The Youngest Son
c. 1833–1924
The youngest of the sons born in England. A saddler whose Adelaide marriage fell apart in the police courts within weeks of the wedding — and who then crossed to the New South Wales side of the Upper Murray, raised a second family under the same name, and died at ninety-two a pioneer of the Tumbarumba country.
Jabez Bunting Jeffries was the last of the five sons born in England and — but for the baby Elizabeth, who died on the passage — the last of the children born there; two more, Elizabeth Hall and Joshua, were born after the family reached Sydney. He was born at Clifton about 1833 and christened at the parish church of St Andrew there on 8 December that year, from Avon Square, his father entered, as in every Clifton record, as a carpenter.1 The register page is headed 1835, but its own dated entries all fall in November and December 1833, and the Layton’s bounty list four years later sets him down as “Jabez, 4” — an age an 1833 birth fits and an 1835 one does not.12 His names are the family’s Nonconformity worn on the surface: Jabez is a chapel name, and Jabez Bunting was the most powerful Wesleyan Methodist minister of the age. He was four or five when the measles ship came up the coast in January 1838, and he grew up in the family’s house in Surry Hills.2 Like his brother Archibald at Bathurst, he was put to the saddler’s trade.
Where the record next has him is South Australia. The gaol books that would shortly hold him enter his arrival in the colony three different ways — from Bristol, from Sydney, from Melbourne — but two of the three bring him to Adelaide out of the eastern colonies, which is to say from the life the family had begun at Sydney.5 He was a saddler, he could read and write, and he was a Wesleyan. On 19 January 1861 he married Ellen McGlynn at her mother’s house at Brompton, on the northern edge of Adelaide; she was Irish-born and about twenty-two, a daughter of Samuel McGlynn.3
It went wrong at once. By Ellen’s own account, given in evidence ten weeks later, “the curse of Othello” fell on her husband on the second day of the marriage and never left him.4 On a night in late March 1861 he came to his mother-in-law’s cottage after midnight, drunk and sure there was a man inside; he threw stones through the windows onto a bed where children were sleeping, and broke in. When Ellen fled through a window he ran her down in the road, drew her out of the chimney of an empty house where she had hidden, beat her senseless more than once on the way home, and there — the report is explicit — held a sword over her and threatened to make “mince meat” of her body.4 The Adelaide police court committed him for trial on two charges and refused bail; the gaol register takes him in as a saddler of twenty-five, and he served four months’ hard labour and a fine of six pounds twelve.45
He was back twice more. In July 1862 the same court fined him on three informations for a drunken assault at Bowden — on his mother-in-law again, and two other people — and gaoled him a month when he would not pay.6 The one child of the marriage, a son, had been born at Brompton on 11 June 1862, in the gap between that term and the next; the birth was registered simply as “Jabez,” for his father.7 In January 1863 he was gaoled a third time, the charge recorded flatly as “assaulting his wife Ellen at Brompton.”5 After that the Adelaide record of him stops.
The boy did not live. He died at Bowden on 15 March 1867, four years old, and the death was registered as Samuel Jabez Jeffries, son of Jabez — a small entry that sat for years in the South Australian index as a puzzle for this family, taken for the lost death of Samuel the emigrant grandfather, or of Jabez himself.8 It is neither: it is the child. Ellen stayed in South Australia. On 30 March 1885, at Robe on the south-east coast, she married John Collins; she died there, as Ellen Collins, on 5 June 1918, and was buried in the Robe cemetery.9 Jabez was by then long gone, and long remarried — while Ellen still lived, and with no divorce on the record.9
He had crossed to New South Wales, to the mountain border country of the Upper Murray. His obituaries credit him with fifty years in the district, which would put his arrival about 1874; an unclaimed letter waiting for “Jabez Jeffries” at Upper Araluen in 1882 may mark the goldfields road he took to get there.1013 He settled first at Ournie, on the Murray above Jingellic, and later a few miles off at Glenroy, and he raised a second and far larger family — its mother on no record yet found, though she died in 1919, “aged 75,” as the wife of Jabez Jeffries of Glenroy.1013 By 1887 a “third daughter” was marrying; by 1908 a “second youngest daughter”; the sons Alfred and one known only as “S. Jeffries” were grown men.10 In 1909, nearing eighty, he took up a thirty-acre lease of his own at parish Mate, “for residence and agriculture.”12 He died in the first week of November 1924, “one of the oldest pioneers of the Tumbarumba district,” about ninety-two — sixty years and a continent from the wreck of his first marriage.13
The next generation
She confessed that the second day after their marriage the curse of Othello fell upon him, and continued to haunt his diseased fancy till the final catastrophe … The defendant brought no evidence to disprove his wife’s statement, and only admitted that he was labouring under a jealous fit, exaggerated by too many nobblers. Bail refused.
