When I left Phoebe to go gallivanting after her brother Tom, she was acting as the governess for the Maudsley family in Lambeth, Surrey, aged 23.By the time she was 28,her only sister Kate had died and her brother Thomas had contracted tuberculosis and sailed with his wife for warmer climes in Australia.
As I mentioned in the previous blog about Thomas Prior Hall, I believe it was his presence in Melbourne that made Phoebe decide to immigrate herself.He was ill, his wife had given birth to a daughter and lost her three weeks later, and was pregnant with twins. Phoebe would have been a Godsend in this situation, and she arrived on the ship Swiftsure just prior to her twin nieces being born.
Within two or so months of her arrival in Melbourne, Phoebe had lost her brother to tuberculosis and one of the little twins, Annie. I can't find what happened to the other twin, Catherine. She does not appear in the death index in the Victorian BDMs, nor in the St. Kilda Cemetery Index like her father and sisters Annie and Maria.I also looked for her in England, figuring that she must have gone back with her mother, but cannot find her there either.
Phoebe Hall's sister-in-law Mary Ann must not have remained in Australia for long, as in September of the year following her husband's death, she remarried in England (another doctor, Frederick Mason).
Phoebe didn't marry Allan Hughan until August of 1859, and at that stage she was living in Emerald Hill, which was the old name for South Melbourne. I have to find out how she lived between April 1857 and August 1859. Her marriage cert states that her occupation at the time of her marriage was 'Professor of Music"- presumably she made a living by giving music lessons to Melbourne's more wealthy families.
Since Richard Poulett Harris had emigrated to Hobart with his small sons and daughter Charlotte in March 1857 and didn't marry until July 1858, I wonder if his sister-in-law Phoebe was called upon to help him care for the boys.
Whatever the case, Phoebe and Allan Hughan met and, despite an age difference of eight years in favour of the former, were married on August 8, 1859, at Emerald Hill, Melbourne, according to the "forms of the Presbyterian Church Phoebe was 30 years old, but gave her age as 28, and Allan Hughan was 22.At the time of their marriage, Allan was the "superintendent of a squatting station" which was Glenloth Station at Avoca, and his wife was a "Professor of Music" living at Emerald Hill.Witnesses to the event were Allan's sister Marion A. Edmiston and Somebody (can't decipher the signature!) Dodgson. The minister was Alexander Ramsay, who presided over several Hughan religious occasions in Australia.
Beneath the marriage certificate is a notation which reads :"I, Allan Hughan, do hereby declare that I am a member of the Protestant Denomination. Married at Emerald Hill, Melbourne.
I have dealt with Phoebe's married life until her husband's death in 1883 in my chapters on Allan Hughan...the birth of their first child Ruth in 1860; the 1867 death of their second daughter Marion on exactly the same day and in the same house as Phoebe laboured to give birth to her third daughter, Minnie; Phoebe's pearling trip with her husband and daughters Ruth and Minnie along the coast of Western Australia on Allan's schooner 'Pilot'; the ship wreck of said 'Pilot' near New Caledonia in 1870, and the family's decision to establish their lives at Noumea thereafter.
Phoebe took up teaching again in Noumea, both of music and the Protestant religion, and participated in musical concerts and performances.She gave birth to two more daughters, Aline and Rose, and suffered more heartache when baby Rose died aged only four months.
I wonder what she thought as a mother when her eldest daughter Ruth married a man the same age as her father in 1881? This sort of arrangement was far more common in that time period, so Phoebe very well may not have thought twice about the event.
In 2008, I was able to obtain Phoebe's medical records from when she was admitted to an institution in Sydney, NSW, and it stated that her first attack of "nerves' had occurred in c. 1877. I have no idea what - if anything- may have prompted this episode. The only thing I can find of importance which happened that year was the return to Sydney of 11 year old Barcroft Boake, the son of a photographer friend of Allan's who had been living with the Hughans in Noumea since 1875.
Another previous attack prior to 1889 was mentioned, but no year given.
In 1883 Phoebe Hughan lost both her eldest daughter Ruth and several months later her husband Allan..after 24 years of marriage, Phoebe was left a widow at the age of 54, with two of her five daughters left to comfort her- 12 year old Aline and 16 year old Minnie.
Phoebe and her girls remained in Noumea for several years after Allan's death, with Phoebe earning her living, I presume, by continuing to give music lessons. Sydney shipping records show that in 1882 Mrs and Miss Hughan had travelled from Noumea to Sydney on the ship 'City of Melbourne'( in different months-Phoebe in April and one of her daughters in May), and also on November 14, 1889, per the 'Birksgate'. This date is very significant, because on November 16, 1889, Phoebe Hughan was admitted to Bay View House at Tempe, Sydney, which was a private mental institution.
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