Hello to all the Cardens.
It is time to re-introduce myself to you all. My name is David [Dave] Carden Collins. I
have been reading all your correspondence with great interest although I have not seen the
link to me I am looking for.
I come from a long line of Collins' who were an old family of Somerset/Wiltshire in
England. There was an emigration of them to Australia in the early/mid 1800s. My
g-g-grandfather, Thomas Collins married Sophia Danvers of the same area, between Bristol
and Bath, before moving to Australia.
Their eldest son, my g-grandfather, was named James Carden Collins. We are not aware of
Carden existing previously. Carden has persisted as a first or middle name [it is my
middle name] ever since. It has been an ambition to find where it originated. There is
no link to a Carden in the immediate family of Thomas' wife, or with his parents that
I can find so far, but there is a family tradition of continuing surnames as middle
names.
Other surnames used through my g-grandfather's generation were Danvers, Brooks,
Whittaker, Noad, Lester, Minchin, and Montgomery that seem to relate to the period before
they went to Australia. So I may be looking for a Carden link to those names. If anyone
recognises a possible link I would be very interested to know about it.
The following is a story about one of those carrying the name Carden, Carden Noad Collins.
He was a son of James Carden Collins, and was born in 1876. To a New Zealander like
myself, this is a fine illustration of Australian culture. The story, set on the
Queensland coast, is as related by his wife:-
"Mrs Collins remembers vividly the day a man was taken by a shark on Yeppoon beach.
His thigh muscle was torn out and although he was transported to Rockhampton Hospital
[about 45 km] the journey was too long and he died from the loss of blood.
Mrs Collins' late husband, Carden Collins, was the man who strode out into the surf
opposite the Strand Hotel to catch the shark with a big hook baited with butchers meat.
He threw it out and it had hardly hit the water when the shark struck. Mr Collins could
not hold the line and it was only with the help of 15 or 20 men that the creature was
landed and dragged up the beach.
Someone had an idea to sell the sharks teeth at half a crown each (25 cents) to raise
money for the widow of the casualty. However, others wanted to souvenir the shark jaws
and during the discussion in the old Myola Hall on the corner of Normanby and Hill street
a fight broke out and Mrs Collins well remembers many young men being carried out of the
hall unconscious.
The sharks teeth were sold with the exception of one which a well-wisher carved into a
brooch and presented to the widow as a keepsake."
And, incidentally, the son Carden Noad Collins, Robert James Carden Collins, died recently
near Yeppoon. I met him last year. He spent WWII in Changi Gaol in Singapore under the
Japanese. That he survived to the age of almost 85, after nearly fifty years of very
ill-health from the Singapore years was remarkable.
Dave Collins