Alice Emmaline Jeffries & Charles William Green

1856–1952

The second of the saddler’s daughters. She kept his house through ten years of his blindness and settled his estate as executrix — then married at fifty-four, was widowed at fifty-six, and lived on as Mrs Green for another forty years.

Born: Bathurst, New South Wales · 1856
Died: 1952 · death registered at Manly, New South Wales
Married: Charles William Green (1842–1912) — married at Bathurst, 5 October 1910
Lived: about 96 years

Alice Emmaline Jeffries was born at Bathurst in 1856, the second of Archibald Joseph Jeffries’ eight children and his second daughter, registered there as Alice E. Jeffries, daughter of Archibald and Mary J.¹ Her elder sister, Mary Rebecca Jane, had married Thomas Robens and gone to Sydney; of the six Jeffries children who lived to adulthood, Alice was the one who stayed home. When her mother died in February 1894 and her father’s sight failed almost completely in the same season, it was Alice who kept the house at 196 Keppel Street — through the whole ten years of his blindness, while her married sisters ran their own households at Perth, Parkes and Sydney.²

Archibald made his will in December 1902, its contents read aloud to him because he could no longer see the page, and when he died the following May the Keppel Street house and the residue of everything went to Alice, who was also named sole executrix.³ Winding it up took the rest of the decade. Probate was not granted until 5 July 1910 — NSW Supreme Court no. 49723, the estate sworn at £179 5s. — with her address by then given as 307 Russell Street, Bathurst.³ She was fifty-four years old, and had spent the better part of twenty years keeping first her father’s house and then his affairs.

Three months after the grant she married. On 5 October 1910, at the Bathurst house of a Miss Schoe, the Rev. J. Marshall Brown married Alice Emmaline Jeffries to Charles William Green — a widower of about sixty-eight who farmed a property called “Monavale” at Godfrey’s Creek, in the country between Cowra and Boorowa.⁴⁵ The Methodist printed the notice a month later.⁴

The marriage was brief. Charles Green died on 2 March 1912, of heart disease, at Godfrey’s Creek near the Boorowa River; an inquest sat at Lonsdale on 18 March and returned a plain finding, and he was buried in the Wesleyan ground at Neville.⁸ Alice had been a wife for seventeen months. She returned to Bathurst, where in 1930 the electoral roll places her at 226 Stewart Street — a few streets from 196 Keppel Street, her father’s old house, in which her widowed sister Mary Rebecca Jane was then living with two of the unmarried Robens daughters.⁹ By 1933 Alice had moved up to Katoomba, and there the rolls hold her, at 138 Lurline Street, through the rest of the decade.⁹ She died in 1952, the death registered at Manly. She was about ninety-six, and had been a widow for forty years.¹⁰

October 5, 1910, at the residence of Miss Schoe, Bathurst, by Rev. J. Marshall Brown, Charles W. Green, of “Monavale,” Godfrey’s Creek, Cowra, to Alice Emmaline, daughter of the late Archibald Joseph Jeffries.

Marriage notice, The Methodist (Sydney), 5 November 1910

The bridegroom

Born at sea, buried at Neville

Green was a native of the colony in the most literal way there is. He was born at sea on 11 August 1842, aboard the Elizabeth, on the last stretch of her passage to Sydney — the ship reached Port Jackson on 23 August — and he was registered and baptised at St Matthew’s, Windsor, once the family was ashore.⁶ His mother, Sarah, did not survive it long: the family record has him christened two days after her death.⁶ The 1912 inquest, working from his papers, simply set his birthplace down as “Windsor.”⁸

By the time he married Alice he had a grown family behind him. His first wife was Eliza, and a compiled record credits them with six children — Eliza Jane, William, George, Dorothea, Annie and John Henry.⁷ He was farming “Monavale,” at Godfrey’s Creek, when he came in to Bathurst to be married in 1910; he was dead by March 1912, at sixty-nine, and the inquest at Lonsdale valued what he left at about £600.⁸

A long widowhood

Forty years Mrs Green

A long life was nothing unusual among the Jeffries and Robens women. Alice’s sister Mary Rebecca Jane lived to eighty-nine; the unmarried Robens nieces of the same Bathurst households reached eighty-seven, ninety and — in Stella Eva’s case — ninety-nine. Alice, born in the Bathurst of 1856, lived to about ninety-six and died within reach of the sea, at Manly, in 1952.¹⁰

For the last forty years of that life the record is only ever a line in a roll — Bathurst, then Katoomba, the entry never changing: “Green, Alice Emmaline … home duties.”⁹

