Awesome Ancestors
I was reminded of this brilliant account of my great great grandmother's life recently and thought it was an awesome enough story to share with you all here.
An Autobiography of Francis Ann Bonner
Born 4th September, 1870, Died 1943.
I was born in Southport in Lancashire, where my father had a boys’ school of about sixty boys. I was educated at the Ladies College, Cheltenham. My husband was educated by my father until he went to the Liverpool University to study Engineering.
Being the only girl I naturally had plenty of sweethearts, and my husband (to be) loved me from the time my hair was down my back. His father had taken up a hundred thousand acres of land in the Falkland Islands, in the year 1864, so he was one of the pioneer settlers. He brought his family to England for their education, but in the year 1889 he suddenly died.
There was no-one to take on the management of the farm, but his wife came to my father and said, “There is nothing for it but for George to go out and manage the farm, and he cannot go unless he has a wife.” My father replied, “I could never consent to my daughter going to that rough life. It is for the young people to decide.”
We decided, and on September 23rd, 1894 set sail from Liverpool. We had a comfortable journey as far as Rio, when plague broke out in the steerage; we were put in on a quarantine station, Flores Island, where we had to stay for eight days, sleeping in sheds. It was so damp that fungus was growing on the walls, and the food was uneatable. After that a tug came and took us up to Monte Video, where we stayed for a month, waiting for a German ship which took us to the Falkland Islands.
We had a very rough passage lasting for five days, and landed there at nine p.m. We had to land in a small rowing boat at Port Stanley. The Inn was full of farmers, so we could not get a bed, but a kind friend took us to his house. After two days we set sail in a schooner for San Carlos, where the farm was. After three days tossing about we reached San Carlos at six a.m. and went straight to the shepherd’s house. They gave us breakfast and then we trudged up to our four-roomed shanty. The shanty was set in a wild stretch, with no garden of any sort. Wild bulls came roaring round the house as there was no protection; the outlook was very grim with the treeless hills all around.
My husband had to go the woolshed each day from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., but about once a week he was from 10 to 12 hours gathering a flock of sheep, and I was left totally alone to cope with the food, of which there was very little. Every settlement had its little store, where it sold tea, coffee, oatmeal and flour. The mutton was sent once a week when a whole sheep was sent up. After a time we got a cow and six hens, and I made a sort of bread from sour milk. As the days passed I grew more efficient in cooking, and began to settle down to the life.
In January of the following year, I saw a yacht sailing down the harbour; she anchored, and a sailor came ashore and came up to say that it was Lord Caernarvon and Prince Dhuleeph Singh, who had heard that my husband had some wild cattle, which they would like to shoot. They had brought in their yacht our mail from England, so they were doubly welcome. They stayed for two days and invited us to dine on their yacht. They had a splendid day bull-hunting, getting thirty-six.
My baby was due in May, and we began to think what we would do about it, as there was no doctor or telephone nearer than Port Stanley, one hundred miles away. We arranged for the last for the wool to be taken away in May, and a policeman’s wife from Stanley came to my rescue. She only stayed for one week and after that my husband and I had to manage as best we could; he washed the baby in a basin, and I dried her. After a bit we began to think about making a garden, and so we dug up a little square patch and railed it in to keep the animals away, and in it planted some seeds we had bought from Port Stanley.
When my baby was five months old, we decided to take her to Port Stanley to have her christened. We set off at eight one morning on horseback, her father carrying her on a pillow, and all our luggage stowed in saddlebags. We took two days to get there, fifty miles each day, staying at a shepherd’s house on route; the shepherds are kindly folk, and their houses are very clean. The baby was baptised in the Cathedral by the Dean. We only stayed in Stanley four days, as my husband had to get back to work, but the change of seeing people did us good.
The food situation grew no better and as I was getting so thin and worn out, my husband decided that after the season’s work, we would go back to England, Whilst we were away, my husband arranged for the carpenter to put an addition on to our house, and to build a house in the settlement for a married man, as we had decided to have married people on the farm.
When we arrived in England, they were shocked at my appearance; my weight had gone down to seven stones one pound and I was only able to go out in a bath chair for a month. When my own old nurse, who was seventy-three, saw me, she said, “I am going back with her”; so we made our plans accordingly. I engaged a very strong Scotch girl to go out too and in September we sailed in a German boat from Tilbury Dock. All went well until we got to Las Palmas, when my little girl got a severe chill, which developed into pneumonia. She hovered between life and death all through the tropics, the ship’s doctor giving us no hope, but as we approached Monte Video she tool a turn for the better, though still very ill. We were able to buy a can of milk in Monte Video which helped to save her life. When we got to Port Stanley we engaged a schooner to take us straight to San Carlos, and once we arrived home we never looked back.
For several years life was much easier, and I was able to ride constantly, which I enjoyed very much. Eighteen months after I got back my second daughter was born, but under different circumstances, as there was now a doctor twenty-four miles away, and we were able to get him. Three years later my next little girl was born.
After we had been there seven years, we decided to have a trip to England, bringing old nurse, aged eighty, the Scotch girl having married a shepherd after a year with us. After our holiday in England we returned, taking a maid from Scotland with us, and leaving old nurse with a great-niece in Liverpool. A year after we got back, our son was born, and there was great rejoicing; the clergyman from Stanley came out to christen him.
