George Winter (1814 - 1879)

Born 1814 in Agher, County Meath, Ireland

Ancestors

Husband of Elizabeth (Cox) Winter — married 15 Sep 1843 in Evandale, Tasmania, Australia

Died 14 Sep 1879 at about age 65 in Levuka, Fiji

Biography

George Winter was born in 1814 in Agher, County Meath, Ireland, son of Samuel Pratt Winter (1779–1831) and Frances Rose Bomford (1793–1831).

George was educated at Trinity College in Dublin, and then sailed to Australia with his sister Arbella in 1838 to join his brothers, Samuel and Trevor, at Tahara near Portland Bay in Victoria. George was 23 when he set sail, and Arbella only 17, so most probably they travelled with someone they already knew; this may have been Cecil Pybus Cooke, then aged 25, who was on the same boat and later married Arbella. George was considered unsuccessful as a sheep farmer but he remained in Australia for close to twenty years and managed his brother Samuel’s sheep runs until 1845. During that time he married Elizabeth, a daughter of James Cox of Clarendon, Tasmania.^[1]

George (27) married Elizabeth Cox (21) (born on January 19, 1822 in Launceston, Colony of Tasmania; daughter of James Cox and Mary Jane Connell) on September 15, 1843 in Evandale, Tasmania, Australia.^[2] Their children were:

• Francis Pratt Winter (1848–1919)
• Georgina Benjamin Winter (1850–1931 )
• St Leonards Crosbie Winter (1853–1879)
• Ernest Winter (1856– )

In 1854 the family returned to Ireland and eventually bought an estate at Levuka in the Fiji Islands and lived there. Levuka, in the island of Ovalua, was at first (c1857) selected as the European capital, but in 1882 the government was transferred to Suva on the south coast of the neighbouring larger island of Viti Levu.^[1]

George died on September 14, 1879 in Levuka, Fiji, aged 64.

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1} Chapter XVIII Stephen the Younger & his Children | 18.7.2 George Winter. The Irish Bomfords. http://www.bomford.net/IrishBomfords/Chapters/Chapter18/Chapter18.htm#18.7.2%C2%A0_George_Winter_
2. ↑ "Australia, Tasmania, Civil Registration, 1803-1933", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q279-SCSX : Fri Mar 08 02:18:06 UTC 2024), Entry for George Winter and Elizabeth Cox, 1843.
3. ↑ Family Notices (1879, October 25). The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW : 1871 - 1912), p. 685. Retrieved May 15, 2024, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article161872838