Overview

 

       A History of the Stephenson Family from the 19th Century.

 

 

The Story starts on familiar lines for most Anglo Indians, where did I come from ? what are the origin of my British surname ? with this in mind I decided to draw a line underneath it and try my best to answer it.
 To start with my Wife is of Yorkshire stock born and bred, my children are therefore half Anglo, my grandchildren are a quarter Anglo, their children will be one eighth Anglo, this will carry on till the Anglo is a dot on the horizon and history will have turned full circle with us finishing up where we started from ( in the main). On various occasions all current generations have been mistaken for - Spanish, Greek, Latin, Pure Indian, Arabic etc. The truth is my family tree is made up of  two distinct genes Indian and English, up to this time I have managed to trace the earliest member of my Anglo-Indian Family to 1800 and Mysorean ( Indo-Portuguese) to 1830. The term Anglo Indian is strictly speaking incorrect, as people from Portuguese, Dutch, German and French descent are also classed as Anglo Indian, the term Euro Indian would be more correct. The term Anglo Indian referring to people of mixed Indian descent was applied in 1911, before that Anglo Indians were Britons born in the UK but living in India, and people of mixed descent were referred to  rather derogatorily as Half Caste, Half and Half, etc. 

According to the records my British side were working for the East India Company as far back as I have gone, however as with most Anglo Indians, at some stage going even further back a European and a native of India would have started our Anglo-Indian line, considering that the English first came to India in 17th century this might have been quite a way back – or equally it could have been closer to the 19th century, at this stage I don’t know when. Genealogy is not an exact science and a lot of what I have traced has come from the British Library India Office Archives. The records were Spartan in the early years of the East India Company, and later on after independence in 1947 the records stop, therefore the very early records and the post WW2 records are a bit hit and miss.

The Portuguese were actually the first European power to come into contact with India commercially when Vasco de Gama sailed into Calicut in 1498. After that date, Portuguese ships would frequently return to Europe laden with spices and commodities that would fetch fabulous prices. Other European powers looked enviously at this stream of exotica coming from the Orient. Portugal managed to hold on to its preeminent position largely in part to the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494. This treaty had been created to divide the New Worlds between the Catholic countries of Portugal and Spain - so at this stage we can already see how Christianity began to take hold in India. In effect they had carved up these New Worlds with Spain receiving a monopoly of power in most of South America and Portugal in the Indies. Working together, the two Catholic countries were able to maintain an effective blockade of these new markets for the majority of the sixteenth century.  The Portuguese  built a port named São Tomé near the village of Mylapore in 1522. In the following year the legendary San Thome Church was built in honor of St Thomas the patron saint of India. Legend has it that St. Thomas travelled to south India from the Roman Empire in 52 A.D. spreading the word of god, he reached the place now known as St.Thomas Mount where some local people followed him, he hid in a cave which is now a shrine.  

Shrine of St.Thomas

 

                                               
                                                          An Early Print of the Church

                                  
                                   The Church is in well looked after by the parishioners

At the end of the 16th century, England and the Holland began to challenge Portugal’s monopoly of trade with Asia, forming private joint-stock companies to finance the voyages: the English (later British) East India Company, and the Dutch East India Company, which were chartered in 1600 and 1602 respectively …arrived after the Portuguese and set up for business in the area, however, this led to costly territorial battles.
The British East India Company realized it needed a proper foothold in India from which to sally forth on its brave mission of making money.
In 1608 the British chose Suryapur (the current city of Surat) in North West India as that foothold, but it soon became evident that they would need a location closer to the Malaccan Straits, through which most of their spice-laden ships needed to sail. The Company bought a small strip of land at what would become the city of Madras (now Chennai) in 1639 from Venkatapathy, the Nayak of Vandavasi, and immediately set about building a warehouse and, in 1640, Fort St. George. This project was under the management of Francis Day a Venturer for the East India Company.

 

                                              

The original Fort was only a stockade, but over time it grew rapidly into an extensive system of fortifications surrounding a collection of public and private buildings known in later times as the White Town, in the early days the whole area was known simply as the English fort.

 

An accurate depiction of what the first landing must have looked like

  Modern aerial view of the fort now

A Panorama of the developing fort in 1860

 

An attack on San Thome by the Dutch in the 1660s compelled the Portuguese inhabitants to turn to the English at Madras for protection, and thus the two settlements began to merge, many Britons taking “Portuguese” wives, who were probably Indo-Portuguese, or Indian Christians converts with Portuguese last names, also the two European religions existed side by side in harmony a situation which has prevailed over the centuries, the early churches used bribery in the form of food, clothing, of other dangling carrots to attract new converts to swell their congregations, they also attracted large numbers of Tamils and other South Indians to their faith, this is evident all over South India.

