Item 180 - Legatees : Ann (Story) Liardet and Frederick Evelyn Liardet

Correspondence from Ann (Story) Liardet and Frederick Evelyn Liardet Aug. 1864 - June 1880
Ann, daughter of J.W. Story, married Frederick Evelyn Liardet, a coach and boat proprietor of Sandridge, Victoria, and later, after an unsuccessful attempt to run a coffee plantation in Raratonga, he was employed as a stationmaster on the N.S.W. Railways. They had a son, Charles, accidentally shot in 1879 at the age of 15 and other children. Ann's letters, and 2 from F.E.L. and 1 from a son, relate mainly to the property and their expectations. Ann described her life in Raratonga, Society Islands, where F.E.L. had purchased half a coffee plantation: wet, warm, mosquitoes, no meat, natives lazy and Ann unhappy (25/5/65, 26/2/66) and by September 1866 they were in Sydney in distressed circumstances - "the missionary paid our passages . .. to see us safe" before returning to Germany (25/9/66); appeal for help - father meant own daughters to have something (1868); husband head porter at Narulan Railway Station 115 miles from Sydney at £115 pa., 2 eldest sons married but out of employment (26/1/71); letter from son (3/8/76); death of her brother - many faults but kind "to my dear dying children", only sister left (19/2/77); thanks for £49 . 14 . 11, death of 15 year old son Charles, memorial • Charles Evelyn Liardet railway telegraph operator at Jordan's Crossing and youngest son of Frederick Evelyn Liardet stationmaster at Macdonald Town died from gunshot wound at house of his brother-in-law James Fletcher on 16 February (7/7/79).