Alfred Ludlam - Marriage in Australia

Marriage in Australia

Ludlam was a periodic visitor to the Australian colony of New South Wales. The main reason for these trans-Tasman visits of Ludlam's was to do business in the City of Sydney, which served as New South Wales' principal trading port, population centre and seat of government. One of the businessmen with whom he dealt was Thomas Sutcliffe Mort—an industrialist, pastoralist and pioneer of the frozen-meat trade.

Ludlam also found time to socialise while in Sydney and, on 1 October 1850, he married into Sydney's colonial establishment. The marriage was solemnised at St Thomas' Anglican Church, North Sydney by Ludlam's friend, the clergyman-scientist William Branwhite Clarke, and his bride was Frances "Fanny" Minto Gibbes. Fanny (1822/23-1877) was the third daughter of Colonel John George Nathaniel Gibbes and the Colonel's wife, Elizabeth (née Davis). London-born Colonel Gibbes (1787–1873) was a senior government official and a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars. He had been head of the New South Wales Customs Service since 1834 and occupied a Crown-nominee's seat in the New South Wales Legislative Council.

Then aged in her late 20s, Fanny was living with her parents at Wotonga House—nowadays part of Admiralty House complex on Sydney's Kirribilli Point—at the time of her marriage to Ludlam. She and her husband spent their honeymoon relaxing at a rural New South Wales property, Yarralumla, which belonged to Fanny's brother-in-law, (Sir) Terence Aubrey Murray. Following their honeymoon, the Ludlams left Australia for New Zealand, making the farm at Newry their marital nest. This move, however, almost proved to be a fatal mistake: on 23 January 1855, the Wairarapa earthquake destroyed Newry homestead, and the Ludlams narrowly escaped being crushed to death when a brick chimney in the living room collapsed around them. After the earthquake, as the Ludlams waited for Newry to be made habitable again, they went to live with the New Zealand politician and landowner (Sir) David Monro, who owned a farm at Nelson. Still extant is a vivid description of the earthquake and its destructive impact on the Wellington region, written by Alfred Ludlam to Sir David in a lengthy private letter dated 8 March 1855.

Ludlam was devoted to his wife. Cultured and well read but the possessor of an irreverent sense of humour, Fanny could speak several languages and was an amateur artist and musician of above-average competence. She also liked to garden on a serious scale, providing her husband with vital help in the completion of his various horticultural projects at Newry. Although she was a dozen or so years Ludlam's junior she nonetheless predeceased him, succumbing to a painful "stoppage of the bowel" on 5 March 1877. She and Ludlam happened to be staying in London, at 2 Clifton Terrace, Maida Vale, when she died, and her death notice was duly published in the New Zealand press and The Sydney Morning Herald of 4 May 1877.