Author talk:Henry Butler Stoney
Sources edit
Biographical detail edit
- son of Richard Falkiner Stoney and Jane Butler http://www.thepeerage.com/p28141.htm (dead link)
Census edit
- 1851 Wales; Source Citation: Class: HO107; Piece: 2489; Folio: 473; Page: 2; GSU roll: 104249-104250
Name: Henry B Stoney, Lieut. Depot Paymaster; Student of Inner Temple; B.A.
Age: 34
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1817
Relation: Lieut Depot Bay My
Gender: Male
Where born: Portland, Tipperary, Ireland
Civil Parish or Township: Brecon St John the Evangelist
County/Island: Breconshire
Country: Wales
Registration district: Brecknock
Sub-registration district: Merthyr Cynog
ED, institution, or vessel: Barracks Brecon
Piece: 2489
Folio: 473
Page Number: 2
Household schedule number: 1
Household Members:
Name Age
Cecil Rivers 27
Henry B Stoney 34
Edward K V Arbuckle 21
George R Beadon 21
Edward W Bennett 27
George Clay 19
Henry F Uniacke 20
Thomas W Barrows 19
detail edit
Henry Butler Stoney was a captain in the 40th and 99th Regiments posted to Victoria and Tasmania during the 1840s and 1850s. He appears to have been Irish; the preface to Residence in Tasmania (1856) was written in Cork, Ireland and the Stoneys were a distinguished Irish family of scientists and engineers. One member of the family married William Fitzgerald, the Bishop of Cork and Cloyne (1857-1862). Also his novel, Reginald Mortimer (1857) was about the life of an Irish university graduate and army officer.
Stoney was promoted to a lieutenant in the 19th Foot Regiment in 1840 and captain in 1852 (The Times, 12 September 1840: 4; 29 May 1852:4) at which time he was on the unattached list. Segments of the 99th Regiment came to Tasmania in 1842 and the Regiment was located there from 1848 until its departure for England on 31 October 1855 which would explain Stoney's presence in Cork, Ireland in 1856. He returned to Melbourne as a member of the 40th Regiment in 1857-58 and was a member of the Royal Society of Victoria in those years
The 99th Regiment had been sent to New Zealand to engage the Maoris in 1845-46. It is not known if Stoney visited New Zealand at this point. It is more likely he did not come to Australia until the early 1850s as he was on the unattached list in 1852. Stoney could have visited New Zealand in April 1860 when four companies of the 40th regiment and two of the 12th were sent from Australia to New Plymouth, New Zealand as reinforcements during the Maori Taranaki rebellion. He wrote Taranaki: A Tale of the War; With a Description of the Province (1861). It is a novel describing the Maori war from official documents according to E. Morris Miller's Australian Literature from its Beginnings to 1935 (1940): 600.
(Source: Tom Gibson The Maori Wars: The British Army in New Zealand 1840-1972 (1974); W. B. Owen, 'Stoney, George Johnstone (1826-1911)', rev. James G. O'Hara, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, OUP, 2004).
Death edit
Registration Number Family Name Given Name(s) Date of Birth Age at Death
1894/3960 Stoney Henry Butler 78Y