Annie Louisa TOOVEY

Annie Louisa Toovey. Annie Louisa Toovey. Annie Louisa Toovey. Annie Louisa Toovey.

Submitted by Irene Doyle,
10 April 2016

Annie Louisa Toovey

Annie Louisa Toovey

Born: Guildford, WA: May 25th 1851
Died: Katanning, WA: January 26th 1937
Married: Thomas Richardson  17 July 1875
Children: Sarah Cecilia b 1875; Lomas b 1877; Emma b 1878; Ethel b 1880
Married: James George Tylor (Tyler on Married Cert) 1882
Children: Sophie Ada b 1883; Bertha May b 1885; Howard Wentworth 1887; Albert George b 1889; Horace Wilfred Alfred b 1893

Annie was born in Guildford, Western Australia, on May 25th 1851, the eldest daughter of Lomas and Sarah Toovey. Not long after her birth, the family moved south to settle in an Inn on the main Albany Road at Round Swamp (now Tenterden) and here she grew up. Annie Louisa was a nurse and then became a Midwife.

She married widower Thomas Richardson when she was 24 years old. They married in Wesley Church in Albany on July 17th 1875. The couple remained living in Albany and had four children; Emma b 1878 married Ted Wilhelm 1898 in Katanning; Lomas b 1877; Sarah Cecilia b 1875 married George Herbert in 1901 in Mt Barker; Ethel b 1880 married John Egalton Baker in 1902 in Katanning. Thomas died shortly after the birth of their fourth child.

In 1882 Annie remarried to widower James George Tylor (Tyler on Married Cert), who already had a daughter Zela and a stepson Frederick. James was a blacksmith and Annie continued nursing. When they moved to Eticup, Annie continued her work of midwifery at the local Inn as there was no hospital.

Their eldest daughter, Sophie Ada b 1883 in Albany, married William Cuthbert Ball 1918 in Katanning. Bertha May b 16th May 1885, married Edgar Richmond in 1905 in Katanning; Howard Wentworth b May 16th 1887, married Elsie Julia Seeber. Both these children were born in Lake Matilda. Albert George b July 24th 1889, in Tenterden and married Mary Elizabeth Draper in 1913 in Boyup Brook, and Horace Wilfred Alfred b 1893 in Eticup, married Ethel Rose Leak in 1915 in Katanning.

In 1897 Annie and James moved the family to Katanning as Eticup township was dying. In the following years Annie became a familiar figure in her long black skirt and bonnet and her high buttoned boots, sitting erect in her buggy (drawn by old Prince) as she drove to various farms to act as midwife. As her children left home Annie began taking patients at her house on the corner of Piesse and Dare (now Park) Street and it became known as Annie Tylor’s Hospital. She was registered nurse number 32 and took patients until she retired in 1917.

After the war, around 1919, Annie went to live next door to her son Horace and his family, giving assist when it was needed. Annie died in Katanning on January 26th 1937, at the age of 86.

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