Henry Townsend ⁹⁴¹

  General Notes:

Source: - The Pragmatic Pionees Page's 125/126/127
On April 22 1851, at the age of twenty-one, Margaret married Henry Townsend in the Colo Chapel. Henry, eighteen months younger than Margaret, was a native of the Kurrajong. He was not a handsome man but Margaret may have been attracted to him by his sartorial style - Dan Mayne, a contemporary of Henry's, later recalled that one could always pick a Kurrajonger by his dress: -

His trousers were very tight at the knee, and widened out to the boot - bell - bottomed - with buttons on the outside seam. Round his cabbage-tree hat he wore
a broad ribbon, with diamond-shaped holes cut
therein. His hair was oiled, and well smoothed down. High-heeled boots, with very sharp-pointed toes, completed the rig.

Who could resist?

Henry was the sixth-born of the eight sons of William and Rebecca Townsend, and the seventh of fourteen children, all of whom survived infancy.

Following their marriage Henry and Margaret established themselves on a farm at Kurrajong. In 1852 Henry purchased twenty acres from Tristram Dunstan for the modest price of twenty-one Pounds and in 1855 he purchased an adjoining sixty acres running north to Wheeny Creek. He paid Thomas Parnell three hundred Pounds for this land. The Windsor and Richmond Gazette in 1910 told the story of how Alfred
Smith, erstwhile operator of the Richmond punt, remembered the transaction. Smith recalled that Parnell sold the farm to Henry Townsend as we were putting him over in the punt one-day.
Between 1852 and 1858 six children were born to Henry and

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Margaret at Kurrajong until, sometime around 1860, they left the district and moved to Emu Swamp, near Orange - in the heart of gold country. Henry's elder brother, John Townsend, had been a grazier in the Ophir district since before the discovery of gold. By the mid-1850's, John Townsend was at Emu Swamp on a property described in Australian Men of Mark as thirty-five square miles in extent and stocked with five thousand head of cattle. Another of the Townsend brothers, Charles, had settled in the area in 1849 and by the mid-1850's a younger brother, Thomas Townsend, was also settled in the Emu Swamp/Frederick's Valley area where he had married one of the daughters of the merchant and squatter Thomas Raine.

It seems probable that Henry was drawn west by the success of his brothers. He may also have been attracted by the idea of gold as were many other Kurrajongers at the time, but whatever motivated the move, he certainly described himself as a farmer when registering the births of his two children born at Emu Swamp in 1861 and 1862.

If he resisted the lure of gold, he was less successful in resisting other temptations. In 1865 two sons were born to Henry, one by his wife Margaret, and one by a woman called Betsy Allen. Margaret did not have to endure Henry's infidelity for long. She died of scarlet fever at Frederick's Valley on December 4 1865. Henry was not present at her death and brother John Townsend served as informant and witness at her burial the following day in the Orange cemetery. Margaret's youngest child, the infant Arthur, did not long survive his mother.

Henry returned to his Kurrajong farm and he and Betsy had four more children before they married, in Sydney, in 1870. Henry sold the farm in 1873 to the Rev. George Middleton of the Kurrajong for four hundred and fifty Pounds. Henry and Betsy then returned to the west, to Meranburn, where Henry took up a block of land, which had originally been selected by Betsy's brother, William Allen. He later selected additional blocks and by October 1878 when the Sydney
Mail's Sketcher travelled through the area, the reporter was able to write that: -
Mr. H. Townsend has a large tract of land on both
Sides, of the Manildra (creek), and, judging by the crop of wheat I saw, its fertility is most extraordinary. A prolific melon last year yielded one

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ton of fruit from a single stalk; if the orchard just planted will bear in anything like the same proportion we may look forward to an astonishing quantity of
fruit on this farm.

The Sketcher also noted that:-
Mr. Townsend is the father of sixteen children, many of whom are married. He made six little boys march into the room and sing a hymn in my presence. One of the boys, not 7 years of age, is an expert at playing the concertina.

Henry and Betsy had ten children: Albert Victor, James Henry, Rowland, Elizabeth, Ernest, Henrietta (Campbell), George Henry, Herbert, Lydia Anne (McKaig), and Walter Augustus. Unfortunately for Henry, these children were all illegitimate since the marriage to Betsy was bigamous! Betsy Allen's first husband, Charles Dennis, with whom she had emigrated, to New South Wales in 1855, was still alive.

Henry's marriage to Betsy foundered and in 1886, at the age of fifty-five, he married nineteen-year old Eliza Farr at Molong. Eliza was the daughter of Charles and Jane Farr of Wellington. According to family legend, Eliza favoured another, younger, suitor but was persuaded by her mother that Henry was a better match.

The marriage apparently caused some tensions in the Townsend household. In 1887, Albert Townsend, eldest son of Henry and Betsy, took out a charge against his father of having unlawful possession of a horse belonging to Alfred. The court suggested that the matter be submitted to arbitration by friends of the parties and the charge was dropped.

Henry and Eliza had three daughters: Mary Jane (Ball), Rebecca May (Maher), and Eliza Ellen (Ward). Henry died at Meranburn on December 26 1891. On his death certificate, his eldest son, Henry John Townsend, recorded the children of Henry's marriages to Margaret and Eliza but did not list the ten children of his marriage to Betsy, although one of them was a witness at the burial.

  Noted events in his life were:

• Occupation: Farmer.

• connection.

• connection.

• connection. ⁹⁴²

• connection. ⁹⁴¹

Henry married Margaret Gosper, daughter of John Gosper and Hannah Beale Reynolds, on 22 Apr 1851 in Colo Chapel, Richmond, NSW Australia. (Margaret Gosper was born on 26 Aug 1829 in Colo, /Lower Portland Head, NSW Australia, christened on 4 Oct 1829 in "School House" At Wilberforce, Nsw. Australia. (According To Edward Reynolds Note Book.), died on 4 Dec 1865 in Frederick Valley, NSW Australia and was buried on 5 Dec 1865 in C of E Orange, NSW Australia.). The cause of her death was Scarlet Fever.

Henry next married Betsy Allen in 1870 in Sydney, NSW Australia. (Betsy Allen was born circa 1840.)

Henry next married Eliza Farr, daughter of Charles Farr and Jane, in 1886 in Molong, NSW Australia. (Eliza Farr was born circa 1867.)