Emma Smith was born in 1826 in the small village of Towersey, Buckinghamshire, England to parents George Smith and Sarah Emma Wheeler. Emma was baptised on January 8th 1825 at Towersey (pictured).
George was a labourer in Towersey, and married Sarah in Bledlow, Oxfordshire on 4 Oct 1825. Sarah had previously had an illegitimate child James in 1822 who was also baptised at Bledlow. Bledlow is on the county border between Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.
In 1848, 23 year old Emma, a dairymaid, pregnant with her first child, accompanied her brother Alfred and his wife Jane out to Melbourne, Australia on the passenger ship “Mahomed Shah”.
Emma gave birth to baby Esther on 5 July 1848 somewhere near Indonesia. She registered the birth in Collingwood. Esther was baptised at St Peter’s, Eastern Hill Melbourne, with no father listed on the birth certificate.
Also onboard the immigrant ship “Mohamed Shah” was Richard White aged 20, who was travelling out to Australia with his brother Eden.
Back home in England, Richard and Emma were only living four miles apart, so perhaps Richard was the father of the child she was carrying as she boarded the ship.
Regardless, Richard married Emma, at St Peters, Eastern Hill, Melbourne (pictured below), soon after the birth of the baby on 10 May 1849 when baby Esther was 9 months old. Both Richard and Emma could not write their names on the mar
riage certificate. Emma’s brother Alfred and his wife Jane, of Collingwood, were the witnesses.
Richard and Emma went on to have another seven children together, including Harriett Maria White in 1854, the mother of Kate Jackson (nee Miles). Richard and Emma’s first five children were born in Richmond and Collingwood. (Kate 1850, Maria 1852, Harriett 1854, Thomas 1857, Richard 1861).
Daughter Emma was born in Violet Town 1866, but the family were back in Collingwood in 1867 for the birth of their last child daughter Ellen (Nell – who would later marry Jack Llewlyn).
In 1889 son Thomas White of Boho North, wrote to the Euroa Shire Council, stating that a bridge should be built instead of a stone crossing at Mrs Emma White’s, as a crossing would only cause the water to flood her house and garden. It was made an ‘order of the day’. (Euroa Advertiser 13 Dec 1889).
After the death of her husband Richard in 1888 at their farm in Boho, Emma stayed on the farm until her death in 1905, aged 80 years.
She is buried in the Violet Town Cemetery with her husband Richard. There is no headstone.
