletin,
(1965), remembered him as a "tall man with a finely built, muscular body,
moving with the ease of perfectly co-ordinated reflexes. Black hair, dark eyes,
a long finely articulated nose, an ironic mouth, a dark pigmentation of the
skin. His eyes, as eyes must be, were his most distinctive feature, slightly
hooded (with the Godschall Johnson legacy), with a glance that looked beyond one
as he talked.
Andrew was a keen tennis player
and an accomplished oarsman, but his chief delight was horsemanship. He rode
with the hounds of the Sydney Hunt Club, and became one of the Colony's best
polo players. As an amateur rider he competed at Randwick and Rosehill.
During his schooldays in Sydney,
Andrew lived at Gladesville with his widowed grandmother Emily May Barton, neé
Darvall, sister of Sir John Darvall, and daughter of Edward Darvall and Emily
Godschall Johnson. Emily had been widowed about 1861, when her husband Robert
Johnstone Barton had sold Boree station off for less that what he had paid for
it, left the dispersal of stock to his son Robert Darvall Barton, and returned
to Sydney, dying not long after.
Emily resided then at Gladesville
till her ultimate death. Andrew stayed with her during his schooldays in
Sydney, and Emily, a well read woman, had a substantial impact on developing
Andrew's literary tastes and in particular fostered his love of poetry.
Andrew's father, Andrew Doyle
Paterson, had had verses published in the Bulletin soon after its
foundation in 1880. Andrew (Junior) followed suit. He began writing verses as a
law student. His first poem El Mahdi to the Australian Troops, was published in
the Bulletin in February 1885. Adopting the pen name "The
Banjo", which was taken from the name of a station racehorse owned by his
family, he became one of the sodality of Bulletin writers and artists
for which the 1890's were remarkable in Australian literature. He formed
friendships with E.J. Brady, Victor Daley, Frank Mahony, Harry "The
Breaker" Morant, and others. He helped Henry Lawson to draw up contracts
with publishers and indulged in a friendly rhyming battle with him in the Bulletin
over the attractions or otherwise of bush life.
By 1895, such ballads as Clancy
of the Overflow, The Geebung Polo Club, The Man from Ironbark, How the
Favourite Beat Us, and Saltbush Bill, were so popular with readers
that Angus & Robertson published the collection, The Man From Snowy
River, and Other Verses, in October 1895.
The title-poem had swept the
colonies when it was first published in April 1890. The book had a remarkable
reception; the first edition sold out in the week of publication and 7000
copies in a few months. Its particular achievement was to established the
bushman in the national consciousness as a romantic and archetypal figure. The
book was as much praised in England as in Australia. The Times compared
Andrew with Rudyard Kipling who himself wrote to congratulate the publishers.
Andrew's identity as "The Banjo" was at last revealed, and he became
a national celebrity overnight.
While on holiday in Queensland
late in 1895, Andrew stayed with friends at Dagworth station, near Winton. Here
he wrote Waltzing Matilda, which was to become Australia's best known folk
song.
In the next few years, Andrew
travelled extensively through the Northern Territory and other areas, writing
of his experiences in prose and verse for the Sydney Mail, the Pastoralists'
Review, the Australian Town and Country Journal, and the Lone
Hand, as well as the Bulletin.
In 1895, he collaborated with
Ernest Truman in the production of an operatic farce, Club Life, and in 1897,
was an editor of the Antipodean, a literary magazine.
Andrew's most important
journalistic opportunity came with the outbreak of the South African War, when
he was commissioned by the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age
as their war correspondent. Andrew sailed for South Africa in October 1899. He
was attached to General French's column. For nine months he was in the thick of
the fighting, and his graphic accounts of the key campaigns included the
surrender of Bloemfontein (he was the first correspondent to ride into that
town), the capture of Pretoria, and the relief of Kimberley. The quality of
Andrew's reporting attracted the notice of the English press and he was
appointed as a correspondent also for the international news agency, Reuters,
an honour which he especially cherished in his later years. Andrew wrote twelve
ballads from his war experiences, the best known of which are Johnny Boer, and
With French to Kimberley.
Andrew returned to Australia in
September 1900, and sailed for China in July 1901 as a roving correspondent for
the Sydney Morning Herald. There he met G.E. ("Chinese")
Morrison whose exploits he had always admired. His accounts of this meeting
have been said to be among some of Andrew's best prose work.
Andrew went on to England where
he met again his old friend of the Bulletin days, the cartoonist Phil
May. Andrew also spent some time in England as the guest of Rudyard Kipling at
his Sussex home.
