A Buchanan at Gallipoli, Queen and the Queen

My grandfather Charles Richard Buchanan enlisted in the 1st AIF in 1916 and served on the western front in France and Belgium in 1917.  He was not at Gallipoli, but there was a Buchanan who fought there – his third cousin, Richard Brendan Buchanan, born in 1894 and so a contemporary of my grandfather.  Were they ever aware of one another?  They are both mentioned within a couple of pages of each other in the Buchanan Book, published in 1911 in Montreal, but were a continent apart at that time.

Richard Brendan Buchanan was born in Londonderry (Derry city in Co. Londonderry), the second son of Robert Eccles Buchanan and Ethel Maud Williams.  Robert, a civil engineer and architect working for the civil service, was the great grandson of Dr George Buchanan of Fintona, Co. Tyrone and was himself born in Fintona.

Richard attended Foyle College in Derry and Bedford School in Bedford, England from 1909 to 1911.  He was enrolled as a medical student at the University of Edinburgh, from October 1911 to September 1914.  He passed all his exams except the final, with first class honours, being awarded the Bronze medal for Zoology, Practical Anatomy and Surgery.

Photograph of R. B. Buchanan from the University of Edinburgh Roll of Honour 1914 – 1919, published 1921

According to the Diamond War Memorial Project website from Londonderry (http://www.diamondwarmemorial.com/soldiers/view/125):

On the day after the Great War was declared he applied for a commission, and, having some time previously obtained certificates A and B of the Officers’ Training Corps, Medical Unit, was gazetted to a lieutenancy in the Royal Army Medical Corps, Special Reserve, on August 16, 1914. Finding a few weeks later that he could not be sent on active service until he had received his full medical qualifications, he applied for transfer to the Royal Scots Fusiliers, and was in due course gazetted second-lieutenant, and went into training at Cambusbarron, Stirlingshire.

In May 1915, the Royal Scots Fusiliers 1st/5th battalion left Liverpool for the Mediterranean, arriving at Mudros on the island of Lemnos in the Aegean Sea on 29th May.  On 7th June they landed at Gallipoli and engaged in various actions against the Turkish Army.

Richard Brendan Buchanan was killed on 20th June 1915 while in a support trench and was buried on a cliff overlooking “Lancashire Landing”, one of the beaches on Cape Helles taken by the Lancashire Fusiliers. His permanent grave is in the Lancashire Landing Cemetery at Gallipoli, grave reference A 31.  He was 21.

Commemorative certificate from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Lancashire Landing Cemetery, Gallipoli

Richard’s elder brother survived the war. He was Edgar James Bernard Buchanan, two years older, a lieutenant in the Royal Engineers in India and Egypt before returning to England in September 1915.  In WW2 he served as Brigadier, Royal Engineers, in the War Office.

And Queen and the Queen?  The Queen in question was Queen Victoria.  Richard Buchanan’s mother, Ethel Maud Williams, was a daughter of the photographer Thomas Richard Williams, who had a studio in Lambeth and later in Regent St, London. In the 1850s Williams developed a popular business in making high quality stereographic daguerreotypes as a portrait photographer and also made a number of series, including of the Crystal Palace in 1854, and of scenes of English village life.   HIs reputation as a portraitist led to commissions from Queen Victoria for photographic portraits of members of the royal household in the mid to late 1850s.

Dr Brian May, guitarist with Queen amongst his other achievements, has an interest in and is a collector of 1850s stereo photographs.  In 2009 he and Elena Vidal published the book A Village Lost and Found, including fifty-nine hand-coloured albumen prints on cards made by Williams of scenes in the village of Hinton Waldrist in Oxfordshire, and through their research, revived an interest in this 19th century photographic pioneer.  He is also remembered through their website at http://www.londonstereo.com/trwilliams/biography.html.

Irish naming patterns and our mob

Apparently in the nineteenth century and perhaps earlier, there was a set tradition for the naming of children born to Irish families.  The usual patterns were:

• the first son was named after the father’s father
• the second son was named after the mother’s father
• the third son was named after the father
• the first daughter was named after the mother’s mother
• the second daughter was named after the father’s mother
• the third daughter was named after the mother.

Having exhausted these possibilities, for the 7th child and beyond (and in these times there usually were 7+ children)  parents may have applied the following patterns:

• the fourth son was named after the father’s eldest brother
• the fifth son was named after the mother’s eldest brother
• the fourth daughter was named after the mother’s eldest sister
• the fifth daughter was named after the father’s eldest sister.