 


      The Madras Presidency

In the early 1700s, the Company had acquired several villages north and west of Madras, as well as a strip of territory extending along what is now Anna Salai, toward Saint Thomas Mount. India itself was a scarcely populated country before its Independence, Madras was no exception, the few densely populated villages around it were Egmore, Triplicane and Vepery.


Early layout of the Madras colony

Early on, some Englishmen began to build pavilions and gardens in these outlying areas – retreats to which they could run to escape the heat and brackish water of the Fort. At this time the Portuguese and British lived side by side with the Telugus, Tamils, Muslims, Jews, Armenians and other groups who came from the north, the area became a magnet for trade and commerce.

The Armenian Church

Old Print

 

Zion Church at Anna Salai

 

Later the Portuguese went on to build famous churches like the Little Mount Church in 1551, St Mary’s Church, and Luz Church during the early part of the 17th century, the Portuguese flourished their trade and social activities for almost 150 years since the 16th century. However they lost their stronghold on the city after the arrival of the Dutch in 1612. Nearby Pulicat was the capital of the Dutch East India company. It hadn't escaped the notice of the British that the Portuguese were building these churches, so in reply they invited the Scottish missionaries to come and spread the Anglican faith to ensure that Madras didn't become another Goa.    

 

 

 

 

Though Dutch and British arrived almost at the same time, the British emerged victorious amongst all during the 18th Century.

 

 

The English had different ideas, whilst the French, and Dutch wished only to trade with India, the Portuguese and English sought to colonise India and add it to their Empires, hence they invested heavily in building and infrastructure programs. During the 17th and 18th centuries Chennai and Goa flourished. Fort St George was constructed during 1640, what you see today is an entire British town started from scratch, as opposed to other major cities in India which were cities before the British came.

 

The Early Fort is beginning to take shape


Parade Ground with a view of St.Marys.



Robert Clive was married here, his record can be seen in the Church.


 St Marys now

 The original font

 

 

 

 

In 1746 there was a siege of a more serious sort. England and France were at war in Europe, and suddenly a squadron of French ships appeared off Fort St. George. After a week’s siege, the English merchants capitulated, it's worth noting that the East India Co. had no standing army at this time, but the treaty of  Aux–la-Chappelle  in 1748 which ended the European war, saw Madras restored to the Company.

 

 

                     

                         the Governor of Madras, Nicholas Morse surrenders to General La Bourdonnais

                           

                               Fort St.George now  

                              

                                

                                

                                 

                                   

St. Andrew’s Church ( know as the Kirk) in Egmore, was built to serve the Scottish community in Chennai. Its design was modelled on St. Martin-in-the-Fields church in London. Building started 6 April 1818 and the church was consecrated in 1821.

 

St. Andrews now

 

Colony Infrastructure 

 Marking the initial days of the railways in the Indian Subcontinent, the Madras Railway Company began to network South India in 1856. The first station was built at Royapuram, which remained the main station at that time. Expansion of the Madras Railways network, particularly the completion of the Madras–Vyasarpadi line,  called for a second station in Madras, resulting in Madras Central coming into being in 1874

 

1854 sketch of the first station

The later building from 1856
 

 

 

A new Station at Madras

 

 A very old picture of Madras

 

 St. Thomas Mount

 

St Thomas’ Mount is a small hillock situated eight miles south-west of Madras. From 1774 it was the headquarters of the Madras Artillery, this is still a large army area. This part of Madras was populated predominantly  by Anglo-Indians, wishing to get away from the hubbub of central Madras. The St. Thomas Garrison Church is located at the bottom of St Thomas Mount.

 

 

 

The British established a cantonment at Pallavaram, supplementary to the one at St. Thomas Mount, the strength of the native regiments stood at 4000 men between 1834-8.

Original Church

 

The New Church

 

 The Garrison Church was built by the British government at the request of the army officers in the area in 1830; There were British troops housed in various places nearby such as Pallavaram, and St. Thomas Mount, the building was completed in 1827, but was opened only in 1830, British civil and military officers of Mount Cantonment furnished the church.
 

The Church now

The Barracks

 

 

 

2 Views of Mount Road

 

 

 

 

 

The Garrison is visible at the top.

