|
Written By Neil WW Gilliat
William Henry (1791-1868) Richard's third surviving son he married Sophia Gilliat (1800-1866) daughter of his uncle Benjanin Gilliat and they spent many years in Richmond Virginia where they went after the demise of Thomas Gilliat. Presumably he went as the agent for John K Gilliat of London but as it is noted elsewhere he was also a partner for a few years with John Henry Gilliat son of Thomas. He was involved in the social and business scene in Richmond and is mentioned in some of the local histories for some of his activities.
The following is from a paper of the Indiana Gilliats who found the following information while researching their own history. "He (William) was an established merchant in Richmond, Virginia in 1816 and was advertising in the newspapers. He was also a ship's broker. He owned a one-third interest in the same coal mine that Thomas owned a one third interest in. He does not show on any records prior to 1816. The 1830 census records two males in his household, five to ten years old (William and Richard). His home in Richmond burned in 1832 and he is not on the role after that except as John & William Gilliat Co. (John Henry was the second son of Thomas). In 1840 he was in London and in 1851 the balance of his warehouses, lots, houses etc. in Richmond were sold".
He returned to England with a fortune and retired to Barham House East Hoathly Sussex. He left effects worth almost £60,000, including large bequests to his children, or in the case of William Henry to his grandchildren for his elder son had predeceased him by several years at the early age of thirty three. His son William Henry Jnr. (1822-1855) had also lived for some time in Richmond.
The wanderlust did not desert succeeding generations. The elder grandson and son of William Henry Jnr., Hubert Adkin (1852-1890), dissipated much of his inheritance as a young man entertaining lavishly, then married Fanny Mackwood from Colombo (they say to avoid creditors). In Ceylon the Mackwood family supplied him with accommodation and occupation, managing the Goonambil Cocoa Estate near Kandy. However, he did not settle either to the climate or his new lifestyle, so departed to farm in Australia. At Rockhampton in Queensland a daughter, Evelyn Gilliat, was born, to be followed in 1887 by a son , Lionel Oswald Gilliat(1887-1975). Shortly after this Hubert deserted the family and was not heard of for three years until the police arrived on Fanny's doorstep, by now in Dulwich, to report that a Hubert Adkin Gilliat had been run over by a locomotive down in Devonshire. Suicide seemed probable.
Both Hubert's son and grandson made a living in the tea business. Lionel, the former, remained in Ceylon till just after the Second World War and Peter Gilliat(1914- ) the latter, remained a planter on the Mackwood's estates till 1958, then moved to the Highlands of Scotland where he continued to trade in Gilliat's Ceylon tea and other ventures. His sister Rosemary Gilliat moved to Canada where she spent some years as a nationally known photographer with a weekly national magazine. She married and settled in Nova Scotia.
When Hubert had moved to Queensland he was possibly thinking of his Uncle Richard who had preceded him hence some twenty years earlier. To Richard Gilliat born 1822 in Richmond Virginnia. The Gilliat family owes a memorial which may live on after every branch has died out. In the early 1860s many of the remote areas of Australia were still being explored. In 1859 Duncan McIntyre, who had journeyed with his family from Scotland to Melbourne in 1836, decided together with his brother Donald to proceed as wandering pastoralists to the Gulf of Carpentaria. They were held up south of the Queensland border by the flooding of the river Darling and the prohibition of entry into the colony after their sheep had been effected by scab.
After an exploratory foray northwards in search for good grazing country. Duncan McIntyre who by 1864 who was well established in the public mind as an explorer returned and the two of them decided to try their original objective, making north from Victoria and following close to the trail of the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition.
Places were still being named and the creek where the brothers were initially located they called
"Gilliat", presumably after one of their party.
Closer settlement did not commence until the early years of this century, and the township of Gilliat which resulted is still today merely a sleepy rail side settlement of 15 people. It is a place where you can drive for hundreds of kilometers through plains of endless pale yellow grass without seeing a tree or the slightest gradient to soften the linear landscape. This is much as Richard Gilliat must have seen it when the white man first arrived, and certainly a contrast to the American state where Richard must have also participated in the management of his father's affairs. The names of Richard's four children reflects his world wide itinerary: Sydney, Adelaide, Trentham, and Virginia.
(Note by N.Gilliat: As previously mentioned my wife and I traveled through Gilliat and the surrounding plains. It had been without rain for five years, however, there was the odd clump of bush that provided shelter to the odd kangaroo and emus but it was as Mr Walker suggests never ending and formidable. Also I am not prepared to take issue as to whether it was Richard or Tom Gilliat, the river (it was a river not a creek and at times could be a mile wide) was named after, for there is no doubt they were both there and suffice it to say it was named after one of the family.)
