William Stoddart Hardie (1856 - 1935)
William Stoddart Hardie was born at 4:30am on Feb 12 1856 in Macmerry Gladsmuir, East Lothian, the eldest child of William Hardie and Jessie Stoddart. He was born a full 22 months before his parents marriage, which explains the use of Stoddart in his name, it also explains his place of birth, because Macmerry was where Jessie' mother Christina Smith lived.
By the time he was 14 (1871 census) he was working as a miner at Penston in Gladsmuir, where he was living with his family. There is limited information available after this, however it is known that he emigrated to Australia at around age 19 or 20 (ie around 1875/76). Nor is any detail known about his early years in the colony.
There are two possibilities for his arrival in Australia
- There is also a William Hardie who arrived in Brisbane aboard the Nairnshire on 24 Jun 1878. The Nairnshire departed from Greenock, Scotland on 21 March 1878 and arrived in Brisbane on 24 Jun 1878
- He came to Australia as a seaman upon the City of Berlin (not to be confused with SS City of Berlin) It a 1012 ton iron ship built by Connell in Glasgow and launched in 1864 for Smith & Sons. It London on 31 Jan 1874 and arrived in Port Adelaid on 17 Apr 1874. The City of Berlin departed Adelaide for San Francisco on 14 May, and there is a William Hardy deserts the ship in Adelaide, where he is arrested on May 30 and charged with with desertion and on 3 July he is 5 pounds or in default six weeks imprisonment. If that is the case he would have been 19 at the time, and would have been free to make his own way after serving out his fine.
The first information available about William in Australia is his marriage in 1881 to Margaret Perry Dilley (b. 1859 - 1924) daughter of Frederick Dilley and Elizabeth Perry.
William appears on the Electoral roll for Bundamba, QLD in 1882, and then were in Borehole, Ipswich, QLD in 1885. H Bennett attended Bundamba School in 1885 (from the Bundamba School Records) and his father is noted as a pitman - so by this time William Sn was working in the mines.