C.B. Berryman family history

Wyalkatchem 20th July 1966 C.B. Berryman

A story must begin somewhere, and the best place for this one is on a windy day in Perth in 1886. Head down, holding on to her hat, Miss Connie Leake rounded a street corner & almost crashed into Mr. Thomas Lodge. They had met beefore, but suddenly Miss Leake felt that there was someone special, & so apparently did Mr. Lodge. They were married on the 15th September 1886, beginning a partnership that lasted until Thomas' death in 1938. Among letters received soon after the wedding was one from Tom's father which he did not bother to open until Connie insisted. It contained a cheque for their fares to England, & off they went to meet the munerous Lodges and introduce Connie to her new in-laws. She went ice skating for the first time & loved it, finding it easy after roller skating learned in Perth. Back in W.A. their first child, Helen Rose, my mother, was born in 1888, & in 1892 the three of them had another trip to England.

Sarah Constance Lodge was born in about 1861 (she hated to give her agi, & to inquisitive grandchildren always replied "as old as my tound & a little older than my teeth.") She was one of the seven daughters (plus 2 sons) of George Walpole Leake & Rose Ellen Gliddon, and was educated in Perth — for a time, I think, in the Cloisters, & later in Adelaide, from which city her mother had come. G.W.L. was an unpredictable character, given to saying odd things, like "Miss Smith, there's a hole in your stocking," "Oh, oh, Mr. Leake, where?" "Well, how else would you get it on?" Seeing a soldier, a reputed murderer & a doctor (?) walking along the street, he remarked "from battle, murder, & sudden death good Lord deliver us." When my grandmother was born & Sarah Constance was proposed as her name, he said that Sarah was after his dead mother's dea cat. She was known as Connie. Rose Ellen was an invalid for many years, & my grandmother resented the fact that two children were born after her health was gone. After her death G.W.L married at 60 add a girl forty years his junior, & died soon after. Most of his considerable estate was left to his widow & she & her yong daugter went to England to live. G.W.L.'s brother Sir Luke was childless, & after his death Lady Leake married Dr. Whaler, & willed all Luke's money to her own side of the family.

Thomas Soutter (SOUTTER) Lodge was the yongest son & 12th of the 13 children of Robert John Lodge & Mary Ann Soutter. R.J.L. was the son of the Rev. Oliver Lodge, a redoubtable cleric who had three wives and about 23 children, mostly sons. Oliver Lodge IV a London judge, made a project for himself of finding out about the Rev's descendants, & send my mother a family tree which is very interesting. T.S.L.'s cousin Frank Lodge has written a delightful account of his boyhood in Cornwall & has included gossip about his innumerable uncles. Ruth Lodge has his papers. T.S.L. lived in the Grove, Highgate, London, in a house which was still standing in 1922 — divided into flats, of which Robert Donat owned one. It is a great sadness to me that I did not ask him more about his boyhood — (he was born in 1851 or 1852, he thought the latter year) — as he had a good memory & loved to talk of the past. I know that his father was comfortably placed, & the younger members of the family lived in a top floor nursery, whence they came, washed & brushed, to see their parents in the evening before dinner. T.S.L. went to Clifton College near Bristol, & then to the U.S.A. not long after the Civil War & remembered the negroes marching & singing. He also went to India, where his brother was in the Army, & progressed from one