THE PADDINGTON CEMETERY

An Ithaca Labour Councilor said "the tombstones are good road metal." 1907

            An old cemetery is one of the most pathetic and melancholy spectacles in this world, and the pathos of it is deepened when it has been allowed to drift into neglect and ruin, with broken fences, overturned tombstones, fallen railings, obliterated inscriptions, rank weeds, long grass and general desolation.

          Longfellow said he “loved that ancient Saxon phrase which called the burial ground God’s Acre,” but old and neglected cemeteries are a poor compliment to the respect shown to God’s special property in graveyards.

          It is not an honour to our boasted civilization that primitive races, and those we are pleased to call “savages,” had far more reverence for their dead, than the most highly civilised races of the present.

          The aboriginal burying grounds of the world were not holiday resorts for lewd and frivolous larrikins and larrikinesses, and sundry other types of human animals whose presence is an insult to the dead. Nor were they feeding places for goats and cows, and they were not allowed to drift into a condition which is an insult to the living.

          The Roman Catacombs (“Roma Sotteranea”), prove the reverent care of the ancient Romans for their dead.

          The Alabaster Sarcophagus of Psammetichus, and the magnificent urns and expensively embalmed bodies of ancient Egypt, show a reverence for the dead not paralleled by any other nation of the world. And no other nation had ever a custom corresponding to the Egyptian “Trial of the Dead,” one of the most weirdly dramatic and tragically mournful and pathetic spectacles in human history.

          To come from the ancient to modern times, let us ask if our own fair land of Queensland has a noble record in its treatment of the dead men and women, the heroes and heroines of the rough old pioneering days of the past, the men and women whose life work made stepping stones for the present to walk over where they had to swim or wade through many a dark morass.

          Brisbane’s first cemetery was on the bank of the river on the curve of North Quay. That was the graveyard of the convict period, a time of horrors unimaginable by the people of today. On that then lonely spot, overlooking the placid river were deposited the bodies of soldiers, convicts, and officers, who died from 1825 to 1839, and today their dust lies there in the silence of that river bank, heedless of the continuous roar of the city which stands now where they saw only the primeval forest, and nightly heard the howl of the dingo and the songs of the savage tribes, far less savage than the whites of that period. They lie there forgotten, the flogger and the flogged, the slayer and the slain.

          The old headstones from that graveyard were removed many years ago to the  cemetery at Paddington.

          There was also another early cemetery by the river and Roma Street, in front of where the Helidon Spa establishment is situated. The tombstones from there were also removed to the Paddington cemetery which is therefore the most venerable graveyard in Queensland, the one with the most fascinating historical associations, the one surrounded by the most pathetic and romantic memories of the early days of Queensland.

          The ancient Necropolis, venerable with age and sacred to the memory of our early settlers, was the subject for discussion in a recent meeting of the Ithaca Shire Council, which decided that it should be vested in the Council, and transformed into a recreation ground.

          In answer to a question concerning the disposal of headstones, Labour Alderman White replied : “Break them up and use them for the footpaths; they make good road metal!”

          And nobody even attempted to brain him with a ruler! Probably the braining process would be as much a physical impossibility with White as it would be with a piemelon, but some might have at least have mercifully have thrown him over a precipice if there was one convenient.

          Darwin said that today, even among the most highly civilised races, there are a number of men still in the Troglodyte stage, men who have the skulls and intellects of cave dwellers who sat in their dark dwelling places and gnawed the grilled bones of even their own parents, when having a special feast.

          To such men there is nothing sacred, and they care for nothing but the welfare of their own carcasses.

          It was said of Cato that his love of gold was such, he sifted the ashes of his dead father, to see if they would pan out a few pennyweights. There are men who would dig up graves for the sake of the shrouds on the dead, and have them made into shirts.

          Some of the Ithaca aldermen are evidently still in the Troglodyte stage, a stage at least ten thousand years lower than that of any savage race of today. The proposal to insult the dead by making road metal of their tombs give the Ithaca Council, and Alderman White, an unenviable distinction that we gladly believe will stand as the only record of the kind in Australian history, from the landing of Phillip to the far off period when this continent is to be once more submerged in the ocean. If Alderman White’s skull is not broken up for road metal after he is dead it ought to be placed in the Museum beside that of the Diprotodon, and other extinct animals of the Post Pliocene period in Australia. And the “Daily Mail” sent out a Troglodyte reporter who approved of Alderman White’s advice.

          This is the first appearance of the Troglodyte in Queensland journalism. It is safe to say that on no other paper is such a reporter possible, at least not on the staff. He would be kept in an iron cage in the yard, and fed on thistles.

          The Paddington cemetery holds most of the historic people of Moreton Bay and Queensland. And in a series of articles we shall endeavour to save the names and deeds of the most remarkable from the oblivion of time.

          Before entering those old cemeteries in that solemn, little valley, which may be called the Valley of the Shadow of Death, it may be well to have a glance at the outside. In those days, the various sects extended their exclusiveness beyond the grave, and so the Wesleyan, the Jew, the Roman Catholic, and the Church of England dead were kept carefully apart by a fence or a street. It was a somewhat inconsistent scheme on the part of those who believe in a resurrection that is to find all equal before God on the Day of Judgment. But theology is not one of the exact sciences, and is subject to many amendments. Today, in the Toowong cemetery, all sects sleep as it were in the same room on apparently harmonious terms, as there is no recorded case of a general disturbance.

          Outside all the sects were two classes of unfortunates to whom consecrated burial was denied. Those were suicides, who murdered themselves, and malefactors whom the law murdered on the gallows. These are the dead “outside the fence,” though there is no reason to suppose they have not slept as peacefully, as those inside.

          No headstones were placed over these lost souls, and so their graves are not discoverable today. Their names only are found in the records. No one call tell who was the first honest person inside, or the first criminal outside.

Toowong Cemetery started with the grave of Miss Hill, a daughter of the late Walter Hill, who was first Curator of the Brisbane Botanic Gardens, in 1855. The next grave was that of Governor Blackall, on January 3, 1871.(Correction: Ann Hill was buried November 3, 1871).

Today the dead in Toowong Cemetery are more in number than the whole of the living in Queensland at the date of Separation, when the population was represented by 25,000 people.

          Among the men buried in the old graveyard between Roma Street and the North Quay were two named Stapylton and Tuck. Stapylton was one of three surveyors sent up by Governor Gipps to start a trigonometrical survey of the Moreton Bay district, the other two being Dixon and James Warner, who was, in after years, Sergeant-at-Arms in the Assembly.

          Stapylton and his two men, Tuck and Dunlop, were attacked by the blacks near Mt. Lindsay, and Stapylton and Tuck were killed, Dunlop being left as dead, but he crawled into the scrub and was found there alive by the relief party from Brisbane, and recovered dying only about 10 or 12 years ago.

          The remains of Stapylton and Tuck were brought to Brisbane and buried in that old ground near Roma Street, where they may be turned up some day in an excavation or a posthole.

          Two blacks named Merridoo and Noogamill were captured in May 1841, taken to Sydney, tried and sentenced to death, brought back to Brisbane and hanged from a beam on the present Observatory, the old convict windmill.

          These two blacks, the first men hanged in Brisbane, were also buried not far from Stapylton and Tuck.

          The railway station of Stapylton on the Southport line perpetuates the name of the dead surveyor.

          Among those outside the fence in the Paddington cemetery is a black called Dundalli, hanged in 1854 in Queen Street on the site of the present Post Office. He was charged with several murders, including those of Mr. Gregor and Mrs. Shannon at the Pine River, in 1846.

          In the same month, another black called “Davey” was hanged in Queen Street for killing Mr. Trevethan at Wide Bay, and he too, is “outside the fence” at Paddington.

          Many readers will remember Lachlan McLean, the once well-known and respected blacksmith, of Elizabeth Street. His father and family came to Sydney from Ross-shire in Scotland, in 1841, and six months afterwards came on to Brisbane, where McLean, senior, was the first blacksmith. He died about 40 years ago and was buried at Paddington.

          There was a remarkable incident on the day of the funeral. At the moment of passing the old gaol at Petrie Terrace, now a police barracks, an aboriginal prisoner named “Tommy Skyring” was attempting to escape. He had climbed to the top of the wall, and was just about to lower himself, when a warder shot him dead, and he fell alongside the funeral procession, nearly on top of one of the mourners.

          Tommy was one of three blacks who killed Stevens, the botanist in 1866, near Mooloolah, at the spot still known as the “Dead Man’s Lagoon.”

          It appears that Tommy gave himself up to the police, as Stevens haunted him. He said the dead man came repeatedly and looked over his shoulder, and this so scared Tommy that he refused to eat, and wasted away to a shadow.

          But the old love of freedom overcame him, and he was making a dash for it once more when the warder’s carbine stopped him at the start.

          He, too, lies outside the fence at Paddington among the unwept, unhonored and unsung.

          At present in Brisbane are some visitors from Scotland, impelled by a desire to find among the Paddington dead, the grave of a relative who was buried there in 1864, and they have been successful.

          Since the Toowong cemetery started a number of people have been taken up and removed to there. Among these were the members of the McLean family.

          Among those buried in the Presbyterian section at Paddington was the Rev. Thomas Mowbray, a once well-known Presbyterian parson, whose name is retained by “Mowbray Park” at South Brisbane.

          He was father of the present Mowbray P.M. of Warwick, and the late Willie Mowbray, once P.M. at Herberton, and finally at Gympie.

          He was also father of the wife of the still juvenile and vivacious Dr. John Thompson, the most experienced medical man in Queensland.

          The Mowbray Estate remained in the hands of the family until recent years, the last of it being sold to the South Brisbane Council, who made it the public Mowbray Park of today.

          The remains of the Rev. Thomas Mowbray were removed in after years to the cemetery at South Brisbane, where Mrs. Mowbray, who died ten or twelve years ago, is also buried.

          Among those in the Catholic ground at Paddington are the remains of a Mr. And Mrs. Loague who came out from Londonderry, in Ireland, in 1852.

          Loague was for many years a highly esteemed officer in the Police Force, stationed at Petrie Terrace gaol.

          One of his daughters, a fine-looking woman, married a Mr. Mylchreest, who was for many years pilot and harbour master at Cairns, the first there, a six foot two, broad-shouldered man, who died leaving one son and one daughter.

          The son died, and the daughter, one of the finest specimens of women in North Queensland, married a Mulgrave River stockowner named Simmonds, who died some years ago, leaving a widow and four children, one of whom, the eldest girl, is married and residing at present in Wynnum.

          It is especially interesting to find such proofs as these that there has been no deterioration, in the second or third generations, and that Loague’s descendants today are quite equal in physique to their old Hibernian ancestors. A few facts like these dispel many illusions concerning the adaptability of Queensland, North and South, for the white races.

          The smallest graveyard at Paddington is that of the Wesleyans. It has also the distinction of being the most neglected. There does not appear to have been more than 70 or 80 people buried there, and some of the graves have either not been marked by headstones, or some of those stones have been broken or removed.

          A few score are lying on their faces, as tombstones frequently do even when erect, and here and there is merely a fragment bearing a part of an inscription.

          On some graves the headstones alone indicate the site, the wooden railings having long since decayed, or been broken or removed for firewood, by some of the ghouls who do these things at night when the nocturnal reptiles are out in search of prey. The surrounding fence has also supplied much firewood, which left panels with no rails, or one rail, and here and there dreary gaps in the palings, with signs of age, and neglect, and decay, and the trail of desolation over it all. Alone of all that is not dismal, and dead, and forgotten, or unfit to be seen, stand two or three silky oaks and a Bunya pine, of which we might say, as Byron said of the cypress:

“Dark tree still sad when others’ grief has fled,

The only constant mourner o’er the dead.”

          The oaks, which are about 40 feet in height, afford favourite climbing exercise for the small boys of the locality and only a very foolish sparrow ever builds a nest on even the highest branch.

          At the south-east corner of the cemetery is a recumbent vault stone telling us that below is all that is mortal of Annie Thompson Pugh, wife of Theophilus P. Pugh, whose name will be handed on to posterity associated with “Pugh’s Almanac.”

          Pugh was once a member for North Brisbane, and while in the House voted for the repeal of the Civil Service Act.

          When he stood again for Brisbane, the whole Civil Service was waiting for his blood, and he was thrown out with a loud bang.

          Pugh was a little man with so much restless energy that he was known as the “Industrious Flea.”

          On the stone is only one line stating that:

“She never caused her friends to grieve until she died.”

a neat epigram such as shows that brevity is often the soul of eloquence as well as of wit.

          Mrs. Pugh died on March 1, 1866, aged 33 years.

          Near the grave is a stone with the name of William Alfred Finney, the eleven months son of Thomas and Sidney Ann Finney.

          Sidney House, at Toowong, bears the name of the mother, and she and the once well-known Tom Finney, founder of the firm of Finney Isles and Co., are in the same Land of Shadows as the child who died on June 11, 1869.

          That is one of the only three graves in a decent condition, but yet one naturally wonders why it has not received more attention, or the stone removed to Toowong.

          The best kept grave there, apparently recently much improved, is that of Henry Edward Tom, second son of Henry and Emma Tom, a child of two years and five months, who died on August 22, 1864.

          That was 43 years ago, but the memory of the lost child is still green in the hearts of some of the Tom family, well-known and respected squatters today on the Maranoa.

          Pathetic beyond expression are these childrens' graves, and there are many of them.

          Only a child,” says the casual fool who has not known sorrow, or is not capable of feeling nor caring that 

out of the souls of the mothers of these, the light and joy of their life has fled,” 

as they consigned those once dearly loved white shrouded little forms to the dust.

          Very singular are fatalities in some families.

          Amy Josephine Leigh died on April 18, 1867, aged 8 months, and next year William Theodore Leigh died on January 17, at exactly the same age. The stone tells us that they were 

children of Thomas Leigh, and Jane White.” 

        White, presumably being the mother’s maiden name. The inscription reads:-

“They have early flown, dear, suffering ones,

Home to their rest,

They have early learned the simple tones

In the land of the Blest,

In that painless clime, in that region fair,

Sweet Amy, dear Willie, we’ll meet you there.”

          The oldest grave appears to be that of Johanna Sutherland, who died on December 14, 1852, aged 70, and next comes George Poole, a Brisbane chemist and druggist, who died on May 6, 1853, at 30 years of age. Of him it is said that 

“he died triumphant in the faith of the Gospel.”

          The Markwell family, well-known since early days, are represented by Mary Ann, wife of John Markwell, dead on April 8, 1855, aged 30, and Mary Ann, the wife of Isaac Markwell, dead on  November 2, 1862, aged 45. Evidently Mary Ann was a favourite name in that family.

          On the tomb of the wife of W. J. Killick Piddington, dead on October 25, 1866, aged 36, is this inscription, referring to her eight year old son, who died on September 27, 1865:-

“Yes, ‘tis sweet balm in our despair,

Fond, fairest boy,

That Heaven is God’s, and thou are there,

With Him in joy;

Farewell then,

for a while farewell,

Pride of my heart,

It cannot be that long we dwell,

Thus torn apart.”

          These are two verses from a very little known poem, one of the most pathetic in the language. It appeared with the title of “Casa Wappy,” the pet name of the poet’s son, who died at the age of four or five, and each double verse ended with the name. They are among the finest In Memoriam verses ever written, and the author was the famous Scotsman, Dr. Macbeth Moir. They first appeared in “Blackwood’s,” over the nom-de-plume “Delta” in 1847.

          On one tomb is the name of Eliza, wife of Charles Abraham, whose name would indicate a Hebrew origin, but she may have been a Christian. She was born on July 15, 1813, and died on March 12, 1875. One of her sons is today a Brisbane town traveler for a firm bearing a Semitic name.

          On her headstone is the following eulogy:-

“She was  - but words are wanting to say what!

Think what a wife should be, and she was that.”

          Florence Gertrude was the seven months daughter of Charles Henry and Caroline Harley, who inscribed over the tomb of this young soul thus prematurely hurried from the world:

“To those who for her loss are grieved

This consolations give,

She from a world of woe was called

To bloom, a rose in Heaven!”

          The name of Harley was well-known to Brisbane in recent years in the firm of Rogers and Harley, printers, of Elizabeth Street.

          The name of “William” (buried on July 7, 1868) four days’ old son of William H. and Minna Miskin, now in Rockhampton, was once a well-known Brisbane solicitor, who for some years was also Official Trustee in Insolvency, and he lived out at Toowong.

          He was an enthusiastic entomologist, and by purchase and exchange made one of the finest butterfly and moth collections in Queensland.

          But the blue serenity of the Miskin household was overclouded by a darkness that might be felt. A new and strange planet, called “Governess,” swung into the orbit of the Miskin system, and the lawful occupant of that sphere appealed to the Terrestrial laws, and Miskin and “Governess” swung off into an orbit of their own, and have remained there ever since.

          Miskin’s butterflies were sold to the Brisbane Museum for £250, and are there at the present time, all except one specimen – “Governess Superbus”- which he wisely retained.

          One of his brothers, A. E. Miskin, was once owner of Bundall plantation on Nerang Creek, his partner for a time being “Charley Morris,” the present C. A. M. Morris P.M. of Ipswich.

          This Miskin afterwards took up a 1280 acre selection of the Johnstone River and settled there.

          But the four day’s old baby of July, 1868, has slumbered in blissful unconsciousness, and the mother, a most esteemable woman, is far away from the lonely grave of the child of her early days.

          James Stevens died on August 27, 1866, aged 75 years, and the headstone was “Erected by his bereaved widow.” Alas! Alas! Thus are we ever face to face with the Eastern Monarch’s Proverb:

“Take all the world can give or land,

But know that death is at the end!”

          “Letitia, wife of Robert Raymond,” is all that one headstone records.

          Jane, the wife of Henry Franklin, once a builder in Fortitude valley, died on September 5, 1859, leaving this message:

“Farewell, my husband, I’m gone before,

My love for you can be no more,

Grieve not for me, nor sorrow take,

But love my children for my sake.”

          James Wakefield, who died at 57, on July 8, 1857, was father of the well known Hiram Wakefield. His widow died on July 4, 1873, aged 68.

          Remarkable are the deaths of so many young women. Mary Ann, the wife of Henry Walpole, an old time Valley tradesman, died on August 5, 1854, aged 21. Her sister Francis died on October 15, in the same year, aged 18, and a child who survived her, died at 21 – the same age as her mother.

          Elizabeth, wife of Daniel Allen, cabman, of Fortitude Valley, died at the age of 30, on May 6, 1875. She was born in Roscrea, Tipperary and left three sons. She buried her first two infant children in unmarked graves in the Church of England portion of the cemetery.

          Henry John Isaac Markwell, son of John Markwell, and one of the dandies of the period, a fine young fellow, was killed off his horse on the Toowong road.

          Fanny, the wife of William Sexton, of South Brisbane, died on March12, 1872, aged 27, and Susannah Sarah, wife of E. J. Kingston, a Valley storekeeper, died on October 8, 1859.

          The old Brisbane Costin family, well known today, gave the grave, on May 7,1875, a young man of 18½ years, son of Thomas A. Costin, once a Queen Street saddler, whose successor was the well known Jarman. His brother, W. J. Costin, is the present chemist in the Valley, and father of W. C. Costin, the Clerk of Parliaments. His brother, J. T. Costin, is in charge of the lithographic department in the Government Printing Office, and one of his sons, J. M. Costin, went recently to Thursday Island as Shipping and Fisheries Inspector.

          Mr. And Mrs. Thomas Costin, the grandparents, came to Moreton Bay in September, 1848, on the advice of T. H. Green, Mrs. Costin’s brother, who was then a merchant and stock and station agent in South Brisbane. The Costins went in those days to the church on the present site of the Longreach Hotel. Then Costin, J. P. Smith, A. Warricott, Freeman, and Chambers, started the first Methodist cause in Queensland in a little lane on the site of the present “Telegraph” newspaper, and the first minister to arrive was the Rev. William Moore, the first church being erected in Albert Street and Burnett Lane, and doing duty for some time for both Methodists and Congregationalists.

          In those days the present Angus Gibson, M.L.C., lord of Bingera plantation, was making a living out of cabbage growing at Bulimba. In 1863 he was going along Queen Street and heard singing in the Albert Street church. It must have been first class singing, for it fascinated Angus, and he went in and became a Methodist, and has continued to be one ever since. This is the tale told by Angus himself.

          Jane Merry, wife of T. F. Merry, died on May 26, 1865, aged 32. She was the first wife. Merry was for years a draper in the Valley, when Tom Finney was there in the same business, before he came to Queen Street. He is still alive, and a member of the firm of Barnes and Co., of which Barnes M.L.A., is the head.

          Caroline Rhodes, who died on March 2, 1864, at the age of 21, was a daughter of Ralph Rhodes, who then had the Sawyers Arms Hotel in George Street, where Trittons is today. Rhodes and his wife were people much esteemed and their carefully kept house was a favourite resort for people from the country. He married a second time, but both are dead. Rhodes had a daughter named Cordelia, who married a George Gotcher, and died on August 24, 1869, aged 25 years. Her mother, Rhodes’ first wife, Margaret, died on August 26, 1869, aged 53 years, so that mother and daughter died within two days of each other.

          The stone over John Bucknell Waldron, who died at 27 on July 26, 1861, was erected by the children of the Congregational Sunday School “as a token of love and esteem for a kind teacher.” How many of those children are alive today?

          Harriett Paten, wife of John Paten, died on February 24, 1861. Paten, in 1856, was a leading bootmaker in Queen Street, and he and “Bobby Cribb” were associated in business. The headstone records that

And as we have borne the image of the earthly,

we shall also bear the image of the Heavenly.”

          Clara Alice Harries, wife of Eustace Henry Harries, died on April 25, 1870, and the stone says she was 

Blest in hope, revered in memory.” 

        She died in giving birth to her first baby. Harries was a draughtsman in the Colonial Architect’s Department, of 40 years ago.

          Catherine Ann Girling, wife of William Girling, died on November 14, 1865, aged 21, and her sister Mary Smith Deacon, died on November 27, aged 20.

          By this time the reader will doubtless have noticed the astonishing number of deaths among young women aged between 16 and 21, and here comes a remarkable statement by one of Brisbane’s oldest inhabitants, a man who has been here since 1851. He says that in the early days there was much bad water, total disregard of drainage, cesspit closets of the worst type, and no attention to sanitation. Much fever, then considered to be malarial, was certainly typhoid. The critical age was that from 16 to 22, and once over 22, there was a prospect of a fairly long life. The death rate among children and young girls was terribly high. Painfully conspicuous is the absence of old people in the cemetery.

          Among all in the Methodist section, there are only two over 60 and two over 70. The majority are under 30. And young men appeared to have no more immunity than women, as the list will show.

          Among those, R. B. Boardman Silcock died in January, 1865, aged 38; Menander Malcolm on June 28, 1872, aged 27; G. G. Stokes on October 28, 1872, aged 22 years; and James Chapman, on November 10, 1867, aged 13 years. On his headstone are the words, 

“Faith looks beyond the grave, and on to light and immortality.”

          Over Stokes are the words,

Man cometh forth as a flower and is cut down. 

He fleeth also as a shadow and continueth not.”

          With this we finally leave the Methodist cemetery, one of God’s most neglected acres.

“Where the traveller meets aghast,

Sheeted memories of the past;

Shrouded forms that start and sigh,

As they pass the wanderer by;

White robed forms of friends long given

In agony to the earth and heaven.”

          When the Paddington cemeteries were first reserved, that region was then “out in the bush,” and apparently no-one foresaw an extension of Brisbane in that direction within the lifetime of any of the existing generation.

          The ridges sloped down from Petrie Terrace into a swamp at the bottom. In those days ducks and herons and snipe fed in that swamp, and kangaroos and wallabies hopped through the ironbarks and spotted and box gums on the surrounding slopes. At night there was heard the mournful howl of the furtive dingo, and the call of the melancholy stone plover. Blacks climbed the trees and cut out the opossum and the wild bees nest. Electric trams were far off, in an unknown and unimagined future. The Philp and Kidston and Bowman parties were lying dormant in protoplasm, like the egg of Eros in Chaos, to be hatched one day by numerous strange devices. Around Brisbane stretched the primeval wilderness, to unknown regions beyond.

