Hamilton

Mildred Gertrude Courbarron was born at Waverley NSW in 1889 to Irish girl Mary Morrissey and Augustus James Hamilton-Courbarron (known as James). Her exact day of birth is unknown at this stage as her parents failed to officially register her birth. One reason for this may have been because Mildred, and her brother James born 2 years later, were both born before their parents marriage. Unusual for the time but not entirely uncommon.

Mildred began school at Waverley before completing her education at Waverley Ladies College at age 15. Her early years were spent living at Waverley before the family moved to Bondi where they nicknamed their new house ‘St Ernans’: it was named after the home, St Ernans, in Ireland in which her paternal grandmother Mary Hamilton was born. The house at Bondi was a terraced house typical of the period and it looked nothing at all like the original St Ernans House.

Mildred’s father, Augustus J H Courbarron, was a sea captain who had charge of a ship which saw him visit many countries around the world. He was rarely at home but during the times he was in Sydney he was remembered as a fond father.

Mildred had three siblings:

James - born 1891
Mary Ellen (Molly) - born 1897
Frederick - born 1900

Upon the death of her father in 1904, it appears that Mildred travelled with her mother Mary to northern NSW where her mother had family. This area, Kempsey, appears to be where Mildred met her future husband Patrick Hopkins given that Kempsey is the same region as his birthplace of Bellingen. Mildred and Patrick were married at Bellingen in the Catholic Church in 1908. In 1909 their first child, a son named Vincent, was born but died soon after birth.

Patrick and Mildred travelled around northern NSW as Patrick sought employment as a logger in the timber industry, eventually settling further south in the Sydney suburb of Paddington. In the 1920’s they moved to a house in Chatswood where they lived until their deaths.

Patrick died from a coronary aged 57 in 1946, Mildred died after a stroke in 1963. They are buried together at Northern Suburbs Cemetery, North Ryde Sydney.

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My grandfather Allan Hopkins married Dorothy Flyght in Willoughby 1929, he was a postal worker and she was a pastry cook. In June 1929 my mother June was born followed by:

Lois - November 1930
Doreen - September 1933
Robyn - September 1947 - died August 2002

They lived in High Street Willoughby until Allan’s death in 1972. Dorothy continued to live in the same house until 1975, she died in Manly 1978.

Allan was born in February 1912 at Main Arm Mullumbimby. At the time of his birth his parents Mildred and Patrick were living in the area, Patrick worked in the timber cutting industry and they moved around the region of northern NSW taking employment wherever possible.

Siblings were :

Margaret Spouse: Kenneth Harris (Bunny)
James (Jimmy) Spouse: Nell (deceased)
Gwen (Gwennie) Spouse: 1) Alwyn Moore 2) Gordon Greentree (both deceased)

Mum cannot tell me where Pop went to school as a child, but chances are high he started school around Mullumbimby and also would have attended school in the town of Berry, NSW, where the family lived before settling in Willoughby.

Dorothy Flyght was born in Chatswood, July 1912 where she grew up. She worked as a pastry cook in the local bakery and also worked in a pub called ‘The Greengate’ at Killara during WWII. She was renowned as a great cook. Nan was also a skilled ‘fisherman’ and it remained her big passion during her life, she was also a fond cricket player and I have a photo of her swinging the bat when she was only 16. Nan was the only person who had the courage to stand up to her husband’s mother, Mildred, and Mum tells me the two women never got along. Nan being Church of England and her mother-in-law being a ‘heathen hating’ RC.

Nan also was part of a long running feud between herself and the local Catholic priest from Willoughby - Father Darby. The two despised each other. Darby was a known drinker and not the most christian of people despite being a priest. The feud stemmed from an incident when Nan took her seriously ill and dying baby niece down to the presbytery one night to have the child baptised and Father Darby, intoxicated, refused to see the child.

Dorothy died in April 1978 from Pemphygus. Allan died in October 1972 from a coronary. They are buried together at Northern Suburbs Cemetery, North Ryde Sydney.
In September 2002 their daughter Robyn was interred with them after her death in Mossman, North Queensland.

Allan Hamilton Augustus Hopkins and Dorothy (Flyght) Hopkins: Sydney 1967.

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My interest in my family history began about 20 years back after many family gatherings where my Mum and her sisters would talk
about their parents and events from their childhood. Mum, and her three sisters, were born and raised in Willoughby NSW, the daughters of Dorothy Flyght and Allan Hamilton Augustus Hopkins. Their paternal grandmother was Mildred Gertrude Courbarron and it was their memories of her that had me intrigued.

One common memory of Mum and her sisters was that Mildred, their grandmother, was not the nicest of people; a staunch Roman Catholic, a regular churchgoer, overbearing and interfering to the point where she played a major part in the breakdown of her own daughter’s marriage. It was generally held that, until her death from a stroke in 1963, she was and remained a bitter and unpleasant old woman. She liked to get her own way at all times and made sure that her adult children, my grandfather Allan in particular, came running to fuss over her when she found she was not at the centre of attention. Mum’s family lived the closest to her home in Victoria Ave so her Dad was often the one who had to drop whatever he was doing and go to call on her. That and the fact that his other siblings refused to pander to her tantrums. So it was usually poor Pop.
Mum said that there was only one way that Pop could bring her out of one of her ’sulks’; this would involve her taking to her bed and feigning illness - and that was for Pop to hurry to the corner shop and buy her the Sydney Herald ( the ‘herld’ as she pronounced it ) and a small bottle of brandy. He would present them to her, sit and pat her hand for an hour then she would be happy. Of course the brandy made a big difference to her change of attitude; he would then leave her contentedly reading the obituaries, her favourite section.

Mum said she was an old ranter about anything and gossiped about everyone, her husband Patrick Hopkins, a dear and kind man, took refuge from life with her by means of a relatively early death at the age of 57. ‘Nagged to death’ as Mum puts it. Most of the family ignored her gossip and nonsense and took much of what she said with a grain of salt. But there was one thing she sometimes spoke about that was interesting: she would often talk about her father’s mother who was descended from royalty and grew up the daughter of a wealthy landowner back in Ireland. Mum said she referred to this estate in Ireland as ‘Brownhall’ and would refer to people such as the Duke of Wellington as being a relative. Only a few of the family took much notice of her when she was in one of her ‘Brownhall’ moods, with some saying to her ‘Oh be quiet Mildred, that’s just the brandy talking’.

The brandy may have been responsible for her opening up about her family’s origins, but it turned out she was actually telling the truth!. Her paternal grandmother, Mary Hamilton, was the daughter of John Hamilton (b.1802) of Brownhall in County Donegal. The estate had been in the Hamilton family since 1690 and John’s mother, Lady Helen Pakenham, was in fact the sister-in-law of Arthur Wellesley, Ist Duke of Wellington. So Mildred HAD been in fact correct to some point, though he was related to the family through marriage to Helen’s sister Catherine (Kitty).

As all this came to light, in it’s correct and more factual form, the family was surprised and delighted that old Mildred was not as batty as they had all deemed her to be. I have been able to piece together bit by bit the truth behind Mildred’s background and her descendancy from a number of aristocratic families down through the centuries. It makes for fascinating reading; what started out as folklore has grown into over 22 generations of an unbroken line. I wonder what she would say to all that?.

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