Wednesday, March 15, 2023

Sir Edmund Hilary

This week we saw Commonwealth Memorial Day so I thought I would have a little look and see if I had any memorable family members who had done something for the Commonwealth.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered I was a distant relative of Sir Edmund Hillary who conquered Everest on the day of the queen's coronation.  Why am I ever surprised by this family tree!

Sir Edmund Percival Hillary KG ONZ KBE (20 July 1919 – 11 January 2008) was a New Zealand mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropist. On 29 May 1953, Hillary and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers confirmed to have reached the summit of Mount Everest. 


We start off with the Bainbridge family, in particular Robert Bainbridge who would marry Dorothy Carrott.  It is her family that we meet Andrew Kirkley who was a riveter in the Sunderland shipyards.  Sadly both he and his wife would die of pneumonia in 1918.  Although I don't have any definite proof there was the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918.  Andrew's wife's name was Elizabeth Edgar and the Edgar family and their extended relatives the Riddles would move to New Zealand in 1862.  They were a family of shepherds.


The Riddle family had some quite interesting family members. The first one we meet is Sir John Riddle who was born in 1637 and he was the MP for Roxboroughshire.  

His brother Archibald Riddle who was born in 1635 was a Covenanter.  Covenanters (Scottish Gaelic: Cùmhnantaich) were members of a 17th-century Scottish religious and political movement, who supported a Presbyterian Church of Scotland and the primacy of its leaders in religious affairs. The name is derived from covenant, a biblical term for a bond or agreement with God.  The origins of the movement lay in disputes with James VI and his son Charles I over the structure and the doctrine of the church.  He was imprisoned on the Bush Rock and transported from Leith to New Jersey on the Henry and Francis of Newcastle arriving in America in 1685.  Many years later on his journey back to Scotland he would be captured by the French and imprisoned in Nantes.


It is through the Riddle family that we meet Janet Riggs, her daughter would marry John Row and he was a Reformation Minister who helped compile the First Confession of Faith with John Knox.


When we eventually get to Sir Edmund Hillary I discovered his father, also called Edmund, was a very interesting gentleman.  He was born in 1836 and sadly died in 1928 in hospital after having surgery under his spinal anesthetic for an inguinal hernia.  In his youth he appeared before Stalybridge Petty Court Sessions for stealing 100 weight of iron and received one month's hard labour.  He would emigrate to New Zealand in the mid-19th century.


It is Sir Edmund Hillary's brother Rex Hillary who was born in 1920 that connects him to my distant relative and her name is Winifred Billkey.  Winifred's relative Robert Bilkey had arrived in New Zealand on board the ship Bombay in 1865.
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