George KENNETT, who was declared insolvent in 1842, disappeared from the public records in early 1842 and no death record has been found. Celia though had another daughter in 1843, who was always known as Amy TAYLOR. Amy’s birthplace is not known, and her birth record has not been found under any of Celia’s surnames – Stubbs, Williams, Kennett or Taylor. The older daughter, Georgiana, was also known in the family as Georgina TAYLOR. Celia called herself Mrs Taylor till she died.
There are at least two possibilities as to Celia's change of marital name:
1. Celia abandoned George Kennett and took up with a Thomas William TAYLOR.
2. George Kennett decided to change his name to escape his creditors, and adopted the name Thomas William TAYLOR from 1842 onwards.
In September 1846 the birth of a child to Thomas Taylor and Celia Stubbs(!) was registered in Adelaide, South Australia. The child was a boy, Frederick, who only lived for 9 weeks, his death being registered on 20 November by his father, Thomas Taylor. Frederick was buried the following day in an unknown location at South Australia’s oldest cemetery, the West Terrace Cemetery, central Adelaide.
24 years later Thomas William Taylor died in Coghills Creek, a hamlet 17 kilometres north of Ballarat, Victoria. His death certificate states he died of gastric enteritis on 4 April 1866, and was aged 65. Coghills Creek is a hamlet 20 kms north of Ballarat, in good dairying country.
Death certificates are a good source of information for family historians, as they often contain details of children, residential addresses, nationality etc. Thomas’s certificate is a good case in point. His parents are named – George Abraham, and Phoebe Taylor. George Abraham’s occupation was “coach fabricator”. Thomas’s birthplace is recorded as Exeter, Devon. He is said to have lived in the Australian colonies for 24 years - Adelaide for 15 years, and Victoria for 9 years. The certificate also states that Thomas married Celia in Hastings, England, when Thomas was aged 40 (in 1841), and two children are named – Georgiana (age 25) and Amy Caroline (age 22).
It also recorded his burial at Glendaruel Cemetery, 5.5 kms to the west of Coghill’s Creek, on 6th April.
Death certificates are also notoriously unreliable. The information provided in Thomas’s certainly raises some issues, and both provides clues as to his relationship with Celia, and confuses and confounds as well.
Known facts about Celia from about 1840 onwards, and of Thomas are:
Celia was 91 when she died in Melbourne in 1896. Nothing is known about her for the last forty or so years of her life.There is no actual evidence (yet) that George Kennett became Thomas Taylor. This may never be proved, or disproved. Clouding the issue is the names of Thomas Taylor’s parents as recorded on his death certificate – George Abraham and Phoebe Taylor. These also seem to be the names of George Abraham Kennett’s parents. Both George Kennett and Thomas Taylor are said to have been born in 1801.
There is no evidence that Celia and Thomas parted company sometime after the birth and premature death of their son Frederick.
There is no evidence that Celia and her two youngest daughters went to India sometime after 1846. It is however, unlikely that Georgiana would have gone to India on her own to marry there aged only 16.
There is reference in Cyrus Williams’ Journal that Celia lived in India during the Indian Rebellion (1857):
“….our household had consisted of our Grandmother, my father's mother, who had spent most of her life in India and had spent anxious times during the Mutiny…..”
It is extremely unlikely that Celia married Thomas Taylor in Hastings, Sussex in 1839, as claimed on his death certificate.
So, all in all, Celia became a woman with a past which her family may have been unaware of, or which she chose to represent to them in very particular ways. One day there may be more records available which throw additional light on Celia’s life between the death or disappearance of her first husband in India in 1835, and her own death 60 years later in Melbourne.
There are at least two possibilities as to Celia's change of marital name:
1. Celia abandoned George Kennett and took up with a Thomas William TAYLOR.
2. George Kennett decided to change his name to escape his creditors, and adopted the name Thomas William TAYLOR from 1842 onwards.
In September 1846 the birth of a child to Thomas Taylor and Celia Stubbs(!) was registered in Adelaide, South Australia. The child was a boy, Frederick, who only lived for 9 weeks, his death being registered on 20 November by his father, Thomas Taylor. Frederick was buried the following day in an unknown location at South Australia’s oldest cemetery, the West Terrace Cemetery, central Adelaide.
24 years later Thomas William Taylor died in Coghills Creek, a hamlet 17 kilometres north of Ballarat, Victoria. His death certificate states he died of gastric enteritis on 4 April 1866, and was aged 65. Coghills Creek is a hamlet 20 kms north of Ballarat, in good dairying country.
Death certificates are a good source of information for family historians, as they often contain details of children, residential addresses, nationality etc. Thomas’s certificate is a good case in point. His parents are named – George Abraham, and Phoebe Taylor. George Abraham’s occupation was “coach fabricator”. Thomas’s birthplace is recorded as Exeter, Devon. He is said to have lived in the Australian colonies for 24 years - Adelaide for 15 years, and Victoria for 9 years. The certificate also states that Thomas married Celia in Hastings, England, when Thomas was aged 40 (in 1841), and two children are named – Georgiana (age 25) and Amy Caroline (age 22).
