Tuesday, December 30, 2014

42.3.2.1 Anthony and Barbara Brabazon Son Edward William Durnford m Elizabeth Langley Their story and extended update on the last post.


This is an updated post from the previous 43.3.2
Anthony and Barbara's first son was Edward William Durnford, and the stories about their families are quite remarkable.



Edward William Durnford married Elizabeth Rebecca Langley  b February 1804 in Gosport   Hampshire.


Members of Elizabeth's  family were also involved in the British Military.


She was the daughter of Captain John Langley b 1771 in London, and Annabella Claringbold.   She was born 1778 and died August 1848 in Cardiff.

Her father was the Captain and Paymaster in the Royal Glamorgan Militia



Elizabeth was one of 12 children.

Among her brothers was General Sir George Colt Langley KCB, a General in the British Army.  He attended Adam's Grammar School for his schooling.


The KCB The Most Honourable Order of the Bath (formerly the Most Honourable Military Order of the Bath) is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725

The Order was now to consist of three classes: Knights Grand Cross, Knights Commander, and Companions. The existing Knights Companion (of which there were 60) became Knight Grand Cross; this class was limited to 72 members, of which twelve could be appointed for civil or diplomatic services. The military members had to be of the rank of at least Major-General or Rear Admiral. 

The Knights Commander were limited to 180, exclusive of foreign nationals holding British commissions, up to ten of whom could be appointed as honorary Knights Commander. They had to be of the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel or Post-Captain. The number of Companions was not specified, but they had to have received a medal or been mentioned in despatches since the start of the war in 1803

WJK: “General Sir George C. Langley served in the [British] operations on the north coast of Spain [during the First Carlist War].” He was “in command of a detachment of Royal Marines of H.M.S. Castor in 1834 and two following years, and was severely wounded on 9 June 1836, defending the Heights of Passages [what they?] against a very superior force of Carlists. For his conduct on this occasion, he was awarded the First Class of the Order of San Fernando. He served subsequently on the north coast of Spain in 1838 to 1840, and had the same order conferred on him a second time for his general services in Spain.”     http://www.orange-tree-valley.co.uk



George married Maria Catherine Penrice and one of their children was Major Lionel Langley of the Royal Engineers

Major Lionel Langley of the Royal Engineers in Portsmouth, went on a shooting expedition.

St Jude's Southsea
He was the son of General Sir George Colt Langley of the Royal Marines and, at the aged of 40, had served his Queen in defending her empire for many years.

During the expedition at Kullur Madras, India, Major Langley was killed by a tiger.

His remains were returned home and interred in Highland Cemetery and a memorial was put up in St Jude’s Church, Southsea – from John Sadden’s The Portsmouth Book of Days.     


Another of her brothers John Henry Langley was a solicitor in Cardiff

and another Robert Langley was an Attorney and assistant country clerk in Cardiff in 1851


The Langley's have a fine historical background, as the family were descended from the Langley's of Golding Hall in Shropshire.  There is possibly a link between Geoffrey de Langley 1226, and Edmund de Langley b 1341 son of King Richard III and nephew of our 17th great grand uncle.

Some members of the Langley family were merchants, and some held postings in Jamaica.

Col. Andrew Langley 1702   Member of the Assembley in Jamaica in 1688 and held other posts up to 1702

He  was the son of John Langley of St Peter's Cornhill who was Alderman of London  his daughter Elizabeth Langley who married Fulke Rose in 1678 in Jamacia and Jane married Anthony Swymmer of Jamacia,  When Andrew died the Swymmer's inherited his estates.

John Langley was an English merchant and politician who sat in the House of Commons in 1653.

Langley was a merchant of the City of London and a member of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers. He was one of the Court Assistants from 1643 to 1648 and from 1649 to 1650. He was elected alderman of the City of London for Langbourn ward in December 1649 or January 1650. From 1650 to 1652 he was on the Committee of the East India Company. In 1652 he was Commissioner for the Admiralty and Navy and also Prime Warden of the Fishmongers Company.[1]

In 1653, Langley was nominated as Member of Parliament for City of London in the Barebones Parliament. He was a member of the Committee of the East India Company from 1653 to 1655 and from 1656 to 1657. He was one of the Court Assistants from 1664 to 1671. He was Deputy-Governor of the Levant Company from 1671 to 1672 and was again one of the Court Assistants from 1672 to 1673.

Langley became poor in his old age and a pension of £20 per annum was granted to him by the Court of Common Council on 10 October 1679.


Elizabeth's great grandfather Thomas died in 1790 in Jamaica.

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From Shropshire:

    Brief Description: The garden at Golding is an excellent example of a gentleman's garden of the later 17th century.

    Description: Golding Hall is the chief house of Golding, a manor in Cound parish. Steep brick terraces behind the house are the most significant evidence that hand-in-handwith the rebuilding of the house in the 1660s went the construction of fashionable formal gardens. The garden at Golding is an excellent example of a gentleman's garden of the later 17th century.

The remainder of the manor of Golding was purchased by George Langley, tenant there since 1598, in 1606. The Langleys owned it until 1820 when it was sold to the owner of the Pitchford estate (V.C.H. Shropshire 8 (1968),65). It then remained a part of that estate until 1994, when it was sold to Mr. Richard Hartley, whose family had been tenants there since the 1930s.-

Golding Hall, two miles south-west of Cound, is part of an attractive group of historic farm buildings which include a 15th- or 16th-century cruck barn (Listed Grade 11: 1189/6/98), an 18th-century dovecote with kennel or game larder beneath (Listed Grade 11: 1189/6/96), an 18th -century and later stable and granary (Listed Grade 11: 1189/6/97), and a large stone barn, perhaps of the early 19th century.

    The Hall itself (Listed Grade II*: 1189/6/92) is a complex and curious building. Edward Langley, who had succeeded to the estate in 1615, rebuilt the Hall in 1662 (dendrochronological date: inf. From Mr. Hartley) as a traditional timber framed structure. He died in 1665 and his son Thomas (d. 1694) soonafter enlarged the new building by adding a brick parlour range onto the west end of it, this being dated 1668. Later, perhaps in the early 18th century, the rest of the house had a brick skin added to present a more symmetrical appearance to the H-plan house.-

It was probably also Thomas Langley, who was born in 1636, was a barrister of the Inner Temple, and was admitted burgess of Shrewsbury in 1670 (Trans. Shrops. Arch. Soc. 4 ser. 8, 79), who was responsible for the brick walls which provide a setting for the house. Set forward 20 m from the north front of the house is a 40 m long forecourt wall (Listed Grade 11: 1189/6/93), 1 m high and stone coped. This is pierced at its centre by a pedestrian gate with square brick piers (little taller than the wall and perhaps much reduced in height) surmounted by stone caps and finials. The forecourt is today lawned. At both ends the forecourt wall turns south, to bound the Hall to west and east.

Probably contemporary with the forecourt wall, although not physically tied to them, are brick terrace walls south of the Hall. The upper wall (Listed Grade II: 1189/6/94), parallel to and 20 m south of the south front of the Hall, is only two or three courses higher than the lawn to its north. It is stone coped. From the centre of the wall a flight of 16 stone steps, probably an 18th-century insertion, descend against the face of the wall to the lower terrace. The upper terrace rises some 5 m, and probably from the start there were problems with the stability of the wall and the weight of soil pushing forward against it. Certainly by the 18th century broad raking buttresses were being built to hold up the western half of the wall, and others have been added since that time. In the 1950s a large area of the wall face at the east end was rebuilt using an incongruously hard, orange-red facing brick

    Related Places:             Cound, Shrewsbury and Atcham, Shropshire (Civil Parish)
    For more information contact: Shropshire Council HER       Date Last Edited: 20/06/2014 11:58:07

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Peltham Rd Portsmouth
St John's Cardiff


 Edward and Elizabeth were  married  in 1829 at St Johns Church Cardiff   Elizabeth died 28 Jan 1894 in Southend .




