In 1907 my great grandmother Kathleen Mary Cudmore nee Cavenagh (1874-1951) posed for a group portrait with her five sisters, my great grand aunts.
My great great grandmother, Ellen Cavenagh-Mainwaring (1845-1920), Kate Cudmore’s mother, lived in Southsea near Portsmouth from the 1890s, so it seems likely that the portrait was taken there. One of my cousins has a copy printed with the photographer’s name, F. A. Swaine. This was Frank Arthur Swaine (1871-1952), a fashionable photographer, who had studios in Southsea and later in London.
In 1901 Kathleen Cavenagh-Mainwaring had married an Australian surgeon, Arthur Cudmore. They lived in Adelaide with their two daughters: Rosemary, born in 1904, and Kathleen, born June in 1908. In January 1907 the Adelaide newspapers reported Mrs. Arthur Cudmore and her baby had left by the North German Lloyd liner SS Barbarossafor a trip to the old country. In September 1907 she returned to Adelaide by the SS Scharnhorst, a another Norddeutscher Lloyd passenger liner.
I am not sure what the occasion was for the portrait, and the sisters, as adults, were probably not often together. They are posed around Eva, who is holding flowers. She seems to be the focus of attention. I do not know what this signifies.
Eva was born in 1867 and was aged 40 at the time of this photograph. She had married a naval officer, Herbert Gedge, in 1892. She was the mother of two children born 1894 and 1895. By 1907 her husband had retired from the navy and was working for the Khedive of Egypt. In July 1907 Mrs H Gedge and her daughter travelled from Port Said to London.
May was born in 1868 and in 1907 was aged 39 She had married a naval officer, Owen Gillett, in Malta in 1906. In July 1907 she gave birth in Woking, Surrey, to the oldest of her two children.
Kathleen, my great grandmother, was born in 1874, and in 1907 was 33. She had married 1901 and had one daughter in 1904 and a second daughter in June 1908. She was in England on a visit from late December 1906 to August 1907.
Nellie was born in 1877 and was 30 in 1907. She had married a naval officer, Thompson Horatio Millett, in 1902. They had three children including a son born in June 1907 in Southsea.
Queenie was born in 1879 and aged 28 in 1907 and unmarried. She married in 1939.
Kiddie was born in 1882 and aged 25 and unmarried in 1907. She married in 1919.
In the photo May can be seen wearing a bracelet. Her granddaughter wrote to me: “My mother had a story that when they all came to England for the first time an ‘Uncle’ Jo (who owned a gold mine) gave Mabel as much gold as she could hold in her hand (sadly she had small hands) and this gold she had made into 3 bracelets in Hong Kong. For herself she had a bracelet in the form of a snake – Sammy – which you can see in the photo.” The three bracelets are still with members of the family.
I do not know who ‘Uncle Jo’ was.
The MyHeritage photograph app dates this photo to 1905. My guess of 1907 is based on my great grandmother’s visit to England in that year. None of the sisters look as though they are expecting children. Perhaps it was taken in August 1907, after the births of Michael Gillett in July and Guy Millett in June.
The photograph is evocative of the Edwardian era, with the voluminous hairstyles and the elaborate dresses abundant with lace. The dresses fit the period 1906 to 1908, at least as illustrated in a blog post by fashion historian Debbie Sessions, at:
Family lore has it that my great grandfather, Constantine Trent Champion de Crespigny (1882-1952), fond of his aunts Ada and Viola (Ada Isadora Charlotte Champion Crespigny (1848 – 1927); Viola Julia Constantia Champion de Crespigny (1855 – 1929)), was sorry that as single gentlewomen, of limited education and with little opportunity to make their own way in the world, they were forced to remain financially dependent upon men.
He insisted that his own daughters should have a university education, and indeed Nancy graduated from Melbourne University and Cambridge. Margaret also gained a Melbourne University degree.
