Mary Craig Atkinson
ca. 1848 — 7 October 1893
Mary Craig Atkinson (1‑49‑16)
Mary Cochrane was the third daughter of Thomas Cochrane, a ploughman, who married Agatha Butter in Edinburgh in 1844. Seven children were born to the family in Dundee. On the 12th of January 1856 Mary arrived with her family in Queensland. Her father, Thomas, ran a grocery store in Fortescue Street, Spring Hill. Five more children were born in Brisbane.
Mary Cochrane married merchant Robert Jackson Craig in 1865. He and his bothers-in-law Samuel and William Cochrane and their families travelled north to the new port of Cairns. By March 1877, the men had established themselves as merchants at Smithfield.
On Boxing Day 1877, Robert was tragically murdered by the owner of the Bee Hive Hotel, William Smith, who then took his own life. Smith's hotel was opposite Robert's store. Robert had asked Bill Smith to settle his outstanding account and refused him further credit until the debt was paid. About 2 o'clock in the afternoon, Bill Smith called Robert Craig over to 'settle' his account. Afterwards gunshots were heard and Robert ran into the street clutching his chest shouting "Murder! Murder!" William Cochrane was working behind the counter of their store and ran outside when he heard the shots fired. He saw Bill Smith standing on the verandah of his hotel with the revolver still in his hand. William towards Bill who quickly turned the revolver on himself. Robert Craig died in his brother-in-law's arms. He was just 34 years old. Robert was the first burial in the Cairns Cemetery on the Esplanade.
The loss of two well-respected citizens stunned the whole community of Smithfield. Robert and Bill Smith had always been the best of friends. The town of Smithfield had been named after Bill Smith, who had hacked a track through the jungle to the Hodgkinson Goldfields in 1876.
Mary was in Brisbane at the time of Robert's tragic death, expecting their sixth child. A son was born the following July, but only lived two months. Two more of their sons had also died in infancy. She did not remarry until nine years later. Although Robert's life insurance payments had lapsed, the Australian Mutual Provident Society made a gift of £400 to Mary so she was secure financially.
Life was not uneventful, however. Her son Fred was only four when his father died and would have had little memory of him, but perhaps family stories of Cairns stirred his curiosity. An item in the Cairns Courier on the 13th of May 1881 reports that Fred ran away, boarded the Leichhardt on route to Cairns, was apprehended by the police at Rockhampton and returned to Brisbane. This happened just before his eighth birthday.
In 1886 Mary married Paul Cole Atkinson, a widower with five children. By this time Mary's three surviving children were teenagers. She had two more children, Pauline and Ruby, making a total of seven children for her to care for. However, fate was not kind to Mary. All she had been through obviously affected her health and she died just seven years later in October 1893 at the early age of 45. Ruby was just five years old. A series of housekeepers raised Mary's children until Paul Atkinson married for the third time in 1898 to Eliza Hendren. Mary is buried in the Atkinson family grave.
Acknowledgement
This story was contributed by June Vickers.