The Wilson Clan from Berwickshire


Eleanora Mitchell Wilson (1807 – 1859)
Eleanora, known as Helen, was David Wilson's “kid” sister and James and Ellen Chard's “cherished” aunt.

Youngest of the Wilson siblings, Eleanora certainly experienced a deal of sorrow in her life.
At the age of 30 she married [1] Mitchell Patison (1796 - 1847), a solicitor [2] to Edinburgh's Supreme Court.
Patison, recently widowed, had a twelve year old daughter Mary Brown (1825 – 1840) and a seven year old son John (1830 – 1876) with his first wife to whom Eleanora became step-mother.

The newlywed's family expanded fourfold in the next six years with the birth of two girls, Helen (1838 – 1855) and Mary (1843 – 1901) along with two boys, George (1839 – 1898) and David (1840 – 1912).
The household had also welcomed Eleanora's third cousins James “Rogers” Mitchell (1835–1915) and John “Rogers” Mitchell (1837–1917) who, along with their own son John, were to learn notary skills under husband Mitchell Patison's supervision.
For the three boys, who had lost their respective mothers at any early age, a strong bond quickly formed.

When Mitchell Patison died (suddenly) in 1847, Eleanora was left with the care of six children under the age of ten and the responsibility of managing a lodging house [3,4] at 3 Market Street Edinburgh (opposite what is now known as Edinburgh Waverley Railway Station).
Seventeen year old stepson John Mitchell Patison was now the “man of the house”, and although still living in the family home, had found employment as a journeyman linen draper.

At this time, life was particularly challenging for Eleanora Patison, but the arrival of her sister Margaret's family from Oban certainly gave her comfort.
Eleanora had been expecting her niece as a border as she and her eldest daughter (both named after their maternal grandmother Ellen) had been enrolled to commence their secondary education at Edinburgh Saint Cuthberts in 1850.
What did surprise Eleanora was the arrival of the whole Dowie family and the “bombshell” announcement that they planned to emigrate to Australia and that they wanted Eleanora and her family to accompany them.

Eleanora was initially sceptical but once her son and the Mitchell boys announced their desire to emigrate, the planning to reunite with her colonial brother David began. James Mitchell, having completed his apprenticeship at the Edinburgh Court, was keen to depart at the earliest opportunity.

The two teenage Patison boys George and David would accompany the Dowie menfolk initially whilst the younger girls, after completing their schooling, would be chaperoned by their mothers on a future sailing.
John Patison and the eldest Dowie boy David remained behind to facilitate the sale of both family residences and, by the end of 1854, having completed all legal formalities, John acquired the first available passage to Melbourne, Australia.

By the northern hemisphere spring of the following year the Dowie and Patison families, along with John “Rogers” Mitchell, boarded the schooner HMS Tay bound for Melbourne.
It was a tragic voyage as the eldest Patison girl Helen, stricken by tuberculosis, dies [5] just 60 days out from Leith.
Devastated by their loss the Patison and Dowie women couldn't really gain comfort with what was meant to be a joyous family reunion.

Whilst the next two years provided many distractions - Eleanora and Mary Patison ran the Bryan O’Lynn household, Margaret Dowie ran the Purnim General Store and Ellen Dowie married James Chard - Eleanora's grief impacted her health and she succumbed to cancer just four years after she had arrived.
Eleanora was buried at the Warrnambool Cemetery on June 1st 1859.

Mitchell Patison (1796 - 1847)
Eleanora Mitchell Wilson's husband.

The Patison Family Tree.

Mitchell Patison's Paternal Roots.
John Patison (1773 – 1843) was the first of twelve children born to Glaswegian (Renfrew) John (1750 - 1808) and Midlothian (Canongate) Christian Watson (1748 - 1831). John and his family were raised in the South Leith district of Edinburgh called Leith Links; his father being appointed town clerk of the city in 1774 - a position he held until his death.

Whilst his brothers became civil servants like their father, John “Watson” (or John Jnr.) was attracted to the excitement of the nearby wharf (Water of Leith) where, as a teenager, he engaged as pilot [6] of the dockland shipping channels. Life changed dramatically however when he met and married Mary “Maisie” Brown (1775 – 1796). The young couple, now living at Tolbooth Wynd in South Leith, had two sons, John Brown (1792 – 1832) and James (1793 – 1822), before “Maisie” sadly lost her life with the birth of their third, son Mitchell (1796 – 1847).

