Other Properties - British Singles and Groups

Lot 2167    Session 7 (11.30am Wednesday)    Other Properties - British Singles and Groups

Estimate $3,800
Bid at live.noble.com.au
SOLD $4,200

MILITARY GENERAL SERVICE MEDAL 1793-1814 TO A TASMANIAN SETTLER, - two clasps - Martinique, Guadeloupe. W.Wood, Paymr. 15th Foot. Impressed. Good very fine.

Captain Paymaster William Wood, 15th (Yorkshire East Riding) Regiment of Foot (Paymaster 20Feb1806, later 44th Foot; born 14Jun1778 at Hastings, England. During the Napoleonic Wars Captain Wood served with a British Expeditionary Force in the West Indies and was present at the capture of the French island colony of Guadeloupe. Shortly after, a French ship bound from Cayenne to France sailed into the harbour for a stopover, unaware of the British presence, and was captured without a shot being fired. Among the passengers was seventeen year old Marie Hyacinthe Genevieve de Gouges accompanied by a duenna and in the charge of Louis de Mabille-Audibert, Inspector-General des Forets. Marie was the only child of General Pierre Aubrey de Gouges, late Governor of French Guiana, who had recently died at Cayenne. Marie was admired for her beauty, goodness and graceful manners. Her aunt, the General's sister, was a maid of honour to Marie Antoinette and is buried with the other victims of the guillotine at the Chapelle Expiatoire behind the Madeleine in Paris. During a ball given by the Governor of Guadeloupe Captain Wood met the young Marie and fell madly in love with her. He swept her off her feet with his wild, passionate wooing and within about ten days they married with one of the witnesses being Colonel Barry of 'the Corps'. The captain continued his military career and fought at Waterloo. He retired from the Army in 1824 after selling his commission for ú1,800. Two years later he and his wife and five children emigrated to Van Diemen's Land under an inducement of the offer of land to retired military men. The family arrived at Hobart Town on 25 October 1829 aboard the brig, Mary Anne. Captain Wood took up a grant of 2,000 acres at Snakes Bank, now Powranna, and named his property Hawkridge after the family manor near Tiverton in Devon. He applied for a further grant of 2,000 acres and in time he had increased the size of his holding to 5,400 acres and built the family home which he called Woodleigh. Old family letters relate the captain's energetic and sometimes indiscreet opposition to the convict system which brought him into conflict with several Governors and he fought at least one duel. A Launceston newspaper report at the time stated that 'shots were exchanged without injury to either party, whereon both felt their honour satisfied'. The captain and his wife had two children born in Tasmania but both died in their infancy. One of his children, Louis de Gouges Wood, was a teacher and in the 1860s an active landscape artist of some renown. His watercolour, Brambletye near Avoca, is in the collection of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston, Tasmania. In an article in The Sydney Morning Herald, Friday, July 16, 1934 it states that certain information had been discovered that revealed the true life characters who were in fact leading figures of 'Pageant', G.B.Lancaster's colourful novel of early Tasmania. The 'Captain Comyn' of the novel was Captain William Wood and his wife Marie is credited with being the basis for the French lady. Captain Wood survived his wife by ten years and died at the family home, Woodleigh, in 1864 at the age of 86. He and his wife are in a vault at the English Cemetery in Elizabeth Street, Longford adjacent to the original St Andrew's Church. With research.