          These thoughts arise as we stand in the Presbyterian cemetery, by the grave of Andrew Petrie, that fine old Scot, who came to Sydney as one of a select band of Scottish mechanics in the Stirling Castle in 1831.The stone tells us that he was born on June 25, 1798, and died at Brisbane on February 20, 1872. What eventful 41 years occupy that space from 1831 to 1872! And how closely are the Petries identified with the early history of Queensland! Tom Petrie, who lives at the North Pine, is today, at 71 years of age, the oldest resident of Queensland. He came here as a year old baby with his parents in 1837.

          In 1837 Andrew Petrie was engaged in Sydney as foreman of Works in Moreton Bay and he and his family came up in the small steamer James Watt. In the following year Petrie first discovered coal at Redbank, where the Tivoli mine is today. In 1838 e discovered the Bunya pine at the Blackall Range and brought the first plants to Brisbane. This tree actually received the name “Pinus Petriane,” but J. C. Bidwell, a collector of that time, sent some specimens to London and it was named “Araucaria Bidwilli”, the name it bears today. Bidwell is buried at the mouth of Tinana Creek.

          Petrie’s first work at Moreton Bay was the repair of the treadmill, the Observatory of today. From a window of that Observatory, in 1841, there projected a beam, on which two aboriginals were hanged, though proved afterwards to be innocent. The gallows were arranged under Petrie’s instructions, and the hangman, who came from Sydney, complimented him on his work. Petrie was not proud of the compliment. In May 1842, accompanied by Henry Stuart Russell, author of the “Genesis of Queensland,” Joliffe, Wrottesley, a convict crew, and two aboriginals, Petrie went on that memorable Mary River and Wide Bay trip from which they brought back Bracefell and Davis, the two convicts who had been ten and fourteen years respectively with the blacks. Andrew Petrie was a fine specimen of a man, tall and good looking, with curly hair and beard. His sons, too, were all tall, fine men, and only Tom is left. One of his daughters married the late Bob Ferguson, who stood six feet four. Bob was for many years Inspector of Works, and among his early contracts was the erection of the Sandy Cape lighthouse, in 1872.

          In the same railing as Andrew Petrie, is Mary Cuthbertson Petrie, who died on June 1, 1855, also Walter Daniel, a year and ten months child of John and Jane Petrie, died on November 3, 1857. This child would be a brother of the present Andrew Petrie M.L.A.

          Andrew Petrie had a son named Walter, who at 20 years of age, was an exceptionally powerful young fellow. At that time, a small creek ran from the present Roma Street station down across Queen Street, by the site of the present New Zealand Buildings, and into the river at the end of Creek Street.

          Walter Petrie fell in, and was found drowned, partly buried in the mud, and grasping a bunch of mangroves in his hand. As he was a splendid swimmer, he must have hurt himself in the fall. His brother, John Petrie, father of A. L. Petrie, M.L.A., had a child whom he named Walter after the drowned youth. There was a singular coincidence when that child at a year and ten months old, was drowned in the same creek responsible for the death  of the uncle whose name he bore. That is the child in the Paddington grave.

          There is also another child of five months, Annie Petrie, who died on December 21, 1863. Here then is the grand old warrior pioneer of the early days, for ever at rest, while:

“The Almighty hand from an exhaustless urn,

Pours out the never ending flood of years.”

          And all we who are alive are but as a foam wreath on the advancing wave behind which lies the dead ocean of the past.

          Matilda Buxton, who died on March 3, 1866, aged 41, was the wife of J. W. Buxton, who had a stationary and fancy goods shop in Queen Street, where Ryder the tailor is today. They buried two of their children, Matilda Adelaide, on April 11, 1862, and Ada Matilda, on March 3, 1865.

          An elegant marble column, with a draped crest, is over the grave of Celia Sabina Craies, wife of William Craies, first manager of the Bank of New South Wales in Brisbane. The stone says:

“So long thy power hath blessed us,

Sure it still will lead us on,

O’er moor and craig and torrent,

Until the night is come.”

          The only other marble headstone is over a son of Archibald McMillan, owner of some of the first vessels in the Polynesian traffic. The boy, aged 11, died on March 28, 1866.

          Jessie Mainwaring, wife of a once leading Queen Street tailor, died on July 29, 1875, aged 37 years.

          Adam Cumming, aged 31, died on May 23, 1861. He succeeded John Stephens, brother of T. B. Stephens, and uncle of the present Hon. W. Stephens, as secretary of the Queensland Steam Navigation Board.

          William Cowans, who died on February 3, 1871, at the early age of 32, was a bookseller and stationer in Edward Street. The stone says: 

“The spirit and the bride say come; 

and let him that heareth say come; 

and let him that is athirst come; 

and whoever will, 

let him take the water of life freely.” 

        We have certainly no desire to be irreverent, but this does read like a free invitation from a newly married couple who have opened an hotel. All epitaphs ought to leave not a shadow of anything suggesting the ridiculous. They should be severely clear, and concise, elegant and expressive. Heaven knows there is a vast supply to select from.

          Mary Jeffcoat died March 3, 1855, aged 50, and Julia Jeffcoat on September 15, 1862, aged 49. Descendants of this family are still well known in Ipswich.

          Jessie Campbell Mackellar, who died on January 11, 1872, aged 29, was the wife of Alexander Mackellar, a once prominent printer and lithographer, whose maps of Brisbane were famous at one time, and are still well known.

          Alexander McDonald, an Argyleshire Highlander, was a well-known tide waiter in the Customs, at Lytton. He was father of Alick McDonald, known to us today as the landlord of the Shamrock Hotel, in Edward Street. One daughter was married to Murray Prior, the handsome barrister brother of Mrs. Campbell Praed. He died a few years ago at an early age. The tombstone over McDonald was “erected by his friends and brother officers.”

          Donald Coutts, who died on December 27, 1857, was the owner of “Toolburra,” the first station taken up on the Darling Downs, by Patrick Leslie in 1841. He was a brother of Tom Coutts, who died recently at Toolburra. Tom was the owner who sold the station, or part of it, to the Government, and acquired some prominence in a recent Parliament in connection with a letter written to him by a prominent member of Parliament who was alleged to have claimed commission. Donald Coutts was killed by the kick of a foal, at Bulimba, where he resided in a house built for D. C. McConnell. Beside his grave is that of a sister-in-law, Anna Maria Thompson, who died on March 8, 1862, aged 47, and the stone says:

“A pilgrim panting for the rest to come,

An exile anxious for her native home.”

          Jessie Guthrie, who died on June 20, 1871, was the wife of John Guthrie, who was first a solicitor with Little and Brown, and afterwards on his own account. He lived in a house called “Lucerne,” long occupied afterwards by John Scott, once Chairman of Committees, at Milton. Beside it stood one of the handsomest fig trees in Brisbane. Jessie was Guthrie’s first wife. His second was Miss Fowles, sister of William Lambert Fowles, once Legislative Assembly for Clermont, and father of the present Under-Secretary in the Treasury. Guthrie was residing at Wooloowin, when he died, and his second wife now resides in Tasmania. In the grave with the first wife are her two children, Mary Isabella, aged 4, and Francis Drummond, aged 2, one died in July 1864, the other in July, 1861. Intensely pathetic are those graves that hold the mothers and their children.

          John Randall, who died on November 31, 1873, aged 45, was head master of the Normal School, and his pupils and friends erected his headstone as a memorial of their esteem. He opened the school at first with a graceful little speech, in which he expressed a hope that they would all be conspicuous for punctuality, and equally obedient to him in school and their parents at home. The youngsters afterwards held a public meeting in the playground, to discuss if it was possible to thus serve two masters. This awful problem was left unsolved. Randall left a family, deservedly held in high esteem. They lived for many years next the brewery at Milton, but are now residing on Gregory Terrace. One daughter is the wife of B. W. McDonald, manager of the A.U.S.N. Company.

          There were originally five sons and five daughters, but three of the sons are dead. All five daughters are married.

          Janet M. Burns, who died on February 6, 1875, was the eldest 4½ year old daughter of John and Jane Burns. John Burns was partner to the once well known firm of J. and J. Burns, now represented by Burns, Philp & Co, in whose firm James Burns is managing partner.

          Alexander Gordon Cummings, who died on December 28, 1866, was the four year old child of Charles C. and Helen Cummings, who in those far off days, kept an hotel at the corner of George and Turbot Streets.

          George Phillips was a carter and contractor on Spring Hill, and he and his wife, Eliza, buried their son, William, aged 30, on September 23, 1871, and the stone says: 

“Walking humbly with his God, 

he was prepared to obey the summons 

‘Come up hither.’ 

Be ye also ready”

          John Murray, who died aged 33, on January 11, 1866, left a widow who married a Mr. Nott. Murray was the most expert painter and glazier of his time and Nott had a general store in Elizabeth Street. Mrs. Nott survives him and still resides out near Woolloongabba. On April 16, 1861, she buried her 4½ year old child by her first husband.

          Angus Mathieson, who died March 11, 1872, aged 38, was a South Brisbane carpenter. On his grave is a ponderous stone, like the dome of a vault.

          Next to him is a grave with four children named Laing, four little girls, Helen, Margaret, Ann and Elizabeth, aged 11, 13, 14 and 17 months, not one reaching two years of age. Three died in 1863, and one in 1873, so the first three must be the children of two mothers, unless two were twin. A cypress pine “Callitris Robusta,” evidently an old tree, has fallen between the two graves, and lies partly on the stone over Mathieson, with a branch over the little girls. The four dead children, the dead man, and the dead cypress! There is no more pathetic or mournful scene in the cemetery.

          Richard Sexton, who died on April 6, 1869, aged 61, was a clerk of R. Towns and Co., and is represented today by a nephew in the Railway Survey Department.

There the traveller meets aghast,

Sheeted memories of the past;

Shrouded forms that start and sigh

As they pass the wandered by,

White robed forms of friends long given

In agony to the earth and heaven.

Edgar Allan Poe

          From the Methodists, we pass across a street, into the adjoining graveyard, occupied by all that is mortal of the Queensland Baptists of a bygone age.

          The name “Baptist” dates back to Thomas Munzer, of Storck, in Saxony, in the year 1621, nearly 400 years ago.

          History tells us that “he excited a rebellion of the lower orders in Germany, quelled in bloodshed in 1525.”

          Several other insurrections followed, all ending in blood, and finally from 1535 to 1540, a number of Anabaptists were executed in England. On January 6, 1661, about 100 of these peculiar people, led by Thomas Venner, a wine cask cooper, appeared in arms in London, and were only conquered after half of them were killed. They fought like devils, and killed a lot of soldiers. Sixteen of them were executed, including Venner. The Baptist published their Confession of Faith in 1643. In 1635, Rhode Island, in America, was settled entirely by Baptists, and today they are a peaceful, respectable and important body among the religious sects of Queensland.

          The warlike, death defying spirit of Venner, and his self devoted warriors has departed. The most remarkable modern Baptist preacher was Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who died at Mentone, in Italy, on January 31, 1892.

          With this we pass into the Baptist section of the Paddington cemetery of Brisbane. It differs from the Methodist graveyard in appearance, by being surrounded with an old paling fence, which has locked gates, the key being held by a local resident, who has the privelege of grazing his cows among the tombstones.

          Byron says:

What matters where we fail to fill the maws

Of worms? On battle field or listed spot,

Both are but theatres, where the chief actors rot.”

          In Brisbane it matters not apparently where our dead are buried, for ultimately the moo cow crops the herbage around the tombstones and perfumed Capricornus regales himself with the bouquets left on the graves by bereaved relatives.

          In the Baptist area is the same neglect – general decay and wreckage and desolation. Fallen headstones, ruined railings, and broken fragments prove how brief is remembrance of the dead.

          Here we have Mary, the first wife of Moses Ward, a once well known chemist. She died on May 21, 1872, aged 55, and Moses has since filled the vacuum in his soul with a fresh bride who brought him a substantial dowry. A good solid dowry dries a lot of tears. On her grave, the grief stricken Moses of 1872, has told us that: 

I would not have you ignorant brethren concerning them that are asleep; 

that ye sorrow not, not even as others which have no hope; 

for if ye believe that Jesus died, and rose again, 

even so also them which are asleep in Jesus will God bring with him.” 

        We make no attempt to explain this, as the human intellect is limited, and would be lost beyond redemption in an attempt to elucidate these intricate theological problems.

          Great men were living before Agamemnon, and there were “Badgers” in Brisbane before the autocrat of the tramways.

          Benjamin Badger died on November 18, 1874, aged 49, followed by his wife Ellen, on December 8, 1874, at the age of 50, and Joseph their son, on December 22, a fortnight after their mother.

          With these, the Badger family became extinct.

          Susan Elizabeth Warry and Edith May Warry were two children who died in 1864. Their father was C. S. Warry, a Brisbane and Ipswich chemist, brother of R. L. Warry, a once well known merchant, and T. S. Warry, who died as a bachelor. His two brothers are also dead.

          Eli Hallet, of Huddersfield, England, died on September 24, 1866, aged 28 years. His father was a butcher, and with J. and W. Orr, then butchers of South Brisbane.

          Benjamin William was the nine year old son of Thomas and Ruth Baker. The stone tells us that the boy was drowned, and also invites to “Come to be where Jesus is and see his smiling face.”

          Eliza Brady Atkins was a ten months child, who died on February 11, 1867, and William Bryant, from Tovil, in Kent, died at Kedron Brook on October 15, 1865.

          Agnes Lucy Blackford, who died on May 22, 1868, was the wife of William Blackford, a baker in the Valley.

          Emma Slater was the wife of Slater, a once prominent bookseller and stationer, who was the predecessor of Gordon and Gotch. She died on August 8, 1865.

          Jane Orr, who died on March 15, 1863, at 58 years of age, was the wife of an old South Brisbane butcher of the firm of J. and W. Orr.

          Her daughter, Margaret, died on December 25, 1870, aged 23.

          One headstone merely tells us that Hannah Maria was the wife of Herbert Watson.

          John Cadbury died on May 28, 1866, aged 29.

          The next stone records the death on June 19, 1867, aged 64, of John Bale, who was the father of the once well known J. L. Bale, secretary of the Brisbane Building Society.

          Kate Spilsbury, who died on August 26, 1862, was the wife of an old Brisbane confectioner, the Compagnoni of his day.

          Joseph Street, who died in November 1867, aged 43, was the father of a family of robust good looking girls, who once kept a millinery and artificial flower shop in the William Street building now occupied by the Protectorate of Aboriginals. It was also once the office of that pious paper, the “Evangelical Standard,” of which Brentnall was one of the associate editors. One Miss Street married A. D. Douglas, afterwards Inspector of Police, and another married J. G. Drake, the ex-Federal Minister. Mrs. Douglas died recently and Douglas has gone to reside in London.

          Eleanor Ann, was the six months old baby of Emily Copeland, whose husband kept the Prince Consort Hotel, in the Valley. The child died in December, 1871.

          John Samuel Kingsford, who died on July 17, 1870, at the age of 22, leaving a young wife and infant son, was a son of the Rev. John Kingsford, a Baptist minister, and brother of R. A. Kingsford, once M.L.A. for South Brisbane, and for many years a resident of Cairns, where he was defeated at an election by F. T. Wimble. R. A. and John Kingsford were drapers in Queen Street, where their business was ruined by a disastrous fire. Then John took to preaching, but Richard Ash stuck to business and prospered.

          Thus ended “Truth’s” first epistle to the Baptists, and we leave that section with a feeling of sorrow, to find that the dead have been as much neglected as those of the Methodists and that the graves are in an equally disgraceful condition.

          We cross the tramline and look down from the embankment of the raised street at half a dozen headstones, which represent the Jewish cemetery. It appears that a number were removed to Toowong, and it would have spared any self respecting son of Israel many a blush had the others been removed, and all trace of the cemetery been obliterated. Presumably the Jews who sat down and wept by the rivers of Babylon, were compelled to gaze at a cemetery like that at Paddington. There is not even a fence, nor any railings. The wandering Jew, in all his peregrinations, never saw anything like that. We cannot picture any Hebrew passing that spot and not fainting with shame. As usual in Jewish cemeteries, the stones bear inscriptions in both Hebrew and English. One records the death of “Aelcey,” the wife of Coleman Davis, who died on May 13, 1876, aged 36. The Jewish year is given as 3685. Coleman Davis was a well known man who kept a toy shop called the “Civet Cat” in Queen Street.

          Osias Loewe died on December 10, 1872, aged 43. On the headstone is an arm with a hand pouring water out of a pitcher into a broken basin. One of Loewe’s daughters married Isaac Markwell and became the mother of a man who was drowned in his bath at Wooloowin, under circumstances which evolved a remarkable lawsuit. Another daughter married the manager of one of our banks.

          Herbert Michael, son of Lawrence Levy, died at the age of 27, on November 20, 1871. He was clerk with A. E. Alexander a well known auctioneer of that period.

          We leave this desolate and forlorn Jewish cemetery with a series of sighs to express our emotions, for language is not equal to the occasion.

          Then we obtain the key of the Presbyterian area and ramble into a wilderness of lantana which requires a scrub knife before we can read the inscriptions. Here we find a superior class of headstones and monuments, with much clearer inscriptions, but all the higher ground is covered with lantana, and many headstones are nearly invisible. George Christie died on March 16, 1857, aged 36, his daughter Sarah Ogilvie having died on April 27, 1856, aged 3, and his brother on February 12 in the same year. George Christie was manager of a store at the corner of Russell and Grey Streets, in South Brisbane. The store belonged to old Bobby Towns and Co., and Christie was their representative.

          John Moffit was a teamster who died in January 1861, aged 38, and his mother Margaret died in December 1860, aged 68. They had a daughter Minnie who married Daniel Cahill, and she is now an elderly widow residing at Peachester. One of her children, a boy, aged two and a half, died on April 10, 1871, and is buried beside his grandparents. The grandmother, Margaret, once lived near Colinton, and while there had an adventure with the blacks.

          One of her sons was in the house seriously ill, and his father had gone away for assistance, leaving only herself and the dying boy. The blacks had seen Moffit leave, and thought it a fair time to raid the house, and probably kill Mrs. Moffit. But she was equal to the occasion. She dressed herself in Moffit’s clothes, walked round the house, went inside, and came out again with another suit on. She did this lightning change artist business so neatly that the blacks thought there were three or four men in the house, and retired. This presence of men probably averted a tragedy.

          A remarkable man was James Low, who was born on January 4, 1791 in Scotland, and died at Brisbane on September 24, 1871. His wife, Isabella, died at “Newmill on Drumoak”  in Aberdeenshire on October 29, 1823. A son died there also, aged 11.  A daughter, Catherine, married to Charles Smith, died at Brisbane on December 8, 1853, and a son, aged 19, died on September 2, 1851. His daughter, Annie, married Rudolph Zillman, son of J. L. Zillman, of German station, one of the original German missionaries, sent to Moreton Bay by Dr. Lang in the convict days. James Low was a very well known timber getter in the Maroochy and Mooloolah districts, and his name is handed down to posterity, attached to the tree known to both timber getters and botanists, as “Jimmy Low,” the botanical name being “Eucalyptus Resinifera.”

          Mary Foran, wife of Edmund Mellor, died on January 17, 1859, aged 26, and in the same grave are her two children, one a month old, and the other a year and a half, John and Agatha. On the stone is 

They are gone to the grave, 

we no longer behold them; 

whose God was their ransom, 

their guarantee and guide. 

He gave the. He took them, 

and He will restore them 

and death was no sting for their Savior who died.” 

This is the usual enigmatical epitaph which baffles all human comprehension.

          Edmund Mellor was a well known man, who for many years was captain of the old stern wheel steamer, Settler, which ran between Brisbane and Ipswich. His second wife was a Miss Duncan, whose daughter is the Eva Mellor of today, whose stately and statuesque figure is occasionally familiar in Queensland. The dark eyed Juna, this “daughter of the gods, divinely tall,” stands six foot two, and is probably therefore the tallest woman in Queensland. One of her mother’s sisters was married to John Stewart, an old pioneer veteran, who died a year ago on the Pine River. He was a father of the late Miss Stewart, of Brisbane. A brother of Mrs. Mellor, Charles Duncan, is a well known storekeeper at Laidley. He was the first man that took a dray from Maryborough to Gympie, when that field was discovered.

          James Powers died on August 20, 1854, leaving a wife and four children, one of whom in the present day is the well known Charlie Powers, who was Postmaster General in the Morehead Ministry, 1889 – 1890.

          Robert Mauley died on February 24, 1855, aged 25, the son of a cabinet maker in Elizabeth Street, half a century ago.

          Alice, the wife of Matthew Henry, died at 23, on August 11, 1851. The stone speaks for the husband “who loved her during life, mourned her death, and revere her memory.” Beneath that “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, Amen.”

          David Muir, a shipwright of that time, erected a stone over his two children, one 4 years, one born and died on the same day, October 24, 1863.

          Kate Pringle, a niece of Tom Finney, died on July 21, 1864, aged 24, one of the appalling number of young girls cut off ultimately in their youth. Tom Finney’s first wife was a Miss Pringle, who lived only for a few months. His second wife was a Miss Jackson, and the third is the present widow who survives him. Very few people know that Tom was married three times.

          A Catherine Jolly, who died, aged 28, on August 27, 1863, was daughter of the Rev Thomas Jolly, of Roxburghshire, in Scotland.

“Where are the Kings, and where the rest,

Of those who once the world possessed?”

          In the centre of all the Paddington cemeteries stands that devoted to the Roman Catholics of a past generation.

          It is said to be still the only Catholic cemetery consecrated in Queensland. This means that it was all consecrated at one time. The usual custom is to consecrate each new grave. The ceremony was performed in the year 1858, by Archbishop Polding, of Sydney, one of the earliest and ablest of the Roman Catholic prelates in Australian history. The ceremony was solemn and impressive, and there was a great gathering of the Catholic people. The cemetery in those days was merely a patch of ordinary forest, covered by coarse grass, bushes and trees. The Archbishop’s gold Pectoral Cross fell off his breast into the grass, and no one saw it fall. When the loss was discovered, they searched for it in vain. An advertisement appeared in the “Courier” offering £5 reward, but there was no response. The cross was regarded as lost beyond recall, and superstitious people considered the loss an evil omen for the new cemetery. No finder appeared, and no emaciated, conscience stricken wallaby hopped along with it as did the jackdaw of Rheims with the Cardinal’s ring.

          Then came a remarkable series of events. A man, whose name is forgotten, came out as an emigrant cook, on board a vessel called the Alfred. He was one of the spectators at the consecration of the cemetery. A few weeks afterwards, whilst on board the steamer, Bredalbane, at the present Queen’s Wharf, he fell overboard and drowned. When the authorities opened his clothing box, there, lo and behold, lying on top, was the Archbishop’s lost cross. He had known it was a valuable article of solid gold, and was waiting to get a bigger price than the £5 reward. Of course, every good Catholic firmly believed that God had drowned that man for his sacrilegious appropriation of the cross! There must be a divine judgment in such cases. We can recall a man who stole a priest’s horse, and three months afterwards he became a member of the Queensland Parliament. This shows that no man can appropriate sacred property without some awful fate overtaking him.

          We were on a visit to Cunnamulla seven years ago, when some impious ruffian stole £3 /15 s out of Father O’Sullivan’s room in the Catholic Church. The genial priest assured us that the man would most certainly be struck down by lightning.

          But that is a digression. There were many graves in the catholic cemetery before it was consecrated by Archbishop Polding. ..(text missing) ...chapter of information for his book on “The Early Days. The husband of the girl wife, Mary Ann Gorman, married again, and still resides in Brisbane, where he keeps a store in Boundary Street.

          Louis Schneider was a saddler who died on April 27, 1868, aged 30. His widow, Maria Jane, afterwards married Joseph Baines, and became Mayoress of Brisbane. When Baines died she married a contractor named Ryan, who built the Roman Catholic Church at Kangaroo Point and the Palace Hotel at South Brisbane. The lady had then s German, an English, and an Irish husband. Perhaps she was solving some great ethnological problem, or was like the Irish bigamist who was proved to have married six wives, and explained to the judge that “he was merely trying to get a good one!” She is still in robust health, drives out daily, and owns the Pineapple Hotel.

          Mrs. Sybella Clune died in Margaret Street on June 11, 1863. The headstone was erected by her only surviving daughter, a Mrs. Cameron, who was afterwards lost in the Fiery Star, which was burned at sea on Good Friday. Thomas M. Clune died on April 10, 1853, aged 27, and the stone was erected by his sister.

