Trustee of the Ground He Lies In

Sophia Robens

1846–1932

The longest-lived of the ten and the most heavily documented. Nine children, and among their descendants three qualified doctors, a New Zealand emigrant who shook hands with a Princess, and a schoolteacher whose whole career was recovered from a service card.

Sepia studio portrait of a woman in a dark high-necked dress with a brooch at the throat, wearing a pale lace cap. — Sophia Sippe, née Robens

Born: 14 January 1846 · Sydney
Died: 11 December 1932 · Chatswood
Married: Robert Dixon Sippe (c. 1838–1925)
Lived: 86 years

Born on 14 January 1846, the third daughter.¹ On Boxing Day 1865 she married Robert Dixon Sippe at Sydney, under registration 300 — an entry that spells the groom’s surname “Sipe”, the first of a long run of variants (Sippe, Sipe, Sipps, Sipp) that follow this family through a century of records.²

Her husband was the steadiest presence this family had at its worst moments. He was the informant on Stephen Robens’s death registration in 1875, and again on Sarah Ann’s in 1900, twenty-five years apart. Sophia herself outlived every one of her nine brothers and sisters but one, and hers is by a wide margin the most fully documented of the ten branches.

The next generation

Children

Robert Wesley (1866–1921) — orchardist, of Galston
Stephen George (1868–1952) — farmer, of Bruce Rock, WA
Charles Henry (1870–1924) — J.P., warehouseman
Frederick John Dixon (1872–1888) — died at sixteen
Rhoda Jane “Jennie” (1876–1960) — married Stark
James Thomas (1877/78–1941) — engineer, then fitter
Martha Blackburn (1880– ) — married Bubb
Lottie Frances (1883–1969) — schoolteacher; married Dobson
Ralph Edgar (1889–1949) — carpenter, then storeman

Sepia studio group photograph of ten people — an older seated couple surrounded by grown sons and daughters and one small boy in a sailor suit. — Robert Dixon and Sophia Sippe with their children — Ralph Edgar, Lottie, Stephen George, Martha Blackburn, James Thomas, Robert Wesley, Rhoda Jane and Charles Henry. Eight of the nine: Frederick John had died in 1888, which places the photograph after that year

1887–1902

Builder, Executor, Trustee, Volunteer

Robert Dixon worked most of his life as a builder. A Sydney directory sets him down plainly — “Sippe Robert Dixon, builder, 181 Campbell Street” — and a family notice of 1898 independently describes him as of Campbell-street, Surry Hills.³ Other directory entries put him at Riley Street and later at Burgoyne Street, Gordon; none is dated closely enough to sequence with confidence.

In April 1887 he was named, with Robert Richardson Iredale, executor of the will of Martin Russell, a freeholder of Walter Street, Paddington. Being asked to execute a substantial estate says something about a man’s standing, though nothing further has been found connecting the two.⁴

Then, on 28 November 1902, Governor Sir Harry Rawson proclaimed him a Trustee of the Wesleyan Cemetery at the Necropolis, Rookwood, under the Necropolis Act of that year.⁵ It is a small appointment and it carries a great deal in hindsight: the ground he was set to administer is the ground he was buried in, and Sophia after him, and four of their children — Frederick John, Robert Wesley, James Thomas and Ralph Edgar — in the Old Wesleyan section around them.

He served too, for a period, in the New South Wales Volunteer Forces: a register of No. 4 Company, 1st Regiment carries “Pte. Sippe, Robert Dixon”, number 1498, with a date that most plausibly reads 24 August 1895 — the hand does not permit certainty on either the corps or the day.⁶

1901

Ten in the House on Berowra Road

The census of 1901 finds the household on Berowra Road, in the North Colah sub-district near Galston, on Sydney’s rural northern edge — schedule number 115, five males and five females, ten persons under one roof.⁷

Galston and the parish of North Colah recur through this family for decades afterwards. Sons farmed there and held civic office there, and the neighbours named on that census page — the Pearces, the Waddells — turn up again as neighbours on electoral rolls years later. In 1891 their second son Stephen George was himself appointed a trustee of ten acres at Galston dedicated for public recreation, a civic appointment strikingly like his father’s at Rookwood eleven years later.⁸

1888

“And He Was Not; For God Took Him”

Frederick John Dixon, the fourth child, died on 29 December 1888 in his seventeenth year.⁹ The headstone raised for him at Rookwood carries the inscription in full:

“In loving memory of Frederick John, beloved son of Robert Dixon and Sophia Sippe, who died December 29th 1888, in his 17th year… And he was not; for God took him.”