The country Jabez settled in was new ground — the Murray above Jingellic only taken up for farms from the 1860s, the gold at Laurel Hill and the Little Billabong field still to come. He was at Ournie Creek through the 1880s, where his wife ran the district school’s annual picnic nine years in succession — “a grand woman to get anything of that sort up,” the local correspondent wrote — and where the family worshipped in the little Church of England.1011 By the 1900s he was at Glenroy, a few miles south, and the younger children were marrying before a Catholic priest.10
His daughter who had married Ruston Stephenson of Jingellic died of cancer at Albury in June 1901, about thirty-seven, and was buried at Walwa; her death, one paper said, “cast intense gloom over the whole of the Upper Murray district.”11 Grace Emma had married a Nichols at Woomargama in 1887; Nellie married a Hoystead of the Albury racing family in 1908, her brother Alfred standing as best man; Alfred himself married a McAuliffe of Glenroy in 1912.10 In October 1909 Jabez lodged for a special lease at parish Mate, County Selwyn — the whole of a revoked reserve, thirty acres, “for residence and agriculture” — and the Tumbarumba land board granted it the next winter at three shillings an acre.12
The son of the first marriage died small. The mother of the New South Wales family is named on no record yet found; these are the children the Albury papers happen to mention, and a household that ran a school picnic for a decade was certainly larger.
1862–1867
The Adelaide child
The only child of Jabez and Ellen, born between two of his father’s gaol terms and registered then simply as “Jabez.”7 He died at Bowden at four, registered that time as “Samuel Jabez” — the entry long mistaken in the South Australian index for a lost adult death in this family.8
c. 1864–1901
Mrs Ruston Stephenson, of Jingellic
Married Ruston Stephenson, an Oddfellow of Jingellic on the Victorian bank. She died of cancer at a private hospital in Albury, about thirty-seven, “a general favorite … very highly respected far and near,” and was buried in the Church of England ground at Walwa, leaving a daughter and four sons.11
married 1887
Mrs William Jubilee Nichols
The “third daughter of Jabez Jeffries, of Ournie.” She married William Jubilee Nichols — third son of John Nichols, late of the Rose Inn, Albury — at Woomargama on 1 March 1887.10
born about 1878
A scholar at Ournie
She took the prizes for singing and recitation at the Ournie school picnic in December 1888. Not otherwise traced; whether she is the same daughter as Grace Emma under a pet form of the name is not clear.10
married 1908
Mrs Harry Hoystead
The “second youngest daughter,” married at “The Retreat,” Glenroy, on 16 November 1908 to Harry Hoystead of Albury, of the racing family — a Catholic ceremony, her brother Alfred as best man.10
married 1912
Married Flora McAuliffe
Best man at Nellie’s wedding in 1908; in April 1912 he married Flora McAuliffe, eldest daughter of John McAuliffe of Glenroy.10
a grown man by 1889
An unnamed son
A son old enough to prepare the ground for the 1889 Ournie picnic, recorded only by an initial. He is not the Adelaide boy, who had died in 1867.10
The second wife. Her name, her people, and where and when Jabez married her are all unknown. The eldest child of the New South Wales family was born about 1864, while Ellen was still alive and not yet remarried — so the union was bigamous, or never formally solemnised. The later children married as Catholics, which she may have been.
The years between. Nothing has been found for Jabez between the Adelaide gaol in January 1863 and the Upper Murray about 1874. The 1882 Araluen letter is the only possible trace, and it is a bare name.
The birth year. The Clifton register page is headed 1835 but filled with 1833 entries; the Layton list (“Jabez, 4,” in 1837) and the 1924 notices (“aged 92”) both point to 1833 or a year either side. Some indexes carry 1835 from the page heading.
“S. Jeffries.” The grown son at the 1889 picnic is on no other record under an initial or a name; whether he was a Samuel, and what became of him, is not known.