          John McCabe, who died in 1861, aged 53, was one of the leading merchants of that time, and also owned a number of teams. He also owned Queen’s Wharf, and a large area of South Brisbane. His store was in George Street, at the corner of Charlotte Street, opposite the old “Courier” office John McCabe and Jeremiah Daly were great chums, and in their many visits to hotel parlors, McCabe’s toast was, “Here’s to oor ainsells, and whaur will you get the like of us?” It is clear from this that McCabe was a Scot. His toast was like the Highlanders’ prayer, “Lord, send us a guid conceit o’ oorsels!” Of the Daly family we have much to say in a future article.

            Sarah Jones who died on October 10, 1867, aged 49, was the wife of John Jones, who kept the St. Patrick’s Tavern in Queen Street, where Tronson’s shop is today. Old residents speak of her as a fine specimen of a woman, and a great favourite.

          Two children, one two years and the other four months, died on December 3, 1864. Their parents were the once well known Mr. And Mrs. Darragh of Kangaroo Point, an old time honored family, for many years in the butchering and hotel trades at the Point.

          Catherine Sneyd, who died aged 46, on July 23, 1858, was the wife of Samuel Sneyd, the first chief constable and jailer in Brisbane. He was a Baptist and she was a Roman Catholic. On the day of her funeral the service was to be conducted by the Rev. Dean Signey who waited at the grave for an hour after the appointed time, and then went home. When the coffin arrived, the service had to be read by a layman, and much strong feeling was shown for some times afterwards through the absence of a qualified priest. Mrs. Sneyd had nine children and on her grave is this verse:

“’Tis religion that can give

Sweetest pleasure while we live,

‘Tis religion must supply,

Solid comfort when we die.”

The Sneyds lived in a house in Adelaide Street between the present Parcels Post and Finney Isles corner, where was the first bougainvillea vine ever grown in Queensland.

          A few readers will remember a wild young Irishman named James McGowan who had a farm at Lytton and was killed off his horse on February 18, 1875, aged 29. There was nothing McGowan loved but a fight. He was always “blue moulded for want of a ” and would offer cheerfully offer to fight all hands, anywhere, at any time. On one occasion he took possession of a Methodist Church, and challenged the whole male congregation to mortal combat. The Methodists regarded James as a man possessed of devils, and fled. He was a fine type of fighting Irishman, and we mourn over the grave of that young warrior cut off untimely in his youth. We miss these fiery spirits at the peaceful elections of today. His sister, now dead, married Adam Fiebig, who still owns the old Crown hotel in George Street. Fiebig still has a great veneration for his dead wife.

          James Cash, who died on December 15, 1870, aged 68, was an old pioneer who was farming and timber getting at the Pine River, where “Cash’s Crossing” is still a landmark in the district.

          In the same grave is Mary McQuinney, his wife’s mother, who died on May 20, 1870, and his daughter Mary Ann, wife of Pat Hughes, who died on November 23, 1872, aged only 21. An appalling number of young wives, under 26 years of age, died in those early days, apparently from bad nursing, bad medical attendance, or no attendance at all. Ignorant midwives have filled many graves.

          Under one stone is Patrick Mooney, a Tipperary man, who died on September 20, 1851, aged 51, also his eldest daughter Mary Scanlan, who died on April 6, 1873, aged 40, and James Mooney, his eldest son, who died on August 31, 1873, aged 44. Mooney was a fine specimen of a man, six feet four, who kept a hotel at the corner of Russell and Stanley Streets, South Brisbane. Mary Scanlan was the wife of Jeremiah Scanlan, who kept the Queensland Hotel in Edward Street, about 25 yards below the present Metropolitan, then kept by Mrs. Duncan. Jerry was an old policeman from New South Wales. He did well in Brisbane, and owned both the Queensland and Metropolitan hotels. Opposite Jerry was the once fashionable Menzies boarding-house, which still stands there, but the Menzies are both dead. One daughter married Thomas Bryce, of the Carrying Company, and another married West, the merchant, of Townsville. One of Jerry’s nieces, a Miss Cuneen, married Ferdinand Papi, an Italian, the present head teacher of the Woolloongabba State School, and became mother of Bertram Papa, the lawyer, and the fair Amy Papi, a name known in the social columns.

          A Daniel Tracey, who died on October 4, 1853, aged 55, and his widow Catherine on September 3, 1871, were a couple of fine people who lived in Margaret Street, and their daughters, very handsome girls, all died young. One daughter, Mrs. Brown, died on October 20, 1866, aged 30, and Ann on November 30, 1869 aged 22. The stone over the grave was erected by the daughter Bridget, “in affectionate remembrance of her dear parents and sisters.” She, too, had only a short life.

          Alice Higham, (pronounced Hyam), who died on August 8, 1872, at the age of 80, was the wife of Higham, who was a timber getter on the Tweed River in the early days. They both came out in Governor Darling’s time. She was a grand old woman, the soul of honesty and hospitality.

          Christopher Weir, who died on July 23, 1873, aged 61, was a cabman who once kept a hotel out beyond the Hospital, on the Bowen Bridge Road. Michael Weir also kept the same hotel. It was a great resort of the young bloods of those days, and many a lively scene was enacted in that now forgotten house, which has long ceased to exist.

          We find that another cabman, still alive, the well known Jack Sweeney, of the George Street stand, buried his young wife Catherine, aged 25, and her infant son, on July 24, 1869. Sweeney was once a very smart policeman stationed at the Towers, Ravenswood, and Cooktown.

          Honora Thomas placed a stone over her husband, John Thomas, who died on April 3, 1864. They kept an hotel in Queen Street, where Alexander Stewart and Sons’ warehouse stands today. The same house was kept as the “Donnybrook Hotel” by a Mat Stewart, a very unusual name in hotel keeping. On the grave of Thomas we find:

“Not lost, not lost, but gone before,

To that land of peace and rest,

Where in God for evermore,

We hope to meet together blest.”

          Widows as a rule, lack a sense of logic, or they would not so often consign their departed husbands to where they apparently meet with peace and rest for the first time. In this case, too, the poetry is deplorably defective. It is the kind of verse that is composed in a hurry while you wait.

          Margaret, wife of Thomas Faulkner, died on January 18, 1869, aged 41. One of her grand daughters is the wife of Under Secretary Brady, of the Works Department.

          There is a handsome stone over the grave of Francis Murphy, who died on August 15, 1872, but so far no information  concerning him is available.

          There is one peculiar inscription over the grave of a young wife, named Janet Murphy, who was born at Grafton on April 3, 1853, and died at Brisbane on November 18,8172. She was thus only 17 years and eight months old, and the stone says:

“A loving wife, a mother dear,

A faithful friend lies buried here,

Our loss is great which we sustain,

In Heaven we hope to meet again.”

          There is said to have been a John Murphy for many years a messenger in the Lands Office, where he was succeeded by Gamble. Janet was the wife of a John Murphy.

          An old military warrior is represented by Patrick John Burke, of the 56th Queen’s Own Regiment. He died on March 17, 1867, aged 80 years. Doubtless he did some hard fighting in that in that famous old regiment.

          Robert Eaton, who died on December 2, 1861, aged 62, was a compositor on the “Courier,” at the corner of Charlotte and George Streets. The old office is now a boarding-house. What ghosts of old compositors must meander in silence through the rooms when all the boarders are asleep! Eaton’s mother followed him to the grave on April 2, 1874, aged 74. Remarkable is the number of those whose age is the same as the year of their death.

          Joseph Brown, who died on January 29, 1868, aged only 33, was a drayman, and “a good, true man,” as an old colonist describes him, who lived out at Teneriffe.

          John Ede buried a child aged five on January 14, 1851. Ede was a watchman in Queen Street. One son, Willie Ede, is today a cabman at the Central Station, and one is a vanman.

          Ellen Lonergan, who died on November 27, 1870, aged 25 (another at the fatal age), was wife of John Lonergan, still a drayman in the Valley. His second wife was a Miss McIver, sister of McIver, a well known blacksmith in the Valley today.

          Ellen Reilly, who died on September 16, 1855, at the fatal 25 years, was wife of Patrick Lonergan, an old time sailor, who lived in Albert Street in the period when its reputation was much cleaner than it is today.

“He came, he went, like the Simoom,

That harbinger of fate and gloom,

Beneath whose widely wasting breath,

The very cypress droops to death,

Dark tree, still sad when others grief has fled,

The only constant mourner o’er the dead.”

Byron

          Those unhappy types of men and women who rise in the night to take a dose of medicine, and make the deadly mistake of selecting the wrong bottle, are represented by John Guilfoyle, who died on January 24, 1874, aged 27. He was a compositor at the Government Printing Office, and the headstone informs us that it is “ a tribute of respect to his memory by the men of the Government Printing Office.” He was only a young man, but was married, and his four year old son had died on March 8, 1871. The father of John died on November 7, 1858, aged 41. He was a quarryman, who worked on the old Kangaroo Point quarry, where the Naval Stores are today. The son who died had risen from sleep, and instead of a bottle of medicine prescribed by Dr. Bell, he got a bottle of carbolic acid, drank some before the dreadful mistake was discovered, and died a cruel death.

          Even doctors fall victims to these fatal errors. Some readers will remember Dr. Clark, who once practised in Stanthorpe. He went to live in a New South Wales town, we believe it was Gulgong, and one night he rose to get some medicine, took the wrong bottle, and when his wife awoke in the morning, he was lying dead beside her.

          A John Meillon, who died on August 1, 1862, had a brother Joseph Meillon, who was educated as a lawyer and in 1869, went to practice at Grafton on the Clarence River, the other lawyer being George Foott, who had succeeded James Lionel Michael, a well known literary man who was drowned in front of his on house. Henry Kendall, the poet, was a clerk in Michael’s office. Foott’s wife, his second wife, was the widow of Boulanger, a name known to the music world as a brilliant composer.

          Sarah Jones, who died on October 10, 1867, aged 40, was the wife of John Jones, who kept St. Patrick’s Tavern, in Queen Street.

          There is a neat stone over Francis Murray, who died on August 15, 1873, aged 37. He had a cabinet makers shop in Queen Street, next to Paddy Mayne’s butcher’s shop, which stood on the present site of the British Empire Hotel. Beside Murray are his two girl children, Isabella Jane, died June 23, 1870, and Annie Maria died October 23, 1873, one three and one sixteen months. Murray was once Mayor of Brisbane, was also fairly well to do in cash, and advanced a considerable sum to Sir Maurice O’Connell, who was unable to repay it and the Government had to overcome the difficulty with a special appropriation.

          Paddy Mayne died in the backroom of that Queen Street butcher’s shop, and Bishop O’Quinn and Joe Darragh, who was a cousin of the Bishop, were with him when his will was being made. Mrs. Mayne was supposed to be a Protestant, and Mayne had a big powerful coachman, also a Protestant. When the will was being made, Mrs. Mayne suspected that she was not receiving due consideration, and she sent the coachman in to remove the Bishop and Darragh, and removed they were. However she had no reason to complain of her share in the will. She afterwards gave the coachman a farm at Moggill, and conferred an annuity on Tom Slaughter, the accountant. Both Mayne and his wife were very good hearted liberal people, who did many generous acts. It is a shame that Paddy had to confess to a murder at Kangaroo Point, in his early days, for which an innocent man was hung- the death bed confession haunted his family to their graves. Mrs. Mayne was a fine specimen of a woman, and an excellent wife and mother. She is said to have sent for a priest when dying, and to have admitted that she was a Catholic.

          Near to the grave of Mayor Murray, is that of Elizabeth Baines, first wife of another Mayor, the E. J. Baines of a previous article. She died on March 3, 1863, aged 39.

          A boy named William Costelloe, who died on May 11, 1861, aged 15, was the son of a man who had held a high position in the Inland Customs’ Revenue Department of Ireland.

          Eliza Quinn, widow of James Quinn, kept a hotel at German Station. Quinn was formerly a clerk with George Edmonstone, one of whose daughters married John Markwell. Edmonstone was a Queen Street butcher, a genial, amiable, old gentleman, who became a member of Parliament. The present writer had many a chat with him from 1875 to 1877.

          On January 1, 1865, D. H. O’Leary buried his infant son Daniel Michael. Daniel senior was a son of Tom O’Leary, the father of Jack O’Leary, for years clerk of the Cairns Divisional Board, and now Traffic Manager on the Musgrave Tramway Company’s line from Cairns to Harvey’s Creek, on the Russell River. Jack’s mother, a dear old lady is still alive and well, and a regular attendant at the Catholic Church in Brisbane. The O’Leary family were mostly brunettes and Jack, as every Cairns man knows, has a decidedly auburn tinge in his hair.

          Catherine Queely, who died on January 5, 1865, aged 16, was the daughter of a shoemaker who came over from New South Wales, and opened a shop in Albert Street, a few doors from Queen Street. The daughter was a fine specimen of a girl, and her death from typhoid fever nearly broke Queely’s heart. A brother of Queely was killed out on the Dawson on the same day as the 19 people were killed by aboriginal attack on Horatio Wills’ Cullen-La-ringo Station, on the Nogoa, October 17, 1861. We have stood over the mass grave in which 16 of the 19 were buried.

          In four fragments is the stone that stood over the grave of Kate Agnes Hickey, who died on October 28, 1863. Hickey was a resident of the Valley.

          Richard Belford, who died on April 28, 1865, was once editor of the “Courier,”, and afterwards editor of the “North Australian,” the leading paper in Ipswich of the early days. Bishop O’Quinn brought that paper to Brisbane, and it is represented by the Catholic paper, “Australian” of the present day.

          Daniel Lyons, who died in 1865, aged 60, was father of Daniel Lyons, a saddler in Turbot Street in the early days, and brother of James Mooney, a hotelkeeper in South Brisbane, one of whose sisters became the wife of J. M. O’Keefe, ex-M.L.A., for the Lockyer, a man likely to bound into the aroma with a wild Hibernian war cry at any moment.

          John Ahearn erected a neat stone over the grave of his brother Denis Ahearn, a native of Donickmore, County Cork, who died on February 12, 1875, aged 32, the fatal age of the Ahearn families, as three of the men died at that age.

          When Camille Desmoulins, of the French Revolution, was before the revolutionary tribunal, and asked his name, he replied, “I am the age of the ‘bon sans culotte,’ Jesus" – an age fatal to revolutionists!”

          Apparently the age of 32 was as fatal to the Ahearns as 37 to the French patriots. These Ahearns, who were carpenters, finally left for California. The Ahearn family mentioned in the last article are still represented. Two of the girls married two of the brothers of Cahill, the present Commissioner of Police, and both of the brothers died. The widow of one is now the wife of the well known and popular hotelkeeper Denis O’Connor, who has given his name to “O’Connor Boatshed,” and is an enthusiast in rowing and other athletic circles. A brother of the sisters is now on Charters Towers.

          The J. W. Buxton who once had a stationery and fancy goods shop in Queen Street, and whose wife died on January 21, 1867, was a man of considerable means. He became infatuated with an actress, and fled away with her, leaving a very fine wife, who was immeasurably the superior of the actress in physique, intelligence and character. Why a man sometimes deserts a splendid woman for a worthless specimen, or a woman forsakes a splendid man for a contemptible weed, are two conundrums beyond the reach of human intelligence.

          Jessie Lamont, a widow, died on April 3, 1866, aged 51.

          The stone records:

“Take comfort Christians when your friends,

In Jesus fall asleep,

Their better being never ends,

Why then dejected weep?

Why inconsolable as those

To whom no hope is given?

Death is the messenger of peace,

And calls the soul to Heaven.”

          One of the daughters, Marion Flora, died on May 23, 1873, aged only 29. She was the wife of James Chapman, father of Ebenezer Chapman, now a builder in Fortitude Valley. Jessie Lamont lies in the Presbyterian ground, near to Margaret Elizabeth Bethune, wife of David Lachlan Brown, head of the firm of D. L. Brown and Co. He died not long ago in Toowoomba, and his first wife died on April 29, 1869, aged 33, at “Langlee Bank,” Bowen Bridge Road. The stone says:

“Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

His second wife, still living, was a daughter of the Rev. George Wight, once Immigration Lecturer.

          George Lindsay, described as “son of the late George Lindsay, of Aberdeen,” died on April 20, 1873. He was an elderly man, confidential clerk to John Bourne, who built the Brisbane bridge of 1873.

          Lindsay died in the year the bridge was opened. There was a great demonstration at the opening, and Dr. Carr Boyd wrote a long celebration poem in the “Courier,” over the “nom de plume” of “Ralph de Peverial.”  Boyd is represented today by his youngest son, Gerald, who is in the Lands Office, and the second son, known to the press as “Potjostler,” is in West Australia. The eldest son David was a surveyor. His widow is wife of the present Dr. Brown of Rockhampton. She was one of several sisters, all handsome women, daughters of a Mr. Ransome who was once C.P.S. at Goodna, and lived at Little Ipswich.

          The Jeremiah Daly referred to before as a chum of merchant John McCabe, was father of the once well known barrister and Crown Prosecutor, Tom Daly, one of whose sisters was Judge Miller’s first wife. Another married the Hon. Sydney Dick Melbourne, and one married a son of Christopher Newton, head of the Sydney firm of that name. They were all fine looking women.

          Buried somewhere in the catholic cemetery is a man named Barrett, who died in 1867. Barrett had come out in the last convict ship, which landed him at Sydney in 1840. That ship was called the “Eden,” a facetious name for a convict vessel. Barrett had revealed a conspiracy on board, and as a reward he received a reprieve. After five years in Sydney and Illawarra, he came to Moreton Bay, and joined a party of timber getters on the Tweed. One of the party was a man named Robert Cox, a victim of one of the most notorious murders in Queensland history.

          Cox and Barrett came to Brisbane on a visit in March 1848, and stayed at Sutton’s Bush Commercial Hotel. On Kangaroo Point, corner of Holman and Main Streets.

          On Sunday night, March 26, Cox was murdered under diabolical circumstances. His body was cut up and his head cut off. The head was found by a dog, in a baker’s new oven, in a building erected for John Campbell, father of the present Amity Point Campbell. A man named George Cummins found the trunk of the body on the mud foreshore of the river, where it was left by the retreating tide. Parts of the body and three shirts, soaked with blood, were found in a well. The cook at Sutton’s Hotel was a man named William Fyfe, who was a friend of Cox, who was staying with another friend, named Moseley. Fyfe and Moseley, and a butcher named Lynch, were arrested, but the final proceedings were taken against Fyfe only. The enquiry lasted five days, and some remarkable evidence was given, all reported in the “Courier” of that date. Fyfe was committed for trial, sent to Sydney, tried and found guilty, and hanged, protesting his innocence to the last.

          He had written a long speech for the scaffold, but was not allowed to deliver it, but the public heard it afterwards.

          This atrocious crime is introduced for this reason. Twenty years ago, in North Queensland, the present writer met a son of Barrett, and heard the whole of his father’s story of the crime, as told to the son. It is quite different from anything so far published. Barrett’s story was that Cox, and three others, well known men then  Patrick Mayne included, and long after, were sitting drinking and card playing in Sutton’s hotel, when a row started between Cox and one of the others, who picked up one of the old heavy brass box snuffers, with the projecting sharp point to adjust the wick. He threw this at Cox, and it struck him on the temple, and the sharp point entering the brain and killing him. There was no murder intended by anybody, but worse than murder followed. The other three men in terror of the consequences, at once conspired to put the guilt on Fyfe, who was not even in the hotel. He was over in North Brisbane, and did not return until nearly daylight. But the apparent evidences of guilt were woven around him with such devilish ingenuity, supported by the evidence of the three conspirators, and the female relations of one of them, and that of two others secured by special inducement, that Cox had enough against him to send any man to the gallows. And two of the conspirators were in Sydney and saw the innocent man hanged. Such was the tale told by that Barrett who sleeps there in the silence of the Paddington cemetery.

Peccavirrus! But rave not thus

And let a Sabbath song

Go up to God so solemnly;

The dead may feel no wrong,

The sweet Lenore hath gone before,

With hope, that flew beside,

Leaving thee wild for the dear child,

Who should have been thy bride,

For her the fair and debonaire,

Who now so lowly lies

 The life upon her yellow hair,

And death upon her eyes;

The life still there upon her hair,

And death within her yes.

-         Edgar Allan Poe’s “Lenore.”

The Church of England cemetery is on the slope of a ridge, on the south side of the Paddington cemeteries, enclosed with a paling fence, in a fair state of preservation. So far as examined the oldest grave dates back to 1847, when Samuel Henry Copperthwaite was buried, on May 27. The most recent graves are dated in 1875, so apparently all funerals after that went to Toowong. Except on three or four graves the lantana has been kept out, and the ground is  clear. But there is the same dismal spectacle of fallen and leaning and broken stones, as in the other cemeteries. Evidently grass fires have killed some of the trees. Among those that remain are a few that date back to the start. There is a silky oak at least three feet in diameter, and a fine grey ironbark very little less. The others are Moreton Bay ash, blue gum, cypress pine, and a few figs. The old road winding through the ground is still clearly defined, though unused for over thirty years. What a long line of hearses and sad processions passed along that road, in the vanished years that saw so many “white robed forms of friends long given, in agony to the earth and heaven.” There must be thousands of dead in that graveyard, since the burial of Miss Hill, Walter Hill’s daughter, in the Toowong cemetery in 1871 up to the present day, that graveyard has received 29,600 dead, representing a period of 26 years. At Paddington, the Church of England ground received bodies for 28 years. The graves are in rows over the whole area, probably not more than one in fifty with a headstone. Conspicuous here, as in other cemeteries, is the small number of old people, the great number of children, and young men and young women. The great majority are under 40.

          On entering the gate, the eye is caught at once by three graves that call back many historic memories. A blue granite eight foot high monolith, the Egyptian symbol of the Supreme God, stands on the grave of Arthur Stuart Bernays, the eight month old child of Lewis Adolphus and Mary Bernays. This child died on May 16, 1865, or 42 years ago. The fact is recorded on a square of marble screwed on near the top of the monolith, which is a miniature of that Cleopatra’s Needle that stands 68½ feet high and weighs over 185 tons. As that was sculptured more than 1500 years before Cleopatra was born, it is not clear why it bears her name.  Bernays, the father of that child of 1865, is the present Clerk of the Assembly, a position he has held since the first Parliament of Queensland opened, in the old convict built stone building in Queen Street, afterwards the Supreme Court.

          We may marvel at the fact the L. A. Bernays has seen all our Governments and their supporters come and go, and sat and listened to their oratory – and is still alive! He is probably immortal and will be sitting in the house a thousand years hence.

          Close to the gate is one of the neatest and best kept tombs in the cemetery. It bears the name of Medora Ann Little, who died on February 27, 1872, aged 37. The Spanish name of Medora was probably taken from the Medora of Byron’s “Corsair.” Mrs. Little was the wife of the once well known Crown Solicitor, Little, who tells us on the tomb that:

“Her children rise up and called her blessed,

Her husband also and he praiseth her.”

We cannot improve on those old eulogiums of the Hebrew prophets. They were eloquent and expressive. Contrast this zenith of epitaph with the nadir on that of the gravestone in Massachusetts, USA:

“Sacred to the memory of Anthony Drake,

Who died for peace and quietness sake,

His wife was constantly scoldin’ and scoffin’,

So he sought for repose in a twelve dollar coffin.”

Or we may go to a graveyard in classic Cambridge, and find the following:

“Here lies the body of Mary Gwynne,

Who was so very pure within,

She cracked the shell of her earthly skin,

And hatched herself a cherubim.”

It is remarkable that the British race, in Britain and America, is responsible for the most ridiculous epitaphs on record. No other race appears to have placed puns or sarcasms on the graves of the dead. Who but a Yankee would record this on a gravestone in Iowa:

“beneath this stone our baby lies,

He neither cries nor hollers,

He lived for one and forty days,

And cost us forty dollars.”

And we go to a grave in Cheltenham for a specimen of what the rustic chaw-bacon of England could do on a headstone:

“Here lies I and my two daughters,

Killed by drinking Cheltenham waters;

If we had stuck to Epsom Salts,

We shouldn’t be lying in these vaults.”

No such epitaphs are possible on an Australian tombstone. Such a stone would be capsized, or smashed, as being an insult to the dead.

          After this digression, we return to an iron railing enclosing two remarkable pioneers, prominent in early Queensland. These graves have also been well kept. Here lies Richard Jones, M.L.C., of Sydney, who died on November 6, 1852, aged 70. He was known to the public of that time as “Merchant Jones,” a man who invested a lot of capital in squatting in the first years of the Darling Downs. The first sheep that ever came over the range, belonged to Jones. They were brought through Cunningham’s Gap, in 1842, by a man named Summerville, who was Superintendent for Jones. He took up Tenthill and Helidon stations, and put the sheep there. Another superintendent named Rogers, at the same time took up Grantham station, and took there a flock of sheep owned by George Mocatta, who took up Innes Plains on the Logan.