Before her death she was living at 22 Peltham Road Portsmouth    The street consists of a selection of similar style terrace housing.


Edward, like his father and uncles before him joined the Royal Engineers.

In 1825 he was nominated a "Candidate for the Corps of Royal Engineers," and joined the Ordnance Survey at Cardiff.

In August 1826, he was posted to Chatham and was gazetted 2nd-Lieutenant in Sept. of the same year.

(a) He joined the Ordnance Survey of Ireland in 1827 and served there until 1842 when he transferred to the English Survey in which he served until 1844.

(b) He was promoted 2nd-Captain in 1841.  In 1845 he embarked for service in China.

(c) In 1849 he served in Scotland until 1855 when he embarked for service in the Crimea.

He was however, detained at Malta and served there until 1856, when he embarked for Ireland where he was employed upon district duties until 1857, being appointed Assistant Adjutant-General to the Royal Engineers serving there.

In the meantime, he had been promoted to Brevet Major in July 1854 and Lieutenant-Colonel in December of the same year.

Shortly after his promotion to full Colonel in 1860 he was appointed Commanding Royal Engineer in Ireland, which he held until 1866 when he again embarked for Malta as Commanding Royal Engineer and Colonel on the Staff.

He remained at Malta until his promotion to the rank of Major-General in 1868.  He was promoted Lieutenant-General in 1874, and in the same year he was gazetted to the rank of Colonel Commandant in the Corps.

He was further promoted to the rank of General on Oct. 1, 1877.  He died a the age of 85 on Jan. 30 1889.  Elizabeth died January 1894 in Portsea, Hampshire.


Some information about where he was during his 52 years of service.

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 (a)  Royal Engineers built forts and garrisons.


The Curragh Camp in 1861, from a painting by army surgeon Jones Lamprey. (Gorry Gallery, Dublin)



With the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854 a requirement for additional training areas for the British Army was recognised as an urgent necessity by the government in London. Early in the following year it was announced that camps would be established at Aldershot in Hampshire and on the Curragh of Kildare



They also undertook a Survey of Ireland and produced the first maps.


The Maps, Plans and Drawings collection of Military Barracks and Posts in Ireland (MPD Collection) is one of our newest online resources for researchers.  Taken from a collection of 19th and 20th century paper architectural maps, plans and drawings of military installations throughout the island of Ireland – many of which are previously unseen - it offers a unique opportunity to explore Ireland’s military architectural heritage.

The MPD collection has come from a variety of sources, both under the British (UK) and Irish (Free State and Republic) administrations.  The vast majority of Ireland’s surviving military installations (north and south of today’s border), including barracks, posts, camps, forts and castles, were constructed by the British during the 19th century.  Accordingly, most of the MPD records were originally produced for the War Office (contemporary Department of Defence equivalent) by the Royal Engineer Corps of the British Army, mainly from the Southampton drawing offices, but often in conjunction with the Ordnance Survey offices at Mountjoy Barracks in the Phoenix Park Dublin, which today houses the Ordnance Survey of Ireland.  These barracks were constructed under the auspices of such Crown organisations as the Board of Public Works and later the Barracks Board. - See more at: http://www.militaryarchives.ie/collections/online-collections/maps-plans-drawings-collection/history#sthash.aC2F6gGX.dpuf


1852 Map of Cork

 
History
Military Archives Maps, Plans and Drawings collection of Military Barracks in Ireland
Introduction

The Maps, Plans and Drawings collection of Military Barracks and Posts in Ireland (MPD Collection) is one of our newest online resources for researchers.  Taken from a collection of 19th and 20th century paper architectural maps, plans and drawings of military installations throughout the island of Ireland – many of which are previously unseen - it offers a unique opportunity to explore Ireland’s military architectural heritage.

The MPD collection has come from a variety of sources, both under the British (UK) and Irish (Free State and Republic) administrations.  The vast majority of Ireland’s surviving military installations (north and south of today’s border), including barracks, posts, camps, forts and castles, were constructed by the British during the 19th century.  Accordingly, most of the MPD records were originally produced for the War Office (contemporary Department of Defence equivalent) by the Royal Engineer Corps of the British Army, mainly from the Southampton drawing offices, but often in conjunction with the Ordnance Survey offices at Mountjoy Barracks in the Phoenix Park Dublin, which today houses the Ordnance Survey of Ireland.  These barracks were constructed under the auspices of such Crown organisations as the Board of Public Works and later the Barracks Board.
- See more at: http://www.militaryarchives.ie/collections/online-collections/maps-plans-drawings-collection/history#sthash.aC2F6gGX.dpuf





The Ordnance Survey (OS) was established in 1824, under the direction of Colonel Thomas Colby, assisted by Lieutenant Thomas Larcom, to undertake a townland survey of Ireland and to map the entire country at a scale of 6 inches to one mile. The cartographic element of the OS project was completed by 1842, and a full set of maps exists for each Irish county.

 Ordnance Survey Ireland has evolved from the Ordnance Survey Office which was established in 1824. This Office was initially part of the army under the Department of Defence. All staff employed by the Office were military until the 1970s when the first civilian employees were recruited.
The Ordnance Survey Office was created to carry out a survey of the entire island of Ireland to update land valuations for land taxation purposes. The original survey at a scale of 6 inches to 1 mile was completed in 1846 under the direction of Major General Colby. Ireland thus became the first country in the world to be entirely mapped at such a detailed scale.

Drawings and sketches of buildings and other antiquarian items were prepared by the researchers employed by the OS as part of their work of recording antiquities in the landscape. Among the artists employed by the OS were George Petrie, MRIA (1790-1866), George Victor du Noyer (1817-69), and William Frederick Wakeman (1822-1900). The collection of OS Sketches in the Royal Irish Academy comprises over 1,000 drawings. (Shelf-marks are in the range 12 T 1 – 12 T 17). These sketches have been conserved, with funding from the Heritage Council. The sketches are stored, unbound, in archival boxes. The drawings are individually catalogued on the Prints, Drawings and Artefacts Catalogue. Funding for the cataloguing of the drawings was provided by the Sailors & Soldiers Trust Fund. The collection has been photographed for preservation purposes with funding from Atlantic Philanthropies. It is planned to make the digitised images available via the RIA website. http://www.ria.ie/library/catalogue.aspx

(b) China

Before the battle meeting with leaders
The first capture of Chusan by British forces in China occurred on 5–6 July 1840 during the First Opium War. The British captured Chusan, the largest island of an archipelago of that name.


On the morning of 5 July, a large number of Chinese troops occupied the hill and shore. British seamen from the masthead of the ships observed the city walls, which were 1 mile (1.6 km) from the beach, also lined with troops. At about 2:00 pm, the Cruiser and Algerine brigs got into position, and the signal was given to land.

The first division comprised the 18th Royal Irish Regiment, Royal Marines, the 26th regiment, and two 9-pounder guns. The second division comprised the 49th regiment, Madras sappers and miners, and Bengal volunteers.  At 2:30 pm, the Wellesley fired at the Martello tower.

 The Chinese immediately returned fire from the shore and junks. The cannonade lasted 7–8 minutes before the Chinese troops fled to the city walls behind the suburbs.

The British landed unopposed on a deserted beach, which Viscount Robert Jocelyn described as having "a few dead bodies, bows and arrows, broken spears and guns".

 By 4:00 pm, British troops placed two 9-pounders within 400 yards (370 m) of the city walls. Six more 9-pounders, two howitzers, and two mortars were later added to the arsenal


 Burrell waited until the next day before ordering a resumption of operations. The next morning, he sent a party to reconnoitre the city. Although there were thousands of inhabitants during the evening, the city was now largely abandoned. The gate was found strongly barricaded by large sacks of grain. A company of the 49th regiment took possession of the main gate of the city of Ting-hai, where the British flag was hoisted.