His eldest brother Robert Wesley joined him in the same plot thirty-three years later, and the two share a headstone — brothers born six years apart, buried a third of a century apart, in the end lying together.¹⁰

The next generations

What the Nine Became

Nine children, born between 1866 and 1889, all with birth registrations naming both parents. Their own children and grandchildren went to the Western Australian wheatbelt, to Mauritius, to Brisbane, and to Wellington.

Stephen George Sippe

1868–1952

Pioneer farmer, Bruce Rock, Western Australia

Married: Ina Louise Allen, in Victoria, 1912
Went west: 1910; settled on land five miles from the township, 1911
Died: 30 August 1952, Bruce Rock Memorial Hospital

Named for his grandfather Stephen Robens. His obituary in the Bruce Rock paper is the fullest surviving account of any of the nine. He had travelled the Commonwealth trying his hand at many kinds of work and never settling, until a spell on the Western Australian goldfields turned him to farming — which he then did through pioneer hardship and the Depression for forty years.¹¹

An early member of the Bruce Rock Agricultural Society, long on its committee, remembered for turning up reliably and for bringing good sharp tools to prepare the show grounds each year; a life member at seventy-one. He helped raise the money for the district’s first hospital and sat eighteen years on its original board.¹¹ His sons Noel Stephen and Sydney Robert Twyford were both born at Cottesloe, near Perth, in 1914 and 1917 — which shows the family had gone west well before the electoral rolls pick them up. Sydney flew with the RAAF, rising to Flight Lieutenant.¹²

Charles Henry Sippe

1870–1924

J.P., fancy goods warehouseman, of “Brooklyn”, Lindfield

Married: Emma Mary Isabel Chambers, All Saints’, Petersham, 21 December 1898
Firm: Sippe C. H. & Co. Ltd, York Street, Sydney
Died: 14 August 1924, suddenly, at home
Estate: £7,846

The most prominent of the nine in his own lifetime. He had begun about the mid-1880s as a wholesale softgoods warehouseman in George Street and for his last ten years ran a similar business in York Street.¹³ He died suddenly one Thursday evening at “Brooklyn”, Nelson Road, Lindfield — not in robust health, but his final illness had not been thought serious. The Lodge Kuring-gai attended the funeral in regalia and the Masonic ritual was recited at Gore Hill.¹⁴

A puzzle sat on his headstone for much of this research: the plot also carries members of a Willcoxson family. The answer came out of a wedding report, where the officiating clergyman, the Rev. J. H. Willcoxson, is described as “the bride’s uncle” — meaning Emma had a sister who married a Willcoxson. That is why they share the ground.¹⁵

Dr Clive Henry Sippe

1904–1949

Physician, of the Brisbane Clinic — Charles Henry’s son

Qualified: M.B., Ch.M., Sydney 1926; M.R.C.P. London 1929
Served: Major, Australian Army Medical Corps, Middle East
Died: 16 January 1949, aged forty-five

He came to Brisbane in 1930 to help establish the Brisbane Clinic on Wickham Terrace and stayed for the rest of his career — a specialist in chest diseases, a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, senior visiting physician at the Brisbane Hospital, and by his obituary’s account one of the most brilliant physicians in the city.¹⁶

He was slightly wounded when the hospital ship Manunda was bombed in Darwin Harbour on 19 February 1942.¹⁶ He died seven years later at forty-five, having arranged to sail for England the following month for further study in London. A farewell party for himself and his wife was already planned for the Friday; he was taken ill late on the Saturday afternoon and died early on the Sunday morning. His plaque names him “Loved husband of Dorothy, Father of Richard, William (dec.) & Elizabeth” — William being the infant son they had lost in 1944.¹⁷

Dr George Robert Sippe and Dr Ann Fraser Thompson

1911–1988 / 1912–2005

Two doctors, Mauritius and Maitland — Charles Henry’s son and his wife

Both qualified: M.B., B.S., Sydney, 1935
Married: Kensington, London, early 1938
Served: British Colonial Medical Service, Mauritius