          Writing in 1876, John Campbell, who took up Westbrook in 1842, said, “I had resided for some months very quietly on the Downs (1842), intent on getting my cattle broken into their runs, when I was one day astonished at hearing a French horn being blown, and looking out over the plain (Westbrook) saw a single horseman approaching. Upon coming up he proved to be Mr. Summerville, the superintendent for Mr. Richard Jones, whose stock it appeared was on its way to what is now Helidon station.”

          That is the Richard Jones whose last sleep is in the Paddington cemetery.

          Buried beside him is John Stephen Ferriter, who died on October 21, 1865, aged 63, another squatter of the early days. Ferriter and Uhr were partners. One of these Uhrs was once Sergeant-at-Arms in the Assembly. John Uhr was killed by the blacks at Sandy Creek, near Gatton. Other Uhrs were officers in the native police, and well known in the north especially Darcy Uhr. Pioneering squatting was a different business from squatting of today. The number of whites known to be killed by blacks in the first ten years of settlement were 254.

          When Rogers went to Grantham station, near the present Laidley, he took possession of about 400 sheets of bark the blacks had stripped for their own wet weather camps. These had been taken off ironbark trees, after the rough outside was knocked off. Rogers gave nothing in return, and Campbell said that this act of mean robbery led to the murder of at least seventeen white men, mostly shepherds.

          Then the Sydney Government sent up a detachment of soldiers, who were quartered at the foot of the range, to protect dray traffic. The camp was long known as the “Soldiers’ Barracks.” Those were days when John Kemp estimated the fighting strength of the Helidon district tribes at twelve hundred men. If one had only complete reminiscences of Richard Jones and Stephen Ferriter, the two men side by side in the Paddington cemetery, what an interesting picture they would give us of those long vanished old, wild, rough days.

“Tell us ye dead!

Will none of you in pity reveal the secret

Of what ye are, and what we dread to be!”

When Jones died he was member for the Stanley boroughs, in what is now Queensland, in the Legislative Council of New South Wales. He had been chairman of the Bank of New South Wales, Sydney. He died out at New Farm, and the body was brought by water to the Queen’s wharf, from whence a funeral procession of about 500 people followed it to the cemetery.

          The chief mourners were Thomas Jones, J. S. Ferriter, Daniel Peterson, and William Uhr.

          Jones , who was a native of Wales, and came to Sydney in 1819, married in 1823, Mary Louisa Peterson, by whom he had two sons and four daughters.

          His daughter, Mary Australia, married Captain W. B. O’Connell, Minister for Lands.

          The daughter, Louisa, married R. R. Mackenzie, once Premier.

          Ferriter’s widow, a tall, handsome woman, resided for about 20 years in No. 2, Hodgson Terrace, with a maid, who stayed beside her to the last.

           The Uhr at the funeral, was Ferriter’s partner.

          There was one E. B. Uhr, J.P., a squatter at Wide Bay.

          A writer of 1854, says of Ferriter:

“John Stephen Ferriter, R.N., was the Agent for Immigration, and lived in a cottage adjacent to the stone barracks between George and William Streets, afterwards the Colonial Treasurers’ Office. He was somewhat addicted to bad puns, but otherwise of a kind and gentle disposition.”

          Thomas Grenier, a youth of 17, who died on August 25, 1857, was the eldest son of Thomas and Mary Grenier, who kept a hotel at South Brisbane at that time. It was the chief resort of the squatters, and there was many a wild scene there. On one occasion some joker packed all the knives, spoons and forks from the breakfast table into a valise of old Captain Collins, who calmly rode away with them to the Logan, and got home before he discovered the contents.

          In the meantime Grenier had the blacks’ camp searched, and much suspicion fell upon innocent men, until choleric old Collins walked in, and banged all the cutlery on the table, with language that nearly set fire to the house.

          The Grenier family owned much property in South Brisbane, including Highgate Hill.

          A 22 months old child of J. C. and Emily Vidgen, was buried on March 25, 1866. The mother is also dead. She was the first wife of the well known and much liked secretary of the Brisbane Gas Company. She was a Lancashire girl, but they were married in Scotland. Vidgen’s second wife was a Miss Mossop.

          In the notice of Crown Solicitor Robert Little, we omitted to mention that his first wife was a Miss Geary, daughter of old Captain Geary. His second was a Miss Bramston, sister of Bramston, once Attorney General – 1870 –74. He also held a seat for three years in Herbert’s first ministry.

          Bramston and R. G. W. Herbert, our first Premier, batched together in the house well known as “Herston,” near the children’s hospital. The name was thus constructed. They took the “Her” from Herbert, and the “Ston” from Bramston, and made a blend of “Herston” out of the first and last syllables. G. P. M. Murray, our ex-P.M. calls his house “Yarrum,” his own name reversed.

          Amongst those buried in that Church of England cemetery, unknown and unrecorded, is a man whose name calls back an episode of 1842. At that time, there was an Eaton Vale station, on the Downs, a young Jackaroo named Barker, who in after years became the Hon. Wm. Barker, of Tamrookum station, on the Logan. An old man named Kelly and his wife and son, were traveling as hawkers, and camped on the present site of Leyburn, then taken up as a station by Pitt and Bonifant. This Pitt gave his name to the present Pittsworth, and one of his daughters married the late Macdonald-Paterson.

          Two men posing as shearers joined the hawking party. On the second night out from Leyburn, these two persuaded young Kelly to sleep at their fire, and shot him dead while he was asleep, their intention being to kill old Kelly and his wife, and take all the property. But old Kelly heard the shot, got his gun and went over to the camp. The two scoundrels ran away, and afterwards separated. One went towards the Clarence, then called the “Big River,” and the other, after going nearly to the Severn, doubled back to the Downs. He was a small dark man with one eye, and his name was Selby. He went to Jimbour woolshed, left there and went by Westbrook, on the way to the main range. Having accidentally shot off one of his fingers, he made for Rosewood station, to have his injury seen to by Dr. Goodwin. Young Barker was one of the pursuers on his track. Selby left Rosewood and went towards the Logan, evidently making for the Clarence. The hutkeeper on Telemon was a ticket-of-leave man, named Brown. Barker gave him a description of Selby, and also told him there was a reward of £100 for his capture, consequently Brown was on the lookout for him. Two days afterwards, Selby walked up to the hut, and Brown recognised him at once.

          He acted as a genial host to Selby, while he sent an aboriginal secretly for assistance. Selby was taken to Maitland, tried and hanged, an act of justice due directly to Barker and Brown. Brown died in 1856, in Brisbane, and lies in the Paddington cemetery. He got the reward and a free pardon for the capture of Selby.

          Barker, and Murray-Prior, and C. R. Haly married three sisters named Harper, all very handsome women. Prior’s wife was the mother of Mrs. Campbell Praed, and Mrs. John Jardine.

          Mrs. Barker was the mother of the well known Barker family of Brisbane.

          ‘We are no other than a moving row,

Of magic shadow shapes that come and go,

Round with the sun illumined lantern held,

In midnight by the Master of the Show.

But helpless pieces of the game he plays,

Upon this chequer board of nights and days,

Hither and thither moves, and checks, and stays,

And one by one back in the closet lays.

Omar Khayyam

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.

          The first Mrs. Tully had five brothers, William, Robert, Frederick, Alfred and Simeon. The first two are dead. Simeon, one of the owners of Eskdale, has also an oyster farm at Lord’s Creek, Southport. One his daughters, Ruby Lord, is at the convent school at Warwick, and exceptionally clever at woodcarving and fancywork.

          W. A. Tully, husband of Louisa, was once a very prominent Brisbane man. He was born in Dublin in 1830 and graduated as a B.A. of Trinity College in 1852. In that year he came to Tasmania, and met the Lord family. He stayed there until 1863 and became Inspecting Surveyor in the Survey Office. In 1863 he came to Queensland, and in 1864 was Commissioner for Lands in the Kennedy district. In 1864 he was transferred to the Warrego. In 1866 he was appointed Chief Commissioner, and then Under Secretary for Lands. In 1875 he became Acting Surveyor General, and in 1883 was appointed Surveyor General. Finally he became a member of the Land Board. He and the second wife, Miss Darvall died, and are buried together in Sydney. The first wife, Louisa Lord, is alone in the Paddington cemetery.

          Charles Henry Rawnsley, who died on January 16, 1873, aged 55, was a staff surveyor who surveyed much of the country around Brisbane.

          He purchased land and built “Witton Manor” on it, at Indooroopilly, the house long occupied by D. C. McConnell, and afterwards by Andrew Bogle.

          Rawnsley took some interest in natural history, and was the cause of a curious discussion in the “Courier,” on a supposed new bower bird which was actually named “Ptilonorhynchus Rawnsleyi,” and held that name until Gerard Krefft, of the Sydney Museum, proved it to be an immature male Regent bird, with only part of the yellow colors displayed. The Rawnsley’s “satin winged bower bird” retired into oblivion. Charles Coxen, Sylvester Diggles, and Gerard Krefft,  were the principal writers in this old time long dead controversy. One of Diggles’ sons is in the Electric Telegraph office.

          William Grosvenor Armstrong was the year old child of Octavius (and Jessie Augusta) Armstrong, one of our veteran police magistrates, still in service at the Central Police Court, and residing at South Brisbane. The child died on May 29, 1872, and the stone says, 

I know, Oh Lord, that Thy judgments are right,

 and that Thy faithfulness hast afflicted me,” 

one of the conundrums common among epitaphs.

          The name of Georgina Hely, who died on September 10, 1866, as the widow of F. A. Hely, of New South Wales, at the age of 71, recalls an old and remarkable family of the early days. Hovenden Hely, a giant of six feet six, was one of the men who started with Leichhardt on his second expedition. He and Leichhardt and Daniel Druce (“Old Ironbark”), left Sydney for Raymond Terrace, on the Hunter River, in the steamer “Thistle,” on September 30, 1846. From there they came overland to Jimbour. However, Hely’s experience with Leichhardt were not pleasant, and the expedition returned from the Mackenzie River as a disastrous failure. When Leichhardt started west on his last trip, in 1848, and no traces of him were discernible for three years, Hovenden Hely went out in 1852 with a search expedition, but his two blacks deserted him, and he returned to the coast, after being within two days journey of where the wild blacks told his own blackboys the Leichhardt party were all killed.

          Hovenden Hely had a number of sons, who ranged in height from 6ft to 6ft 4in., and three of them are well known in Brisbane. The Georgina Hely, of the Paddington cemetery, was mother of the wife of the late W. L. G. Drew. She was a tall handsome woman.

          William Yaldwyn, the now retired police magistrate, of Brisbane, buried a six weeks old child on May 12, 1867. Yaldwyn’s second wife is a daughter of the genial Phil Agnew, Post and Telegraph Master of Dunwich. The child of 1867 was named Duncan Francis. Yaldwyn was one of the early squatters of the Dawson, and was out there in 1861, when 19 people were killed on Wills’ station on the Comet.

          Mary Ellen, the wife of T. H. B. Barron, was a daughter of Arthur Wilcox Manning, once Under Secretary. This was the Manning whom a relative named Bowerman, also in the service, struck on the head with a tomahawk, and badly wounded. Parliament in an hour of unreasoning sentimentalism, rushed through a “Manning Pension Bill,” giving him a pension of £600 per annum, and £300 yearly to his widow if she survive him. Manning died after drawing about £20,000 and his widow still draws the £300.

          Bowerman’s tomahawk will probably cost Queensland about £30,000. And Manning went to live in Sydney, and not a penny of the pension has ever been spent in Queensland.

          Barron’s first wife, Miss Manning, died on December 21, 1866. His second wife was a daughter of the once Registrar-General Blakeney, and she is still alive. Both wives were fine looking women. The only daughter of the second wife is married to a son of Sir Arthur Hunter Palmer.

          Charlotte McKeand, who died on April 19, 1865, was the wife of a giddy financial agent, McKeand, who had an office at the top of Queen Street, beside where a chemist named Drew had a shop, near where Dr. Hugh Bell resided, at the corner of Queen and George Streets. McKeand made much money and lost it again in a fashion common with giddy men, and all that is left to perpetuate his name is his wife’s grave at Paddington. He was the sixty per cent magnate of that period. He owned the land now occupied by James Cowlinshaw and Herbert Perry, on the Breakfast Creek road.

          Henry Kingsmill Shaw and his wife Helen, buried a year old infant on November 29, 1874. Shaw was one of the managers of George Raff and Co., and had a tragical death in a lagoon near Dalby. He stripped to swim in after some ducks he had shot, became entangled in the weeds, and was drowned. The present writer remembers the sad event. The widow married again, and kept Auckland Villa, Tank Street, as a boarding house.

          Tom Haynes, who died on June 12, 1875, was coachman for Governor Cairns, who put a large, horizontal slab, with a cross, over his grave, and an inscription to say it was a record by the Governor.

          Charles Street, who died on September 23, 1873, aged 42, was engaged at Pettigrew’s Sawmills in William Street. His brother was father of the Street sisters who had an artificial flower and dressmaking shop in the building now occupied by the Protector of Aboriginals. One of these sisters married J. G. Drake, and another was the wife of Inspector A. D. Douglas.

          Daniel Weinholt, over whom is a fine marble monument, died at Cleveland, on February 28, 1865, aged 43 years, leaving a widow and four children. He was a son of the then late J. B. Weinholt, of Kent and Weinholt, who were among the early squatting families of Queensland. The monument was erected by the brothers and sisters.

          Thomas Burnett Temple, M.R.C.S., who died on June 10, 1864, aged 32, was a young doctor who came out for his health, and died of consumption. His mother lies beside him, and Cecil Burnett Temple, a child of 13 months. The mother died on November 24, 1873, aged 50. The grave has a marble slab on a large stone cross.

          Inside one railing is a row of five headstones, over F. J. Barton, and his two infants, Charles Samways Warry, Albert Barton, Thomas Symes Warry, and Thomas Warry. F. J. Barton, who was a doctor, died on August 31, 1863. He was married to a Miss Warry, who, as Barton’s widow, married Dr. Hugh Bell, and, on a trip to Scotland, was lost in the Fiery Star, which was burned at sea, on Good Friday, 1866.

          Barton was one of the first doctors of the Brisbane Hospital, when it was in George Street. Albert Barton, who died on February 23, 1864, was his brother. The stone says: 

I shall be satisfied when I awake with Thy likeness,” 

another epitaph conundrum.

          Thomas Symes Warry was a chemist in Queen Street. He died, unmarried, on August 19, 1864, aged 42. The stone says: 

“Blessed is he that considereth the poor.” 

Also this remarkable verse:

“’Tis strange that those we lean on most,

Those in whose laps our limbs are nursed,

Fall into shadow, soonest lost,

Those we love first are taken first,

God gives u s love, something to love,

He lends us, but when love is grown

To ripeness, that on which it throve

Falls off, and love is left alone.”

          This Warry was a humorist. On one occasion he induced Billy Brookes to climb a greasy pole in front of his shop in Queen Street. Those were days when Billy was not the severe good templar he became in after years. The pole climbing scene was exhilarating. Billy, with the aid of sandpaper on his hands, and got about half way, then slid down with great celerity. Then he and Warry went over to call on “Pretty Polly,” at the Treasury Hotel, to drink confusion to greasy pole climbing.

          “Pretty Polly” afterwards married a man named Moffit, and they kept the Royal Hotel, opposite the Post Office for years. After she became a widow, Polly went to Charters Towers, and died there.

          Thomas Warry, senior, died at Gladstone, on February 7, 1869, aged 77.

          The mother of the late Tom Pratten, of the Railway Department, was a Miss Warry.

          Emily Gertrude, was the year old child of Sheppard and Emily Smith, and died on February 24, 1862. Smith was the first manager of the Bank of New South Wales. He was a tall, fine specimen of a man, about six feet two, and his wife was a little woman. The smallest women never seem to hesitate about facing giants.

          Richard James Coley, who died on September 12, 1864, aged 60, was Sergeant-at-Arms in the Legislative Assembly. Coley came to a tragical end at the cottage still occupied in George Street, close to Harris Terrace. His son came to an equally tragical end in after years. One daughter was married to a squatter named Thompson, on the Dawson, and another married C. B. Dutton, once Minister for Lands, Minister for Railways, and Minister for Works and Mines, in the first Griffith Ministry. Beside Coley are his two little girls, of 8 and 13. The first died on March 4, 1845, the other on June 30, 1851.

          Sarah Emily Harris, who died on September 17, 1866, aged 78, was the mother of John and George Harris, once the leading Brisbane merchants and shipping agents. George married a sister of the late George Thorn, of Ipswich, and their well known home, “Newstead,” at the mouth of Breakfast Creek, was famous for its generous hospitality. Mrs. Harris, who is yet alive and well, is still a fine looking woman. She is mother of the well known Did Harris. The mother of J. and G. Harris is described as a grand old lady. Both brothers are dead. John Hurrow Turner, who died on July 20, 1862, was manager of the Union Bank in Brisbane. He was born at Milthorp, in Westmoreland. It is rather singular to find two John Turners, managers of the Brisbane Union Bank, and no relation to each other. John Hurrow Turner came up from Melbourne to take the place of John Sarjeant Turner, whom the directors wanted in Melbourne for some special work. He came up also in the hope of improving his health, but consumption had too strong a hold, and he died while in Brisbane, at the early age of 36.

“Why dost thou build thy halls, son of the winged days?

A few short years and the blast of the desert comes

It howls in thy empty court”

Ossian

“A spirit passed before me, I beheld

The face of Immortality unveiled;

Deep sleep came down on every eye save mine,

And there it stood, all formless but divine,

Along my bones the creeping flesh did quake,

And as my damp hair stiffened, thus it spake,

‘Is man more just than God? Is man more pure

Than He who deems even Seraphs insecure

Creatures of clay, vain dwellers in the dust,

The moth survives you, and are ye more just?

Things of a day, ye wither ere the night

Heedless and blind to Wisdom’s wasted light.”

Byron’s Paraphrase from Job

            A few extra particulars concerning the old historic Hely family. Frederic Augustus Hely, whose wife lies in the Paddington cemetery, was the first Superintendent in Chief of convicts in Sydney. He died in 1835, and was buried in a vault in his own orchard at Gosford, Broken Bay. His wife was Georgina Lindsey Bucknell. One of their sons was Hovenden Hely, the explorer, who was out with Leichhardt in 1846, and went to search for him in 1852.

          One son was Henry Lindsey Hely, a barrister, who became a Queensland District Court judge.

          One daughter married the late W. L. G. Drew, then a paymaster in the Fleet. He came to Queensland, joined the Civil Service, and his last position was Chairman of the Civil Service Board.

          Another Hely girl married Edward Strickland, a major in the Royal Artillery, and afterwards Sir Edward Strickland, Commissary- General, who served in the Zulu War of 1878.

          Another girl married Captain G. K. Mann, Royal Horse Artillery, who after retiring from that position, became Superintendent of the Penal Settlement on Cockatoo Island, Sydney Harbor, where he planned and superintended the docks.

          Hovenden Hely was the father of the six tall sons of whom one is Major Hely, at present in the Government Savings Bank.

          These are a few results from F. A. Hely’s marriage in the long ago with the woman who lies in the Paddington cemetery.

          Mary Grace Sheppard, who died on June 28, 1869, was the wife of Edmund Sheppard, judge of the Metropolitan District Court. Her infant son, Alfred Henry, had died on October 15, 1866. One of our chief Government officers tells the following gruesome story:

        In 1869 a young fellow named Davidson was out one night with some boon companions, and they were on their way home late at night. Davidson lived in North Brisbane, the others on the South side. He went with them to the ferry, and they advised him to go home. The ferry boatman was a Chinaman, named George. A punt also ran across on a rope, there being no bridge. They pushed the boat off, and Davidson took off his coat and trousers and dived in head first after it. The Chinaman merely said, ‘Oh, let him swim out,’ and pulled away. Davidson was drowned, and the police dragged for two days without success. On the third day, the ferry boat left the steps with Mrs. Sheppard, then on the eve of becoming a mother, two other passengers, and the officer who tells the story. When a short distance out the punt was coming in from the south side. Suddenly, at the stern of the boat, the body of Davidson rose from the river, head first, shot up, until breast high, glared, as it were, for a second with those ghastly, glassy, staring eyes, turned over on the back, and floated away. The second it rose, the officer, with remarkable presence of mind, instantly caught Mrs. Sheppard by both arms, to prevent her turning around to look at the body, and held her for at least a hundred yards, speaking to her softly, and telling her he would give a clear explanation. The judge afterwards thanked him earnestly, expressing a belief that he had save his wife’s life. Alas! Poor Mrs. Sheppard got puerperal fever after the birth of that baby, and lies there in the Paddington cemetery, so her life went after all.

          A young Church of England clergyman is thus recorded: “Jesu Mercy. In memory of the departed John Brakenridge, M. A. of Christ’s College, Cambridge, Clerk in Holy Orders. Died March 26, 1861, aged 31.” He was one of the many young men who have come out to Queensland in that advanced stage of consumption which no climate can cure.

           Amos Braysher, who died on September 27, 1871, aged 35, was the landlord of “Braysher’s Hotel,” now the Metropolitan, in Edward Street. His widow married Duncan, and after Duncan died, Mrs. Duncan kept the hotel for years.

          Mrs. Duncan’s Metropolitan Hotel was the favorite house for squatters in those days, and probably then the best hotel in Brisbane.

          Buried at Paddington, is an old fellow named Marvel, perhaps a descendant of the famous Andrew Marvel. He was one of the band of ticket-of-leave men who came to the Darling Downs in 1840, with Patrick Leslie, when he took up the first station, Toolburra. In after years, Leslie wrote that “they were 20 as good and game men as ever I saw, and worth any 40 I have ever seen since.”

          Marvel was a chum of Peter Murphy, whose name is borne by Murphy’s Creek, on the Toowoomba line. Murphy was also one of Leslie’s men, and he died at Charters Towers on April 6, 1878.

          Among the stone less graves is that of Tom Mostyn, one of the mob who pulled Trevethan’s butchers shop down in the beef riots at Charters Towers, on October 30, 1872.

          Another man named Perkins was with Captain Owen Stanley on the Rattlesnake, on the Queensland coast, in 1846, and was present at the Captain’s funeral at North Shore, Sydney, on March 10, 1850.

          There are many interesting men lying among the unknown dead. A young fellow buried there was a son of Charles Alcocks, who was one of the owners of the “Free Press,” a squatting paper, published in Brisbane in 1851, the office being on the site of the present Australian Hotel. Young Alcocks was killed by being thrown from his horse at Cowper’s Plains, in 1851. These plains are erroneously called “Cooper’s Plains,” though named from Dr. Cowper, the first medical man at the early convict settlement at Moreton Bay. Even Moreton Bay is spelled wrongly, as it was named by Captain Cook after the Scottish Earl of Morton, in whose name there is no “e.”

          An old lady, still living, tells us that in the Paddington cemetery, she has a brother, who went up the Brisbane River on June 27, 1846, in the first trip of the small steamer, Experiment, owned and built by Pearse, when the first and second class passenger return fares were 6s and 4s, and the freight on wool was 2s per bale. She remembered when Francis Gill, for many years Postmaster at Ipswich, had a saddler’s shop at South Brisbane, in 1843. This latter tough old gentleman is still alive and well, and can be seen weekly in Queen Street, faultlessly dressed and wearing a bell topper hat.

          She herself remembers when the first soda water and lemonade factory was started in North Brisbane, by Fisher and Gregory, in 1853, and Dr. Hobbs had his dugong oil fishery on the island of St. Helena, fifteen years before Superintendent Macdonald started to cut the scrub in 1864 to prepare it for a penal settlement.

          A two year old son of John and Ann Nott was buried on May 17, 1875. Nott was a merchant in Elizabeth Street, and had a wholesale house there. His wife was widow of a painter named Murray. She was a daughter of Lachlan McLean, whose son, William McLean, was once a well known blacksmith in Elizabeth Street. Nott died at Enoggera Terrace. His widow is still alive, and resides near Woolloongabba. She was referred to in a former article.

