Hannah Terry Rouse née Hipkins

Hannah Terry Rouse 1819-1907


Hannah Terry Rouse, nee Hipkins (1819-1907) was born in Tipton, Staffordshire, England, daughter of Stephen and Nancy Hipkins, She came to New South Wales in 1837 with her aunt and namesake Hannah Terry, widow of John Swan Terry and sister-in-law of well-known Sydney wealthy emancipist Samuel Terry. Hannah Hipkins met her future husband Edwin Rouse, third son of Richard and Elizabeth Rouse of Rouse Hill, at the Terry family property Box Hill, near Windsor, the home of Edwin’s sister Eleanor Terry. They married in 1840 and lived for the first fifteen years of their marriage on the Rouse family property . By the time this photograph was taken, probably in late 1855, Edwin and Hannah Rouse and their children had come to live at Rouse Hill, Edwin having taken responsibility for the estate following his father's death. In her long life Hannah travelled to Australia and back to England four times, spending more and more time in England. She died at Brighton, Sussex, in 1907.

She was the mother of Emma Rouse .

Emma Rouse (1843-1928), was the second child of Edwin Rouse (1806-1862) and his wife Hannah Hipkins (1819-1907) and was a granddaughter of Richard and Elizabeth Rouse of Rouse Hill in the Parramatta district of New South Wales.
She was born at the Rouse family property Guntawang near Mudgee but by the time this photograph was taken, probably in late 1855, Edwin and Hannah Rouse and their children had come to live at Rouse Hill, Edwin having taken responsibility for the property following his father's death. In 1871 Emma married Lieutenant Dudley Davison Batty, an English army officer, in London. They had met on board the sailing ship Sobraon in 1869, when Emma and her mother, brother Edwin and sister Lizzie were returning from a European trip and Dudley Batty was making a sea voyage for the sake of his health.

Hannah Rouse’s cameo ring
This cameo ring is probably a travel souvenir. It belonged to Hannah Terry Rouse (1819-1907), the widow of Edwin Rouse (1806-1862) of Rouse Hill House and it is likely that she bought it during her ‘Grand Tour’ of Europe in 1868-1869, when she was accompanied by two of her daughters and her younger son, Edwin Stephen Rouse. Hannah owned a copy of John Murray’s Handbook to Rome and its Environs which she bought while staying at the Hotel d’Angleterre in Rome in February 1869. This guidebook provided advice on where to buy antiquities, mosaics and cameos. Cameo jewellery was a fashionable memento of a trip to Italy and immensely popular during the reign of Queen Victoria. They often depicted subjects drawn from ancient Rome, such subjects being thought to connote the wearer’s connoisseurship, taste, and classical learning. Hannah’s ring features a profile of the Roman Emperor Augustus. It is made of moulded white glass adhered to a dark glass ground and is set in a twisted gold rope frame. Hannah is wearing it in a photograph taken in the studio of London photographers Elliott & Fry, perhaps taken shortly before her return to Australia.

Hannah Rouse’s onyx brooch


There are several mysteries about this elegant enamelled gold brooch, beginning with its date and original owner. It is believed to have belonged to Hannah Terry Rouse, nee Hipkins (1819-1907) of Rouse Hill House, and to have been acquired following the death of her husband Edwin Rouse in 1862. The brooch, 2.5cm in diameter, certainly has the appearance of a mourning brooch, with a central onyx encircled with a band of black enamel set with seed pearls, denoting tears. The pearls are also ‘colourless’ and therefore appropriate for mourning but the onyx is polished to reveal a narrow band of white in the black and the combination of white and black was fashionable in Victorian times, representing a form of elegant reticence for married women of a certain age. Mourning brooches of this kind would usually have a glass back containing a lock of the loved one’s hair. There is no such compartment on this brooch but there is evidence that the back has been remade and the safety pin is definitely a later addition. Perhaps the original back was replaced because the glass had broken?

DEATH OF MRS ROUSE



News has come to Sydney of the


death, at Brighton, England, on the
4th instant, of Mrs Hannah T. Rouse,
a very old colonist, at the age of 87
years. She was the widow of the late
Mr Edwin Rouse, of Rouse Hill and
Guntawang. Her eldest son, Mr Ric-
hard Rouse, of Guntawang, died three
years ago. Three daughters and one
son survive her—namely, Mrs Dudley
Batty (Brighton), Mrs Frederick
Campbell (Kent), Mrs A. A. Dangar
(Baroona, Singloton), and Mr Edwin
S. Rouse (Rouse Hill).
watercolour

family groups her children
Rouse, Edwin Stephen, 1849-1931.
Rouse, Elizabeth (Lizzie), 1845-1931.
Rouse, Mary Phoebe, 1847-1931.
Rouse, Emma, 1843-1928.
Rouse, Richard, 1842-1903.