The China War Medal was issued by the British Government in 1843 to members of the British Army and Royal Navy who took part in the First Anglo-Chinese War (1839–42). The medal was designed by William Wyon.

The China War Medal was originally intended by the Governor-General of India, in October 1842, to be awarded exclusively to all ranks of the Honourable East India Company's Forces. Instead, in 1843, under the direction of Queen Victoria, the British Government awarded it without clasp to all members of the British Army and Royal Navy who had "served with distinction" between 5 July 1840 and 29 August 1842 in the following actions :
  • In the Canton River operations of 1841.
  • At the first and second capture of Chusan, in 1840 and 1841.
  • At the battles of Amoy, Ningpo, Chinhai, Tsekee, Chapoo, Woosung, in the Yangtze River, and in the assault of Chinkiang.

This campaign became known as the First Opium War, ending in the seizure of Nanking. The resultant treaty opened five ports to trade, and ceded Hong Kong to Great Britain



(c) The Crimea Medal was a campaign medal approved in 1854, for issue to officers and men of British units (land and naval) which fought in the Crimean War of 1854–56 against Russia.


The medal is notable for its extremely ornate clasps, being in the form of an oak leaf with an acorn at each extremity, a style never again used on a British medal. The suspension is an ornate floriated swivelling suspender, again unique to the Crimea Medal.

Five bars were authorised, the maximum awarded to one man was four. Azoff was only issued to Naval and Marine personnel. The medal was issued without a clasp to those who were present in the Crimea, but not present at any of the qualifying actions. A five bar specimen is held in the Royal Collection.

This medal was also presented to certain members of allied French forces. These medals, in addition to the five British clasps, were often issued with unauthorised French bars; Traktir, Tchernaia, Mer d'Azoff, and Malakof.


The medal was awarded with the British version of the Turkish Crimean War medal, but when a consignment of these were lost at sea some troops were issued with the Sardinian version instead.

Royal Engineers Shipping at Balaclava




Their children were:


1.1  Anthony William Durnford                       24 May 1830 Manor Hamilton Ireland  22 Jan  1879
                                                                                                           South Africa
1.2.  Edward Congreave Langley Durnford     8 May  1832  -  1927
1.3.  Annabella Barbara Durnford                    19 Mar 1834   Limerick Ireland    -  1884
1.4   Catherine Jemima Durnford                     16 Mar 1836  Killerhrandra Ireland   d  1904  Devon
1.4.  Arthur George Durnford                           9 Aug   1838  -Westport Ireland     1912
1.5.  Harriet Maria Boteler Durnford                1 Mar   1840  -  1916   Born In Limerick

Harriet did not marry and lived with her parents throughout her life



This post regarding Edward and Elizabeth and the family has revealed some absolutely amazing facts and stories.  The achievements of these Durnford cousins has at times been quite overwhelming.


I often felt that our great grandmother Jemima Isaacson was treated rather badly, and felt sorry for her. 

 I am sure however, she would be so very proud to learn the achievements of her grandchildren from her younger son Anthony William Durnford.       KH




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SPECIAL NOTE

Anyone who is unfamiliar with the lineage of this Durnford Family which has been written in the blog, will find it difficult to work out who was who, when it comes to the era of the "Military" Durnfords.    This line commenced with the marriage of Elias Durnford to Martha Gannaway, who lived in London in 1753.

Elias was not involved in any military, he lived as a gentleman, on the proceeds of an inheritance, however they had four sons, Charles, Elias, Andrew and Thomas.  These last three begin this lineage of the Military Durnfords.

So many were in the Royal Engineers, they held senior posts, Captains, Majors and Generals and have undertaken remarkable engineering projects all over the world.

They were talented authors, artists, surveyors and builders.

There have been so many who gave their life for England buried in far flung places, on land and in the sea.

So many who have died from tropical illnesses, in a time when medical research was just being undertaken, before smallpox vacinations, or quinine for malaria, or treatment for yellow fever.

The wives and children who accompanied each of them to places like India, South Africa, Malta, West Indies, America, Canada, all at a time when there was so much conflict, especially during the Victorian era, deserve a mention.

While their husband's and son's bravery can be researched, the women were often those left raising many children in difficult circumstances in areas where disease was prevalent, when children died in infancy, where conditions were deplorable, in foreign lands where English was not the first language they had to cope in the best way they could.  For some that meant earthquakes and uprisings.

They truly are unsung heroes.

There was a tradition to name the children after others in the family, with the result that there is a lot of incorrect information written about various members of this family.

When documenting this story about each of the different family members, it has been done in a chronological order.  Family stories of the children follow each of the levels of parentage.

Later there were so many who fought in World War I.




HANSARD REPORT

 In order to clarify some particular notions that cast some doubts on the ability of Col. Anthony William Durnford in South Africa, and particular this piece from Hansard, the officer attached to the Dublin Ordinance Branch was his father, (whose Military history is above, and the comments in the Hansard report are irrelevant to Anthony Durnford's ability as a soldier.

And in no way does it cast any doubt on the ethics of Col Edward Durnford.

The case involves a fraud within the staff of the Ordinance Department - one Hamlton Connolly.

The interesting thing about this is that while based at Dunkirk, Edward's cousin, Andrew Durnford also in the Royal Engineers, sent reports back to London about his concerns with the smuggling and illegal activities of the Irish.  His brother was reporting on fraud at Chatham Dockyards, so the family were serious about the role that they played while in service of the Royal Engineers.

The transcript is listed, so that others can gain a clear understanding, as to which officer was responsible.


From Hansard British Parliament HC Deb 21 March 1862 vol 165 cc1925-8 1925


§ MR. WHITESIDE

I wish to call attention to the facts proved on the recent trial in Dublin of Hamilton Conolly, a clerk in the Ordnance Department, and of John M'Ilvaine, a contractor with the Government; and to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, or the Secretary to the Treasury, to explain in what manner the Ordnance Accounts are kept and audited, which allowed the proceedings by the parties convicted at such trial; and whether any and what changes have been effected in the mode of keeping the Public Accounts calculated to prevent a repetition thereof?

These two persons were tried for conspiracy.

The one, Hamilton Conolly, was a clerk in the Ordnance Department, drawing a very respectable salary, and bearing, of course, a good character. The other, John M'Ilvaine, was a contractor with the Government, and, according to the evidence of several witnesses who were called on his side, one of the most respectable men that ever lived.

The frauds for which they were brought to trial and convicted were committed in the following manner:—It appears that when a contract is made in Ireland—say, for the repair of barracks—the estimate is considered and the prices are fixed in a most methodical manner. When the work is done, it is carefully examined.

The head of the department in Dublin, Colonel Durnford, an officer of Engineers, and, I need hardly say, a man of unexceptionable character, retains a facsimile of the Account, and gives the counterpart to one of the clerks to forward to the Ordnance Department in London.

Conolly availed himself of this practice to alter the account before sending it away. Sometimes he inserted £300 or £400, or sometimes £500 extra. The account which bore Colonel Durnford's signature was next examined by a number of very able gentlemen in London. When, however, they were satisfied of the correctness of the account, they did not communicate with Colonel Durnford or any of the officials in Ireland, but sent a check direct to the contractor.

In this case the contractor, M'Ilvaine, was in collusion with 1926 the clerk Conolly, and therefore, when he received a letter authorising him to draw on the Treasury for a sum perhaps twice the amount of his account, it was thankfully received and immediately obeyed. In passing sentence on the offenders, the Judge enumerated some of the instances of fraud which occurred between February and July, 1861.

A sum of £323 17s. was altered into £628 7 s.. 2d.; another of £271 11s. in £576 1s.; another of £361 14s. into £706 17s.; another of £221 16s. into £445 18s.; and another of £268 into £501. Of course, had the head of the department in Dublin caught sight of any of the altered accounts or orders to pay, the fraud would have been at once detected.

