Mary Ann Stanfield
By Sally Steel
TFHS Inc. Member No. 3919
Mary Ann Stanfield was known as Granny Lamprill, so she almost seems real to me although her parents arrived on the First Fleet. I feel that my direct female line of ancestors is a line of strong women. It is not surprising when I find out about their lives.
Her Parents
Mary Ann Stanfield was born on Norfolk Island in 1799. Her father, Daniel Stanfield was a marine and her mother had also arrived on the First Fleet as the wife of another marine.
Alice Harmsworth left England with two small children and another was born in December 1787. Her older son died soon after they arrived at Port Jackson, and her husband Thomas Harmsworth soon followed. She married Daniel Stanfield and they settled on Norfolk Island and had five children, Mary Ann being the youngest. She was nearly ten years old when the family left for Hobart Town on City of Edinburghin 1808. Her step sister, Ann Harmsworth had married a widower Private in the NSW Corps soon after Mary Ann was born and they went to Sydney when the Corps was recalled in 1810. Her step brother John Harmsworth had enlisted as a drummer in the NSW Corps when he was nine years old and went to Van Diemen's Land in 1810 with the 73 rd Regiment.
Alice's parents settled at Green Point (now Bridgewater) on the Derwent. Her older brother Daniel jnr was now married and settled at Clarence Plains near his father-in-law Edward Kimberley. Her brothers Thomas and William went to Green Point. Her sister Sarah married William Kimberley in June 1816 and they settled at Pontville. Later that year, Mary Ann married David Reynolds who had arrived from Sydney in 1813 and been employed by her father at Green Point.
Mary Ann Stanfield and David Reynolds
David Reynolds had come to Sydney in 1806 with his mother and sisters. His father, Edward Reynolds had arrived there as a convict in 1800.1 David served an apprenticeship as a cooper before sailing for Hobart in 1813. A year later, his mother and two sisters returned to London. Two of his sisters had married in Sydney. An older brother had remained in London and two of his children later came to Van Diemen's Land.2 Edward Reynolds died at Windsor, New South Wales in 1818.
In 1817 David Reynolds lodged a tender to supply 750 lbs of meat to the Government Store. By 1818 he had a grant of 30 acres of land at Herdsman's Cove and his stock comprised one horse, 110 cattle and 200 sheep. He had two convict servants. In August 1820, he was appointed Magistrate for the District of Herdsman's Cove. They were still living at Green Point in 1822. He resigned from the position of Chief District Constable in 1824.
He received 240 additional acres in February 1825 in the Break O' Day district at a price of 7 /6 per acre. In 1827 he applied to purchase 640 acres near the South Esk River for his son Thomas. In 1828 he applied to purchase 500 acres between St Paul's River and Break O' Day Plains. He possessed 2150 acres, either by grant, lease or purchase, partly cultivated and fenced and including buildings. He had 200 head of cattle, 1700 sheep and seven horses. He is recorded as having received 556 acres on 24 August 1831 in Drummond Parish for £188- 10-10.3 In February 1832 he advertised a reward in the Tasmanian Mailfor the return of five sheep missing from his paddock at Old Beach. In the same month he rented 2000 acres in the Great Lake District.
Somerville
David and Mary Reynolds had four sons and two daughters and lived at Somerville , a solid stone, two-storey house, still standing today, not far from Green Point and Old Beach. The youngest child, Daniel, was born in 1832, five months after his brother Daniel died.
David Reynolds drowned in the Derwent River, near Austin's Ferry when ferrying farm produce (a boatload of grain) to Hobart on 12 August 1834. He was accompanied by his two convict servants, Lamprill and Gibson. Gibson also drowned. Mary's brother-in-law William Kimberley, advertised a reward of £20 for the recovery of David Reynolds' body which was found and buried three weeks later at Somerville. A descendant, Oswald Bayley Reynolds later had the grave renovated and removed to St Mark's Pontville.4
Aged 40 years, he was a kind father and an affectionate husband.
Mary Ann Stanfield and William Lamprill
When her husband died, Mary was only thirty-five with five children from seventeen to two years. In January 1836, permission for her marriage to William Lamprill, a convict, was sought and initially refused.5 In April, Lieutenant-Governor Arthur noted,
I know not that I have ever seen Mrs Reynolds. If there be no Eccles!. Objection I approve GA.
The Affidavits of William Lamprill of 'The Tea Tree Brush', widower and Mary Reynolds of 'The Tea Tree Brush', widow, that there were no legal impediments to their proposed marriage were sworn at Hobart Town on 3 June 1835.6 They were married on 7 June 1836.
William Lamprill came from South Ockendon in Essex and was convicted at Essex Assizes of stealing a sheep. He was transported to VDL in 1827 on the Asia.He had worked for David Reynolds and was with him when he drowned. He received a conditional pardon in 1836 and a free certificate in 1841.
In June 1836, prior to her second marriage, Mary made a settlement of her husband's estate with part of it assigned to Gamaliel Butler, Edward Paine Butler, and her half-brother John Harmsworth as trustees. Later in 1836, Mary Lamprill obtained a grant of 400 acres in the Drummond Parish.