George Town - Ft. St. George

The Black town area was re-named George Town in 1911. This Black Town, however, was the second. The first was the Indian town that developed just north of Fort St. George, on what is the High Court-Law College campus. The use Comte de Lally’s French troops made of the buildings in this settlement during his siege of the Fort in 1746-4 led the English, once they had blunted the French threat, to demolish this first Indian settlement and create an esplanade and, beyond it a new planned Black Town. The name Blacktown came about not because of ethnic difference ( although most natives did live there and Europeans lived in Whitetown ) Whitetown had electricity at a very early stage, leaving Blacktown dark and unlit, and the names were used as a point of reference.

 

This is a view of a street in the European section of Georgetown.

 

 

As Madras grew Georgetown ( black town ) became the commercial centre of the city, much the same as London’s Docklands started to change in the close of the 20th century.

 

 

 

Parrys Corner is a neighbourhood in Georgetown, the area has many popular Anglo-Indian schools like St. Mary’s and St. Columban’s. The Anderson Church at Parrys Corner is the oldest and most prominent church in the region, built in 1845 by Scottish missionaries of the Free Church of Scotland .

 

 The Anderson Church, Parrys Corner now

Madras Law Courts 1920's

Parrys now showing the High Court

 

 

St. Mark’s Church is a church in the neighbourhood of Georgetown, the construction of the church was commenced by John Goldingham an earlier Scottish Missionary in 1799 and completed in 1800.

 

 

Washermanpet

Washermanpet is located in the northern part of Chennai, north of Parrys corner and adjacent to Royapuram. The name comes from the fact that it used to be the washermen’s enclave in Chennai, where many of the city’s dhobi ghats used to be located. Washermanpet acted as the textile business hub of Chennai, and is now a big clothing production and retail area.

Typical Dyers from the area
 

 Washermanpet now

 

Royapuram

Royapuram derives its name from “Rayar Puram” meaning St Peter’s town. The famous St Peter’s church was built in the early 19th century by the Christian fishing community which migrated from the village of Chepauk.

 

 

 

Areas where the Stephenson family lived.

 

 

The areas where our family now live

 

 

 

    The Native Infantry

17^th /33^rd Native Infantry
 

After the French attack on Ft. St. George in 1746 the East India Co. attained permission from the crown to raise a private army, this led to the formation of the East India Army, and the start of careers in the east for military men, who saw an opportunity to expand their purses and their standing in British society.
  
 General George Wahab was born in 1752 in Balbriggan Ireland, he Joined the Honourable East India Company as a cadet in 1769, on the 1st January 1800 at Guntoor He established the 1st Battalion 17th Regiment, Madras Native Infantry – renamed the 33rd Madras Native Infantry in 1824, It was composed mostly of Muslims, Tamils and Telugus (Dravidians), there were also Anglo Indians in the ranks who generally held non commissioned roles, they acted as intermediaries between the officers and the men, George Wahab attained the rank of General in 1808 and was present at the siege of Seringapatam ( see the Mangalorians chapter ), he died while in command of the Guntoor Division in the same year aged 55.

 

 

The 17th native infantry were stationed at Bandar Fort, Masulipatam, they had been moved there from Vellore in 1795 because Vellore was considered too inhospitable. John William Stephenson was in service there at that time. John had married Elizabeth Brookman in 1822 and by 1830 had been  transferred to St Thomas Mount Garrison.

Vellore now

 

The abandoned Ft. Bandar before it was demolished
 

By the 1860’s the total population of the Masulipatam area was around 60,000, then on 1st November in the darkness of the night, a giant tidal wave came in, 13 feet high and going inland some 7 miles killing more than thirty thousand people; almost half of the population of that area. St. John’s Church ( where John & Elizabeth were Married in 1822 ) was a home for many British tombs and was now completely destroyed, for three days the authorities were involved in the sole task of cremating, burying the putrefying bodies whichever way they could as the fears of epidemics loomed large. The fort was then left in the hands of the Native Force to keep running till a Cyclone in 1864 saw the end of the fort as a bastion and it was abandoned altogether. A few crumbling walls are all that is left of the fort now.

