On Thursday, April 29, 2021 at 11:34:09 PM UTC-7, Brad Verity wrote:
> I'm working on a follow-up post, detailing the descendants of Rev. Henry Willis and his wife Jane (Lubbock) Willis. There are more living today than those of Texas Governor Francis Lubbock and his siblings.
It turns out that the one child of Governor Francis Lubbock of Texas was adopted, so though there are those living today who could, using a broad definition, be considered descendants of the Governor through his adopted son, they are not descendants of Rev. Henry Willis and Anne, Duchess of Exeter (see note [*15] in the post below).
I understand that this is off topic to the SocGenMed newsgroup, but, if we broaden the scope to include individuals who can be traced back to the medieval period, I hope the newsgroup will accept this post in that spirit. There are around one hundred various family trees on Ancestry alone, which involve portions of the Rev. Willis descendants named below. None of them trace his Ancestry back to Anne, Duchess of Exeter, and many of them do not even trace back to Rev. Henry Willis. Perhaps someday one or more of the genealogists who created those trees comes across this post online, finds it interesting or useful, and joins this newsgroup.
It's a long post, so I've divided it into three parts. This Part 1 is an introduction, the eldest two children of Rev. Willis, and their descendants (the Smiths). Part 2 covers the next two children of Rev. Willis, and their descendants (the Lubbocks and the Shutes), and Part 3 details the remaining children of Rev. Willis and their descendants (the Lavers).
Cheers, ------Brad
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The source for Ruvigny’s enumeration of the children of Rev. Henry Willis (1739-1794), Rector of Little Sodbury, Gloucestershire, on p. 618 of his Anne of Exeter volume, was the ‘Stephens of Eastington, Lypiatt, and Cherrington’ pedigree from ‘The Visitation of the County of Gloucester 1682-83’, edited by Thomas F.P. Fenwick & Walter C. Metcalfe (1884). The book is only available snippet view through Google Books, but a digital copy can be accessed thru FamilySearch (p. 176):
https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/55177?availability=Family%20History%20Library
It’s easy to understand why, in the last decades of the 19th-century, Fenwick & Metcalfe, and Ruvigny, had difficulty tracing the descendants of Rev. Henry Willis. His father John Willis was successful enough in life to purchase the Suffolk estate of Redlingfield Hall, but the family was not of landed gentry status generations previous, and financial difficulties plagued John Willis in his final years so that Redlingfield was not passed down to his only surviving son Henry.
Descended through his mother from the Stephenses, a Gloucestershire gentry family, by 1790 Rev. Willis was the heir apparent to his maternal grandmother’s elderly, childless first cousin, Henry Stephens (1710-1795), the last of that family. For more than two centuries, the chief seat of the Stephens family was Eastington, Gloucestershire, but in the latter half of the 18th-century, the family had moved it to Chavenage, in the parish of Horsley, and the manor house at Eastington was demolished in 1778. Rev. Henry Willis made an agreement to assume the surname of Stephens on the inheritance of these estates. The Willis family would once again be landed gentry. Rev. Willis died in June 1794, seven months before his elderly cousin Henry Stephens. Having disinherited his eldest son Richard Lubbock Willis, it was the reverend’s second son, Henry Hannes Willis who became the heir to Eastington and Chavenage, and he assumed the surname of Stephens, though the estates remained in the hands of Ann (Huntley) Stephens, the widow of old Henry Stephens. Rev. Willis’s widow, Jane (Lubbock) Willis, moved to Tetbury, the closest town to Chavenage, in anticipation of her son inheriting the Stephens estates, and she died there in 1799, two years before the death of elderly widow Anne Stephens in 1801. The 26-year-old Henry Hannes Willis, now Henry Hannes Stephens, proved to be a poor estate manager. He sold the Eastington estate in 1806 to a wealthy clothier, and let out Chavenage House, fleeing to the continent, first Portugal, then eventually France, where he converted to Catholicism, became a monk, and suffered from the effects of a mental disorder, until he died a bachelor in 1821.