A medical student living with his mother and sister at Lindfield in 1933, George graduated in 1935 and went straight out as an assistant pathologist at the Medical Department, Port Louis, Mauritius.¹⁸ His wife was not the Englishwoman the London marriage register implies: Ann Fraser Thompson was a fellow Sydney graduate of the same year, placed third overall and winner of the Dagmar Berne Prize as top female graduate, who had gone to school at Bathurst at seven and entered university at sixteen on a bursary.¹⁹

They had both sailed out as ship’s doctors, she by the Cape and he by Suez, and married within weeks of her London registration — a medical-school romance continued at the other end of the world. Their daughter Helen Jane was born at Mauritius in 1939, where Ann assisted George’s research into malaria and nutritional macrocytic anaemia, which earned him a Doctorate of Medicine, and kept the family fed through wartime shortages.¹⁹

By 1943 they were recorded together as medical practitioners at Elizabeth Street, Telarah, near Maitland — a husband-and-wife practice, a striking arrangement for the period. Ann spent many years in Maitland as a physician and marriage guidance counsellor. The family house, “Bryn Glas”, is remembered for its garden, bush picnics, and tennis, at which the ambidextrous Ann had a formidable backhand.¹⁹²⁰

Eileen Sippe, later Tyler

1912–2002

Of Wainuiomata, New Zealand — James Thomas’s daughter

Born: 20 April 1912, “Kurnwa”, Dudley Street, Coogee
Married: Albert William “Bill” Tyler, Trinity Methodist Church, Wellington, 24 July 1934
Died: 24 October 2002, aged ninety

The most far-travelled of the whole family. She sailed at twenty-two to marry a Wellington seaman, and her honeymoon made the New Zealand papers: “Happy Honeymoon: Sydney Bride’s Visit to New Zealand”, the Evening Post calling her a young Australian “whose family have been closely connected with early New Zealand history.”²¹

That history was her mother’s. Her great-uncle Edward Watkin was reputedly the first white man born in the Friendly Islands, and had come out to New Zealand in the sailing ship Cyrus — twenty-three days, against the three her own honeymoon crossing took — taking up land at what is now the corner of Woodward Street and Lambton Quay. Edward’s father, the Rev. J. Watkin, was among the earliest Wesleyan missionaries in Tonga and New Zealand. At a pā at Putiki the chief had heard of her great-uncle, and kept asking her “Where’s your bloke?” — slang it took her some minutes to work out.²¹

She lived out her life at Wainuiomata. Sixty-eight years after she arrived, a photograph catches her in a crowd in a white crocheted hat, shaking hands with Diana, Princess of Wales.²²

Lottie Frances Sippe, later Dobson

1883–1969

Schoolteacher — a career recovered from one service record

Began: Pupil-teacher on probation, Lower Fort Street, 10 May 1899, aged sixteen
Ended: Assistant, Neutral Bay Girls’ School, March 1908, at £136
Married: John Dobson, at Chatswood, 1912

Nothing in the family’s photographs or memory records that Lottie had a profession. Her New South Wales teaching service card records the whole of it: probationary pupil-teacher at sixteen; Class III in 1900, Class II in 1901, Class I in 1902; acting pupil-teacher at Fort Street Lower Primary from August 1903; a full scholarship to Training School that December; temporary attendance at Surry Hills South Girls’ in 1905; Class II B provisional on completing her training in December 1906; Class II A in October 1907; and Assistant at Neutral Bay in March 1908.²³

Nine years, rank by rank, from sixteen to twenty-five. She married four years later, and whether she went on teaching is not known — the regulations of the day usually settled that question for a woman.²³

Her daughter Mollie Sippe Dobson — the middle name a deliberate carrying-forward, as “Dixon” and “Blackburn” are elsewhere in this family — married an actuary and eventually settled in Wellington. So two granddaughters of Robert Dixon and Sophia, from entirely separate branches, made their homes in the same New Zealand city without either setting out to.²⁴

Ralph Edgar Sippe

1889–1949

Carpenter, then storeman — the youngest

Applied to enlist: 19 December 1917, Victoria Barracks, Sydney
Rejected: Defective vision
Married: Elsie Olive Waterhouse, St Leonards, 1919