In November 1847, discovering she was pregnant by her lover Philip Champion Crespigny, my 3rd great grandmother, Charlotte James nee Dana, deserted her husband and her daughter Charlotte Constance and fled to France. Philip and Charlotte’s daughter Ada Isadora was born out of wedlock in Paris on 15 May 1848.
Isadora Ada Charlotte was baptised with the surname ‘D’Estrée’ at St Servan near St Malo on 4 July 1849. This was an attempt at concealment: Ada’s parents were hiding there from Charlotte’s husband John James, who attempted to sue Philip over Charlotte’s desertion.
Ada apparently felt the stigma of illegitimacy all her life; her great-nephew Francis Philip (Frank) Champion de Crespigny (1918-2010) remembered her as “Mad as a snake; never got over it.”
In a letter from her father, probably written when he was away in Melbourne about 1860, Philip Crespigny addresses Ada as Mouse
[MELBOURNE?] [undated, about 1860] Dearest little Mouse A little bird has just told me that you have been a dear good little girl, and I shall therefore get the prettiest present for you I can. Tell Loup [Philip] that I shall not forget to buy him something too, and if the little bird tells me he has been very good, I will get whatever I think he will like best. I shall be back very soon after you get this letter, so mind be very good children and be very kind indeed to dear Mama. I will not forget something for Bab and Polly. Goodnight darling Mouse. I hope soon to give you all a great big kiss. Your most affec Father, P C C
Ada was at this time about twelve years old, and the nickname “Mouse” may indicate that although she was the eldest she was quiet and shy. “Loup,” in contrast, from the French for a wolf, refers to Philip, who turned ten in 1860 and appears always to have been energetic. Philip was known in the family as Loup or Loo for much of his life. “Bab” and “Polly” are presumably the two youngest children; Viola, turning five, and Rose, two.
Some fifty letters to and from members of the Crespigny/CdeC family during the nineteenth century were collected by Ada and passed to her nephew, my great grandfather Constantine Trent. The letters are now held by the State Library of South Australia. They have been a great source of insight into the lives of members of the family. (The letters feature in Charlotte Frances Champion Crespigny nee Dana (1820-1904) and her family in Australia).
Ada spent her teenage years near Talbot, in the Victorian goldfields where her father was a magistrate. We know she learned the piano and there are several newspaper reports of her performing in concerts in 1867.
In 1869 Philip Crespigny, Ada’s father, was transferred from Talbot to Bairnsdale. Ada accompanied him to keep house. In a letter to his ten-year-old daughter Helen Rosalie, written at Bairnsdale one month after his departure from Talbot, Philip airs a small complaint about Ada’s tidiness:
2 March, 1869 My own darling little Rose, I must apologise for not answering your dear little letter before. I am so very glad to hear that Vi and you have been such very good children and taken such care of your poor Mother in that dreadful sale and the other miseries since we left. Poor dear little love, how delighted I was to hear of the narrow escape you had! – from the falling tree I mean. Vi will soon be going to Inglewood and your poor Mother will have no one but you. What care you will take of each other! How I long to be with you. You would laugh if you could see poor Ada and I keeping house together. When we first commenced I thought I could have it all my own way and make her tidy and so forth – but hitherto she says she will begin tomorrow! But tomorrow never comes. I much fear I shall be beaten in my attempts at making her tidy! Now good-bye, my own darling, with love in which Ada joins me. Your most affectionate Father P C Crespigny
Ada, at the time of this letter aged 21, spent most of her life helping her father and later her brother with housekeeping, though it seems from this letter that at least, in the early days she herself was not very tidy.
This photograph is annotated on the back by Rose’s husband Frank Beggs: Miss Ada de Crespigny on Malahide at Eurambeen East Malahide was afterwards sold to Admiral Bridges Trawalla for ladies hack where he lived his natural life FB
Ada’s sister Rose and her husband Frank lived at Eurambeen East from about 1882 to 1908. The horse was probably named after the place in Ireland near Dublin from where the Beggs family emigrated. Admiral Bridges was at Trawalla, eighteen kilometers east from Eurambeen on the other side of Beaufort, from 1887 to his death in 1917.
