Two Early Australian Sisters – Ellen Johnson Winder & Mary Lister Dodds

By Peter Sherlock

[Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the HAFS Journal of May 2000 – issue 5-3. Please refer to the journal to see the signatures of Tom Winder, Ellen Johnstone, James Dodds and John Leister.]

Perhaps the most mysterious person amongst the ‘Associated Families’ of the Hungerford Society, at least in its Australian membership, is Ellen Johnson. This intriguing character was sometime servant, companion and wife of Tom White Melville Winder. Through their children Ellen was mother-in- law to three sons of Captain Emanuel Hungerford, and grandmother to dozens of Hungerfords, Winders, De Wintons and Simpsons. Ellen, certainly my earliest Australian-born ancestor, died in 1887 allegedly aged 87, having outlived her husband by some thirty-four years.

This article sets out what we know about Ellen Johnson (or Johnston, or Johnstone), with a view to encouraging further research. It establishes for the first time the existence of her sister, Mary Lister, wife of James Dodds, fellow settlers on the Hunter River in the 1820s. Through this sibling we can ascertain beyond reasonable doubt that Ellen’s father was John Lyster, a convict-turned-constable who was transported to Sydney in 1796.

Ellen Johnson Winder

There is no recorded baptism entry for Ellen Johnson in the Australian colonies. This is unsurprising, for many were the children born out of wedlock and / or not baptised in the 1790s and 1800s. She first appears as a servant to Tom W.M. Winder on the 1818 Muster of New South Wales; later musters show her still living with Winder but with an increasing number of children taking the surname Johnson, not Winder (though this gradually changed). On all these censuses, Ellen stated that she was born in the colony of New South Wales, while by the ages given she appears to have been born in the year 1800 or shortly thereafter.

Winder’s movements in and out of the colony are reasonably well-known. What has not been noticed is that on at least one of these journeys, his companion Ellen accompanied him. The Sydney Gazette for 1 May 1819 records that Ellen Johnston leaving the Colony by an early Opportunity, Claims against her to be presented at No. 4, Bligh-street’, and also that ‘For sale, at T. Windear’s, No. 4, Bligh-street, good Green Tea at £12 per Chest; also some Articles of Houshold Furniture’ [sic]. Winder was not to return to Sydney until March 1820, spending at least part of the intervening ten months in Calcutta. It appears Ellen resided with him throughout the period.

By 1838 Tom and Ellen had settled in the Hunter Valley district and produced two sons and seven daughters, though one of the sons had died at infancy, and two of the daughters had serious health problems that saw them confined to institutionalised care for most of their lives. Like their mother, most of the children were not baptised, or at least their baptisms were not recorded. Three of the girls – Anne, Agnes and Fanny – were baptised as girls in the Church of England at West Maitland in 1836, followed by Ellen in 1839, but it appears the other children did not follow suit.

Family legend records that Tom Winder was of Quaker sympathies; Ellen’s religious sympathies are largely unknown. When in 1848 the couple decided to be formally wedded, possibly to ensure a smooth disposal of their property after death, they attended St. Andrew’s Scots Church in Sydney. Ellen signed the standard declaration that she was a member of the Presbyterian Church, but Tom did not.

Tom Winder died on 30 September 1853, in his will leaving his estates to his only surviving son Thomas Jr. Ellen was provided with an annuity, yet we know nothing whatsoever about her movements in the following decades: if she was living with her son it may be worth checking the birth registrations of her Winder grandchildren in case she was a witness or involved in their deliveries.

By the time of her death on 28 January 1887, Ellen was living at 29 Denham street, Sydney, survived only by her daughters Ellen Hungerford and Fanny de Winton, the latter living in England. Her death certificate was filled out by her daughter- in-law Emily Winder and her friend Robert Williams of Woollahra, so its reliability is questionable. Nevertheless, her age was given as 89, her place of birth as Sydney, and her parents surnames – the first names being unknown – as ‘Lester, a soldier’ and ‘Johnston’. Ellen was buried in the Church of England section 6 at Waverley cemetery, in vault 484. This plot was owned by one John Foot: others buried in the grave were George T Foot (1889, aged 7), Thomas Charles Murray (1909, aged 7 weeks) and Mary Foot (1916, aged 58). A metal plaque recording her death was added to the gravestone commemorating the others buried in the plot. Research into the above named Robert Williams, and the Foot family with whom Ellen was buried may provide further clues about her activities in the 1860s and 1870s.

