Mercy Bambury

Story

MERCY BAMBURY

Great Grandmother Mercy was born to William and Joan Bambury (nee Salisbury) in 1840 at Norton-sub-Hamdon, near Salisbury, Somerset, England. William was a stonemason and Joan was a glove maker. In 1851 Census Joan and her three children were living with her father who was stated to be a pauper. Joan died in 1852 and William in 1854. In 1861 Census Mercy was living with her Aunt Mary Hamlin at Ham Hill Stoke-sub-Hamden and working as a silk and cloth glove maker.

At age 22 in 1862 Mercy came to Maryborough Queensland on the ‘Ariadne’ the first boat to bring immigrants directly to Maryborough. The journey took 123 days. Apart from some storms, gales and some unrest among the crew the journey was uneventful. Until they arrived at the southern entrance to Great Sandy Straits, this entrance is considered dangerous as it is very shallow and rough. The captain was stopped from going over the bar by another ship\’s captain. He had to go up the east coast of Fraser Island & then south again to the mouth of the Mary River. Here they were inspected by a health officer & declared free of disease. The coastal steamer ‘Telegraph’ arrived alongside at 7am on the 8th October and passengers and their belongings were transshipped and taken up river to Maryborough\’s Queen\’s Wharf.

On arrival Mercy was hired as a servant and set off for Stanthorpe, near the NSW border, to work for a family named March. The journey was mostly on foot or sometimes in the wagons carrying supplies. Mr M H March had selected 200,000 acres as a sheep run, which he named Maryland Run. In 1864 Mercy married Samuel Francis, who arrived in 1854 aboard the ‘Lady McDonald’. Samuel was a carpenter so they went where the work was. Eventually arriving back at Stanthorpe where Samuel died, in 1879, of Typhoid from drinking polluted water from the well behind the building he was working on. At this time Mercy and her six children were left destitute.

Mercy is thought to have leased land in the name of her son Samuel, who was still a child of seven, and grown vegetables and run a few milking cows. She was a well known midwife and family history says she even swam a flooded creek, heavily pregnant, to assist a neighbour to give birth. Another family story is of the time she and other women and children were attacked by hostile natives. Mercy made the women and children hide under a table while she held the natives off with a shotgun until the men of the families returned from work. It is also said that she frequently gave food and bed to Thunderbolt, the bushranger, when he was in her vicinity.

In 1882 Mercy Francis married widower Charles Burton, witnesses were Emily Francis(aged 14) and Samuel Francis (aged 9). Charles was born in London, about 1821, and arrived in the Stanthorpe in 1849 to work as a shepherd on Maryland Station. Charles had married an Irish girl named Margaret Francis. They had three children before she died in 1881, all born in Warwick, Queensland. Charles and Mercy lived on his property at Sandy Waterholes. Two of Mercy\’s daughters married two of Charles\’ sons, Emily married Charles and Mary married John. Charles\’ daughter Johanna married William Bambury (not related to Mercy). Mercy and Charles had one daughter Rose Ann, our grandmother. Rose Ann was only seven years old when Charles died in 1893. Charles had left a will leaving Mercy one horse, cart and harness, 10 milking cows and their calves plus all his household furniture and effects. The remainder of his estate was left to his son Charles.

Again Mercy showed her strength of character by going into Stanthorpe where she bought a block of land. She had the timber felled and milled. From this timber she had enough money to pay for the milling and the building of the first four roomed timber house in the town. She then turned it into a boarding house for single tin miners working leases around the town. She later built a second house for the princely sum of forty pounds. This house eventually became the family home of daughter Rose Ann and her family. Rose and her husband had a family of thirteen children.

There were two outstanding events in Mercy\’s life and our mother was present at both. On 26th July 1920 Mercy was among a number of people invited to be presented to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales on the occasion of his opening the new branch railway line from Cottonvale near Stanthorpe to Amiens. The second event was about 1925 when grateful residents, who had been helped in numerous ways, collected enough money to send Mercy and our mother by train to spend a week in a CWA cottage by the sea at Sandgate, close to Brisbane.

Mercy lived a long full life and died at the age of 89 in 1929, leaving a huge number of descendents.

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