They just keep piling up

(Old Commercial Bank Building, Lancefield. Photo by J. O'Connell.)

Like her counterpart Mary Hamilton Allan, Mary Ann Darby’s husband died young. James Darby died on 29 March 1872 at aged forty-five, from pneumonia. James Allan died a year later on 9 April 1873 from the result of a wagon accident. He was forty-three. The Darbys were in Lancefield, the Allans in Monegeetta (towns sixteen km apart).

James Allan and Mary had eight children, (the eldest married, the youngest, two at the time of his death) and Mary was pregnant with the ninth when her husband died. The infant was a female, stillborn in July of the same year, and buried with her father. James left Mary with the farm in Monegeetta and she probably managed it with her eldest son Robert. Perhaps she also had help form her sons-in-law George Jeans and John Foy (Foy also had a farm in Monegeetta). Mary didn’t leave the area until the 1880s – she had to survive on something – one assumes she did so with the farm.

Not so fortunate Mary Ann Darby. When her husband died she had five surviving children (the first two did not survive), eleven and under, and just pregnant with another. (This child was born seven months after his father’s death, so Mary then had six children twelve and under. According to the Letters of Administration and Probate files (Darby died intestate) Darby left debts of eight hundred and eighty seven pounds.

The amount of debt is hard to fathom. Darby rebuilt the flour mill in Lancefield after it burned down in 1871, was a Magistrate in the District, was on the Roads Board, and held other important positions in the local community. Nevertheless, he died leaving Mary in a dreadful predicament. There was a mortgagees auction for the flour mill on Wednesday 27th November 1872, one month after Mary’s son was born. At some point after, she moved into the old Commercial Bank Building and started a business. The advertisement doesn’t say what she’s selling. (She did complete a dressmaking apprenticeship in England before emigrating.)

M.A. DARBY (Widow of the late Mr. Jas Darby, Lancefield Flour Mills) Respectfully intimates that she has removed to the premises formerly occupied by the Commercial Bank, where she has OPENED A STORE In soliciting a share of the patronage of her friends, and those of her late husband, Mrs D. desires to express her grateful ? of the kindness of those friends by whose generous liberality she is enabled to enter into business.
But by 1878 Mary is living in Melbourne. The tragedies just keep piling up.