William Hampshire Thompson, the son of Aaron (an exciseman) and Elizabeth Thompson, was baptised on 18 April 1815 at Tamworth, Staffordshire, England (IGI). He married Maria Rogerson at Pontefract, Yorkshire on 25 February 1837. Having left their home in West Riding, Yorkshire, Maria and William boarded the 1129-ton Hannah More (Captain William Brown) which set sail from Liverpool on 13 January 1863 and, following frustrating delays, from Bristol on 9 or 11 February 1863. At the end of a long and distressing journey, they reached Moreton Bay on 23 June 1863. Their children¾Elizabeth Rogerson, Maria Ellen, William and Aaron (b. 15 June 1853, Wakefield, Yorkshire)¾travelled with them, together with Elizabeth’s husband, Henry Brooke Elcock, and their baby daughter Eleanor. Of the 420 passengers on board, many of whom were cotton operatives from the distressed districts of Lancashire, 35 died en route, including William Thompson (aged 11) and Eleanor Elcock (aged 1). The Crompton family, referred to elsewhere in these pages, also boarded the vessel in Bristol and made the journey with the Thompsons.

The ship was actually bound for Keppel Bay (Rockhampton) but had to call at Brisbane to replenish food and water supplies which were almost exhausted because of the added length of the journey from England. Owing to the serious illnesses the passengers had endured en route, it was quarantined at Dunwich. Some of the immigrants remained in Brisbane; and the others were transferred to the 400-ton Clarence (Captain Cotter) for the remainder of the journey to Rockhampton.

William Hampshire Thompson, a veterinary surgeon, died suddenly at Eight Mile Plains on 8 February 1888 at the age of 74 years and was buried in the Cooper’s Plains Cemetery two days later in the presence of official witnesses Thomas Brennan and Robert Finlay. He was survived by his son Aaron (b. about 1853), a farmer. A son and two daughters predeceased him, as did his wife. As he died intestate and without other close relatives, his estate passed to Aaron, ‘the lawful and only child of the said deceased’.

Maria Thompson, the daughter of William (a butcher) and Maria (née Armitage) Rogerson, was christened in Conisbrough, Yorkshire, on 21 August 1814. She died at Eight Mile Plains on 30 July 1885 at the age of 72 and was laid to rest in God’s Acre on the following day in the presence of official witnesses, James Freney and Thomas Brennan. Aaron alone of her four children survived her passing. It should be noted that Maria’a death certificate gives her place of burial as the Eight Mile Plains Cemetery. There is little doubt that, in this instance, the reference is to God’s Acre where her husband was laid to rest less than three years later.
 

Maria Ellen Thompson married William Oliver Hocken on 2 January 1865 and died on 19 March 1866. They had one daughter, Anna Maria (b. 19 October 1865; d. 20 April 1866).

Elizabeth Rogerson Thompson, the wife of Henry Brooke Elcock, died on 27 April 1866. She and her husband had one child after their arrival in Australia, Lima Brooke (b. 6 August 1864). With the Reverend E Griffiths officiating, Lima married Thomas Ridgway Drane, the third son of the late Reverend JWC Drane of Ipswich, at the home of Mrs Hopkins, Milton, on 30 June 1883. Lima died on 20 January 1942 and was laid to rest in the Toowong Cemetery in the grave (13 452) which had already received the remains of her husband (d. 31 May 1935) and their daughter Elizabeth Ridgway Drane (d. 12 September 1893).

On 28 September 1867, before a registrar, the widowed Henry Brooke Elcock remarried, this time to Elizabeth Anna Hopkins, the daughter of William (deceased) and Rachel (née Barling) Hopkins. They became the parents of Elizabeth Rachel (b. 3 September 1868, known as Rachel), Charles William (b. 11 February 1871) and Henry Richard (b. 3 June 1873).

Henry, the son of Charles and Mary Ann (née Hart) Elcock, passed away on 16 November 1873 leaving his wife to raise three young children and a step-child. That his funeral on the following day to the Wesleyan Cemetery (presumably Paddington) left from the Friends’ Meeting House, North Quay, is consistent with his wife’s identification of herself as ‘being one of the people called Quakers’.

Elizabeth Anna Elcock died on Christmas Day 1921 and laid to rest in the Toowong Cemetery (13 61 4). The funeral left from the Milton residence of her son-in-law Herbert John Fairfax, the husband of Elizabeth Rachel Elcock.