He was twenty-eight and eight months, a carpenter, single, still at his parents’ house on Burgoyne Street, and five feet seven. His application to the AIF survives; the preliminary medical found him unfit for active service on account of defective vision, and that was the end of it.²⁵

Against a family that put a great many men into two wars, his own wish to go is the one that was refused. The marriage index renders his bride as “Elsie Og Waterhouse”, almost certainly a slip for Olive, as the couple’s own later roll entry confirms.²⁵

Black and white press photograph of a crowd at a barrier; a woman in a light tweed suit shakes hands with an older woman in a white crocheted hat and dark glasses. — Eileen Tyler, née Sippe — in the white crocheted hat — greeting Diana, Princess of Wales, at a walkabout in New Zealand, believed 1980s. She had arrived from Sydney as a bride of twenty-two, half a century before

1925–1932

Section 2C Triangle

Robert Dixon died in 1925. Two sources give 17 August and a third gives 17 April; the two agreeing are followed here.²⁶ His headstone says he died “in his 87th year”, which puts his birth around 1838 or 1839 — no birth or baptismal record for him has ever been found.

Sophia died seven years later. Here too the record splits evenly, 11 December against 17 December 1932, and neither reading is obviously the slip.²⁷ Her stone also says “in her 87th year”, which fits her known birth in January 1846 exactly.

They lie together at Rookwood in the Old Wesleyan section, Section 2C Triangle, sharing the ground with several of their children — the ground Robert Dixon had been proclaimed a trustee of thirty years before. Even the row number is contested: the cemetery inscription record gives Row 14 throughout, while Find A Grave’s transcriptions wander between 13 and 23 across members of the same small cluster of plots. Row 14 is the better-supported reading and is what is carried here.²⁸

The Record

Sources & References

1
Sophia’s birth

Born 14 January 1846, almost certainly in Sydney; a summary record independently gives the same date and place and records her death at Chatswood, in the City of Willoughby.
2
Marriage, 1865

NSW BDM marriage registration no. 300, 26 December 1865, Sydney, indexed on both the bride’s and the groom’s side. The groom’s surname is rendered “Sipe”. The family name appears across the record as Sippe, Sipe, Sipps and Sipp, sometimes within one lifetime; this is treated as ordinary clerical variation, not a change of name.
3
Robert Dixon, builder

Sydney directory — “Sippe Robert Dixon, builder, 181 Campbell Street”; a family notice of 1898 independently describes him as of Campbell-street, Surry Hills. Other directory entries give Riley Street and Burgoyne Street, Gordon; none is dated closely enough to sequence.
4
Executor, 1887

NSW Government Gazette probate notice, April 1887 — Robert Dixon Sippe and Robert Richardson Iredale, both “of Sydney”, named executors in the will of Martin Russell, freeholder, of Walter Street, Paddington.
5
Trustee of the Wesleyan Cemetery, 1902

Proclamation by Governor Sir Harry Holdsworth Rawson, 28 November 1902, under the Necropolis Act 1902 — Robert Dixon Sippe appointed a Trustee of the Wesleyan Cemetery at the Necropolis, Rookwood, with Thomas Parker Reeve, Walter Hamilton McClelland, Thomas Cummins, Charles Stratford, John Wade, George Forster Crozier and James Matthews.
6
NSW Volunteer Forces

Register, No. 4 Company, 1st Regiment — “Pte. Sippe, Robert Dixon”, register no. 1498, date of issue most plausibly 24 August 1895. The hand does not permit certainty on the corps designation or the exact date.
7
Census, 1901

Household schedule no. 115, Berowra Road, North Colah sub-district near Galston — five males and five females, ten persons. Neighbours named include the Pearce and Waddell families, who recur on later rolls.
8
Stephen George at Galston, 1891

NSW Government Gazette — appointed trustee, with Alexander Hutchison, John William Smyth Campbell, William Fagan junior and John Waddell, of ten acres at Galston, Portion 181, parish of North Colah, dedicated for public recreation.
9
Frederick John Dixon

NSW BDM birth registration 1872, Sydney; death registration 1888, both naming his parents. Died 29 December 1888 in his seventeenth year.
10
The shared headstone

