We
rode out to Parramatta, to the Female Orphan School. I tried to hide my
eagerness as we dismounted at the entrance but in truth, I was excited. Mrs
Susanna Matilda Ward, the matron, was both renowned and renounced among the
ladies of Sydney Town and I was keen to meet her.
A
demure girl, who may have been one of her charges, ushered us into the parlour
and into the presence of a delightful tableau of feminine beauty. Mrs Ward
herself was the centrepiece of this enchanting vision. She was very handsome,
of course, especially for a matron of her advancing years and she greeted us
with an air of genteel delight that made us feel immediately welcome. She
smilingly addressed father with exaggerated respect and, had it not been for
her laughing eyes, I might have thought her obsequious. She then expressed such
admiration for my humble, 16- year- old person that my ears burned.
My
eyes, meanwhile, were drawn to the quartet of young ladies draped prettily
around her. My sister, who had accompanied our father on a previous visit, did
not do Mrs Ward’s daughters justice when she had described them as “comely but
a little forward”. They were angels! From the rosie-cheeked child who took
father’s hand and led him to a chair, to the graceful Elizabeth, who poured the
tea, I was smitten by them all.
And
so we might imagine, for indeed we were not there, the first meeting of Fred Garling
Jnr and Elizabeth Ward.
The
year must have been around 1822, for Susanna had obtained the position of
matron in late 1820[i]
and was, in her own words, “superseded” in 1823[ii]. Frederick
Garling Snr was a governor of the institution during that time. The two young
people had much in common having each arrived in the colony at the tender age
of nine.
Fred
arrived aboard the Francis and Eliza
in 1815, after a voyage of more than 12 months. His mother’s diary describes a
year of numbing dullness, waiting for convicts or cargo or the weather,
punctuated by times of high “excitement”. An attack by American privateers must
been a highlight in Fred’s boyish mind.[iii] He showed no inclination, as he grew, to
follow his community-spirited father into the Law. Fred’s passion was his art
and he liked adventure.
Elizabeth
came on the Dromedary in 1820. It had
been a more comfortable voyage, if being on a ship for four months with 370
male convicts and 57 soldiers can be “comfortable” for five little girls and
their mother. She had since endured the untimely deaths of her father[1][iv]
and baby sister and had had to accustom herself to life in a small settlement
where more than two thirds of the population were convicts or ex-convicts.
The
Female Orphan School might have been unsettling. Most of the students were not
orphans but the children of convicts whose parents were unable to raise them.
Indeed, colonial authorities thought it better that their parents did not raise
them[v]. Elizabeth,
however, was born in Portugal, where her father was engaged in the wars against
Napoleon. She had never known an ordinary life.
The
marriage of Fred Jnr and Elizabeth[vi] probably
suited both families. The Garlings brought a measure of respectability and security
that Susanna, forced to fend for herself and her family alone, may have craved.
Susanna, on the other hand, had become a wealthy landholder[vii]
with aristocratic links, which probably appealed to the Garlings. Marry they
did, however, and their brood of eleven little Australians, assured a successful
future in their adopted country.
[i]
Sydney Gazette and NSW Wales Advertiser, December 1820, article seeking
applications for the position. Trove; Ward, Susanna Matron, 1821, Jan 3, Re
appointment and salary of Mrs Ward as Matron of the Female Orphan Institution,
Parramatta. Colonial Secretary’s papers. Reel 6017; 4/5783 p 25 State Records
of NSW.
[ii]
Ward, Susannah Matilda, letter to Governor Thomas Brisbane dated September 11,
1824.
[iii]
Elizabeth Garling’s Diary of the Voyage to New south Wales; original held in
the Mitchell Library was transcribed and republished by descendants of
Frederick Garling Snr and Elizabeth in August 2015 for the Bicentennial Reunion
of Descendants of Frederick and Elizabeth Garling.
[iv]
The death of a William W Ward in September 1820, in Sydney, NSW Australia, is
listed in the NSW Colonial Secretary’s papers, 1788 – 1856, State Records of
NSW. Viewed September, 2017. I have not found a death notice for baby Eleanor
Maria Villiers but she is not listed with her mother and sisters in the 1822
Census of New South Wales.
[v]
Bubacz, B., The Female and Male Orphan Schools in New South Wales, 1801- 1850 –
PHD Thesis, University of Sydney, 2007; http://hdl.handle.net/2123/2474
[vi]
Marriage notice. Sydney Gazette and NSW Advertiser, Tuesday 13 October, 1829
p.3. National Library of Australia, Trove.
[vii]
Ward, SM Matron, 1820, Nov 7, Re approval for lands and indulgences to be
extended in trust. Colonial Secretary’s Papers, Reel 6007; 4/3502. P44-7. State
Records of New South Wales.
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