William WILLIAMS 1833 - 1915
William “Willie” Williams was Cyrus’s father. He was born on 17 July 1833 in Mymensingh in the Bengal Presidency of India in 1833, when the Honourable East India Company was still the ruling force for the sub-continent. Mymensingh (Bengali: ময়মনসিংহ) is one of the districts of Dhaka division, Bangladesh. Mymensingh town is the district headquarters. At the time of William's birth Bangladesh was part of India, becoming a separate country after Partition in 1947.
Willie was the fifth child, and third son of Celia and Richard Williams. His experiences and early life in India are unknown. He may have only lived in India for a couple of years as according to his death certificate he lived in New South Wales for 20 years, Brisbane for 40 years, and Western Australia for 20 years. This information was probably provided by some family member, and may not have been absolutely accurate, but it does suggest that the Williams family moved to Australia sometime between 1835 (when his father Richard Williams) seems to have vanished) and 1840 (when his mother remarried in Sydney).
The first life event for which there is a record is William's marriage in October 1856. William was 23 and his bride, Annie Fitz DOYLE, was 14 months older having been born on 21st May 1832. Annie was the daughter of a large and successful farming family who were amongst early settlers/developers of agriculture in the Hawkesbury and Hunter Valley north of Sydney. Annie’s immediate family however farmed an area on the lower reaches of the Hawkesbury River[1], close to Wiseman’s Ferry[2]. Her family lived in Dargle Cottage which was built in 1831 and is still occupied today. The initials of Annie’s father -John Frederick Doyle - can still be seen on the keystone of the arch above the main door to the cottage.
It is entirely possible that William and Annie met because he worked for a shipping company which served communities up and down the Hawkesbury River. According to their marriage certificate William was an accountant, but he managed a steam navigation company for some time and may have been serving some time on board various vessels plying coastal and riverine trade around Sydney in his younger years. By 1858 he was Secretary to the Clarence and Richmond Rivers Steam Navigation Company.
The marriage in 1856 took place in the Church of England School House of the Colo Branch, at Lower Portland (where the Colo River flows into the Hawkesbury River). According to the information on the marriage certificate William was living in St. Lawrence’s Parish, Sydney at the time. This Parish is one of the four small parishes in the Sydney city area and covers most of the current CBD. Perhaps William lived with his grandmother Esther Spencer in Phillips Street! His father Richard’s occupation is given as Captain HEIC.[3]
Annie’s father was noted on the marriage certificate to be a “landholder and grazier”. Witnesses to the marriage were Annie’s older brother, also called John Frederick, and a younger sister Ellen Emily. The officiating minister was Thomas Horton.[4]
Eleven months later William and Annie had their first child, a daughter they named Lucy, born on 3rd September 1857. The birth was registered in Pyrmont, Sydney. Pyrmont is the area of Sydney east of Darling Harbour.
Pyrmont was once a vital component of Sydney's industrial waterfront, with wharves, shipbuilding yards, factories and woolstores. It was the site of quarries from a fairly early in Sydney’s settlement because of the quality of the sandstone which was used in many of the most significant buildings in Sydney.[5]
Three years later, in August 1859, their second child, a son, was born – Harold Washington Williams. He too was born in Pyrmont. By the time Cyrus was born, another three years later, in 1862, the family had moved across the harbour to what was then called Blues Point, the harbour end of McMahons Point, opposite where the Opera House now sits, and under the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
“Blues Point was named after Billy Blue, a convict who arrived in Sydney on the Minorca on 14 December 1801, transported for stealing a bag of sugar. Physically imposing, he was described as a "strapping Jamaican Negro 'a very Hercules in proportion' with a bright eye and a jocular wit". He claimed to have served with the British Army in the American War of Independence. When he arrived in 1801 he only had two years of his sentence left and he was soon working on the harbour with boats and selling oysters. His friendly manner and humorous conversation made him popular and he became a notable local character. He married English-born convict Elizabeth Williams in 1805, and in 1807, was the only person licensed to ply a ferry across the harbour. Governor Macquarie named him "The Old Commodore" and he ran his ferry dressed in a blue naval officer’s coat and top hat. His ferry service grew to a fleet of 11 vessels, and in 1817, Governor Macquarie granted Billy Blue 80 acres (320,000 m2) at what is now Blues Point.”[6]
In February 1865 Annie died, leaving William a grieving widower with 3 small dependent children. His grief for his wife is evident in the inscription on her splendid tombstone in what is now the St Thomas Rest Park, in West Street, Crow’s Nest, North Sydney viz.