In the Australasian (Melbourne, Vic.), Saturday 19 September 1891, page 5:
Mr. Francis Beggs, Eurambeen, Beaufort, requests permission to supplement our correspondent's report of the Ararat show by stating that his colt Saint Marnocks, by Macgregor-Nightlight, took first prize at Ararat in the class for two and three year old thorough-breds, and also Messrs. Briscoe's special prize for the best thoroughbred stallion in the yard. In the light-weight hack class his horse Malahide, by Macgregor, took first prize.
Malahide was 3 years old in September 1891 so the photograph was probably taken in the early 1890s. A horse would generally not be ridden until its third year, maybe longer as riding sidesaddle like this takes even more training than basic astride. The horse looks fully mature so I would guess that this photo was taken no earlier than 1892.
Ada died on 29 November 1927 in a private hospital in Vale Street, East Melbourne, following four days from intestinal obstruction and toxaemia. She was buried on 30 November at Cheltenham Pioneer Cemetery.
I was surprised to discover that she was not buried with other members of her family, including her parents, brother and sister, who are buried in Brighton cemetery, about 9km north of the Cheltenham cemetery. Ada’s usual residence at her time of death was Hampton Street, Brighton, which is closer to Brighton Cemetery than Cheltenham Pioneer Cemetery.
The photograph collection of the State Library of South Australia has an album by Caroline Louisa Turton, daughter of Sir Dominick Daly, labelled “Photograph album relating to the visit of Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and Naval officers to South Australia in 1867, and the visit of H.M.S. ‘Falcon’ in April 1865”. There is a carte de visite of Rowland Mainwaring (1782-1862), my fourth great grandfather, and two photographs of his third wife Laura nee Chevillard (1812-1891).
Rowland and Laura’s son Guy Mainwaring, my third great grand uncle, was a lieutenant on HMS Galatea, a steam-powered wooden frigate, on a world cruise from 1866 under the command of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, second son of Queen Victoria. The Galatea arrived at Adelaide on 31 October 1867, commencing a royal tour of Australia, which included visit to Melbourne, Tasmania, Sydney, and Brisbane.
The Governor of South Australia at the time wasSir Dominick Daly. His daughter Caroline Louisa (Daly) Turton (1832 – 1893) had married Henry Hobhouse Turton in 1866.
There were many events held in Adelaide as part of Galatea‘s visit. For example, on 1 November 1867 there was a dinner party followed by dancing. The Turtons and Guy Mainwaring were present.
The State Library identifies one of the portraits as that of Admiral Mainwaring and another of Mrs Mainwaring (taken in Bristol, England). Another portrait, that of an “Unnamed lady”, appears to be of Laura, taken at the same time as the portrait of the Admiral, with the same background.
From a Photograph album relating to the visit of Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and Naval officers to South Australia in 1867, and the visit of H.M.S. ‘Falcon’ in April 1865: Admiral Mainwaring ; Mrs Mainwaring (taken in Bristol, England); Unnamed lady
The first and third photographs are similar to a pair of painted portraits at Whitmore Hall.
The two photographs seem to have been used by the portrait artist.
Rowland Mainwaring was also the father of Gordon Mainwaring, my third great grandfather, who lived for many years in South Australia. Gordon, with most of his family, left South Australia for England in 1866, before the visit of the Galatea. Gordon’s daughter Ellen had married Wentworth Cavenagh and stayed in South Australia until 1892. Wentworth Cavenagh attended a banquet on 9 November 1867. Officers of the Galatea were present and so Wentworth Cavenagh would probably have met, Guy Mainwaring, his wife’s uncle on this occasion.
I was surprised and delighted to find the portraits of Rowland and Laura Mainwaring in the collection of the State Library. It is a long way from their home at Whitmore Hall.