Andrew returned to Sydney in
1902, and published another collection Rio Grande's Last Race, and other
verses.
In November 1902, Andrew decided to abandon his legal practice.
In 1903, Andrew was appointed
editor of the Sydney Evening News.
On 8 April 1903, Andrew married
in the lovely old church of St. Stephens Presbyterian, at Tenterfield in
northern New South Wales, Alice Emily Walker, who was the daughter of W.H.
Walker, the owner of Tenterfield station, after which the lovely country town
was named. Her father had donated the land for the Church and Manse originally
in 1884.
Andrew and Alice settled at
Woolahra in Sydney where a daughter Grace Paterson was born in 1904, and a son
Hugh Paterson, was born in 1906.
In 1908, Andrew resigned as
editor of the Evening News.
He had enjoyed his newspaper
activities and had produced an edition of folk ballads Old Bush Songs,
published in 1905, which he had researched for some years. He had also written
a novel An Outback Marriage, which was published in 1906, but which had
first appeared as a serial in the Melbourne Leader in 1900. But the call
of the country could not be resisted, and he took over a property of 40,000
acres, Coodra Vale, near wee Jasper, where he wrote an unpublished treatise on
racehorses and racing. The pastoral venture was not a financial success, and
Andrew briefly tried wheat farming near Grenfell.
When World War I began, Andrew
immediately sailed for England, hoping unsuccessfully to cover the fighting in
Flanders as a war correspondent. He drove an ambulance attached to the
Australian Voluntary Hospital, Mimereux, France, before returning to Australia
early in 1915. As honorary vet, with a certificate of competency, he made three
voyages with horses to Africa, China and Egypt, and on 18 October 1915, Andrew
was commissioned in the 2nd Remount Unit, Australian Imperial Force.
Almost immediately, Andrew was
promoted to the rank of Captain. He served in the Middle East. He was wounded
in April 1916, but rejoined his unit in July. Andrew was said to be ideally
suited to his duties, and was promoted to the rank of Major. He commanded the
Australian Remount Squadron from October until he returned to Australia in
mid-1919.
Angus & Robertson had
published in 1917 a further collection of his poems, Saltbush Bill, J.P., and
other verses, and a prose selection, Three Elephant Power, and other stories,
heavily edited by A.W. Jose, to whom Robertson confided: "It is amazing
that a prince of raconteurs like Banjo should be such a messer with the
pen".
After the War, Andrew resumed
journalism. He contributed to the Sydney Mail and Smith's Weekly,
and in 1921, he became editor of a racing journal, the Sydney Sportsman,
an appointment which, with his love of horses, he found highly congenial.
In 1923 most of his poems were
assembled in Collected Verse, which has now been reprinted many times
over.
Andrew retired from active
journalism in 1930 to devote his leisure to creative writing. He was by now a
celebrated and respected citizen of Sydney, most often seen at the Australian
Club where he had long been a member, and where his portrait hung for decades.
In ensuing years, Andrew became a
successful broadcaster with the Australian Broadcasting Commission (the ABC),
on his travels and experiences.
Andrew also wrote his whimsical
book of children's poems
The Animals Noah Forgot in 1933.
In 1934, in Happy Dispatches,
Andrew described his meetings with the famous, including Sir Winston Churchill,
Rudyard Kipling, G.E. Morrison, Lady Dudley, and British Army leaders.
Andrew published another novel The
Shearer's Colt in 1936, and in 1939 he wrote reminiscences for the Sydney
Morning Herald
In 1939, he was appointed a
Commander of the British Empire (C.B.E.).
Andrew died on 5 February 1941
after a short illness and was cremated with Presbyterian forms. His wife Alice,
and children, Grace and Hugh, survived him.
The following testimonial is from
Clement Semmler, author of The Banjo of the Bush (1966), and The
World of Banjo Paterson, in 1967:-
“By the verdict of the Australian
people, and his own conduct and precept, Andrew was in every sense, a great
Australian. Ballader-writer, horseman, bushman, overlander, squatter- he helped
to make the Australian legend. Yet, in his lifetime, he was a living part of
that legend in that, with the rare touch of the genuine folk-poet, and in words
that seemed as natural as breathing, he made a balladry of the scattered lives
of back-country Australians and immortalised them. He left a legacy for future
generations in his objective, if sometimes sardonic, appreciation of the
outback; that great hinterland, stretching from the Queensland border through
the western plains of New South Wales to the Snowy Mountains-so vast a country
that the lonely rider was seen as "a speck upon a waste of plain".