          Elizabeth Bateman, who died on March 9, 1873, was the wife of Samuel Bateman, who kept a hotel on the site of the present Hotel Cecil. It was built by a man who was foreman printer on the “Courier,” in old Jimmy Swan’s days. After Bateman died, the property was bought at a low figure by Dr. Mullen, who built the Hotel Cecil of the present day.

          The Horrocks family buried three of their children, Reginald Blackall, Algernon Levinge, and Gertrude Mary Horrocks, in 1871 and 1873, aged 13 months, 10 months and 2 years and 9 months. Horrocks was the well known officer in charge of the Orphans, and was once Immigration Agent. He held a Captain’s rank in the army. He was a Manchester man, and a nephew of the Horrocks known  to all women and drapers, as the originator and maker of “Horrocks’ long cloths.” He married a Miss Miller, whose father was a police magistrate at Armagh, in Ireland. That marriage was against the wish of his uncle, and it cost Horrocks a fortune.

          Horrocks was an educated, polite man, who commanded general respect. The tragical fate of one of his sons is still familiar to Brisbane people. A daughter, aged 18 or 19, died recently, but Mrs. Horrocks still resides in Brisbane. Reginald Miller, of the Audit Office, is her brother.

          Ernest Alexander Cairncross, a child of 21 days, who died on September 26, 1867, was a son of Cairncross, who kept a store on the corner of Queen and Albert Streets, where Rutter, the chemist, recently had a shop.

          Cairncross was married to a daughter of old George Edmonstone, once M.L.A., for Brisbane. He had a butchering business in Queen Street. One of the daughters of Cairncross married the present Hon. A. J. Thynne, who was staying at the time with the Cairncross family on Spring Hill. This Cairncross is often confused with Captain Cairncross, who owned Wattlebrae, and in front of whose house was the “Cairncross Buoy,” well known to all boating men. That red buoy is still there.

          A. R. and Annie Jones buried an infant on February 28, 1870. Jones was a shipbuilder, predecessor of Paul and Gray.

          One of his sons, named Sydney, became partner in the legal firm of Rees R. and Sydney Jones, of Rockhampton. He married a daughter of the late John Ferguson, and when he died his widow, who had several children, married J. T. Bell, late Minister for Lands.

          There is a stone placed over Charles Augustus Basham, by his brother, W. H. Basham, who still resides at Oxley. Basham died on April 12, 1873, aged 37. The father of these Bashams was an officer in the Irish Coast Guards. Our informant was present, as a boy, at his funeral, at Cushendall, Red Bay, Glens of Antrim, in 1849. The boy had run away from home to see the funeral, and saw a hearse for the first time. This gruesome vehicle gave him an awful scare, but nothing like the scare his dad gave him when he reached home.

          Amelia Isabella Peake, who died on April 22, 1873, aged only 24, was the wife of Captain Peake, first Captain of the old Government steamer, Kate, which finally sank in Moreton Bay. Two of Mrs. Peake’s infants are buried  with her. The ages, 24, 25, and 26, were the fatal period for an appalling number of wives. When his wife died, Captain Peake went to Sydney, and died somewhere in New South Wales.

          One day in 1872, someone saw two large strange fish in the pond of the Botanic Gardens. Captain Peake had a seine net and that was taken down to the pond. The fish were caught and caused great astonishment, as no one at the time had seen anything like them. But the usual expert came along and found that they were two specimens of  Ceratodus of the Mary and Burnett Rivers. Enquiries proved that they had been caught years before in Tinana Creek and been sent down to the gardens by the late R. B. Sheridan, then Collector of Customs, in Maryborough. Then they were restored to the pond and vanished again into oblivion until the days of curator McMahon, when one of his men, a Teutonic gentleman, was cleaning out the pond, and caught a ceratodus, then weighing about 12lbs. The German merely remarked, “By shingo, dis vos goot,” and took it home and ate it. Next day he caught another, but McMahon happened to come along, and sent it up to Curator de Vis at the Museum. De Vis saw at once what the fish was, and sent it back to the Gardens, where it was placed in the pond, none the worse for its temporary absence. Finally that one and his mate were removed to the fountain pond at the south-west corner of the Gardens, and both were taken away by the flood of 1893, or 21 years after Captain Peake had hauled them out in his seine net.

          John Wallace Barnett, who died on September 3, 1872, at the age of 46, was a well known man in Brisbane, where he was Consular Agent for the United States, a country in which he had lived for some years. He and Heusmann, and G. R. Fyfe, were once owners of one of the principal Mount Perry mines, and the town of “Fyfe Barnett,” actually stood on the present site of Mount Perry. Barnett’s only son, Sydney Barnett, married a daughter of William Baynes, once a partner in the squatting firm of Moore Brothers and Baynes, owners of Barambah station, on the Burnett.

          Baynes was returned as member for the Burnett, at the General Election of 1878, as a supporter of McIlwraith. He was a fine, genial, honest fellow, and a general favourite on both sides of the House. The present writer was a member in those days and can write with authority. Sydney Barnett lives today at Ormiston, on the Cleveland railway.

          One of Cobb and Co.’s coachman, a young fellow named Henry Taylor, was drowned in Oxley Creek, on March 11, 1870, aged 29, and his fellow employees erected a stone over his grave.

          Marie Louise Fairlie, wife of Patrick Fairlie, sixth son of the then late Colonel James Fairlie, of Holmes House, Ayrshire, Scotland, died at Brisbane, on February 16, 1873, aged 31. Referring to the “Courier” of that date, we find only the funeral notice, but there is a very ambiguous paragraph referring to the sudden death of some lady, in a high social position, who had been addicted to looking upon rainbow colored wines, and had been fed on nothing but brandy and water for weeks before her death. The “Courier” thought the subject demanded a searching enquiry.

          I came to the place of my birth and cried 

“the friends of my youth, where are they?” 

and an echo answered “Where are they?” – 

Arabic poem.

They grew in beauty side by side

They filled one home with glee,

Their graves are  severed far and wide,

By mountain, stream, and sea.

The same fond mother bent at night,

O’er each fair sleeping brow,

She had each folded flower in sight,

Where are those dreamers now?

          Among the unknown graves are those of a number of aboriginals, who were hanged.

          These are said, by some early colonists, to have been buried outside the cemetery, and others say they were buried in a corner inside.

          It is certain they were all taken charge of by the Church of England.

On April 21, 1854, a notorious black called “Dundahli,” was hanged on the site of the present General Post Office. He had been accused of seven murders, but the one he was hanged for was that of William Gregor and Mary Shannon, at the Pine River. On the day he was hanged – by a hangman purposely brought from Sydney – there was a mob of about 33 blacks on the “Windmill Hill,” where the Observatory is today. They called to Dundahli, as he stood on the gallows, and he called back, telling them to be sure and kill “Woom-boongoroo,” the black who had betrayed him. He was captured in the Valley, where he had incautiously ventured among a lot of other blacks, through the agency of a man named Baker, who in after years had a farm and hotel at Walloon, in the Rosewood.

Baker knew Dundahli, and enticed him into a room where three other men were concealed, and the four men sprang on him, and held him until the police came. Dundahli was badly knocked about in the struggle.

Mrs. Baker told the writer in 1878, that there was a reward of £25 for his capture, and she went to the courthouse and drew the money for her husband. She is said to be still alive, in Ipswich, or was a few years ago.

Dundahli had too long a drop, and fell with his feet on the coffin underneath. The hangman doubled his legs us, and added his own weight, until the miserable black was strangled.

          It was a ghastly spectacle for a crowd of men, women, and children.

          Dundahli was buried at Paddington, either inside or outside the Church of England ground.

          Two other blacks who were hanged are also there. These were “Chanerrie,” and “Dick,” hanged on August 4, 1859, for a criminal assault on a German woman. They were two Burnett River blacks.

          The came “Kipper Billy,” who was shot by Warder Armstrong when attempting to escape from the jail. It was remarkable that no bullet wound was discovered, but it must have reached his interior somehow, unless he died on shock, or what the modern Sawbones calls “stoppage of the heart’s action.” Presumably, if the heart continued working, death would be indefinitely postponed.

          Some enterprising criminologist opened “Kipper Billy’s” grave, and took his skull away. This raised much indignation on the part of Shepherd Smith and Henry Buckley, the cemetery trustees. Someone, in 1854, had dug down to Dundahli and taken his head. The Paddington cemetery was a lonely isolated spot in those days, and there was opportunity enough to dig up anybody.

          Buried there is a man named Jubb, who had a hotel in Cunningham’s Gap, on the old road to Toowoomba, in 1852. In that year, two distinguished visitors went up to see the squatters on the Downs. These were Lord Kerr, and Lord Scott, the latter being a son of the Duke of Buccleugh. They stayed, on their way up and down, at Jubb’s Hotel. These were the first lords who ever visited the territory now called Queensland. Jubb’s name recalls the “Jubb Jubb” in the “Hunting of the Snark.”

          A neat headstone marks the grave of Thomas Ayerst Hooker, second son of James and Mary Hooker, drowned in the Condamine crossing at Undulla, on December 13, 1866. A squatter named James Hooker, or Hook, was one of the owners of Weranga Station, in 1856, afterwards sold by Hook, or Hooker, to Mort and Laidley. Was this young fellow Hooker his son? Perhaps some old squatter will kindly tell us. And was the body brought all that distance in those days, to be buried at Paddington?

          Buried on December 23, 1871, was a child of seven months old, named Moreton Franklyn Ryder, son of the long experienced and courteous Under Secretary W. H. Ryder, of the Home Office. Ryder was born in Prince Edward Island, Canada, in November, 1843, and came to Victoria in 1851.

          In 1861, he was on the staff of the old “Guardian” newspaper in Brisbane, and in 1862 became a clerk in the Government Printing Office. Thence he rose rapidly and finally reached the post of Under Secretary, in 1896. He had once a sadder bereavement than that of the baby of 1871, when a fine son was killed on Breakfast Creek bridge by being thrown off his pony on the way to school. One of his sisters was married to Rickards, once station master at Ipswich, and became mother of Katie Rickards, the brilliant pianisto.

          Harold Durham Paul, who died on June 12, 1873, was a four months and fourteen days old baby, fourth son of George William and Emily Paul. This George William is our well known genial Judge Paul, who was born at Penrith, New South Wales, on June 2, 1839, and came to Queensland on December 25, 1863. He became Crown Prosecutor in 1866, Acting Judge in 1871, and District Court Judge in 1874. He has been three or four times Acting Judge of the Supreme Court.

          A young fellow named William Page had an accident on board the ship Light Brigade, on her way to Brisbane, and was so badly injured that he died after arrival, on December 15, 1866, aged 22.

          A young fellow named John Mace, said to be a brother or nephew of the famous boxer, Jem Mace, was drowned in the Brisbane River, on September 11, 1869, aged 23.

          One grave holds the infant son of George Hope and Morforwyn Verney. Captain Verney was aide-de-camp to Governor Blackall, and left Queensland when the Marquis died.

          Evidently Mrs. Verney, if we are to judge by her name, belonged to a Welsh family.

          The child died on November 26, 1870.

          It would appear as if one early settler was somewhat of a humorist, with regard to names. That was Henry Rosetta, who died on December 9, 1863, aged 49. Beside him lies a six year old son, whom he had named “Christmas Gift,” and who died June 23, 1864. This is the Rosetta who gave his name to “Rosetta Swamp” of the present day, the notorious quagmire out of which Dr. Ham has ordered the City Council to expel all microbes without delay.

          One stone less grave contains a man named Marks, who was one of a number badly injured in a terrible boiler explosion at the Union foundry, in Maryborough, in 1872, when seven men were killed. One half of the boiler was blown clear over a Chinaman’s garden, 200 yards away.

          In 1855, two shiploads of German immigrants arrived in Brisbane, by the ships Merbz and Aurora. They were engaged in Germany by a man named Kirchner, of Kirchner and Co., of Sydney, who brought them out on a two years engagement.

          They were intended for the stations, as men were scarce in those days, especially shepherds, of whom a great number were killed by the blacks. The squatters were to pay £16 for each German’s passage, to be deducted from his two years’ wages. A majority of the squatters made no deductions, and the Germans gave great satisfaction. A number shared the fate of those who fell under the spear and nulla. Among these immigrants were two brothers named Muller, one of whom died a month after arrival, and was buried in the Paddington cemetery. The brother went as a hutkeeper on Manumbar station, and was killed by the blacks.

          Captain Graham Mylne, M.L.A., and his wife, Helena White, buried a five months old child on May 31, 1868. Mylne in that year, was member for the Warrego. The Mackenzie Ministry was in office, and in a precarious position. Not a soul of either the Council or Assembly is alive today. South Brisbane was represented by T. B. Stephens, North Brisbane by A. B. Pritchard and Dr. O’Doherty, the Valley by Charles Lilley. The 20 members of the Council, and the 31 of the Assembly are all dead. Mylne spoke of the position of the Ministry, who had been defeated on the Address-in-Reply, by 13 to 11, and the Governor refused to accept their resignation. Mylne’s wife, the mother of the child at Paddington, was a Miss White, sister of Albert White, of the Logan River, now of Bluff Downs, west of Toowoomba. Besides his station on the Logan, Albert White held old Combabah Station, which took all the country from the Coomera River to Nerang, including Southport.

          In 1870, the Manager of Combabah was old Sandy Gordon, who kept a whole pack of Kangaroo dogs, the leaders of which were usually about a mile ahead of Gordon on the march. Present writer was a youth of 17, when on a first visit to Queensland, in 1870, and we had two days kangaroo hunting with Gordon. Southport then was covered by heavy forest, with rank undergrowth, and long grass, full of wallabies.

          Albert White, the present owner of Bluff Downs, on the head of the Burdekin, was in Brisbane last week. He is one of the finest specimens of men in Queensland. He was a young man when owner of Nindooimbah and Coombabah. His sister, who married Graham Mylne, is still alive and well, in Sydney, but Mylne died many years ago, at Eatonswell Station, on the Clarence.

          One of his sons, also a Captain Mylne, fought in the South African war, and was on the staff of Lord Metheun. He passed through Brisbane last week, and we shall have occasion to refer to him and Albert White again.

          David Williams, who died on March 26, 1874, was a Welshman, who had been years in the pilot service, at Gladstone, and was also some time in the Port Office.

          Can anyone enlighten us concerning Clara Ann Hopkins, who died on April 12, 1874, aged 29, and on whose grave is this extraordinary verse?

“She is not as we saw her last,

On a suffering dying bed;

To her all death and pain are past,

And by living streams she is led;

She has learned the sacred story,

Of the Saviour’s dying love,

Her eyes now see the glory,

That awaited her above..”

          If the writer of this had seen the look in the eyes of those who read it, he would have fled somewhere in the middle of the night.

          In the centre of Rosewood, near Marburg, is a flat valley, once known as Sally Owen’s Plains, still known as such to old residents. Sally was an old time celebrity, who kept a hotel at Western Creek, between Rosewood and Grandchester, then known as “Bigge’s Camp.” She used the plains for her cattle and horses, as they were safe there from horse thieves and cattle duffers. The “plains” were merely an open forest pocket in the brigalow scrub. An enterprising person , who had run an illicit still in the old country, thought Sally Owen’s plains an ideal spot for a similar institution, and he made whisky and rum there in hundreds of gallons. Likewise he killed cattle and boiled then down for tallow. He took this tallow to Ipswich in large casks, but there was only about six inches of tallow in the inside of the casks, and all the rest was occupied by kegs of raw spirit! This was engineered so cleverly that there was never any discovery. That old time distiller of Sally Owen’s Plains, lies at rest in Paddington cemetery, near the southwest corner.

          We withhold his name for the sake of his descendants. The shepherds, shearers, stockmen, and bullock drivers of those days must have had a gay time with the rum from Sally Owen’s Plains. Artemus Ward would have said “that sort of rum inspires a man with a wild desire to smash windows!”

          In reference to correspondents who wrote to make corrections.

          Notwithstanding the fair Josephine Papi’s declaration that her uncle Jerry Scanlan was a surveyor, we have the inexorable facts that he was a saddler by trade, and a policeman by choice. Those who knew Jerry most intimately, say he would not have known the difference between a theodolite and a concertina. Jerry had a weakness for attending funerals, mounted on a serious looking horse, with two long “weepers” hanging from the back of his hat.

          In reply to Mr. Rendall, who says his father’s name was John Wood Rendall, we can only say that John Randall is the name on the tombstone.

          In answer to Mr. Conroy, we have the fact that a Constable John Conroy was burned to death on the Durundur Road. There may have been two constables of that name.

“The man, how wise, who sick of gaudy scenes,

Is led by choice to take his favourite walk,

Beneath Death’s gloomy, silent cypress shades,

Unpierced by Vanity’s fantastic ray,

To read his monuments, to weigh his dust,

Visit the vaults and dwell among the tombs.-

Young’s Night Thoughts

How loved, how valued once, avail thee not;

To whom related, or by whom begot;

A heap of dust alone remains of thee

‘Tis all Thou art and all the Proud shall be.

-Pope

The doctor says that I shall die;

You that I knew in days gone by,

I fain would see your face once more,

Con well its features o’er and o’er,

And touch your hand, and feel your kiss,

Look in your eyes and tell you this;

That all is done, that I am free,

That you through all eternity

Have neither part nor lot in me.

-Amy Levy

          A neat headstone is over Susan Geary, wife of Lieutenant William Geary, R.N. She died on August 9, 1852. She was the mother of all the Queensland Gearys, including four girls and three boys, of whom only one girl is alive today.

          One of the sons was once manager of Jimbour station when Joshua Bell was owner, in the days when champagne was a common beverage, and the silver on the Jimbour dining table cost £500. Those days have passed.

          It is interesting to remember that Joshua Peter Bell was an enthusiastic admirer of the Miss Geary who married Robert Little, the Crown Solicitor. Both were competitors for her hand, and Little won. It was a grievous disappointment to Bell, but the squatters of those days, like the French Mirabeau family, had a talent for choosing fine women, and Bell went and wooed and won a daughter of Dr. Dorsey, of Ipswich. She and the Miss Geary who married Little, were two of the finest specimens of women in Queensland. One Miss Geary married Percy Faithfull, member of an old time honored family, in New South Wales. On one occasion in their single days, the sons of Faithfull were driving home across the Goulburn Plains, when they were attacked by Gilbert, the bushranger, and his gang, who had bailed up Springfield station, and rounded up the whole population. The Faithfull boys made a gallant fight, and were quite a surprise party to Gilbert. The Gilbert men were armed only with revolvers, and knowing that one of the Faithfulls had a rifle, in addition to their revolvers, galloped round at long range, fired under the necks of their horses, and from behind trees, and generally gave the Faithfull warriors a wide berth. One of Gilbert’s men got fairly close and fired from behind a tree, point blank at one of the Faithfull brothers, but Faithfull’s horse threw up its head at the exact moment, intercepted the ball with its forehead, and fell dead. Finally the bushrangers cleared, and the gallant fight of the Faithfulls was afterwards recognised by the Government in a gold medal for each of the party.

          One Miss Geary married E. O. Moriarty, engineer in chief of Harbors and Rivers in New South Wales. Another married a nephew of Sir Maurice O’Connell. The Miss Geary who married Robert Little had a family of four sons and four daughters.

          William Henry Geary, the grandfather, died on February 20, 1870. He was at one time Harbor Master in Brisbane. One of his sons, Godfrey N. B. Geary, was once chief clerk in the Lands office, and a captain in the artillery. He involved himself in a a lawsuit for breach of promise brought against him by a Miss Hollingsworth, of Stanthorpe, and she got a verdict for a thousand pounds. But she merely held it over him in terrorem, like a Damocles sword, which was to fall only if he married another girl. As he contracted no further engagements, the sword remained suspended until he died. Miss Hollingsworth finally married Tom Coventry, a gentleman whose name is not unknown in mining circles. Mrs. Coventry, an educated, intellectual, woman, was for years, the social editor-ess of the “Telegraph,” and once started on her own account a bright little journal called the “Princess,” which reached 22 numbers, and died generally regretted by all who knew it.

          On the headstone of the Mrs. Geary from 1852 we read:

“And I heard a voice which said: ‘

Write – blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth.”

          Margaret Francis Clara, wife of William Pickering, died on June 28, 1859, aged 43, and Pickering died on March 11, 1868, aged 57. Pickering was once Curator of Intestate Estates, also an auctioneer and commission agent, and owned a lot of land in the Valley, where the Pickering Estate took in a considerable area now covered by closely built houses. Alexander Raff succeeded him as Curator of Intestate Estates. One of his sons, now deceased, was a once fairly well known Captain Pickering, for some years labor agent in the South Seas. His family are still in Brisbane.

          Elizabeth Cowell, who died on January 17, 1864, aged 38, was the first wife of Tom Cowell, once one of Brisbane’s best known men. Tom once had a dairy farm at the “One-mile Swamp,” the present Woolloongabba, and carried milk into town in two cans slung  on a yoke across his shoulders. The farm was owned by old “Joe Howe,” who is still alive. Joe had one daughter who married Bill Moody, of Oxley.

          Cowell prospered , as he deserved to prosper , and in after years became the proprietor of the Sovereign Hotel in Queen Street. Finally he retired, and lived in a house on the North Quay, near the Longreach. The house was afterwards occupied by Dr. Purcell, and at the present time is tenanted by the Military Club. In that house, Tom Cowell’s first wife, a fine specimen of a woman, died a tragical death through her clothes catching fire, and the servant girl who tried to save her was also burnt to death.

          In after years, Tom married again, and the second wife is still alive. By the first he had one daughter, who married a man named Daniell, who died not long ago. Present writer knew Cowell well. Once sold to him for £40 a double choke bore Greener gun which cost £65. Cowell afterwards sold it to Lennon, of Lennon’s hotel, for £40, and Lennon used it for many pigeon matches. When he died the gun disappeared, and finally found its way to a Brisbane pawn shop, where warehouseman John Bell saw and bought it for £5, and it is now in his possession.

          On Mrs. Cowell’s grave is the line

“Ye know not what shall be on the morrow.”

          One headstone, which has fallen down, bears the name of two children, Emma and William Henry Collins, who died in 1863 and 1864. Beside them is the grandmother, Mary Collins, who died on July 12, 1873, aged 86, one of the very few old people in the cemetery. The father of the children, Jimmy Collins, was a well known butcher and tanner, who once owned the present York Hotel, which he built up from a butcher’s shop, the money being mostly provided by Joshua Peter Bell, who realised the words of the Psalmist, “passing away, passing away,” for he never saw his cash anymore.

          Ann Ellen Boyce, second daughter of William Martin Boyce, E.L.C.S., died on June 11, 1866, aged 24. Also Susan, wife of W. M. Boyce, died on May 27, 1874, aged 58. The stone also records Ellen Victoria Board, youngest daughter of W. M. and Susan Boyce, who died at Melbourne on August 24, 1877, aged 34. She was the wife of T. A. Board, of Sydney, brother of G. L. Board, present chief clerk in the Lands Office and Inspector of State Forests. The stone also records Stuart Leslie Board, a child of the mother, who died in Melbourne.

          William Martin Boyce was for many years Town Clerk of Toowoomba, and his only son, J. A. Boyce, is the well known P.M. of Townsville. The first wife of W. M. Boyce was a Miss Brown of Tasmania. When G. L. Board was a youth he went to a collegiate school kept by the Rev E. B. Shaw, close to the old windmill, the present Observatory. Among his fellow pupils were the McDougalls and Taylors, of Toowoomba, Pring Roberts, Arthur Chambers, Fred Hamilton, Jack Kent, the two Hausmanns, and other sons of the pioneers.

          A four months’ child named Frederick Charles Cracknell was a son of Cracknell, who was the predecessor of Matvieff as head of the Telegraph Department. He lived four miles out on the Ipswich Road, near Hardcastle’s old hotel.

          Gilbert Wright, of New South Wales, was a solicitor, who died in Brisbane on June 12, 1866, aged 37. He resided in the Valley. His widow married the well-known R. R. Smellie, founder of the firm of R. R. Smellie and Co. On Wright’s tomb are the words, 

“I wait for the Lord; 

my soul doth wait, 

and in His word do I hope.”

          Charlotte Greenwood was the wife of Christopher Henry Greenwood, and died on March 16, 1857, aged 23. Greenwood kept a hotel in Grey Street, near Russell Street, South Brisbane. One Miss Greenwood married George Grenier, of Oxley. The Grenier family held a lot of land in South Brisbane.

