Stony Heap Ancestry

A Memory of Stony Heap.

My great grandfather, Robert Stephenson, birth date 13 June 1853 was born in one of the Stony Heap Cottages, Greencroft, Happyland, County Durham. He was baptised on 17 July 1853, in Lanchester. His father was William Stephenson, a coal miner and his mother was Sarah Barron. I don't know much about the location of his birth, as Robert emigrated to New South Wales, Australia in 1878. Robert married Mary Ann Steadman on 10 July 1880 at Singleton (then called Patrick's Plains) in the western rural districts of New South Wales. They produced 11 children. Robert died on 25 May 1910 at Water Reserve, Wickham (a suburb of Newcastle, on the New South Wales Mid Coast, about a hundred kilometres north of Sydney). He is buried in the Sandgate Cemetery at Newcastle, in the Methodist section. His wife, Mary Ann is buried alongside him , having died 30 August 1925, in Railway Reserve, Wickham. Robert Stephenson spent the greater part of his life in New South Wales employed by the New South Wales railways and never returned to coal mining, like his father William. Whilst I am now in my latter years and had I found out more about my Family history when I was younger, I would have liked to have travelled to England and visited this area on Durham County.

Greg Stephenson (South Australia)

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