This was Andrew's land of
contrasts: "the plains are all awave with grass, the skies are deepest
blue", but also the "fiery dust-storm drifting and the mocking mirage
shifting", "waving grass and forest trees on sunlit plains as wide as
seas", but the "drought fiend" too, and the cattle left lying
"with the crows to watch them dying".
Although coming from a family of
pioneer landholders, who by their industry had achieved some substance, Andrew
wrote for all who were battling in the face of flood, drought and disaster.
Andrew saw life through the eyes of old Kiley who had to watch the country he
had pioneered turned over to the mortgagees, of Saltbush Bill fighting a
well-paid overseer for grass for his starving sheep, of Clancy of the Overflow
riding contentedly through the smiling western plains:
While the sttock are slowly stringing,
Clancy ridess behind them singing,
For the drovver's life has pleasures
that the townsfolk never know.
In such lines as these Andrew
lifted the settled gloom from the literature of the bush.
On the night of Andrew's death,
Vance Palmer broadcasted a tribute:
“He laid hold both of our
affections and imaginations; he made himself a vital part of the country we all
know and love, and it would not only have been a poorer country but one far
less united in bonds of intimate feeling, if he had never lived and written.”
In 1983, his granddaughters, R.
Campbell and P. Harvie published a two volume complete edition of Andrew's
works, including hitherto unpublished material: R. Campbell and P. Harvie (comp
and introd): A. B. (Banjo) Paterson: complete works 1885-1941, (Sydney
1983).
Andrew's portrait by John
Longstaff won the 1935 Archibald prize, and is in the collection of the Art
Gallery of New South Wales.
5. ELIZA DARVALL:
Eliza Charlotte Darvall was the
fifth child, and second daughter, of Edward Darvall and Emily Godschall
Johnson.
Like her sister Emily, she too
was snapped up quickly by an eligible bachelor not long after her arrival in
the Colony of New South Wales in 1839.
Henry Herman Kater, son of Henry
and Mary F. Kater, married Eliza in 1840, the same year that Robert Johnstone
Barton married Emily Darvall.
Henry Herman Kater was said to
have had considerably more capital invested than Robert Johnstone Barton. When
he came out, he was said to have brought about thirty thousand pounds worth of
horses, cattle and sheep. He was said to have brought out, at the time, some of
the best blood horses that had ever come to Australia, at the time, including a
purebred stallion named Cap-a-pie. He also brought out machinery for a wool
factory for making cloth, but he found that it was a dead loss and brought him
nearly insolvent. He had to sell all his horse stock, and put steam machinery
for grinding wheat into his factory, operating the mill at Caloola. By many years of hard graft and economy, he
succeeded in making good provision for his old age.
Of the later Kater descendants,
one of the eminent was Henry Edward Kater (born 1841), eldest son of Henry
Herman Kater and his wife Eliza Charlotte Darvall, who became a Member of the
Legislative Council of New South Wales.
Another son was Edward Harvey
Kater, born 1846, who married Fannie M Matthews in 1877 at Wellington, and had
six children:
1 |
Mary Eliza
Kater (1877), |
2 |
Mary Agnes L.
Kater (1879), |
3 |
Edward
Darvall Kater (1880)(who married Vera A. Mack in 1907 at Narrowmine |
4 |
Mary C. Kater
(1882), |
5 |
Frederick C.
Kater (1884) (who married Mary Harrigan in 1908 and Blanche Abbott in 1912),
and |
6 |
Eric S. Kater
(1890), who married Evelyn Macdonald in Sydney in 1923. |
Henry Herman Kater and his wife
Eliza Charlotte Darvall also had two daughters, Emily M Kater in 1855, and
another daughter (unnamed in the registers) at Orange in 1856.
An Alice Eliza Kater married a
Herbert Salwey at Canterbury in 1882, and a Mary F. Kater married a Henry
Salwey at Burwood in 1889. These are either daughters of the above named, or
are otherwise related.
Edward Darvall Kater and his wife
Vera M. Mack, who he married in 1907 at Narrowmine, had children
1 |
Katherine D.
Kater born at Warren in 1908, |
2 |
Darvall
Edward Kater born at Dubbo in 1910 (who married Patricia Ann Russell Glasson
at Woolahra in 1942) and |
3 |
Vera P.
Kater, born at Warren in 1912 |
In the year 1901, Kater Bros ran
Mumblebone Station, and Egelabra Station, at Warren in western New South Wales.