Presumably after the 10th child, you could be creative. Often the name of a child who died in infancy or early childhood would be applied to the next child born of the same gender.

Families with a number of siblings all following these naming patterns would consequently end up having cousins within a single generation with a number of common first names, making the job of a family history researcher trying to distinguish between them, rather difficult!

How do the Irish families of our ancestors stack up against these ‘rules’?

Looking at the Molloys first …

Patrick Molloy and Ellen Fearon families

Patrick and Ellen Molloy’s  male children were named as:

1. John Augustus Molloy
2. Patrick Molloy
3. James Thomas Molloy
4. Daniel Peter Edward Molloy.

Girls were named as:

1. Mary Margaret Molloy
2. Ellen Teresa Molloy
3. Sarah Elizabeth Molloy.

So the Molloys have re-jigged these patterns slightly to push the parent’s names up the list, and in the case of James Thomas, the parents may have been remembering an as yet unknown Molloy, or either of Ellen Fearon’s grandfathers, who were both named James.

What about the Egans?

Patrick Egan and Mary Coyne families

I’m a bit stymied here as the names of Patrick’s  and Mary’s parents are not fully known.  Mary’s father may have been John Coyne (yet to be confirmed).  The naming of the children went as follows:

1. John Patrick Egan
2. Thomas Egan
3. James Vincent Egan
4. Joseph Francis Egan.

The girls were:

1. Mary Lucy Egan
2. Margaret Egan
3. Ellen Josephine Egan
4. Agnes Veronica Egan.

The origins for the first two male names may be for the grandfathers, although not in the order expected, and the patterns for the girl’s names are not clear, apart from Mary being named for her mother.  If only they had stuck rigidly to the rules, I would have been able to hypothesize backwards to predict the names of the unknown grandparents!

The Buchanans do appear to have played by the rules  … almost.

Charles Todd Buchanan and Arabella Hardinge Going families

Their children’s names were:

1. George Charles Buchanan
2. William Alexander Going Buchanan
3. Thomas Hardinge  Buchanan

and for the girls:

1. Matilda Emily Hannah Buchanan
2. Anna Buchanan
3. Arabella Caroline Going Buchanan.

Dr George Charles Buchanan’s name combines both the paternal grandfather’s and father’s name in one.  The name Thomas doesn’t occur in the Buchanan family, so Thomas Hardinge may be named for Arabella’s brother closest in age to her, Thomas Hardinge Going.

These naming patterns illustrate the continuation of the surnames from the mother’s family as part of the child’s name, which also happens in the Scottish branches of the family.

Arabella Caroline Going Buchanan: her name carries on her mother’s surname

 

 

 

 

Buchanan medicos … volcanoes, dragoons and the Tasmanian wild

A review of the occupations of the (male) Buchanans living in Ireland in the late 18th and 19th centuries shows a concentration of professions.   Quite a few doctors, a couple of coroners, clerks in holy orders (of the Church of Ireland), stockbrokers and insurance agents, and military men and some whose occupation was ‘gentleman’ – occupations reflecting the generally middle class status of those descended from the Scottish arrivals in Ireland as part of the English-engineered “plantation of Ulster”.

The earliest known of the doctors was Dr. George Buchanan.  He was born about 1740 in Fintona, Co. Tyrone, the son of Beaver Buchanan.  On 11 March 1774 he married Ann Mullan, and they had 14 children, all but three surviving to early adulthood.

There were a number of typhus fever outbreaks in Ireland during the 19th century.  According to Wikipedia, epidemic typhus is caused by a bacteria (Rickettsia prowazekii) and is spread by the human body louse. Outbreaks tend to occur during times of malnutrition and concentrated conditions of poor sanitation and hygiene.   From Wikipedia:

A major epidemic occurred in Ireland between 1816 and 1819, during the famine caused by a world-wide reduction in temperature known as the Year Without a Summer.

This period of climate-change-induced famine is now thought to have been caused by the explosive eruptions of Mt Tambora volcano in April 1815, in Sumbawa Island in Indonesia, the largest eruption in over 1600 years, which sent large amounts of volcanic ash into the upper atmosphere and caused a temporary reduction in the average land temperature of 1 degree C, with consequent impact on largely subsistence agricultural societies around the world.

