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Archiver > INDIA > 2001-11 > 1005080093


From: alfred gabb <>
Subject: [India-L] Reintroductionn
Date: Tue, 06 Nov 2001 20:54:53 +0000


Hullo again. For those who do not know me, my forbears mostly went out to
India from Ireland and England in the 19th century in the British & EIC
armies and in the engineering side of the GIP railway in the Bombay
Presidency. The family returned to England after Indian independence, where
I became a Civil Engineer and writer.

Can anyone please advise me on the following:-

1. Was St Mary's Church in Poona, Bombay Presidency RC or C of E?

2. Was there a St Mary's Orphanage or Asylum in Poona in the 19th century
for European or Anglo-Indian children? Were there any other orphanages in
Poona/Kirkee then, either military or civil for European or Anglo-Indian
children?

3. Was the Garrison Church in cantonments used only by the military, or was
it a civil church, with special services at particular ones designated for
military church parades only? What were these in Poona and Kirkee?

A paternal great grandfather of mine, one David Hayter, a hospital steward
in the 1st Bombay Fusiliers married Margaret Wainwright in 1853, in Poona in
the Diocese of Bombay, but the photostat of the register entry I have from
the OIOC does not mention the name of the church. Margaret was a minor at
the time. A chaplain officiated. Their daughter my grandmother was
subsequently baptised in St Mary's Church, Poona, hence the questions above.
She subsequently married in a Baptist Church in Bombay.

A maternal great grandfather of mine John Callaghan, a RC, took his
discharge in Kirkee in 1888 from the Royal Horse Artillery aged about about
46 years. He died after 1898, when he appeared as Godfather at my mother's
batism, but I could not trace his burial, nor that of his wife Mary in OIOC
Ecclesiastical register, nor in either St Patrick's RC Cathedral, Poona, or
St Ignatius RC Church, Kirkee.

Alfred Gabb










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