The eldest of the sons of Henry
Herman Kater, Henry Edward Kater, as abovementioned, married Mary Eliza
Forster, daughter of William Forster, at Ryde in 1870.
Henry Edward Kater became a
Member of the Legislative Council of New South Wales.
He and his wife had a son Norman
William Kater, born in 1874 at Ryde. They had another son Henry Harvey Kater
who died in 1902 at Moss Vale.
Henry Edward Kater died in 1924
at Woollahra.
Norman William Kater married Jean
G. M. McKenzie at Sydney in 1901 and had children:
1 |
1902 Henry E.
F. Kater at Sydney, who in 1926 married Christina A. Atkinson, |
2 |
1904 Norman
H, M. Kater at Moss Vale, |
3 |
1907 John B.
D. Kater, at Cargo, |
4 |
1907 Mary F.
Kater at Cargo, who married Douglas Tooth in 1929, |
5 |
1909 Jean G.
Kater at Cargo, who married William R. Munro at Moss Vale in 1929, |
6 |
1912 Gregory
B. Kater at Cargo. |
Henry Edward Kater is mentioned
in the Australian Dictionary of Biography:
“Kater, Henry Edward (1841-1924),
pastoralist and businessman, was born on 20 September 1841 at Bungarribee, near
Penrith, eldest son of Henry Herman Kater (1813-1881) and his wife Eliza
Charlotte Darvall (died 1909), sister of John Bayley Darvall.
His father had arrived in Sydney
on 23 December 1839 in the Euphrates with Durham cattle and six thoroughbred
horses; he bought Bungarribee but after eighteen months faced bankruptcy and
had to sell his stock. He moved to Caloola, started a cloth factory and later
made enough to retire to Sydney where he died in 1881.
Henry Edward Kater was educated
by his mother and for a year at Clader House, Redfern. He became a junior clerk
in the Australian Joint Stock Bank at Mudgee. In 1861 he was held up by
bushrangers while carrying bank notes to Bathurst. In 1863 he acquired
Gungalman, a cattle station on the Castlereagh. He established good relations
with the Aboriginals and learnt bushcraft from them; he often used the local
rainmaker. He sold Gungalman and set up as a flour-miller at Wellington.
On 8 February 1870 at St. Anne's
Church of England, Ryde, he married Mary Eliza Forster (died 1935), daughter of
William Forster. She had read the Origin of the Species at 16 and studied Greek
as a pastime at Wellington. In 1875 they visited Europe and Britain, where they
earnestly looked at churches, art galleries and opera, and while visiting
relations Henry saw and played his first lawn tennis.
In the 1870 Henry Edward Kater
took up land in the Wellington district. With his brother Edward Harvey Kater
(died 1903) he acquired Mumblebone on the Macquarie River near Warren. From
John Smith, in 1879 they bought merinos directly descended from the Reverend
Samuel Marsden’s flock. In 1881, the brothers formed a partnership as Kater
Bros; Henry had a third interest and attended to the city end of the business.
Under Edward, Mumblebone became one of the foremost studs in New South Wales;
he developed strong-woolled, large-framed and plain-bodied sheep.
In 1879 Henry Edward Kater had
bought Mount Broughton near Moss Vale. He was a founder and president of the
Bong Bong Picnic Race club and sometime president of the Berrima District
Agricultural, Horticultural and Industrial Society. In 1889 he was appointed to
the Legislative Council upon the recommendation of G. R. Dibbs. On 9 January
1908 the Bulletin complained that “19 years' research hasn't explained why
(Dibbs) did it”. Despite such comments, Henry Edward Kater proved a useful
councillor, active on committees and interested in rural matters. In 1911 his
opposition forced the Government to modify the Shires Bill. Edward Kavanagh, a
Labour member, maintained that 'if one could satisfy Mr. Kater that a thing was
in the interests of the State, then, irrespective of political party, one could
rest assured of his support'.
In 1892-1924 Henry Edward Kater
was a director of the Colonial Sugar Refining Co. and Chairman in 1901-2. He
was also vice-chairman of the Commercial Banking Co. of Sydney and local
director of the Liverpool and London and Globe Insurance Co.
He represented Moss Vale in
Anglican Synods from the 1880s and his most charitable work was in connection
with the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. A director from 1892, honorary treasurer
in 1901-16, and chairman in 1920-24, he gave the hospital its first X-ray
machine and 1000 pounds to endow the H. E. Kater ward.
