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wondered how he was.
Her other younger brother, Henry Honeycombe, as well as her much younger sister, Martha,
who may have lodged with Jane, both caused her some grief around this time.
Henry, who had followed his father's trade of stonemason, had contracted Bright's Disease, and
died on 12 July 1860 in Geelong Hospital.
His mother's name is not given on his death certificate - an error, surely, as the informant,
Lawrence Mountjoy (who gave his occupation as 'wheelwright'), must have known his wife's
mother's Christian name. Henry's age is given as 24. He was in fact 26, having been baptised at
llsington in Devon in March 1834. He never married, and his burial place is unknown.
Nine months earlier, Martha had disgraced herself - just as her older sister had done in England
- by giving birth to an illegitimate baby boy, on 6 October 1859.
Martha was 19 then and was probably a servant or lodger on the farm of Charles Chapman at
Chtpstone Dale in the village of Mulgrave, a few miles southeast of Melbourne. The baby, born
at Mulgrave, was christened Alfred Jesse Honeycombe, although the father's name was given
on the birth certificate as 'Charles Chapman, farmer, 40.'
Was the baby the result of an infatuation, seduction, or rape? But if the latter, family history was
not repeated further, as Martha and Chapman, a 43-year-old Irishman, married two years later,
in October 1861, at the Registrars Office by Princes Bridge in Melbourne. The marriage
certificate reveals that both the bride and groom were then living in Little Bourke St West.
Chapman, who was born in Drogheda (according to Alfred Jesse's birth certificate), described
his occupation as 'contractor', and he told the regi$trar his father, James Chapman, was a 'navy
captain'. A widower, he already had two children to support.
Martha would provide him with three more, in addition to Alfred Jesse. What happened to her
thereafter in Victoria is unknown.
This is the second time that a Chapman has been associated with the Honeycombes. On the
Lady McNaghten, sailing with William Honeycombe, his wife and children, were G Chapman
and his wife - she gave birth on the voyage out.
Did these Chapmans and the Honeycombes become friends? Was Charles Chapman a
relation? Could he even have been G Chapman - G a misprint for C?
Another Chapman, a woman who had married a Chapman, enters the Honeycombe family
history many years later and far to the north - in Queensland, at Charters Towers. For a time,
Johanna Chapman became the surrogate mother of the youngest children of Martha Chapman's
young brother, John.
There is no record of William Honeycombe's youngest son, John Honeycombe, in Geelong, He
would have been 19 in 1861. But by this time, when Martha married, John was probably on
some gold-field: gold-mining became his life. He is not heard of in Geelong - or anywhere else -
for over 30 years.
128
15. Lome and the Mountjoys
A map of Highton in18B1 shows that the farms adjacent to that of Lawrence Mountjoy and
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