The Record

Sources & References

1
Birth registration, 1856

NSW BDM birth index — Alice E. Jeffries, 1856, registration district Bathurst, reg. no. 3021; father Archibald Jeffries, mother Mary J. The second of the eight Bathurst children; see the Jeffries entry above, reference 7, for the full sibling set.
2
The unmarried daughter at Keppel Street

National Advocate (Bathurst), 8 February 1894, “Death of Mrs. Jeffries,” on her husband’s near-total blindness; and the obituaries of Archibald Joseph Jeffries, Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal and National Advocate, both 20 May 1903 — “about ten years” blind, the daughter who kept house, and the married daughters listed as “Mrs. Schoe (of Perth W.A.), Mrs. T. Robins (Sydney), and Mrs. Howard (Parkes).” See the Jeffries entry, references 15–16.
3
Will (1902) and probate (1910)

Will of Archibald Joseph Jeffries, dated 2 December 1902; NSW Supreme Court probate no. 49723, granted 5 July 1910 to Alice Emmaline Jeffries of 307 Russell Street, Bathurst, sole executrix, with the Keppel Street house (bought from Patrick McCabe, 1895) and the residue devised to her; estate sworn at £179 5s. net. The attestation clause certifies that, the testator being blind, the will was “previously read over and explained to him.” Set out in full at the Jeffries entry, reference 19.
4
Marriage, 1910

The Methodist (Sydney), 5 November 1910, “Marriage — Green–Jeffries”: “October 5, 1910, at the residence of Miss Schoe, Bathurst, by Rev. J. Marshall Brown, Charles W. Green, of ‘Monavale,’ Godfrey’s Creek, Cowra, to Alice Emmaline, daughter of the late Archibald Joseph Jeffries.” NSW BDM marriage index — Charles W. Green and Alice E. Jeffries, 1910, registration district Bathurst, reg. no. 11431.
5
“Miss Schoe”

The wedding was held at the Bathurst house of a “Miss Schoe” — one of the Schoe connection of Alice’s brother-in-law James Schoe, who with his wife (Alice’s sister Martha Ann) had gone to Perth by 1903 (obituary of A. J. Jeffries, 20 May 1903). She was most likely a Bathurst niece of James’s rather than a daughter: James and Martha appear on every electoral roll from 1903 to 1936 as a household of two, and neither of their 1937 death notices names a child (see the Schoe entry, reference 4). The Schoe family home in Keppel Street, Bathurst, was the house from which Alice’s mother, Mary Jane, had been buried in February 1894 (funeral notice, Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal, 7 February 1894); whether the 1910 house was the same one is not stated.
6
Charles William Green — birth, 1842

NSW BDM birth registration no. 974/1842 (V1842974 26A) — Charles W. Green, parents Charles and Sarah. Family record: born at sea on 11 August 1842 aboard the Elizabeth, which reached Port Jackson on 23 August 1842; baptised at St Matthew’s, Windsor, two days after the death of his mother, Sarah. The 1912 inquest register (reference 8) records his birthplace only as “Windsor, N.S.W.” — the place of registration and baptism.
7
Green’s first family

Compiled memorial record: first wife Eliza; children Eliza Jane (later Charman), William, George, Dorothea (Graham), Annie (Graham) and John Henry Green. Not verified against civil registration.
8
Death and inquest, 1912

NSW BDM death index — Charles W. Green, 1912. NSW Register of Coroners’ Inquests and Magisterial Inquiries, 1912, p. 102 — Charles William Green, inquiry held at Lonsdale (Godfrey’s Creek) on 18 March 1912 before J. Stevenson, J.P.; birthplace “Windsor, N.S.W.”; locality of death Lonsdale; age 69; property possessed about £600; verdict “Heart disease.” Buried in the Wesleyan section of Neville cemetery, Neville (Blayney Shire), the burial confirmed by the Cowra Family History Group though no plot was recorded; some accounts give the place of death as Boorowa.
9
Electoral rolls, 1930–1936

Commonwealth Electoral Roll, Division of Macquarie — Subdivision of Bathurst, 1930: “Green, Alice Emmaline, 226 Stewart street, Bathurst, home duties.” Subdivision of Katoomba (State district of Nepean), 1933, 1934, 1935 and 1936: “Green, Alice Emmaline, 138 Lurline street, Katoomba, home duties.” The 1930 Bathurst roll also places her sister Mary Rebecca Jane Robens, with daughters Ida and Stella, at 196 Keppel Street (chapter reference 16).
10
Death registration, 1952

NSW BDM death index — Alice Emmaline Green, reg. no. 27120/1952, registration district Manly; father Archibald Joseph, mother Mary Jane. Born 1856, she was about ninety-six.