The Adelaide Son
1826–1881
The third of the sons, and the one the record loses. Nothing is known of him for the thirty-eight years between the emigrant ship and his wedding — and then he is at Bowden in Adelaide, marrying Emma Saxton at nearly fifty, a labourer with a police-court fine to his name, dead five years later and leaving three daughters under five.
Ebenezer George Jeffries was the fifth of the nine children and the third of the sons. He was born on 2 December 1826, on the Bristol side of the family’s life rather than in Cornwall, and was christened at St Andrew’s, Clifton, the following spring — the youngest of the five children Samuel and Anne brought to the font together on one morning in March 1827.1 He was the “Ebenezer, 12” of the Layton’s bounty list, eleven years old when the ship came up the coast in January 1838 with measles in her steerage and about seventy of the emigrant children dead on the passage.2 After that the record simply loses him.
For thirty-eight years there is nothing — no colonial marriage, no children, no address, no trade. Where Ebenezer George was between 1838 and 1876, and what he did, has not been found. He reappears, already a man of forty-nine, on 19 February 1876, when he married Emma Saxton at his own house at Bowden, on the north-western edge of Adelaide; the marriage was registered in the Hindmarsh district, and the entry names his father as Samuel Jeffries — the thread back to the Layton.3 Emma was much the younger, a native of Launceston in Tasmania and a daughter of John Saxton.4 As far as the record shows it was a first marriage, for a man of nearly fifty.
Bowden set him down among his own people. His widowed mother, Anne, was living in the same suburb and died there — at Fullarton, her residence given as Bowden — in 1885; his sister Ann Douglas, widowed in Sydney by a quarry accident, ended her life in Drayton Street, Bowden, in 1891.9 Ebenezer George is the earliest of the three to be firmly placed there, in 1876. Which of them drew the others to that one corner of Adelaide is not known — but the family’s South Australian chapter, long only half-explained, runs through his house.
He was a labourer, and the single glimpse of the man comes seven months after the wedding: in September 1876 the Adelaide Police Court fined him ten shillings and costs — two pounds four in all — for assaulting Ephraim Solly, a grocer.5 Three daughters were born at Bowden over the next four years — Edith Ann in 1877, Georgina Emma in 1878, Mary Jane in 1880 — the clerks entering their father by turns as “Ebenezer George,” “George,” and “Ephraim George.”6 He did not see them grow. Ebenezer George Jeffries died at Bowden on 1 May 1881, aged fifty-four; the youngest girl was eight months old.7 He was buried at Hindmarsh — the cemetery that already held his sister’s infant daughter Ruth Wilton, and that would take his mother and Ann Douglas in the years to come.79
Emma was left with three children under five, and she stayed at Bowden for the rest of her life. In December 1888 the South Australian Police Gazette recorded a nearly-new galvanised washing tub taken overnight from her yard in Drayton Street — the same street in which her sister-in-law Ann Douglas was then living.8 She married again, to a man named Nicholls, and it was from Nicholls households that two of her daughters married in 1900; her eldest grandson was christened Wilhelm Heinrich Saxon Weger, carrying her maiden name down a generation.810 She died in the Adelaide Hospital on 16 September 1929, an old-age pensioner of Gilbert Street, Bowden, and was registered as Emma Nicholls — forty-eight years after Ebenezer George.8
The next generation
Ebenezer George Jeffries, laborer, was fined 10s. and costs, £2 4s. in all, for assaulting Ephraim Solly, grocer. Mr. W. G. Downer prosecuted.
The thirty-eight-year gap. Nothing at all has been found for Ebenezer George between the Layton’s arrival in January 1838 and his marriage in February 1876 — not a New South Wales record, not a South Australian one, nothing to say when he crossed to Adelaide or why. He was somewhere for the whole of his twenties, thirties and forties, and the record is silent.