          Joseph Thompson, who died on December 19, 1857, aged 38, had his name handed down by the Thompson Estate on the Ipswich Road, near the junction.

          On March 11, 1856, a young fellow named J. M. Omanney, aged 20, was thrown from his horse and killed on the Breakfast Creek road. He was a son of Major Omanney, of the Bengal Engineers.

          One of the earliest graves is that of Edward Roe Thomas, fourth son of Jocelyn Thomas, Esq., of Van Diemen’s Land, who died on July 31, 1853, aged 32. The stone assures us that 

“he died in the Christian faith, a firm believer in his Saviour.” 

His father was careful to have the “Esquire” on the tombstone. Some day we shall see a stone to the memory of John Brown, J.P.

          A neat stone marks the grave of Frederick Neville Isaac, of Gowrie, Darling Downs, who died on July 12, 1865, aged 44. This name takes us back to the early squatting days, to the year 1845, when Hughes and Isaac held Westbrook and Stanbrook stations, when Tom Bell, grandfather of the present Bells, held Jimbour, and ex P.M. Papa Pinnock held Ellangowan. Leichhardt named the Isaacs River, a tributary of the Fitzroy, after F. Isaac, of Gowrie station. It is rather remarkable that the name on the tombstone is Isaac, whereas Leichhardt and the early records give it as Isaacs. The Isaac in the Paddington cemetery was only 23 when he met Leichhardt at Gowrie in 1844.

          Alice Elizabeth Burrowes, who died in March 1859, was the sixteen year old daughter of Major Edward Burrowes, one time Deputy Surveyor-General when A. C. Gregory was Surveyor-General. Burrowes held a Lieutenant’s commission in the 93rd Regiment at 17 years of age. He married a Francis Susannah Nalder, who died at the age of 68, at Burketown, when on a visit to her son, and was buried under the only shade tree within a radius of 30 miles. Eight of her family are still living, five sons and three daughters. One of the girls, Frances Mary, is a widow, living in Yorkshire. Amy is a Mrs. Allan Campbell, of Bathurst, and the third, Augusta, is the wife of the well known Brisbane chemist Harry Cormack. The first treadle sewing machine that ever came to Queensland was imported by A. C. Gregory, and presented to Mrs. Burrowes. It was a great curiosity in those days. Mrs. Cormack’s name, Augusta, was given in honor of Gregory, whose name was Augustus.

          A man named Peter Martin was drowned off McCabe’s wharf at South Brisbane. In 1855, and is buried at Paddington. He was one of three men wrecked away east of Fraser’s Island, and they landed from one of the vessel’s boats on the coast of Bribie Island, where the other two men were killed by the blacks. Miller got away and landed on St Helena, when Dr. Hobb’s dugong fishing station was there. McCabe’s wharf, where he was drowned, was on the present site of Baines’ Brothers wharf. The first “Courier” office was on McCabe’s wharf, and did not move over to George Street until 1852. The present W. J. Costyn, chemist in the Valley, was a boy in the “Courier” office on McCabe’s wharf, in 1847 and 1848, and the money to pay for the first plant was found by T. H. Green, whose sister Costyn married in after years. James Swan, who has been often credited with starting the “Courier,” came on the scene only after the office was removed to George Street.

“Farewell, my son! 

And farewell all my earthly happiness! 

Farewell, my only son! 

Would to God I had died for thee! 

I shall never more see earthly good in the land of the living! 

Attempt not to comfort me! 

I shall go mourning all the rest of my days, 

until my grey hairs come down with sorrow to the grave!”

Hervey’s Meditation

I pass, with melancholy stare,

By all these solemn heaps of fate;

And think, as soft and sad I tread

Above the venerable dead,

Time was, like me, they life possessed;

And time will be when I shall rest.

-Parnell

          In the Baptist section of the Paddington cemetery is William Grimes, who died on October 30, 1870, aged 60. The stone tells us that he “was the father of Messrs. Grimes of this city.” It also records the death of Ernest Henry Grimes, a grandson, who died on May 12, 1875, aged 6. The Grimes family are prominent in Brisbane history over a considerable period. Samuel and George Grimes were members of the Assembly as representatives of Oxley and Bulimba.

          In 1874, S. and G. Grimes, grocers of Queen Street, had a sugar and arrowroot mill at Oxley, adjoining the Pearlwell Estate, owned by Dr. Waugh, one of whose daughters was drowned in the Quetta.

          Sam and George Grimes were men of undoubted honesty, but not orators or statesmen. On one occasion when Sam rose to speak, Morehead got up and walked out, remarking: “I can’t stand the hum of that arrowroot mill!”

          This sarcastic observation referred to the arrowroot making at the Coongoon mills. Grimes and Petty, and S. and G. Grimes were once familiar firms.

          One Miss Grimes married J. B. Hall, Accountant in Insolvency.

          One daughter and one son, Ernest Henry Grimes, remained unmarried.

          Jane Bulgin, who died in 1872, was the wife of auctioneer Bulgin, of Brisbane’s early days, and mother of Henry Bulgin, generally known as “Lord Bulgin,” who died recently, leaving a family, of whom one was for a time nurse in the General Hospital. One of “Lord Bulgin’s” sisters was a girl whose beauty captivated Sam Griffith, Chief Justice of the Commonwealth, and Sam did his best to induce her to become Mrs. Griffith, but Sam was not her ideal, or she had no idea that he would one day have a salary of £3,500, and so she rejected him and married C. C. Carrington, one of the still living men who have been longest in the Civil Service in Queensland.

          Clara Reinhard,  who died on November 27, 1867, was a year old child whose sister was one of the cleverest pupils in the early days of All Hallows Convent School. Can anyone tell us what became of Lillian Reinhard?

          William Hickey, who died on August 7, 1871, is under a stone erected by his brother, Matthew Hickey, who was 30 years with D. L. Brown and Co., and is now with Alexander Stewart and Sons. Hickey’s brothers were well known perambulating salesmen in the days when Mallens and Ziemans and other old time peripatetic merchants were out in search of spare cash from the pioneer settlers.

          The oldest recorded grave in the cemetery is that of “Margaret Brown, of Ipswich,” native of Kildare, Ireland, who died on August 30, 1845, aged 35. Being Irish, she was evidently no relation of the Ipswich Brown family, which included Peter Brown, once mayor of Ipswich, and a leading architect, as they were all decidedly Scottish, and wore kilts and called themselves “Broon.” So far we have failed to trace the Maggie Brown who was taken out to the Paddington cemetery over sixty five and a half years ago, or three years after Brisbane was thrown open to free settlement, in 1842.

          Conspicuous among the graves of the white race is the solitary last resting place of “Sing Cong Long,” in the Presbyterian ground. How came this one lonely disciple of Confucius and Mencius, and Bhudda, among the adherents of the stern merciless uncompromising John Knox, who bearded the Scottish, Queen Mary, in her den? Sing Cong Long was a Chinese merchant and fruiterer, who had shops in Albert Street, and was a general favourite with all classes. And yet Sing Cong Long had unscrupulous enemies – with whom he wanted to get even – and he studied the various religions to ascertain which one gave most promise of a conclusive settlement. He decided in favor of Presbyterianism after reading a translation of a sermon by Calvin, who held that the chief joy of the Blessed was in sitting on the battlements of Heaven and joyfully contemplating the gymnastic performances of lost souls basting in the sulphur ocean of fire underneath! Hence the appearance of Sing Cong Long in the Presbyterian cemetery!

          Caroline Jane Blakeney, buried on March 23, 1866, was a little girl, six years and 20 days of age, daughter of William and Eliza Blakeney. Blakeney was the once well known Registrar-General, and son of Judge Blakeney. One of his daughter s married T. H. B. Barron, and another married S. B. Leishman, the squatter. Both were fine looking women. One of Mrs. Barron’s daughters is the wife of one of Sir Arthur Palmer’s sons. C. J. Blakeney, a once well known lawyer of Brisbane, Cairns, and Cooktown, was another son of the Judge.

          Thomas William Hutton, a young man who died in May 1874, was the son of an old gaol warder, whose name is borne by Hutton Lane, between Adelaide and Ann Street. One of his daughters married a son of Stuart Russell, author of the “Genesis of Queensland.”

          Maria Passmore, who died on April 11, 1872, aged 27, was the wife of Hugh Passmore, one of a family well known in the early days of Toowoomba, where they were prominent citizens.

          Edmund Morris Lockyer, who died on June 28, 1872, aged 62, was a son of Major Lockyer, who came up the Brisbane River in a whaleboat in 1825, and wrote a full description of all he saw. Among the men with him were two red-haired soldiers, at whose fiery ringlets the blacks were much astonished. Lockyer and his party camped one night at the mouth of Oxley Creek, and in his diary he says, “Emus were running about all night, making an intolerable noise.” As emus do not move at night, and make very little noise at any time, Lockyer evidently referred to the stone plover, usually known as the curlew. Lockyer’s name is handed down to us by Lockyer’s Creek at Gatton, one of the tributaries of the Brisbane River.

          Peter and Magdalena Betz buried a year old child on February 20, 1870, Betz kept the West Riding Hotel, at the foot of Queen Street.

          The only child of William and Ellen Scarr, was buried on October 23, 1874. Scarr was a draughtsman in the Survey Office, and still resides in Brisbane. Very melancholy are these children’s graves. Old Matthew Prior, the poet, wrote,

“Happy the babe, who, privelege by fate,

To shorter labour and lighter weight,

Received but yesterday the gift of breath,

Ordered tomorrow to return to death.”

          Edward Hackway, who died on August 18, 1871, aged 41, left a widow, a handsome woman, who married John Killeen Handy, member for the Mitchell in 1863.

          Bramston petitioned against his return, but the Committee decided that he was legally entitled to hold the seat. The petition was based on the ground that Handy was a priest of the Roman Catholic faith, and as such could not be a member of Parliament.

          The chief evidence was that of Dr. Cain, who said that with the Church of Rome, a priest is always a priest, and that he cannot give up, nor can the church take from him, the priestly character conferred by ordination. He might dress like a layman, but he is always a priest. Even if under major excommunication, he still remains a priest, though cut off from positive and active communion with the faithful. Under minor ex-communication he can still say Mass, and even under major excommunication he can administer baptism in emergencies. Handy said he joined the Church of England in 1863, and next month was married by a Church of England clergyman. In 1865 he started practice as a barrister in Brisbane, where he had arrived in the previous year. Evidently Mrs. Hackway was Handy’s second wife. Handy’s vote on one occasion saved the Palmer Ministry from defeat, a friendly act not forgotten by Palmer.

          An old time publican named Woods kept a hotel in Queen Street, on the site of Todd’s auction mart. He was the man who introduced the first cab to Brisbane, one of the old “jingles” which have long since disappeared, though in a majority over the hansoms for many years. The two seats were back to back, the same as in an Irish jaunting car, but faced to and from the driver, whereas in the Irish car the seats were back to back facing over the wheels.

          The first “jingle” was received with great applause and much mirth, and as at that time the streets bore no resemblance to a billiard table, it was necessary to hold on securely to avoid being fired out into space. No citizen  of that date was recognised in “society” unless he had been on Woods’ jingle. The driver on one occasion, after taking too much rum on board, drove his astonished steed into the waterhole at the corner of Albert and Adelaide Streets, and went to sleep on the front seat. Sarcastic bushmen woke him up, and asked if he was fishing. One of them waded in and led the horse out.

          A young man of 22 named Martin Collins died on May 2, 1871. His father was a butcher in Queen Street, and one of the family is still in the same trade in Warwick.

          A child’s grave bears the name of Irwin Maling, who was a military captain connected with a detachment of the 50th Regiment, which bore the name of the “Dirty Half-hundred,” a name said to have been acquired by their severe economies in personal expenditure, especially where ladies were concerned.

          Mary Jewell, who died  in December 1874, aged 41, was the wife of Jewell, whose name is born by Jewell’s Buildings, near the Grand Hotel.

        (text missing) Fahey was adopted by the New England blacks, who took him to the triennial festival at the Bunya Mountains. Fahey evidently was quite at home with the blacks, and he remained with the bunya tribes, who ornamented him with raised “Moolgarre” scars on the breast and shoulders, and gave him the native name of “Gilburrie.” He had been 12 years with the blacks, whose language he spoke fluently, when found and brought in by Lieutenant Bligh and the native police in 1854. He was taken to Sydney, identified by the Superintendent of Convicts, and actually sentenced to 12 months hard labor for absconding 12 years before. Fahey escaped and joined the blacks in 1842, the year in which Davis and Bracefell were brought in by Andrew Petrie. Fahey had a brother, a free man, who came out in 1852, and was in Sydney when his brother was brought in. After “Gilburrie” Fahey had served his time, the two brothers came to Brisbane, and went to work on Jimbour station under the name of Bryant, but “Bilburrie” was at once recognised by the blacks. Burke, the manager of Jimbour had been killed by the blacks in 1852, not far from the station.

          The Bells told Fahey that they cared nothing about his previous career; but he only stayed there over one shearing season, and went away to New South Wales where he died.

          The other brother, Denis Fahey, came to Brisbane, and worked for William Pettigrew. He was a tall, dark, powerful man, with restless eyes, and an uncontrollable temper. In a row one night at McAdam’s public house, some one struck him with an axe handle from behind, and he died two days after. He is buried in the northwest corner of the Catholic cemetery at Paddington. Some woman who loved him went out every Sunday and placed a bouquet of flowers on his grave for 12 months. The she married and went away south, and never more did flowers adorn the grave of Fahey, the wild Hiberian, brother of the still wilder “Gilburrie,” who lies in some unknown grave in the sister State.

“Death is here, and death is there;

Death is busy everywhere,

All around, within, beneath,

Above, is Death, and we are Death,

Death has set his mark and seal,

On all we are and all we feel,

On all we know and all we fear,

All things that we love and cherish,

Like ourselves must fade and perish.

Lost, lost, for ever lost,

In the wide pathless desert of dim Sleep,

That beautiful shape! Does the dart gate of Death

Conduct to thy mysterious Paradise,

Oh, Sleep?

-Shelley

What guilt,

Can equal violations of the dead?

The dead how sacred! Sacred is the dust

Of this Heaven labored form, erect, divine!

This Heaven assumed majestic robe of earth.

-Young’s “Night Thoughts.”

Among the dead is one name well known in the Queensland State and Federal service today. On November 12, 1871, Richard Bliss, aged 44, was buried in the Paddington cemetery, and beside him lies his two little girls, Mary Sophia Bertha, and Maud Ethel, who had died in 1865 and 1869, aged six years and one year. Richard Bliss and family came to Queensland in 1864, in the Flying Cloud, commanded by Captain Jones, who was in after years drowned in the China Seas.

          The Bliss family, on arrival in Brisbane, went to stay with the Rev. John Bliss, at St. John’s parsonage, in William Street. John and Richard Bliss were brothers, but the clerical Bliss had been out some years before the other, and had ceased to be a new chum when his brother arrived. Richard Bliss became an officer in the Audit Office, and also the father of six sons, of whom one is today in the Treasury, one in the Lands Office, and two in the Customs, in Brisbane and Townsville. One son, the eldest brother, was a captain in the militia, and was present with Colonel Prendergast at the storming of King Theebaw’s palace. One of the daughters of Richard Bliss married the well known and deservedly respected Dr. Ryan, of Gympie.

          Mary Ann Hamilton, who died as a girl, at the age of 13 years, was a daughter of the once well known J. A. Hamilton, who was in charge of Dunwich for over twenty years. One of her brothers is a responsible officer in the Port Office today. Hamilton, who died some years ago, married a second time, and the second wife is still alive, and at present on a visit to a daughter in North Queensland. By each wife he had a family of six children. There was no better known man in Moreton Bay, and Dunwich has never had a more considerate or sympathetic superintendent.

          Among those in the Presbyterian cemetery is Margaret Stewart, who died on August 31, 1858. She was the wife of Hugh Stuart, who died on June 28, 1871, aged 73. Hugh was a popular blacksmith, whose smiddy was at the back of Menzies boardinghouse, opposite Jerry Scanlan’s hotel in Edward Street. Jerry’s hotel was then kept by a man named Fishley, the predecessor of Jerry. Stewart was an enthusiastic Highlander, and a great patron of the Caledonian sports. Likewise he was a general favourite, and a real good old Scot.

          James Paish, who died at the age of 26, on November 16, 1866, was a member of the “Queen’s Own” the 50th regiment, then stationed at Brisbane, in the Petrie Terrace barracks. This regiment left an unpleasant record. They were in frequent conflict with the police, and a source of many troubles. The men had an unsavory reputation. They were charged with various robberies, and never paid any bills except compelled. Frequently the police sent at night for the officers to come and take charge of their men, who had been arrested. Three of them assaulted Constable Colahan in Albert Street, which even then had an evil reputation, and had him apparently killed when the police arrived and handled the soldiers roughly, in fact the three of them were knocked out by a present day retired Inspector of Police, renowned for his size as a son of Anak.

          In South Brisbane, the redoubtable citizen, Paddy Fox, is the only surviving link that binds us to that Queen’s Own squad of 1868. When the regiment departed, Paddy was left behind. He was either too virtuous and abstemious to continue longer with such a reckless crew, or he was asleep at the hour of despatch.

          Henry Watson, who died on December 17, 1861, at the age of 38, was a young man of independent means, whose old country parents were comfortably situated. Watson married a daughter from the Grenier family of South Brisbane. He was the first man who traded in oysters from Moreton Bay to Brisbane. This was a hobby with Watson more than a source of revenue. He bought a cutter and engaged a man to bring oysters to Brisbane and sell them. The oysters in those days were sold at 10s per bag, or a shilling for a bucketful, and were a much better quality than we get today. Watson’s career was unfortunately cut off at the early age of 38, and the oyster trade languished for two years afterwards.

          Two children of Robert D. Henry died at Goodna in 1873 and 1875. Henry was then a warder at Woogaroo, but he was a man who held a sailing master’s certificate, and in after years we find him as captain of the schooner Tom Fisher, which was built on the Clarence, and named after Tom Fisher, the leading storekeeper of Grafton in those days. The schooner traded for many years between Brisbane and Thursday Island, and is still “going strong.” Captain Henry is at present residing in Ernest Street, South Brisbane. His wife is a sister of David Graham, retired Inspector of Police, well known in Brisbane, Charleville, Rockhampton, Townsville, and Burketown. He is now a resident of Edmonstone Street, South Brisbane.

          The first vessel Captain Henry had in Queensland, was the Governor Cairns, which was built in England purposely to be used by the Queensland Government as a pilot schooner. Her construction was supervised by Captain Daniel Boult, and she was brought over by Captain Cairncross, nephew of the Captain Cairncross who resided at Wattlebrae, near Bulimba. Captain Henry had charge of the Governor Cairns, for some years in Moreton Bay, where she was the pilot schooner. In the first days of the annexation of New Guinea, she was chartered as a yacht for the use of the Government. Then she had a term of service at Cooktown and Thursday Island. About two years ago, Captain Henry bought her a s a speculation, and sold her in Sydney at a profit. This vessel had a varied and successful career at least so far as escaping accidents or wreck was concerned.

          Mary Baird was the wife of the Rev. John Wilson, a Presbyterian parson, who lived near the Christian Brothers, on Gregory Terrace. She died on January 17, 1866, aged only 29. Wilson preached in the old Wharf Street church, and is remembered as a good preacher, and all round real fine fellow. He is the subject of a very comical reminiscence. Two immigrant ships had arrived, and on board were many girls, some of whom were of a somewhat frivolous disposition, girls for whom Mrs. Grundy had no terrors. When one loose onshore these festive ladies atoned for the restraint of the sea voyage. Their conduct was giddy in the extreme. Three of the choicest and their gentlemen friends took possession of Wilson’s hay loft under the impression that it was some peculiar sort of Australian bedroom. Wilson heard the voices and advanced towards the loft in the form of a hollow square, or some other military figure, and overheard remarks which turned half his hair grey. He turned and fled to the police station, muttering a prayer as he ran. At the station he found the giant O’Driscoll, the genial Inspector Andrew of today, and told him a dreadful tale. O’Driscoll asked him if he would like them all hanged or merely admonished and discharged. Wilson wanted them all arrested before they set fire to his hay loft. O’Driscoll’s office was then in Adelaide Street, next to the old Wesleyan church. He took two policemen with him, and Wilson, in a cab, and the four started for the scene of operations. The night was dark and heavy rain was falling. O’Driscoll got a ladder, and climbed up to the loft, followed by Wilson. Both stepped inside, and O’Driscoll lighted a candle. The scene that presented itself turned the balance of Wilson’s hair grey. Lying on the hay were three very scantily dressed ladies, and three gentlemen wearing nothing, all sound asleep. One of the three “gentlemen” was an American black, whose dark skin contrasted conspicuously with the snow white limbs of his “lady,” who was said to be a splendid specimen of a woman. The scene in which she figured was one that could only be described in a language that no reader of “Truth” could understand. And all this in a clergyman’s hay loft! It was blasphemy, sacrilege, atheism, and – most unbecoming!

          The stern O’Driscoll was so shocked that he held on to a rafter to keep himself from falling out of the loft. Wilson clasped his hands and muttered, “Merciful God, what sons and daughters of Bekal are these?” Then duty called, and the warlike voice of the representative of O’Driscoll’s warrior race, woke the three brides and bridegrooms up in a hurry.

          Seeing the colossal form of O’Driscoll standing over them, they at first took him for Beelzebub, and gave a yell that was heard at Sandgate! The ladies completed their toilet in record time, and the sad procession of six were marched down to the cells and locked up. They were brought up next day, and, after a severe reprimand, discharged. One of them was a humorist. He said they all went to the clergyman to get married, and as it was a wet night and rather late when they arrived, they did not like to disturb him before morning! There was necessarily a great future before that man, in fact he became in after years a Brisbane alderman, and what giddier height could any man attain?

          The bride of the dark gentleman settled in Albert Street, where she had a home for years, renowned for its hospitality to paying guests! Finally she captivated a well off gentleman from the bush, and he married her and took her home, and she became the mother of some very fine children, and was an exemplary wife. She had proved the truth of the adage that virtue is its own reward!

          To mention her descendants would be to heave a bombshell into a circle of some of Brisbane’s most select society, so we merely shed a tear and pass on to the next. It may be as well to mention, however, that Wilson’s yardman was responsible for the party in the hay loft. Wilson always said a short prayer when he thought of the horrors of that awful night.

          A well known son of that dear old clergyman married the widow of squatter Clapperton. She was originally a Miss Kendall, a very accomplished, fine girl, who was educated at the Brisbane Convent School.

          Graham Lloyd Hart was the three year old son of his well known father of that name, founder of the legal firm of Roberts and Hart, merged into Hart, Mein and Flower, then Hart and Flower, then Hart, Flower and Drury, and finally Flower and Hart. Hart was one of the directors in the troubled times of the Queensland National Bank. The child died on April 10, 1874.

          We omitted to mention that Irwin Maling, of the last chapter, was the Captain Maling who was private secretary to Lord Normanby. He was brother-in-law of General English, of the 53rd Regiment, the “Shropshire Dashers.” English married Maling’s sister.

“How bold the flight of Passion’s wandering wing,

How soft the step of Reason’s firmer trend,

How calm and sweet the victories of life,

How terrorless the triumphs of the grave.”

-Shelley

“ In death itself there can be nothing terrible, for the act of death annihilates sensation, but there are many roads to death, and some of then justly formidable, even to the bravest; but so various are the modes of going out of the world, that to have been born may have been a more painful thing than to die, and to live may be more troublesome than either.”

-Colton’s “Lacon.”

“Oh, God! It is a fearful thing

To see the human soul take wing,

In any shape, in any mood,

I’ve seen it rushing forth in blood,

I’ve seen it on the breaking ocean,

Strive with a swollen convulsive motion,

I’ve seen the sick and ghastly bed

Of sin delirious with its dread.”

-Byron.

     Among the un-recorded dead is a half caste named “Macinnon,” who died in 1869.  He was the son of an old pioneer “Paddy Macinnon,” who was out in 1847 with McPherson, on Mount Abundance station, which he had taken up on Sir Thomas Mitchells’ description in 1846.

     Paddy was stockman for Macpherson, and is described as a wild character, who lived for years with the blacks. When the blacks finally drove Macpherson off the station, he gave Paddy all the stock that was left.

     In years afterwards, Paddy made periodical trips to Dalby or Drayton, with a small mob of fat cattle, and had a wild spree while the proceeds lasted.