With their eldest brother disinherited and far off in America, their youngest brother an officer in the army who died childless on service in the West Indies at age 25, and their brother Henry, the theoretical head of their gentry family, an absentee landlord on the continent, it’s not surprising to find that none of Rev. Henry Willis’s six adult daughters made grand marriages. The eldest sister Temperance Willis, the practical head of the family, was the glue that held them together after the death of their parents, and never married. Second sister Amelia Willis married a carpenter wheelwright from Bristol five years her junior. It’s noteworthy that Amelia’s marriage to a man below her station occurred a year after her father’s death, as it’s unlikely Rev. Willis would have approved. The next sister Harriet Willis married in 1799 a customs officer in Bristol of a minor gentry family, whose father and grandfather had been clergymen. Two years later in 1801, Louisa Willis married a linen draper, though he was resourceful enough to eventually rise to manage a bank in Thornbury, Gloucestershire, and serve a term as mayor of that town. The two youngest sisters relied on their siblings, with Ann Packer Willis joining her brother Richard in America, and Sophia Willis close enough to her brother Lt. Winchcombe Willis, that she was a witness at the 1813 second marriage in London of his widow Ursula Maria (Bath) Willis to William Brookes, a surgeon from Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire. Brookes died five months after the wedding, but his younger brother, Samuel Brookes, also a surgeon, would, eleven years later in 1824, marry Sophia Willis, then middle-aged at 38, sparing her from spinsterhood.
In January 1804 in Charleston, South Carolina, Ann Packer Willis made out her will, leaving her sister “Harriet or if she is removed from a world replete with misfortunes to her dear little girl twenty pounds to be given her aunt Temperance who will dispose of it I am sure as will be most for the advantage of dear little Alice.” Harriet (Willis) Shute died almost two years later, leaving a 5-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter, Alice. Whether it was due to her early death, or due to the fact that, of all the Willis sisters, Harriet had made the most socially acceptable marriage, when Henry Willis Stephens made out his own will in December 1814, he designated his late sister Harriet’s son his heir to Chavenage House, to be entered upon when he reached the age of 25. The son, Henry Richmond Shute, was age 21 when his uncle died in 1821, but never became the master of Chavenage House since he died only two years later, in 1823. Henry Willis Stephens had designated his niece Alice Shute, Harriet’s daughter, the next heir if her brother died, and so the young lady found herself owner of Chavenage House. In 1826, she took for her husband the new 35-year-old vicar of Thornbury, Rev. Maurice FitzGerald Townsend, a second son of a landed gentry family in county Cork, Ireland, who dutifully assumed the additional surname of Stephens seven months after the wedding. The surviving Willis sisters may then have faced a quandary: their American nephew, physician Henry Thomas Willis Lubbock, who had taken courses at Oxford University some years back, and so was familiar to all the family in Gloucestershire, was the direct male-line heir of their father Rev. Henry Willis. Did he have the more natural right to Chavenage House, if Rev. Willis’s rash disinheritance of his eldest son in 1791 was put aside? “My father died [in February 1830] of a country fever while he was preparing for a trip to England to look after an estate to which he was entitled” [Francis Richard Lubbock, ‘Six Decades in Texas’ (1900), p. 11]. It’s interesting to ponder how the course of history may have been different if instead of governor of Texas during the American Civil War, Francis Richard Lubbock had been esquire of Chavenage House in Gloucestershire.
Thanks to the wonders of our 21st century digital age, it is now possible to trace all the descendants of Rev. Henry Willis, who had previously eluded the research of Victorian genealogists like Ruvigny. I’ve done so to the fourth generation. Not surprisingly, the descendants of Alice (Shute) Townsend Stephens of Chavenage House remain well within the British landed gentry, some even found in Burke’s Peerage. But the descendants of her disinherited American uncle, and those of her aunts who married socially ‘lower’, cover a wide range, from a governor of Texas and a founder of a company that today is a British multinational corporation, to blacksmiths and carpenters, land agents and road surveyors, mariners and miners, farmers and dentists, stationers and surgeons. And, by the beginning of the 20th century, spread out over three continents.
Rev. HENRY WILLIS, Rector of Little Sodbury, Gloucestershire 1788-94, bap. 22 Dec. 1739 St James Church, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk; d. 4 June 1794 Iron Acton, Gloucestershire, son of John Willis of Redlingfield Hall, Suffolk (d. 1764) and Temperance Hannes (1700-1765, descended from Edward III thru Anne, Duchess of Exeter); m. 1 Sept. 1765 St Andrew Church, Redlingfield, JANE LUBBOCK (bap. 17 Feb. 1744 St Nicholas Church, North Walsham, Norfolk; d. 10 Apr. 1799 Tetbury, Gloucestershire), only dau. of Richard Lubbock of Norwich, wine merchant (1706-1783) and Jane Attesley (b. 1720), and had issue, three sons and seven daughters (#s 1 to 10 below):
1) TEMPERANCE JANE WILLIS, bap. 28 Aug. 1767 St Nicholas Church, North Walsham, Norfolk; dunm. 26 Feb. 1843 Thornbury, Gloucestershire, bur. 3 Mar. 1843 St Mary Churchyard, Thornbury.
