A Quiet Life: Gordon Mainwaring (1817-1872)

This week’s Sepia Saturday theme is inspired by the theories of the Danish author Herman Bang (1857 – 1912), one of the leaders of the “quiet existences” literary movement, which sought to give more attention to “ignored people living boring and apparently unimportant lives”. One of my forebears, known in the family as the remittance man – the term meaning an emigrant, banished to a distant British possession to live on money sent from home – seems a suitable candidate.

Our ‘remittance man’ was my 3rd great grandfather Gordon Mainwaring (1817 – 1872) who arrived in the colony of South Australia in 1840.

Photograph of Gordon Mainwaring from Cavenagh-Mainwaring, Christine ” Whitmore Hall : from 1066 to Waltzing Matilda”. Adelaide Peacock Publications, 2013. page 103.

As the third son of Rowland Mainwaring (1783 – 1862), Gordon Mainwaring was not expected to inherit the family estate, ‘Whitmore’ in Staffordshire.

But it appears that he was thought to need a career, and from 1832 to 1834 Mainwaring was enrolled as cadet at Addiscombe in Surrey, a military seminary for the British East India Company. In 1835 he joined the 53rd Bengal Native Infantry Company of the Honourable East India Company Service.

Mainwaring resigned his commission in 1839 after less than five years. In 1840 he left Calcutta and sailed for Adelaide, arriving in South Australia as a passenger on the Eamont on 9 April 1840, less than four years after the proclamation of the new colony.

Three years later, in 1843, Mainwaring married Mary Hickey (1819-1890), who in 1840 had emigrated to South Australia on the Birman from Cork in Ireland with her sister and brother and her brother’s wife and small child. (Her brother died on the voyage out and her sister-in-law seems to have returned to Ireland.)

Gordon and Mary had seven children:

• Ellen (1845 – 1920)
• Emily (1848 – 1863)
• Charles Henry (1850 – 1889)
• Alice (1852 – 1878)
• Walter Coyney (1855 – 1888)
• Julia (1857 – 1935)
• Frederick Rowland (1859 – 1891)

In 1925 the Adelaide Register published extracts from a diary that Mainwaring kept in 1851. By that time he had become a farmer, with a small property at Gilles Plains, 15 kilometers north of Adelaide.

The 1851 diary records the Mainwaring family’s visit to Mary’s sister. A.T. Saunders, a South Australian historian, who annotated the diary in 1925 explains that Mary’s sister Julia (1817-1884) was married to William Morris, the head keeper of the lunatic asylum.

Mainwaring’s diary gives us a glimpse of Gordon’s quiet life in 1851. He chopped wood for sale, grew vegetables and fruit, helped his wife with the housework and socialised locally. I find Gordon’s record of his quiet life interesting and no less important than any other life.

Diary of 1851 published by the Adelaide “Register” 23 March 1925. Introduction and month of January.

February and March 1851. On 24 February Gordon Mainwaring, his wife Mary and the children visited Mary’s sister, Mrs Morris, wife of William Morris, then head keeper of the lunatic asylum.

March to May. Selling firewood through Mr Kerr.

May

Related post

• Trove Tuesday: Obituary for Admiral Mainwaring

Deaths at sea

This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt is the sea. In fact, the prompt picture of Bondi Beach inspires thoughts of holidays by the beach, but I have recently been researching several members of my family who died at sea and I was reminded that the sea is not always benign.

The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault painted 1818-1819 and now hanging in the Louvre. The Méduse was wrecked off the coast of Africa in 1816. Of the 400 on board only 15 survived.

Arthur Branthwayt (1776-1808) was the second husband of my 5th great grandmother Elizabeth née Phipps (1774-1836). He died at sea in a shipwreck. He was travelling to Gothenburg and the Crescent, a frigate with 36 guns, which was lost off the coast of Jutland. 220 of the 280 aboard her died. A raft was constructed, similar to the Méduse‘s. Arthur Branthwayt’s wife, eight-month-old daughter and four step-children were not travelling with him.

Hampshire Chronicle 6 February 1809

Kentish Gazette 30 December 1808

Morning Post (London) 17 January 1809

Arthur Branthwayt’s grandson, Arthur Branthwayt Toker (1834 – 1866), my first cousin five times removed, is doubly related to me as his mother married her half-sister’s nephew by marriage, the son of Clarissa Champion de Crespigny (1776 – 1836). Young Arthur died at sea of typhoid fever while returning to England from New Zealand. He had been an officer in the 65th Regiment (later the York and Lancaster Regiment) and fought in the Maori Wars. He was unmarried.

 

from William Francis Robert Gordon’s album “Some “Soldiers of the Queen” who served in the Maori Wars and Other Notable Persons Connected Herewith”. Retrieved from the collection of Puke Ariki, New Plymouth, New Zealand

 

Wellington Independent 27 March 1866

In 1814 another shipwreck took the lives of Henry Gore Wade, his wife and children. Wade was the brother-in law of my fourth great uncle Philip Champion de Crespigny (1765 – 1851).  The Wade family were returning to England from India and died when the John Palmer was wrecked.

Morning Post (London) 31 March 1814

Morning Post (London) 1 April 1814

Gordon Skelly, who died in 1771, was my 6th great grandfather. His granddaughter Sophia née Duff (1790 – 1824) married Rowland Mainwaring (1783 – 1862). Skelly was the captain of the Royal Navy sloop Lynx stationed at Shields Yorkshire. He was drowned when his ship’s long boat, ,crossing the bar of the harbour, was overturned by breakers. At the time of his death his two children were aged four and three.

Leeds Intelligencer 2 July 1771

Entrance to Shields Harbour from The Ports, Harbours, Watering-places and Picturesque Scenery of Great Britain Vol. 1 by William Findon retrieved from Project Gutenberg

When I checked my family tree I found a number of others who died at sea:

• Charles Patrick Dana (1784 – 1816), my 4th great grand uncle, who died while travelling from the East Indies to England on the Sir Stephen Lushington.
• Michael Hickey (1812 – 1840), the brother of my 3rd great grandmother died on the voyage to South Australia from Cork, Ireland,  on the Birman.
• Kenneth Budge (1813 – 1852), my 3rd great grandfather, died of cholera while sailing near Elsinore, Denmark.
• Walter Wilkes Plaisted (1836 – 1871), my 3rd great grand uncle, who died of phthsis (tuberculosis) on board the SS Geelong during the passage from Singapore to Melbourne. His probate file, held by the Public Records Office of Victoria, includes an inventory of his effects, a fascinating insight into his possessions.

My great great grandfather, James Francis Cudmore (1837 – 1912) was born at sea aboard the Siren off the coast of Kangaroo Island. His mother, Mary née Nihill (1811 -1893) was travelling from Launceston to the very new colony of Adelaide to join her husband Daniel Michael Paul Cudmore (1811 – 1891).

My husband’s great great grandmother Margaret née Smyth (1834 – 1897) gave birth to a baby boy as she travelled to Australia from Ireland on the Persian. The baby is recorded on the passenger list but it is not known what happened to him after arrival. He probably died as an infant. His death was before compulsory civil registration.