George Boddy (1824-1901)

30 September, 1901 Hamilton (Broadmeadow) NSW

  George was the first of our direct Boddy ancestors to actually make it to Australia (but not the first in the extended family) - and by the time he arrived in Newcastle, he was already already into his retirement years.  He was brought here by one of his sons, Alfred, who had been enticed  by the reports of two of George's other sons, who all ventured south in the 1880s.

 George was born in his mother's home-town of Sidbury, in Devon, in 1824, and probably had his initial schooling in the village, along with his two brothers, Henry and Joseph. 

In the 1830s, the family left for London, where George's parents, John and Charlotte had married in 1821.  While John worked as a parliamentary messenger, the family lived close-by to Westminister.  The Civil Service also appealed to young George, and he joined the Inland Revenue Service.

In the 1840s, he met Caroline Nichsolson, the daughter of a shoemaker from Kent.  The young couple - George was then 23, Caroline slightly older at 25 - married in April, 1847 at St George the Martyr in Southwark in south London.  George set about building his career, as the same time as his family expanded to seven children, five sons and two daughters.

The nature of George's work meant the family moved around southern England, and at each of the subsequent 10-year census conducted by the UK Government, the Boddy family lived in a different address.   In 1851, when there were just two young children, George jnr and William, George and Caroline were living at the Staple Hill area of Mangotsfield, in south Gloucester, just north east of Bristol.  Two years later, they had moved to South Stoke a small village close to Bath, where their sons Alfred (grandfather of Geoffrey Alfred Boddy) and Charles were born.

South Stoke is an historic village, with its pub dating from 1498, and its church, St James, from the 12th century.

There were at least two more moves ahead of George and his family in his working life - to Andover in Hampshire, and Dover in Kent, but by 1881, George and Caroline had moved to the capital, closer to their son Alfred.

...............