2) AMELIA WILLIS, bap. 21 Dec. 1768 St Nicholas Church, North Walsham, Norfolk; d. 15 Dec. 1849 Iron Acton, Gloucestershire, bur. 21 Dec. 1849 St James Churchyard, Iron Acton; m. 13 Sept. 1795 St John the Baptist Church, Bedminster, Somersetshire, JAMES SMITH of Iron Acton, carpenter/wheelwright (b. c.1774 Gloucestershire; d. 17 Nov. 1847 Iron Acton, bur. 21 Nov. 1847 St James Churchyard, Iron Acton) [*1], and had issue, three sons and two daughters (2A to 2E below):
2A) JAMES HENRY SMITH, bap. 20 Nov. 1796 St James Church, Iron Acton, Gloucestershire; d. young, bur. there 31 Aug. 1800.
2B) HORATIO NELSON SMITH of Little Gonerby, Grantham, Lincolnshire, road surveyor, bap. 3 Mar. 1799 St James Church, Iron Acton, Gloucestershire; d. 24 July 1879 Little Gonerby; m. 1st 20 May 1826 St Peter & St Paul Church, Shepton Mallet, Somersetshire, JANE STRODE (b. 10 Mar. 1808 Shepton Mallet, bap. 6 May 1808 Hephzibah Chapel, Shepton Mallet; d. 10 Mar. 1842 Little Gonerby), dau of Thomas Strode of Shepton Mallet, cordwainer (d. 1821) & Jane Bryant (d. 1832), and had issue, four sons and one daughter (2B1 to 2B5 below); m. 2nd 3 Mar. 1846 St Wulfram Church, Grantham, ANNE STAPLEFORD (b. c.1810 Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire; dsp. 16 Mar. 1864 Little Gonerby), dau of Samuel Stapleford of Newark-on-Trent, cordwainer (1774-1857) & Elizabeth Robinson. Issue (all by 1st wife):
2B1) THOMAS JAMES SMITH of Kingston-upon-Hull, wholesale druggist, founder of Smith+Nephew, today a British multinational medical equipment manufacturing company, bap. 17 June 1827 St John Church, Whitfield, Northumberland; dunm. 3 Oct. 1896 Wilton Terrace, Hornsea, Yorkshire. [*2]
2B2) HENRY NELSON SMITH of Manchester, commercial insurance agent, bap. 7 Jan. 1829 St John Church, Whitfield, Northumberland; dsp. 26 July 1879 Park Bank House, Higher Broughton, Salford, Lancashire, bur. 30 July 1879 Manchester General Cemetery; m. 27 Dec. 1859 Eccleston Chapel, Belgravia, London, RACHEL MARTIN (b. 1829 Woolwich, Kent; d. unknown), dau of William Martin of Woolwich, shipwright & Mary Pool (d. 1829). [*3]
2B3) WILLIAM JOSEPH SMITH of Woollahra, New South Wales, Australia, mariner, bap. 14 Mar. 1830 St James Church, Iron Acton, Gloucestershire; d. 20 June 1903 Southmere, 33 Windsor Street, Paddington, New South Wales, bur. 22 June 1903 Pioneers Memorial Park, Leichhardt, New South Wales; m. 11 Feb. 1856 Newcastle, New South Wales, HARRIET MCLEAN (b. 8 Mar. 1833 Sydney, New South Wales; d. 7 Oct. 1879 29 Moncur Street, Woollahra, bur. 8 Oct. 1879 Pioneers Memorial Park, Leichhardt), dau of John McLean of Armidale, New South Wales (1798-1880) & Sarah Margaret Alford (c.1807-1899), and had issue, three sons and three daughters. [*4]
2B4) GEORGE FREDERICK SMITH of Hampstead, Middlesex, stationer, bap. 20 May 1832 St Cadoc Church, Llangattock, Monmouthshire, Wales; d. 17 Feb. 1906 172 Finchley Road, Hampstead; m. 17 Dec. 1861 St Mary Church, Bluntisham, Huntingdonshire, LUCY HARDING (b. 8 Sept. 1832 Lincoln, Lincolnshire, bap. 3 Oct. 1832 St Peter at Gowts Church, Lincoln; d. Dec. 1914 Hampstead), dau of James Anthony Harding of Lincoln, solicitors clerk (1802-1856) & Sarah Pennell (1806-1898), and had issue, two sons and one daughter. [*5]
2B5) AMELIA ANN SMITH, bap. 9 Apr. 1838 St James Church, Iron Acton, Gloucestershire; dunm. 21 Mar. 1905 Wilton Terrace, Hornsea, Yorkshire.
