Obituaries Australia

The death is announced of Mrs. Mary Jull Ham at the ripe age of 76. She was a colonist of fifty-three years, forty-one of which were spent in Queensland. Mrs. Ham came to Australia in 1850 with her parents and family. She was the eldest child of John Collings, of West Mailing, Kent, England. Mr. Collings settled in Hawthorn, Victoria, and the Augustine Church, which recently celebrated its 60th anniversary, was originally founded by his giving a property and building for Baptist services. In this way he followed up the benevolences which marked his life in the old country, where he built a Baptist chapel and carried on a circulating library in his own home for the benefit of his neighbours.

Mrs. Ham was married in 1861. Her husband, Thomas Ham (eldest son of the Rev. John Ham, Baptist minister, Sydney), was the publisher of Ham's Magazine, the first in Australia. He was also the first geographer in Australia, compiling maps for the Government of New South Wales, and had the contract (in 1849) for engraving and printing the first Victorian stamps. Mr. Ham was engraver and lithographer to the colonial and English banks, and the Government of Victoria.

In 1861 Mr. Ham came to Queensland, and commenced the practice of his profession as engraver and lithographer, with a photographic branch attached; he also started sugar-growing on the Albert River. He afterwards accepted the position of engraver and lithographer to the Government. Mrs. Ham joined her husband in Brisbane in 1862, and although she never lost her love for England and English things, she preferred Queensland to Victoria. She was a great reader, and interested in all questions of the day, was passionately fond of music and of flowers, and almost to the last spent much time in her garden; for she loved the common things which all may share—sunlight, and dewdrop, grass, and stars, and sea. Mrs. Ham passed quietly away after three months' illness at her late residence, Narangba, on Saturday last, and was buried at North Pine Cemetery, Rev. W. D. Meiklejohn officiating. Seven children survive her, some of whom are married.