John and James died in 1843 in an epidemic. They were buried on the property. It is said that William left Mary and went to South Australia possibly because she would not pass 'Somerville' to him.
Shipping records show that Mrs Lamprill departed from Launceston per Aden on 19 May 1846, with two children.7 W. Lamprill and Frederick arrived from London to Launceston per Lochnagarwith wife and two children on 28 July 1847. I have not found the newspaper item to confirm this entry in the Wayn Index at the State Archives, but it seems likely that Mary returned with her two children at this time, having spent only a brief time in England.
William Lamprill returned to England at some stage as he died in Colchester, Essex in 1855.7 He stated that he had been residing at Hornchurch in Essex and made his will in January 1855 at Romford. The executors of his will were his wife, Sarah and William Henry Clifton.8 He left one hundred pounds to his brother James Lamprill, a farmer of South Ockenden and the rest of his estate which was sworn at under two thousand pounds, to his wife Sarah and her heirs. They appointed Charles Butler in Hobart as administrator in 1861 and after duly advertising in the Hobart papers, he distributed the estate in Tasmania to them. Sarah Lamprill was by now known as Sarah Mundy. There appears to have been no claim made by his family in Tasmania.
Mary was known as Granny Lamprill and lived in a cottage at Somerville until she died on 22 June 1881 at Brighton Plains aged 83 years. She was buried at St Mark's Church Pontville. She made a will in February 1868, leaving two parcels of land to her two surviving Lamprill sons. Henry Reynolds, William Hodgson and Daniel Reynolds were now the Trustees of the Settlement, the original ones having died. She divided her estate equally between her two Lamprill sons, William and Frederick, each receiving 505 acres of land. Thomas and Matilda Reynolds were both still alive when their mother died, but the Reynolds children had probably been recipients of the one third share of their father's estate which had been placed in trust.8
Did someone suggest that David Reynolds was pushed off the boat? Did William Lamprill marry Sarah bigamously when he returned to England? Had he perjured himself when stating he was a widower in 1836, and returned to his wife in England? Or did he divorce Mary?
Mary's Children
Thomas Reynolds was born at Brighton in 1817 and married Charlotte Augusta Devine in 1837. They had five sons and six daughters. They lived at Baskerville at Old Beach. Charlotte died aged 67 in 1887 and Thomas in 1893. They are buried in St Mark's Churchyard at Pontville.
My ancestor, Sarah Reynolds was baptised at St David's Hobart on 3 May 1820, by Rev. Knopwood. She married William Hodgson on 14 September 1836 at age 16, the same year that her mother remarried, and died on 13 August 1879, aged 59 years, two years before her mother. They had seven sons and six daughters. Grants of land were made to William Hodgson and his brother-in-law Thomas Reynolds in 1842-44 at Broadmarsh, Pelham, Strangford and Huntingdon and Monmouth. The Hodgsons lived at 'Burnside', near Orielton, from around 1850.
Henry Reynolds was born at Brighton in 1824. He married Mary Ann Horton in 1843. They lived at Cornelian Hill at Bagdad, which according to a note in my family file, was given to him by his aunt Sarah Kimberley. They had eight sons and five daughters. Henry was a councillor at Brighton and died from pneumonia at Bagdad in 1868 when he was 44 and his youngest child was only a year old. His wife died in 1900 after living with her youngest daughter in Melbourne for two years. They are buried at St Marks' s, Pontville.
Matilda Reynolds, who was born in 1829, did not marry. She was 70 when she died in 1899 and is buried at St Marks.
Daniel Reynolds married Mary Ann Blacklow in 1854. They had four sons and five daughters and lived at Roydon at Elderslie in Tasmania. Their eldest two sons went to New Zealand. Daniel died at Elderslie in 1871 when he fell off a horse and broke his neck. His wife died in 1906. They are buried at St Mark's, Pontville.
William Lamprill was born in 1837 at Brighton and married Harriet Elizabeth Bonney at St John's New Town in 1863. They had two sons and a daughter, all born at Brighton. William died in 1889 at Brighton and his wife died in Hobart in 1932. They are buried at Pontville.
James and John Lamprill died in January 1843 aged 4 and 2 years, and were buried at Somerville.
Frederick Lamprill was born at Brighton in 1843 and married Jane Celia Stephens in Hobart in 1864. They had three sons born at Brighton in the 1860s. She died in 1872 in Hobart. In 1875, Frederick Lamprill and Lucy Nicholson had a daughter born in Hobart. Another daughter was born to Frederick Lamprill and Catherine Armstrong at Longford in 1898.
1 from Geoff Reynolds
2 from John Reynolds
3 David T. Hawkins, Bound for Australia, Library of History Aust 1987
4 Merle Pinch
5 CON 52/1 p.105, 106 No. 386
6 CSO 1/6 [1824-1836] Class C Arthur pr file 100, 2" vol. pp.185-6
7 Launceston Examiner, 20 May 1846
6 Letters of Administration 1862 Lamprill William (Admin. 7 Book 4 page 230)
7 Will Book 5 page 524
98 Will 1881 book 9B page 296 No. 2450
This story was originally published in 2001 by the Tasmanian Family History Society Inc in My Most Interesting Ancestor.
The original introduction to this publication may be found here.