Jan SQUIRE's ancestors who arrived in South Australia.
John SQUIRE - arrived 1911.
What would be needed in 1911 for John SQUIRE to leave his work in Bristol and hop on a boat bound for
South Australia? A good answer is probably love! John was staying with his mother’s brother, William GILL
and his family while undertaking his apprenticeship in Bedminster, Bristol, Somersetshire. One daughter of
William GILL and Sophia was Ethel GILL, who John had plenty of opportunity to get to know well. William
was the brother of John SQUIRE’s mother, so John and Ethel were first cousins.
There were certainly adverts in all the Somerset and Gloucestershire papers advertising for servants and
labourers to come to South Australia for guaranteed work. John was a qualified wheelwright and
coachbuilder, and it seemed that when he arrived in Adelaide, he went at once to Port Wakefield to work
for the South Australian railways. Today, we might call him a specialist carpenter. Three years later, in
1914, Ethel GILL followed John to Adelaide, and they married the day she arrived in Adelaide. Ethel and
John were first cousins, so is that why they came to live half-way around the world? I do not know what
their families thought of the match-up, but John and Ethel never returned to Somerset to see their
relatives. They did make a satisfying life for themselves in South Australia, and set up us descendants for a
great future.
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Ethel GILL seems to have decided that John SQUIRE was the one for her, so she followed John to Adelaide,
Australia. Their relationship must have begun in Bristol, England, but may have been discouraged by one or
both sets of parents, because John’s mother and Ethel’s father were brother and sister. The couple were
therefore first cousins. Although the GILL and the SQUIRE’s hometown was in the Alcombe and Dunster
area of Somerset, Ethel’s father William GILL moved to Bristol to marry and bring up the family. John
SQUIRE was undertaking his apprenticeship as a wheelwright in Bristol, and he would have been boarding
close by the GILL’s while learning his trade. We do not know what the family thought of the relationship,
but given Ethel and John both left England, Ethel three years after John, they must have decided that
making a start together in a new country was a great option. Ethel needed to have been very brave and
strong to travel half-way around the world on her own.
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John RANN was born in Dudley, Worcestershire in 1821. He married Sarah Anne STANLEY in the same village in
1844, and he set sail for South Australia with a pregnant wife and two young children late in 1854. He is listed as a
carpenter or joiner, so would have had the skills a young community in South Australia would want. I cannot find any
census records in 1851 to indicate where they were living at that time, but this was a time of the Scottish Highland
Clearances, and also of the Irish famines, so there was the likelihood of many families moving to the city of
Birmingham, already a highly industrialised city. John and Sarah would most likely find the offer of an assisted
passage half-way round the world to Adelaide, Australia, to be quite attractive.
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William MORRIS - arrived 1847.
William was born in Penzance, Cornwall, in 1807, and married Honor LOWRY at the young age of 21 years, in 1828.
By the 1841 census, they had seven children, but three were to die before the remaining family set off for Adelaide,
South Australia, in 1847, on the ship ‘Cressy’. Although they lived in a mining area in Cornwall, William is listed as a
wheelwright, blacksmith and coach-builder, all skills vital to the mining industry.
After a time working for an employer for a few years, William started his own business in the city, and soon won
awards and accolades for his highly sought after carriages. He was highly regarded as a craftsman during his career
and into retirement. Three more children were born to this couple in Adelaide, but what brought them here? Was it
the deaths of some of their children, or the declining mining industry in Cornwall, or both? This family stayed in
Adelaide, rather than moving to a mining town, and lived in the city and at Magill.
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Joseph MUSSON was born and grew up in the village of Long Clawson, south east of Nottingham, England, but in his
teens he moved to Grantham in Lincolnshire where he worked as a Boatman and Carrier. Here, Joseph met and
married Ann ROGERS in 1822. They spent 26 years of married life together, and they had seven children. When Ann
died in 1848, the family discussed a move to South Australia and Adelaide, even though Joseph was already 50 years
old. From here, the MUSSON name is entwined with the PRIEST family. Joseph’s son Richard MUSSON married
Frances PRIEST in Grantham, and daughter Frances MUSSON married John PRIEST after they arrived in Adelaide.
Richard and Frances emigrated first in 1851 on the ship ‘Omega’, with most of the PRIEST family. Then daughter Ann
came to Melbourne in 1854 (on the ‘Ontario’), and our Joseph came to Adelaide, with the rest of his children, also in
1854, aboard the ship ‘Emigrant’.
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William TRELOAR - arrived 1847
William TRELOAR was born in the south-west corner of Cornwall, at Wendron, in 1800, most likely to a mining family.