To the memory of Annie Fitz
The beloved and deeply regretted wife of
William Williams
Whose pure and guileless spirit was released for the loved form
Here committed to the dust Friday the 17th day of February 1865
The St Thomas Rest Park is the site of the first cemetery on Sydney's North Shore, and was the cemetery of St Thomas’ Anglican Church. The land for the Cemetery was donated to the Anglican Parish of St Leonards in 1845 by the prominent landowner and merchant, Alexander Berry, whose wife was a sister of Edward Wollstonecraft. [7] In 1967 the Cemetery was handed over to North Sydney Council by an Act of Parliament granting the area as 'community land' and allowing its conversion from a cemetery into a Rest Park. The new park opened in 1974. Many monuments and headstones are located within the sandstone-edged historic precincts while others are scattered around the Rest Park.
Annie’s tombstone is one of those that remained in situ, and is in a prominent position close to the Berry tomb. It comprises a rectangular chest tomb with a “fully three-dimensional sculpture of a veiled woman weeping over an urn”[8] facing the side with the above inscription. It is a poignant symbol of the way William felt about the death of his wife, the mother of his three children. A notice of her death was published in the Sydney Morning Herald the following Monday, 20th February:
"At her late residence, Sharp's Bay, North Shore, in the 32nd year of her age, Annie Fitz, the dearly beloved wife of William Williams."
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawkesbury_River
[2] Named after Solomon Wiseman, a former convict (1778–1838), who received a land grant in the area from Governor Macquarie in 1817. Wiseman established a ferry service on the Hawkesbury River in 1827 for the transport of produce and provisions to the convicts building the Great North Road and was known to many as King of the Hawkesbury. The ferry today is a vehicular cable ferry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisemans_Ferry
[3] Honourable East India Company
[4] Pages on the Doyle family will be added to this website sometime in the next few months i.e. March-August 2015
[5] Extracted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrmont,_New_South_Wales
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blues_Point#cite_note-Warne-1
[7] Edward Wollstonecraft (1783-1832) was a successful businessman in early colonial Australia. He was the nephew of the early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and cousin to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. He was buried in the Sydney Burial Ground in Elizabeth St. His remains were later moved to a tomb constructed by Alexander Berry on the death of Berry's wife, and Wollstonecraft's sister Elizabeth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Wollstonecraft
[8] Life and Death on the North Side: A History of St Thomas’ Church & Cemetery, North Sydney, by Chris Morgan, published by Staunton (sic) Library, North Sydney Municipal Council, 1099, page 44.
William “Willie” Williams was Cyrus’s father. He was born on 17 July 1833 in Mymensingh in the Bengal Presidency of India in 1833, when the Honourable East India Company was still the ruling force for the sub-continent. Mymensingh (Bengali: ময়মনসিংহ) is one of the districts of Dhaka division, Bangladesh. Mymensingh town is the district headquarters. At the time of William's birth Bangladesh was part of India, becoming a separate country after Partition in 1947.
Willie was the fifth child, and third son of Celia and Richard Williams. His experiences and early life in India are unknown. He may have only lived in India for a couple of years as according to his death certificate he lived in New South Wales for 20 years, Brisbane for 40 years, and Western Australia for 20 years. This information was probably provided by some family member, and may not have been absolutely accurate, but it does suggest that the Williams family moved to Australia sometime between 1835 (when his father Richard Williams) seems to have vanished) and 1840 (when his mother remarried in Sydney).
The first life event for which there is a record is William's marriage in October 1856. William was 23 and his bride, Annie Fitz DOYLE, was 14 months older having been born on 21st May 1832. Annie was the daughter of a large and successful farming family who were amongst early settlers/developers of agriculture in the Hawkesbury and Hunter Valley north of Sydney. Annie’s immediate family however farmed an area on the lower reaches of the Hawkesbury River[1], close to Wiseman’s Ferry[2]. Her family lived in Dargle Cottage which was built in 1831 and is still occupied today. The initials of Annie’s father -John Frederick Doyle - can still be seen on the keystone of the arch above the main door to the cottage.
It is entirely possible that William and Annie met because he worked for a shipping company which served communities up and down the Hawkesbury River. According to their marriage certificate William was an accountant, but he managed a steam navigation company for some time and may have been serving some time on board various vessels plying coastal and riverine trade around Sydney in his younger years. By 1858 he was Secretary to the Clarence and Richmond Rivers Steam Navigation Company.
