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Seeking to substantiate the legend, I had assumed that this William Robert had also emigrated -
but when? And did his wife, Ernma, go with him? This assumption was supported by the fact
that a William Honeycombe was recorded in Bendigo as having lived there in 1856. But he was
a miner. This wasn't a problem, however, as William Robert, the carpenter in England, could
have been caught up in the Victorian gold-rush and gone goldmining in
Bendigo. And it was possible, if this Bendigo William was William Robert the carpenter and
died before July 1856, that his widow, Emma, could have remarried in December 1856 on her
supposed return to England and Bristol. Emma did in fact remarry then. She probably never left
Bristol. For no record has been found that confirms that either she or William Robert ever
emigrated to Australia. And I very much doubt, all things considered, that they did.
But was this William, the Bendigo miner, the same man as another William, a stonemason,
whom I knew had resided in Melbourne in 1851 and in Geelong in 1854?
The difficulty in reconciling these three Williams was that the first, William Robert, was a
carpenter. He and William the stonemason might have turned into temporary gold-miners in the
gold-rush. But William the miner might have been always such, perhaps the brother of a certain
Samuel Honeycombe, a gold-miner descended from another branch of the Calstock
Honeycombes, who I already knew had lived in Bendigo in the 1870s/80s.
Another legend passed on by the aunts said that the parents of the Richard and the John {and
William Robert) had travelled out to Australia to visit their children and had been drowned in a
shipwreck on the homeward voyage. This was possible, as the deaths of these parents, William
and Elizabeth Honeycombe, are unrecorded in England. They might indeed have died at sea.
On the other hand, they might have died somewhere else. In Australia perhaps.
Then, in that same January 1988, I came across two unexpected and very useful pieces of
information.
Aunt Lil, in Melbourne, revealed that it had not been Richard's parents who had drowned on
the voyage home, but his wife's father, George Ryder. One parent had died, not two, and he
had not been a Honeycombe.
I also discovered a chance reference to a 'Mr W Honeycombe' in Geelong in 1868, evidently a
relative of Mrs Jane Mountjoy, who was Richard's older married sister.
Who was this William? Was it William the stonemason, who was known to have lived for a time
in Melbourne and Geelong?
To cut a long story and much speculation short, let me conclude, as I did after reviewing all the
possibilities and ail the facts, that there was but one plausible candidate for William the
stonemason, and he was the William, a stonemason, who was the father of Jane Mountjoy, and
of Richard and John, and of William Robert - as well as of several other children, among whom
were another boy, Henry, and two girls, Elizabeth and Martha, all of whom were born in
England.
Leave aside for the moment William Robert the carpenter and William the Bendigo miner. More
about them later.
Suffice to say now that although William Robert probably never emigrated, the aunts' legend
contains a truth, that three brothers did come to Australia, and they were Richard and John -
and Henry, William the stonemason's fourth surviving son.
Documents and records also showed that a William and an Elizabeth Honeycombe had died in
Australia, and that six of their children lived, married and/or died there - Jane, Richard, Henry,
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