 But, with singular ingenuity, all the checks were arranged so that there was no safeguard whatever against conspiracy between a clerk and a contractor. It was chiefly in the items for slating that the figures were altered.

A gentleman told me that there were charges for slates enough to cover the Isle of Wight. Any one who knew anything of the barracks for which it was pretended that these slates were required, could see at a glance that it was utterly impossible such a preposterous quantity could have been used

On the trial the Judge observed, that although he was, of course, bound to confine himself to the frauds disclosed in the evidence, he had a shrewd suspicion that they were but a small portion of the system which had been carried on in the department for a series  of years. I have been told that these two gentlemen, one very religions, and the other a very fashionable man, have been making nearly £2,500 a year by their dishonesty. Indeed, they might, perhaps, but for an accident, have been still pocketing large sums.

The report is, that the fraud was discovered only through a clerk from Dublin happening, when in the London office, to set eyes on one of the cooked accounts. Upon that the law officers were called in, and the two gentlemen were arrested, one of them as he was going to a dinner party, which was clearly very inconvenient for him, and very distressing to his feelings.

It was discovered that the two rogues had an agreement to divide the spoils. They were convicted, and the justice of the country was vindicated. I wish to know from the Government what sums of money have been abstracted from the public treasury in this manner; and what steps, if any, have been taken to 1927 prevent a repetition of this systematic and long-continued plundering?

SIR GEORGE LEWIS

The statements of the right hon. Gentleman are perfectly correct as far as they went. The information I have received is, that a clerk named Conolly, who was formerly in the Ordnance Department, and afterwards on the Consolidated Staff of the War Department as chief clerk of his branch, conspired with a contractor named M'Ilvaine to defraud the Government.

My information leads me to the belief that their frauds extended over the years between 1848 and 1861. It is plain that as the amalgamation of the Ordnance and War Departments took place in 1854, these offences were not due to that measure.

The manner in which the frauds were committed was this:—The Commanding Officer of Engineers certified the value of the work done, and delivered the certificate to the chief clerk, who, in collusion with the contractor, increased the amount, and transmitted it to the War Office in London, where it was examined, and whence the order for payment on the paymaster was sent to the contractor.

That was the system of checks; the chief clerk was supposed to be a check upon the officer of Engineers, and the contractor to be a check upon these two officers. It was the practice of the old Ordnance Office, and no alteration was introduced by the combined departments. The right hon. Gentleman said, that if payment had been made on the order of the officer of Engineers, the possibility of fraud would have been avoided.

But, without intending to cast any imputation upon the honour of officers of the army, he must say, that if there bad been collusion between the officer of Engineers and the contractor, such a system would have led to a precisely similar result.

 [Mr. WHITESIDE: Then we have no hope?] Your hope is in this, that you may have a system of checks which will make fraud extremely difficult. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? No system of checks can be devised which, by means of forgery and conspiracy, may not be defeated. I believe that at first the frauds were not large, but impunity rendering the parties bolder in late years the amounts of which the public were defrauded became more considerable.

As these persons were only convicted of frauds to the extent of £1,400, I feel some difficulty in stating, upon what may be considered official authority, the extent of the frauds which they actually committed, as they may have friends and relations whose feelings would be hurt by such a statement.

If the House thinks I am justified in making the statement I have no objection to do so; but I will hot voluntarily state the amount, though I may say that it considerably exceeds that which was proved at the trial. The frauds were detected by a clerk in the office, who suspected something was wrong, and wrote to London.

Inquiry was made, and the irregularity was at once found out. The rule which has been adopted to prevent the recurrence of such practices is, that the Commanding Officer of Engineers should send to the London office a duplicate statement, which will be a check upon the clerk.

This will prevent the recurrence of any precisely similar frauds, but it is impossible to provide securities against every possible fraud which ingenious rogues may devise. Means have also been taken, with which I need not trouble the House, to prevent such frauds as these leading to the expenditure of more money than has been voted by this House.

SIR FREDERIC SMITH said, that in England the system was very simple. The works were executed by contract and measurement, and when complete the contractor, the clerk of the works, and the executive officer of Engineers, each of whom kept a book, checked one another.

The check was complete, for there must be collusion between all four persons before any fraud could be effected. It appeared that in the instance referred to the amount paid was more than the work could cost. It should be known that in these cases there was an estimate, and every sum paid upon it was entered in a hook.

Now it was the duty of the clerk who made the entries, the moment there was an excess of payment over the estimate, to state the fact; and therefore the contractor would be called upon to know why there was an excess.

He contended that the practice should be that no bill in which there was an erasure or interlineation should be paid, and he would suggest that there should be a positive order to that effect.        








Monday, December 22, 2014

42.3.2 Anthony Durnford and Barbara Brabazon Their children Updated


Anthony Dunford and Barbara Brabazon had 5 children


1.Edward William Durnford     b  22 nd Oct 1803  in London and died 30 January 1889 in Hampshire

2.George Anthony Durnford     b  18 Sept 1804  in Kent and died 8 Oct 1856 in Simla East Indies

3.Catherine Jemima Durnford    b  3 Feb 1806   died  8 October 1820 in St John Marylebone

4.Arthur Gifford Durnford          b  14 Jan 1809  Brockhill Surrey  d  22 Dec 1886  Hindolveston

5.Harriet Barbara Durnford         b  9 May 1810 in London  d  2nd May 1885 in York Ontario





1.  Edward William Durnford married Elizabeth Rebecca Langley  b 1804 in Sri Lanka
                                         married  in 1829 at St Johns Church Cardiff    d  28 Jan 1894 in Southend


1.  Edward William Durnford

In 1825 he was nominated a "Candidate for the Corps of Royal Engineers," and joined the Ordnance Survey at Cardiff.  In August 1826, he was posted to Chatham and was gazetted 2nd-Lieutenant in Sept. of the same year.

He joined the Ordnance Survey of Ireland in 1827 and served there until 1842 when he transferred to the English Survey in which he served until 1844.  He was promoted 2nd-Captain in 1841.  In 1845 he embarked for service in China.  In 1849 he served in Scotland until 1855 when he embarked for service in the Crimea. 

He was however, detained at Malta and served there until 1856, when he embarked for Ireland where he was employed upon district duties until 1857, being appointed Assistant Adjutant-General to the Royal Engineers serving there.  In the meantime, he had been promoted to Brevet Major in July 1854 and Lieutenant-Colonel in December of the same year.  

Shortly after his promotion to full Colonel in 1860 he was appointed Commanding Royal Engineer in Ireland, which he held until 1866 when he again embarked for Malta as Commanding Royal Engineer and Colonel on the Staff.  He remained at Malta until his promotion to the rank of Major-General in 1868.  

He was promoted Lieutenant-General in 1874, and in the same year he was gazetted to the rank of Colonel Commandant in the Corps.  He was further promoted to the rank of General on Oct. 1, 1877.

He died a the age of 85 on Jan. 30 1889.  



They had 5 children

1.1  Anthony William Durnford                       24 May 1830 Manor Hamilton Ireland  22 Jan  1879
                                                                              South Africa
1.2.  Edward Congreave Langley Durnford     8 May  1832  -  1927
1.3.  Annabella Barbara Durnford                    19 Mar 1834   Limerick Ireland  -  1884
1.4   Catherine Jemima Durnford                     16 Mar  1836  Killerhrandra Ireland  d  1904  Devon
1.4.  Arthur George Durnford                           9 Aug   1838  -Westport Ireland     1912
1.5.  Harriet Maria Boteler Durnford                1 Mar   1840  -  1916

The family of Edward William Durnford is in a following post 

2.  George Anthony Durnford

Was a Captain in command of 27th Foot went to assist British garrison besieged by Dutch trekboers Port Natal 1842.  At Congella They were boarded Conch in Algoa Bay under Capt William Bell and it took 2 weeks to reach Natal.