The marriage in 1856 took place in the Church of England School House of the Colo Branch, at Lower Portland (where the Colo River flows into the Hawkesbury River). According to the information on the marriage certificate William was living in St. Lawrence’s Parish, Sydney at the time. This Parish is one of the four small parishes in the Sydney city area and covers most of the current CBD. Perhaps William lived with his grandmother Esther Spencer in Phillips Street! His father Richard’s occupation is given as Captain HEIC.[3]
Annie’s father was noted on the marriage certificate to be a “landholder and grazier”. Witnesses to the marriage were Annie’s older brother, also called John Frederick, and a younger sister Ellen Emily. The officiating minister was Thomas Horton.[4]
Eleven months later William and Annie had their first child, a daughter they named Lucy, born on 3rd September 1857. The birth was registered in Pyrmont, Sydney. Pyrmont is the area of Sydney east of Darling Harbour.
Pyrmont was once a vital component of Sydney's industrial waterfront, with wharves, shipbuilding yards, factories and woolstores. It was the site of quarries from a fairly early in Sydney’s settlement because of the quality of the sandstone which was used in many of the most significant buildings in Sydney.[5]
Three years later, in August 1859, their second child, a son, was born – Harold Washington Williams. He too was born in Pyrmont. By the time Cyrus was born, another three years later, in 1862, the family had moved across the harbour to what was then called Blues Point, the harbour end of McMahons Point, opposite where the Opera House now sits, and under the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
“Blues Point was named after Billy Blue, a convict who arrived in Sydney on the Minorca on 14 December 1801, transported for stealing a bag of sugar. Physically imposing, he was described as a "strapping Jamaican Negro 'a very Hercules in proportion' with a bright eye and a jocular wit". He claimed to have served with the British Army in the American War of Independence. When he arrived in 1801 he only had two years of his sentence left and he was soon working on the harbour with boats and selling oysters. His friendly manner and humorous conversation made him popular and he became a notable local character. He married English-born convict Elizabeth Williams in 1805, and in 1807, was the only person licensed to ply a ferry across the harbour. Governor Macquarie named him "The Old Commodore" and he ran his ferry dressed in a blue naval officer’s coat and top hat. His ferry service grew to a fleet of 11 vessels, and in 1817, Governor Macquarie granted Billy Blue 80 acres (320,000 m2) at what is now Blues Point.”[6]
In February 1865 Annie died, leaving William a grieving widower with 3 small dependent children. His grief for his wife is evident in the inscription on her splendid tombstone in what is now the St Thomas Rest Park, in West Street, Crow’s Nest, North Sydney viz.
To the memory of Annie Fitz
The beloved and deeply regretted wife of
William Williams
Whose pure and guileless spirit was released for the loved form
Here committed to the dust Friday the 17th day of February 1865
The St Thomas Rest Park is the site of the first cemetery on Sydney's North Shore, and was the cemetery of St Thomas’ Anglican Church. The land for the Cemetery was donated to the Anglican Parish of St Leonards in 1845 by the prominent landowner and merchant, Alexander Berry, whose wife was a sister of Edward Wollstonecraft. [7] In 1967 the Cemetery was handed over to North Sydney Council by an Act of Parliament granting the area as 'community land' and allowing its conversion from a cemetery into a Rest Park. The new park opened in 1974. Many monuments and headstones are located within the sandstone-edged historic precincts while others are scattered around the Rest Park.
Annie’s tombstone is one of those that remained in situ, and is in a prominent position close to the Berry tomb. It comprises a rectangular chest tomb with a “fully three-dimensional sculpture of a veiled woman weeping over an urn”[8] facing the side with the above inscription. It is a poignant symbol of the way William felt about the death of his wife, the mother of his three children. A notice of her death was published in the Sydney Morning Herald the following Monday, 20th February:
"At her late residence, Sharp's Bay, North Shore, in the 32nd year of her age, Annie Fitz, the dearly beloved wife of William Williams."
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawkesbury_River
[2] Named after Solomon Wiseman, a former convict (1778–1838), who received a land grant in the area from Governor Macquarie in 1817. Wiseman established a ferry service on the Hawkesbury River in 1827 for the transport of produce and provisions to the convicts building the Great North Road and was known to many as King of the Hawkesbury. The ferry today is a vehicular cable ferry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisemans_Ferry
[3] Honourable East India Company
[4] Pages on the Doyle family will be added to this website sometime in the next few months i.e. March-August 2015
[5] Extracted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrmont,_New_South_Wales
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blues_Point#cite_note-Warne-1
[7] Edward Wollstonecraft (1783-1832) was a successful businessman in early colonial Australia. He was the nephew of the early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and cousin to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. He was buried in the Sydney Burial Ground in Elizabeth St. His remains were later moved to a tomb constructed by Alexander Berry on the death of Berry's wife, and Wollstonecraft's sister Elizabeth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Wollstonecraft
[8] Life and Death on the North Side: A History of St Thomas’ Church & Cemetery, North Sydney, by Chris Morgan, published by Staunton (sic) Library, North Sydney Municipal Council, 1099, page 44.