2C) TEMPERANCE ANN SMITH, bap. 11 July 1802 St James Church, Iron Acton, Gloucestershire; d. in infancy, bur. there 26 Dec. 1802.
2D) LOUISA ANN SMITH, bap. 6 Jan. 1805 St James Church, Iron Acton, Gloucestershire; dsp, bur. there 10 Feb. 1828; m. 25 June 1827 St John the Baptist Church, Bedminster, Somersetshire, JOB SMITH of Bedminster. [*6]
2E) JAMES HENRY SMITH of Brighton, South Australia, carpenter and wheelwright, emigrated to Australia with his wife and children 1852 [*7], Town Clerk Brighton Council 1863-66, bap. 8 Feb. 1807 St James Church, Iron Acton, Gloucestershire; d. 13 June 1878 Brighton, South Australia, bur. 15 June 1878 St Jude Churchyard, Brighton; m. 1st 19 Oct. 1828 St Peter & St Paul Church, Shepton Mallet, Somersetshire, MARY CHAPLIN STRODE (b. 2 Sept. 1806 Shepton Mallet, bap. 14 Oct. 1806 Hephzibah Chapel, Shepton Mallet; bur. 20 Jan. 1843 St James Church, Iron Acton), dau of Thomas Strode of Shepton Mallet, cordwainer (d. 1821) & Jane Bryant (d. 1832), and had issue, three sons and three daughters (2E1 to 2E6 below); m. 2nd 13 May 1843 Temple Church, Bristol, Gloucestershire, HESTER GAINER (bap. 22 Sept. 1805 St Mary Church, Kingswood, Gloucestershire; d. 3 Dec. 1875 Brighton, South Australia, bur. St Jude Churchyard, Brighton), dau of Samuel Gainer of Kingswood, dyer (1779-1869) & Hester Werrott (c.1779-1833), and had further issue, one son and two daughters (2E7 to 2E9 below):
2E1) MARY JANE SMITH, bap. 22 May 1831 St James Church, Iron Acton, Gloucestershire; dsps. 13 July 1901 Kew Lunatic Asylum, Victoria, Australia; m. 10 May 1855 St James Church, Melbourne, Victoria, ALFRED JAMES WALKER KEEN of Queenscliff, Victoria, master mariner (b. Dec. 1828 Halesworth, Suffolk, bap. 4 Feb. 1829 St Andrew Church, Aldringham, Suffolk; d. 29 Jan. 1883 Queenscliff), son of Robert Keen of Claydon, Suffolk, miller (b. c.1805) & Anna Walker (c.1804-1875), and had issue, one son. [*8]
2E2) THOMAS JAMES SMITH, bap. 3 Nov. 1833 St James Church, Iron Acton, Gloucestershire; bur. there 1 Sept. 1846.
2E3) LOUISA ELIZABETH SMITH, bap. 30 Aug. 1835 St James Church, Iron Acton, Gloucestershire; d. 2 Jan. 1900 Flemington, Victoria, Australia; m. 1st 11 June 1853 Adelaide, South Australia, GEORGE LEVASON GEORGE of Fitzroy, Victoria, dentist (b. c.1828 Chester, Cheshire; d. 10 July 1873 Fitzroy, bur. Melbourne General Cemetery, Victoria), son of Lewis Levason of Liverpool, Lancashire, dentist (c.1800-1876) & Catherine Jones (1801-1873), and had issue, six sons and four daughters [*9]; m. 2nd 1891 Victoria, as his 2nd wife, HENRY BULLIN of Flemington, watchmaker (b. c.1823; d. 31 Aug. 1898 Flemington, bur. Melbourne General Cemetery), son of Thomas Bullin & Esther Hodges.
