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young couple's first child, a girl, was born in Scotland in 1848, although we don't know where.
Christened Elizabeth Jane, she was born on 21 October 1848 - so pregnancy was not a factor
enforcing the wedding at Gretna Green.
Richard and Elizabeth then moved south and back to England, to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where
their second child, another girl, was born on 28 January 1851. She was called Mary Ann, but
known in later life as Annie. She was baptised at Newcastle's All Saints church in March; the
family were then living in Carliol Street. Richard was probably employed as an itinerant
stonemason in the construction of some public building. He could have been employed in 1851
on the construction of the High Level Bridge across the River Tyne, which would complete the
rail link between London and Edinburgh. The presence, years later, in the house of his youngest
daughter, Louisa, of a large oil painting of Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, seat of two
Dukes of Northumberland for several centuries, seems to indicate that Richard may have
worked for a time on the restoration of that Castle, which commenced after the accession of the
fourth duke in 1847.
Richard's parents and their four youngest children had emigrated from Liverpool on the Sea
Queen on 27 January 1850, a year before the birth of Mary Ann. We will never know why he
decided to follow his parents to Australia. Presumably his father, and possibly others, wrote
glowing accounts of well-paid job possibilities and a far better lifestyle. He may indeed have
responded to some advertisement specifically asking for stonemasons to come to Australia to
work, and his daughter, Louisa, would tell her grand-daughter many years later that her father
was 'brought out to work on the building of the Victorian Government House' in Melbourne.
According to the aforesaid Charles Regelsen, Richard also worked on the construction of the
Princes Bridge across the Yarra River - the present bridge was completed in 1888.
Certainly an era of extensive civic building had begun in Melbourne just before the ship carrying
Richard and his family docked at Geelong in September 1853. But why go to Geelong if
Richard had been hired to work in Melbourne? The likely reason for this was that his father and
his younger brothers and sisters were already there - with or without his father's second wife -
and could provide a base and perhaps a home, as well as the best advice.
His departure from England was probably delayed by his wife's third pregnancy and by the
difficulty of finding a suitable ship and acceptable fares. But on 3 February 1853 Elizabeth gave
birth to their first son, who was conventionally christened George William (borrowing both his
grandfathers' first names). He was born in Leith, Edinburgh's port on the Firth of Forth?
149
The family probably left Newcastle in 1852, and returned to Edinburgh, so that Elizabeth could
be with her parents for a few months, as she might never see them again. Perhaps she didn't
want to go, to be separated from her family and friends for ever and to leave her native land.
Edinburgh was a cold, grey and windy city, but it was home. Perhaps her short-tempered and
shorter husband browbeat her into submission. She had no option in any event but to submit: it
was her duty to go wherever he went, and to do what he said.
But how she must have wept when saving her various goodbyes, and how dismal the long train
journey south, taking her and her three little children, including a three-month-old baby, away
from Scotland to the west-coast English seaport of Liverpool.
They sailed on a ship called the Banker's Daughter on 19 May 1853. Weighing over 1,000
tons, she carried 380 emigrants, a third of them single women aged between 14 and 45. The
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