The death itself. The date is only “the first week of November 1924” from the notices, and the place of burial — Walwa, Tumbarumba, or elsewhere in the Murray country — has not been found.
The Record
Baptism, Clifton, 1833
Parish register of St Andrew, Clifton, Gloucestershire, baptisms — page 251, entry no. 2008: Jabez, son of Samuel and Ann Jeffries, abode Avon Square, father’s trade “carpenter,” baptised 8 December. The pre-printed heading of the page reads 1835, but every dated entry on it is of November or December 1833, and the entry numbers agree (Archibald was no. 1628 in January 1832); the Layton’s bounty list of 1837 enters him as “Jabez, 4,” which fits an 1833 birth and not an 1835 one. Some indexes carry 1835 from the page heading. The child is “Jabez” alone in the register, with no “Samuel”; he appears as Jabez Bunting Jeffries — a Wesleyan naming, for the Methodist leader Jabez Bunting — on his 1861 marriage and on every colonial record after it.
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: “Jabez, 4.” The voyage, on which measles killed about seventy of the emigrant children, is set out in full in the companion chapter above, “Measles in the Channel.” Nothing has been found for Jabez between the ship’s arrival in January 1838 and his marriage at Adelaide in 1861; the family was in Surry Hills through the 1840s.
Marriage, Brompton, 1861
South Australian marriage registration (GenealogySA), district of Adelaide, book/page 45/364 — Jabez Bunting Jefferies, father Samuel Jefferies, and Ellen McGlynn, father Samuel McGlynn, married 19 January 1861 “at the residence of Mrs McGlynn, Brompton.” Ellen was born in Ireland about 1838, a daughter of Samuel McGlynn and Elizabeth Louisa Glynn; the mother appears in the court and gaol records under the name McLean.
The assault of March 1861
South Australian Weekly Chronicle (Adelaide), 6 April 1861, page 7, “Police Court — Adelaide” (Trove nla.news-article90031367) — two informations against Jabez Bunting Jeffries: one by Elizabeth Louisa McLean, his mother-in-law, for the night attack on her cottage at Brompton, and one by his wife Ellen for “a gross assault upon her on the same night.” The report gives the stone-throwing, the chase, the chimney, the beating in the road and the sword; “the defendant brought no evidence to disprove his wife’s statement, and only admitted that he was labouring under a jealous fit.” Committed to the next Local Court of Full Jurisdiction on both charges; bail refused.
The Adelaide gaol register — three terms, 1861–1863
Register of all Persons brought to the Common Gaol of the Province of South Australia, at Adelaide (State Records SA). Page 157: Jabez B. Jefferies, “assaulting and beating Eliz. L. McLean and Ellen Jefferies at Hindmarsh, 27 March [1861]”; committed by police, convicted at Adelaide; four calendar months’ hard labour and a fine of £6 12s; sentence dated 9 April 1861; age 25, reads and writes, married, Wesleyan, saddler; discharged August 1861, “served and paid fine.” Page 201: same name, drunken assault on Samuel Coombs, Elizabeth L. McLean “and others” at Bowden, 9 July 1862; age 26; discharged 9 August 1862. Page 222: same name, “assaulting his wife Ellen at Brompton,” 14 January 1863; age 28; discharged 11 February 1863. The “arrival in colony” column is filled differently each time — 1849 “from Bristol,” 1844 “from Sydney,” 1858 “from Melbourne” — the years unreliable, but placing him at Adelaide by way of the eastern colonies.
The July 1862 assault
South Australian Weekly Chronicle (Adelaide), 12 July 1862, “Police Court” — Jabez Bunting Jefferies fined on three informations, by Samuel Coombs, Elizabeth Louisa McLean and John Field, for assaulting them at Bowden “on the previous day” while “under the influence of drink,” his conduct “very riotous”; 20s for the assault on Mrs McLean and 10s for each of the others, £4 5s in all with costs; “he did not pay the amount, and was removed in the custody of the police.” Corresponds to the gaol register, page 201 (reference 5).
Birth of the son, June 1862
South Australian birth registration (GenealogySA), district of Adelaide, book/page 20/388 — Jabez Jeffries, born 11 June 1862 at Brompton; father Jabez Bunting Jeffries, mother Ellen McGlynn. The only child recorded to the marriage.