State Library of South Australia: Photograph album relating to the visit of Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and Naval officers to South Australia in 1867, and the visit of H.M.S. ‘Falcon’ in April 1865 https://collections.slsa.sa.gov.au/resource/PRG+1513/3/1-51
THE REJOICINGS IN HONOUR OF THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH. (1867, November 2). South Australian Register (Adelaide, SA : 1839 – 1900), p. 2. Retrieved December 5, 2023, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article39179188
VISIT OF H.R.H. THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH. (1867, November 16). South Australian Weekly Chronicle (Adelaide, SA : 1858 – 1867), p. 6. Retrieved December 5, 2023, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article91265204
On the reverse of the picture, which is the size of a carte de visite or visiting card, is a plan; the cabins occupied by the Beggs family appear to be indicated with red ticks.
My great-great Aunt Rose’s photograph album consists mostly of portraits of members of her family, but it does include one picture of a ship, Brunel’s SS Great Britain. This has the caption:
S.S. Great Britain 1868 September 1868. We all returned from Ireland in the Great Britain.
The ‘we’ is the Beggs family; the caption was probably inserted by Rose’s husband Frank Beggs, a boy of seventeen at the time of their long journey back to Australia.
The following old colonists, late residents in Geelong and the "Western District, returned to the colony by the steamer Great Britain;—Hon. Niel Black, of Glenormiston, Mrs Black, Masters Archibald, Stewart and Niel Black, and servant; Mr and Mrs F. Beggs, of Beaufort, Misses Elizabeth, Charlotte, Maria, Clamma, Gertrude, Masters F., H., R. and J. Beggs; Mr. and Mrs D. Stead, of Ballan; Mr Robert Richardson, formerly Inspector of Police, Geelong; Mr Fairfax Fenwick, of Chevy; Mr Alex. Hunter, and Mr George Staveley of Geelong, also Master E. G. Staveley.
The SS Great Britain was a steamship designed by the famous Victorian-era engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Launched in 1845, until 1854 she was the largest passenger ship in the world. The Great Britain made her first voyage to Australia in 1852 and operated on the England–Australia route for almost 30 years. Still afloat, she is now part of a Bristol maritime museum. (The Great Britain was not Brunel’s famous SS Great Eastern, a different vessel.)
In 1866 the Beggs’s youngest child, Gertude, was born in Ireland during their stay there.
The photograph album contains many portraits of the Beggs’s relatives and friends from Ireland, presumably people Frank Beggs and his family met at the time of their 1860s visit.
Hugh Lyons Montgomery Beggs was born 15 June 1815 in County Dublin, Ireland, fifth son of a Linen Hall linen-factor (dealer, chapman) named Francis Beggs (1766 – 1839), of The Grange, Portmarnock, Dublin, and his second wife Clamina Lyons née Montgomery (1786 – 1821).
Hugh’s brothers Francis, George, and his sister Sophia, emigrated to Victoria, Australia, on the Statesman, arriving in March 1850.
Hugh followed his brothers and sister three years later on the Africa, arriving in Melbourne on 16 April 1853.
On 27 April 1853, shortly after his arrival, Hugh, then thirty-eight years old, married Elizabeth Smith (c. 1830 – 1864), twenty three, in St James’s Church, Melbourne.
At St. James's Church, Melbourne, on the 27th inst., by the Rev. George Studdart, Hugh Lyons Montgomery Beggs, Esq., of Malahide, County Dublin, to Elizabeth Smith, second daughter of Richard Horner Smith, Esq., late of Tullaghcop, County Meath, Ireland.
They had five children:
Catherine Beggs (1854 – 1939)
Rose Ann (Beggs) Wood (1856-1932)
Francis Beggs (1858 – 1919)
Jane Frances (Beggs) Dodds (1860 – 1934)
Martha Florence Beggs (1864 – 1867)
Elizabeth died at the age of thirty-four on 1 August 1864 at Bushy Creek, two months after the birth of her daughter Martha.
