13/52 Sisters: Charlotte Guy 1816 - 1901

 What did Charlotte Guy do between the age of 22 and 61? It is a frustratingly long time for an ancestor to be absent. My great great grandmother Mary Amelia Guy was the subject of the blog Curious. Her  sister Charlotte is the subject of this blog, Sisters, even more curious. Sadly this blog is more about the people around Charlotte and not the woman herself who is only glimpsed amongst  other family members. Who was she? There is this charming photo which turned up in a Godlee collection, her name written on the back, taken in Adelaide. 

Charlotte was born in Lewes in 1816 and baptised in St John the Baptist Church which is in Southover Street., the second daughter of Arthur Guy and Charlotte née Fuller.  Lewes lies in a valley of the South Downs on the River Ouse, between London and Brighton by train. The High Street cuts thought the town and turning off you head down towards the railway station,  walking south in the direction of Southover Street. The St John the Baptist Church was once part of the now ruined Lewes Priory. Built in the 12th century it provided hospitality to travellers and the poor and survived Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries which destroyed the rest of the priory.

Arthur Guy, Charlotte’s father, was born in a rural village of Ripe which was 13 Km east of Lewes.  Her mother, Charlotte Fuller, was from Lewes where they married at the St John the Baptist Church and raised their five children. There is a clue to Arthur’s occupation in the newspaper report of his death. The Sussex Advertiser said  he was ‘connected by the intercourse of business with an extensive circle of friends and acquaintance by whom he will be long remembered.’ In another article he is referred to as a ‘clerk’. Charlotte had an older sister, Sarah, and three younger siblings: Mary Amelia, 1819, Joseph 1820 and Elizabeth (Lizzie) 1825. The streets in Lewes are narrow and the terraced houses meet the footpath with no front gardens.

When Charlotte was 15 years old her mother died. Sarah was 17, Mary 12. Joseph 11 and Lizzie only five. The Sussex Advertiser reported that it was ‘much lamented.’ I should imagine so! Six years later, in 1837,  Arthur followed his wife to the grave in the Southover John the Baptist churchyard. 

I don’t know what prompted the Guys to migrate to Australia in 1839. Certainly emigration officers had been sprucing the benefits of life in South Australia with its convict free status and assisted passage was offered. The government made an effort to balance the sexes which made it more attractive to women as a destination. Charlotte, Mary and Joseph set off for the south, leaving Sarah and Lizzie in Lewes to make their living from dressmaking. Perhaps the motivation for migration was economic. They hoped for a more prosperous life in the colonies, or perhaps Mary had marriage prospects. 

Joseph went first, leaving Liverpool in August 1838, exactly a year after his father’s death. The Dorset was a brand new brig, leaving Liverpool to engage in coastal trade in Australia, later to sail between Port Adelaide and Port Lincoln, Hobart and Sydney.. The Dorset was a small brig, carrying only 9 adult passengers and a child. Joseph arrived in Adelaide on Jan 24th 1839.  He was 18 years old.  

Charlotte and Mary left Plymouth in October of 1839, arriving on The Java in February 1840, with 464 passengers. They were not assisted passengers and had a cabin, so considerably more comfortable than most of the other 400 odd passengers.

In April of that year Charlotte witnessed the marriage of her sister to John Godlee. One of the likely motivations for their migration was that Mary and John had arranged to marry, John coming to Adelaide first in 1838. Mary could not possibly travel alone so Charlotte chaperoned her. Now the marriage was finalised. Where now for Charlotte? 

This interesting document I found at the East Sussex Record office (The Keep). It is related to Burwood Godlee’s will, Mary’s brother-in-law. It confirmed for me that Charlotte had indeed travelled with Mary to Adelaide and that she had witnessed their marriage. 

After the wedding, Charlotte disappeared from the historical record. I suspect that she may have lived with Joseph, her younger brother who is also hard to follow. The earliest reference to him is in the South Australian Government Gazette which records that he was appointed to the Mounted Police force in 1845. That rings alarm bells for me! Was he involved in hunting down Aborigines? In a history of the police in South Australia Robert Clyne says:

‘Police attention was first directed to enforcing British law on Aborigines, and response to native crime was swift and terrible. In 1840 at a site near the Maria massacre, police authorised to exact summary justice hanged two alleged perpetrators without trial. The following year they rode into New South Wales with over-landers and fought a bloody battle near Lake Victoria, resulting in significant loss of life to the Aboriginal combatants.’ 