In 1896 he had bought Egelabra
near Warren, and in 1906 when the partnership with Edward was dissolved his
share was half the Mumblebone stud and Yanganbil. About 1910 he took into
partnership his son Norman who added Eenaweena. The three properties included
72,000 acres and, under the expert classer E. H. Wass, H. E. Kater & Son
formed the well-known Egelabra stun. The Mumblebone stud continued to develop
under H. E. Kater's descendants.
Henry Edward Kater died on 23
September1924 at his home, Headingley, Woollahra, and was buried in the
Anglican section of the Sutton Forest cemetery. He was survived by his wife and
his younger son (Sir) Norman Kater. Able in business and a shrewd judge of men,
Kater left an estate sworn for probate at over 190,000 pounds.”
His son, Norman William Kater,
later knighted to Sir William, is also mentioned in the Australian
Dictionary of Biography:
“Kater,
Sir Norman William (1874-1965), medical practitioner, grazier and politician,
was born on 18 November 1874 at Brush Farm, Ryde, New South Wales, second son
of native born parents Henry Edward Kater and his wife Mary Eliza, daughter of
William Forster. He was educated at All Saints College, Bathurst, in 1886-88
and Sydney Grammar School in 1889-91, where he excelled at rifle-shooting.
He studied medicine at Sydney
University, and was resident medical officer at the Royal Prince Alfred
Hospital in 1894. He then studied at Dublin and London. Returning to Sydney he
set up practice at College Street. He married Jean Gaerloch Mackenzie on 25
February 1901 at St. James' Church. After the death of his elder brother in
1902 he reluctantly abandoned his practice and bought Nyrang near Molong. He
was a member of the Boree Shire Council in 1906-11.
When his father and uncle divided
the Mumblebone stud in 1906 he joined his father in H. E. Kater & Son and
supervised the Egelabra merino stud, near Warren. By 1911, he had virtually
exterminated rabbits there and at Nyrang.
He served in France in the First
World War. After the war Kater returned to pastoral pursuits. He sold Nyrang in
1920 and bought a house in Sydney; in 1924 he inherited Mount Broughton near
Moss Vale.
A member of the central council
of the Progressive Party, Kater was nominated to the Legislative Council in
1923.
He died on 18 August 1965, survived
by four sons and two daughters of his first marriage.”
6. ROSE DARVALL
Rose Darvall was the third and
youngest daughter of Edward Darvall and his wife, Emily Godschall Johnson.
Rosamund Mary Darvall married
Arthur J Templer (although his name sometimes appears as John A. Templer) in
1844. They appeared to have had a son, John A. Templer born in 1844 who died in
1847, and a daughter Florence L. Templer in 1854. Arthur Templer may have died
for there is a marriage entry for a Rosanna Mary Templer in 1868 at Orange to a
James A. H. Poulton.
On Arthur Templer appears this
story from his nephew Robert Darvall Barton:
“I should like to relate a story
in which Arthur Templer did a feat in taking two bushrangers, but I shall have
to lead up to it by informing you that at that time there were no banks in the
country, and people owning stations a long way out had to take up their money
to pay their labour and expenses in cash. The very fact of this was one reason
why bush ranging was a profitable employment. After the banks got out and
cheques were used, we were too poor to be worth robbing. Mr. Templer at that
time owned Nanama Station, close to what is now the town of Wellington, and in
taking a trip up from Sydney he had a large parcel of money wrapped in a
water-proof cover, which he strapped on to his carpet-bag. He got safely to
within about ten miles beyond Bathurst from Sydney; the coach was slowly
dragging up a steep hill when two men, carrying flint-lock guns, stepped into
the road and bailed them up. The coach stopped, of course; but Mr. Templer was
on the box-seat; one man stood a short distance from the coach covering it with
his gun; the other one put his gun down and started to search the passengers
for any money they might have about them; and, as there was always a danger of
being robbed in those days, you had to secrete your cash in your clothes where
you considered it least likely to be found. Of course, the robbers were up to
this trick, and each passenger had to undress, or nearly so. While the
bushranger was examining the passengers on the coach, Mr. Templer sat on the
box-seat, and when his turn came, the man came round and said: "Now you
get off and let me have a look at you." Mr. Templer was a fine athlete, of
splendid physique, and, on the impulse of the moment, he jumped off the
box-seat on to the robber, and caught him by the shoulders, and kept the
robber's back to the man with the gun, at the same time calling out to the
other passengers to come to his assistance; but their trousers not being quite
on, impeded their progress, and the bushranger with the gun, seeing that he
would have to do something, attempted to fire, but, fortunately- it was a wet
morning- missed fire. He then threw the gun down and made off. Mr. Templer then
threw the other man on his back, called out to the other passengers to secure
him, and followed the man who ran away, whom he succeeded in catching and
dragging back to the coach. They secured both men with straps and ropes, and
amused themselves by kicking them into the first police station, which was at
that time near Guyong. The thanks that Mr. Templer got for this action was a
paragraph in the Sydney Gazette..."
