SECRETS OF A VAULT

Taranaki Daily News, 23 November 1932, Page 10

SECRETS OF A VAULT

SEARCH FOR FORTUNE. LINK WITH PEER’S FAMILY. .Romance, possible wealth, and a link with the Primrose family in England dating back six centuries are bound up in inquiries which have been made at the New South Wales Health Depart- | ment, in Sydney, with a view to the exhumation of the remains of a settler who came to Australia after a quarrel with his father. Sydney relatives say that John Primrose, who was born in 1794, came to Australia in the early days. Mrs. Amelia Onus, a relative, says that a letter recently was received from Mr. J. D. Primrose, ’of Neidpath Steps, Scotland, asking for information concerning the family, which, he said, could be traced back to 1370. The letter added that several relatives in Victoria had been traced.

Mrs. Onus said she could remember, years ago, having played with a gold crest. Her brother, now aged 83, was called into his grandmother’s room when she was dying. She said she had a great secret to tell him, but, as there was Another person present, she told him to return' next day. She died that night. Her brother, however, remembered that when his grandfather was buried in a vault in 1856, in the Windsor Cemetery, near Sydney, several documents were placed beneath his head in a casket. After his grandfather’s death the crest was not seen.

It was stated by Mrs. Onus that she was sure that somewhere there was a key to a fortune. The documents in the vault might be •of importance, and the question of exhumation was now being considered.

Mrs. Onus said that when the Earl of Rosebery, whose family name was Primrose, went to Windsor, he told her father, who was Mayor at the time, that he recognised him as a relative. Lord Rosebery asked her father to meet him next day at Government House to discuss the family question, but her father, who was just as proud as his ancestors—they refused to answer letters from the English family—did not go to town.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Onus, who is a widow, is making toys in Sydney to provide for herself in case the fortune never comes.