Edward William Hawker was born in 1850, the eldest son of what became a South Australian dynasty. His father George Charles Hawker, together with two of his uncles, selected acreage for a sheep station at Bungaree, near Clare in South Australia in 1841. They had arrived in the colony the year before, cashed up with family funds. Edward was born in the hut built by his father and uncles. He ended up with 14 siblings (11 survived childhood). He was educated at boarding school in Adelaide (St. Peters College) and at Cambridge University in England.
Louisa was born in Adelaide in 1854, the 3rd child of 10, to Paul and Lavinia Oke who had migrated to South Australia from Truro in Cornwall. According to Aunty Alma, Louisa was working as a 17 yo housemaid at Bungaree station in 1872, when she became pregnant to Edward who was home on holidays from his studies at Cambridge Their daughter – Mary Elizabeth - was born in Adelaide in 1873 and though Edward is named as the father on her birth certificate, there is no evidence that he acknowledged or supported her.
Louisa married Charles Horen in Holy Trinity Church, Adelaide in 1877. He was listed on the marriage certificate as a Wharf Labourer. They lived in the Adelaide/Port Adelaide area for the next 30 years and, though they had no more children, Louisa’s large family of parents, siblings and their families were nearby. Little more is known about Louisa who died at the age of 47 in 1902.
Edward went on to have a privileged career as a lawyer and politician with an entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography - http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hawker-edward-william-6604 - He married Mary Letitia Stawell in London in 1890 and they had 5 children. According to the ADB, “he was considered to be never more than an earnest, persevering, rather prosy politician, who favoured rigid economy and retrenchment”. He inherited the Bungaree property in 1895 and died at the age of 90 in 1940.
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