John Jnr. was also a student of the law and in 1804 at the age of 31 he was accepted [7] as an apprentice to Robert Boswell - a Writer to the Signet (WS) [8]. He had also remarried by this time and begun extending his family with Ann Ferguson Hill (1780 – 1829). Together they had three girls and two boys; one of the boys being named John Hill (1807 – 1871).

After serving his three year qualification as an advocate [9], John “Watson” Patison became a Writer to the Signet of the Edinburgh Judicial Office in 1808 [10], and a Master Solicitor (MS) to the Supreme Court of Edinburgh, a position he retained until his retirement in 1833. Of his three sons with “Maisie” Brown, John Brown also became a Writer to the Signet of the Edinburgh County Court; James became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Surgeons (FRCSE) and Mitchell a WS and MS in Edinburgh’s Supreme Court. Of his sons to Ann Hill, John “Hill” also became a WS and MS in Edinburgh’s Supreme Court whilst Thomas also became a surgeon.
Online availability of Scottish records for Births, Deaths and Marriages vary from parish to parish.

John Mitchell “JM” Patison (1830 - 1876)
Eleanora Mitchell Wilson's stepson and James and Ellen Chard's cousin.

After disembarking HMS Annie Wilson [11] at Melbourne Port Phillip, John arrived at his uncle David's Bryan O'Lynn towards the end of April 1855 to be joyfully reunited with his step-brothers George and David and closest cousin James “Rogers” Mitchell. Unfortunately for John, Bryan O'Lynn's homestead construction was far from complete, forcing him to seek lodgings and employment in Warrnambool.

It was at Messrs Briggs and Napthine's Timor Street drapery that John began realising his life's dream.
JM was a well educated 26 year old and as much as his father and grandfather (both master solicitors to the Edinburgh Supreme Court) may have wished otherwise, John displayed a merchant’s bent and it was in the drapery business that he excelled. He also had an adventurous spirit, fuelled as a youngster by his grandfather's Leith dockland [6] exploits.
Now the enterprising salesman, he persuaded Robert Napthine to extend their drapery business to Woodford, a move which enabled him to be closer to his family at Purnim.

The next two years provided three significant events that impacted southern Australia, the Woodford community, and the Bryan O’Lynn “family”.
The first was the appearance of Haley’s Comet [12] which commanded the skies for a quarter of a year. The second was the connection of the Electric Telegraph to the neighbouring structure adjoining Napthine's drapery, a building which the colonial postal service had occupied as a depot. Now with the telegraph installed and the Post Office becoming an official government utility, the third event saw John appointed to the office of Deputy Government Registrar for the Villiers and Heytsbury shire.

The Patison's Woodford Residence.
(Main) A building of two parts; the squat front section is the original postal depot which also doubled as the Woodford National School in 1856, whilst the larger back section (with chimneys) is John Mitchell Patison's residence.
Photograph (c1946) courtesy of the Almanac of Victorian Postal Lists.
(Lower Left) Eleanora “Helen” Patison's death is recorded in the Warrnambool Examiner in 1859.
(Lower Right) The same newspaper recorded John's death in 1876.

Immediately upon taking up his new appointment John sought Government approval to extend the postal depot to include family living quarters at the rear.
Upon receiving approval, JM, with the help of his friends “the James brothers” Mitchell and Chard, completed the structure by the end of 1857.

One of JM's earliest acts as a notary was the birth registration of his Chard cousin's first child - son Thomas James - in 1858.

Woodford at this time was a thriving community [13] and assistance was required in the drapery, a position filled by 32 year old Irish widow Mary Jane Major (nee Kirker; 1827 - 1911).
Known locally as “Jessie”, she had tragically lost her husband during their voyage [14] to Australia and then her baby son [15] shortly after coming ashore in Melbourne.

In Jessie, JM had found a kindred spirit and it was a joyous occasion for the Chards, the Bryan O’Lynn “family”, and the Woodford community when the couple married in March 1859.
Their happiness was dampened somewhat when John's mother Eleanora died two months later.

John and his wife lived in the house pictured (above) where they raised 3 girls.

