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Maria Morris. She was 20 and he, a stonecutter, was a few months short of his 21 st birthday.
They married in Adelaide on 22 June 1880. It was work, presumably, that had taken Thomas
to Adelaide. But the young couple were not there for long. In 1881 they were in Melbourne,
living in Richard's former residence at 108 Nicholson St, and here their first son, George Henry,
was born, on 24 August 1881. He would become the Town Clerk of the northern Melbourne
suburb of Fitzroy.
They had two other children - Elizabeth Mary, born in February 1883, and Thomas Gordon,
born in January 1889 - and although they remained in Nicholson St until 1891, after that date
Catherine Honeycombe's address changed every second year or so.
Where was Thomas? He was in South Africa. In his absence (and more of that later) Catherine,
it seems, had to earn a living to support herself and her three children. On two occasions the
street directories tell us she ran a ham and beef shop - in Brunswick St, North Fitzroy, in 1897,
and at 241 Nicholson St in 1899.
Three months after Thomas's wedding in Adelaide, his eldest brother, George William, married
in Melbourne, on 24 September 1880.
Aged 27, he painted railway carriages and lived in Seel St, Windsor. His bride was Eliza
Soutar. Born at Hotham, she was now 25, a dressmaker, and lived in Albion St, South Yarra;
and it was in Albion St that the couple would live for most of their married lives. They were
married at 7 Izett St, Prahan -'according to the usages of the Independent Denomination of
Christians.' Eliza's father, William, a Scot, was a carpenter. He would become Lord Mayor of
Melbourne in 18 .... It seems that neither set of parents attended the wedding, as it was
witnessed by Thomas Soutar, brother of the bride, and by the wife of the officiating minister.
The couple's first home was at 23 South Caroline St, South Yarra, and it was there that their
first child, and only son was born, on 13 December 1881. Named William, he would become
an accountant in later life. His only son, Robert, would be renowned as the first Honeycombe to
become a professor (of Metallurgy) and to be knighted by the Queen.
George and Eliza also had three daughters, May, Louisa (Louie) and Annie Florence (Nancy).
160
May and Nancy were members of the Australian Church and were married (in 1919 and 1923)
by the Church's founder, Charles Strong. May described herself as a 'lady' - her husband,
Charles Fox, was a 'boot clicker1. Nancy's husband, James Williams, was a 'stock buyer1; she
was a milliner.
Charles Strong was a famous man. Originally a Presbyterian minister, born in 1844 in Ayrshire,
he upset Scottish elders in Melbourne with his support of socialist and pacifist ideals and
organisations. He was anti-war and anti-conscription and much concerned with workers'
morals, education and health. Tall, pale, charming, mild and dignified, he founded the Australian
Church as a free religious fellowship in November 1885; he died while on holiday in Lome after
a fall, when he was 98.
May was married at the Australian Church's temporary home in Armadale, Nancy at the
Church's main edifice at 19 Russell St. All three of George Honeycombe's daughters were older
than their husbands, and all three claimed, when they married, to be younger than they were.
The third of Richard's sons to marry was the youngest, Jack, on 15 February 1883. This
wedding, by license, took place at St Luke's Parsonage (C of E) in North Carlton and was
performed with the written consent of the bride's father, a baker. She was 20, a 'machinist' born
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