The following year on 23 Mar 1865 at Bushy Creek Hugh married again, at Bushy Creek, to Lavinia Mary Eugenia Heney (c. 1839 – 1925). She was twenty-five; he was forty-nine.
BEGGS—HENEY.—On the 23rd March, at his residence, Bushy Creek station, Wickliffe, by the Rev. David Kaye, Hugh Lyons Montgomery Beggs, Esq., to Lavinia Mary Eugenia, fourth daughter of the late William Godwin Heney, Esq., of Dublin.
They had seven children:
Sophia Beggs (1866 – 1866)
Lavinia Beggs (1868 – 1869)
Sophia Montgomery Grattan (Beggs) Champion de Crespigny (1870 – 1936)
Hugh Lyons Montgomery Beggs (~1872 – 1949)
Mabel Georgina (Beggs) Moodie (~1874 – 1951)
Matilda Cairns Beggs (1876 – 1969)
William Goodwin Beggs (1878 – 1957)
Hugh Beggs died on 13 November 1885 at the age of seventy at Bushy Creek and was buried in the cemetery there.
BEGGS.—On the 13th inst., at his residence, Bushy Creek, Glenthompson, Hugh Lyons Montgomery Beggs, aged 70, fifth son of the late Francis Beggs, The Grange, Portmarnock, Co. Dublin, Ireland.
Hugh Begg’s daughter Sophia was the second wife of my great great grandfather Philip de Crespigny (the bank manager).
See also: Bushy Creek, Victoria. (1901). The Pastoralists’ review : a journal and record of all matters affecting the pastoral and agricultural interests throughout Australasia Retrieved January 6, 2023, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-539017377
One, a cousin of Frank, is annotated ‘Catherine Beggs, Bushy Creek’.
Called Kitty, Catherine (1854 – 1939) was one of Frank’s cousins, the oldest daughter of Hugh Lyons Montgomery Beggs and his first wife Elizabeth née Smith.
Catherine’s birth notice appeared on 30 August 1854 in the Empire newspaper (Sydney):
July 27, at Bushby [sic] Creek, Geelong, the wife of Hugh Lyons Montgomery Beggs, Esq., of a daughter.
Hugh Beggs married Elizabeth Smith in Melbourne on 27 April 1853. The Argus of 29 April 1853 has:
At St. James's Church, Melbourne, on the 27th inst., by the Rev. George Studdart, Hugh Lyons Montgomery Beggs, Esq., of Malahide, County Dublin, to Elizabeth Smith, second daughter of Richard Horner Smith, Esq., late of Tullaghcop, County Meath, Ireland.
In 1853, the year of his marriage, Hugh Beggs purchased the Bushy Creek property of John Kidd, near Glenthompson in Western Victoria. It remained in the Beggs family for 125 years.
Catherine’s mother Elizabeth died in 1864, when Catherine was ten. Her father Hugh remarried the next year.
Catherine never married. At the time of her death, on 20 October 1939, she was living in Hawthorn with her niece, Queenie Wood, the daughter of her sister Rose (Annie). She was buried in Box Hill cemetery.
From the Argus 23 October 1939:
BEGGS.—On the 20th October, at Carboona, Riversdale road, Hawthorn, Katherine (Kitty), eldest daughter of the late Hugh Lyons Montgomery Beggs, Bushy Creek, Glenthompson, aged 85 years. (Privately interred, Box Hill Cemetery.)
BEGGS.—On the 20th October (suddenly), at Carboona, Hawthorn, Catherine, eldest daughter of the late Hugh Lyons Montgomerie and Elizabeth Beggs of Bushy Creek Estate, Glenthompson, loved aunt of Eileen (Mrs. Gordon Langridge).
The photograph was taken by Stewart & Co at 217 & 219 Bourke Street East. The company operated at these premises from 1881 to 1889.
