LACHLINA ELIZABETH SCOTT

The grave of 37 year old  Lachlina Elizabeth Scott  Walker in Tasmania’s  Longford Pioneer Cemetery raises an interesting question. What was the origin of her unusual first name?

Here is the registration  of her birth;

Now in my opinion Lachlina was named for a colonial administrator.  Not her grandfather, who  served as Tasmania’s  Lt. Governor from 1813 to 1817, but for Governor  Lachlan Macquarie of NSW. The strange thing is that Macquarie had a very low opinion of  Lachlina’s grandfather Thomas Davey. He had described him as, ‘..so dissipated in his Manners and Morals, so expensive in his habits, so very thoughtless and volatile, and so easily imposed upon by designing, plausible characters.‘   Strong stuff eh?  Macquarie had recommended several times to the British government that Davey should be removed from office and in 1817 that is what happened.

Lachlan Macquarie

Subsequently. Thomas Davey  turned to farming…quite unsuccessfully it seems.   So why on earth would Lachlina’s mother Lucy name her eldest daughter for Lachlan and Elizabeth Macquarie?  Read on.  😎

Lachlina’s father was Dr. James Scott. He was the surgeon on the convict transport Castle Forbes, which had  arrived in Van Diemen’s Land  from Ireland via Sydney at the beginning of  March 1820. Governor Macquarie read Scott’s meticulous report of the voyage and was impressed with the young man’s handling of the convicts.

Dr. James Scott met Lucy Davey soon after he arrived in the Castle Forbes, and romance blossomed.

By co-incidence, Lachlan Macquarie and his wife Elizabeth  were on a visit to Hobart Town when the couple  were married. The father of the bride was not in attendance. Davey was in England trying to sort out his financial affairs, otherwise the Governor may have stayed away. But here was a man Macquarie thoroughly approved of marrying a young woman he felt a good deal of sympathy for.  Lucy and her mother Margaret had been left in a perilous situation by the improvident Thomas Davey.

SOURCE – HOBART TOWN GAZETTE

From Macquarie’s diary;

Oh my goodness, not a bad wedding gift. I suppose it was really a dowry, and that Macquarie felt some responsibility towards Lucy given his part in her father’s removal from office.  The land grant was located at Bothwell and was named Rothiemay.

It seems fitting that, although Thomas Davey  was not at his only child’s  wedding, the establishing  of the church was considered one of the chief accomplishments of his governorship.

Lucy and her mother had been in attendance the day the foundation stone was laid, which must have increased the significance of  the wedding being held there. The church had only just been completed, and would not actually  be consecrated until two years later.

Below is an image of St David’s church dated 1830.

The church where Lucy Davey married Dr James Scott.

Thomas Davey died in England on  May 2  1823; intestate and with an estate valued at under £20. His wife Margaret was denied a pension, so we can only hope she was provided for by her daughter and son-in-law. She died in 1827, aged 60. Lucy died aged  only 47 in 1847.

On January 31 1854, Lachlina  married Arthur Walker  at St David’s, though by then it was St David’s Cathedral as Hobart Town had become a city. The main alteration since her mother  Lucy’s marriage in 1821 was that the original steeple had been replaced with a ‘pepper pot’ tower.

Lachlina was married below the replacement tower of St David’s.

At St David’s Cathedral, Hobart Town, on the 19th Instant, by the Venerable Archdeacon Davies, Arthur George, second son of Thomas Walker, Esq, of Rhodes, to Lachlina Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Dr. Scott, R.N., late Principal Colonial Surgeon of Van Dieman’s Land, and grand-daughter of Colonel Davey, R.M., formerly Lieutenant- Governor of this island.

Macquarie’s opinion of Thomas Davey as Lt. Governor may have been overly harsh. If you would like to read more about this, CLICK HERE.

NOTE – Feel free to challenge my theory of Lachlina Elizabeth  being named for the Macquaries, but it makes sense to me.