CLAIM TO £450,000

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21155, 30 September 1938, Page 11

CLAIM TO £450,000

WALKER FAMILY’S HISTORY The stream of claims to the share of the £450,000 estate of the late Thomas Walker, of Yaralla (Sydney), was swollen recently when the New South Wales Master in Equity sat to consider the particulars filed by additional claimants, says the “Australasian." One undisputed fact in connection with the far-flung Walker family is that at one point in its history there was a marriage which joined the Walker blood with that of the Lyons, of Glamis Castle, the present Queen’s family. The Rev. John Glass, founder of the religious sect known in Scotland or England as “The Glassites,” had fifteen children, of whom one was Agnes. She married in 1719 the Rev. William Lyon, of Airley, a member of the family of which the Earl of Glamis was hereditary chief. Their son, Robert Lyon, who died in 1801, had a daughter, Katherine, who in 1778 married John Walker, of Leith. They were the father and mother of ten children, one being’ Thomas Walker, of Yaralla. At the recent hearing the descendants of Jonathan Griffiths, who lived in the Hawkesbury district as early as the end of the eighteenth century, appeared through their solicitor in increased number. Mr A. J. Grant appeared for numerous clients who insist that the Jonathan Griffiths who arrived in Australia in 1789 under duress was not the Jonathan Griffiths who became the paternal ancestor of the claimants. The case of these claimants is that Jonathan Griffiths of the Hawkesbury was really a Walker, and that he changed his name for reasons unknown.