Rookwood, Old Wesleyan, Section 2C Triangle — Frederick John Dixon Sippe with his elder brother Robert Wesley, who died 16 August 1921 at Chatswood aged fifty-four. The inscription for Frederick John ends “And he was not; for God took him.”
11
Stephen George’s obituary

Bruce Rock (WA) newspaper obituary, 1952 — arrival in the district in 1910 and settlement in early 1911; earlier travels across the Commonwealth and a spell on the goldfields; long service on the Bruce Rock Agricultural Society committee and life membership at about seventy-one; eighteen years on the original board of management of the district hospital. Died 30 August 1952 (a death registration gives 29 August), buried Bruce Rock Cemetery, Methodist portion, 1 September, Rev. F. Wilmot officiating.
12
The Bruce Rock sons

Noel Stephen Sippe, born 8 January 1914 at Cottesloe, WA; married Winifred Anne Buller; their shared headstone at Bruce Rock names six children. Sydney Robert Twyford Sippe, born 31 July 1917, also at Cottesloe; RAAF officer, service no. 415188, Flight Lieutenant; buried Allambie Park Cemetery, Albany. Both births at Cottesloe show the move west preceded 1914.
13
Charles Henry in business

Sydney directories — “Sippe Charles H., J.P.”, Nelson Road, Lindfield, and “SIPPE C. H. & CO.”, fancy goods specialists, York Street, later incorporated as Sippe C. H. & Co., Ltd. His obituary describes forty years in business, beginning as a wholesale softgoods warehouseman in George Street. A 1904 baptism register and his estate duty card both give his occupation as warehouseman.
14
Death and funeral, 1924

Obituary and funeral report — died suddenly at “Brooklyn”, Nelson Road, Lindfield; service at St Alban’s, Lindfield, then Gore Hill Cemetery; Lodge Kuring-gai attending in regalia. Deceased estate duty card: died 14 August 1924, probate 21 October 1924, estate assessed at £7,846. A Find A Grave memorial gives 15 August; the estate record and headstone agree on the 14th and are followed.
15
The Willcoxsons in the plot

The Gore Hill headstone also carries Mary Beatrice, Ruth and John Henry Willcoxson and others, 1910–2005. A wedding report describing the officiant, Rev. J. H. Willcoxson, as “the bride’s uncle” establishes that Emma Mary Isabel had a sister who married into that family — which explains the shared grave.
16
Clive Henry Sippe

M.B., Ch.M. Sydney 1926; M.R.C.P. London 1929, GMC registration 22 February 1928 while living at St Michael’s House, Basinghall Street, London. Came to Brisbane in 1930 to help establish the Brisbane Clinic, Wickham Terrace. Major, Australian Army Medical Corps, Middle East; slightly wounded when the hospital ship Manunda was bombed in Darwin Harbour, 19 February 1942. Married Dorothy Maude Dixon at St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Creek Street, Brisbane, 1 March 1934.
17
Clive’s death, 1949

Courier-Mail obituary, January 1949 — died 16 January 1949 aged forty-five at Laurel Avenue, Chelmer, having planned to sail for England the following month; taken ill on the Saturday afternoon, died early Sunday at the Mater Hospital. Memorial plaque, Bridgeman Downs: “Loved husband of Dorothy, Father of Richard, William (dec.) & Elizabeth.” The infant Charles William had died 21 April 1944.
18
George Robert Sippe

Birth registered Chatswood, 1911. Recorded as a medical student at 19 Nelson Road, Lindfield, in 1933; M.B., B.S. Sydney 1935; The Medical Directory records him “c/o Medical Dept., Port Louis, Mauritius”, Assistant Pathologist; GMC registration 28 August 1937. Died 15 April 1988, cremated Beresfield. His birth also corrects his father’s 1924 obituary, which counted two sons and two daughters where the record gives three sons and one daughter.
19
Ann Fraser Thompson

Born Lithgow 1912, daughter of Herbert Fraser Thompson and Helen Holt, one of five sisters, several also Sydney graduates. M.B., B.S. Sydney 1935 with honours, placed third overall, Dagmar Berne Prize as top female graduate; entered university at sixteen on a University Bursary and an Ellen Bundock Scholarship to Women’s College. Resident medical officer at Royal Prince Alfred and acting superintendent at Crown Street Women’s Hospital; registered in London “c/o Australia House”, 31 December 1937; posted to Hammersmith Hospital. Died 27 October 2005, buried Macquarie Park Cemetery.
20
The Telarah practice, 1943

