William Seldon Grey - A Mystery Solved

 Recently, I was doing some research into my 3x great aunt, Mary Ann Seldon Buck née Salmon and her husband George Green Buck. They arrived in Wellington on the Birman in 1842 and were among the earliest settlers in the Hutt Valley. Mary Ann died at Taita aged 50 on 4 July 1867. On the 15 October that year, her nieces, Alice and Mary Ann Grey, left London for Wellington on the Wild Duck, and as I had never checked the exact dates, I assumed the young women had come out to New Zealand to support their uncle in The Travellers' Rest at Taita after their aunt's death. The dates suggest this is unlikely to be the case. News like this would have taken two months to get to the United Kingdom even by mail steamer. On their arrival, they would have had the double shock that not only had their aunt died, but also their older brother, William, had drowned some weeks later. These deaths must have been an horrific shock for their mother, Sarah Grey, in Bath who lost her sister and son, and would never see her daughters again, all in the space of a few months. While Mary Ann Buck is well-documented, it seems that few later descendants knew that William was even in New Zealand. In fact, other than his birth in 1841, where he is recorded as William Sildon Gray and the 1851 census when he was nine, there were no other clues to his whereabouts. William seemed to disappear and I've never seen anything which suggested his fate.

You may wonder how I solved what, at least to me, was a mystery. While thinking about my 3xggrandmother, Sarah and her husband John, I thought I'd better check my sources. As Grey/Gray is such a common name, I relied on the work of Shon Edwards, a distant cousin, also a descendant. Finding an error in Sarah's death year in his records, I thought I'd see if I could find a cemetery record on Bath Archives for clarity. And there it was - a photograph of the Grey family headstone in the cemetery at Saltford, Somerset which stated that William had drowned in Wellington, New Zealand on 4 or 14 August 1867. Unless someone had visited the churchyard and seen the headstone, the death recorded there would not be known.

However, other than the headstone, could I find any other proof? A search of New Zealand death records showed no death for a William Grey/Gray aged about 26 in 1867. A search of Papers Past also proved inconclusive, though there was a drowning of a Thomas Grey in the Ruamahanga River in August 1867. His horse returned home although his body wasn't found for some weeks. There was no evidence of an inquest or a death or funeral notice, and I couldn't find a Wairarapa or Taita burial online. Another newspaper search stated that a son was born to the wife of the late William Gray at Taita on 17 March 1868. Birth records showed this child was William Albert John Grey and that his mother was Isabella. That narrowed down a number of William Grey/Gray marriages. William had married Isabella Burnett in 1863. They had a daughter, Alice later that year.

So when did William arrive in New Zealand? In my research on his uncle, George Green Buck, I discovered that the Bucks had returned to England on a trip in the late 1850s. They arrived back in Wellington in early 1858 on the Hastings. There is a newspaper letter from the passengers including the Bucks thanking the doctor, Charles Clarke, for his care during the voyage. One of the last signatories was a William Grey. It is likely that William aged about 16 would have come out to Wellington with his uncle, aunt and cousins who were making a real success of life in the colony.

So is that conclusive proof? I think the proof comes in the generation of his grandchildren when we consider the names of the children of his posthumous son, William Albert John Grey (1868-1955). William married Annie Elizabeth Mary Leach in 1894 and their son, Roy William Seldon Grey was born in 1898. Roy's Letters of Administration after his death show that William's great grandson also has William Seldon as middle names. Interestingly, a number of the descendants of Mary Ann and Sarah Salmon follow a similar naming pattern with Seldon as one of their middle names, and this continues to the present day. It is clear to me that William Seldon Grey did come to New Zealand as a teenager and died here. 

A headstone in a Somerset churchyard and a series of middle names may have solved the mystery of what happened to William Seldon Grey.

Update: The informant for the birth registration of William Albert John Grey was Alice Grey - William's sister. The definitive proof is the marriage certificate of his daughter Alice. Her father is named as William Seldon Grey, farmer.