Vincent, Frank or perhaps Francis I F. Vincent, 4 St. James's Barton, Bristol; Vincent I. Bristol directories of the late 1850s list various tradesmen named Vincent, none recorded as resident at the St. James's Barton address. The only Vincent with initial "F" is Francis Vincent, list in 1856 (also later) as owner or manager of a lodging-house, 48 College Street.
The contributor is a well-educated Englishman. According to his H.W. articles, he went ot the Port Phillip district of Australia "many years ago, when Australia was little more than a vast sheep-walk"; "unwilling to settle prematurely," he took a tour from one station to another in what later became Victoria, having letters of introduction to several squatters. Later he settled at Gundagai, on the Murrumbidgee River, New South Wales, and brought his wife "up from Sydney." During one of his years of residence at Gundagai – in the late evening and the night of the last day of March – occurred a flood that inundated the entire Gundagai valley and resulted in the loss of "several lives." There is record, from 1844 to 1852 (after which date the Gundagai settlement was moved to a higher site) of several floods in that district. The flood that the writer tells of was not the flood of 1852 – the "great flood", which occurred in June and resulted in the loss of more than a hundred lives (Gormly, Exploration and Settlement in Australia, pp. 196–98, et passim); but it could have been any one of the intervening floods that may have occurred at the end of March. Thus, the writer's account does not serve to establish the exact date of his Gundagai residence. The latest date that the writer mentions in connection with his residence in Australia is 1853, when he visited the gold fields of Victoria. He must have left Australia not later than the latter months of 1857. The Office Book records (with the Bristol address) payment for his first contribution as made Feb. 8, 1858.
In the conversations that the writer records in "The Waters Are Out" [XVII, 567–600. June 5, 1858], his wife addresses him as "Frank"; another person asks "if that was the residence of Mr. Frank," i.e., of the writer. His Christian name would thus appear to be Frank (or perhaps Francis).
Sands' Country Directory and Gazetteer of New South Wales for 1881–82, compiled by James Tingle, lists a Frank Vincent, newspaper proprietor of Uralla in the Gundagai district (information from Mitchell Library, Sydney). This may be the H.W. contributor.
The similarity of name and the connection with Bristol seem to indicate some relationship between the H.W. contributor and Francis Vincent, 1822–1884, born in Bristol, who emigrated to the U.S. by 1839 and became a Delaware newspaper proprietor. (Appleton).
Author: Anne Lohrli; © University of Toronto Press, 1971