7. HORACE DARVALL:
Horace Darvall was the youngest
child of Edward Darvall and Emily Godschall Johnson.
Nothing further is known of him.
****
Emily Godschall Darvall, nee`
Godschall Johnson, died in 1840 a year after her arrival in the Colony.
Her husband, Edward Darvall
remarried.
His second wife was Jane
McCullough.
The Registers show this marriage
as occurring in 1852.
Jane was the daughter of William
McCullough.
In 1844 Edward Darvall and Jane
McCullough had a son, Anthony W. Darvall.
Edward Darvall died in 1869 at
Ryde.
Jane died in 1899 at Ryde.
Anthony W. Darvall appears to
have married a Kate, and had sons Anthony W. Darvall and Beresford Darvall, and
possibly daughters Mabel J Darvall and Kate W. Darvall.
Anthony W. Darvall Snr., died in
1910 at Ryde. Beresford Darvall died in 1911 at Ryde.
Anthony W. Darvall, jnr., married
Hardie I. Holmes in 1912 in Sydney, and had offspring:
1 |
1914 Hardie
Darvall |
(Kogarah) |
2 |
1916 Kathleen
M Darvall |
(Rockdale) |
3 |
1917 Anthony
W. Darvall |
(Rockdale). |
****
Frederick Orme Darvall was the
third son of Captain Edward Darvall and Emily Godschall Johnson.
He married Lucy Shapland, fourth
child and third daughter of Colonel Shapland, who was born near Calcutta.
They had children:
1 |
Lucy
Elizabeth Darvall, born 17 January 1843, |
2 |
Edith Flora
Darvall, born 1844 |
3 |
Frederick
Orme Francis Darvall, born 1846 near Penrith |
4 |
Ralph
Shapland Darvall. |
Both Edith Flora Darvall and
Ralph Shapland Darvall did not marry.
Frederick Orme Francis Darvall
married Deborah North and had 11 children.
Lucy Elizabeth Darvall married
George Orme Weston Wood, nephew of Lord Hatherley, in 1860, and had a son
Waveney Weston Wood.
George Orme Weston Wood died, and
Lucy Elizabeth Wood, nee` Darvall, remarried.
Her second husband was George
Cresswell Crump of Chorlton Hall, County of Cheshire.
She had no further children.
Her son by her first marriage,
Waveney Weston Wood, married B. Deakin and had a daughter Helen.
FREDERICK ORME FRANCIS DARVALL:
Frederick Orme Francis Darvall
was born in 1846 at Penrith, the eldest son of Frederick Orme Darvall and his
wife Lucy Shapland.
In 1870 he married Deborah North,
daughter of Lieutenant J. North at "Fernie Lawn" near Ipswich. Fernie
Lawn was the nearest station to Ipswich on the Brisbane River and it was
occupied shortly after the embargo on settlement within fifty miles of the
Moreton Bay Penal Settlement was lifted in 1842. Fernie Lawn was purchased by
the North family from the Uhr brothers early in 1843. Before the sale one of
the Uhr brothers had been killed by Aboriginals while working sheep in a yard
near the site of the present Lake Manchester, where he was buried. Wivenhoe was
the adjoining station higher up the Brisbane River, owned by the surviving Uhr
brother and J. S. Ferriter, a retired Royal Navy man, who also owned an
interest in Barambah station in the Burnett district. Wivenhoe station was
situated about a mile from the old Wivenhoe Inn, a well known stopping place,
on the road to the Upper Brisbane, Dawson and Burnett districts. Wivenhoe was
also bought by the North family in 1849, and another property called Northbrook
on the east side of the River was also secured. Joseph North lived firstly at
Fernie Lawn, but afterwards at Wivenhoe. Apart from daughter Deborah who
married Frederick Orme Francis Darvall, another daughter married Frank
Villeneuve Nicholson, who afterwards purchased Humberstone, part of Durundur
near what is now Kilcoy, and changed its name to Villeneuve. The name survives
to this day.
Deborah North was born on 31
August 1848.
