Wednesday 19 September 2018

Memorials

My eye caught three of the very numerous memorials in St Pancras Old Church
The brother of the oddly spelled earl

The family inscription

The annoying feminist


Wollstonecraft is the name of a trendy lower North Shore Sydney suburb; on googling it emerges that it was named for a nephew of the famous Mary who came to the Colony to escape identification with his notorious feminist  aunt,  and her views. As might be expected he flourished in Sydney town with a partner (Berry) and a land grant of 500 acres in the area in 1821 and lots more elsewhere with Berry (10,000 acres on the Shoalhaven in 1822) and  free convict labour . 
They built Australia's first canal, with the assistance of Hamilton Hume. The 209 yard long canal was completed in 12 days. The crops farmed at Shoalhaven included native cedar and tobacco, which were sold at considerable profit both to the growing colony at Sydney and for export. The property at Shoalhaven grew to 40,000 acres (162 km²) under Berry's management, while Wollstonecraft looked after business in Sydney.(Wikipedia )

What makes this of passing interest to me is that aforementioned 2nd great grandmother reached Jamberoo, a little north of the Shoalhaven, in the late 1830s as the young wife of a cedar cutter. She had 2 children baptised but did not last to the first census in 1841.


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