This Richard Gilliat also features in the letters of Rachel Henning, sister of Bidulph and Annie who sailed to Australia on the S.S. Great Britain in 1853. Rachel and another sister Amy followed them out a year later, but the former did not find the new territory to her liking and returned to England in 1856, finally deciding to join her kin permanently in 1861. She soon went to live with her brother Biddulph on his recently acquired lands in the north of Queensland on the Bowen River, which he called Exmoor. The nearest settlement was Port Denison, over a hundred miles away.
Having stocked Exmoor with several thousand sheep, two years later in 1864 Bidulph Henning decided to journey 350 miles east to the river Flinders to see about the possibility of obtaining more land in the area. He first sent out two employees on January 7th then a few weeks after, Biddulph sent out a Mr. Gilliat, who overtook the expedition about 150 miles from here. We heard of Mr. Gilliat's having joined camp.
It was virgin territory. As Rachael goes on to explain in her letter, by the new Land Act, whoever who ever puts his stock on a new piece of country and then puts in his tenders for it to Government, has the right of occupying that country as a sheep run. Biddulph sent out 7000 sheep under the care of a superintendent with the orders to occupy some land on the Flinders River,found it occupied, heard of some better country a hundred miles beyond, pushing his sheep out there and `took up' eight blocks, each containing fifty square miles of beautiful open downs, stretching along the bank of the river for nearly fifty miles, he has left a superintendent, a Mr. Gilliat, to take care of the new station, and he will probably hold it until land becomes valuable over there and then sell it.
This was then the same period that the McIntyre brothers were in the area and the River Gilliat was first named. However, the new superintendent does not appear to have stayed long, according to a letter written by Rachel Henning to her sister Henrietta in England on Christmas Day: "All our own people are at Lara or on the road there. The Flinders River station is a sort of Moloch and has swallowed up sheep, horses and men from Exmoor. 5000 sheep are already there and 3000 more are on their way. About twenty horses are gone and Mr Gilliat is out there taking charge of the station, there has been some difficulty about finding a superintendent for Lara (the property comprised eight blocks of 25 square miles each, stretching from Alick's creek to the junction of the Cloncurry River, a tributary of the Flinders). Biddulph is dissatisfied with Mr. Gilliat and has written to recall him. The Flinders party arrived back from the Lara station the following April 30th Mr Gilliat did not come on here".
It was possible that he had enough of such a distant outpost. Certainly it subsequently proved no easy task for Biddulph to find a successor. Never the less, it was not to be Rachel's last encounter with the ex-superintendent. In October 1865 she left Exmoor to sail on the S.S. Rangatira for Sydney and reported "Mr. Gilliat is on board whom we knew at Exmoor, and who at one time had charge of the Flinders station for Biddulph. He is a pleasant gentlemanly man". After a somewhat turbulent voyage lasting three days they docked in Sydney harbour on Friday 20th October. The following March Rachel married Deighton Taylor, whom she had known from Exmoor, and went to live at Bulahdelah on the Myall River, 22 miles from Stroud New South Wales. Some contact with the elusive Mr Gilliat seems to have been maintained, "I still take in the Cornhill Magazine. There is rather a good story in it by Anthony Trollope called ¬The Claverings' Mr. Somerville (her husbands new employer) takes the Sydney Herald, but I do not often read it. I like to look at the Port Denison papers, which come here for Mr. Gilliat".
Richard Gilliat (1822- ?) married Emily Sarah Clode
Richard Gilliat batchelor 33, farmer born Richmond, Virginia USA, son of William Gilliat retired merchant and Sophia Gilliat, living Maitland Co. Northumberland New South Wales, married Emily Sarah Clode spinster (18) born St. Peter's West Maitland, daughter of John Clode farmer and Sarah Potts at St. James's Morpeth NSW on 18/4/1861. They had four children:-
Sydney William Ernst (4/5/1862- ? ) born at Mount Torrens Seaham parish of Morpeth Co. Northumberland NSW, entered Chanvellors School, Lincoln UK 1896, priest 1899, various livings, the register of electors list him at Trecefn, Hereford Road, Monmouth in 1939.
They had four children Ralph, Winifred,Leofric (born 1923 in Australia) Marjorie. Widow Jane Parnel Gilliat (nee Bagnall-Oakley) and daughter Winifred were still living in 1945
Ralph went to the USA and settled in the Kansas City area and had three children:-
William Ralph Gilliat (1920 - 1987)
Wilson Gilliat (now residing in Pensacola FL)
Anne Gilliat married Van Dyne (living in Kansas City area)
William Gilliat married to ???? one son Bruce Curry Gilliat living in Alameda California. (more to come)
Adelaide Alexander (1864-?) who married Cragg,
Frank Trentham (1865-?) married twice (1) Ellen Price (2) Rhoda Robinson in 1917
Virginia Sophia Gilliat (?-1903)
|