Ten years later however tragedy struck the family when JM was seriously incapacitated in a road accident on the Woodford bridge which precipitated his death a few years later.
To mark his passing an obituary appeared [16] in The Almanac of Victorian Postal Lists stating:-

“[on their arrival in the township] the family soon became respected members of the Woodford community. John Patison continued as Postmaster almost to the day he died in May 1876, aged 47. Several years earlier he had received severe injuries in a driving accident when he was thrown from his buggy on the Woodford Bridge. His injuries troubled him for the rest of his life but he was unfailingly obliging and courteous in his duties, and he was greatly missed.”

Following John’s death Jessie and her three daughters sold their Woodford and Warrnambool properties and moved to Melbourne resettling at Rathmines Road, Hawthorn.
Jessie Patison lived until she was 84 and was interred with her husband in a Warrnambool Cemetery grave.

Their three daughters, all spinsters, followed their father’s footsteps becoming lifetime employees of Melbourne’s prestigious Buckley and Nunn haberdashery, living their days at the Hawthorn residence called “Woodford”.

George Wilson Patison (1839 - 1898)
Eleanora Mitchell Wilson's eldest son and James and Ellen Chard's cousin.

Fourteen year old George and his younger brother David arrived at Bryan O'Lynn with their Dowie cousins in 1854; the first of the Edinburgh Patisons to immigrate.

Under the protective eye of their uncle David the young boys quickly adapted to the harsh reality of settlement, a situation made somewhat easier with the arrival of their mother and siblings the following year.
There was much for the young lads to do around their new home at Bryan O’Lynn with the care of the homestead livestock and some of the station's lesser general farming chores falling on their shoulders.

George became the family provider at 19 when, in 1859, his mother died and his step-brother married.
With financial assistance from his uncle, a homestead was erected on their Woodlawn property [17] and stocked with a small herd of milking cows purchased from Tower Hill farmer Abraham McGinness.
Abraham was son to Patrick (1810 – 1869) and Catherine (nee Larkin), Purnim's Royal Oak publicans, trading alongside the Dowie and Kavanagh families.

Taking after his step-brother JM's taste for Irish women, George took a fancy to the publican's daughter Elizabeth (1838 – 1924) marrying in 1865.
The couple settled in Purnim East (Woodlawn) and raised four girls.

The property became one of the districts first dairy farms and although George died relatively young at 58, Elizabeth and her maiden daughter Catherine remained on the family's Purnim land milking their dairy herds until their respective deaths in 1924 and 1925.

Both George and Elizabeth were buried in the Catholic section of the Warrnambool cemetery.

David Wilson Patison (1840 - 1912)
Eleanora Mitchell Wilson's youngest son and James and Ellen Chard's cousin.

David Wilson's death in 1867 precipitated the sale of Bryan O’Lynn, the lives of David Patison and his younger sister Mary were suddenly reshaped.
Whereas previously they, along with their cousins James “Rogers” Mitchell and David A.W. Dowie, had been actively involved in the everyday property management; now, they had nothing.
David Wilson must have had a premonition of this possible eventuality when on the second day of March 1867 (he died on the 15th) he penned his will bequeathing [18] two thirds of his estate to David Patison and the remaining one third to David's sister Mary.

Now with the financial wherewithal David purchased some prime grazing land north of Purnim at Ballangeich and took ownership (also from David Wilson's legacy) of a smaller plot at Mepunga East in the Tallangatta Shire.

In 1873 David married Euphemia “Effie” McGillivray (1848 – 1897), the youngest daughter of Isle of Skye immigrants and Purnim neighbours, Archibald and Jessie (nee McDonald).
On the Ballangeich property they called Braehead the couple raised five girls and four boys.
When his wife Effie died quite suddenly at the age of 48, David decided to abandon Braehead leaving his eldest son David Mitchell and his new wife Charlotte Winton (1877 - 1947) in control.
Deciding on a fresh start, eldest daughter Helen Wilson persuaded her father and her siblings to relocate to their Mepunga East property - a move which lasted barely six years before the family relocated again to the Gippsland parish of Heath Hill on a dairy farm called Belvoir.

When David Wilson died in 1912, the family wound up their interests in Gippsland and returned to Ellerslie.
Son Archibald “Archie” Charles eventually returned to Braehead to marry Mary Ormsby (1882 - 1965) and work with his older brother. Whilst David Mitchell died in 1934 Archie and Mary continued dairying on their Ballangeich / Ellerslie land until Archie's death in 1958.