The photograph shows Catherine Beggs posed in half-profile. She is dressed in the fashion of the early 1880s, firmly corseted, with a very small bustle. Her hair, parted in the middle, seems to end in a small bun.
Lenore Frost writes in Dating Family Photos 1850-1920: “From late 1870s skirts were no longer full, but rather sheath-like with a train until about 1882 when they again expanded into a bustle. The bustle of the eighties was at times even larger than that of the seventies, reaching its maximum size between 1886 and 1888.”
Catherine’s bustle does not look large suggesting the photograph is from earlier in the decade.
Catherine appears to be wearing a coat-basque, a long, coat-like bodice that fully encased the torso and often extended into coat-tails resembling the back of a man’s frock coat; the coat-basque was extremely fashionable during the 1880s. In the early part of the decade waists were fairly long.
The pleated ruffle at the hem is typical of the early 1880s. The use of gauging, (pleating) was a notable decorative feature between 1880 and 1882. The asymmetrical line is a feature of the early part of the 1880s and apparently swathes of contrasting fabric across the abdomen is a peculiarity of 1882.
Catherine’s hair, plainly dressed and close to the head with a centre part and small bun is typical of the early 1880s.
Frost, Lenore (1991). Dating family photos 1850-1920. L. Frost, Essendon, Vic
Taylor, Maureen Alice (2013). Family photo detective : learn how to find genealogy clues in old photos and solve family photo mysteries. F+W Media, Cincinnati
Zwolan, Madeleine. “1880.” Fashion History Timeline | A Hub for Fashion Research, State University of New York, 2 June 2020, https://fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/1880-2/
My great great grandfather Philip Champion de Crespigny was born on 4 January 1850 in St. Malo, Brittany. He was the son of Philip Robert Champion de Crespigny, who later became a police magistrate and goldfields warden in Australia, and his wife Charlotte Frances née Dana. Philip junior was the second of their five children.
Philip Champion de Crespigny had a long career with the Bank of Victoria from 1866, and he became the bank’s General Manager in 1916. Early in his career, however, he resigned from the bank to travel in the Pacific islands with his cousin George Dana.
On 28 July 1871 George Dana’s two partners, James Bell and William Ross, were murdered by natives on Tanna island. George Dana gave evidence at the inquest and conducted the burial service. Philip Crespigny is not mentioned in reports, perhaps because was not on Tanna at the time. Many years later he recalled to his grandson Philip George de Crespigny (1906 – 2001) the uneasy feeling of being moored in the evening on a small ship just offshore, with a strong sense of hostile eyes in the jungle a short distance away.
With his cousin George, and Henry Bell (brother of James who was murdered), Philip Crespigny, age 21, is recorded on the passenger list of the Gem when it returned from New Caledonia to Melbourne on 4 October 1871.
Philip decided that the life of an island trader was not for him and decided to return to the bank. He regarded himself as very fortunate in being allowed to rejoin, for it was a general rule that a man who had left that service should not be employed again.
One portrait was taken at the studios of J. Botterill in Melbourne between 1869 and 1874 and the other by Bardwell studio in Ballarat, possibly at the time of his marriage to Annie Chauncy in 1877. The studio of J. Botterill was at 19 Collins Street from 1869 and moved to the Bee-Hive Chambers, Elizabeth Street in 1874, the second copy of the portrait is a reprint of the first taken in the early 1870s.
My great great aunt Helen Rosalie Champion Crespigny, called Rose, was born on 15 October 1858 at Daisy Hill, later known as Amherst, near Talbot, Victoria to Philip Champion Crespigny and Charlotte née Dana, the youngest of their five children.
On 3 February 1876 she married Francis Beggs in Ararat by license, according to the rites of the Church of England. Rose was 17 and her father provided his written consent to the marriage. Rose lived in Ararat, where her father was the Police Magistrate. Francis Beggs was 25, a squatter living at Eurambeen. Eurambeen is about 40 kilometers south-east of Ararat.