The result of this conflict was the end of the Boer Republic of Natalia and the final annexation by Britain of Natal to the Cape Colony followed in 1844.

At the time of Langalibalele's birth, European settlements in Southern Africa were confined to Cape Colony and to Portuguese fortress of Lourenço Marques.In 1824 Fynn established a small British settlement at Port Natal (later to become Durban) but the British Government declined to take possession of the port.

From 1834 onwards, the Voortrekkers (Dutch-speaking farmers) started to migrate from the Cape Colony in large numbers and in 1837 crossed the Drakensberg into KwaZulu-Natal where, after the murder of one of their leaders, Piet Retief, in the massacre at Weenen they defeated Shaka's successor Dingane at the Battle of Blood River, put Mpanda on the Zulu throne and established the republic of Natalia.

 Friction between the Voortrekkers and the Pondo, a tribe whose territory lay between Natalia and the Cape Colony led to the British occupying Port Natal, the subsequent Battle of Congella followed by the siege and relief of the port. After the port had been relieved, the Voortrekkers withdrew from KwaZulu-Natal into the interior and the British established the Colony of Natal.


"Narrative of the Entrance of the 'Conch' at Port Natal" by Capt. William Douglas Bell, printed by the Natal Mercury, Durban 1869.
"Annals of Natal" Vol 1 & 11 : J. Bird   
Rosemary Dixon-Smith, great-great-granddaughter of Captain Bell, first Port Captain of Natal. 


The Durban Old Fort was set up when British forces and Durban inhabitants were beseiged by the Boers in 1842. The Fort commemorates the ride to Grahamstown by Dick King (26 May 1842) to raise relief, has the St Peter in Chains Chapel, formerly the magazine, the Moths Museum and many other historical displays. Regrettably the site is being neglected by the Ethekweni Municipality and some of the exhibits in danger of disappearing.

3. Catherine Jemima Durnford


Catherine was born 3rd February 1806 and baptised 19th February 1809 in Warfield Berkshire in England.  Catherine died 8th October 1820 at St John Marylebone.

Her address was Queen Ann Street London

Special Note:    While researching all the different family lines, there was bound to be some mistakes especially from the information in different genealogy programes, and while it was my aim to update and correct any prior information, the previous information supplied for this Catherine Jemima Durnford actually belonged to her niece, another Catherine Jemima Durnford daughter of Edward William Durnford.  

 This has now been corrected.  Throughout the family lineage there are so many people named exactly the same.



4.  Arthur Gifford Durnford  b  1809 in Brockhill in Surrey.  He became a minister and he married Marianne Wiffen in 1839 in Essex.                                                              

They had 13 children

Anthony Yates Durnford                    1842  -  1843
Marion Durnford                               1842                m Newnham Philpott
James Poole Oates Durnford              1845  -  1919    m Woodward
Sophia Bestard Durnford                   1846  -  1903
Georgina Harriet Pellow Durnford      1848   - 1935 m Thomas Henry Griffinhoofe
Katrine Brabazon Durnford                1849  -  1849
Madeline Durnford                            1850 -  1851
Lucy Isaacson Durnford                     1854 -  1939 m Fletcher Ivens
Kathleen Durnford                             1857
Mable Montague Bockett Durnford     1859    1864
Julia Maude Dunford                         1860  - 1879
Arthur Gifford Durnford                    1864    1864

How sad it is to see the deaths of the young children, very difficult for the parents.


They lived in Hindolveston in Norfolk.  He died December 1886 she died in 1864, possibly in childbirth.

All the children carried interesting middle names.  Usually it is the name of a grandparent or g.ggrandparent, and with these children it has taken some time to work out the connections.

The name Yates is Marianne's Grandmother - Isabelle Yates who married Henry Wiffen
Their son was Henry Yates Wiffen and he married Elizabeth.  Parents of Marianne.
Going on the surnames, Oates should be the name of Marianne's mother Elizabeth.

Which leave Poole, Pellow and Bestard and Brockett.  There was a habit also in the Durnford's to name their children after famous Military figures.

Bastard and his brother were at Plymouth, and quelled a riot. As well as military they were Members of Parliament.  Pellow was a very strong Military family, being Governor General of India, and in the Navy, Bastard was the godfather of one of the Pellows.

John Halsey Bockett was the son of John Bockett and Martha Halsey John married Rebekah Bradney and  their daughter Frances married Rev Thomas William Barlow, the Prebendary of Bristol
who was the son of William Barlow.

His brother  Sir George Hilaro Barlow married Elizabeth Smith.   They had a large family and the eldest daughter Eliza Harriett Barlow married Pownoll Bastard Pellow the 2nd Count of Exmouth.

The Bocketts were a Quaker Family as was the Wiffen.  Family jigsaw's nothing like them!


The Droits de L’Homme Engagement

On the 13th of January 1797 shortly after midday two British frigates sighted an unidentified French ship off the coast of Brittany.  The frigates, Indefatigable, Captain Sir Edward Pellew, and Amazon, Captain Robert Reynolds, immediately gave chase and by four o’clock in the afternoon observed the ship to be a large vessel with two tiers of guns

January 1797, ranged from eight to twenty-seven, though two of the youngest, Pownoll Pellew and Fleetwood Pellew, the captain’s sons, appear to have been carried on the ships books in order to  reduce the period of active service required before they could sit their lieutenants’ examinations
In the case of the Indefatigable, the young gentlemen were no exception, six were the sons of Pellew’s friends and acquaintances, two were Pellew’s own sons, and one was related to his wife.




5.  Harriet Barbara Durnford born 1810 in London she married Nov 1830 to Capt Charles Gerard King in Chatham England.

Capt Charles Gerard King was born in 1801 in Vella Eas Indies, and he died November 1855 in Istanbul in Turkey.


Their children

Arthur Charles Alpin King        b  1833 in Chatham
Barbara Catherine King            b   1835
Pauline D'Estrade King             b    1839  Drakes Island in England  d  1911 in York Ontario
Florence Harriet Barbara King   b  1840  England  d  1881 Muskoka Ontario  m Rev Joseph Cole
Edward William Durnford King b  1842
Louisa Alice King                     b  1843  Kent
Charles Gerard King                 b  1845   d  1920  Muskoka Canada  m  Priscilla Dangerfield
Georgina Metcalfe King            b 1850  d   1921  Welland Ontario  m  George Rodney Owen




Harriet Barbara Durnford wrote a book 'Letters from Muskoka', by an Emigrant Lady. The book was published in 1878 and is a record of her experiences as a pioneer woman living in the "bush" of Muskoka, Ontario, Canada.

Notes from Internet search......................

It sounds like the premise of a 19th-century reality show: a British lady accustomed to servants, tea and whiling away the hours with embroidery is plunked into the Muskoka bush in 1871, where she lives in a cabin missing a door, fights an endless plague of mosquitoes and chases cows from the cabbage plants.

She may not be suited for the bush, but our 61-year-old widowed protagonist has a dry wit. “The pleasure of a solitary walk is greatly impaired by the vague terror of a stray bear confronting you on the pathway,” she writes.

In 1871, Harriet Barbara Durnford King, daughter of a prominent British military family, leaves Calais, France, a city that has been a shelter for her and her family during “fifteen years of widowhood.” The Franco-Prussian War, now finished, has disrupted her life. Harriet has an adult son making a go of it in Canada and she, along with three of her other children, is convinced to join him in this magical El Dorado called Muskoka.

She is courageous, she is miserable and she nearly starves. She writes it all down in Letters from Muskoka, credited to an anonymous “emigrant lady,” which is published in 1878.
Generations of the King family scatter. Then, seven years ago, a television writer and director living in Los Angeles, a man with the regal name of Durnford King, learns he is the descendant of Harriet. He also discovers cousins back in Canada he never knew existed.