Emma Saxton. Her baptism is at Launceston, Tasmania, a daughter of John and Maria Saxton, but her year of birth is not fixed and it is not known whether the 1876 marriage was a first one for her. Her second husband — the Nicholls she was buried under — has not been identified, nor whether he was any relation of the Arthur Jabez Nicholls who married her daughter Georgina.
The Hindmarsh headstone. The cemetery record gives Ebenezer George’s birth year as 1830; his baptism and his age at death both point to 1826, and the memorial date should not be carried forward.
The Attunga namesake. An “Ebenezer George Jeffries, of Attunga, labourer,” near Tamworth, was declared bankrupt in the New South Wales courts in 1928. He is not this man, who died in 1881; the name recurs among the up-country Jeffries descended from the eldest brother, Samuel, and the 1928 bankrupt is one of them.
All three were born at Bowden and all three married in the district. Two of them married in 1900 from houses of the Nicholls family; the third married a Nicholls herself.
1877–1961
Married Wilhelm Weger
The eldest. She married Wilhelm Martin Ludwig Weger on 26 December 1900, at the residence of Mr Nicholls, Bowden.10 Two children are recorded — a son christened Wilhelm Heinrich Saxon Weger, keeping his grandmother’s maiden name, and a daughter, Edith Laurence, who married a Whiley.10 Edith Ann was buried at Hindmarsh, in the ground where her father lay.10
1878–1909
Died at thirty
The middle daughter, and the only one of the family whose face survives.10 She married Arthur Jabez Nicholls on 9 April 1907, from her married sister Mary Jane’s house at Bowden on the Hill, and by 1909 was living at Franklin Harbour, on the west side of the gulf.10 She died at Adelaide on 8 August 1909, thirty years old, and was buried at Hindmarsh.10
1880–1956
Married George Keltie
The youngest — eight months old when her father died.7 She married George Keltie on 25 June 1900, at the residence of Josiah Nicholls, Bowden, the register entering her father as “Ephraim George Jeffries.”610 She lived to 1956 and was buried at the North Road Cemetery, Nailsworth.10
The Record
Baptism, Clifton, 1827
Parish register of St Andrew, Clifton, Gloucestershire, baptisms 1827 — entry no. 608, Ebenezer George, son of Samuel and Anne “Jefferies” of Clifton, carpenter, born 2 December 1826, baptised 18 March 1827 by James Taylor; the last of the five children (entries 604–608) christened together that morning. The shared christening, and the family’s move from Cornwall to Bristol before it, are described in the companion chapter above, “Five children christened in a morning”; the Bristol birthplace follows from the family already being at Bristol by 1821 (Ann Douglas’s branch page, reference 1).
Emigration — the barque Layton, 1837–38
State Records NSW, Index to Bounty Immigrants per Layton, 1838 — among the family of Samuel Jefferies, house carpenter and joiner: “Ebenezer, 12.” The Layton sailed from Bristol on 8 September 1837 and reached Sydney in January 1838, measles having killed about seventy of the emigrant children on the passage; the voyage is set out in full in the companion chapter above, “Measles in the Channel.”
Marriage, Bowden, 1876
South Australian marriage registration (GenealogySA), Hindmarsh district, book/page 106/424 — Ebenezer George Jeffries and Emma Saxton, married 19 February 1876 at the residence of Mr Jeffries, Bowden; the groom’s father recorded as Samuel Jeffries. That father’s name is what identifies the groom with the Layton child, there being no other Ebenezer George Jeffries of the right age in the Australian colonies. An Ancestry abstract of the same entry gives the place as “Res of Mr Jeffries, Bowden.”
Emma Saxton
Tasmanian baptism register — Emma Sexton, baptised at Launceston, daughter of John Sexton and Maria (Family History Library film 992652); the surname is written both Saxton and Sexton. Her year of birth has not been established. After Ebenezer George’s death she married a man named Nicholls and was afterwards known as Emma Nicholls (reference 8).