2E4) JOHN HENRY SMITH of Kingston, South Australia, wheelwright & blacksmith, bap. 5 Mar. 1837 St James Church, Iron Acton, Gloucestershire; d. 25 Oct. 1876 Kingston; m. 4 July 1857 Brighton, South Australia, SARAH (MCINESS(?)) HINDE (b. c.1832; d. 18 Feb. 1911 Maylands, South Australia) [*10], and had issue, four daughters.
2E5) NELSON SMITH of Kingston, South Australia, blacksmith, bap. 20 Mar. 1839 St James Church, Iron Acton, Gloucestershire; d. 28 Aug. 1874 Kingston); m. 20 Feb. 1864 St Peter Church, Robe, South Australia, as her 1st husband, ALICE O’DONNELL (b. c.1839 County Tipperary, Ireland; d. 23 Oct. 1914 Naracoorte, South Australia, bur. Naracoorte Cemetery), dau of John O’Donnell of Tipperary & Winifred Keefe (c.1806-1891), and had issue, three sons and two daughters. [*11]
2E6) AMELIA ANNE SMITH, bap. 3 Jan. 1841 St James Church, Iron Acton, Gloucestershire; d. 29 June 1881 Kingston, South Australia; m. 16 Jan. 1867 Robe, South Australia, as his 2nd wife, EDMUND EAGER of Silverton, New South Wales, carpenter (b. c.1825; d. 22 June 1898 Silverton, bur. Silverton Cemetery), son of John Eager, carpenter, and had issue, seven sons and one daughter. [*12]
2E7) SARAH ANN SMITH, b. Mar. 1844 Iron Acton, Gloucestershire; d. in infancy there, bur. 23 Mar. 1844 St James Church, Iron Acton.
2E8) ESTHER EMILY SMITH, bap. 2 Nov. 1845 St James Church, Iron Acton, Gloucestershire; d. 30 Jan. 1861 Brighton, South Australia, bur. St Jude Churchyard, Brighton.
2E9) SAMUEL JAMES SMITH of Richmond, Victoria, Australia, dentist, bap. 19 Mar. 1848 St James Church, Iron Acton, Gloucestershire; d. unknown [*13]; m. 18 Dec. 1872 Victoria, Australia, as her 1st husband, MARION EMILY JOHNSON (b. 12 May 1856 Victoria; d. 18 Oct. 1894 Victoria, bur. Melbourne General Cemetery), dau of Peter Johnson of Richmond (c.1829-1911) & Emily Mary Kent (1838-1924), and had issue, one son and one daughter.
[*1] Per the 1841 England Census, James Smith was born in Gloucestershire, and per his burial entry in the Iron Acton Parish Register, James was age 73 at his death. There are too many James Smiths baptized in Gloucestershire in the period 1772-76, to determine which entry is this James Smith, husband of Amelia Willis. Some family trees on Ancestry name James’s parents as John and Elenor Smith, but there are no supporting records provided.
[*2] Thomas James Smith has an entry in ODNB:
https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-39049
Smith+Nephew has the history of the company on its website:
https://www.smith-nephew.com/about-us/who-we-are/our-history/
[*3] Rachel (Martin) Smith’s brother, Rev. Samuel Martin (1817-1878), has an entry in ODNB:
https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-18209?rskey=xUMh5G&result=2
I have not yet been able to determine a date of death, or locate a burial entry, for Rachel (Martin) Smith. Her husband, Henry Nelson Smith, is overlooked by most genealogies, including that in ‘Smith & Nephew in the Health Care Industry’ by James Foreman-Peck (University of Michigan, 1995):
https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Smith_Nephew_in_the_Health_Care_Industry/rAdtAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&bsq=horatio%20nelson%20smith
[*4] William Joseph Smith followed his uncle James Henry Smith (see 2E above), and emigrated to Australia in the early 1850s. The children of William Joseph and Harriet (McLean) Smith were: 1) Amelia Ann (Smith) Poulter (1857-1934), 2) William James Smith (1860-1911), 3) Edwin Horatio Nelson Smith (1862-1942), 4) Harriet Martha Smith (1865-1875), 5) George Frederick Smith (1867-1947), 6) Florence Ada Elizabeth (Smith) Dunckeur (1869-1931). There are descendants in Australia living today.
