Hereford & Worcester

Thomas Henry Chinner (Eric’s Dad) with his five sons.

The parents of Amos Chinner (the elder) kept the George and Dragon pub in the centre of Chacombe, in Northamptonshire, and he was born there in 1741.

He became a farmer and a game keeper and had seventeen children by two wives.

He was a prominent figure both in local church, and village life and was elected churchwarden at the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in Chacombe.

He was also a keen musician, having a 'baroque' violin which was handed down through the generations, and is at present in the hands of Betty Cameron at Poplars Farm, who became the Chinner family historian.

Amos Chinner (the younger) was named after his father.

He was born in 1783, and eventually became a yeoman farmer and butcher, owning and working more than fifty acres of land in and around Chacombe.

Amos had thirteen children and like his father was a prominent figure both in local church and village life.

Like his father too, he was a staunch Anglican, and was also elected Churchwarden at the Church of St.,Peter and St.,Paul in Chacombe, where he served in this capacity for several years.

To Australia

Although William Chinner and his brother Amos were both sons of Amos (the elder), Amos remained staunchly Anglican, like his father, while William left the Church of England to become a Baptist,

He moved to the nearby village of Middleton Cheney, where a thriving Baptist community existed and where, like Amos, he became a butcher.

William had three children, who all became pious Baptists and when he died in 1845, all three children Ann, Charles and John, decided to leave Britain and begin a new life in Australia.

Charles had seen one of the notices placed throughout Northamptonshire by George Fife Angas, who was also a Baptist and Head of the South Australia Company.

George Angas was trying recruit farmers, tradesmen and labourers, who were prepared to travel as Government assisted passengers to a new Baptist Colony, where they could farm and build on land around a town he had founded and which he called Angaston.

Charles Chinner decided to take up the challenge, and together with his brother John and his sister Annie, Charles joined a group of Baptists from Middleton Cheney, who set sail for South Australia (founded only nine years previously in 1836), in July 1845.

Tragedy

Eric in uniform, with his mother, Sarah Chinner.

Travelling under sail on a ship called the 'Templar', the voyage of more than 14,000 miles took 123 days.

The passage was a rough one, and with most of the group travelling in 'steerage', conditions were cramped and uncomfortable, with very little privacy.

It was a tragic crossing too, since John lost his two youngest children through whooping cough, and Charles' lost his wife Anne, only three weeks before their arriving in Adelaide.

For John, who had already been widowed twice, losing the two infant children of his second marriage was more than enough to shatter any dream of a new and happy life in Australia and, pausing only to see his oldest son George Williams Chinner in secure employment, John together with his daughter Annie, set sail once again for England, having spent just 130 days in Australia.

Having completed a round trip of some 30,000 miles, Annie remained in England until the death of her father in 1854, and returned to Australia aboard the 'Niger' in 1855, as Mrs Samuel Claridge.

Annie turned 19 while at sea on the 'Templar' and 20 shortly after her return to England, having spent almost eight months of that year at sea.

When she finally settled in Adelaide, Annie must surely have been one of the most travelled women of her time.

Goldfields

When John Chinner returned to England, the Chinner family name in Australia continued either through John's son, George Williams Chinner, or Charles' son, William, and each branch of the family seems to have gone its own way.

Charles and his descendants in Angaston, and George Williams and his descendants in Adelaide.

Charles and his older son William both worked as stonemasons until 1852, when William decided to seek his fortune in the goldfields of Victoria.

Sadly he had no luck in this regard, and returned to Angaston, where he continued working with his father for some time, before setting up his own business as a building contractor.

He later became a Deacon in the Baptist Church and developed an interest in gardening and horticulture.

William's son Thomas was born in 1857 and went on to develop his own successful drapery business.

Like William, he was a prominent member of the Baptist community and having developed an interest in local politics, Thomas became a councillor, and later the Mayor of Petersburgh South Australia, from 1899 until 1900.

To war

Lt. Eric Harding Chinner as a serving officer

Thomas's son Eric Harding Chinner was born in 1894, the fifth of six surviving children, five of whom were boys.

He was educated at Prince Alfred College in Adelaide, and became a bank clerk, before enlisting as a Lieutenant in the 32nd Battalion AIF [Australian Imperial Force] at the outbreak of World War One.

Like all his immediate family, Eric was a teetotaller, a committed Christian and a Baptist.

Eric fought in France at the Battle of Fromelles on 19 July 1916, where he was wounded in action and according to German records, later died as a prisoner of war.

Like many other men who died on that day, Eric's body was believed to have been placed in an unmarked mass grave behind the German front line.

Although his family searched for this grave for many years, and were told of its possible location by the historian CEW Bean, all official efforts to locate and recover missing men, appear to have ended in the late 1920s

Eric's final resting place lay undiscovered for more than 90 years, until the official search was re-opened in 2008, and 250 'unknown' men were recovered from an unmarked mass grave, at a place known as Pheasant Wood, in 2009.

Eric was finally identified through DNA profiling in May 2010, and has now been re-buried with full military honours.

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