They had 11 children:
1 |
Edward Orme
Darvall, born 1872 in Brisbane, |
2 |
Frederick
Joseph Dundas Darvall, born 1873 in Brisbane, |
3 |
Edward Horace
Darvall, born 1874, died 1875. |
4 |
Edith Lucy
Darvall, his twin, born 1874, died 27 November 1875. |
5 |
Guy Francis
Darvall, born 1875, who later married Nell Asmus, |
6 |
Cecile
Deborah Darvall, born 1878 (Molly), |
7 |
Cholmondeley
Burnett Darvall, born 1880, |
8 |
Marion Dundas
Darvall, born 1882, |
9 |
Winifred
Darvall, born 1882, died 1883, |
10 |
Roy Darvall,
born 1884, |
11 |
Frederick
Lucy Darvall, born 1886, died 1981. |
Queensland Death records show a
Dundas Darvall died on 15 September 1887, whose parents were Frederick Orme
Francis Darvall and Deborah Elizabeth.
Also recorded is the death of
Joseph North on 2 January 1881, parentage William North and Sarah Marsh.
Spencer Browne in A
Journalist's Memories has a brief reference to Frederick Darvall:
“The chief Inspector of
Distilleries was Fred Darvall, F. O. Darvall jun., a very well known Brisbane
man, and one of a very well-known Australian family.”
Deborah Eliza Darvall, neé North, died on 31 August 1903. The Death
Entry records her parents as Joseph North and Robert (sic) Dundas. The name
Dundas, was used in naming her second child Frederick Joseph Dundas Darvall,
and her eighth child Marion Dundas Darvall. It was also used in naming Beth
Dundas Darvall born 12 October 1902 to Frederick Joseph Dundas Darvall and his
wife, Ethel Maude Cooper.
Edward Orme Darvall (shown in
records as Edwin), married Annabella Campbell Ranken Morehead, and they had
children:
1 |
Jocelyn Orme
Morehead Darvall, born 25 May 1901, |
2 |
Deborah
Ranken Orme Darvall, born 22 January 1903, |
3 |
Boyd
Frederick Orme Darvall, born 23 March 1903. |
Annabella Campbell Ranken
Darvall, neé Morehead, died on 23 October 1919. Her parents were recorded as Boyd
Dunlop Morehead and Annabella Campbell Ranken.
So how did the Darvalls become
involved with the Morehead family. Therein lies an interesting story.
Lieutenant Joseph North and his wife Robert(a) Dundas, of Fernie Lawn had
daughters. Deborah North married Frederick Orme Francis Darvall in 1870.
Another daughter married Frank Villeneuve Nicholson. Another daughter, Sarah
Elizabeth North married, in 1879, Alexander Charles Grant. Now Alexander
Charles Grant is a bit of a legend in Queensland grazier circles. And from
there came the involvement with Boyd Dunlop Morehead.
The story of Alexander Charles
Grant is as follows:
Alexander Charles Grant was born
in 1843 at Inverness, Scotland, the son of Peter Grant, sugar merchant of
Demerara, West Indies, and his wife Jessie McDonald, daughter of John McDonald
of Ness Castle, Inverness.
He had an elder brother, John
Macdonald Grant, christened in 1841 to Peter Grant and Jessie Falconer
Macdonald, at Inverness, and, from the IGI, younger siblings, John Grant, christened
in 1862 to Peter Grant and Jessie Macdonald at Kilmonivaig, Inverness, and Jane
Isabella Grant, christened in 1865 at Kilmonivaig, Inverness to Peter Grant and
Jessie Macdonald. A Peter George Grant died in 1924 in Queensland with given
parentage Peter Grant and Jessie Falconer Macdonald. This would be one, at
least, of the brothers who helped establish Dartmoor station.
Alexander Charles Grant was
educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, the Royal Academy of Halle,
Germany, and Montgrennan House, near Irvine, Scotland.
Early in 1861 he arrived in
Queensland to work for his uncle, Chesborough Claudius Macdonald on Cadarga
station in the Burnett district.
He worked first as an unpaid
jackaroo, then as superintendent of the store and cattle. Later he drove 20000
sheep north to Macdonald's Logan Downs, near Clermont.
In 1868, Alexander Grant and his
brothers bought Dartmoor, inland from Mackay.
However, they sold out in 1870
when the country proved unsuitable for sheep.
Alexander Grant then established
Wrotham Park on the Mitchell River in North Queensland in 1874. He sold meat to
Normanby and Palmer goldfields, but failed to find a partner for a wholesale
meat concern. This failure and severe malaria led him to sell his share of
Wrotham Park in 1878.
