Darvall, Emily Mary

1817 - 1909  (91 years)

• Name	Darvall, Emily Mary
  Born	12 Nov 1817
  Christened	3 Dec 1817	Saint Helen, York, Yorkshire, England
  Gender	Female
  Lived	1839	30 Montaga Street, London. England
  Marriage	1840	Sydney, NSW
  	Emily married Robert Barton, a retired naval officer and grazier.
  Moved	1840	"Boree Nyrang", Molong, NSW
  	457 Peabody Road Robert and Emily began their life together in a bark hut on Boree Nyrang sheep station. Gradually, as their nine children grew up, the bark hut became a comfortable homestead with a large fruit and vegetable garden. Life was hard -- schools and medical help were a long way off and a baby daughter (one of a pair of twins) died "of a teething fever" when 10 months old. Emily learned to deal with both friendly and hostile Aboriginals and trained some of the girls for domestic help. Her eldest son, Robert Darvall, later reported that at one time, when he was a young boy, there was a large tribe of blacks at Boree and one day they were raided by the Yass blacks. His father was away and only a young jackeroo was in charge. Some of the Boree blacks took refuge in the house in Emily's and Robert Darvall's bedrooms after several of their number had been killed. Being denied access to the house and having collected all the young black girls they could find, the Yass blacks finally withdrew.
  Lived	Jan 1840	"Roseneath Cottage", Parramatta, NSW
  	"Roseneath Cottage" has on the north-east corner of O'Connell and Ross Streets in Parramatta.
  Purchased	1866	"Rockend", Gladesville, NSW
  	Following Roberts death, 'Boree Nyrang' was sold and Emily purchased 'Rockend' at Gladsville to be the family home.
  	In 1866, lot 47 became the property of Emily Mary Barton, a recently-widowed member of one of nineteenth-century Ryde's leading gentry families, the Darvalls. It was Emily Mary who gave the name Rockend to the cottage and it remained her home for more than 40 years. This association of the cottage with her, and with later generations of her family, is central to the historical significance of Rockend. When Emily Mary Barton took up residence at Rockend, her household included various unmarried children. Within a few years the cottage also became home to her widowed daughter Emily Paterson and Emily's children. In 1889 another widowed daughter, Rose Paterson, also sought shelter at Rockend with her youngest children. Rose's eldest son, Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson, had been a resident at Rockend in the 1870s while he attended Sydney Grammar School. Visitors to Rockend were able to enjoy not only the outdoor pleasures of boating, bathing and fishing, but also the indoor pursuits of music, painting and poetry. Emily Mary Barton was a poet and published several prize-winning poems in the Sydney press in the 1880s. Her daughter Emily Paterson painted watercolours of Australian flowers and butterflies and exhibited in the Sydney International Exhibition in 1879. Emily Paterson's daughter, another Emily, composed music. Emily Paterson jnr also took an interest in some of the women patients at the asylum, sometimes inviting them over for croquet and tea on the lawn at Rockend. She later went on to establish the After Care Association to assist these women as they were discharged from the hospital. Her uncle, Henry Francis Barton, was Master in Lunacy and Master in Equity at the asylum.
  Buried	Aug 1909	St Annes Anglican Church, Ryde, NSW   [1]
  	Robert and Emily's graves are on the north side of the church. (GPS coordinates: S33' 48.927" E151' 6.274") There are memorial plaques for both Robert and Emily within the Chancel.
  Died	24 Aug 1909	"Rockend", Gladesville, NSW
  Published	1910
  	Description: "Straws on the Stream"
  Person ID	I0136	Barton Family Tree
  Last Modified	1 Sep 2016

  
  

  Father	Darvall, Major Edward,   b. 10 Oct 1775,   d. 16 May 1869, "Ryedale", 14 Bellevue Ave, West Ryde, NSW  (Age 93 years)
  Relationship	Birth
  Mother	Johnson, Emily G,   b. 1788,   d. 1841  (Age 53 years)
  Relationship	Birth
  Married	1805
  Lived	Abt 1833	Boulogne, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France
  	They owned two houses; Chateau de Capecure and nearby Chateau Vert Pré. They did not sell either of these houses when they moved to Australia as they intended to return to France within a few years.
  Property	1833	"Chateau de Capecure", Boulogne, Fance
  Property	1833	Chateau Vert Pré, Boulogne, France
  Moved	Dec 1838	City of London, England
  Moved	Sep 1839	Sydney, NSW
  	Major Edward Darvall and his wife sailed to Sydney with five children (Frederick, Emily, Eliza, Rosamond and Horace) intending on living in NSW for a time.
  Lived	May 1840	"Deniston", Deniston, NSW
  	They leased the house "Deniston" with one hundred acres of land from Dr Thomas Forster.
  Moved	Abt 1849	"Glen Ryde", Ryde, NSW
  	He purchased a house "Glen Ryde" at the rear of the St Charles' Church. He was to later purchase further land and create "Ryedale".
  Property	"Chateau de Capecure", Boulogne, Fance
  Family ID	F0084	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Barton, Captain Robert Johnston,   b. 30 Jun 1809, Ireland ,   d. 4 Oct 1863, The Australian Club, Sydney, NSW  (Age 54 years)
  Married	30 Jul 1840	St James' Anglican Church, 173 King Street, Sydney Nsw
  	Emily and Robert both sailed on the 'Alfred' to Australia. It was on this voyage that they met. They were married by the Bishop of Australia. NSW BDM ref: V1840157 24B/1840
  Children	1. Barton, Arthur Sterling,   b. 3 Jul 1856, "Boree Nyrang", Molong, NSW ,   d. 19 Jul 1916, "Ovalan", Albert Road, Strathfield, NSW  (Age 60 years)  [Birth]   2. Barton, Emily Susanna,   b. 1841,   d. 1917  (Age 76 years)   3. Barton, Robert Darvall,   b. 16 Apr 1843, "Boree Nyrang", Molong, NSW ,   d. 16 Aug 1924, Sydney, NSW  (Age 81 years)   4. Barton, Mary Eliza,   b. 1844,   d. 1845  (Age 1 years)   5. Barton, Rose Isabella,   b. 30 Dec 1844,   d. 24 Feb 1893  (Age 48 years)   6. Barton, Nora Clarina,   b. 3 Dec 1846, "Boree Nyrang", Molong, NSW ,   d. 1931  (Age 84 years) + 7. Barton, Charles Hampden,   b. 8 Jul 1848, "Boree Nyrang", Molong, NSW ,   d. 21 Jun 1912, Darlinghurst, NSW  (Age 63 years)  [Birth]   8. Barton, Edward Hugh,   b. 1850,   d. 1891  (Age 41 years)   9. Barton, Lucy Georgina,   b. 1852,   d. Yes, date unknown   10. Barton, Henry Francis,   b. 5 Nov 1853,   d. 26 Oct 1902  (Age 48 years)
  Last Modified	17 Jul 2010
  Family ID	F0050	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

