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By David Parker
A few months ago, Jackie Latchbury, of Moore Park Baptist Church, contacted the Baptist Historical Society of Queensland about some letters in the possession of a family living nearby and known to her. They were requesting help in identifying the letters. Upon inspection, the letters turned out to date from the early 1800s and were associated closely with the famous Baptist pioneer missionary, William Carey. The family who now own the letters are direct descendants of Carey through his son Jonathon (1796-1874).
There are three letters and they have been professionally conserved, but they are hard to read in their entirety. One dated 26 May 1831 is very brief and is a short greeting from William Carey to his daughter-in-law Anna. It reads:
Dear Anna
Through divine goodness I am now perfectly recovered. Your
mother suffers from the heat. I hope you, Jonathon, the children
and Lucy are all well.
Is Lucy’s marriage fixed for the 8th of June? I intend to
be with you on that occasion, but am not certain about the day
Your affectionate Father,
W Carey
Another longer one, which is quite badly damaged, is dated 27 August 1815 and is addressed, ‘My dear Hanna’. It contains some spiritual counsel, and news about the family and church life.
The third letter is addressed to ‘Mrs Jonathon Carey’ (the same lady as the first) in Calcutta and is written from Oxford in 1825. It deals mostly with the report of meeting held 29 Nov 1825 to set up the ‘Oxford Ladies Association’ to aid the ‘Bengal Christian School Society.’
The letters have come down through the Buttfield family which has interesting Baptist connections, and complicated relationships to the Careys.
Sarah Buttfield (1820-91) was the 3rd child of William Buttfield (1793-1817) and his wife Elizabeth (nee Parker). William was a printer who moved around England a lot, and eventually ended up in Jersey in the Channel Islands apparently to escape trouble over his printing activities. For a period they lived in the Hemel Hempsted area, north-west of London, and were associated with the Boxmoor Particular Baptist Church. They had a total of 10 children. William was known as a man of great Christian character and was a respected member and leader, even though his wife was quite the opposite due to a drinking problem. Sarah was a member of this church but in 1850 transferred to London’s Bloomsbury church.
The Carey connection begins in 1843 when Sarah was 23. She
married Jonathon Carey, then a widower aged 47 years.
Jonathon, a solicitor, was the seventh son of William Carey and
was born in India. He had first married Anna, the daughter of
Baptist minister, Samuel Pearce, and close friend of William Carey.
They had met in India where Anna worked at the Serampore Girls’
School. Their marriage in 1824 united two great Baptist families,
and there were three surviving children, Anna Louisa, Jonathon
Pearce, and William Hopkins (who lated became minister of Parramatta
Baptist Church, NSW, before his premature death at the age of
23 years). This is the Anna or Mrs Jonathon Carey of the letters.
However, Anna died in 1832, and the three children returned to the Boxmoor area in England. In the fellowship of the Baptist church, they came in contact with the Buttfields – there were two families each with a young man and a young woman about the same age. Not surprising, two of them were attracted to each other, and in 1844 Anna Louisa (aged 18) married John Parker Buttfield (aged 22), the fourth child of William and Elizabeth.
But the complicating factor was that Anna Louisa’s widowed father Jonathon was also looking for marriage again and found a bride in Anna Louisa’s sister-in-law, Sarah Buttfield. As the Buttfield family history states, ‘This created a most confusing set of relationships. Was Jonathon Carey John Buttfield’s father-in-law or his brother-in-law? Sarah Carey became Anna’s sister-in-law and step-mother’ (A Family Named Buttfield, by Judy Peters and Cynthia Waddle, 1991, p. 45).
Whatever the relationships, John and Anna set out on an amazing
life together. Three weeks after their marriage, they sailed for
British Honduras to serve with the Baptist mission. However, John’s
work as a printer was cut short due to differences of doctrine
with the other resident missionary, and so three years later,
the Buttfields returned to England, now with two children. After
only a few months, they were on their way again – this time
to South Australia.
They arrived in Dec 1848 with three children, but they themselves
were only aged 26 and 22. John first of all became the first paid
minister of the Salem Baptist Church, Gumeracha. It was to be
a stormy settlement, and led to many further movements as John
doggedly continued to serve in different parts of the colony.
He bought land and became deeply involved in the communities where
he lived, doing his best to preach and meet the needs of the people.
His story is briefly told in the official history of the Baptists
in South Australia.
The couple had eleven children, and on 1 July 1862, when the youngest was only 3 ½ months old, Anna died at the age of 36. Her grave stones in the grounds of Eley Chapel in the Munno Para district, read,
Her husband John, who was minister of the church 1852-64, remarried six years later, after he had moved on to start a church in Port Lincoln. This marriage produced a further eight children! The small church was unable to support him, so in 1865 he became Sub-Protector of Aborigines in the far north, living at the mining town of Blinman. He was also appointed a magistrate. The rest of his life, which ended on 14 July 1885, was a remarkable story of public humanitarian service and commitment in remote areas, and devoted support of his large family.
With such a large number of children, the descendants are numerous, and scattered over many parts of the country – especially South and Western Australia. However, the second child of John’s first marriage was Emilie Anna, who was born 1 May 1847 in British Honduras. She married Edmund Harvey in 1868 near Port Lincoln, South Australia. Their grand-daughter, Susan Elizabeth, is Jackie Latchbury’s friend, who showed us the Carey letters! These letters are now with the Buttfield family in Western Australia.
John and Anna’s fifth child was Felix Montgomery Buttfield. One of his grandsons was David Buttfield who for 16 years prior to his death in 2002 was Chairman of BaptistCare in Western Australia. A new facility has been named after him, the David Buttfield Centre.
It is interesting to have this contact with a direct descendant of William Carey and to be able to publish this brief report about the letters.
Sources:
A Family Named Buttfield, by Judy Peters and Cynthia Waddle,
1991
Our First Hundred Years—The Baptist Church in South Australia,
by H. Escourt Hughes, 1937