The Keats family
Sir, — My great-grand-father, George Keats, arrived in Christchurch in 1859, and, finding no work for bricklayers, walked to Oxford and became a builder. His daughter Harriet married William Varian Wilson, shown as architect on the old Sydenham borough building foundation stone. My grandmother, Harriet, believed she was related to John Keats, but the .many descendants of George cannot claim direct descent from the poet, for my great-great-grandfather, Charles Keats, was also a bricklayer in Bilston, Staffordshire. I seek the origin of “Varian,” an Irish surname, in our family. The father of William Varian, Henry Isaac Varian Wilson, was possibly in North Canterbury befo-e the first four ships, as neither he nor his wife, Ann Williams, nor the witnesses to their marriage, Jane Passmore and Thomas Eaton, at Kaiapoi in 1854, appear in records of arrivals here. — Yours, etc., VARIAN J. WILSON. February 22, 1981.
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Bibliographic details
Press, 27 February 1981, Page 12
Word Count
147The Keats family Press, 27 February 1981, Page 12
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