Shep's Place Family Tree

He emigrated to South Australia by the S.S. "Salamanca" ‎(steam)‎ which arrived 2 Sep 1878 - S.A."Register" Shipping News. He was aged 31. He joined the education department in 1883 and was sent to a one teacher school at Hawker in the mid-north of South Australia. This was a shock to his system. While there he met Marion Wilson, the exact middle one of a family of 15 children. She spoke well and could read and write in spite of only one year of schooling at the Misses DuMar's private School at Mt. Barker. Her father was an English gentleman who had inherited money, soon spent it, but never did a day's work in his life. Marion, with only one surviving sister older and 9 surviving brothers to be cared for, had not been spared from home for lessons. There was a tutor for the sons and the last two girls went to boarding school in Adelaide. From hard work at home she went to the same as housekeeper to brothers and was at Carrieton, with brother Ernest when C.P. teaching at Hawker and so they met.

By 1886 he had changed over to an Adelaide warehouse and drove a van and two horses for the firm getting drapery orders and found his way fairly often to Carrieton 182 miles north of Adelaide. In November he found her in distress with a poisoned hand and an injury to it from an axe cut. There was no doctor and Ernest wasn't much interested so C.P. helped her pack and drove her to the city, arriving late at night, so he took her to his landlady at Hindley Street, the doctor next day, and to a married brother ‎(Oscar)‎ at Evandale and from that house she was married to C.P, on the 24th. But Oscar's wife was a mischief maker and wrote to the parents at Mt. Barker that the wedding was "hurried" and the parents thinking the worst as was intended became estranged from Marion.

C.P, was 40 when he embraced matrimony and Marion was 32. C.P. had no interest in purchasing a house and they were to live in 13 rented ones in the years ahead. He obtained a position at John Martins at their drapery warehouse section which lasted 16 years until a fire in c.1902 destroyed that section and it was not replaced. The staff was dismissed. He had also while there spent certain hours being a shop walker in morning dress with long tailed "cut-away coat" that had pockets and in these he carried home packets of his favourite gorgonzola cheese.

They lived in reasonable comfort during these years. However by 1897 Marion suffered a breakdown of health. After four children in five and a half years, the first, 13 months after marriage to confound Mrs. Oscar, and too much packing and unpacking of household goods from one narrow suburban street to another similar one, and now in their sixth, and this after a lifetime of open country space, it was all too much.

C.P. hurriedly found a beach holiday house at the Grange which would accommodate her and the children for three weeks. So great was the improvement that he looked for, and found, another rented house, "Lily Cottage". It was separated from the beach by only sand hills. These have long gone and the cottage too, at what became Sturt Street. Marion did not even go back to pack. C.P, undertook this on his own, and eventually the wagon piled high with goods and chattels came wobbling down the sandy hill ‎(also vanished)‎ with the four year old Violet in an agony of apprehension in case the lot toppled. They stayed 8 years. Marion was well and the little girls spent every moment they could on the beach, and even when they came upon a suicide from poison with a blue and distorted face they were not tempted to abandon their playground.

With the loss of his position at John Martins came a time of hardship, though not altogether desperate. There was the Jersey cow, Pansy, there were hens and the usual flourishing vegetable garden that Marion achieved wherever she went, in spite of beach sand and salt laden winds, and there was some money from Marion's mother who died in 1901 and with the sale of "Westbrook" there was a legacy. The mother had long since been reconciled, had even stayed with them, and sent generous baskets of country food down by rail. C.P. had his money from his father, eventually ‎(George was rather reluctant about it)‎ but C.P. had grandiose idea of a fortune on the stock exchange and quickly lost his £300. He now decided to look for a gold mine to recoup the family fortunes and set out with some tools and a bag of necessities. He reached Knightsbridge ‎(now Leabrook)‎ and Arthur Wilson, another of the brothers, by nightfall. They kept him a week and sent him home.

C.P, walked from the Grange to town looking for work, but it was a long time before he found it. For a while he was at Nenke's Store, at Kapunda and sent his laundry home to Marion to stiffly starch his cuffs and high collars, and she'd return them the same way. At last he found a position with D. & W. Murray, Warehousemen of Adelaide and they moved nearer town to Woodville. There were more changes of houses, then Unley, Wayville and Camden Park before the family came to the last of their moves. They shifted into First Avenue, Royston Park on 1 Feb 1920, the day EMS was born.

By this time Charles Percy was with Macrow & Son, - they were then at the corner of Gawler Place and Pirie Street - and so still involved with soft furnishings and drapery. He worked until two weeks before his death ‎(from heart failure)‎ on 23 Jun 1921, aged 74 years. His wife Marion survived him until 16 Aug 1942 and was in her 89th. year. Both were buried at the Payneham Cemetery. The plot for C.P, cost Marion £2/10/0!