David Wilson Patison, his wife Effie and their daughter Helen Wilson are buried in the Ballangeich cemetery. Their sons David Mitchell and Archibald Charles are buried at Ellerslie.

Mary Brown Patison (1843 - 1901)
Eleanora Mitchell Wilson's youngest daughter and James and Ellen Chard's cousin.

Having arrived at her uncle David's in 1855 as a 12 year old, she soon assumed full responsibility of Bryan O'Lynn's housekeeping when her mother died four year later; a role she filled up to the time of the estate's sale in May 1867.
By August of the same year the now 24 year old, released from Bryan O'Lynn's confines married her cousin James “Rogers” Mitchell.
Mary and James' future journey is outlined in the section relating to the Mitchell immigrants.

Mary Brown Patison
Portion of her certificate of marriage to James Mitchell.
The Presbyterian ceremony took place at the Woodford residence (pictured above) of her step-brother John (JM) Patison.

References

  1. Scotland, Select Marriages, 1561-1910. Eleanora Mitchell Wilson married Mitchell Patison on the 1st June 1837 in Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland.
  2. Pigot's 1825 Directory. Professional and business listings in Edinburgh.
  3. The 1851 Census for Scotland was taken on the night of 30/31 March 1851.
  4. Eleanora Mitchell Patison, head of the family, is registered as a lodging keeper at 3 Market Street Edinburgh. The lodging house had 3 servants and 6 lodgers. Op Cit. 3.
  5. United Kingdom Registers of Births, Marriages and Deaths at Sea, 1844-1890. Helen Patison's death at sea is registered in the United Kingdom shipping records.
  6. The Edinburgh Directory; 1797. John “Watson” Patison is engaged as a pilot on Leith Water.
  7. Registry of Edinburgh apprenticeships in 1804. The Edinburgh Town City Registry; 1804.
  8. A Writer to the Signet is a senior solicitor having the exclusive privilege of preparing crown writs in any Scottish Court. Such a solicitor has been admitted as a member of the Society of Writers to His / Her Majesty’s Signet - a private society dating back to 1594 that formed part of the College of Justice. Admission to the Society is open to individuals qualified to be an advocate / solicitor in Scotland and who have worked in that practice for at least three years. The WS Society.
  9. Directory of advocates in Edinburgh. The Post-Office Annual Directory; Edinburgh 1807.
  10. Directory of solicitors in Edinburgh. The Post-Office Annual Directory; Edinburgh 1808.
  11. Assisted and Unassisted Passenger Lists, Victoria, 1839–1923. HMS Annie Wilson departed Liverpool on 28 January 1855 with 99 adults and 2 children on board. It docked at Melbourne Port Phillip, Victoria, Australia on April 22nd 1855.
  12. Powling J.W. Port Fairy - The First Fifty Years 1837 – 1887; A Social History. William Heinemann Australia, 1980.
  13. James Bonwick (1817-1906), teacher, author, historian and archivist wrote a narrative of his educational tour of the Western District in 1857. When he passed through Woodford he recorded in his diary that; “there were 230 people living in the twin towns (i.e. the settlements on either bank of the Merri River), and the population supported two schools – the National and a Roman Catholic”.His notes were originally published by Thomas Brown of Geelong in 1858 and subsequently reprinted in 1970 by Heinemann Publishers Pty. Ltd., Melbourne.
  14. Assisted and Unassisted Passenger Lists, Victoria, 1839–1923. HMS Athenais departed Liverpool on 13 August 1857. It docked at Melbourne Port Phillip, Victoria, Australia on 18 November 1857.
  15. Australia Death Index, 1787-1985. For Robert Major in 1857, registration Number 5876 at Melbourne (Buried Melbourne General Cemetery, Carlton North).
  16. Post Office Lists.
  17. In 1854, at the time of the sub-division of Thomas Manifold's Grassmere Estate, David Wilson purchased two small plots of land on the Woodlawn-Drysdale Road. The first, situated on the northern banks of the Drysdale Creek for his own residence (and later to become known by the Chards as Marys Vale) and the second at the junction of the Framlingham Road for the possible future use of his widowed sister Eleanora and her Patison family.
  18. Victoria, Australia, Wills and Probate Records, 1841-2009. The will of David Wilson, resident of Bryan O'Lynn.