Edmund Dytum was born in about 1812 in Mursley, Buckinghamshire, the son of Edmund Dytum and Mary Dickens. Hannah Spooner was born in March 1815 in Drayton Parslow, Buckinghamshire, the daughter of William Spooner and Mary Coolin. Mursley and Drayton Parslow were adjacent villages, within the Aylesbury Vale district, about 10 kilometres from Bletchley.
Edmund and Hannah were married in Drayton Parslow on December 31, 1833. The Holy Trinity Church, pictured above on the right, was the only Church in Drayton Parslow in 1833 and may have been the location for their wedding. However, their religion was identified as Episcopalian as were a number of the other passengers onboard the ‘Statesman’.
William Dytum was born in about 1841 in Mursley and Mary was born a few years later, about 1845. In the 1851 English census Edmund was listed as aged 39 and an agricultural labourer; Hannah, 36, was a lacemaker, William, 10, also identified as an agricultural labourer and Mary, 6, was a scholar.
The family arrived in Melbourne on September 14, 1851, onboard the ‘Statesman’. Mary and Hannah could both read, while William and Edmund could neither read nor write. The family apparently next appeared in Geelong where Hannah died on May 28, 1952, aged 37. She drowned in suspicious circumstances.
In 1862 Edmund appears in Wahgunyah, on the southern side of the Murray River, opposite Corowa.; his occupation was possibly a brickmaker. Itinerant brickmakers were common and William also appears to have worked as a brickmaker as shown in the 1866 police gazette. William was wanted in regards to theft and his occupation was stated as a brickmaker at that time.
In the May 3, 1866 edition of the Bendigo Advertiser, Edmund Dytum is shown as having been granted 257 acres with the grant being held at the Sandhurst Pay office. Whether he took up this grant is unknown however he was still in the area in 1885 and warranted a mention in the newspaper and so was probably a resident. Bendigo was the original name of the settlement and then the name became Sandhurst. In 1891 the name reverted to Bendigo.
Sandhurst from Camp Hill, 1886.
Dytum Bendigo Advertiser (Vic. _ 1855 – 1918), Wednesday 4 February 1885, page 2
In 1862 Mary married Peter Dopper, also a brickmaker. Their oldest child, William George Dopper, was born in 1861 however no record exists to show the actual date, however, his obituary states that he was born on October 22nd. George’s death certificate states that he was born in Wagga Wagga however his place of birth is identified as Victoria on Amy’s birth certificate and so Wahgunyah is a more likely place of birth.
A second child, Limena, was born in 1863 and died in the same year. John Edmund was born in Chiltern, Victoria, in 1866 and died in Jindera in 1890, apparently having shot himself. Peter Dopper died February 21, 1886, in Albury, and Mary married Walter Butcher on December 18, 1886, at Holbrook, NSW. Mary died on January 26, 1913, in Albury, NSW, aged 68, having outlived two of her three children, two husbands, her parents and her only sibling. At the time of her death, she had 10 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren, including Harold Charles Falk.
Edmund Dytum died on February 1, 1885, in the Bendigo Sandhurst Hospital, run by the Benevolent Society. His death was reported on February 4th 1885, in the Bendigo Advertiser. There are no family details on his death certificate.
In the 1903 electoral rolls, William is listed as living at the Parkville Home for the poor and homeless. He died in 1904 in Brunswick aged 63.
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