Death Certificate of Ellen Winder (1887/182)

Date:
 28th January 1887
Place:
 29 Denham St.
Name: Ellen Winder
Occupation:
 Widow
Sex and Age: Female, 89 years
Cause of death: Senile Decay, 3 months
Medical attendant: Dr Crago, last saw 13th January 1887
Father: ~ Lester, soldier
Mother: ~ Johnston
Informant: Emily Winder, daughter-in-law, Lochinvar, West Maitland; also Robt Williams, friend
‘Aberfoile’, Point Piper Road, Woollahra
Registered: E. Ward, 28th January 1887
Burial: 29th January 1887
Church of England Cemetery, Waverley
Undertaker: Charles Kinsela
Witnesses: P. Sommer, H.W. Milham
Birth: [Maitland crossed out] Sydney, N.S. Wales
Marriage: Sydney, 18, Thomas White Melville Winder
Children: Ellen (Hungerford) 66 years, Fanny (de Winton) 59 years living, 2 males, 5 females deceased

Mary Lister Dodds

Although Ellen Johnson’s descendants remember nothing about her except that she was a ‘Currency lass’, she was not an only child. Her sister was Mary Lister, also spelt Lyster, Leister and even Leicester. Like Ellen, there is no known record of Mary’s birth. The earliest definitive record of her existence is the 1822 Muster of New South Wales, when, aged 16, she was a servant to Robert Campbell in Bligh street, Sydney, the same street in which her sister Ellen lived with Tom Winder.

Mary Lister married James Dodds, a recent immigrant from Scotland, on 26 September 1825 at the Scots Church, Sydney. Prior to the marriage, Dodds lodged the following affidavit, the document surviving amongst the Colonial Secretary’s papers (it may be viewed at AONSW Reel 6028 2/8305 pp.163-5):

Together with the affidavit, was a form of consent from the bride’s father, she being only about nineteen years old:

Mr James Dodds has my consent and good will to marry my daughter Mary Leister Sydney 19 Sep 1825

James and Mary Dodds initially lived in Sydney, where James worked for the Commissariat Department. He was soon given a grant of 1,000 acres of land on the Hunter River, near Singleton and not far from ‘Windermere’, and the family removed there in about 1828. The property was named ‘Maison Dieu’, that is to say, the ‘House of God’.

In 1835 the Dodds family moved back to Sydney, where James ran a company ‘Dodds and Davis’, running steam-mills. Tragedy struck the family twice, however, for in 1836 their young son – Tom Winder Dodds, namesake of his uncle by marriage – drowned aged two, according to the Sydney Morning
Herald for 3 March 1836 in ‘a pond
in the yard of Mr. Barker’s steam
engine’. Then, on 12 June 1839
Mary Dodds gave birth to a still
born child, and died herself two
days later. She was buried from the
Scots Church, Sydney, on 17 June by John McGarvie, the Presbyterian minister who would later marry Ellen and Tom Winder. The entry recorded that she was ‘Mary Dodds formerly Lyster’. James Dodds, variously described as ‘settler’, ‘miller’, and ‘gentleman’, remarried Sophia Elizabeth Cooke in 1843, and eventually died in Sydney in 1874.

James and Mary had several children, many of whose names were the same as those of their cousins, the children of Tom and Ellen Winder. These names were passed down to the grandchildren and perhaps beyond. The children were: James (1826-1874), Agnes (1828-1851), Jessie (1830), Ellen (1832), Tom Winder (1834-1836), Robert Selby (1836-1885), Alexander (1837-1911) and a stillborn child (1839). Descendants of the eldest child James lived in the Maitland district for several decades and may still do so today alongside their now-distant Winder and Hungerford cousins.

John Lyster

The names of Mary Dodds’ children – the girls Agnes, Jessie and Ellen and the boy Tom Winder – together with the evidence of Ellen Winder’s death certificate show that Mary and Ellen shared the same father, John Lyster. Whether or not they shared a mother remains to be seen, for so far no information has come to light.

Although Ellen Winder’s death certificate listed her father ‘Lister’ as a soldier, he was in fact a convict. John Lyster was sentenced on 23 October 1794 at Westminster to seven years in the West Indies, which was changed in September 1795 to New South Wales. Lyster arrived aboard the ‘Ganges’ in June 1796. The various musters show his career developed favourably after he served out his sentence. In 1806 he was a hairdresser, but on 29 December 1810 he was appointed one of Sydney’s Constables by Governor Macquarie, a position he held at various times until at least August 1825. In the 1814 and 1820 Musters he was listed as being officekeeper to the Judge Advocate. He may be the ‘George Leister’, constable, who in 1821 was victualled from the Magazines with a wife and daughter, and he may also be the ‘J. Leicester’ to whom one Samuel Rowley was servant in 1822.

Lyster does not appear on the 1822 Muster nor the 1828 Census (James and Mary Dodds are missing from the latter document also), yet we know he was alive in 1825. There was a John Lyster who died on 14 October 1836 aged 88. No burial entry exists for this man, but a tombstone still stands in the Botany Pioneers Memorial Park, Sydney.

Many questions still surround these characters of the Lyster, Johnson, Winder and Dodds families. More research into the early colonial period of New South Wales may provide some answers. But it is possible to reverse the usual adage for we are surer of the identity of these women’s father than their mother!