The Kidd Family A Family History
Chapter One · Stephen & Sarah Robens

Under Central Station

Stephen Robens

1850–1853

Three years old, and buried in a cemetery that no longer exists. His name was given again to a brother born nine years later.

Born
1850 · Sydney
Died
1853 · Alexandria
Lived
3 years

The eldest son, born in Sydney in 1850 — before compulsory civil registration began in New South Wales, so that the only record of his birth is a baptism in the Wesleyan Methodist circuit books, under reference V18502418 55.1

He died in his third year, in 1853, at Alexandria. That burial too was entered in the Methodist circuit records rather than a civil register, and under the spelling Stephen Robins, reference V1853842 110.2 He is almost certainly the “1 male deceased” noted on his father’s 1875 death record — the shorthand by which the registrar counted a child who had not lived.

1853

Devonshire Street

He was buried at the Devonshire Street Cemetery, the main burial ground of Sydney before Rookwood opened.3

It is not there any more. At the turn of the century the ground was cleared to build Central Railway Station, and the graves were moved or lost. Every other member of this family who died in the colony can be found in a plot that still exists and can still be visited. This child cannot. The Wesleyan circuit book is the whole of what survives of him — two lines in a minister’s register, a birth and a burial three years apart, the surname spelled differently each time.

Nine years after his death his parents had another son and gave him the same name. Stephen Wesley Robens outlived every one of his brothers and sisters, and died in 1945 at eighty-three.

The Record

Sources & References

  1. 1

    Baptism, 1850

    Sydney Wesleyan Methodist Circuit register, reference V18502418 55 — his birth predates compulsory civil registration in New South Wales, so no civil birth entry exists.

  2. 2

    Burial record, 1853

    Alexandria, Wesleyan Methodist Circuit, reference V1853842 110 — entered under the spelling “Stephen Robins”.

  3. 3

    Devonshire Street Cemetery

    Devonshire Street Cemetery transcripts, Sydney — burial register entry, 1853. The cemetery was Sydney’s principal burial ground before Rookwood; it was cleared at the turn of the twentieth century for the construction of Central Railway Station.