Boyd Poole

Boyd Poole was born on 28 December 1890, his birth registered in the Glen Innes district, and can hardly have been named for anything but the river that ran past his family’s own front door: Dalmorton stood on a tributary of the Clarence known as the Boyd, or Little River. He lived only eight months. The Clarence and Richmond Examiner recorded his death in a single notice on 22 September 1891: "On the 1st of September, at South Grafton, BOYD, the dearly beloved infant son of William F. and Frances Poole, aged 8 months and 3 days, after a short and painful illness of bronchitis."¹ He is the only one of William and Frances Poole’s eleven children known to have died in infancy.

The family had evidently gone down from Dalmorton to South Grafton — perhaps seeking treatment, or simply nearer to help — when the illness took him. A year later, almost to the day, his parents were still marking the loss: an In Memoriam notice in the same paper, dated Dalmorton and signed simply "E. and W. Poole," used the pet name the family plainly knew him by. "We miss thee, dearest Boydie," it read, "our grief is still as deep."²