AD ASTRA JUNE 2010
In search of
Rebecca Greenwood The Yorkshire town of Haworth is known worldwide as home to the Bronte family, but romantic literature was not its only creation. It also harboured the roots of Rebecca Greenwood, wife of founding College Principal, George Morrison. Con Lannan explores: Who was Rebecca Greenwood? Known simply as Mrs Morrison to generations of students, Rebecca Greenwood played a vital, though little advertised role, in the evolution of The Geelong College. She guided the boarding and domestic establishment that underpinned the operations of the School. George Redmond in the 1911 Jubilee History of the College said of Rebecca: “She always took a vivid interest in the boys at the College, and her marvellous memory for names and faces lent a great deal of charm to the visits of old boys, who came back expecting to find themselves forgotten, only to learn that Mrs Morrison remembered them and many little incidents of their school careers. When the old boys came homing back every year, Mrs Morrison used to hold an informal levee, which was always one of the most pleasurable of the reunion functions.”
Above: Rebecca Greenwood (photo courtesy of David Morrison)
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Despite receiving only three slight mentions in the College’s Centenary History, of all the family of Morrisons, hers was the longest association with the school, spanning almost 50 years from 1861 to 1909. Even after the transfer of the school to the Presbyterian Church, the tragic death of her son Charles Norman in 1909, and her subsequent move to Melbourne, she remained an ardently interested background figure. Born in the east coast port of Kingston Upon Hull in Yorkshire on 8 April 1837, and baptised at the Fish St Independent Church on 22 June 1837, Rebecca spent her teenage years growing up in the small village of Crosby Garrett in Westmoreland on the edge of the Lakes District. The family moved there from Hull sometime between 1842 and 1845. Rebecca’s mother, Jane Irving, had married John Richardson Greenwood (1806-1874), merchant, at Holy Trinity Church, Hull on 21 April 1836, just a year before Rebecca’s birth. The family later moved to Dollar in Clackmannanshire, Scotland, but after the death of her mother there in 1860, the family’s cohesiveness collapsed. Rebecca was to become the unifying force for the younger members of her family. Rebecca’s father, John Richardson Greenwood, is a shadowy and unresolved character. He was variously described as a merchant’s clerk, merchant, farmer and annuitant. He died, aged 67, on 7 March 1874 in Oxenhope near Haworth and close to the house of his half brother, William Greenwood Jnr (1800-1893). He was buried in an unmarked grave at Keighley. Rebecca’s grandfather, George Greenwood (1774-1856), a merchant and shipping agent in Hull, had retired to Mossgill House, Crosby Garrett to become a lay Baptist preacher of considerable ability. His birthplace, Haworth, on the edge of the Yorkshire Pennine Moors was the focus of the Greenwood mill owning family. The various branches of this Greenwood family, who all trace their origins back to John Greenwood (1661-1738) of Bridgehouse, are recorded as owning over 30 textile and corn mills throughout West Yorkshire and Lancashire from the 1780s. Among them was the builder of Knowle House, Keighley. It was possibly Rebecca’s uncle however, William Greenwood Jnr, who, of her other relatives, was of interest. Despite his own Baptist convictions, William Greenwood Jnr became acquainted with the Anglican Perpetual Curate, Patrick Bronte (1777-1861), who invited Greenwood’s election to be churchwarden as a vicar’s warden of the Established Church at Haworth in 1843 and 1845. One story suggests that this was part of Bronte’s attempts to secure funding for the rebuilding of the church tower. The Brontes were visitors to the Greenwood home and William Greenwood is thought to be the Baptist friend Patrick once mentioned as living in Haworth.