Wesleyan Rites, Catholic Ground
Stephen Wesley Robens
1862–1945
Named for the brother who died nine years before he was born. He married into an Irish Catholic family in a Wesleyan ceremony, and his wife and several of his children were buried under Catholic rites.
- Born
- 28 June 1862 · Surry Hills
- Died
- 23 December 1945 · Lidcombe
- Married
- Kate O’Neill (1860–1911); Elizabeth Pope (m. 1931)
- Trade
- Clerk, warehouseman, then draper
- Lived
- 83 years
Born on 28 June 1862 at Surry Hills. His father was then still working as a mason, some months before his appointment as the first missionary of the Sydney City Mission.1 The birth registration is unusually useful: it confirms his parents’ marriage as 1838 at Hastings, matching the parish register, and records Stephen Wesley as the couple’s eighth child, following seven girls and one boy, of whom one had already died.1
That boy was his own elder brother Stephen, dead in infancy in 1853, nine years before this birth. He was named for him, and he outlived every one of his brothers and sisters.
The next generation
Children
- Stephen Oliver (1885–1962)
- Wesley John (1887–1953) — AIF, 3rd and 55th Battalions
- Ellis Thomas (1889–1897) — died at eight
- Vera Kate
- Reginald Joseph
- Ernest Neill
- Walter Leonard (d. 1899, in infancy)
The Rev. J. Gardiner’s House, Pitt Street
On 23 February 1884 he married Kate O’Neill at the residence of the Rev. J. Gardiner in Pitt Street, Redfern. He was twenty-one, a clerk, of Surry Hills; she was twenty-two, of Strawberry Hills. The ceremony was Wesleyan.2
Kate — christened Catherine — was the daughter of Denis O’Neil, a blacksmith, and Ellen O’Driscoll, both from Cork, who had married at Parramatta in 1858. Her father’s birthplace was first entered on the register as “Cork, England” before somebody corrected it.3
The Wesleyan rites are worth dwelling on, because the family did not stay that way. Kate was buried in the Catholic section at Rookwood in 1911, and several of her children after her. Whatever turned this household Catholic, it was not the wedding.24
111 Goodlet Street
The early married years moved between rented rooms south of the harbour — Redfern, Surry Hills, Petersham, all recorded as the children were born. By 1911 the settled address was 111 Goodlet Street, Sydney, with two grown sons at or near it.
Kate died there on 15 November 1911, aged fifty. Her death registration is the best census of this family anyone ever took: five surviving children named with their ages — Stephen twenty-seven, Wesley twenty-four, Vera twenty, Reginald eighteen, Ernest fifteen — and two sons already dead, being Ellis Thomas and Walter Leonard. Her son Stephen was the informant.4
Set that beside her husband’s own death record thirty-four years later. He died on 23 December 1945 at the State Hospital and Home, Lidcombe, aged eighty-three, described as “draper, old age pensioner”. The informant was an assistant manager at the institution, not a member of the family, and he recorded two living children and none deceased.5 The two documents together are a small, complete account of how a man’s circumstances can change: in 1911 his wife’s death was registered by their son, and in 1945 his own was registered by a clerk who knew of two of his seven children.
