Charles Southwell Shayle George 1849 – 97

CSSG was born 25-Sep-1849 in Newport, Monmouthshire, UK; lived most of his life in Auckland, New Zealand, where he was a solicitor, and died in Coolgardie, Western Australia, 5-Jan-1897. His fate is nearly as mysterious as his father’s.


Parents
His father was Thomas Shayle George, a solicitor from Monmouth in Wales; his mother was Frances (Southwell) Shayle George, who is listed in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography as an early educator of girls. His mother’s family lived in Clifton, Gloucestershire, a well-to-do area of Bristol, just across the Severn river from Monmouth. Thomas and Frances took him to New Zealand on the Sir Edmund Paget when Charles was a baby, arriving in Auckland on 18th December, 1850. They then had another boy and three more girls. His father died in mystery in Rock Island Illinois when Charles was 18; his mother was running girls’ schools by that time.


Family
His met his future wife through his mother - Mary Anne Hughes was a pupil at his mother's school, where she was awarded a top prize in 1870. They married on 26th April 1876, when he was 26 and she was 21. They had seven children, one of whom died on the day of birth.

Mary’s father made valuable investments, including South British Insurance (later NZI) – I believe some of those shares remained in the Hughes/Shayle George families for well over a century.

He was a solicitor like his father. There was a story in the family that Charles was treasurer of the Auckland Law Society. Unconfirmed. However, he was a solicitor in partnership with his father-in-law, Stephen Edward Hughes senior [newspaper clipping, 14/8/1929], and was said by his daughter Hinemoa to work in the Maori Land Courts.

An 1882 register of NZ land holdings indicated Charles held £1600 worth of land in Hobson, Auckland, plus another £60 jointly with his mother. His mother owned another £700, while his parents-in-law held £7,000 worth.
Sounds like they were doing reasonably well financially.


Leaving Auckland
Charles left his family soon after the youngest (Hinemoa, my grandmother) was born. He travelled to Sydney, having been there at least once before, for a few weeks in 1889. He wrote letters to his family both times, both with return address ‘Grand Central Coffee Palace’.

Grand Central Coffee Palace, Clarence St, Sydney, 1892

As he had originally intended, he travelled by ship to Western Australia. From Perth, he continued inland to Coolgardie, at the time a rising goldrush town, a few years before its zenith. He apparently tried his hand at gold mining, as well as practicing as a solicitor - neither of which seems to have met with great success. He wrote many, repetitive letters to his wife and family. He was frequently asking forgiveness of his wife.
The latest letter I saw was to Mary Ann from a friend of Charles' in Coolgardie in 1897. The friend wrote that his wife had been pressing him to write to Charles' wife to let her know how he had died. Charles was unconscious in hospital for a few weeks before he died (was it pneumonia?), and he's buried at Coolgardie Anglican Cemetery. Oh, and here's the undertaker's bill.

Note that to date, the nearest thing I have to a gravestone inscription refers to "Chas Seymour George, 1849 - 6 Jan 1897". My belief is that this is him, with a few details mangled. IGI and probate evidence both give 5 January; 6th may be the burial date.

What happened?
This is up for debate. The only clue is contained in the letter he wrote to his wife from Sydney, dated 31st October, 1894. Inter alia:

“It is no use going to Perth until I am better so shall stop here in the meantime.
Tell me what has been done in the office and how you are getting on and the dear children and what you are doing yourself. You can say to everyone that I was unable to complete my business and cannot return till next steamer.”

He also said that he was missing his wife, “fretting most terribly”, and had “a horror of going to Perth”.

So he was overseas quite reluctantly (the tone of his other letters confirms this), was still attached to his wife, and wanted her to mislead others on his travel plans. According to my grandmother (his daughter Hinemoa), he “left Auckland in a hurry, having been guarantor for some deal that had gone horribly wrong and seen as owing a considerable sum of money” [CM].


The family curse

Hinemoa apparently said it was a curse of the family that the men were destined to die in foreign lands. That was certainly the case for her father and her father’s father. And according to her handwritten notes, her great grandfather was Lt-Col George, who died in Sierra Leone.
Interestingly, this fate continues at least in part. Separately, her husband Freddie and son Robin (my father) settled in England where they died, and I’ve settled in Sydney permanently. That would make five generations of men who lived in New Zealand but didn’t die there.

Chronology
1849 Born in Monmouthshire
1850 Migrated to New Zealand
1868 Father died in Illinois
1876-Apr-26 Married Mary Ann Hughes
1877 Daughter Frances (“Frank”) born
1879-May-17 Daughter Muriel born
1880-Jun-24 Son Charles (“Neville”) born
1882 Listed as solicitor
1883-Aug-25 Son Stephen Edward (“Tup”) born
1884-May-25 Daughter Millicent (“Milla”) born
1885 Son Thomas born and died
1889 Visits Sydney
1893 Daughter Hinemoa (“Hine”) born
1894 Leaves Auckland for Sydney, then Perth
1897-Jan-5 Dies in Coolgardie