Death of the son, March 1867
South Australian death registration (GenealogySA), district of Adelaide, book/page 26/392 — Samuel Jabez Jeffries, death age 5, born about 1862, of Bowden, died 15 March 1867; father Jabez Jeffries. This is the boy of reference 7, registered at birth simply as “Jabez.” The entry was for years read in this family as a possible death for Samuel the emigrant grandfather or for Jabez himself; the age and the father’s name exclude both (companion chapter, references 7–8). Samuel senior’s death is still untraced.
Ellen McGlynn after the marriage
South Australian marriage registration (GenealogySA), district of Robe, book/page 142/1422 — Ellen Jefferies, father Samuel McGlyn, married John Collins on 30 March 1885 “at the residence of Hugh Mutrie, Robe.” Cemetery and death records — Ellen Collins, formerly Jefferies, née McGlynn, born Ireland 1838, died 5 June 1918, buried Robe Cemetery; parents Samuel McGlynn and Elizabeth Louisa Glynn. She married Collins while Jabez was still living and is not shown to have divorced him.
The Upper Murray — Ournie and Glenroy
The family in the Albury Banner and Wodonga Express: the marriage of “Grace Emma Jeffries, third daughter of Jabez Jeffries, of Ournie,” to William Jubilee Nichols at Woomargama, notice of 4 March 1887 (Trove nla.news-article254560984); the Ournie public-school picnic “at the usual place, Mrs Jeffries’s,” run by her nine years in succession, with “Mr S. Jeffries” preparing the ground and “Emilie Jeffries” taking the singing prize, 11 January 1889 (nla.news-article254382426); the wedding of “Miss Nellie Jeffries, second youngest daughter of Mr and Mrs Jabez Jeffries, of Glenroy,” to Harry Hoystead, “Mr Alf. Jeffries” best man, 27 November 1908 (nla.news-article100772601); and the marriage of “Mr Alf. Jeffries, son of Mr Jabez Jeffries, also of Glenroy,” to Flora McAuliffe, 3 May 1912 (nla.news-article101192002). A list of unclaimed letters for 1882 holds one for “Jeffries Jabez, Upper Araluen” — possibly this man on the goldfields road east, though the bare name cannot carry the identification.
The daughter who married Ruston Stephenson
Albury Banner and Wodonga Express, 14 June 1901, “Jingellic” (Trove nla.news-article128565677) — the death at Albury of Mrs Ruston Stephenson, “a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Jabez Jeffries, an old and highly respected family of Ournie Creek, on the Upper Murray,” aged 37, of cancer, buried in the Church of England portion of the Walwa cemetery, leaving a husband, one daughter and four sons.
Land applications, 1909–1910
Albury Banner and Wodonga Express — 15 October 1909, “Tumbarumba”: “Special lease of about 36 acres, parish Mate, County Selwyn, Jabez Jeffries” (Trove nla.news-article132467993); 19 November 1909: “Special Lease — Jabez Jeffries, 30 acres, parish Mate, County Selwyn, being the whole of C.R. 2579 (revoked), for residence and agriculture” (nla.news-article132476625); 5 August 1910, “Tumbarumba Land Board”: “Jabez Jeffries, sp.l 09/14, 30a — Recommended; rent 3s. per acre” (nla.news-article100701253).
The deaths of Jabez and his second wife
Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney), 28 May 1919, “Albury — Obituary” (Trove nla.news-article263708187) — “the death occurred this week of a well-known resident of the Upper Murray, Mrs. Jeffries, aged 75, wife of Mr. Jabez Jeffries, of Glenroy.” Cootamundra Herald, 12 November 1924 (nla.news-article143746629) — “Mr. Jabez Jefferies, one of the oldest pioneers of the Tumbarumba district, died recently, aged 92.” Upper Murray and Mitta Herald (Corryong), 13 November 1924 (nla.news-article268868082) — “Died last week, Mr. Jabez Jeffries, 92, resident of N.S.W. Upper Murray district for 50 years.” The exact date and place of death, and the burial, have not been found.
Not this man — the 1920 medal roll
A First World War medal roll certified at Woolwich on 31 January 1920 (Army Form W.5102, Royal Field Artillery) lists “Driver Jeffries, Jabez, L/20539.” This is a British soldier of the 1914–18 war, not the subject of this page, who died in 1924 aged about ninety-two; it is noted here only because the record is sometimes attached to him in error.