Durnford King has seen the old westerns but never imagined his relatives in the story, in a much tougher landscape — 1870s Muskoka.


Charles King was Harriet's son who came to the Muskoka ahead of the family, and later opened a resort called "King's Park" on Lake Rousseau. Montague King is Durnford's father.
“Parts of it, you really felt they weren’t sure they were going to make it — are we all going to starve out here?” he says.
“I certainly arrived with a vague notion that passing deer might be shot from one’s own door and that hares and rabbits might almost be caught with the hand,” his great grandmother writes in her long ago book. “These romantic ideas were ruefully dispelled.”
________________________________________
In the basement of his cozy Port Carling home, John Chapman, who looks like a woodsy Donald Sutherland, sorts pictures of ladies in Gone with the Wind dresses, as his wife calls them, and serious men with waxed moustaches.

“I probably wouldn’t have liked them,” Chapman says with a laugh. “A little too uppity.”
Harriet left France with many of these items — paintings of relatives, books, her late husband’s telescope — and now they live in a trunk in the unpretentious basement of her great-great-grandson John Chapman, alongside a commemorative newspaper from President Barack Obama’s election.
“I just can’t imagine as a settler, how tough it would have been,” Chapman says. “I don’t know how she did it myself.”

Although he did not inherit the family fondness for wearing a suit at breakfast ( “only funerals and weddings,” he says), the 67-year-old has the entrepreneurial spirit. He’s lived around the world working as a boilermaker, owned a successful bait shop in Port Carling and is now the owner of a taxi service.

On a not too cold day, he follows Harriet’s trail and drives to an area near Huntsville, the sunshine flickering through the snow-covered pine and cedar trees. Back in 1871, the hilly Muskoka Road was the main overland route into the north, a “colonization road” to open up the district, built by the government and maintained by settlers. The colonization roads had worked well opening up southern parts of the province.
“It worked a lot less well in Muskoka and Parry Sound because survival was so much tougher there,” says Lee Ann Eckhardt Smith, author of Muskoka’s Main Street. “Road maintenance was very far down on the list of priorities.
“With the Canadian Shield, the road could not be cut straight. It would run into a cliff or a lake or a river or a swamp, and so it was really this twisting, hilly, horrible thing for most of its life, but it did evolve over time, and it now forms part of Highway 11.”
After taking a train and two steamers to Washago, north of Orillia, Harriet travelled this road with a hired carriage. The entire journey took days. The forest was burning and she had been told it hadn’t rained for three months.
“The farther we went from Toronto, the more barren and ugly the country appeared, and the hideous stumps in every clearing became more and more visible” she writes. “Toward dusk the lurid glare of the burning trees in the far-off forest became appalling, as well as magnificent. . . The forest gradually closed in upon us, on fire on both sides, burnt trees crashing down in all directions, here and there one right across the road, which had to be dragged out of the way before we could go on.”

Marta Iwanek/Toronto Star

Here is a postcard from King's Park, the resort on Lake Rosseau that the King family ran for decades after leaving their original settlement in the bush.

Chapman stops his van near his great-grandfather’s old wooden house, nestled in deep, untracked snow. He stands on the lonely road with his hands in his pockets, the tips of his ears red, his grey hair catching snowflakes.

“Can you imagine the 1870s?” he asks. “I can see why a society person would feel out of place.”
________________________________________
Harriet’s review of her first night in the bush was undeniably scathing.
Sleeping arrangements: “of the most primitive description.”
The toilet: “unsatisfactory.”
Breakfast: “needs no description.”
Scenery: “the dense forest circling us all round . . . gave me a dreadful feeling of suffocation.”
“Had it not been for these drawbacks, I should greatly have admired the situation,” she writes.
This was the latest Canadian frontier, the result of an influx of immigration in the 1850s and a demand for more space, says Eckhardt Smith.

“The whole idea had been to leave it to First Nations to have all of Muskoka and Parry Sound, and gradually they just kept edging them out with different treaties,” says Donna Williams, author of Hardscrabble: The High Cost of Free Land.

In 1868, the Ontario government passed the Free Land Grant and the Homestead Act. “A FREE GRANT OF LAND! Without any charge whatever,” read one notice, addressed to “all parties desirous of Improving their Circumstances by Emigrating to a New Country.”
Anyone over 18 was eligible for 100 or 200 acres of land — provided they cleared 15 acres, built a house and lived on the property for six months of the year, for five years.
“It was a controversy that raged for oh, at least three decades,” says Eckhardt Smith, “about whether Muskoka was just the greatest place you’d ever want to live, a land of opportunity, and all you needed to do was come up here and work hard and you could make it, and people who said, ‘If you go there, you will die.’ ”
________________________________________
Harriet’s land was between her children’s parcels. You can see “Mrs. King” written in a square box in an old atlas, representing the land that brought her so much grief.
She arrived in autumn. The family cleared the land and called the neighbours to a “bee” to help build a house. It was Harriet’s first bush faux pas — she passed along invitations on a Sunday (offensive to religious neighbours), and called the bee for November (too cold). Three people came.
With no roof, Harriet stayed with her daughter Florence until the spring. Gone were the days of pretty drawing rooms, embroidery and “social and intellectual converse.”
“It was anguish to me to see your sisters and sister-in-law, so tenderly and delicately brought up, working harder by far than any of our servants in England or France,” she writes in her book, which is composed of lengthy letters to a child still living across the Atlantic.
“I confess, to my shame, that my philosophy entirely gave way, and that for a long time I cried constantly. I also took to falling off my chair in fits of giddiness, which lasted for a few minutes and much alarmed the children, who feared apoplexy.”
The winter of 1872 was cold. The silks, delicate shawls and laces were “perfectly useless.”
“Instead of the spring which I fondly anticipated, we burst at once from dull gloomy weather and melting snow, to burning hot summer and clouds of mosquitoes and flies of all kinds.”
Harriet’s great-great-granddaughter Roz Barden moved to the same area in 1979 without realizing the coincidence: “There are times I don’t even step outside, the blackflies and mosquitoes are so bad,” she says.

Durnford King looks at some old King family photos in 2008. The visit was the first time the long-lost cousin met John Chapman, who is looking on.

The growing season was short. The family couldn’t afford a machine to remove the tree stumps. They had to let nature rot them.

Harriet thought the stumps looked like spectres in the dim light. “I could almost fancy myself in the cemetery in the Dunkirk Road, near Calais, and that the blackened stumps were hideous black crosses which the French are so fond of erecting in their churchyards.”
The family had a few cattle, and named them — one was Mistress Dolly. In the morning, the neighbour’s cows, Bling and Baldface, would show up like little children to fetch the King cattle away to the bush, to feed for free. All the cows wore bells.

Before the family built a fence, much of Harriet’s time was spent “running out with the broom to drive away the neighbour’s cattle and protect our cherished cabbage plants, and the potatoes just coming up.”

In the hot summer of 1872, the family tried to relieve Harriet’s suffering by moving the “hideously prominent” stove outside the cabin. They cut a new door in the back to make access to it easier for her. Unfortunately, to her “great discomfiture” they didn’t have the lumber to make a new door. It remained a gaping hole for a time.

It was a lonely summer: Harriet’s pregnant daughter-in-law and daughter went to Bracebridge to await the birth of the first “bush baby.”
There was solitude, but not privacy. “I was liable at any moment of the day to have some passing settler walk coolly in, and sit down in my very chair if I had vacated it for a moment.”
One day, a man’s face appeared at the door.
“I greeted him with a scream.”
His salutation was: “Wall, I guess I’ve skeered you some!”
Aside from this man and another “well-meaning, but especially noisy and vulgar individual who was a continual terror to me,” Harriet found the settlers around her to be helpful, hard-working and kind. Each imagined his land the best, each had “the largest turnip ever seen” and each hoped the railway might pass through their land someday, she remarked.
“There might be a little quarrelling, backbiting and petty rivalry among them, with an occasional dash of slanderous gossip; but I am inclined to think not more than will inevitably be found in small communities.”
Her old life made no sense in the bush. Servants were hard to come by when anyone 18 or older could take up free land. The best thing a man could have was a trade.
She wrote about the strangeness of sharing a table, on one occasion, with a Kentish plowboy: “This was my first initiation into the free and easy intercourse of all classes in this county, where the standing proverb is ‘Jack is as good as his master!’ ”

Marta Iwanek/Toronto Star

Great-great grandson John Chapman holds a photo he has stored in a trunk in his home in Port Carling of a woman identified as pioneer Harriet Barbara King.

