- Harry Cornelius Bray - Life Events
Born at the family home in Marie La Bonne Street, Portsmouth, Hampshire, England on 2 Jul, 1847, Harry Cornelius was our first Aussie Bray,
He arrived in Sydney with his parents on 28 July 1853 on the barque "St George".
When he married Mary Bannatyne Armitage on 22 December 1870 at St Lilas Church, Waterloo, he was a driver of a baker's carter and lived at Chippendale. With their growing family, the couple lived at Mitchell Street Glebe, then Wyndham Street Alexandria and also at a number of addresses in Redfern.
By 1901 he had purchased lots 20 and 22 Woids Avenue and Bellevue Parade Hurstville. This property was later occupied by one of his sons and has remained in family hands until recent times.
He worked as a van proprietor or carrier throughout his life.
Harry and Mary's children were:
- Alfred Charles Bray
- Edith Rhoda Bray
- Hilda Martha Bray
- Harry David Bray
- Percy William Bray
- Essie Mary Bray
- Joseph Corelius Bray
- Robert Ernest Bray
He died on 19 September 1923 at home in Woids Avenue, aged 76 of artersclerosis, myocarditis and uraemia.
Armitage Connection
Joseph Armitage, his wife Martha (Files) and their two children emigrated from Ashton under Lyne in Lancashire under peculiar circumstances.
Ashton was a working call factory town and a radical stronghold for Chartism which was:
"a working-class male suffrage movement for political reform in Britain that existed from 1838 to 1857. It took its name from the People's Charter of 1838 and was a national protest movement, with particular strongholds of support in Northern England" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartism
A Chartist National Rising had been planned and mob violence erupted in Ashton on the 14 August 1848 when an armed Chartist “National Guard” shot dead a police officer in the town, PC Bright.
One of the leaders, Joseph Radcliffe, was put on trial and convicted of wilful murder although it was unclear who fired the fatal shot. The Home Secretary ultimately yielded to pleas in so far as he commuted the death sentence to four years imprisonment and banishment for life. After four years imprisonment Radcliffe was sent to Western Australia.