He was 24 at the time of enlistment and returned to Australia on December 14th 1918. He married Agnes and had a son, John Courbarron who died 1996.

His brother, Frederick, enlisted at the age of 15 in the AIF in 1915. He served at the Gallipolli Landing on 25th April 1915. He was discharged due to to effects of gassing. He lived in Brunswick Heads and died in 1983. Freddies wife, Mary Ellen, died in 1963 at Brunswick Heads.

We do know that Frederick and Mary married in Ballintra, Co. Donegal, and began married life on the Courbarron farm in Millbrook, St Helier. In 1863 their first child, a son Augustus James Hamilton, was born. He was followed by Stanhope Frederick in 1865, John Edward Hamilton in 1866 and finally Helen in 1867.

The family are listed on the British Isles Census for 1871.

In 1877 Frederick and Mary, accompanied by the four children, were en route to Ireland and whilst in Cornwall contracted typhoid. Tragically both Mary and Frederick died within months of each other. Both are buried in Landulph Church, Saltash Cornwall. It was quite some time before a headstone was placed on their grave, the reason being a lack of finances at the time. Their son Augustus James saw to it some twenty years later that a headstone was erected on his parent’s graves.

Back in the mid-90′s, and pre-computer, it was a slow process of writing letters by hand (remember doing that?) and waiting for replies to arrive. A basic enquiry would take about 2/3 weeks to go around. That’s how I did my Channel Islands research back then. Well, all my research really. But now, onto Frederick and Mary. This section will go into several chapters I suspect; not so much on Frederick ( until I get more info on his parents, etc) but as Mary was a ‘Brownhall’ Hamilton there is a raft of stuff about her and her very fascinating life.

This is where it all gets fun.

Frederick Augustus Courbarron was born 1826 in Jersey in the Channel Islands. Not alot is known at this stage about his parents but I do know that his father’s name was Augustus Courbarron and he was born around 1805 in Jersey to French parents from Brittany. His mother, too, was born in Jersey of French parentage. His parents arrived in the Channel Islands from France around 1800/01 and Frederick and several siblings are listed on a ‘people count’ (not actually a census) from the year 1805.

Fredericks parents were farmers on the island, possibly in the town of Millbrook as that is where his own children were born later on. Farms tended to remain in families in those days so it is a good assumption that Frederick inherited his father’s farm.

Also a contributor to this project on Ancestry is Ken Wills. I don’t have your contact details Ken but I would like to get in touch with you if possible.

What you will see on Ancestry is the basic outline of the family tree; on this site I am putting the information behind those names. So there is a lot of work to be done!.

Included will be letters written to him from his family abroad and letters he himself wrote whilst on his voyages and at home. It also gives great insight about life in the late 19th century/early 20th century Sydney. I’m looking forward to publishing this as his story is truly interesting to read.

Also, I am in the process of scanning in a collection of very old photographs which will put faces to the names in these posts, many of them are over 100 years old but excellent in quality. In all, I am very enthusiastic about putting all this Hamilton family history together and I hope it is all of assistance, and interest, to other family historians.

The essay will be titled ‘He only ever went to sea’ and will appear as a seperate page.

The Aparima enjoyed a distinguised but sadly short career. On the 19th November 1917 she was torpedoed and sunk by a UB 40 whilst 6 miles SW off Anvil point en route from London to Barry.

On settling in Sydney in 1888 James met a young Irish girl, Mary Morrissey. Mary had arrived in Sydney in 1881 with her parents and siblings from Killarney, Ireland, as part of the assisted immigrants scheme. They had left Plymouth in late June and arrived 17th July 1881 on board the Peterborough arriving in Sydney the following month. En route, Mary’s sister Honora was born. The family settled at Woolloomoolloo, a harbour suburb of Sydney.

It is unknown how James and Mary met but from the start they defied convention. In 1889 their first child, my great grandmother Mildred Gertrude, was born with a brother, James (Jimmy) born in 1891. The family lived in a little house called ‘The Grove’ in Paddington, later moving to a house in Birrell St Bondi that they nicknamed ‘St Ernans‘. In August 1893 however James and Mary finally married in St Davids Church of England Sydney.

In 1898 Mary-Helen (Molly) was born and lastly Frederick in 1900. James being Protestant, and Mary a Catholic, they somehow bridged the gap as all their children were baptized in the Catholic Church. Obviously religion was never an issue in the house. The family lived happily at Bondi with Mary and the children sometimes accompanying James on his ships voyages. At one time baby Mary-Ellen was saved by a sailor when she crawled too near to the decks edge. From 1903 James entered into a period of ill health which saw him staying at home from his sea duties more often. It is now known he was suffering from Brights Disease.

In 1904 Augustus James fell gravely ill before lapsing into a coma. He died at their home in Birrell Street Bondi. Augustus JH Courbarron is buried at Waverley Cemetery in a plot, fittingly, over looking the sea.

The S.S Aparima circa 1902.

Brother Stanhope Frederick was born 1865 followed by John Edward and sister Helen.

Not a great amount of detail is available about the family’s life in St Helier but it is known that they led the lives of typical farming folk of the day. Many French arrived in the Channel islands from nearby Brittany to work on the potato harvests; the Courbarrons were originally from Brittany having arrived and settled in 1802.

In 1877 the lives of the four children were to change forever. The family, en route to visiting Mary’s brother in Ireland, made a stopover in Landulph, Cornwall England. It was during their time here that Mary and Frederick were stricken with typhoid and tragically died within weeks of each other. They were buried in a churchyard at Landulph, near Saltash in Cornwall.

The orphaned James, 14, Stanhope, Edward and Helen were sent to live with their mother’s brother James Hamilton at the family estate of Brownhall in Co Donegal Ireland. Here they were cared for in a loving family atmosphere; the Hamiltons having always been a close knit and caring family. It must have been quite a change for the four children to go from a farming community to living on the substantial estate of Brownhall. The children resided in the family’s private residence of St Ernans House on a small island in the estuary near Donegal Town. Their uncle, James Hamilton and his wife, took the children into their home and began to plan to future of the 14 year old James. Young James had professed a love of the sea whereupon he was sent to England to begin the gruelling life of an apprentice seaman in the merchant navy.

Stanhope and John (known as Edward) chose to go to Canada eventually; Helen married, and as Mrs Helen Moody, spent her life in America. Throughout her life Helen remained in contact with her brothers, particularly Augustus James, writing a steady flow of letters from her homes in New York and Paris. Stanhope also went to Canada and settled in Ontario where he graduated from Gulphs Agricultural College. He died in a farming accident in 1899.

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.

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?.