While seeking health in travel
overseas. he wrote a fictionalised account of his experiences, published in
Blackwood's Magazine in 1879-80, and reprinted as Bush Life in Queensland or
John West's Colonial Experiences (Edinburgh, 1881).
Returning to Queensland in 1879,
he married Sarah Elizabeth North at Ipswich on 28 November 1879. Sarah
Elizabeth North was a sister of Deborah North, both daughters of Lieut J.
North. Deborah North married in 1870 Frederick Orme Darvall.
He then joined the mercantile and
pastoral firm, B. D. Morehead & Co. His practical background soon made him
indispensable and he was rapidly promoted to manager of the stock and station
business and to a junior partnership. Through the senior partners, Morehead and
William Forrest, he made valuable political and financial contacts. In great
demand as an assessor in hearings before the Land Boards under the Crown Lands
Act of 1884, he travelled widely throughout Queensland, seeking lower
valuations for pastoralists.
Although the firm was old and
respected, it was badly shaken by the Queensland National Bank crash which
brought not only deflated land values and bankruptcies, but also a whiff of
scandal since Morehead had been a director of the Bank.
In the resultant reshuffle, Grant
emerged as managing director of the new company, Morehead's Ltd., with a 30%
shareholding.
Morehead & Co. had sponsored
the Queensland Meat Export and Agency Co. Ltd. which allowed Queensland to
enter the frozen meat trade.
From the 1880's Grant campaigned
for local sale of wool rather than sending the clip to Sydney or London. In
spite of opposition, the Brisbane wool sales were successfully established in
1898.
A captain in the Queensland
Scottish Volunteers until 1890, Grant was also a trustee of the Brisbane Public
Library in 1896, a member of the Johnsonian Club, and vice-president of the
Queensland Stock Breeders and Graziers' Association in 1898.
In the drought of 1900-01, he
lost heavily. Convinced that the best days of pastoralism were over, fearful of
radical political trends and concerned about his children’s' prospects, he
decided to seek refuge in the United States of America. Selling up all his
Queensland interests in 1902, he took his wife, three sons and eight daughters
to California. He died in Los Angeles in January 1930.
Alexander Charles Grant, in the
flyleaf, dedicated his book John West's Colonial Experiences, to his
mother, who, at an advanced age, made the journey across the seas to Australia.
Jessie Macdonald died in Queensland on 7 December 1905 (daughter of John
Macdonald and Mary Campbell).
The name Chesborough, as featured
in that other great pioneer, Chesborough Claudius Macdonald, of Cadarga
station, was used in the 1899 birth of James Chesborough Grant to Thomas
William Grant and Norah O'Grady. Thomas William Grant was born in 1871 to James
Grant and Catherine Quinland. They are probably relations.
Archibald Meston was writing of
Paddington Cemetery in Brisbane in 1908 when he penned this piece:
In one grave, which ought to have received a little more attention, are Louisa Tully and her month old child Blanche. She was the first wife of the late William Alcock Tully, ex-Surveyor General, and eldest daughter of the late Simeon Lord, of Eskdale station and son of Simeon Lord, one of Sydney’s best known men seventy years ago. He was generally known as “Merchant Lord.” The Eskdale Lords once lived in Tasmania, where they had a station called Bona Vista, near Avoca. Fred Lord, of Brisbane, some years M.L.A. for Stanley, was born at Bona Vista, on November 8, 1841. The station was once stuck up by two notorious bushrangers named Dalton and Kelly. While they were inside the house, Constable Buckmaster came onto the verandah. They fired through a glass door and shot him dead, one ball striking him in the forehead. Nobody else was hurt. Lord’s daughter, Louisa, was then a child. She was born there in the year 1837, and died in Brisbane on February 20, 1866, aged 29. Her only sister married a Lieutenant Airey, who came to Sydney and Brisbane as a Lieutenant of Marines, in the Challenger with the Duke of Edinburgh, in 1868 and 1869. He became in after years, the late Lieutenant Colonel Airey, of Sydney.
One of the Challenger’s men died in Brisbane and is buried at Paddington. His name was Percival Perkins Baskerville, Commander in the Royal Navy. He died on March 1, 1869, aged 21.
One of Louisa Tully’s brothers, Robert Lord, was once member for Gympie. His widow is the present wife of Sir Horace Tozer, Queensland’s Agent General. Louisa Tully left two sons, one of whom is in ‘Frisco, and the other in Sydney. Tully’s second wife was a Miss Darvall, sister of Anthony Darvall, for many years manager of the A.J.S. Bank in Ipswich, and a candidate at the first federal elections.”