[*5] The children of George Frederick and Lucy (Harding) Smith were: 1) Thomas Brooks Smith (1862-1938, issue extinct 1974), 2) Annie Amelia Smith (1863-1919), a journalist and suffragette, and 3) Horatio Nelson Smith (1874-1960), the “Nephew” of Smith+Nephew, who has descendants in the UK living today. See the Smith family tree on p. 1 of the book ‘Smith & Nephew in the Health Care Industry’, linked in note [*3] above.
[*6] Job Smith, the husband of Louisa Ann Smith, was likely a kinsman, as they were married in the same parish, Bedminster, as her parents were in 1795. I can find no further information on him.
[*7] James Henry Smith emigrated (departed London 21 Jan. 1852, arrived Port Adelaide, South Australia 31 May 1852) on the ‘Surge’ with his second wife Hester, and children Mary Jane, Louisa Elizabeth, John Henry, Nelson, Amelia Anne, Samuel James & Esther Emily.
https://passengers.history.sa.gov.au/node/661212
His first wife, Mary Chaplin (Strode) Smith, was the sister of Jane (Strode) Smith, the first wife of his elder brother, Horatio Nelson Smith (see 2B above).
[*8] The only child of Mary Jane (Smith) Keen was: Alfred Henry Keen, b. Jan. 1856, d. in infancy, bur. 29 Feb. 1856 St Kilda Cemetery, Victoria, Australia.
[*9] The children of Louisa Elizabeth (Smith) (George) Bullin were: 1) Mary Catherine (George) Strudwicke (1854-1943), 2) Grenville Levason George (1856-1859), 3) Henry Lewis Levason George (1857-1898), 4) Alfred Horatio George (1859-1867), 5) Rose Jane Esther (George) Dibden (1861-1921), 6) Lilla May (George) Curlewis (1863-1945), 7) Frank George (1867-1945), 8) Arthur Ernest George (1869-1939), 9) Wynne Ernest George (1871-1917), 10) Amy Leah (George) Shorland (1873-1955). There are living descendants today in Australia and New Zealand.
[*10] Per the entry in the Australia Marriage Index, the father of Sarah (Hinde) Smith was “Jesse Mciness”. Per the Australia Death Index, she was age 78 at her death. Many family trees on Ancestry identify her as the Sarah Hinde bap. 18 July 1832 St Peter Church, Liverpool, Lancashire, dau of William Hinde, butcher, and his wife Elizabeth. This though doesn’t match up to her marriage index entry. The children of John Henry and Sarah (Hinde) Smith were: 1) Mary Elizabeth (Smith) Garvie (1858-1926), 2) Annie Jane Mcewen (Smith) Clark (1860-1893), 3) Emily Louise Smith (1862-1951), 4) Hester Helena Smith (b. 1864). There are descendants living today in Australia.
[*11] The widow of Nelson Smith m. 2nd 9 Feb. 1875 Kingston, South Australia, George Connley Dudley (1848-1916). The children of Nelson Smith were 1) John Henry Smith (1865-1937), 2) Thomas James Smith (b. 1866), 3) Alfred James Smith (1868-1914), 4) Alice (Smith) Fergusson (1871-1918), 5) Winifred Bernard (Smith) Snodgrass (1873-1951). There are descendants living today in Australia.
[*12] The children of Amelia Anne (Smith) Eager were: 1) Henry Eager (1867-1919), 2) Edmund Eager (1868-1932), 3) Samuel Eager (1870-1901), 4) Emily Jane (Eager) Slocum (1872-1938), 5) Arthur Nelson Smith Eager (1874-1876), 6) William Eager (1876-1877), 7) Frank Eager (1878-1938), 8) Thomas Eager (1880-1931). There are descendants living today in Australia.
[*13] Samuel James Smith “is charged, on warrant issued by the Richmond Bench, with deserting his wife on the 7th instant. Description:—English, a dentist, 28 years of age…31st January 1876” [Victoria Police Gazette]. Samuel James Smith “is inquired for by his son, Arthur Samuel Smith, Aldgate, South Australia. He was last heard of 25 years ago, as employed by Mr. Meyers, a dentist, in Melbourne…31st August, 1904” [Victoria Police Gazette]. The children of Samuel James Smith were: 1) Emily Violetta (Smith) (Arrowsmith) Nugent (1874-1937), and 2) Arthur Samuel Smith (1875-1914). There are descendants of the latter living today in Australia.
[Continued in Part 2]