‘they also serve who only stand and wait’
Who organised this sweet headstone for a widow?
Eleanor White was the eldest child of William and Harriet Jones and born in Birmingham in 1847. William was a miller. At some point the family emigrated to Melbourne and it was there that Eleanor married Alexander de Pedros Kellett in 1864. He and his brother Samuel were grocers.
Eleanor’s husband had the publican’s licence for the Victoria Hotel at Prahran. In 1866 an employee by the name of Young sued Alexander for £4 for wages. Amongst his other misdemeanours, Young had been insolent to Eleanor and use threatening language towards her. But Alexander lost the case, as he had not discharged Young on the instant the insolence was given. Alexander appears to disappear from the records at about this point.
We next pick Eleanor up in New Zealand at her wedding to Charles Loynes White in 1876. Charles was the postmaster at Balclutha and later also a Registrar of marriages at Bulls. There were no children of this marriage either. Eleanor’s Will left the bulk of her estate to her nephew Charles Hunter White (b 1886), the eldest son of her brother in law George. She said that “I have brought him up from childhood and who has been as good as a son to me”.
Charles Hunter White passed the Junior Civil Service Exam in 1903 and became a cadet in the Government Insurance Department. Eleanor was also widowed in 1903.
Charles served in WWI in Western Europe with the Wellington Regiment and Eleanor was his next of kin. They shared a home at 3 Cardall Street Newtown, until Eleanor died in 1925 aged 79. We assume it was Charles who oragnised the headstone. The line on the headstone is from a poet by John Milton “On His Blindness”.
Charles worked as a civil servant his whole working life and died in 1943. He is buried in the Servicemen’s section. He left his whole estate to Catherine Mahoney (b 1899),the wife of John Mahoney. Charles had been living at the same address as the couple since 1935. He may have been their lodger.
Eleanor White – Plot: Public 2/H/589
Charles Hunter White – Plot: Soldiers/H/3/14
Plot of Eleanor White