• Event Map		Moved - 1840 - "Boree Nyrang", Molong, NSW Lived - Jan 1840 - "Roseneath Cottage", Parramatta, NSW Purchased - Following Roberts death, 'Boree Nyrang' was sold and Emily purchased 'Rockend' at Gladsville to be the family home. - 1866 - "Rockend", Gladesville, NSW Buried - Aug 1909 - St Annes Anglican Church, Ryde, NSW Died - 24 Aug 1909 - "Rockend", Gladesville, NSW  = Link to Google Earth
  Pin Legend	: Address       : Location       : City/Town       : County/Shire       : State/Province       : Country       : Not Set

  
  

• Notes

  THE BUILDING OF ROCKEND John Crotty, who also bought other land up the hill near the flagstaff, was probably the builder of Rockend and its first occupant. When he died in July 1859, leaving a widow and two sons, his death notice in the Sydney Morning Herald observed that he was "a master builder, of considerable eminence". He may have been involved in the construction of St Charles' church and his burial place in the churchyard there is marked by a finely carved headstone. By 1861 John Crotty's heirs were in financial difficulties and forced to sell their Gladesville property. An auction notice in August 1861 described the building on lot 47 as "a substantial stone-built family residence, containing seven rooms and kitchen". Lot 47 was bought by a gentleman named Edward Craig Corner who lived in the house with his young family for only a few years before he too was forced by financial difficulties to sell the property. An auction notice for "Corner's property" in January 1864 described it as "a substantially built stone residence, containing verandah, hall, seven rooms, with large attic above, kitchen and cellar, yard, with water reservoir at the rear, and flower garden in front". The rest of the land was "laid out as orangery and orchard, just coming into bearing" and there was "a bathing house at the waterside." Emily Mary Barton died at Rockend in 1909, at the age of 92. After her death, the house had various tenants and owners until it was purchased in 1923 by Harold Meggitt, who established a linseed oil extraction plant on what had become by that time a 5-acre site. The cottage was converted into an office for the factory. When the plant closed in 1974 it was in a bad state of repair but was saved from demolition by a community campaign which also led to the acquisition of the site by the State Government for community use as foreshore parkland. Currently the cottage is leased as the Banjo Paterson Cottage Restaurant. STRAWS ON THE STREAM Emily Mary Barton (nee Darvall) was one of the most talented pioneering women of outback Australia. She was born in 1817 and was educated in England and France while Napoleon was in exile at St. Helena. She remembered the Chartist Riots and the Reform Bill and saw the first steamboat. In 1839 she came to Australia with her father, Major Darvall, and the following year married Robert Johnstone Barton, whose 66,000 acre station BOREE NYRANG, near Molong, in central New South Wales, become her home for the next thirty years. Her husband was an uncle of A.B. (Banjo) Paterson and a nephew of Mrs (Rosa Carolin) Campbell Praed, the most distinguished Australian woman novelist of the pre-Federation period. Emily Barton could easily match her distinguished relatives (by marriage) when it came to talents as she was fluent in French and Italian, spoke enough Greek and German to teach the rudiments, was a more than average Latin scholar and was an accomplished portrait painter. Life at BOREE NYRANG was full of incident and tribulation and she had to live through the era of the gold rushes, which denuded the stations of workmen and servants, through bouts of cattle thieving and activities of bushrangers. She had one particularly terrifying experience when a tribe of aborigines from the Yass district attacked the Boree tribe, killing a number of them. The terrified remnants fled to the Boree homestead where some of them were taken in by Mrs Barton and hidden in cupboards and under beds. Not all the tribe managed to secure refuge and those who did not make it in time were killed by the Yass blacks on the verandah and yard of the homestead. The only man present when the assault came was a young jackaroo who managed to frighten off the attacking blacks by waving a gun at them. Fortunately for him the blacks did not know the gun wasn't loaded. Emily Barton had commenced writing poetry in childhood and continued almost up to the date of her death on August 24, 1909 when she was 91 years old. The 89 poems in this volume cover a great span of time and an enormous range of subjects reflecting life in the colony in the 19th Century. They include a number of prize winning poems which appeared in the "Illustrated Sydney News". In addition to the poems, the volume includes a resume of Emily Barton's life and an unusual character reading made for her early in her life by a phrenologist, Professor Hamilton.

  
  

• Sources

  [S0004] St Annes Anglican Church at Ryde history on website.