Maria Nash

(1843 - 1885)

and her husband Edmund Baines

Schoolteacher of Hartley NSW and Ipswich QLD

Maria Nash was born in 1843 to George Nash and Mary Lees who were farming land in Londonderry Parish north-east of Castlereagh NSW.   She moved to Windsor with her family in the late-1840's then to Hartley in the mid-1850's.  In 1861 Maria married Hartley schoolteacher Edmund Baines.  No children were born to their marriage.

Edmund Baines was born c1835 in Liverpool, England, to Edmund Baines and Catherine Lloyd (married in 1828 at Liverpool according to the IGI).  In the late 1850's he married Catherine Rowbottom (c1837-1860) and the couple emigrated to Melbourne on board the Red Jacket in 1859. A daughter was born in 1860 however both the daughter and Catherine died in the same year. Edmund relocated to Sydney soon afterwards and was appointed to the position of school teacher at Little Hartley.         

Edmund and Maria's childless state combined with the scarcity of information surviving for the Hartley district in the 1860's has meant that few references to the couple have been found.  They relocated to Glen Innes in 1865 and then to Bundarra in 1870 where Edmund continued to serve as a school teacher. He resigned in 1872 and relocated to Queensland where they settled at Ipswich. Edmund apparently found work as a teacher in a private school there.   Maria died in 1885 at Ipswich in Queensland.  

Shortly afterwards Edmund returned to Sydney, marrying widow Caroline Blake in 1886 at Parramatta.  Caroline was the daughter of Henry and Elizabeth Mary Crouch and was baptised in 1846 in Greenwich, England.  The Crouch family probably travelled to NSW on board the Ashburton in 1853.  Caroline married Henry Thomas Blake in 1868 and had three children born in Parramatta.         

Edmund and Caroline settled initially in Parramatta however by the mid-1890's had moved to "Arizona" in Flood Street, Bondi.  Edmund retired from teaching to manage his wife's estate, dealing in land and providing funds for mortgages.  He died in 1915 at his Bondi residence and was buried in Waverley Cemetery.  Caroline survived for a further 22 years.

This is a brief summary of the chapter relating to Maria Nash and Edmund Baines published in Nash: First Fleeters and Founding Families - A Three Generational Biographical History.  

Copyright 2004 - Carol Baxter

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