A royal connection??

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks | Week 10 - Strong

Ellen Boyne ca 1900

#52ancestors

Writing about a strong woman on International Women’s Day seems very apt. I started this piece about my 3xgr-grandmother Ellen Boyne for the Week 1 challenge and didn’t get it finished, so I’ll recycle it for this week’s post as there is no doubt she was a woman of great fortitude. She was also the ancestor that first sparked my interest in family history.

Family folklore told to me by my great-great aunt Else (Ellen’s grand-daughter) states that ‘Ellen was from a house of royalty of Boyne Castle, Scotland’ and purportedly the illegitimate child of Lord Boyne and the Countess of Skyfield, who subsequently married, thereby legitimizing Ellen’s birth.

Ellen allegedly emigrated to Australia on the ship ‘Bride’ to defy her family and escape her illegitimacy. In an alternate version she was shipped to Australia to rid the family of an embarrassment. Else also recalled the local postmaster in Ararat trying to get Ellen to accept registered mail from Lloyds of London. The presumption was that this had to do with an inheritance, however, according to Else’s memory, Ellen flatly refused to accept the correspondence. Other than her emigration to Australia, none of the above has been able to be proved or disproved.

What we do know is that Ellen arrived in Australia in 1852 as a 27 year old domestic servant. The ‘Bride’ had departed Plymouth in 1851 under the seamanship of Captain Natrass and docked in Hobson’s Bay (Victoria) 77 days later on 31 January 1852 (quite a fast trip for the times). The ship delivered a cargo of much needed emigrant workers to the Port Phillip colony, all of whom were apparently quickly hired. Ellen was hired two weeks after her arrival by O. Brown, Esq., of St. Kilda for the sum of £20 plus rations for three months. Her employer was quite possibly Octavius Browne, who is described as a ‘highly-esteemed merchant’. In 1852, he had five children under the age of 7 years and it appears that his wife Martha was pregnant so some domestic help would appear to have been much needed.

On June 11, 1852, four months after her arrival, Ellen married Charles Plant at Scots Church in Melbourne. Else believed that Ellen and Charles met aboard ship, however, no trace of Charles on board the ‘Bride’ could be found. Not surprising, as it turned out he came to Australia as a convict (something Auntie Else vehemently denied). However, witnesses to the marriage, Richard Wedge and Sarah Maria (nee Gordon) Melhuish, were aboard the ‘Bride’ with Ellen and married upon their arrival in the colony (whether they met on board or knew each other beforehand has not been established). Another element of the story of Ellen’s emigration is that because she was a lady she had to be chaperoned on the voyage to Australia as anything else would have been inappropriate. It is suggested that Richard and Sarah may have been these chaperones.

Not quite 10 months after the wedding, Ellen and Charles’ first son James was born in June 1853. At the time the couple were living in a tent at the top end of Collins Street (Melbourne). They then moved to the Victorian goldfields where they had six more children. Of their seven children, four died in infancy from fairly common (and today easily treatable) illnesses. The family lived in various goldfields locations before purchasing land at Crowlands/Eversley. During this time, Ellen was to bear another six children. Of the seven children, only two lived to adulthood, the others dying as infants or toddlers from fairly common (and now easily treatable) illnesses. Ellen was purportedly well-known as a midwife in the district, although no evidence of this has been found to date.

The marriage was apparently not an easy one with Charles being described by Else as ‘a worthless drunk’, which is probably something she heard Else or her mother say. However, Else also described Ellen as ‘pigheaded’. She purportedly worked as a midwife, however, her son James took responsibility for a large amount of the care and support of his mother and sister while they were growing up. In her later years, Ellen lived in the homes of her daughters in the Nhill district of Western Victoria. By this time, Ellen was receiving a pension and gave financial help to the family of her daughter Margaret (who was the mother of Else and my great-grandmother Ellen). Margaret’s husband Jack had a tendency to ‘fritter money away on gambling and drink’ and it is likely that Margaret relied upon Ellen’s assistance to provide for her family.

Ellen died in Nhill at the home of her daughter Mary Sanders in 1920 at the age of 91 years. Else remembers Ellen being bedridden in her later years and having very wrinkled, loose skin (Else said she used to pinch the skin on the back of Ellen’s hands to see how far up she could stretch it). Charles had long since vanished and his movements and whereabouts during this time have been hard to trace. It appears that he was admitted to the Rookwood Asylum in 1897 under the name Charles Crinks (possibly his mother’s maiden name) where he died in 1904.

Based on the ages listed in shipping, marriage and death records, her date of birth is in the range of 1825-1829. Neither Ellen’s marriage or death certificate provide any clues to her parentage. The birth records of her children provide the best clues to her birthplace, with four listing Inverness-shire, Scotland and two including a town (Nairn and Forres, which are about 10 miles apart). These towns are also only about 40 miles from Boyne Castle, which was the seat of the Earls of Seafield. A Helen Boyne appears in the 1841 census as a 15 year old female servant with the Chalmers family in Grants Close, High Street, Forres. In the 1851 census an Ellen Boyne appears as a 26 year old house servant in the home of Army Captain William McDonald in Lomond Street, Helensburgh, County of Dumbarton. This is a 150 miles south from Forres, however, her birthplace is listed as Forres, Morayshire which suggests this might be the same person listed in 1841. Perhaps she had already determined to emigrate and was making her south to embark.

While these pieces add up and have some parallels to the family folklore, there’s still not substantial enough evidence to prove or disprove the theories or establish her origins. Regardless of the circumstances of her start in life, I think it is safe to say that Ellen was clearly capable and resilient, travelling as a single woman halfway around the world to forge a new life, then enduring the hardships of life on the goldfields. Her marriage was not a successful or happy one and she suffered the loss of so many of her babies. But she also successfully raised three children to adulthood who married and had children, lived into her 90s, and is survived by many descendants around Australia. This took great courage and endurance and there’s no doubt that she, like so many others who lived similar lives in this era, was a very strong woman. But, alas, probably not a royal connection in our family tree.