The plowboy was thriving. He had cleared 30 acres and had more than a dozen cattle and a large family. In the winter he supplemented his earnings by working in Bracebridge as a stable boy.
Ladies and gentlemen did not have these advantages, she writes. Many of the men in the area spent their winters working in the lumber business away from home to earn extra money, but gentlemen could not leave their ladies unprotected, she wrote.

The family had friends in England they were able to call upon for resources and support, but there were times of near-starvation. The fall wheat in 1984 was a “magnificent” crop, but it was then spoiled by repeated freezing and thawing. “Every grain was found to be wizened, shrivelled, and discoloured, and fit for nothing but to feed poultry,” Harriet writes.
“We suffered at intervals this year more severely from the want of money than we had ever done; and had even long spells of hunger and want, which I trust have prepared us all to feel during the remainder of our lives a more full and perfect sympathy with our destitute fellow-creatures.”
Harriet submitted articles to publications, hoping to pay the bills. Some were accepted, but penury was always lurking in the margins.

At Christmas 1874, “We had been literally without a cent for two months, and all our provision for Christmas festivities consisted in plenty of potatoes and a small modicum of flour.”
Some of her children left the settlement as early as 1873, and by 1875, Harriet had left the bush behind, using money from “unwearied” friend in England. By 1881, she is living with her daughter and son-in-law in Bracebridge.

“I went into the Bush of Muskoka strong and healthy, full of life and energy, and fully as enthusiastic as the youngest of our party,” she writes. “I left it with hopes completely crushed, and with health so hopelessly shattered from hard work, unceasing anxiety and trouble of all kinds, that I am now a helpless invalid.”
________________________________________
Canadian bureaucrats and politicians encouraged immigration to the region, British philanthropists sponsored thousands of people with limited means to make the journey, and in Muskoka, Thomas McMurray, an early settler and booster, was a de facto PR man in his 1871 book, which includes a question-and-answer section.
“Q:. Are there many settlers in the District, and how do they thrive?
“A: There are thousands of settlers, and they all thrive well and like the country.
“Q: Is any portion of the Free Grant Lands tolerably free of stones and rocks?
“A: Yes, some places entirely free, with 70 per cent fit for cultivation.
There were success stories, and there was some fertile land, particularly around Bracebridge, Hardscrabble author Williams says. But the majority of the newcomers weren’t farmers, and the land was mean.
“We were certainly deceived by the accounts given of Muskoka; after four years residence I am inclined to think that from the very first the capabilities of its soil for agricultural purposes have been greatly exaggerated,” Harriet writes in her book.
The government continued to send delegations to Muskoka into the 1880s. They found most of the land hadn’t even been cleared; “it was just burnt out stumps, and the people who were there looked pretty badly off,” says Williams.
By 1880, “Manitoba Fever” hit. Some people abandoned their Muskoka farmland for the decent soil and a railway westward.
“Harriet, she told the truth about how terrible it was,” says Scott Shipman, who came upon King’s story when he was editing and adding historical context to the more upbeat and humorous pioneer story of young Frederick de la Fosse for the book English Bloods.

Marta Iwanek/Toronto Star
John Chapman poses for a photo near the original family settlement north of Utterson, Ont.
He says both accounts are great reads that offer different perspectives, and he is working on an edited version of King’s book, to provide more historical context. “Eventually I got caught in it so bad I had to find out where they all came from and what happened to them after the story,” he says.
Harriet died in Toronto in 1885. Her descendant Roz Barden says the names of Harriet’s sons Edward and Charles can be found in Toronto business registries — they worked at a medical oxygen company. Charles eventually returned to Muskoka, where he opened a resort called “King’s Place” on Lake Rosseau.
In 1902, it cost $6 a week to stay, and there was room for seven guests. By that time, The Toronto Daily Star resort guide noted that Muskoka was known for its “unbarbered beauty spots”, a quiet alternative to the “American watering places,” with their brass bands and gin rickeys.
________________________________________
Sitting in his living room, where the big screen television is on mute, John Chapman talks about the times he saw “Durnford King” on the end credits of television shows. It always bothered him.
Unbeknownst to Chapman, Durnford grew up in Toronto. His father, Montague “Monty” King was around 60 when he was born.

Durnford’s parents split when he was 10, and he never heard from his father again. He started a career in advertising, and eventually moved to Los Angeles, where he transitioned into the entertainment industry. He has directed music videos (Jefferson Airplane, Roberta Flack) and television specials (Oscar Peterson’s Canadiana Suite) and written scripts for shows like Highlander and The Lost World.

“My entire life goes by, and every once and a while I try and find out what happened,” he says.

In 2008, Durnford’s daughter Thalia Ryder began looking for traces of grandfather Montague online. Scott Shipman, who lives in Huntsville and had been tracking down King family descendants for his research, saw her posts and emailed.
“He actually had been doing research on the family for years and years and years. He said he was in touch with some of my relatives. I didn’t know they existed.”
The surprise was mutual.
“Nobody in the family, even my mother, nobody knew that he (Durnford) existed,” Chapman says.
Chapman knew of another family that Monty had, with two daughters.
A few years ago, Durnford brought his family to Muskoka to meet his cousins. Chapman presented him with a cake: “Welcome home Durnford, King of Muskoka.”
“Now we’re like a couple of twins,” Chapman says. “I love him to death. He’s got the family look. It’s nice to now the King family isn’t extinct.”
On a recent trip, the cousins took a boat ride on Lake Rosseau, where “King’s Park” is faintly visible on a rock where the old resort used to be. Another memorial was even more obscure: Harriet’s grave, in Mount Pleasant cemetery, was marked with a small slab that said “King.”
“She was really a courageous person,” says Durnford. “Getting a book published when you’re living in the backwoods of Muskoka is no small feat . . . I thought she deserved some kind of recognition.”
This fall, the cousins laid a new stone. In January, the snow that Harriet resented so much covers the grave. Brushing it away, the white flakes fall into the crevices, making the accomplishments of Harriet’s life stand out:

“Daughter, mother, grandmother, friend, poet and pioneer woman. Wife of Capt. Charles Gerrard King, Author of ‘Letters from Muskoka’ By an Emigrant Lady.





42.3.1 Anthony Durnford m Barbara Brabazon Their family Brabazon Boys


At the time Anthony married Barbara Brabazon, she was the mother of three sons, to her husband John Moore.

Tara Hills
Tara and Trim
Those sons became eligible to inherit the lands and titles of Tara Lodge in Ireland.









1. William John Moore b  1789 was a minister of religion.  He added Brabazon to his surname in 1845, and he lived at Tara Lodge, County Meath in Ireland.  He died 1866 and had no children

2.  Major John Arthur Moore b 1791  d  1860 Marylebone London married Sophia Stewart Yates in Secunderbad Madras India in 1827.  When he returned to England, John was a Director of the East India Company.

3.  Charles Henry Moore  b  1798    d 1806


2.  Major John Arthur Moore and Sophia Stewart Yates had at least two children

 Francis Stewart Moore who married Richard Clark Acton Thockmarton of the 17th Royal Irish Fusiliers after 1860.

