ETHEL'S ROYAL CONNECTIONS

The other name Ethel chose for her first child, 'Louis', also presented me as a family historian with some food for thought.
I discovered that Ethel was very particular about the names she gave her children.
When her daughter Ruth Victoria Brown was born, her mother, Julia Page, wanted to call her granddaughter, 'Queen Victoria', after the former ruling British monarch, but the authorities would not allow it.
So she settled for Ruth Victoria Queen Brown instead.
[Source: Coastal Custodians, Feb 2005 see  via link in right margin of  this blog]
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It appears to me that Ethel seemed to think she had royal heritage.
'Louis' is the name of a long list of French kings and some lived at the Palace of Versailles which is near the town of Giverny (also spelt 'Givney').
Ethel's mother's mother's maiden name was Givney.
Was there a family French royal connection?

Ethel named her first child with Frank Brown after their marriage 'Robert Joseph Golden' Brown.
Was it just a coincidence that she had given her first son the name 'Golding' which could be a misspelling of 'Goulding'?
Or was Frank Brown the father of her first child, and not Jimmy Governor?

THOMAS GOLDEN/GOULDING BROWN

Thomas G Brown was born in Bourke c.1839 and baptised a Roman Catholic at Araluen near Braidwood in 1855.
His father, Patrick Brown, appears to have been Irish, or born in the colony of Irish descent, and his mother was an Aboriginal mother.
In 1858, when he was 19, he married Hannah (Annie) Nicholson, under the Roman Catholic rite at Braidwood.
They had 11 children, six of whom were living at the time of their father's death: Patrick (b.1860), Charles (b. 1862), Thomas (b.1865), Richard (b.1873), John (b. 1875), and Frank (b.1878).
The two deceased girls were Myrtle and Margaret.
When the couple married, Thomas was living at Currawang on the Clyde River at Bateman's Bay and and Annie at Broulee.
He was a servant and she a house servant.  

The name Ethel Governor gave her first child, Sydney Golding Louis Governor, has always struck me as 'odd'.
In those days, first sons were usually named after their father, in this case, 'James'.
'Louis' appears to be a French family connection.
But where did his middle name 'Golding' come from?
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In a post I made last February, I observed that this was the middle name of the father of Francis (Frank) Brown, Ethel's second Aboriginal husband.
According to transcripts of Thomas Brown's marriage and death certificates, his middle name was spelt 'Goulding' or 'Golden'.
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These were the names of a South Coast Aboriginal leader, Budd Billy II (c.1815-1905), who was given a breastplate by the whites denoting him as 'King of Jervis Bay'.
He was also known as 'Jimmy Goulding' and 'King Golden' and his wife Mary (c.1822-1928) as 'Queen Golden', Mary Goulding, Mary Golden and Queen Mary.
[Source: Lady Denman Heritage Complex website]
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If Thomas Golden/Goulding Brown was connected with this Aboriginal couple, then Ethel married into Aboriginal royalty when she married his youngest son, Frank in 1901.

Jimmy drowned his sorrows by killing people for a while, but by early September, six weeks after last seeing Ethel, he wrote her a letter.

To the police of NSW
My dear Ethel.
You did not now suppose you was free, dear, when you was with me; you never think that you was at home. I have been good to you, and often say the Lord take me away. I hope he got you. You know you are going fast, dear. I suppose you glad, but I am not. I feel sorry for you, dear Ethel...

He asked for her to come and spend some time with him before he gave himself up to the police, but she did not go.
Either she feared for her life, possibly knowing that under tribal law Jimmy could kill his deserting wife, or the police would not let her.
The police would want to protect their chief witness and would not want to do a deal with an outlaw with a price on his head.

These days when a wife tells her husband she is planning to leave him, the man sometimes becomes deranged with grief and anger, and wounded pride, and kills their children.
But Jimmy Governor killed his employers' wife and children instead.
He blamed them for the break-up of his brief marriage of only 19 months, just over a year and a half.
After the murders of four members of the Mawbey family, Jimmy wanted to kill his own wife and her child, but was prevented by one of  his older kinsmen who was with him.
The Aboriginal culture was based on 'honour and shame' Jimmy had been shamed and his honour shattered in the eyes of other people by his wife leaving him.
He was broken hearted.

On a cold winter's evening in July 1900, a young white woman, Mrs James Governor, gave her part Aboriginal husband, Jimmy, some bad news.
She was leaving him.
It was dinner time and they had no food to eat.
All their rations freely given to them by their employer, farming husband and wife, John and Sarah Mawbey, had been exhausted.
This was because Jimmy had invited some male relatives and a friend to stay with him, and they had eaten some two-thirds of the rations meant for two adults and a small child.
Jimmy had not only used up all the rations, he was 15 shillings in debt for those he had been given generously in advance by the Mawbeys.
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Ethel was fed up with living in a humpy by a creek, an isolated existence with no family or friends for support.
After she had married Jimmy in December 1898, she had moved into his father's house next door to that of her parents at Wyaldra Creek on the outskirts of Gulgong.
She had apparently not anticipated having to 'camp out' with her husband, even though she knew he was an itinerant farm worker.
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Most of all she was fed up with Jimmy's refusal to stand up to the Mawbey women and the female school teacher about their salacious and malicious comments about her sexual relationship with a black man.
She wanted him to defend her honour, to teach them some respect.
There were several valid reasons Jimmy had found this hard to do.
Ethel had decided she wanted a better life.
She was starting to put on airs and graces, even using the same expressions as the school teacher with German parents, like 'pooh' to dismiss what he said to her.
And Mrs Mawbey had advised her that if she wanted a better life for herself and her 15-month-old son, she would have to leave Jimmy.
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Jimmy later told of the heated discussion he had with Ethel at their camp that evening, before the two of them left to murder the Mawbeys.
My wife and I had a word or two about cooking and something or another about the camp.
With that I said, 'I suppose I am in this world alone with no one to care for me. I thought you was my wife.'
She said, 'Go to the devil.'
Everything I said to her she said, 'Pooh, that's nothing! Pooh, that's nothing!'
With that me and Underwood cleared out.
I thought I might as well die, so the Mawbey murders were committed.
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A couple of days earlier, Jimmy had broken all the crockery in the camp because he was planning to leave.
This meant there would be nothing heavy to carry by people travelling on foot.
But it could also have symbolised the breakdown of Jimmy and Ethel's domestic arrangements, the end of their marriage.