Wesley John
Wesley John married Mary Agnes McAleer, a button-hole machinist, at St Michael’s Church, Flinders Street, on 12 February 1910, both of them twenty-two. The register lists his father’s name in reverse, as “Wesley Stephen Robens, warehouseman” — the sort of slip that makes a family hard to trace. Their address, 111 Goodlet Street, is confirmed independently by a Sydney directory of the same year.6
He enlisted for service abroad with the 10th Reinforcements of the 3rd Battalion, later transferring to the 55th, and embarked from Sydney aboard HMAT A69 Warilda on 8 October 1915. Three different enlistment dates appear across his papers — 30 August, 1 September and 8 September 1915 — while the service number, the address and the next of kin all agree. It is the ordinary untidiness of enlistment paperwork, not a doubt about the man.7
He died at Liverpool on 6 February 1953, aged sixty-five, and was buried at Matraville. Mary Agnes followed him two years later and they share a headstone.8
What the Compiled Account Got Wrong
A compiled account of this household circulated before the research behind this chapter began, and a good deal of it does not survive checking. His eldest son is called “Stephen O’Neill Robens” throughout it; the man’s own signature on his 1931 marriage register, and his entry on the 1936 roll, both give Oliver.9 The second son Ellis is called Timothy; his burial record and his funeral notice both give Thomas.10 The 1884 marriage is dated 24 August with a reference that turns out to be reused elsewhere as a child’s birth registration; the transcription gives 23 February.2
One claim is worth setting out fully, because it reached across into another branch of this family. The compiled account named the witnesses at Stephen Oliver’s 1931 wedding as cousins “Mervyn and Hector Hamer-Bubb”, descended from his aunt Martha Jemima Robens. The register gives the witness surname as Warner-Bubb; and Martha Jemima’s own descendants, separately and thoroughly documented, married first Caldwell and then Doust, with no connection to any family named Bubb. The claim is unfounded, and a false cousinhood has been removed from this history rather than left to propagate.11
A smaller correction of the same kind: his granddaughter Enid’s husband, Noel Kent, is described in that account as an RAAF non-commissioned officer. His service record and his memorial plaque both give the Army — Lieutenant, Second AIF, in the Printing and Stationery Service, which is his own trade of printer put to military use.14
Thirty-Five Lansdowne Street
The working notes for this household record one loose end: a “Robens, Rhoda Blanche” on the 1930 electoral roll at 35 Lansdowne Street, Surry Hills — a different address from the family’s own at 17 Alexander Street, but the same district. She could not be placed, and was left as an open lead.12
She can be placed now, from the other end. Rhoda Blanche Robens is the third child of Stephen Wesley’s elder brother Thomas — his own niece — and the Sands Directory enters her at 35 Lansdowne Street, Surry Hills, in 1934 and again in 1936. Same street, same number, overlapping years.
The identification rests on the name and the address rather than on any document that links the two households, so it is short of proof. But it is one unmarried woman of an uncommon surname at one number in one street, and it does two things at once: it closes this lead, and it pushes the start of Rhoda’s twenty years of independent living in Surry Hills back from 1934 to 1930.12
The Registrar’s Office at Marrickville
Twenty years after Kate’s death, on 13 July 1931, Stephen Wesley married again. He was sixty-nine and working as a draper, of Regent Street, Redfern; his bride was Elizabeth Pope, sixty-seven, a widow born at Nile in Tasmania, daughter of Matthew Taylor, a farm labourer. It was a civil ceremony at the District Registrar’s Office, Marrickville.13
His own 1945 death registration names this second wife differently again, as “(given name not stated) Saunders” — most likely her own maiden name, Pope having itself come from an earlier marriage.5 He was buried at Rookwood on Christmas Eve 1945, the funeral handled by J. Molloy of Molloy Bros., matching the notice in the Herald the same day.
Four of his seven children — Vera Kate, Reginald Joseph, Ernest Neill and Walter Leonard — are named on their mother’s 1911 death record and nowhere else that has been checked. They are carried here as names, and left for later work.
The Record
Sources & References
- 1
Birth, 1862
NSW birth registration transcription 1862/3110 — Stephen Wesley Robens, born 28 June 1862, Surry Hills, father a mason. The entry gives the parents’ marriage as 1838 at Hastings, matching the parish register, and records this child as the eighth, after seven girls and one boy, one already dead.
- 2
Marriage to Kate O’Neill, 1884
NSW marriage registration transcription 1884/3115 — 23 February 1884, at the residence of the Rev. J. Gardiner, Pitt Street, Redfern; groom twenty-one, clerk, of Surry Hills; bride twenty-two, of Strawberry Hills; Wesleyan rites. A compiled account gives 24 August 1884 under reference 2470/1884, a number reused elsewhere in the same account as a child’s birth registration; the transcription is preferred.
- 3
Kate O’Neill’s origins
NSW birth registration transcription 1861/3031 — Catherine O’Neil, born 10 December 1860 at Strawberry Hills, daughter of Denis O’Neil, blacksmith, and Ellen O’Driscoll, both natives of Cork, married 1858 at Parramatta. The father’s birthplace was first written “Cork, England” and corrected. An elder sister is indicated by the “previous issue” field but has not been identified.
- 4
Kate’s death, 1911
NSW death registration transcription 1911/13186 — died 15 November 1911 at 111 Goodlet Street, aged fifty; five surviving children named with ages (Stephen 27, Wesley 24, Vera 20, Reginald 18, Ernest 15) and two sons deceased; informant her son Stephen. Buried 16 November 1911 in the Catholic section at Rookwood.
