From the Land Down Under to the Rising Sun

We barely scratched the surface on Milton’s ancestry in a previous post and will come back to it soon as there is more interesting details. This post is to introduce June’s paternal ancestry. The next paragraphs are Mom’s words and then following her story, I’ve have added more details.

June (Furner) Wayne

My ancestors were French Protestants called Huguenots and under the persecution of King Louis XIV of France they fled to England. My great, great, grandfather, Charles Furner, was born in England and was a botanist sent out to Australia by sailing boat to study the botany of Australia. It was during the reign of King William IV of England. After returning to England with his research he received permission to bring his wife and son Owen to Australia and settle here.

They came by sailing boat to Sydney and put their goods on a dray (a side-less and roofless cart) pulled by horses and went the 197 kilometers (122 miles) to Goulburn. When they first settled in Goulburn, there was only one shop and one pub.  Somehow, they acquired a lot of land around Goulburn. I am not sure if it was Charles or his son Owen, my great grandfather, but the story goes that he was very fond of alcohol. He used to ride his horse to the pub, drink his full, somehow get on his horse and go home. The horse knew its way home and to its own stable. When the horse and its owner arrived, the family would shut the stable door and leave him to spend the night with the horse.

Perhaps that is why my grandfather George never touched alcohol. My grandfather George and his father, Owen, built a big house in Goulburn and grandfather became a Real Estate Agent and Auctioneer. His wife was Mary Jones, and her ancestors were from Wales. Like many Welsh people she was very musical. George and Mary had two sons and three daughters and their son, Warren, was my father.

When the First World War broke out in 1914, volunteers were called for. If men did not volunteer, there were a few women who put a white feather in their letter box calling them cowards and my father volunteered. He was not suited by temperament for being a soldier as he was a gentle man who loved animals. He spent nearly four years fighting in the Western Front living in the mud of trenches. Conditions for soldiers in the First World War were frightful. On the Western Front, where my father fought, 46,000 Australians lost their lives, and 132,000 Australians were wounded. My father never spoke to his family about the war but, like so many others, he suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and received no treatment for it. So many of these men had nightmares and flash backs, and became addicted to sleeping medicine, alcohol, and gambling.

My father took over his father’s Real Estate and Auctioneering business and married my mother Elsa May Guest, whose ancestors were from England. My mother’s parents were also Methodists and when young she went to church in a horse-drawn carriage. However, after marriage she did not go to church although the teaching remained with her.

Mary –

I haven’t directly traced the Furner line in the Ancestry tree back to France, but the Huguenot history told to Mom makes perfect sense. The name Furner is an English variation of the French name Fournier. There is a Fournier Street in East London that is part of an area rich with Huguenot history.

The East Sussex region where the Furner’s lived from at least 1582 is an area where historically, the Huguenots, fleeing from France, settled in the late 16^th century. For at least six generations from 1582 to 1795, the Furner’s lived here and especially around a small hamlet called Brede. If you want to see in google maps – type in Brede, UK and you will see it is really small even still today.

Mom’s 2x great grandfather, Charles Furner (1795-1865) was the one to leave England and sail to Australia. I have not been able to confirm the botanist story yet but I have uncovered a few interesting facts- some are guesses based on  birth, baptism, marriage and death records.

Charles, born in February of 1795, was the youngest child born to Francis and Elizabeth (Fairhall) Furner. Just two months later, in April his mother died and was buried in Brede. Then just two years later his father died! We can only speculate about aunts, and uncles who may have taken care of Charles and his siblings. The next record of Charles is when he is age 24 and gets married on Christmas Day, 1819. He marries Mary Waters in Speldhurst, Kent – about 30 miles from Brede. Charles and Mary have six children and one of them Owen (June’s great-grandfather) is born in 1828. His baptism (see image) is recorded in Ashdown Forest, Maresfield, Sussex. Fun fact for trivia fans- Ashdown Forest is the location for the fictional Winnie the Pooh.

.