Mrs Caroline Doe

A fuzzy photo, an obvious copy from a previous version, tells little of this lady, my great grandmother, Caroline Byron. Her life was short, only 43 years, but it was a hard one. Caroline was born in Launceston, the eldest child of Caroline (nee Walker) and John Byron. One of the big mysteries of my research has been the disappearance of John Byron. Three children were born of this union, then John disappeared, just went ............. I have checked every record imaginable but the difficulty is that the name John Byron was used by a few other people, one of them the poet who seems to have hogged the limelight as far as John Byrons go. One thing seems to crop up when distant relatives are asked for any clues. Everyone associates him with the sea. He was in the Navy (did we have one in 1858?). He was a sea captain. He went away to sea and kept other women in other places. John Byron was obviously educated. He confidently signed his name on his marriage certificate but on the birth records of his three children he is listed as a labourer - no mention of the sea. However, young Caroline began her life living at Robin Hood Wells on the banks of the Don River in Northern Tasmania, where her father worked at Don Sawmills. Possibly he worked on the ships which plied the timber trade along the coast and across Bass Strait. Caroline was not to know him for long. By the time she was three or four years old, he was gone. Caroline gained a new father, Frederick Bishop and a brother Henry, but before she could blink, her new father was dead. Ten years later, father number three, George Smith arrived and three more children were added to the family. By this time, Caroline would have been old enough to be thinking about going out to work. In 1878, she became the wife of Ephraim Doe the younger. Together they made a home at Paradise, but how much paradise was it for her? Caroline shows no more expression than the Mona Lisa. It is hard to tell what she was thinking.