William Slade Vincent

Prologue

In the 1980’s, I was working as a relief clerk for the Main Roads Department of Western Australia (W.A.) and was assigned to the Moora District Office for 3 months.

I was aware, at the time, that my family had a strong connection with the town as my father, and his siblings were born in Moora, and my grandfather, Millar Buzzard, was buried there. On visiting the Moora Cemetery, I found my grandfather’s gravesite (he died aged 33 years old in 1920) but was not prepared for the fact that he was also buried with a William Slade Vincent.

On the gravestone was an inscription for both men but for William (died 1934, 14 years after my grandfather) the gravestone was also inscribed with “and his half-brother William Slade Vincent”. Seeing this was quite a shock to me as I had no idea who William was.

This stuck in my mind and in 2021, when researching my family tree, I delved into my grandfather’s half-brother and pieced together some of his life, and that of the family connection with my grandfather.

However, the research on William Slade also uncovered another ancestor who I had not been aware of, William Hunt, a farmer at New Norcia, W.A.

William Hunt led me on a fascinating path, as he was thought to be a former schoolmaster, but in fact was a petty thief who was sentenced to be transported to the Swan River Colony (now Perth, W.A.) as a convict. William was born in Norfolk, England and a Historical Society in Tharston, and in particular, one of its members, Nigel Peacock, was keen to help me with my research. Thanks to Nigel’s numerous hours of work on our project, William Hunt’s story can now be viewed on his website.

After we finished that project, I carried on researching and writing about members of my family. It took me no time at all to decide to gather information on my grandfather’s life, that of Millar Buzzard and his family. A photograph of him, in the uniform of a World War 1 army officer, had been on my bookshelf for years and now was the time to find out more about the man Millar was.

Millar’s wife, Margaret Mary (nee Sheridan), was the granddaughter of William Hunt, the convict, and I have many memories of her as my much-loved Nanna. She died in 1980 aged 93 years. Her father Stephen Sheridan was a prominent man in the Moora area and further enriched our family history in Moora and Carnamah Districts of W.A.

Having completed the “Life and Times of Millar Buzzard”, it can be read on Nigel’s website.

I was now ready to research William Slade Vincent Junior, the man buried with my grandfather. William, I discovered, was a veteran of World War 1, as was my grandfather, and was laid to rest, at the age of 35 in Moora.

But how did he end up buried in a town he had never visited before his death? I found out he was born in England, then lived in Adelaide, South Australia (S.A.), went back to England (as a teenager), fought with the British Army in World War 1 (receiving a Military Cross for bravery), returned to Australia, died in Perth, and was buried in a small country town, 168km to the north of Perth, in W.A.

This is his story and for one so young it is filled with many of life’s highs and lows. But like so many of his generation he, I suspect, never recovered from the horrors of World War 1 and this led him eventually to only find peace when he was laid to rest beside my grandfather.

A quick check of multiple ancestry websites revealed some information on William. After the war, he was repatriated to Australia in 1919. The “Trove” website (a collaboration between the National Library of Australia and many hundreds of partner organisations) had many articles on William.

But I soon found that my research was going to be more complicated than I had thought. The father of the William Slade Vincent was also named William Slade Vincent.

Differentiation between father and son was made a little easier by William’s father rising to the rank of Major in the Colony of Queensland’s Defence Force (Q.D.F.) in Australia. What are now known as States in Australia, were each a former Australian colony of Great Britain, Before the Federation of Australia in 1901, each colony was independent and was directly governed from England. After his military career, William’s father used the suffix Major, so here he will be referred to as Major Vincent and his son will be called William or William Junior.

In the National Archives of Australia and Great Britain were hundreds of documents I didn’t expect to find. However, the quality of the documents, in some cases, was poor. But considering the documents, particularly the War Diaries, are over 100 years old and were mostly written by hand and in pencil by men not far from the frontline, the reader should make allowances for this.

The British Archives contains a file of 281 pages detailing his career in the British Army from enlistment, in 1915, to his death in Australia in 1934. A file of correspondence held by Australian National Archives, with 222 pages of documents in it, had recorded his receiving a pension from the British Government through a reciprocal agreement with the Australian Government. The correspondence between William and the Australian Repatriation Commission (Repat. Dept.) provided a wealth of information. Importantly, it provided his whereabouts in Australia at different points in time.

Often I found the letters and telegrams William sent needed scrutiny as William was inclined to “bend the truth” to provide himself with the best outcome. After reading hundreds of documents and becoming familiar with the style of writing used by officials in correspondence with William, I could detect the frustration of those officials in their written words.

Gerald (Gez) Vining of Somerset, England, grandson of William’s sister Joan, supplied me with photographs and information of artifacts passed down from William’s mother, Emily Alice Vincent, to Joan. Chris Perriam, of the Burnside Branch of National Trust of S.A., was particularly helpful in piecing together William’s earlier childhood in Adelaide. Also, mention must be made of the book by E.R. (Elizabeth) Simpson, “Beaumont House – The land and its people” [2] for stories about the Vincent/Buzzard family in Adelaide.

The archivist at St. Peter’s College, Adelaide, S.A. also supplied me with valuable records about his education before joining the army. His education at this prestigious college and his father’s military background, as I found from correspondence in his service file in the British Archives, was instrumental in him getting a commission in the British Army. War diaries from various military units he served in, Government Record Offices, State Libraries and the like, from England to Australia, were also crucial in preparing this document.

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[2] “The land and it’s people” – E.R. Simpson