Item 229 - Letters to JB Cotton from J.B. Mather

Joseph Benson Mather (1814-1890) was the eldest son of Robert and Ann Mather who settled in Tasmania in 1822. He joined his father in his drapery and hosiery business in 1836 and later established his own business as a merchant tailor and importer in Liverpool Street, Hobart, taking his son, Joseph Francis, into partnership as J.B. Mather & Son in 1874. One of their contracts was to supply police uniforms. J.B. Mather also managed the East Coast Steam Navigation Co. in Hobart 1854-57. J.B.Mather was for many years Clerk to the Hobart Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. He spent most of the year 1840 in Sydney visiting and helping Sydney Friends on a visit of "concern" and on his return also travelled around
Tasmania visiting country Friends. In 1841 he obtained consent from Francis Cotton of Kelvedon, near Swansea, to "corresponding with his daughter with an intention to an union in marriage" and the following year he married Anna Maria Cotton. They had six children: Joseph Francis (1844-1925), Anna Maria (1846­-1900), Esther Ann (1849-1957) who married C.H. Robey, Maria Louisa (1851­ -1857), Emma Elizabeth (1853-1939) and Frances Josephine (1855-1856) but Joseph's wife and the youngest little daughter died in 1856. Joseph Mather was lonely after her death, as he recorded in his diary, but he cared devotedly for his children, reading to them every night, except when they went to stay with their Cotton grandparents at Kelvedon for country air, and nursing them when they were ill. He nursed little Louisa day and night in 1857 until she died in his arms.
For more information see http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mather-joseph-francis-7514