 

                               

                               A Newspaper sketch of the Native Infantry at that time

                               St. Thomas Mount Garrison


 

                         

         Kolar Gold Fields

The KGF was another well known Anglo-Indian enclave – who exactly are Anglo-Indians? They are Indian-born Europeans brought up in India, the children of mixed marriages also fall into this category. You would find them at railway colonies, postal colonies and places like KGF where the enterprise was owned and run by the English. There are still many Anglo-Indians living there and they all recall the old days with considerable fondness. It was a life of Saturday dances, Christmas parties and things quintessentially British with an Indian twist. The township in its heyday was smart and had good schools, the Europeans built a good golf course & Gymkhana ground together with its clubhouse, and KGF boasted one of the best hospitals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The dichotomy in the lifestyle and privileges between the management, particularly the English and the Anglo-Indians, and the local workforce could not be more evident.

 

 

Kolar Gold Fields ( known as KGF ) is a mining region in the Kolar District of Karnataka state, Robertsonpet was the headquarters for the Kolar Gold Fields. It includes the township of the same name, some 45 miles East of Bangalore and about 160 miles west of Madras, The town was known for gold mining for well over a century, which was eventually closed in 2001 due to low-level of gold production.

1895 view of the mining area

 Nandydroog mine 1895

Taylors Shaft 1895

Robertsonpet 1930's
 

 Robertsonpet now
 

Historically in about the second century the Gangas founded Kolar which is much older than Bangalore. In 1768 there were a series of wars with the local rulers, Kolar came under British rule briefly till 1770, it then passed back again to Maratha rule and then to Hyder Ali in 1779. In 1791 Lord Cornwallis conquered Kolar, before passing it back to Mysore under the peace treaty of 1792 and Kolar has been part of the Mysore State since that time. The tradition of mining gold at Kolar started at least as early as the first millennium BC with linkages to the Indus Valley civilisation, Golden objects found in Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro have been traced to KGF.  Pliny the Roman historian who passed in this area in 77 AD  made reference to the gold and silver mines.

 

 

In later years John Warren a young East India army captain (and later Lieutenant Colonel with Her Majesty’s 33rd regiment of foot) While working as a surveyor in the Great Trigonometrical Survey in 1802  for the East India Company while surveying the region near Malur, heard about gold deposits and examined the old mines in the Kolar region that had been abandoned as being too low in yield, he rediscovered the ancient gold workings and the previous diggings done by Tipu Sultan’s miners a century earlier, however no further digging were done for the mining of gold, as they thought it would be fruitless.

In the 1850s’ an Irish soldier named Michael Lavelle recuperating in the salubrious Bangalore Cantonment after fighting the Maori war in New Zealand, ( Lavelle road in Bangalore is named after him ) heard of these “native mines” around Kolar and decided to investigate. He found abandoned pits that sometimes went down to about 250ft and more. He even found foot niches in the mud walls and some ancient mining equipment, there were signs of the wood fires that the miners had used to heat the walls of the pits, obviously, even the early miners, having exploited the pits to the limit of their technological capacity, must have declared the mines dead and left.  Lavelle having found nothing and not having the money to carry on but convinced there was still gold to be found sold his rights and concessions to Major General G. Beresford in 1877.

 

 

Beresford formed a syndicate known as the Kolar Concessionaries which took up the matter in earnest, and gradually acquired most of the area now known as the Kolar Gold Fields and floated a private limited company called The Mysore Mine Company believing that Lavelle was right that there was gold in the ground.

 

 

In 1880 The Mysore Mine Company hired the British engineering firm, John Taylor and Sons, flush with its success in the gold mines of Africa. A last-ditch effort was made in 1883 to find gold and lo and behold!  they struck lucky, the veins were so rich and extensive that the consortium decided to sink four shafts, those were plush years and large-scale mining started in the area, everyone now wanted a finger in the pie including the Mysore government, its exchequer considerably fattened by royalties from gold mining and eager to please the British prospectors they were happy when the British agreed to pay extra royalty, in return for which they were allowed to directly ship out of the country all the gold that they mined. Champion reef back then was dominated by British foremen miners, Reginald Gregory was the first engineering miner who started the mining project at Champion Reef for Taylor & Sons.

 

 

However there were teething problems, The Gold Fields lay in the middle of rocky, non arable unpopulated land.

 

 

According to a local legend, Kolar was named after a herdsman who created his own little kingdom in this hostile land after he discovered surface gold during the reign of the Colas ( 300 B.C – 170 A.D.). But by the late 1800’s there was no sign of that easy to reach gold and there was no local population to speak of but the mines needed men, plenty of them, for mining was a labour-intensive and dangerous job, The locals were reluctant to give up their traditional occupations and enter this profession, even though the British were willing to offer them special incentives like housing, schooling, health care and enhanced pay packets. And so, finally, the mines attracted only the desperately poor social and economic outcasts from neighbouring areas who had nothing to lose. They were the drifters, who in those early days drifted in and out when they found the going too tough.