Many priests and ministers, doctors and others providing services to the sick and poor were amongst those who died [Hugh Fenning, Typhus Epidemic in Ireland 1817-1819: priests, ministers, doctors. Collectanea Hibernica No. 41 (1999)].

The journal The Patriot recorded on 22 September 1818, the death of …

in consequence of fever, caught in the discharge of his professional duties, Dr Buchanan, of Fintona, Co. Tyrone (father of Mr. William Buchanan, of Grafton St).

It is interesting that Dr Buchanan was still discharging his professional duties at the age of 78!

One of his sons was Bever Buchanan.  The Buchanan book claims him to be the first president of the Apothecaries Hall of Ireland, in Dublin.  Again from Wikipedia:

The Apothecaries’ Hall of Ireland is an association of apothecaries of Ireland, founded in 1791. The Apothecaries Hall was erected in Mary Street, Dublin, in 1791, at a cost of £6000. It contained a spacious chemical laboratory where medical articles were prepared. Part of it was a wholesale warehouse, where the apothecaries could procure their medicines. Lectures were delivered there. The principal duty of this society was the examination of candidates for the rank of master apothecary, without which no person could open an apothecary’s shop in the city. It could also confer medical students with a degree that enabled them to practice.

Surprisingly the right of the Apothecaries Hall to issue licences to practice medicine was not legally removed until an Act of Parliament in 1971, although it had long ceased to have that function. However our Bever Buchanan would have been only about 14 in 1791, so any association with the Hall would have come later.

In 1815 Bever Buchanan was practising as an apothecary at 80 Grafton St, Dublin.  He died aged 38 on 2 July 1815 (pre-deceasing his father) according to his burial record in St Anne’s Church, Dublin. At the same time, there was also the burial of an infant son (probably also named Beaver).  No information is available as to the cause of his death.

He had married Elinor Hodgson in 1795 and had five children.  One of these children was another Dr George Buchanan.

This George Buchanan was born about 1800.  In 1824 he was a physician in Warrenpoint, Co. Down and for 14 years he was the surgeon to the County Down Infirmary in Downpatrick.    On 11 December, 1824 he married Anna Wright, daughter of Richard Wright of Dublin.  The Westmeath Journal published the details of their marriage (23/12/1824):

On Saturday, the 11th inst. at Mary’s Church, by the Rev. Charles Bardin, George Buchanan, Esq., M.D. of Warrenpoint, to Anna, daughter of Richard Wright, Esq. of Lower Ormond Quay.

Like his namesake grandfather, he also died of typhus during the 1841 epidemic which swept through the country.  He is buried in the Downpatrick Church of Ireland graveyard, with the following inscription:

Sacred to the memory of George Buchanan, M D , L R C S I , for fourteen years surgeon to the County of Down Infirmary who departed this life the 19th day of October A D 1841 aged 41 years

(L.R.C.S.I. = Licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland)

In Ireland, typhus had appeared again in the late 1830s, although the major typhus epidemic did not occur until the Great Irish Famine between 1846 and 1849.  He and his wife had seven children, including the Rev. Charles Todd Buchanan, the father of Dr George Charles Buchanan, my father’s grandfather.

Amongst other medicos in other branches of the family were:

• Robert Buchanan, another son of Dr George Buchanan (1740 – 1818) of Fintona, a younger brother to Bever Buchanan, the apothecary.

He was born in approximately 1787. The Buchanan Book records him as being a physician and surgeon to the Royal Scots Greys, a cavalry regiment of the British army, and as residing at Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire, but as this castle has been in ruins since the English civil wars of the 17th century, it can’t be correct.  However he did live in the town of Pontefract.

He obtained his medical qualifications at the University of Edinburgh, studying over five non-consecutive years from 1810 to 1820 and graduating M.D. in 1820.  At that time the university’s medical faculty was regarded as one of the best in Europe and many graduates subsequently established medical faculties at other universities around the world, including at the University of Sydney.  He graduated as Robertus Buchanan, Anglus. de Scarlatina – ‘Anglus’ identifies him as English in spite of being born in Ireland (Hiburnus).  De scarlatina – denotes a thesis on scarlet fever?