It is small comfort to know that these events occurred before 1845, although wouldn’t he have been aware of these killings? A reading of newspaper reports from 1845 would indicate that ‘protecting’ settlers from Aborigines was a key function of the Mounted Police, along with following up robberies, assaults and ship wrecks. Joseph Guy is mentioned in several court cases where he is giving evidence about robberies and assault. so perhaps I have grounds to hope he was not involved in roaming the outback ‘protecting’ settlers. 

There is a mention of Charlotte Guy in an 1867 letter to her sister Mary from John Godlee’s older sister. She sends 25 yards of fabric to Mary and suggests it will be enough for a two dresses, one for Mary and one for ‘thy sister Charlotte’. This suggests that Mary and Charlotte were connected, perhaps closely. Imagine them in their voluminous 1860s style matching dresses! 

Joseph, their brother, seems to have been connected to Mary and John Godlee during the 1860s and 70s. Joseph is recorded umpiring a cricket match in 1869. John Godlee was the Forman of the Clare Foundry who held the cricket match for the workmen who were given the afternoon off.  Was Joseph one of these workers? In 1870 he applied unsuccessfully for a job as the Inspector of Nuisances for the Clare Council. Joseph died in November 1879, at the home of his brother in law, John Godlee, by that time living in Norwood. The Family notice says he was ‘late of Wirrabara’, a wool growing and mining town in the southern Flinders Rangers. Did Charlotte live with him, performing the job as housekeeper? Was she present with her sister when their brother died, the first of the Guy siblings to die. 

We do know that two  years earlier, in 1877, Charlotte Guy, aged 61, did something unexpected. After remaining mysteriously single all these years, she married Joseph Arthur Jackman. He was 64. It was his third marriage. He migrated with his first wife and eight children from Surrey in 1855. His 2nd wife died four years before he married Charlotte leaving him with two children: Charles aged 13, Alexander aged 10 when Charlotte came into their lives. Mr Jackman was a boot maker and his obituary says  ‘for many years he carried on a boot making  and importing trade in King William Street.’ I hope she found pleasure in married life and in caring for these boys. An obituary doesn’t necessarily tell the whole story but he does sound like husband material. ‘Mr Jackman, who was highly respected, led a hard working, unobtrusive life, and practically the only public position he occupied was that of a deacon at the Christian Church, Stepney. His characteristics were industry, business capacity and a reserve which centred his happiness in the home.’ 

In 1897, when Charlotte was 81, she is mentioned in a letter from her sister’s daughter-in-law, who remarks that Aunt Charlotte has been down to visit them while they are holidaying at Grange. She says Aunt Charlotte isn’t very well. These are the scraps I have been able to retrieve from a meagre store of records. 

Charlotte outlived her younger sister Mary who died in 1896. Charlotte died in 1901, her husband surviving her by seven years, said to have died at 95.

References 

bound-for-south-australia.collections.slsa.sa.gov.au/ShipLists%20Alpha%20by%20Year/1839D-G.htm

Clyne, Robert, ‘Police’, SA History Hub, History Trust of South Australia, https://sahistoryhub.history.sa.gov.au/organisations/police, accessed 22 March 2022.

Evening Journal (Adelaide)

England & Wales Christening Index, 1530 - 1980.

England & Wales Marriages for Charlotte Fuller and Arthur Guy.

findagrave.com/memorial/186747829/charlotte-guy

findagrave.com/memorial/186963593/thomas-arthur-guy

Godlee, Charlotte Louisa, The Dear old Letter, transcribed and edited by Sally O’Wheel, 2020.

Godlee, Mary. Letter, 1867.

London, England, Church of England Marriage Banns, 1754-1936

passengers.history.sa.gov.au/

Sussex Advertiser

sussexparishchurches.org/church/lewes-st-john-the-baptist-southover-high-street/

South Australian. 

South Australian Register.

South Australia Deaths, 1842 -1915.

South Australian Marriages 1842 -1916.

wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirrabara,_South_Australia