William Henry Hunt
| First name | William Henry |
|---|---|
| Last name | Hunt |
| Country of Origin | England |
| Date of Birth | 7/16/1809 |
| Year of Arrival in Australia | 1848 |
| Submitted by | Verle Wood |
Story
William and Elizabeth Hunt
William Henry Hunt, baptised 16 July 1809, and his wife, Elizabeth nee Toogood, left Gillingham, Dorset, England, seeking better prospects for their all male family of five sons. At Plymouth they boarded the SS Sibella, bound for South Australia. The Sibella had departed London on 24 March 1848 and left Plymouth on 6 April 1848. She was 721 tons, and her dimensions were 127′ 6″ x 29′ 3″ x 21′ 5″ (39 m x 9 m x 6.5 m approx) which meant that her passengers and crew (some 250 or more souls) shared rather cramped accommodation for the 3Ð4 months it took to sail the high seas from England to Australia.
On 4 June, off the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, tragedy struck the Hunt family. Their eldest son, Henry William, barely 18 years of age, died. Anecdotal evidence is that he “died on the boat in rather a tragic way. In a rough game the sailors pretended to hang him for not doing as they wished, and unfortunately, their rough horse-play proved fatal”.
Ten days later the steward on the Sibella wrote in his journal, ’10Ð14 June 1848: Fine weather and everything going well except a man named Hunt and Doctor had high words and Hunt gave Doctor much abuse.’
William Henry Hunt was obviously extremely upset. A family story records that ‘Finally É the boat reached Adelaide and William Hunt, now a wreck of his former self, tried to establish himself. But we are told by an old friend of the captain of the boat, that ‘From being the strongest man to board the boat, he was the weakest to get off\’. Worn out with illness, grief and worry, he died within a year, leaving his widow to carry on and bring up the four sons.’
For the short remainder of his life, Hunt was the miller of a wind-powered flour mill at Encounter Bay, South Australia. The ruins of the mill still stand on private property in Gibson Avenue and the site is marked with a cairn and plaque.
After William died, his wife Elizabeth reared her young family alone. A family member has written: ‘Anyhow she was a plucky woman, though not physically strong and faced life in a new land with four small sons. How well she did it, might be judged by the fine type of Hunt offspring in the world today.’ Elizabeth and her boys were members of the Tabernacle Chapel, a congregation of ‘dissenters\’ established by Rev Ridgway William Newland.
The Hunt\’s four surviving sons (John, Frank Ladson, Frederick and Thomas Edwin) farmed in and around Encounter Bay before moving east where they took up land, farming successfully at East Wellington, Cooke\’s Plains (Hundred of Seymour and Hundred of Coolinong), Brinkley, Pooginagoric, and other places in the southeast of South Australia, and in western Victoria. All four boys married daughters of other pioneers and founded families of worthy Australians.
A stone with a plaque in honour of William and Elizabeth Hunt has been placed in the Tabernacle Cemetery at Encounter Bay where we believe William was interred.