c. 1864, Photograph, B 24992
Martha Yeates, nee Barr, who was born in 1796 at Henwick Hall England, died in Adelaide in 1864 and is buried in the West Terrace Cemetery. Her brother was Marcus Barr a highly decorated military man who was killed in action in India by a cannonball. She married John Luther Yeates Esq. in 1820, when she was 24, and he was 54, and twice a widower with 5 children. They had six hildren with her, five of whom survived infancy. In 1838, aged 72, having been a solicitor in London, he took the family to Adelaide, landing on 22 January 1839, and died of dysentry on 26 April. She set up a primary school in Rundle Street, "for young ladies and young gentleman under nine", with herself as teacher. She sent her 14 year old son to work, and she married off her 16 year old daughter to a wealthy land developer twice her age, John Richardson. They had 18 children, of which 11 survived to adulthood, and lived to 88. Martha Yeates remarried in 1842 to William Fairbank, an accountant/clerk/debt collector, bu that went awry in 1851 when he got into debt, and a court ordered the furniture of their home on North Terrace to be auctioned off. A year later, she was widowed a second time when died on his way to Sydney. Her three sons left South Australia in 1863 to set up sheep farms on vast acreages in North Queensland, but were eventually beaten by the difficulties of life on the frontier. It was while they were away up north that Martha died, aged 68 [information supplied by researchers].