Though the Gold Fields lay in the Mysore maharaja’s territory, they were on the border with the erstwhile Madras Presidency. The migrant labour came in essentially from neighbouring Anglo-Indian and Tamil-speaking areas, these people were from the North and South Arcot districts of Tamil Nadu and Chittoor, Madhanapalli and the Ananthapur districts of Andhra Pradesh It was an ideal situation as far as the British were concerned and they exploited it as well as they could. A British journalist visiting KGF in the 1930s was eloquent about the “modern” and progressive township, It also had a sizeable Anglo-Indian Population who worked in the various mines in different capacities. The ‘natives’ living in the ‘coolie lines’ serviced the mines as well as the British township.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By the end of the nineteenth century, a brand new British colonial town was in place, complete with sprawling bungalows, clubhouses and gymkhanas’, KGF was known as “Little England” by the British, due to its more temperate weather and a landscape more similar to Britain’s.

 

 

Gold production peaked between 1900 and 1910, the grade quality of the ore averaged at nearly 30 grammes per tonne (GPT) In some years it even peaked to 40GPT. In those ten years, over 170,000kg of gold was extracted. In the 1920s, when the mining industry was at its peak, KGF occupied an area of 30 square miles and went down as far as 17,000  feet  making it  the deepest mining shaft in Asia. A 1928 health report says there were between 4 to 6 native families living in each of these two-roomed huts provided by the company, very little had changed for the miners over the years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The miners worked in the cavernous underground passages, wearing flimsy hats made of wicker baskets and carrying oil lamps to light their way, where temperatures often touched 48C – 120f, It was literally like working in hell, Over the years, however, things improved. The shafts even became air-conditioned. Though miners continued to go down to the bowels of the earth in precarious-looking ‘cages’, they were now equipped with good helmets and torches.

 

 

 

The Indian independence movement passed the mining town by, until the mines were nationalised in 1956, the British continued to send their quota of gold ‘home’ every month. By the time the government of the then Mysore state took over these depleted “holes in the ground”, the GPT had come down to less than 10. The town changed almost overnight, The British abruptly left and the Indian inheritors slid effortlessly into the social structure, business went on as usual, The mines were depleted, but they still yielded a little gold, retrenchment and closure were just threatening words that were bandied about by the men.

The Abandoned mines now





The remains of one of the Workshops now

 

 KGF town in the 60's

 

 

 

    Abandoned in a time warp

 

 

     Still used as a venue though the crowds are much smaller now

 

 

Victory Stores now – it use to be a hive of activity for Anglo Indians

 

 

 dilapidated and unused now

 

 

 

The population during the 1950’s was around 90,000. Of these, 24,000 were employed at the mines, of these only 400  were European and another 400 were Anglo-Indian mostly descendants of the English mine supervisors but not entirely, the rest were native people. In the census of 1901, Tamil people constituted 61% of the population of KGF,  in 1921 it was 58%, and in 1971 it stood at 81%. Champion reef (  it gets its name from a British officer called Champion ) had many schools, built during the colonial times including St. Joseph’s and St. Mary’s Schools.

 

                                

 

 

KGF Anglo Indians were predominantly Catholic and St Sebastian’s was built in 1899 making it the oldest Catholic church in KGF.

 

 

In 1901 an English Primary School St. Mary’s was established by John Taylor and Sons at the Nandydroog Mine, for providing education to the children of British and European workers of the company, It came to be  known as the Kolar Gold Fields School Oorigaum, and was later upgraded to Middle School and then to High School. A Boys Tamil school was also established in the same St. Mary’s Church compound. Funding from 1927 was provided by the Mysore Government. However this school was co-educational only up to Primary School level, with girls being excluded after that. To meet the educational requirements of girls in KGF the Sisters of St. Joseph of Tarbes in 1904 established two schools, an English School for Europeans  and Anglo Indians with 22 girls, and a Tamil School with 7 girls. The school operated in the compound of St. Mary’s Church Champion Reef, with Sister Teresa serving as Head Mistress for both schools. St. Mary’s School was moved to Andersonpet and renamed St. Theresa’s School after a rock blast incident In 1933. Another rock blast in 1952 caused severe damage to the area making St Marys Church unserviceable, the new church of “Our Lady of Victories” was built next to the ruins of the old Church.