March 6, 7.30pm, Burnside Uniting Church, cnr Fisher & Portrush Roads:
DISCOVERING MY FAMILY – The Stories of Maria Gandy and George Mayo by Professor John Mayo DPh
Being an historian, I have always been aware of my family’s connection with Colonel William Light through his young housekeeper, Maria Gandy. She accompanied Light to the emerging colony of South Australia in 1836, and was to remain with him until he died 3 years later. Light described her as his housekeeper; history has assumed she was his mistress. Another early colonist was a surgeon named George Mayo who arrived in 1837 and then immediately returned home to England. However, he must have liked what he saw, as he came back in 1839, and married Maria in 1840.
I wanted to find out what I could about my ancestors’ life together, coming as they did from dissimilar backgrounds: she was a seamstress and daughter of a labourer, he was a surgeon and son of a vicar. The result is this book, Two Lives in Adelaide in the 1840s, and the talk describes the path of my research, the nature of the sources I used, and why the story is almost as much about Adelaide as it is about Maria and George.
About Professor John Mayo: John is a fifth-generation of one of the original South Australians. He was educated at St Peter’s College after which he studied at the universities of Adelaide, Sydney, Papua New Guinea, Hawaii and Oxford. He taught at Malabunga High School, and at the universities of Papua New Guinea, Hawaii and the West Indies where he finished his career as Professor of Latin American History. After retiring to Adelaide, which is not a centre of Latin American studies, he turned to family history.
Note: John will have his books for sale at the talk. Please bring cash if you wish to purchase one. There are no eftpos facilities.