Before he graduated, he had married in 1814 Sophia Theresa Wharrey of Selby, Yorkshire, and had had two children, Robert born 1816, also a doctor, and Eliza, born 1817, who married a surgeon.  His first marriage notice (Leeds Mercury):

On Thursday se’nnight at St Andrew’s, Canterbury, Robert Buchanan, Esq. to Sophia Theresa, youngest daughter of the late Morley Wharrey, Esq. of Selby.

Sophia died in 1817, and Robert remarried in 1822, in Edinburgh. His second marriage notice (The Scots Magazine):

Marriage at Leith, 18th inst. Robert Buchanan M.D. to Ellen, eldest daughter of Capt Robert Fraser and neice and co-heiress of the late Major William Fraser of the Hon. East India Company’s service

He and second wife Ellen had seven children.  All children of both marriages were born in Yorkshire, and while he was living in South Leith, Edinburgh at the time of his second marriage, his time in Scotland and perhaps his connection with the Scots Greys appears to have been limited.  The Scots Greys were involved in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, but otherwise were not engaged in other conflicts until the Crimean War in 1856.

Memorial statue for the Royal Scots Greys, Princes St, Edinburgh (2010) – officially at the time, the 2nd Dragoons (Royal Scots Greys)

The family was living in Featherstone, Yorkshire from 1823, then in Pontefract, Yorkshire for most of his career.  His wife Ellen died in 1860 in Yorkshire.  From the 1861 census he is recorded as living in London, Middlesex. His final address when he died in London in 1872, aged 84, was 2 St Leonard’s Villas, Bloomfield Rd, Maida Hill, London, Middlesex.

• Stanley Buchanan: a grandson of Bever Buchanan, through his son William.  He married Sarah Hare in Dublin in January 1846, and was living in Newport in South Wales at the time of the census in 1851.  He died in July 1851 at the age of 29 and is buried at St Woolos, Newport, Monmouthshire.  There appear to have been two children born in Wales.  His wife Sarah remarried in Dublin in 1853 to a William F Buchanan (I’m yet to determine if he is from the same family).

• John Robert Hamilton, M.D.: a son of Emily Buchanan, a grand-daughter of Dr George Buchanan of Fintona (1740 – 1818), through his son James.

Emily had married on 15th June 1852 to John Eccles Hamilton, a surgeon:

In Fintona Church, on Tuesday week, by the Rev. Thomas Maunsell, JOHN ECCLES HAMILTON, ESQ., Surgeon, R.N., to EMILY, second daughter of JAMES BUCHANAN, ESQ., Fintona

John Robert Hamilton was born in 1857 but died in 1883 in Londonderry at the age of 25, so his medical career would have been short-lived.

• Dr. Alfred James (Bruce) Hamilton, another son of Emily Buchanan and John Eccles Hamilton, migrated to Tasmania and was practising from at least 1898, principally in Queenstown and later Penguin.  He is listed in the Tasmanian Post Office Directory for 1904 with the following qualifications:

Hamilton Alfred .James L.R.C.P. & L.R.C.S. Edin. 1887, L.F.P.S. Glas. 1887; Queenstown

(ie licensed by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons at Edinburgh, and a Licentiate of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons, Glasgow)

The Tasmanian newspapers of the era provide occasional reports where he acts as a medical witness, as in the following case:

The Mercury (Hobart) 12 February 1898
SCOTTSDALE.
On the 7th inst., before the Hon. C. O’Reilly, Coroner, an inquest was held on the body of Dr. E. Jas. Cheetham, who was found dead. …. Dr. Alfred James Hamilton, legal qualified practitionor, Derby, gave corroborative evidence, and the jury returned a verdict that the deceased died from using alcohol and narcotic poison, administered by himself.

The U.K. Medical Register for 1927 records him as being at Strahan, Tasmania.  Alfred James Hamilton was born in 1861 in Ireland.  He married in 1898 in Melbourne to Victoria Alice Geoghegan, also born in Ireland, and died aged 75 at Penguin, Tasmania.

Advocate (Burnie, Tas) 25 August 1936
HAMILTON.-On August 24, at his late residence, Penguin, Dr. Alfred James (Bruce) Hamilton, beloved husband of Alice Hamilton, and eldest son of the late John Eccles Hamilton, Surgeon, R.N., of Omagh, County Tyrone.

