thomas cleghorn westgarth
Thomas was born in Leith, Scotland on 17 November 1816, the son of John Westgarth and Christian Thomson. In 1841, he was living in Rotherham in South Yorkshire and working as an Engineer. The town of Rotherham grew rapidly during the Industrial Revolution first as a result of the large coal deposits and later as the numerous iron and steel foundries became the primary industries. Although Rotherham lay inland, it was located on the River Don which was part of a system of rivers and canals, known as the Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigation, that connected the industrial towns of Sheffield, Doncaster and Rotherham as well as other canal systems in West Yorkshire and the River Trent in Staffordshire.
As an engineer, Thomas likely found work in one of the foundries or more likely on the steamships navigating the canals. There is no sign of Thomas in the 1851 Census but in 1859, he applied for a passport and emigrated to Victoria in the colony of Vancouver Island. By early 1861, he was mentioned in the local Daily Colonist newspaper as the Inspector of Steamers of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. In April of that year, he was also reported as travelling to Hope to investigate the explosion of the steamship Fort Yale on the Fraser River near Union Bar.
One year later, Thomas married Caroline Mallandaine at St John’s Church in Victoria but they did not have any children. They remained in Victoria for the next twenty years before returning to England in 1882. They settled in the south London where Thomas died in 1895.
john westgarth + christian thomson
John was born in Edinburgh 13 May 1769 to John Lieutenant Westgarth and his wife Esther Cleghorn. He married Christian Thomson on 17 December 1812 in Leith, a parish in northern Edinburgh, and they went on to have nine children. Later references state that the Westgarths were a landed family from Durham in northern England but this has yet to be confirmed.
John and Christian had three sons in three years: John, born on 28 February 1814, William, on 12 June 1815 and Thomas, on 17 November 1816. The family continued to live in Leith where John was employed as the Surveyor General of Customs for Scotland. After three boys, they went on to have six daughters. Margaret was born on 29 April 1818 followed by Anne on 5 December 1820, Susan on 5 January 1823, Sophia Esther on 15 January 1825, Christian Robertson on 4 November 1826 and finally Elizabeth on 20 October 1832.
Their eldest son John died, aged 22 years, in 1836 and was buried at the Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh but the cause of death is not known. On 23 July 1840, their son William left Edinburgh for Melbourne, Australia where he established himself as a merchant and later a public official. In 1841, John was recorded in the census at 8 Marysfield Road in Greenside, a residential area in Edinburgh that lay on the north western side of Calton Hill. His 16 year old daughter Sophia was also listed with him along with two female servants. At the time of the census, Christian and three of her daughters, Ann, Susan and Elizabeth, were staying in a house that overlooked King Edward’s Bay on Sea Banks in Tynemouth on the Northumberland coast. The only other resident was a female servant so it appears they were renting the house rather than visiting another family.
On 19 July 1843, their daughter Susan left home to marry Lewis Borthwick and they too emigrated to Australia but settled in Queensland. William returned from Melbourne in 1847 and the following year he published the first of his recollections Australia Felix; or, a Historical and Descriptive Account of the Settlement of Port Phillip in Edinburgh before sailing back to Melbourne. Over the next ten years, William continued to travel between Melbourne, London and Edinburgh.
In 1851, John and Christian were still in Edinburgh but had moved to Doddingston where they lived at 13 East Brighton Crescent along with two servants, a cook and a housemaid. John died on 3 February 1854 and was buried at Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh. Four months later, William, who had returned home in 1853, married Ellison MacFie at St Cuthbert’s Church in Edinburgh. Ellison was the daughter of John MacFie, the Deputy Lieutenant Justice Of The Peace, and his wife Alison Thorburn. William and Ellison returned to Melbourne following their marriage where their first daughter, Alice, was born in 1856 but by 1861, they were back in Britain and living at 84 Gloucester Terrace in Paddington. They had two more daughters Annie and Mary Ethel who were both born in London.
Susan died on 15 January 1859, aged only 36 years, and was buried in the local cemetery in Toowong, Queensland. Two months later, her sister Sophia married Johann Hensaler, a German immigrant from Bockenheim near Frankfurt, at St Stephen’s Church in Brisbane. It is not known if Sophia emigrated to Australia with Susan and her husband Lewis or if she followed later.
William and Ellison remained in London and in 1871, they were living at 30 Brunswick Gardens in Kensington. William died at the family home in Kensington on 28 October 1889 and buried in the family plot at Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh. The unusual circumstances of his death were reported in newspapers in both London and Australia. They reported that William had suffered from poor health since he retired from business and on the morning of his death, it was believed that he fell from the second floor while attempting to open his bedroom window. He left an estate valued at £147 000 but it is not known if his brother Thomas was among the beneficiaries. His wife Ellison died 31 March 1911 in London and was later buried at Dean Cemetery with her husband. She left an estate valued at £80 000.
Sophia Westgarth died on 5 June 1914 and was buried at Toowong; she was pre-deceased by her husband Johann on 26 October 1907. Her mother, Christian Thomson died in Brisbane, Australia on 28 February 1878.