It seems this family did not move around much for they were in Wendron since the late 1400s, until William left the
area in 1847, headed for Australia. William married Ann PASCOE in 1824, and they had 12 children by 1844, all living
to adulthood. William and Ann decided to bring the entire family to South Australia in 1847, probably because of
local advertising of enticing jobs in South Australia, and because the local mining industry was starting to decline. I
previously said a two-year-old boy would be a challenge on a three-month trip on a sailing ship, but twelve kids???
There is no firm evidence that William was a miner, but it is most likely that he worked in the mining industry. He is
absent from the family residence on census night in 1841, and I cannot identify him anywhere else. The family
settled in Kapunda in South Australia once they arrived here, but some members of the family soon took land north
of Kapunda and became farmers. William died in 1857 at the young age of 57 years, and he left a large number of
descendants in the colony.
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George PRIEST was born in Grantham, Lincolnshire, in 1803. He was listed as a bricklayer and builder in the 1851
census, so he would have had great building skills to bring to a new colony. He was well into middle age when he
brought his wife Frances and his three youngest children (John, Charles and Emma, aged 7, 11 and 17 years old) to
Adelaide in 1851. Two of his older children had already married into the MUSSON family, and most of this family
were also on the ship ‘Omega’. Their second child, George, had married in 1849 and emigrated to South Australia in
1850. This was a year before the rest of the family came to South Australia, so they were probably on an advance
journey to look at the opportunities. As a bricklayer and builder, George must have thought he would do well in the
new colony, as he did. He lived in North Adelaide, to the age of 85 years, and died at North Adelaide in 1889.
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Anne KEIGHTLEY's ancestors who arrived in South Australia.
Samuel KEiGHTLEY - arrived 1850
Samuel’s family had farmed in the Loughborough area of Leicestershire for generations, but by the 1841 census, his
father had died at a relatively young age. As the youngest of five children, and having an older brother, Samuel
probably felt he had little chance of inheriting the family farm. In 1842, at the age of 24 years, he married Eliza
STEWART, in the wonderfully named village of Thorpe Acre, in Leicestershire. The couple stayed in the county of
Leicestershire, but their first four children were born in Leicester, Loughborough and Nottingham, all quite close to
the farm. Samuel would have spent some of this time working on the farm, but, after his marriage, may have worked
and lived in the towns where his children were born. Samuel set off for Australia in 1850, bringing his wife and four
young children to a new land in Adelaide, Australia.
Samuel and his family settled in Angaston, and he bought property from George Fife Angus, a prominent colonist
involved with the establishment of South Australia. The property was between the township of Angaston and
Penrice. Samuel sold the property in 1872 and moved to Napperby where he died in 1878.
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Franz MEINCKE - arrived about 1850.
Franz Ludwig Rudolph MEINCKE, or Louis as he was known for most of his life, was born and grew up in Schleswig, in
Prussia or Denmark, depending on the state of these two warring countries in the 1840s. Louis went to sea at an
early age, from the port of Hamburg, and stopped off in Adelaide around 1850. It is thought that Louis jumped ship
and stayed in Adelaide, possibly as a consequence of thinking he would likely be conscripted into the military if he
returned home. I did find a web page listing him as a deserter many years ago, but did not save the evidence.
However, Louis quickly found employment with the Pilot Service in Port Adelaide, operating a light-ship in the Port
River, and spoke at least German, Danish and English. He would never have seen his family again.
Franz did quite well in South Australia. He soon married, and had his first child while working on the Port River lightship.
After leaving the harbour service, he was employed as a translator with the German work-gangs on part of the Adelaide
to Kapunda railway. As a result, he settled in Kapunda, and became a carrier at Kapunda Railway Station for some
years. Franz was a freemason for more than forty years, with the Lodge of Light, and was also a town
councillor for one term. He died in Kapunda in 1914, aged 79 years.
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Alfred CHAMBERS - Arrived 1865.
Alfred’s father, John CHAMBERS, came to Tasmania from London in 1841, but it was Alfred CHAMBERS who moved
across to Adelaide that is the focus of this narrative. John CHAMBERS was born in London, and spent his early life as
a clerk, before an Uncle took him to Ceylon aged around 14 years, where he managed a property for some time. On
his return to England aged just 19 years, he sought a course in teacher instruction. At age 25, he married Eliza
ROBINS and began a family, before accepting a teaching position in Tasmania, Australia. Alfred was born on the ship
‘William Wise’, off the coast of South Africa, in 1841. John CHAMBERS was heading to Tasmania to start a new life as
a schoolteacher, with his wife and four children, although they arrived with five children.
Alfred grew up in Tasmania, moved to Melbourne with his parents in 1851, and then went to the Victorian goldfields
in 1855, aged about 14 years of age. He found work as a store-keeper’s assistant. Alfred married Sarah STODART in
the goldfields in 1863, and they moved to Adelaide in 1865. Alfred’s working career started at Harris, Scarfe and Co.,
but quickly included being an inventor and manufacturer, mainly of washing machines. He was involved in literary
circles and church life, and Alfred was a persistent abstinence promoter. What an amazing life he led.