I

Buchanan of the Montreal bar …. and Marble Bar

The information which I have about the ‘deep’ history of the Buchanan clan comes from the Buchanan Book, or to give it its correct title, The Buchanan Book. The life of Alexander Buchanan Q.C. of Montreal, followed by an account of the family of Buchanan, by A. W. Patrick Buchanan K.C. Montreal, 1911.   The author of this book was Arthur William Patrick Buchanan (1870 – 1939), a grandson of the titular Buchanan, who printed 300 copies of the book for private circulation. He also published The Later Leaves of The Buchanan Book (1929).  He was admitted to the bar of the province of Quebec in 1894 and was appointed a KC in 1908. He later published a history of the early judiciary in Canada: The Bench and Bar of Lower Canada Down to 1850 (1925).

I was the fortunate recipient of a copy of a chapter of the Buchanan Book –  dealing with our branch of the family (Family of Dr George Buchanan of Fintona, Co. Tyrone)  – back in the 1980s, courtesy of Marjorie Buchanan Benson (sister of my grandfather Charles, who was living in Vancouver at the time). One of the informants for ‘our’ chapter was Thomas Hardinge Buchanan, brother of my great grandfather, Dr George Charles Buchanan, and of the Rev William Alexander Going Buchanan.

Now in the digital age, this book can be accessed on the web, courtesy of the University of Toronto at https://archive.org/stream/buchananbooklife00buchuoft/buchananbooklife00buchuoft_djvu.tx. It was also reprinted in 2009 and can be purchased from online booksellers such as the Book Depository, Amazon, etc (for a rather large sum).

A. W. Patrick Buchanan seems to have gone to some lengths to gather the material for the book.  He was a member of the Buchanan Society in Glasgow, a charitable organisation founded in 1725 to assist the needy of the Buchanan clan, and was interested in heraldry.  In 1937 he advertised for documents in relation to a submission to the Court of the Lord Lyon, the heraldic authority for Scotland, for a coat of arms for his Buchanan family:

WANTED

£5 WILL BE PAID for the FIRST CERTIFICATE received in respect of each of the following:


(1) Marriage of John Buchanan (born at Eccles Green, Fintona, co. Tyrone, Ireland), Hospital Mate, or Assistant-Surgeon, or Surgeon, and Lucy Richardson about 1790-97, (possibly in London);

(2) Baptism of their son Alexander Buchanan, born 22 April 1798 (probably at Gosport or Canterbury), and

(3) of their son John Buchanan about 1800 probably at Ipswich.

BUCHANAN & BUCHANAN, Solicitors,

276 St. James Street, W., MONTREAL, Canada.

He was successful in this pursuit, and the arms were registered in 1937.  A. W. Patrick Buchanan’s family is very distant from ours; the last common ancestor would have been in the 18th century, although we do have some Buchanans named Eccles, and also come from Fintona, Co. Tyrone.

I am hardly in a position to confirm the accuracy of all the Buchanan genealogical information in the Buchanan book.  For ‘our’ branch, however, at least for the generations between my grandparents and great-great-grandparents, most information has been presented correctly as far as I can tell, except for the fate of my great grand-uncle, the Rev. William Alexander Going Buchanan, who is said to have been the rector at Marble Bar, in Western Australia, at the time of his death in 1906.

Marble Bar!! Hottest place in Australia – or close to it.  According to Wikipedia, it set a world record of most consecutive days of 100 °F (37.8 °C) or above, during a period of 160 days from 31 October 1923 to 7 April 1924.  Isolated and distant from any major towns –  what was an Anglo-Irish person doing there?  This seemed such an unlikely event that I investigated further.  I was able to follow up from information received from the archivist at the Anglican Archdiocese of Western Australia.  Indeed, he was at Marble Bar, but he did not die there.

According to Crockford’s Clerical Directory (1905), William Buchanan had studied at the Theological College in Manchester in 1898 and had been ordained a priest in 1901.  His subsequent appointments were as curate at the Holy Trinity Church in Bolton, Lancashire, then at Dronfield in Derbyshire, and at The Limes, Bitton, near Bath in the Diocese of Bristol.

He sailed on the Ortona of the Orient Pacific Line from London on 25th August,  arriving in Fremantle on 28th September 1905.  He was one of three English ministers who travelled to Western Australia in 1905 to join the Anglican diocese of Bunbury, which then included Marble Bar and other northern locations.  The book, A hundred not out, Anglican Clergy in Western Australia 1829-1929, by Ted Doncaster, notes for W. A. G. Buchanan: September 1905 – 1906: R. Marble Bar [Bunbury].  He was not to stay long in Marble Bar.