And a son Lieut Colonel John Arthur Henry Moore  b  1884 in Hyderabad, East Indies
d  11 January 1908 in London  m Emma Sophia Richards  b  1851    1937.
In 1868 he received approval from the Army to add Brabazon to his surname.

They had two sons

William Lockhart Chambre Moore-Brabazon                   b  1880
John Theordore Chuthbert Moore-Brabazon                     b  1884   d  1964.Longcross Surrey

John Theodore Chuthbert Moore-Brabazon, inherited the lands and titles of Tara.

His Biography

John Theodore Cuthbert Moore-Brabazon, 1st Baron Brabazon of Tara, GBE, MC, PC (8 February 1884 – 17 May 1964) was an English aviation pioneer and Conservative politician. He was the first Englishman to pilot a heavier-than-air machine under power in England, and he served as Minister of Transport and Minister of Aircraft Production during World War II.

Moore-Brabazon was born in London to Lieutenant-Colonel John Arthur Henry Moore-Brabazon (1828–1908) and his wife, Emma Sophia (d. 1937). He was educated at Harrow School before reading engineering at Trinity College, Cambridge, but did not graduate. He spent university holidays working for Charles Rolls as an unpaid mechanic, and became an apprentice at Darracq in Paris after leaving Cambridge. In 1907 he won the Circuit des Ardennes in a Minerva.

Pioneer aviator                                                 

John Moore-Brabazon in his Voisin Bird of Passage in 1909


Moore-Brabazon learned to fly in 1908 in France in a Voisin biplane. He became the first resident Englishman to make an officially recognised aeroplane flight in England on 2 May 1909, at Shellbeach on the Isle of Sheppey with flights of 450 ft, 600 ft, and 1500 ft.

On 4 May 1909, Moore-Brabazon was photographed outside the Royal Aero Club clubhouse Mussel Manor (now known as Muswell Manor the Worlds first Aero Club) alongside the Wright Brothers, the Short Brothers, Charles Rolls, and many other early aviation pioneers. In 1909 he sold the Bird of Passage to Arthur Edward George, who learned to fly in it at the Royal Aero Club's flying-ground at Shellbeach and bought a Short Brothers-built Wright biplane.

 A documentary, A Dream of Flight, was made in 2009 to celebrate the centenary of his achievement on the Isle of Sheppey.

On 30 October 1909, flying the Short Biplane No. 2, he flew a circular mile and won a 1,000 pound prize offered by the Daily Mail newspaper. On 4 November 1909, as a joke to prove that pigs could fly, he put a small pig in a waste-paper basket tied to a wing-strut of his aeroplane. This may have been the first live cargo flight by aeroplane.

With Charles Rolls, he would later make the first ascent in a spherical gas balloon, which had been made in England by the Short brothers.

On 8 March 1910, Moore-Brabazon became the first person to qualify as a pilot in the United Kingdom and was awarded Royal Aero Club Aviator's Certificate number 1 his car also bore the number-plate FLY 1. However only four months later, his friend Charles Rolls was killed in a flying accident and Moore-Brabazon's wife persuaded him to give up flying.

In 1934 Moore-Brabazon fitted a gyro-rig to a Bembridge Redwing, an Isle of Wight class of yacht that allows and encourages the development of different rigs. The area of the rotating blades complies with the sail area limits of the class and are painted red, also to comply with the class rules.  The boat was, and remains, dangerous, but it was probably the first auto-gyro boat. The boat is currently in the collection of the Classic Boat Museum at East Cowes, Isle of Wight, and still 'sails'.

World War I

With the outbreak of War, Moore-Brabazon return to flying, joining the Royal Flying Corps. He served on the Western Front where he played a key role in the development of aerial photography and reconnaissance. In March 1915 he was promoted to captain and appointed as an equipment officer.

On 1 April 1918, when the Royal Flying Corps merged with the Royal Naval Air Service to form the Royal Air Force, Moore-Brabazon was appointed as a staff officer (first class) and made a temporary lieutenant-colonel

Moore-Brabazon finished the war with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, had been awarded the Military Cross, and had become a commander of the Légion d'honneur.

Conservative MP

Moore-Brabazon later became a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Chatham (1918–1929) and Wallasey (1931–1942) and served as a junior minister in the 1920s. In 1931 and 1932 he served as a member of the London County Council. He was strongly opposed to war with Nazi Germany and in early 1939, when war seemed imminent, he made contact with Oswald Mosley in an attempt to co-ordinate activity against the war.

Despite his earlier anti-war agitation, in Winston Churchill's wartime government, he was appointed Minister of Transport in October 1940 and joined the Privy Council, becoming Minister of Aircraft Production in May 1941. As the Minister of Transport he proposed the use of Airgraphs to reduce the weight and bulk of mails travelling between troops fighting in the Middle East and their families in the UK. 

He was forced to resign in 1942 for expressing the hope that Germany and the Soviet Union, then engaged in the Battle of Stalingrad, would destroy each other. Since the Soviet Union was fighting the war on the same side as Britain, the hope that it should be destroyed, though common in the Conservative Party, was unacceptable to the war effort.

Later life

Moore-Brabazon was elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Brabazon of Tara, of Sandwich in the County of Kent, in April 1942.



In 1943 he chaired the Brabazon Committee which planned to develop the post-war British aircraft industry. He was involved in the production of the Bristol Brabazon, a giant airliner that first flew on 4 September 1949. It was then and still is the largest aeroplane built entirely in Britain.

A keen golfer, Moore-Brabazon was captain of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, the governing body of golf, from 1952 to 1953. According to the UK newspaper the Daily Mail, he was a member of the original Pools Panel, which for betting purposes assessed the likely outcome of postponed football matches.

Moore-Brabazon was president of the Royal Aero Club, president of the Royal Institution, chairman of the Air Registration Board, and president of the Middlesex County Automobile Club from 1946 until his death in 1964. He was appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire in 1953.

                                                        

On 27 November 1906, he married Hilda Mary Krabbé, with whom he had two sons. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Derek.

Moore-Brabazon is buried in the cemetery of Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire.


He was involved with Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, in the Montagu Motor Museum.  In fact the restaurant there is named in his honour. 
     


Fifty years later, Edward, the present Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, opened Palace House to the public. 

A collection of five early motor cars were placed on display in the entrance hall as a tribute to his father, John Scott Montagu, who had died in 1929. By 1956 this display had grown and was moved into converted wooden outbuildings to create the first Montagu Motor Museum. The opening ceremony was performed by Lord Brabazon of Tara. The same year, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu followed in his father’s footsteps and launched a motoring periodical – The Veteran & Vintage Magazine. This monthly journal covered Veteran, Edwardian, Vintage and Thoroughbred motoring and motor cycling.

The Montagu Motor Museum proved very popular and in 1959 it moved into a larger, specially made building. Lord Brabazon of Tara again performed the opening ceremony. Public interest in old vehicles continued to grow and Montagu Motor Museums were opened in Brighton by 1961 and Measham in the Midlands by 1962. These satellite museums no longer exist, but the main Montagu Motor Museum at Beaulieu was replaced by the National Motor Museum in 1972 as an independent museum backed by a charitable trust: The National Motor Museum Trust.
From the National Motor Museum Trust

(A recommendation to visit if you are traveling in the New Forest area, be prepared for the unexpected, we were chased by three donkeys up the road, all in aid of a photo opportunity, as the animals have right of way)

Baron Brabazon of Tara, of Sandwich in the County of Kent, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1942 for the aviation pioneer and Conservative politician John Moore-Brabazon. Moore-Brabazon was a descendant through a female line of Edward Brabazon, 7th Earl of Meath. His father Major John Arthur Henry Moore had assumed the additional surname of Brabazon in 1866 by Royal license. As of 2014 the title is held by the first Baron's grandson, the third Baron, who succeeded his father in 1974. He is also a Conservative politician and one of the ninety elected hereditary peers that remain in the House of Lords after the passing of the House of Lords Act 1999