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Abraham BARRETT - arrived c1862.
Abraham BARRETT was born in Hobart in 1825, which was where he grew up. He sailed to Portland in 1846, aged just
21 years, married, and had seven children here. He came to Mt Gambier in South Australia in about 1861.
However, we also need to know of his father, John BARRETT, who was born in Ripley in Yorkshire (England). John
was the intrepid traveller, and he came to Hobart as a free settler in 1823, on the ship ‘Brixton’. John was variously
described as a grocer, brick-layer and businessman. John married Hannah FIELD in Hobart soon after arriving, and a
year later, Abraham was born. It seems the BARRETT family stayed in Tasmania, but young Abraham was
adventurous enough that around 1840 he travelled to Portland in coastal Victoria. He must have been well educated
for he is listed as an accountant in Portland, and later a merchant in Mt Gambier. He married Susan SHACKLOCK in
Portland and raised seven children, before moving to Mt Gambier in the early 1860s. He is a bit unique in not moving
halfway around the world to settle in South Australia. Abraham died in Mt Gambier in 1877.
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Helen THOMSON - arrived about 1870.
Helen Band THOMSON is another of my new and very short narratives, and the records are also a bit
sparse. She was born in Port Adelaide in 1855, to Robert THOMSON and Jane BOWMAN. They were both fr
om Scotland, and they had married in Dundee in 1850. They were probably from Dundee, but I cannot
find birth records to be sure. Likewise, I cannot find any record of their emigration or arrival in Adelaide.
Helen marries Herbert KEIGHTLEY in 1877, in Napperby in South Australia, and from then, we know much
more. The family eventually moved to Western Australia after several attempts at various businesses,
including farming and running hotels. Their farming pursuits in Western Australia were not very successful,
and they moved to Perth, where Helen died in 1924. Four of their children returned to Adelaide, where the
KEIGHTLEY line continued.
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Thomas WILLIAMS - arrived 1857.
Thomas WILLIAMS is another Cornish miner (as stated in the 1851 Census records), who was most likely lured to
South Australia to start a new life and to work in the mines here. He would have known that he had lived through a
most productive time for mining in Cornwall, but that tin and other mining had started to decline. Many mines in
Cornwall were closing as they had exhausted their ore reserves. Thomas WILLIAMS was born in St Just, in the
southwest part of Cornwall, but moved around the region several times. He married Rachel TREVORROW in 1836 in Lelant,
Cornwall, and they had eight children before they all came to South Australia as a family. It is likely there was at least
one more child who died in infancy. In July 1857, they boarded the sailing ship ‘Lady Ann’ in Plymouth for the 14
week journey to Port Adelaide.
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Duncan BUCHANAN - arrived 1856.
Duncan BUCHANAN was the only one of our South Australian pioneers to have spent several years in another
continent before emigrating to Australia. He was born in Glendaurel, Scotland in 1819, and went to Argentina at the
age of about 22 years. Duncan worked in pastoral pursuits for 14 years before returning to Scotland. He became a
very skilled horseman, but he left Argentina and returned home, due to poor conditions in Argentina for non-locals.
Still unmarried, but disliking the Scottish climate, he emigrated to South Australia, settling immediately in Mt
Gambier. Duncan was a real adventurer and a skilled horseman when he arrived at the Mount. After working for Mr
Neil BLACK for two years, he bought a farm at Square Mile, a few miles south-east of Mount Gambier, where he
farmed for the rest of his life. Duncan died in 1890.
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Catharine KNIGHT - arrived 1854.
Catharine KNIGHT was born in St Winnow, Cornwall, in 1812, to parents William KNIGHT and Elizabeth LANGDON.
Catharine married William BRAY in 1833. He was probably a china clay miner, but he died early, in 1844 aged just 39
years. As Catharine BRAY, she appeared in the 1851 English census as a widow with five children under 9 years of
age, but still in St Austell. Three years later, with her five children, she had made the very bold decision to come to
South Australia, arriving in 1854 on the ship ‘Trafalgar’. The family must have been fairly well off to be able to live as
a single parent family in Cornwall. What must Catharine’s life have been like since William’s death? What were the
drivers for the family to come to Adelaide at this time? Catharine was 42 years of age when she arrived in South
Australia, and she never remarried.
We know that Catharine settled quickly in Carey Gully in the Adelaide Hills, on land that delivers excellent market
gardening produce. Her descendants still have land in the area today. While this narrative is primarily the story of
the BRAY family, we will look first at Catharine’s ancestors in Cornwall, as there are some important stories to be
told. We will start with Catharine’s mother, Elizabeth KNIGHT nee LANGDON, and this maiden name left an
important legacy. In 1915, many of the MEINCKE family adopted LANGDON as the family surname, to avoid antiGerman sentiment during WW1.