Although the population of Marble Bar township at the 2006 census was 194, in 1891 after the discovery of gold nearby, it was estimated at 5,000.  A big enough population to support a newspaper …

The Pilbara Goldfield News (Marble Bar) reported

• on Saturday 11th November 1905: The Rev. Mr Buchanan, who has been appointed to this district, has, we believe, gone on to Derby to officiate at the marriage of the Rev. W G. Haynes. He cannot, therefore, reach Port Hedland until the Bullarra returns from Wyndham, about the 22nd inst. Mr. Buchanan, we learn, was previously in charge of Bitton Parish, near Bath (Eng.) and has not been long in the State.
• on Saturday 2 December 1905: The Rev. Mr. Buchanan will conduct his first service in Marble Bar on Sunday next.
• on Saturday 30 December 1905: Divine services will be conducted in the Miners Institute tomorrow morning and evening by the Rev. Mr. Buchanan.
• on Saturday 20 January 1906: The Rev. Mr. Buchanan, who has been in Marble Bar about seven weeks, leaves by coach to-day for the metropolis. The Bishop is endeavouring to secure another man for this portion of the diocese …
• The same paper later made a reference to the fact “Rev. Mr. Buchanan was sent to this parish, who was physically incapable of attending to the work the office entailed“.

The Western Mail (Perth) reported on Saturday 27 January 1906:

Marble Bar.  The cool weather of last week has been followed by trying days. The shade temperature on Monday was 110 degs., and on Tuesday it was 111 degs. Last week the shade temperature fell to 92 degs. Several places have received splendid rains, but a general downfall is badly needed. The De Grey River ran past De Grey Station last week, for the first time in three years. Rev. Mr. Buchanan, who has been stationed here for about six weeks, will shortly leave the district.

It is likely that he was already in very poor health and the discomforts of living in Marble Bar would not have helped.  On his return to England in April 1906, he was admitted to the Sanatorium in Maldon, Essex and died there on 28th May 1906, of pulmonary tuberculosis.

Rev. William Alexander Going Buchanan. Photograph is marked as from a Maldon, Essex, studio, so is likely to have been taken not long before his death.

The book Ritualist on a Tricycle  by Colin Holden (1998) is a biography of Frederick Goldsmith, the first Bishop of the Diocese of Bunbury, W.A., which included responsibility for the North West, prior to its establishment as a separate diocese in 1910.  The fate of Rev. Buchanan is used as evidence of the hostile environment which they were forced to endure.

… a ten-week visit in 1906 beginning on 15 June took Goldsmith to Carnarvon, Onslow, Cossack, Port Headland, Broome, Derby – and from there on a camping tour of more remote centres, and to Marble Bar and Roebourne. Death must have appeared an uncomfortably close companion in the north: during his visit to Derby, the magistrate, Dr McQueen, collapsed and died on the verandah of the Institute as a congregation of almost sixty gathered for a Sunday evensong.

At the beginning of the next year Goldsmith wrote to Montgomery that W.A.G. Buchanan, a priest who had been at Marble Bar ‘was invalided south, and had died shortly afterwards’. Climate and isolation took their toll in due course on Archdeacon Brooks, who arrived in 1906 and was sent to Broome, but by the end of 1909, his health too had been seriously affected.

In an essay on the church in Australia written at the end of his life, Goldsmith expressed a commonly held view of the north: it was an area hardly fit for European habitation. The physical problems experienced by his skeleton staff could only have encouraged him in making this conclusion.

It is not known how long William was suffering TB symptoms but given that he died within such a short space of time after leaving Marble Bar, it is more likely that it was this illness rather than the conditions of the north that caused his invalidity.

He was 38 when he died.  He was buried in All Saints and St Peter Anglican Church yard, Maldon, Essex.

All Saints and St Peter’s Church, Maldon, Essex. Photo by J Buchanan, 2006

Unlike his siblings who were all born in Ireland, William’s place of birth was given as Peckham, Surrey on census records, but as yet I have not been able to locate his birth record.  He was known to the family as Willie.  The ‘Going’ part of his name is his mother’s maiden surname; the Going family will be covered in a later post.

Children of Charles Todd Buchanan and Arabella Hardinge Going (click to open in a new window)