     There was no Roma before 1862, in fact a sketch of it in 1864 shows a primitive settlement of half a dozen houses and the post office. Paddy had the usual platonic affection with an aboriginal lady, whose name was “Concern,” who bore him a son, the usual result of platonic affections that are prolonged beyond a reasonable limit, and when Paddy died at Forester’s public house on the Condamine in 1861, the boy, whose native name was “Wyreela,” passed into other hands, and finally reached Brisbane, where he died in 1869, aged 21 years, the cause of death being inflammation of the lungs. He is buried in the lowest part of the Church of England ground at Paddington.

     Buried near him, in the same month, was an old ex-convict named Tom Davis, who came out with the convict ship, Eudora, in 1838. After the vessel left Liverpool, someone confessed to committing the crime for which Davis was sentenced, and a pardon for him came out on the next ship. Davis worked on Captain Cadell’s steamer, the “Lady Auguste,” the first vessel that ever ascended the Murray. The Governor of South Australia, Sir Henry Young, was on board that pioneer ship. Davis also worked, in 1846, for the Tyson brothers, the afterwards well known Jimmy Tyson, and his brother, on some country they took up at the junction of the Lachlan and Murrumbidgee. Davis came to Brisbane in 1858, and went up to the disastrous Canoona gold rush, on the Fitzroy. He returned to Ben and was engaged by Murray Prior for Maroon station, where he remained for twelve months, and thence went to Toolburra, until October 1867, when Nash discovered gold. Davis went to Gympie, did well there for two years, prospected in the Bopple scrub, got fever there, came to Brisbane, and died in a friend’s home in Turbot Street.

     He had a brother lost in the “Fiery Star,” burned at sea, on Good Friday, 1865.

“A restless impulse urged him to embark,

And meet lone death on the drear ocean’s waste.”

     Ella Lavinia, wife of Daniel Skyring, was the ancestress of all the Skyrings of the present day. Daniel owned all the land where All Hallows Convent stands, and used it chiefly as a pineapple garden, where he grew some of the best pines in the market. Likewise he owned, known as “Skyring’s quarries,” to the present time. While Skyring grew fine pineapples and grapes, his wife and two daughters had charge of a drapery establishment, the “Beehive” at the corner of Queen and Edward Streets, where Hunter’s boot shop is today. Dan Skyring, jun., had a dairy farm out at Kedron, and brought fresh milk to town. It was pure milk, as there were no poisonous “preservatives” in those days. Daniel junior and his brother Zechariah, went afterwards to reside at Gympie.

     Old Mrs. Skyring died on July 27, 1863, aged 59, and the coffin was exhumed on March 26, 1882, and removed to the Toowong cemetery. On the tombstone we are told –

Weep not for me, prepare to meet your God.”

     Mrs. Skyring is now buried in the Toowong cemetery, near Governor Blackall, and over her is a handsome monument.

     Her son, George, in after years, was owner of Baffle Creek Station, where his first wife died. She was a Miss Waldron of Fortitude Valley. George died at Gympie, where he was at the time Inspector of Slaughter Houses.

     Miss Waldron was a sister of Mrs. Steele, now widow of the late chemist Steele. She survived Steele, and at present resides at South Brisbane. Zechariah Skyring and his wife died within a week or two at Gympie. Daniel, who had the dairy at Kedron, married a Miss Payne, daughter of Thomas Payne, a once well known and much respected farmer at Oxley. He had four daughters, all handsome, fine specimens of women. One married William Dart, now orchardist on the Blackall, but at that time owner of Dart’s sugar mill, where the St. Lucia Estate is, on the Brisbane River. Another is the present Mrs. Reeves, of Toowong, and the fourth became Mrs. Elferson, of Gympie, now a resident of Gympie. Daniel Skyring is still alive, and residing retired on the North Coast. The Skyrings were one of the oldest Brisbane families.

     George Dudley Webb, who died on September 11, 1870, aged 70, was secretary and general manager of the A.U.S.N. Company. He and W. J. Costin, the chemist, were two men chosen by the shareholders of the Brisbane Permanent Building Society, in 1863, to audit the books. Alfred Slaughter was the manager of the company, and old Robert Cribb was one of the principal shareholders. Cribb bossed Slaughter and had a free and easy way of taking deeds away to his own office, and some were not returned. This gave the shareholders an idea that there was something wrong, and hence the audit by Webb and Costin. No one doubted old Bobbie Cribb’s honesty, but he had a loose style of doing business, and the auditors found it necessary to enter a protest. This made the old fellow very wild, and he assailed the auditors in great style, but they all survived.

     One of Webb’s daughters, a girl named Alice, aged 19, died on November 14, 1864. His son, Ernest Webb, was a well known man as Resident Secretary of the A.M.P. Society. He married a daughter of L. A. Bernays. Ernest was an enthusiast in boating, and was an active member of the rowing club. It is quite certain that Webb’s early death was attributable to chiefly to an unlucky speculation in Mount Morgan shares. He was one of the victims of Billy Pattison’s foolish bet of £10,000 that shares would reach £20.

     Webb bought heavily and found himself involved when shares were falling. The prospect of failure broke his heart in a few days after the receipt of the bad news.

     His brother, Harry Webb, went in for pastoral pursuits, on the Logan.

     Daniel Petersen, who died on January 21, 1855, aged 46, was  a grocer and storekeeper, next McCabe’s wharf, South Brisbane. The business was continued by Petersen and Younger, the son and son-in-law. One of the sons was the afterwards well known Seth Petersen, who distinguished himself while in the position of Registrar in Brisbane, and in after years left for the south. One of his brothers was presiding at the recent Valley election.

     William and Ellen Scarr buried their only child at that time, on October 23, 1874. Scarr is now retired on pension, and resides at “Alsatia” on Dornoch Terrace, South Brisbane. He was father of Scarr, the footballer, who died recently from blood poisoning. Scarr senior had a brother prominent in racing, and as handicapper in New South Wales. Another brother, Frank Scarr, was a surveyor and land commissioner. A township was once surveyed on Bowen Downs, near Muttaburra, and called “Scarrbury,” in honor of Scarr, but the town never got beyond the name.

     A year old child named Moreton Bradley Lytton Hitchins died on February 25, 1876, his father being a clerk in the Post Office in the days of Salisbury, R. T. Scott, Crosby, and Lawry.

     A young fellow named William Ker Atchison, died in November 1868, aged only 27. He was a Customs agent, and a general favourite, but consumption ended his career in the morning of his days. In the words of Shelley he was

“A lovely youth, no mourning maiden decked,

The lone couch of his everlasting rest;

And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pined,

And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes.”

     In the north west corner of the Church of England portion, is an old timber getter, who was a cedar cutter on the Maroochy River, at the time of a remarkable tragedy in that locality. The timber getters were all in camp on Sunday, and there was a wild unholy revel on over proof rum. This began on Saturday, and continued over Sunday. One man, a big, powerful fellow, took rather too much rum, divesting himself of all his clothes, and started to chase the wife of one of the other men. She ran into the hut, got the husband’s gun, and ran to another hut, the rum maddened man in pursuit. She met him at the corner of the hut face to face and fired, the charge of No 2 shot striking him in the stomach. In three minutes he was dead. It was a dramatic and tragical scene!

     At the same camp, some of the blacks who were working for the cedar cutters were also given an excessive share of rum, and three of them went to sleep on the beach at low tide. The rum had paralysed them to such an extent that even the rising tide failed to rouse them, so they were all drowned, and their three dead bodies were found close together on the beach next morning. The other blacks took them away and probably ate them, as they would not regard rum as a poison. In after years it was said that beach was haunted, and there were men who declared they saw the mad cedar getter racing round among the trees, and the drowned blacks walking on the sand. Others said they saw the ghost of Stevens, the botanist, who was murdered by the blacks in 1866, at the “Dead Man’s Waterhole,” near Mooloolah. The rum in those days was good, and men saw nothing worse than ghosts. With the rum of today men see nothing but devils, a specially ferocious class of devils with iron teeth, arms like those of an octopus, and the green and yellow eyes of a crocodile.

     Gilbert Elliott Gore was a child buried on May 30, 1875. This child was evidently named from Gilbert Elliott, the first Speaker in the first Queensland Parliament. He was proposed by St. George R. Gore, seconded by Macalister, and chosen unanimously.

     The original Gores took up Yandilla and Tummaville stations on the Downs in the early forties. One of these, Robert Gore, and his wife, Mary and child were drowned in the wreck of the steamer, Sovereign, outside the South Passage, at Moreton Island, on the 11th of March, 1847. The Gore best known in Brisbane was Ralph Gore, who was for years Immigration Agent, and Visiting Justice at St. Helena and Dunwich. He married a daughter of E. I. C. Browne M.L.C., of the legal firm of Little and Browne. One of Morehead’s jokes referred to this firm which he called the “Snipe lawyers,” as “the snipe is little and brown, with an absurdly long bill.” They had done some work for Morehead and the bill made him gasp for breath.

     When Gore died, his widow resided for some time in their old home at New Farm. During a voyage to the old country with Captain Withers, of the Quetta, she and that giddy mariner, contracted a platonic friendship of the kind common among sea captains, and he deserted his wife to fly with his new found love, forgetting his wife as the false 

Theseus once in Dia forgot his beautiful haired Ariadne.”

     Old Browne, M.L.C., was a wealthy man, and chief owner of the “Courier.” His share went to Mrs. Gore, who is today chief owner of that journal. Of course, Captain Withers was aware of Mrs. Gore’s financial position, but captains are never influenced by considerations of wealth. They invariably marry for pure love, and live the simple life – when there is no chance of any other variety.

     Ralph Gore inherited a title, and was Sir Ralph at the time of his death. This title is now borne by his eldest son, who is an officer in the army. There were two other children who are said to be still alive, and the infant “Gilbert Elliott” in the Paddington cemetery.

     William Holbrook, who died on January 15, 1870, aged 36, was a young man employed as jeweler by Flavelle Brothers and Roberts, of that date, and the neat headstone was erected “as a token of respect by the employees” of that firm.

     Harry Dobbin Shepperson was the two year old son of Harry and Mary Shepperson, and died on September 11, 1870. There is also a son who lived only for one day. This is the Harry Shepperson, a stationer, who has been previously mentioned as the gay Lothario who fled with the giddy actress, though some old colonists fiercely affirm that Buxton was the faithless man who deserted his wife to browse on fresh theatrical fields and pastures new. However, but for these “Bygone” reminiscences, the loves and hates of all parties concerned would be as a tale that was told by some unrecorded narrator in a long forgotten age.

They are gone,

And others come, so flows the wave on wave,

Of what these mortals call Eternity;

Deeming themselves the breakers of the ocean,

While they are but the bubbles, ignorant

That foam is their formation.

Byron

So peaceful shall thou end thy blissful days,

And steal thyself from life by slow decays,

Unknown to pain in age resign thy breath,

When late stern Neptune points the shaft with death,

To the dark grave retiring as to rest,

Thy people blessing, by thy people blessed!

-Homer’s “Odyssey.”

“Tis a long, ‘tis a last, ‘tis a beautiful rest,

When all sorrow has passed from the brow and the breast,

And the lone spirit truly and wisely may crave,

The sleep that is dreamless, the sleep of the grave.

-Eliza Cook

On July 1, 1873, a Scottish visitor, traveling for his health, died in Brisbane. His name was John Howie, and he died at the age of 50. The stone over his grave was placed there by his nephew James Isles, whose mother was a Miss Howie. James Isles came to Queensland in 1862, and in 1866 he and Tom Finney bought out the drapery business of T. F. Merry in Fortitude Valley. They continued that business there until 1870, when they removed to the cornet of Queen and Edward Streets, where the original title of the firm is retained by the widely known Finney, Isles and Co., of today, now fronting Edward and Adelaide Streets, and withdrawn from their old Queen Street corner.

     James Isles was a true type of old Caledonia’s sons, and the physical vigor of his race was transmitted to his own five sons, all of whom were champion athletes, whose performances are recorded in Perry and Carmichael’s “Athletic Queensland.” The well known J. T. Isles, of Isles, Love and Co., among other performances, won the 440 yards Footballers’ Handicap in 1888. In 1887 he won the 150 yards handicap and the 440 yards handicap.

     Very sad was the untimely death of Willy Isles, one of the brothers, at an early age, the cause being peritonitis

..(text missing) ."Fisherman’s Island was a dreary place, a patch of earth, a desert of mud, a sea of water. The quantity of driftwood was surprising, and the multitudes of centipedes truly alarming. At first we had some quantity of green grass, but A. C. Gregory’s exploring party landed and cut it all for their horses on board ship. We had to pull several miles to the muddy waterhole for every drop of brackish water we had. James strained mine through all sorts of things, but it never lost its muddy look and flavor. Influenza, fever, and ague were bad amongst us, and were only indifferently combated by quinine and strong brandy and water.”

     The James mentioned by Grundy was a James Morton, afterwards killed by the blacks at Manumbah station. In 1847 he had two mates killed beside him by the blacks, on the Clarence. His own turn came afterwards. Grundy said Morton had a mortal fear of blacks. His brother, Charley Morton, was either a first or second mate on the Boomerang, and he died suddenly one night at Mercer’s Hotel at Kangaroo Point, and was buried at Paddington.

     John Cook was a chemist in the Valley, the only chemist there 55 years ago, and his business was afterwards purchased by W. T. Costin, the present veteran Valley chemist, the oldest now in Queensland. Cook, the old time pill pounder, sleeps in the Paddington cemetery. Perhaps his soul is proscribing a teaspoonful of Celestial nectar, some ambrosial nepenthe, to angels with a “tired feeling” in the Elysian fields. And we may be sure it is “a tablespoon three times a day.”

     John Pound, who died on July 14, 1875, aged 55, was father of Jonathan Pound, whose son is the present chairman of the Southport Shire Council. Jonathan is still in robust health, and owns a lot of property on the shores of the south end of Moreton Bay.

     On August 8, 1868, a German named F. M. Raaaba, was buried, aged 57. In the year 1856, a German family of that name came to Brisbane in the ship Helena. One of the sons, a boy aged 13, named Charles, became, in after years, a prominent resident of Maryborough, where he finally settled in 1875, after years of teamster work to and from the stations on the Burnett. From team driving he went to hotel business, and kept the Royal Exchange Hotel, in Adelaide Street. In 1894, he became an alderman, and has been a good and useful citizen. Will some Maryborough man kindly write and say what became of him.

     George Hall, who died on October 18, 1855, aged 31, was a clerk in the firm of Christopher Newton Brothers of Sydney. He came to Brisbane for the benefit of his health, and added one more to the victims of consumption.

     It was usual in those early days for consumptive people to come north in the hope of recovering in the climate of Moreton Bay, but they were usually in too advanced a stage.

     Among the old time shepherds buried at Paddington, was Harry Brown, who was shepherding on Burrandowan station, in 1855, when it was owned by Phillip Friell and Gordon Sandeman, who bought it from the first owner, Henry Stewart Russell, who took it up in 1843, the first station on the Burnett. Several shepherds and hotel-keepers were killed on Burrandowan, and Harry Brown was speared through the side. Shepherding was a dangerous occupation for the first twenty years on the Burnett and Mary. Brown finally died at Brisbane in 1861, while in the service of the first “Brisbane Club,” which had only started the previous year, the first meeting to organize having been held in the office of D. F. Roberts. The first ballot for member was held on March 1, 1860, and the first club room was on the premises of W. A. Brown, the sheriff, in Mary Street. The first committee included Sheppard Smith, of the Bank of New South Wales, E. S. Elsworth of the A. J. S. Bank, and Nehemiah Bartley. They drafted the rules and engaged the first servants, among whom was Harry Brown, who never quite recovered from that Burrandowan spear wound.

     Since Brown’s time, the modest pioneer club, in the one room in Mary Street, has grown into the Queensland Club, housed today in the palatial building facing the Gardens and Parliament House.

     A girl named Sarah Ann Pratten died in 1859, aged 23, the age – from 23 to 26 – fatal to so many young women in the early days. Miss Pratten was an aunt of F. L. Pratten, present Deputy  Registrar of Titles in Brisbane. Her father, the granddad of the present Prattens, came to Brisbane in the forties, and was farming at Cowper’s Plains, today erroneously called “Cooper’s Plains,” though named after Dr. Cowper, the first medical officer in the convict settlement at Moreton Bay. Pratten senior died at the Plains and was buried there. His son was one of the pioneer surveyors of what is now Queensland, and did much useful work on the Darling Downs, Maranoa, and elsewhere.

     He married a sister of R. S. Warry, once a prominent Brisbane merchant, and she became the mother of six sons and three daughters. One of the girls married a son of the late Rev. J. H. Hassall; one married Leslie Tooth, grandson of W. B. Tooth, who was one of the pioneers of Wide Bay, the present Maryborough district. He was a brother of Atticus Tooth, who came from Kent in 1839, as a cousin of the famous brewing Tooths of Sydney. He and W. B. Tooth took up Wide Bay stations from which John Bales had been driven by the blacks. I n 1856, Atticus Tooth held a station on the Mary River, including the present site of Gympie, and had ten thousand sheep there, but a wet season, extending over several months, drove him elsewhere, and he married, in 1869, a daughter of D. R. Emmerson, of Bowen, and became one of the first squatters in the Port Denison district.

     Four of G. L. Pratten’s sons are alive today, and the three daughters still survive, two married and one single. Harry Pratten is in the Bank of New South Wales, at Rockhampton, George in the Railway Department, Paul in the General Post Office, and F. L. Pratten is Deputy Registrar of Titles. The well known Tom Pratten, late secretary in the railway head office, died recently, and Arthur was killed in Bundaberg by falling over a balcony when walking in his sleep. The present Mrs. Pratten, mother of these sons, was a sister of Dr. Hugh Bell’s wife. Their brother, R. S. Warry, started business in Queen Street about the year 1853, and in the year, 1862, erected what was then the best building in Queensland, a large brick store next the Royal Hotel afterwards the first office of the Queensland National Bank. He had two brothers, Tom and Charles, both chemists, one in Brisbane, and one in Ipswich, and both died at an early age. Tom was a practical joker of an unusual type, and a gruesome tale describes the most remarkable of his performances. He invited the principal citizens to a special dinner, presumably in honor of his birthday, or his grandmother’s death, or his best girl coming of age, or an imaginary legacy left to him by his uncle in Spitzbergen. In the centre of the table was a large, round dish under a cover. “I think,” said this peculiar joker, “that we better start on the principal dish,” and he raised the cover to reveal the fresh head of an aboriginal, who had been hanged that morning! It was garnished like a ham, with frilled pink paper, and the thick mass of black hair had a dozen rosebuds inserted here and there. The company first gasped for breath, and then some of them fell over the backs of their chairs. Others fell over the doorstep rushing outside, and two fainted. A bombshell could not have scattered that dinner party more effectually. It was Tom Warry’s champion joke. He had induced the authorities to give him the head for scientific purposes, and he explained afterwards that this was in order to settle the great physiological problem of how fright affects various types of men! But Brisbane citizens were clean “off” Tom’s dinner parties forevermore.

     Warry senior, father of all the Warrys, died at the age of 78, as the final result of a fall between a steamer and the wharf. One of his daughters married a Dr. Barton, and when he died, she married Dr. Hugh Bell. One of her daughters, by Dr. Barton, is the wife of the Hon. Albert Norton, M.L.C., and the other, who is still single, resides with her sister.

     One final anecdote of Tom Warry’s frivolity. He got about a dozen boys into his shop one day and painted all their faces in about twelve different colours, then sent them home looking like the broken tail of a rainbow. The sky blue, and the bright red, and the rich bronze boys, are well known citizens of Brisbane today.

 

“One fond kiss and then we sever,

One farewell, alas, for ever!

Deep in heart wrong tears I’ll pledge thee,

Warring sighs and groans I’ll wage thee,

Me, -no cheerful twinkle lights me,

Dark despair around benights me.”

-Burns

“Thy day without a cloud hath passed,

And thou wert lovely to the last;

Extinguished, not decayed;

As stars that shoot along the sky,

Shine brightest as they fall from high.”

-Byron

“Lo! Where this silent marble weeps,

A friend, a wife, a mother sleeps;

A heart within whose sacred cell

The peaceful virtues loved to dwell.

-Gray

“So softly death succeeded life in her,

She did but dream of Heaven, and she was there,

No pains she suffered, nor expired with guise,

Her soul was whispered out with God’s still voice.”

-Dryden

An interesting historical character is James Charles Burnett, who died on July 18, 1854, aged 39. He was the oldest surviving son of William Burnett, of “Burnettland,” on the Hunter River, and he entered the service of the Survey Department in Sydney in 1834, when only 15 years of age. In 1842 he was deemed capable of conducting a general examination of the Great Dividing Range, which he followed to the 30th parallel and then came on to Brisbane. He was afterwards engaged on surveys on the Clarence and Richmond, and returned to Moreton Bay and did so much useful and excellent work that he was held in the highest esteem by his department, and by Governor Sir Charles Fitzroy, who requested that his name be given to the Burnett River, and that was done. Burnett had named the Fitzroy River in honor of Sir Charles, who repaid the compliment by requesting that Burnett’s name be given to the famous Burnett River, on which Bundaberg and Gayndah stand today.

     Burnett, like most men in those pioneer days, died at an early age, and was buried in the Church of England cemetery at Paddington, there being a large funeral at which the Rev. Robert Creyke officiated.

     Shortly after his death, his horses were sold by auctioneer Bulgin, father of the late somewhat eccentric “Lord Bulgin,” well known to Brisbaneites. The sale will show the value of horses at that time. A bay colt sold for £14, a bay horse for £17, a grey colt for £36, a brown draught mare for £43, and grey draught for £35, and a solitary mule for £11.

     There was much talk about a tablet to his memory, but so far we have not seen it, unless it is among the fallen and broken stones. The erection of a tablet or small monument to the memory of Burnett would come gracefully from a subscription among the people on the Burnett River.

     He was one of the men who made Queensland history in the old, wild, rough, days, when life was very different from that of the present.

     Arthur Henry Garbutt, of Stockton-on-Tees, and Jane his wife, recall an old time Garbutt family who lived at Coorpooroo, where Thomas C. Garbutt owned a large area of land. He was the man who named Coorpooroo, a word which is sadly mispronounced, being always called “Coorparoo,” whereas “Coorpooroo Jaggin” was the name of the South Brisbane tribe of aboriginals, who pronounced the word Coor-poo-roo with accent on the second syllable.

     Garbutt’s widow married a Dr. Temple, who practiced in Brisbane and died here. After old Garbutt’s death, his horse and buggy were bought by P. R. Gardon, the genial old Caledonian, ex-Inspector of Stock. The horse was a dark chestnut, afterwards owned by Robert Gray, the once well known Under Colonial Secretary, and finally Railway Commissioner, whose first wife was a daughter of Dr. Dorsey, of Ipswich, and sister of the wife of the late Sir Joshua Peter Bell. One of Garbutt’s sons, and brother of the one who died at Cleveland, was squatting for a time on the Logan. This was the F. O. Garbutt, who in after years held a station property in the Herberton district, where he finally kept a hotel at the Coolgarra Hot Springs. He was a big, powerful, specimen of a man. About 25 years ago, he and the present writer entered what is now the York Hotel. Garbutt had a misunderstanding with some aggressive person who had several friends present and while he was engaged in a go-as-you-please combat with the man in front, he was assailed by two of the man’s friends in the rear. This made it necessary for us to take prompt action, and Garbutt and “we” cleared that private bar in one of the shortest times on record. One victim wrote to the “Telegraph,” to ask whether a Queensland magistrate who had broken two of his ribs in a bar room was a suitable man to hold a Commission of the Peace? No name was mentioned, but he referred to “we,” and there was no more about the little episode.

     When Garbutt left the Logan to go north, he was accompanied by Robertson, an old Logan squatter, who afterwards took up Wyroona station on the Wild River, a tributary of the Mitchell. Garbutt is now hotel keeper at Mount Molloy.

     Paulus Bront was a German seaman on board the steamer Shamrock, an old time steamer that ran to Sydney from Brisbane in the days when the small steamers Hawk, Swallow, and Bremer, built by Taylor Winship, ran from Brisbane to Ipswich. The first was the Experiment, built by James Canning Pearce.

     Winship, in those days, had a fine garden and orangery, from where the present Palace Hotel is along the river west to the baths and the North Quay Ferry at South Brisbane. Paulus Bront, on June 26, 1854, was walking ashore from the steamer on a plank, fell off, and was drowned, as scores of men have been since then to the present time, at the Brisbane wharves.