When our baby was eleven months old, a cable came to say that Mrs. Bonner had died suddenly, so we set sail in one of the two local schooners from San Carlos at about four o’clock. It was a very cold, stormy night with snow squalls. About eight o’clock there was a frightful bump; the schooner had run on a rock. We were the only passengers, and the captain came to me and said, “Will you take to the boats, or stay on board till daylight, risking that she will not break in two?”
I hurriedly dressed the children and my husband grabbed the baby, putting a bottle of brandy in one mackintosh pocket and some bread in the other. The boat was then lowered and we stood on the deck, ready to get into it, until daybreak. My husband spent the night throwing bales of wool into the sea, to lighten her and see if she would ride off the rock. At daybreak the captain said that we must take to the boats, and we found land near; it proved to be a small island, inhabited only by sea-lions. The crew hastily took off mattresses from the bunks and bedclothes, also milk and some beef, which we were taking in as a present to the governor. The sailors took the sails and made a shelter with them; they then made three fires in a row, which could be seen from the mainland, which meant certain death. Luckily these were seen by a shepherd, and he rode straight into Stanley. The other schooner was in port, so the governor sent her out at once to pick us up. We arrived in Port Stanley on a Sunday morning, and were met by everyone as they came out of church, for prayers had been offered for our safety.
A week later the mail boat came in, and we started off for England. We were kept in England for two years on account of settling up the estate. We then returned to the islands, and I started giving the children lessons regularly; at nine-thirty they had to be ready with their books in the dining-room and we did lessons until twelve. Our horsed were saddled then and we rode till lunch-time. At half past two we did lessons again till four. I may say that my housekeeping and dairy were always done before breakfast, as I always got up at six o’clock.
When my eldest daughter was fifteen, we decided that she must go to school, so we got a manger for the farm. The next year war broke out and women were not allowed to travel, so we took house in Harrogate. My husband was too old to fight, but he took an active interest in the Ministry of Munitions; he worked as a voluntary worker in Leeds for the duration of the war. Meantime I had sent Kathleen to the Ladies’ College Cheltenham, where she took the same position as I had when I was her age which earned great compliments from the people who taught her; but the climate of Cheltenham did not suit her, so we sent our second girl, Muriel, to Roehampton. On leaving school, the girls took their V.A.D. exams, and went to nurse, Kathleen at Northwood and Muriel at Tunbridge Wells.
After the war there was a tremendous slump in wool, so we sold our house in Harrogate and went back to the farm. Sir John Middleton was our governor then, and he appointed my husband Senior Member of the Executive Council; this meant that whenever the Council met they sent for him. And as I was a friend of Lady Middleton’s I went too. I enjoyed these visits to Government House very mush, as frequently there were two or three Naval ships in harbour, so there was a great deal of entertaining.
After we had been out there four years, wool prices began to improve, but in the meantime my second daughter had married Mr. Slaughter, who was the manager of the largest farm belonging to the Falkland Island Company with 200,000 sheep. Her wedding was from San Carlos, and we had to put up sixteen people. It was a great day, as all his work people came over for it, and they had a marvellous breakfast in the cookhouse, with a three tier cake. My husband and I looked round for a house in England, but it was always the servant question that prevented us taking one, so we went back and forward to the Falklands every two years or so, and lived in the Queen Hotel, Harrogate, when in England. Meantime Sir Arnold Hodson was appointed Governor, and my husband retained his position on the Executive Council, and was a trustee of the Cathedral.
In 1927 we had been home to England for a trip, and had brought out our third daughter, Mildred, to be married to Mr. Elliott, who was manager of a section, with 90,000 sheep of the farm which Mr. Slaughter managed. (Mr. Slaughter’s farm consisted of 200,000 sheep.) On our way out, after we had left Monte Video, it became very cold and we encountered forty icebergs between there and the Falklands; it was a very anxious time, and the captain never had his clothes off. Sir Arnold Hodson was the governor at the time, and he had arranged a house party to welcome us.
The wedding was arranged to take place at our farm, but I had a heart attack the day before, so the governor said, “It must be from my house.” This was the first wedding that had taken place from Government House; all Stanley was “en fete” with flags flying. The ceremony was at eleven, and they had a luncheon party at Government House afterwards, followed by “thé dansant” at the Town Hall for the town people. After that the happy couple mounted their horses and rode away.
In 1928 my son married and my husband handed over the management of the farm to him.
In 1930 we spent six months on the Riviera; our eldest daughter, who had been staying with a friend in Cyprus for a year joined us.
In 1934 we decided to go back to the Falklands for a year spending half the time with my son and the other half with my youngest daughter, Mrs Elliott. Sir Henniker Heaton was now our Governor.
Before leaving the Falklands, my husband had built a new woolshed, cookhouse and six houses for married people. Our own house had been built on to jive times, and we had now a beautiful garden with a turf wall which was planted with gorse and daffodils, which were a blaze of colour in the spring. Our house had water laid on from a mountain spring, and we had an “Ideal” boiler, which gave us constant hot water; we also had a conservatory.
In 1935 we returned to England and in 1937 we had the great honour of being asked to represent the Colony at the Coronation which included the ceremony in the Abbey, which lasted from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., a command to the ball at Buckingham Palace, and the Garden Party. For three months we were lavishly entertained, finishing with the Henley Regatta.
