Building dynasties in New England

Crystal Palace exhibition, 1851. Attended by Edward Baker Boulton and his wife, this was the first of the great expos that were such a feature of the second half of the 19th century.This is the fourth in a series on the lives of English children's writer Arthur Ransome and his Australian connections.  

Over the years that I have been sharing our past with you, themes recur. One is the way in which some of our big pastoral families identify with Australia and their immediate areas, while others are torn between their new home and the UK and Europe they left behind.

The Wrights and Northern Whites fall in the first group, Edward Ogilvie (Yulgilbar Station) in the second.

Ogilvie wanted to build a dynasty, but he was also in love with European life and especially Italian life and art. His conflicting ambitions would lead to dynastic failure.

Edward Baker Boulton (EBB) belongs to the second group. While he would die on the New England and be buried in Walcha cemetery, his heart lay elsewhere. As grandson Arthur Ransome summarized, he was always more interested in his art than his sheep.

Following his marriage to Mary Atkinson on 3 April 1850, EBB decided to take his wife to visit the Great Exhibition (the Crystal Palace Exhibition) of 1851.

Driven in part by Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband, this was the first of the great international expos that were such a feature of the second half of the nineteenth century.

Few places were immune from their allure. In an earlier series, I mentioned that Armidale soap maker George Mallaby exhibited his wares at the 1900 Paris expo.

EBB and Mary had travelled to England with Mary’s parents. Initially they lived in a house that Mary’s parents had purchased, before moving to a leased place of their own.

We do not know much about this period beyond the facts that two children were born (Emily 1851, Edward Oswald 1852), while EBB continued to sketch and paint.

The Boultons were still in England when on 17 June 1851 an advertisement appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald that would change the family’s direction,   

In 1834, John McLean had taken up a run near Walcha that he called Bergen-op-Zoom, a reported tribute his relatives Allan and Francis McLean who had assisted the Dutch in the defence of that town against the French.

McLean had died, and now the 44,800 acre run was advertised for sale as part of his deceased estate.

The Boultons’ focus had been the central west. Now they were to acquire Bergen-op Zoom, in so doing bringing them within New England's history.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 12 February 2020. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019, here 2020