News extracts: Feb. 1, 1845(?): Death of Major Frederick Hovenden

[Alison Kilpatrick]

Names: Hovenden, James.

Transcribed from the 21 April 1846 edition of The Armagh Guardian
newspaper:

Melancholy Death.--The remains of Major Hovenden, who appears, after
for years fighting his country's battles, to have reached New South
Wales, to find not an asylum where he might end his days in peace and
plenty, but to perish by the most horrible of deaths--absolute
starvation--have been found in the Bungarabbee Brush, on the western
road. The bones were disjointed and scattered, and not a single particle
of flesh remaining. His remains were found by a party who was been [sic]
hunting in Bungarabbee Brush. On pursuing the search a variety of
articles and a leather valise were found there, two cloth body coats, a
cloth cloak, a blue cloth cap with a peak, a boot, two tooth brushes,
and shaving and nail brushes, the remnants of a black silk stock, a
handkerchief, and also a quantity of bones. When the peak of the cap was
first found it was covered with dirt, but on cleaning it there was
written, apparently with a penknife, "Frederick Hovenden died of
hunger." The second boot could nowhere be found, nor could any razor.
The Major had been missing about eighteen months, about which time he
left Sydney, and when he neither said where he was going nor did he
leave word with his agent, Mr. Nicholas James, where he could be found,
and although he had been advertised, no trace could be obtained of him.
The Major had been about three or four years in the colony; and when he
left Sydney he had been heard to remark, that he would rather go into
the bush as a shepherd than be dependant on his friends. He had recently
brought a considerable sum of money with him to the colony, but had lost
it.--Paramatta Chronicle, Feb. 1.

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