Marriage certificate of Francis Beggs and Helen Rosalie Champion Crespigny
BEGGS-CRESPIGNY. — On the 3rd inst., at Christ Church, Ararat, by the Rev. Canon Homan, Francis Beggs, eldest son of Francis Beggs, Esq., of Eurambeen, to Helen Rosalie, third daughter of P. C. Crespigny, Esq., P.M., Ararat.
[The marriage notice seems to be in error. The Anglican Church in Ararat was then known as Trinity Church, later Holy Trinity.]
Photographs from the albums of Rose Beggs née Champion Crespigny and Charlotte Champion Crespigny née Dana. The annotations are
The photograph album compiled by Rose Beggs includes photographs of them taken at the time of their wedding. The photographer was Johnstone, O’Shannessy & Co. of 3 Bourke Street, Melbourne. Perhaps they travelled to Melbourne after the wedding and had their photographs taken then as a memento. Or perhaps a photographer from the studio was visiting Ararat at the time.
Frank died in 1921. Rose Beggs died on 28 March 1937 in North Brighton,Victoria. They had no children.
DEATHS.
BEGGS -On the 28th March at her residence St Marnocks, Hampton street, North Brighton, Helen Rosalie, widow of Francis Beggs, of St Marnocks, Beaufort.
BEAUFORT.-The death occurred at North Brighton of Mrs. Helen Rosalie Beggs, widow of the late Mr. Francis Beggs, the original owner of St. Marnock's Estate, Beaufort. She lived in the district many years and was closely associated with the local branch of the Australian Women's National League. The burial took place in the family burial ground at Eurambeen Estate.
The photograph album of my great-great aunt Rose includes many people whose portraits I had never seen. One of these is of her first cousin George Dana (1849—1872), who died accidentally 150 years ago on the remote Pacific island of Tanna.
George Kinnaird Dana, christened George Jamieson Dana, was born in 1849 in Dandenong, Victoria, fourth of the five children of Henry Dana, commandant of the Native Police, and his wife Sophia Cole Hamilton née Walsh. Henry was the brother of Rose’s mother Charlotte.
In 1852, when George was three years old, his father died of pneumonia, and his mother Sophia moved to Tasmania. In 1854 George’s older brother, William, died in Launceston. Henry’s brother—George’s uncle William—discovered that Sophia and the children were living in poverty and distress, and he arranged to have them provided with food and financial help. [At that time William was a Victoria Police Inspector at Kilmore, sixty kilometres north of Melbourne.]
In 1856, two years after Sophia was rescued by Uncle William, they were married in Launceston. She was 29; he was 30. The family returned to Victoria, and a son was born—half-brother to George. He died in infancy.
In 1860, when George was ten years old, his mother Sophia died of tuberculosis.
On leaving school George was employed as a clerk in the Bank of Victoria in Melbourne. He appears to have enjoyed football; he played for the South Yarra Football Club [following the code now known as Australian Rules].
About 1867 or 1868 George left the Bank of Victoria with the intention of setting up as a trader in the islands of the South Pacific. Within a year or so he had established a trading firm in the New Hebrides group (present day Vanuatu) in partnership with two young men: James Fraser Bell and William Alister Ross. His partnership with James Bell gave him a share in a small cutter, the Gem 52 tons, and he took up land on the island of Tanna to establish a plantation for the production of copra. [Copra is the dried meat or kernel of the coconut, from which coconut oil is extracted.]
On 28 July 1871 Bell and Ross were murdered by Tanna tribesmen. Australian newspapers published several reports of this, with the Melbourne Leader and the Geelong Advertiser of 31 August carrying a full account of an inquest held immediately afterwards, with statements from George Dana and several other witnesses, including natives whose reports were taken by translation.
Bell and Ross had been on their way to a plantation owned by a man called Henry Lewin, guided there by a native employee. A group of five tribesmen offered to take over, killed the two young men, and stole their clothes and revolvers. The five murderers were described and named, but nothing more could be done: they were members of a tribe known to be troublesome, and there was no military or police presence to make arrests or undertake a punitive expedition.