     The Swallow, of Winship, and the Experiment, of Pearce, sank at the wharves in the river, the Swallow drowning her steward as previously mentioned.

     In a Doncaster cemetery is the following quaint epitaph on two brothers:

“Here lyeth two brothers by misfortune surrounded,

One died of his wounds and the other was drowned.”

     Charles Thomas Clay and his wife Elizabeth, buried a five years’ old child on July 31, 1872. Clay was a clerk in the Lands Office in Brisbane, but he got an appointment in the Agent General’s Office in London and left Queensland.

     The second daughter of Montague Stanley, R.S.A., died on June 24, 1864, aged 22. Stanley, as the R.S.A., indicates, was a member of the Royal Society of Artists, and practised his profession in Edinburgh. He was, perhaps, the first professional artist whose family came to Brisbane, and two of his sons became well known men in Queensland. One was F. D. G. Stanley, the Government Architect, who designed a great number of our public buildings, including Parliament House and the Supreme Court, and the other was for many years Engineer for Railways, connected with the department from the time the first section of a Queensland railway was made in 1864, from Ipswich to the Little Liverpool Range, a distance of 21 miles, by Peto, Brassey and Betts, whose tender was for £86,900, or £4,000 a mile. The first Victorian railway cost £38,000 per mile, South Australia £28,000, and New South Wales £40,000.

     The Queensland line from Ipswich to Dalby, crossing the Liverpool and main ranges, cost £10,600.

     Engineer Stanley, son of artist Stanley, was a capable man, whose integrity was never questioned. The first Queensland railways were by far the cheapest and most substantial of all the first Australian tracks, and all constructed since under Stanley or Ballard have held a deservedly high reputation.

     Montague Stanley, the artist, never came to Queensland! He died at Rothsay, in Scotland, but his sons came to Queensland, and the mother and the rest of the family followed. H. C. Stanley, the engineer, has four sons and four daughters one of whom, Pearlie Stanley, married Victor Drury, the solicitor, now practicing at Dalby.

     Architect F. D. G. Stanley had three sons and four daughters. His son, M. T. Stanley married Mary McIlwraith, daughter of Sir Thomas, and her sister Jessie married a Mr. Gostling, now residing at Sherwood. M. T. Stanley is an architect, his brother Ronald is in the Commissioner for Railways Office. One of H. C. Stanley’s sons, also H. C., is now in Townsville, and another son, Talbot, is in charge of the Gayndah extension. A son of F. D. G. Stanley, who died some years ago, is an Inspector in the Works Office. H. C. Stanley, senior, was recently on a visit to Brisbane, which he left last Tuesday. He has an office in Sydney and a branch in Brisbane.

     A man named George Perrin, said to be a descendant of that Perrin who fought the heavy weight, bare handed battle with Johnson, back in the eighteenth century, is buried in the Church of England cemetery. Perrin was one of the stockmen on Burrandowan, when that station was held by Philip Friell, and Gordon Sandeman, who bought it from Stuart Russell, author of the “Genesis of Queensland.”

     Friell was a man with a remarkable history, which would make interesting reading, but would require at least a chapter  for itself. It is enough here to say that he died of heart disease on board the steamer Argo, off Cape Horn, on September 17, 1853, aged 48. He was a son of Captain Friell, who was killed in India, while a captain in the Duke of Wellington’s Own Regiment. Friell’s life was saved on Burrandowan by George Perrin. Friell was asleep under a tree, holding the reins of his bridle, and Perrin was lying face downwards about 20 yards away with his gun beside him. Hearing a slight noise, he raised his head in time to see a tall black close to Friell, and just poising a brigalow hand spear to drive through him. Perrin acted promptly, and the black fell dead with his head within three yards of Friell, who awoke with great celerity.

     Perrin was one of the typical bushmen at the dinner given to the Duke of Edinburgh, in Brisbane, in 1868. The ball to the Duke was given in Christopher Newton and Co.’s store, in Eagle Street. At the dinner the Duke proposed the toast of “The Ladies.” Perrin, just for fun, dined as he would have dined in a shepherd’s hut. He cut his bread in his hand, and used his knife as a fork, drank his tea out of the saucer, with a noise like a cow drinking the last water out of a puddle, and asked a horrified swell opposite to “Chuck us over the mustard mate!”

     Another joker, one of the Coomera River Brinsteads, saw the humour of the situation, and posed as the wild timbergetter.

     He and Perrin caused a lot of amusement, and even the Duke had to smile. Perrin died in 1869, and was buried during heavy rain. Even the grave was half filled with water running down from the side of the ridge. Some grimly humorous bushman remarked “If some rum were mixed with that water it would agree better with old George!”

     Perrin had married an immigrant girl, a most cantankerous person, who gave him an awful time, but one day she was bitten by a black snake and died within an hour. George afterwards said that the snake died first! In a Devonshire cemetery is the following epitaph-

“Margery, wife of Gideon Bligh,

Underneath this stone doth lie,

Nought was she e’er known to do,

That her husband told her to.”

That would have suited Mrs. Perrin’s gravestone, also, we grieve to say, a lot of other ladies’ monuments.

     Henry George Morris, who died in1865, was a son of the wife of Judge Lutwyche, by her first husband, whose name was Morris. Harry was a young man of only 25 when he died from the effects of some gastric trouble, contracted when on a visit to Kedron Brook. A fall over a stump aggravated the trouble, in fact was supposed to be the fatal agent, and he died on the following day. His sister, Miss Morris, step-daughter of Judge Lutwyche, is now the wife of A. G. Vaughan, the well known Government Printer.

     Judge Lutwyche after whom the Brisbane suburb was named, invariably treated Miss Morris with all the consideration he could have given his own daughter and recognised her as such in his will.

     Paul Lyons Burke, who died on August 26, 1868, aged 35, was secretary of the Brisbane Hospital and a prominent member of the Masonic body, who gave him a Masonic funeral.

     In the Paddington cemetery is an old pioneer, who came out in the early days on a free passage, and went to the “Government boarding house” at Port Macquarie in the time when old Colonel Gray was boss of that reformatory, the same Colonel who was father of Robert Gray, who died as Queensland Commissioner for Railways, and who, as Under Secretary in the Home Office, is still kindly remembered by the old officers of that department. We shall call the free passage pioneer John Brown. He takes us back to the days when old Panton built George Thorn’s house at Ipswich, and kept a store there; when William Hendren returned as member for Bulimba, in 1878, had a draper’s shop opposite where Cribb and Foote are today, and William Vowles had the Horse and Jockey Hotel, kept in after years by Thompson. Vowles was grandfather of Solicitor Vowles, who contested Dalby at the last election with Joey Bell, and was for many years an alderman of Ipswich. He was a Devonshire man, who annually imported a cask of cider, and invited his friends to “come and join.” Present writer drank that cider for three years. John Brown was groom at Vowles’ Hotel, and Vowles sent him to Brisbane on horseback on a special message. At the One Mile Swamp, now called Woolloongabba, Brown’s horse threw him against a tree, and killed him, and he was buried at Paddington.

Sweet is true love though given in vain, in vain;

And sweet is Death who puts an end to pain:

I know not which is sweeter, no, not I

Love, art thou sweet! Than bitter death must be;

Love, thou art bitter; sweet be death to me.

O Love, if death be sweeter, let me die.

Sweet love, that seems not made to fade away,

Sweet death that seems to make us loveless clay.

I know not which is sweeter, no not I.

I fain would follow love, if that could be;

I needs must follow death, who calls for me;

Call and I follow, I follow! Let me die.

-“Elaine’s Song” – Tennyson

     A young man named Robert Mauley died on February 14, 1855, aged 23. This rather rare name was once famous among the warriors of a past age. In Scott’s “Lord of the Isles,” is the following passage, giving some of the English knights who fought under Edward at Bannockburn.

“Ross, Montague, and Mauley came,

And Courtney’s pride and Percy’s fame;

Names known too well in Scotland’s war

At Falkirk, Methven and Dunbar,

Blazed broader yet in after years

At Cressy red and fell Poitiers.”

     It may be that the youth in the Paddington cemetery had some of the blood of those old warrior ancestors.    

     A man named George Arthur Smith died on March 24, 1868. Smith came to Victoria in 1861, in a ship called the Donald Mackay, which on the same trip brought out the late Bishop Quinn, and Dr. Cani, who afterwards became Bishop of Central Queensland. Also the well known surveyor P O 'Kelly, of Maryborough, a fine old Irish gentleman, a boy of the olden time, who arrived there on January 1, 1863, the year in which no rain fell for ten months, followed by a wet season of four months. George Smith was a ganger on the railway, when the tunnel was being cut through the Little Liverpool Range, and afterwards a sub-contractor under John Gibbons, a contractor who gave his name to “Gibbon’s camp,” known as such for many years on the Toowoomba railway line.

     Gibbons was once partner with Randall in railway and building contracts in New South Wales and the well known “Randall’s Terrace” of nine houses in Newtown, in Sydney, bears Randall’s name as the builder and first owner. House no 9 had the credit of being haunted.

     Smith was injured in a premature blast on the railway, and was brought to the Brisbane hospital, where he died, aged 47. John Gibbons had a stone erected over his grave, but it is amongst those that are smashed. Gibbon’s widow in after years married Detective Sergeant McGlone, who came from Sydney to Queensland, and arrested Frank Gardiner, the bushranger, at Apia Creek, on the road to Clermont where he was living under the name of Christie, and had a small store and butcher’s shop.

     An old time honored Queensland pioneer family are recalled by the graves of John Edmund and William Alexander, two children of John and Margaret Hardgrave. The first was the third son, who died on October 30, 1860, aged a year and a half, and the other died 11 days afterwards at the age of five and a half. He was the first son. The late John Hardgrave was born in Louth, and educated in Dublin. His wife, who survives him, was a Miss Blair, a very handsome woman, who was born at Ballymeena, in Ireland, within 50 yards of the house in which General White was born, and after the death of her parents came to Queensland with her uncle Reed (afterwards engineer of the steamer Hawk), in 1849, and was married six months afterwards to John Hardgrave. The young couple at first resided in one of three brick cottages built up in the convict days as residences for the officials, and situated where Ned Sheridan’s shop is today, near the Longreach Hotel, where the convict workshop and lumber yard stood in those old wild days. The soldier’s barracks were on the corner  now occupied by the Geological Museum. One of the brick cottages was afterwards fixed up as the first Church of England in what is now Queensland. Mrs. Hardgrave saw that church opening by the Bishop of Newcastle, she attended there for fifty years and then saw it pulled down. How many people go to church for 50 years?

     She had five sons and three daughters, including the two boys who died 47 years ago, and one daughter, Mrs. Campbell, who died recently. John Hardgrave, who died last year, was one of Brisbane’s best known men, and one of the most respected. At death he was chairman of the Board of Waterworks, a position he held for many years.

     Among the graves is a son of the Rev. Thomas Jones, a schoolboy, who was a great favourite. On the day of the funeral the scholars of St. John’s school would not allow the coffin to be placed on the hearse. They formed relay parties and carried it all the way to the cemetery.

     There too, is the son of John Scott, who was once Chairman of Committees, and lived for many years in the house at Milton, close to the railway cutting on the north side of the station.

     Near him, in the old house on the hill, in what was “Walsh’s Paddock”, lived the redoubtable Henry Walsh, father of the beauteous “Coojee,” and once Speaker of the House. Beyond Scott, at Auchenflower, lived Sir Thomas McIlwraith, and within 50 yards of the brewery was “Papa” Pinnock, P.M. When the famous “Steel Rail” discussion was raging, a railway guard was promptly sacked for calling to the driver to call at “Steel Rails!”

     Ann Eliza Young, a girl of 16, died in 1874. Her father was a Chinese settler who was once a clerk in the old firm of J. and G. Harris, and afterwards ferryman between North and South Brisbane from the present Queen’s Wharf at the foot of Russell Street. He married a woman of good family, her brother having an interest in the firm of R. Towns and Co. Young was a cook on her father’s station.

     One of Young’s sons, Ernest, was for a time teacher in the South Brisbane school, and another kept a fish shop for some time in Melbourne Street, near Gray Street. A daughter, Katie Young, a good looking girl, was for years with a firm of storekeepers in Boundary Street, then married a son of Benjamin Babbidge, once Mayor of Brisbane, had two children, and died of typhoid fever. Old Young and his wife still reside in South Brisbane.

     Jane Orr, who died on March 15, 1863, aged 58, was wife of a Constable Orr of that period, and mother of three daughters and a son. The daughter Maggie became the wife of Peter Phillips, the present day tailor, and her sister Jane, who remained single, still resides in Boundary Street, near Vulture Street. Her sister Phoebe and the brother died long ago. Constable Orr on one occasion was escorting some prisoners to Sydney. The steamers in those days called at Newcastle, and while there it appears that Orr’s vigilance was relaxed long enough to allow the prisoners to escape, and as a result of that he left the police force.

     Very sad was the drowning of a handsome young fellow who was a nephew of Dr. Simpson, who had charge of the Government stock at Redbank. The nephew was an only son of Dr. Simpson’s sister, who was a widow in the old country. The doctor sent for this nephew to come out and stay with him, intending to make him a present of “Wolston” of which Dr. Simpson was the first owner. The nephew, who was only 27 years of age, was crossing the river from Wolston to the coal pits, the boat capsized, and he was drowned. This was a cruel blow to Dr. Simpson, who soon afterwards sold Wolston to the late Matthew Goggs, and went to England.

     A sister of Goggs married Captain Coley, who was once Sergeant-at-Arms, and died by his own hand in the small cottage still standing in George Street, near Harris Terrace. One of his daughters was married to C. B. Dutton, once Minister for Lands.

     James Fleming, who died on March 7, 1872, aged 55, is said to have been the squatter who once held Burenda station, on the Warrego.

     Jane Campbell, who died on May 22, 1866, aged 29, was the wife of Constable Alexander Campbell, who at the time was stationed with a detachment of Native Police at Humpybong. Governor Bowen was there on a visit on the day Mrs. Campbell died.

     Rosina Cox, who died on April 17, 1873, aged 29, was the youngest daughter of Sarah and William Cox. Cox was a warder in the gaol, and died within the last two years.

     Joseph William Saville, who died on March 5, 1869, aged 36, was a groom employed in Duncan McLennan’s livery stables, and he was thrown from his horse and killed in George Street.

     Richard H. Watson, who died on May 5, 1868, aged 61, was the builder of the Commercial Hotel, in Edward Street, and kept a boarding house near there. One of his sons was afterwards the well-known Watson, the plumber, who became one of the mayors of Brisbane.

     Thomas Palmer, who died on July 12, 1867, aged 60, was one of the two brothers who started a ginger beer and cordial factory beside the present police court.

     From the Palmers the business passed into the hands of one who was then in their service, the well-known Marchant of the present day.

     Isabella Thomasena Deacon Ferguson was a child of a year and 10 months, and died on September 18, 1865, the mother being a sister of John Petrie, and aunt of the present Toombul Petrie. She was the wife of the late Inspector of Works, Ferguson, one of the biggest men in Queensland, and with a heart to match. Among his numerous works he superintended the erection of the lighthouse on Sandy Cape in 1872, when the blacks carried all the material and rations from the beach to the top of the sand hill, 315 feet in height, exactly the same height as the hill on which the Double Island lighthouse stands. Bob was a giant with a giant’s strength. One night in Mrs. McGregor’s Hotel in Rockhampton, the same grand old Highland woman who afterwards kept the Great Northern Hotel in Cooktown, an aggressive Hibernian gentleman, named Barry, whose brother married Miss McGregor, made himself unpleasant, and finally sparred up to Ferguson, as a bantam rooster might spar at a cassowary. Bob rose, quietly grabbed Barry by the neck of the coat and the northwest cape of his pants, and heaved him head first, not at the door, but against a thin partition. Barry went through this partition, took half of it with him, and disappeared! Then Ferguson sat down and ordered drinks for the company as if nothing had happened.

     A man named Harry Burrows died on March 9, 1862, aged 45. He was working for Crown Lands Commissioner and Surveyor J. C. Bidwell, when that official was running a marked tree line from Maryborough to Brisbane. That line went through the present site of Gympie, and it is certain that Bidwell found gold there 15 years before any was found by Nash. That was clearly proved in after years by G. W. Dart, who was one of Bidwell’s party, and who wrote an account of the gold find to one of the Maryborough papers. Dart saw the gold, and said Bidwell showed it to many of his friends. Bidwell never finished his track, as severe privations in the scrubs in wet weather, with poor food, laid the foundations of an illness that killed him, and he died and was buried at the mouth of Tinana Creek, where can be seen today, the huge mango trees which Bidwell planted, the first ever grown on Queensland soil.

     He was the man who sent specimens of the bunya trees to Kew Gardens, and today that tree bears Bidwell’s name, “Araucaria Bidwelli,” though the honor should have gone to old Andrew Petrie, who was certainly the first discoverer, in fact the bunya for a time was actually called “Pinus Petriana.” Harry Burrows was out with Bidwell in the worst part of his trip, and had one or two narrow escapes from the blacks He afterwards worked for Atticus Tooth, and also for J. D. Mactaggart, an old Wide Bay pioneer who died at Kilkivan, on January 16, 1871, an uncle of the well known stock and station Mactaggart brothers of Brisbane today. Burrows was away south in 1854, on the Hunter River, and in a letter written by him in 1861, to an old Brisbane resident, he said he was in Newcastle when an aboriginal named Harry Brown was burned to death while intoxicated. This was the “Brown” who was one of the two blacks with Leichhardt in his second expedition of 1847, when no one ever returned.

     An old resident says that in the cemetery is a man named George Smith, who died in 1863. He tells us that this man was once tried for his life on a charge of murder, somewhere on the Downs. Evidently he means a George Smith, who was one of two men, the other being John Morris, tried in 1854, for the murder of James Tucker, on Gowrie Station. Both men were acquitted, as the evidence showed Tucker’s death to be the result of a drunken row. Two doctors were witnesses, Dr. Buchanan and Dr. Labatt, and they gave two totally different versions. One swore he saw no wounds to Tucker’s head, and the other swore he was dreadfully knocked about! There being nobody to decide when doctors disagree, the evidence went for nothing.

     Morris had a brother who was killed at Oxley, on the day Sir Charles Fitzroy, the Governor of New South Wales, in which Queensland was then included, was on his way to Ipswich, accompanied by Captain Wickham, the Brisbane P.M., whose name is borne by Wickham Terrace, the private secretary, Captain Gennys, and police escort. They had lunch with Dr. Simpson, at Woogaroo, and were met by a big escort from Ipswich, where the party had supper at Colonel Gray’s house, and there was a swell ball the next day, and an address was read by R. J. Smith, who was then M.L.C. in the Sydney Council, representing Wide Bay, Burnett, and the Maranoa. Picture a man representing those three electorates today!

     Morris was riding after horses, about a mile beyond the Rocky Water Holes at the spot where old Billy Coote had his mulberry farm in 1876, and his horse ran him against a tree and killed him, about the time the Governor was passing. His body was brought to Brisbane in a two horse dray, and buried at Paddington.  

November 1, 2002

    Courier Mail, Brisbane: The ground beneat the old Lang Park is giving up its secrets of early life in Brisbane, writes Craig Johnstone.

    She had bright red hair, was tall and well-built. At some stage in her short life, she had badly broken her left leg. Most likely her family had plenty of money. No one yet knows how or when she died, although it was at least 127 years ago, but where she was buried is no mystery at all.

    The woman with the red hair was one of about 5000 buried at the site of Queensland's largest public works project- the $280 million Suncorp Stadium.

    Her fully preserved skeleton and coffin (complete with some of her hair and scented wood shaving) have been exhumed by a team of University of Queensland archeologists who worked at the site between August 2001 and May 2002.

    Her remains were among 397 the team excavated and removed from the stadium site, used as a burial ground between 1843 and 1875. It was Brisbane's first major cemetery after free settlement.

    Convicts who died in Brisbane's earliest days as a penal colony were buried near where the William Jolly Bridge now stands.

    The archeologists, working for the Public Works Department and operating under rules set by the Environmental Protection Agency, have dug up priceless details of early Brisbane.

    Along with remains of the dead, belt buckles, coffin handles and religious medals, all more than a century old, were found. But it is the human remains they found and took from the site that are bound to generate the most interest.

    The exhumations involved remains from the Anglican, Catholic, and Presbyterian sections of the cemetery, as well as 16 sets of remains from an Aboriginal cemetery. More than half the coffins the team discovered were less than 150 cm long, suggesting that most of those buried in the cemetery were children.

    The team recently submitted the first of a series of reports to the Government, detailing the results of the salvage and how they went about their excavations in a place that most people now regard as a sporting venue.

    The painstaking work of analyzing what they found is still going on in University laboratories. By February, 2003, the team should have compiled a report detailing discoveries about the remains.

    This salvage has attracted much less controversy than the excavation of graves that occurred in 1990 at the time of the Hale Street redevelopment. The row over moving the remains of the dead grew so heated back then that an Anglican priest accused then Lord Mayor Sallyanne Atkinson of grave-robbing.

    This time, however, the Beattie Government did everything it could to avoid being accused of desecration.

    In August last year, an ecumenical service was held in the stadium's western stand to recognise the site's former use as a cemetery. Only those graves that would be damaged by the stadium redevelopment were salvaged by the archeologists.

    That is, where excavations for the redevelopment would cut below the level of the burials, those graves were salvaged. But the remains of thousands will stay where they were interred.

    How the team undertook their work is as fascinating as what they found.

First, they needed to excavate and remove the fill that had been dumped in the area since it ceased being used as a cemetery in 1914. That unearthed "grave stains," or patches where the trained eye can tell a coffin had been buried.

    "Once a grave site had been identified, a 20 tonne excavator was used to scrape the surface away, centimetre by centimetre with a batter bucket, until wood or bone was detected," the archeologists report said.

    "As the salvage was of a cemetery area, it was considered inappropriate to open large areas of the sit, therefore the heavy machinery was used to target the grave sites."

    Talks are going on between the university and the Brisbane City Council as to where to re-inter the remains. It is likely they will end up at Toowong Cemetery.

    All the material from the Aboriginal cemetery was moved to a secret sacred storage area at the University's anthropology museum. The Aboriginal remains are not being examined.

    They will stay in the museum until negotiations between the Council and representatives of the Turrbal people come up with a suitable location for their re-interment.

    The team was lead by Dr. Jon Prangnell, of the University's archeological services unit. Prangnell said DNA tests were now being carried out to discover what diseases those buried at the site might have suffered.

    Tests will screen for up to 2000 diseases, including influenza, smallpox, tuberculosis, even leprosy.

    The team also is performing a population study to try to differentiate the remains into ethnic backgrounds. What the team already has discovered is fascinating enough.

    "People weren't buried with much at all," Prangnell said. "With the Catholics, we found a few crucifixes, rosary beads and medallions. But I don't think we found one wedding ring."

    As he says in his report, "All other graves were devoid of personal items (except a ceramic plate in the Presbyterian cemetery)."

    "This is somewhat surprising. There is no archeological evidence to suggest that once coffins were placed in the ground they were dug up at any later time.

    "Either people did not intend to be buried with their possessions or their possessions did not make it into the ground with them."

    One other interesting discovery was that none of the graves was the accepted six feet deep.

    The gravediggers went only 1 metre down before striking hard bedrock, and many of the coffins were just below the surface.

    The team found that many of the coffins were pressed flat, with the lid resting on the base- probably the result of the weight of the fill dumped in the area when it ceased to be used as a cemetery.

    Of the woman whose remains were intact, Prangnell said: "My guess is she was a big, red-headed Catholic woman, but probably of some wealth."

    The break in her left leg meant that it was about 5 cm shorter than her right.

    But the archeologists have found no sign of grinding in the pelvic area, suggesting that she died soon after her femur bone had healed.

    Her body lay under what is now the stadium's playing surface, just near the north-east corner of the field.

    The slope from Petrie Terrace down to the Stadium originally ended at a swamp, near where Castlemaine Street now runs. Prangnell speculates that water flowing down the slope to the swamp helped preserve the woman's remains.

    And her identity?

    "Other than DNA screening all of Brisbane, we won't know her relatives," he said.

    The Queensland State Archives holds some records of the old cemetery, but these are mostly related to the bodies exhumed in 1913 and re-interred at Toowong Cemetery.

    Finding out who she was is going to take some prolific detective work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

         

         

 

 

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