The 1876 assault
Express and Telegraph (Adelaide), 4 September 1876, page 2, “Police Court — Adelaide,” before Mr S. Beddome, P.M. — “Ebenezer George Jeffries, laborer, was fined 10s. and costs, £2 4s. in all, for assaulting Ephraim Solly, grocer. Mr. W. G. Downer prosecuted” (Trove nla.news-article208306417).
The daughters’ births, 1877–1880
South Australian birth registrations (GenealogySA), Hindmarsh district, father entered variously as “Ebenezor George,” “Ebenezer George” and — for the youngest — “Ephraim George” Jeffries: Edith Ann, 1877, book/page 181/185; Georgina Emma, born 19 September 1878, 210/112; Mary Jane, born 26 August 1880, 248/264.
Death, Bowden, 1881
South Australian death registration (GenealogySA) — Ebenezer Jeffries, of Bowden, died 1 May 1881, aged 54 (birth about 1827), registered Hindmarsh district, book/page 111/154. Buried Hindmarsh Cemetery, where the memorial gives — in error — a birth year of 1830. The age at death agrees with the December 1826 baptism (reference 1).
Emma as widow, 1888–1929
South Australian Police Gazette, 26 December 1888, page 207, “Stealing in Dwellings” — “On the night of the 17th instant, from the premises of Emma Jeffries, at Drayton-street, Bowden, a large round galvanized iron washing tub (nearly new), with flaw in seam.” Adelaide Hospital, Register of Patients, 1929 — Emma Nicholls, of Gilbert Street, Bowden-on-the-Hill, old-age pensioner, admitted 26 August 1929, died 16 September 1929. South Australian death index — Emma Nicholls, 17 September 1929, book/page 515/225. Drayton Street was also where her sister-in-law Ann Douglas Wilton died in 1891 (reference 9).
The mother and sister at Bowden
Anne Jeffries, Ebenezer George’s mother, died on 22 September 1885 at Fullarton, her residence given as Bowden, registered in the Hindmarsh district (companion chapter above, reference 9). His sister Ann Douglas Wilton died on 25 September 1891 in Drayton Street, Bowden, and was buried at Hindmarsh Cemetery (Ann Douglas’s branch page, reference 11); her infant daughter Ruth Wilton had been buried at Hindmarsh as early as 1849.
The daughters’ marriages and deaths
South Australian registrations (GenealogySA) and cemetery records. Edith Ann Jeffries married Wilhelm Martin Ludwig Weger on 26 December 1900, at the residence of Mr Nicholls, Bowden (Adelaide district, 205/1138); as Edith Ann Weger she died 6 March 1961 and was buried at Hindmarsh Cemetery, her children given as Wilhelm Heinrich Saxon Weger and Edith Laurence Whiley. Georgina Emma Jeffries married Arthur Jabez Nicholls on 9 April 1907, at the residence of Mrs Keltie, Bowden on the Hill (Hindmarsh, 231/311) — Mrs Keltie being her own sister Mary Jane; she died at Adelaide on 8 August 1909, aged 30, then of Franklin Harbour (342/373), and was buried at Hindmarsh. Mary Jane Jeffries married George Keltie on 25 June 1900, at the residence of Josiah Nicholls, Bowden (Hindmarsh, 203/1366); as Mary Jane Keltie she died 10 November 1956 and was buried at North Road Cemetery, Nailsworth.
The Attunga namesake, 1928
New South Wales Government Gazette, 27 January 1928 (sequestration order, on the debtor’s own petition) and 3 August 1928 (single meeting of creditors, at Tamworth) — “Re Ebenezer George Jeffries, of Attunga, labourer” (Trove nla.news-article223010229 and nla.news-article219951958). Attunga lies just north of Tamworth, in the district settled by the descendants of the eldest brother, Samuel jr, among whom the name Ebenezer recurs; this bankrupt is one of them, not the Ebenezer George of this page, who had been dead forty-seven years.