- 5
Stephen Wesley’s death, 1945
NSW death registration transcription 1946/2465 — died 23 December 1945 at the State Hospital and Home, Lidcombe, aged eighty-three, “draper, old age pensioner”; informant an assistant manager of the institution, recording two living children and none deceased, which is plainly incomplete against Kate’s 1911 record. Buried Rookwood 24 December 1945; funeral by J. Molloy of Molloy Bros.
- 6
Wesley John’s marriage, 1910
Marriage register, St Michael’s Church, Flinders Street, Sydney, entry no. 308 — Wesley John Robens and Mary Agnes McAleer, 12 February 1910, both twenty-two, she a button-hole machinist. The register reverses his father’s forenames as “Wesley Stephen Robens”, warehouseman. Sydney Directory: “111 Robens Wesley”, Goodlet Street. The bride’s mother is named Agnes Kyle on the register and Margaret McAleer on a compiled record; unresolved.
- 7
Wesley John’s AIF service
AIF attestation paper and AWM embarkation roll, service no. 3119 — 10th Reinforcements, 3rd Battalion, later 55th Battalion; embarked Sydney aboard HMAT A69 Warilda, 8 October 1915; next of kin his wife Mary Agnes at 111 Goodlet Street. Enlistment is dated 30 August (embarkation roll), 1 September (compiled account) and 8 September 1915 (his own signed attestation); all other identifying details agree.
- 8
Wesley John’s death
Died 6 February 1953 at Liverpool, aged sixty-five, buried Matraville; Mary Agnes died 31 May 1955, aged sixty-seven. Shared headstone.
- 9
Stephen Oliver — the middle name
1931 marriage register, St Peter’s Church, East Sydney, entry no. 435, and the 1936 Commonwealth Electoral Roll, Subdivision of Darlinghurst West — both give Oliver, against the compiled account’s “O’Neill” throughout. He married Annie Mary Pemberton in 1908; she died 15 January 1930, of Bondi, and he was granted probate of her £270 estate that April. He died 8 June 1962 and was buried at Rookwood in the Catholic section.
- 10
Ellis Thomas
Born at Petersham 1889, died in Sydney 1897 aged eight, buried Rookwood 9 February 1897. Both the burial record and the funeral notice give his middle name as Thomas; the compiled account gives Timothy.
- 11
The “Hamer-Bubb” claim
The compiled account names the witnesses at Stephen Oliver’s 1931 wedding as cousins “Mervyn and Hector Hamer-Bubb”, descended from Martha Jemima Robens. The register gives the surname as Warner-Bubb, and this project’s own research into Martha Jemima’s descendants — who married Caldwell and then Doust — supports no connection to any Bubb family. Treated as unfounded.
- 12
Rhoda Blanche at 35 Lansdowne Street
The working notes for this household record an unplaced “Robens, Rhoda Blanche” on the 1930 electoral roll at 35 Lansdowne Street, Surry Hills. Sands Directory entries 4569 and 3953 place Rhoda Blanche Robens — daughter of Thomas Robens, and Stephen Wesley’s niece — at 35 Lansdowne Street in 1934 and 1936. The identification is by name and address, not by any document connecting the two households, and is offered as near-certain rather than proved. It extends her known residence there back to 1930.
- 13
Second marriage, 1931
NSW marriage registration transcription 1931/8994 — Stephen Wesley Robens, sixty-nine, draper, of Regent Street, Redfern, and Elizabeth Pope, sixty-seven, widow, born Nile, Tasmania, daughter of Matthew Taylor, farm labourer; civil ceremony at the District Registrar’s Office, Marrickville, 13 July 1931. A compiled account gives 28 May 1931 under a different reference; the transcription, corroborated by a separate index record, is preferred.
- 14
Enid Vera Robens, later Kent
Stephen Oliver’s daughter, born 1910; married Noel John Hamilton Kent, tram conductor, at Waverley in 1928. He served in the Second AIF, service no. NX20187, reaching Lieutenant in the Printing and Stationery Service — his civilian trade as a printer put to military use — and died 28 January 1962 aged fifty-two. A compiled account describes him as an RAAF non-commissioned officer; the Army record and his memorial plaque are preferred. He remarried in 1953, during Enid’s lifetime and after a divorce; Enid died 29 July 1964 and did not remarry.