Electoral roll, 1943 — George Robert and Ann Fraser Sippe both recorded as medical practitioners sharing a household at Elizabeth Street, Telarah, near Maitland.
21
“Happy Honeymoon”

Evening Post (Wellington), 1934 — feature on Mrs E. Tyler, “a young and pretty Australian, whose family have been closely connected with early New Zealand history”, sailing home aboard the Monowai. Her account of her great-uncle Edward Watkin, the ship Cyrus, the land at Woodward Street and Lambton Quay, the Rev. J. Watkin’s missionary work in Tonga and New Zealand, and the visit to the pā at Putiki. Her marriage is confirmed by a certified New Zealand record: 24 July 1934, Trinity Methodist Church, Wellington, the groom a seaman of twenty-five, the bride twenty-two, of Sydney, daughter of James Sippe, fitter, and Isabelle née Watkin.
22
Eileen’s later life

Settled at 164 Main Road, Wainuiomata, Lower Hutt. Her husband Albert William Tyler died 23 May 1967 at Hutt Hospital; his death notice names Eileen, their daughter Wendy (Mrs T. Lahood) and grandchildren Gregg, Colin, Julie and Jeff. Eileen died 24 October 2002 aged ninety and was buried beside him at Taitā Lawn Cemetery, Naenae. The photograph of her greeting the Princess of Wales is undated; a New Zealand royal walkabout of the 1980s is the likely occasion.
23
Lottie’s teaching service record

NSW Department of Public Instruction service record — pupil-teacher on probation, Lower Fort Street, 10 May 1899; Class III 1900, Class II 1901, Class I 1902; acting pupil-teacher, Fort Street Lower Primary, from August 1903; full scholarship to Training School, December 1903; temporary attendance, Surry Hills South Girls’, February 1905; Class II B provisional, December 1906; Class II A, October 1907; Assistant, Neutral Bay Girls’ School, March 1908, salary £136. Married John Dobson at Chatswood, 1912, reg. no. 5474.
24
Mollie Sippe Dobson

Born Chatswood 1919; married Leslie George Oxby at Chatswood, 1941, reg. no. 1635. He was an actuary, born Mosman 1914, RAAF officer, service no. 411812. They sailed from Cape Town to Southampton first class aboard the Edinburgh Castle in June 1957, his address “c/o the A.M.P. Society, King William Street, London”, and later settled permanently in Wellington. Their Diamond Wedding notice of 14 March 2001 carries congratulations “from daughters and grandchildren”.
25
Ralph Edgar’s rejected enlistment

Application to enlist, Victoria Barracks, Sydney, 19 December 1917 — aged twenty-eight years eight months, carpenter, single, of Burgoyne Street, Gordon, both parents living, height 5 ft 7 in. The preliminary medical found him unfit for active service on account of defective vision. Married Elsie Olive Waterhouse, St Leonards, 1919, reg. no. 6340, the index rendering her name “Elsie Og Waterhouse”. At 23 Whiting Street, Artarmon, by 1930, occupation storeman. Died 27 May 1949, buried Rookwood.
26
Robert Dixon’s death

A compiled summary record and a Find A Grave memorial both give 17 August 1925; a cemetery inscription record gives 17 April. The two agreeing sources are followed. His headstone gives his age as “in his 87th year”, implying a birth about 1838–39; no birth or baptismal record has been found.
27
Sophia’s death

Sources give both 11 December and 17 December 1932 — an evenly balanced discrepancy rather than an obvious slip, and left unresolved. Her headstone gives “in her 87th year”, consistent with her birth on 14 January 1846.
28
The family plot

Rookwood General Cemetery, Old Wesleyan section, Section 2C Triangle, plots 150, 152, 154 and 156. The cemetery inscription record gives Row 14 consistently; Find A Grave transcriptions of members of the same cluster vary between Row 13 and Row 23. Row 14 is treated as the better-supported reading. James Thomas Sippe, buried 1941, is recorded under a different scheme again — Methodist section, Zone A, Grave 154.