It also recorded his burial at Glendaruel Cemetery, 5.5 kms to the west of Coghill’s Creek, on 6th April.
Death certificates are also notoriously unreliable. The information provided in Thomas’s certainly raises some issues, and both provides clues as to his relationship with Celia, and confuses and confounds as well.
Known facts about Celia from about 1840 onwards, and of Thomas are:
- Celia married someone called George Kennett in Sydney on 26 August 1840, when she was aged 35. There is an official record of this marriage.
- Celia had a daughter Georgiana on 6 August 1842 in Sydney, and the father is registered as George Kennett.
- Celia had a daughter Amy sometime between 1842 and 1846.
- Celia had a son Frederick in Adelaide in September 1846, and the father is registered as Thomas Taylor. The mother’s name is Celia Stubbs. Thomas is also the father on Frederick’s death certificate issued 9 weeks later.
- Celia gave evidence in a court case in Adelaide in 1854 in which she is referred to as the wife of Thomas Taylor, of Port Adelaide (source: Adelaide Observer, Saturday 25 March, 1854).
- Thomas Taylor died in Coghills Creek on 4 April 1866 and was buried 2 days later at Glendaruel Cemetery. There is no burial record for Thomas at Glendaruel Cemetery – he may have been buried as a pauper and no record kept.
- Celia and Amy were living with her son William Williams and his children in Careening Cove, Sydney, by early 1866.
- Celia’s five children by her first husband Richard Williams were aged between 20 years and five years when she married George Kennett in 1840. These children were obviously not abandoned and most likely remained in the care of Celia, although other family members (Stubbs) may have of course assisted with their care. ,
- After George KENNETT became bankrupt in 1842 he and Celia “disappeared” to South Australia to escape creditors in NSW. They set up as Mr & Mrs Taylor, adopting George’s mother’s maiden name, and remained in Adelaide until at least the end of 1846. Amy may have been born in Adelaide but not registered, and Frederick was born and died there, both his birth and death being registered.
- Sometime between 1846 and 1857 Celia & Thomas/George parted company and she returned to India, where she survived the turbulent times of the Indian Mutiny in 1857.
- In 1857 Thomas moved to Victoria and eventually settled in Coghill’s Creek.
- In 1858 Georgiana, aged only 16, married James MALTBY in Chittagong, India (now Bangladesh).
- In 1866 Thomas MALTBY, husband of Georgiana, died in India and Georgiana returned to Australia in early 1867, with her two children and her mother Celia. They were greeted on arrival in Sydney at the home of Celia’s third son, William Williams, in Careening Cove.
- In April 1866 Thomas William Taylor, who had been living in Victoria for the past 9 years, died at Coghill’s Creek and was buried a pauper.
- In 1869 Amy married Henry Alderson THOMPSON in Sydney.
Celia was 91 when she died in Melbourne in 1896. Nothing is known about her for the last forty or so years of her life.There is no actual evidence (yet) that George Kennett became Thomas Taylor. This may never be proved, or disproved. Clouding the issue is the names of Thomas Taylor’s parents as recorded on his death certificate – George Abraham and Phoebe Taylor. These also seem to be the names of George Abraham Kennett’s parents. Both George Kennett and Thomas Taylor are said to have been born in 1801.
There is no evidence that Celia and Thomas parted company sometime after the birth and premature death of their son Frederick.
There is no evidence that Celia and her two youngest daughters went to India sometime after 1846. It is however, unlikely that Georgiana would have gone to India on her own to marry there aged only 16.
There is reference in Cyrus Williams’ Journal that Celia lived in India during the Indian Rebellion (1857):
“….our household had consisted of our Grandmother, my father's mother, who had spent most of her life in India and had spent anxious times during the Mutiny…..”
It is extremely unlikely that Celia married Thomas Taylor in Hastings, Sussex in 1839, as claimed on his death certificate.
So, all in all, Celia became a woman with a past which her family may have been unaware of, or which she chose to represent to them in very particular ways. One day there may be more records available which throw additional light on Celia’s life between the death or disappearance of her first husband in India in 1835, and her own death 60 years later in Melbourne.
When Celia died in Melbourne she was resident at 160 Gipps Street. Her death was medically attributed to “extreme age, haemorrhage into brain.” Her death certificate states that she had been resident in the state of Victoria for the previous seven years. Perhaps she had been living there with Georgiana. She was buried in Kew Cemetery, Melbourne, and Georgiana was interred with her when she died in 1911.
Celia’s eight children are named on the death certificate:
James age 75
Celia dead
Robert age (67)
Emma dead
William age 63
Annie dead
Georgina age 47
Amy age 45
Her death certificate also records that she was 15 when she married Richard Williams, and 30 when she married Thomas Taylor. The latter is clearly a fabrication as it would have meant she married Thomas in 1835. There is no reference to the marriage made in 1840 with George Kennett. Nor is there any reason why there should have been a gap of seven years between the birth of the last of her child by Richard in 1835 and the birth of her next child in 1842.
Whatever happened in Celia’s life during many years of her long life we can be sure she lived an interesting and action packed life, moving between India and Australia, perhaps several times.