Simpson Jane
| Type of person | Individual |
|---|---|
| Place of birth | Cornwall |
| Principal occupation | Musician |
| Date of death | 1885 |
| Place of death | Christchurch, New Zealand. |
In 1868 August married Jane Simpson, whose family had come from Cornwall. They had five children, Augustus Ferdinand (known as Freddy), Albert Percy, William Nelson, Lillian Gertrude and Alfred Bernhard, my grandfather. Freddy died of diphtheria in 1872 aged three.
The next few years were life changing for Jane and her four children. August had left Jane the executor of his will and the amount of his estate was £1000. At the end of March, she sold their furniture in Gawler and moved to Adelaide, where she stayed at Botanic House on North Terrace, before running a boarding house for gentlemen at Fountain Villa on the corner of Pirie and Hutt Streets. Her two elder sons, Albert and William, were boarders at Hahndorf College in the Adelaide Hills. This was run on similar lines to Friedrich Basedow’s school in Tanunda. Albert excelled in music and gymnastics. However, in 1884 their lives changed again. In May, Jane, aged thirty-seven, married Nicholas Patrick Lenehan, aged twenty-five, at St John’s Church, East Terrace, Adelaide. According to the South Australian index of marriages, Nicholas Lenehan was a ‘professor of surgery’. This did not seem to fit, especially since he was singing at concerts soon after he arrived in Adelaide and was a salesman when he was in New Zealand the next year. When I looked closely at the marriage certificate at SAGHS, I found he was a ‘professor of singing’. The witnesses were Jane’s cousins, James Sawle Kemp, and Eva Simpson.
To read a shortened excerpt of Jan's book please <click here>
I have written a more detailed account of this story in August Georg Cranz: A man of ideas and deeds, a copy of which is at SAGHS. Jan McInerney
janmcinerney@hotmail.com
Gawler History Team thanks Jan McInerney for sharing this information with us.
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