On 20 December 1872 George Kinnaird Dana also died tragically, of tetanus, contracted when he accidentally shot himself in the leg.
A traveller passing through, named Frederick Campbell, who in 1873 published an account of his journeys, described George’s death:
Port Resolution, Tana, December, 1872. AFTER a stay of two months at Kwamera, I went round by boat to visit Mr. and Mrs. Neilson at Port Resolution. The station here occupies a fine position on the banks overhanging the bay, and commands a very fine view towards the lofty Mount Mirren. The general aspect of the country is much the same as that around Kwamera, only the land is more flat and the forests are more free of underwood. There are two traders’ establishments here, the occupants of them being engaged principally in the manufacture of cobra from cocoanuts and the collection of sulphur. Until lately one of these establishments was in charge of a young man named Dana. He was one of that unfortunate expedition that left Melbourne some years ago to settle upon this island. Two of them—Messrs. Ross and Bell—were killed by the natives ; and now Dana, poor fellow, has met his death here too. Going out one Sunday alone, with his gun, it went off accidentally, inflicting a very bad wound in the leg. He was conveyed home by natives, and Mr. Neilson went down to attend to him. For some days he seemed to be in a fair way of recovery, but then, quite unexpectedly, he took lockjaw, and shortly afterwards died. It was sad to see a young man like that dying alone, on a heathen island, far from his friends and relatives, with no one to care for him except the kind-hearted missionary, near whose station the accident happened to occur.
Mission cottage at Port Resolution from “Nineteen years in Polynesia: missionary life, travels, and researches in the islands of the Pacific” by George Turner (1861) page 133 retrieved through archive.org
An announcement of George Dana’s death was published in the Melbourne Argus just over three months later, on Tuesday 1 April 1873:
DANA.– On the 20th December, 1872, at Port Resolution, Tanna, of an accidental gunshot wound, George Kinnaird Dana, aged 23 years and seven months, the last surviving son of the late Captain H E P Dana.
A few weeks ago I received an email from my father’s cousin, the son of my great aunt Nancy Movius nee Champion de Crespigny (1910-2003), offering me the custody of several collections of photographs:
“We have unearthed three Victorian photo albums that my mother seems to have brought from Adelaide with her. They came to light when we moved out of our house by the seaside, and are filled with deC's and others among our forebears. We are no longer living in space sufficient to store them safely. You should have them for your archive. It would be a shame not to have them preserved and I am happy to ship them to you. Please say you want them and furnish an address.
The three albums have arrived, a most exciting event. They include more than 200 photographs, most of them cartes de visite, with some cabinet cards.
Pages of cartes de visite. Not all the photos are identified.
Cabinet cards of Rose and Frank Beggs
Cartes de visite, first produced in the 1850s, were small photographs. They were usually made of an albumen print, with the thin paper photograph mounted on a thicker paper card. Cabinet cards, of a larger format, date from the 1870s.
One the albums is inscribed “Rose from her brother Loo”. Loo or Loup was the pet name for my great great grandfather Philip Champion de Crespigny (1850-1927). Rose (1858-1937) was his youngest sister. She married Frank Beggs. This album has an index to people in the photos, and my great aunt Nancy has also annotated some of the photographs.
The second album has no inscriptions nor annotations.
The third album has been partly annotated by Nancy, who refers to the album as belonging to Charlotte Frances Champion de Crespigny nee Dana. Charlotte was my third great grandmother, the mother of Philip and Rose.
Rose Beggs nee CdeC on her wedding dayCharlotte CdeC nee DanaPhilip CdeC (Loo)
I think that Rose gave the albums to Nancy, her great niece.
Most of the photographs are new to me. It is marvellous to be able to see photographs of people I had previously only known as names. I look forward to sharing the photographs, and perhaps some of the stories that go with them, in forthcoming posts.