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This is a transcript of a notebook in which Aunt Coral set out to write an autobiography but quickly tired of it. I do not know the date of writing but it is likely to have been after her father’s death since she obviously did not check facts with him. I comment where I know any statement to be incorrect.
My father’s father was Charles Elmslie of Longside, Aberdeen. His mother’s name was Sarah Watt. He had a brother Alexander and a sister name unknown, [“He” means her father and not her father’s father. In fact he had a second brother and four sisters. ] Both the boys ran away to sea and both must have been well educated as they became captains of sailing ships in the firm of Devitt & Moore before they were 30, My father had command of the Cospatrick and then the Sobraon, his brother taking command of the Cospatrick afterwards. He, his wife and son were all lost in the Cospatrick burnt at sea, leaving his daughters at school at home who my father adopted and brought up with us. He was in command of the Sobraon for many years and sold her at Sydney for Devitt & Moore somewhere about 1890 [actually 1891] when he retired. He was twice married. By his first wife, Mary Ann Tatham he had four sons and three daughters. She died after the birth of the youngest daughter in 1872 and he married my mother 1875. I was the eldest and was born on board the Sobraon. My brother Noel was born at sea the following year, also on the Sobraon. My 2nd brother, Reginald Cheyne and my sister, Essil Forrest, were both born at Bedford, one at Croxon Lodge and the other at Essilmont, a large rambling house which my mother had to run with all the steps and us to say nothing of the nieces. However we were all a very happy family. We made another voyage in the Sobraon in 1879-80 and again in 1886-7, I think, when we had our nurse Charlotte Ashton and our cook Ellen Page who went as one of the stewardesses. On this voyage, the only one I remember, we had a beautiful house and garden with staff lent to us a few miles from Melbourne, where we had a lovely time, and on the way home called at St Helena. We were there for some days and the whole island was en fete while the ship was there. Dances and dinners for the passengers both on shore and on ship..
My mother was Cecilia Cheyne, the youngest daughter of John Cheyne, who was the oldest surviving son of Dr John Cheyne, who had 14 children. My mother’s father was also a doctor of medicine but never practised. He went to Australia to his uncle George Cheyne and became a clergyman of the Church of England at Sandridge. He married before he went out from the Manor House at Sherington Bucks about 1833 Annie Lavinia Forrest, daughter of Colonel Chas E Forrest of Emberton, he died in 1894. My mother’s mother died when she was 11 ans she was brought up by her sister Mrs Elizabeth Harper, whose husband from Abbotsford Amersham Bucks and who worked at a very large station at Muckleford near Castlemaine Australia. My mother said he employed about 30 men to look after the cattle and had Chinese cooks to cook for them. My mother was sent home to school when she was 15 or 16 to Banff. Her old schoolmistress was still living when we went to Scotland when I was about 20. We went to visit her.
My mother had relations in Scotland and Ireland to go to during the holidays, a stuffy old aunt, Mrs Cheyne, who never let her go out except in the carriage with closed windows and to church nearly all day Sundays. She also spent some very happy holidays in Ireland another aunt married to the Bishop of Limerick and who had a large family of young people among them Charles Graves of Punch and Albert Graves the father of Robert Graves.