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Name: GREY, Ernest William (Griffin)

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Nee: son of William Griffin

Birth Date: 23.1.1875 Caroll, Gunnedah, NSW, Australia

Death Date: 20.1.1931 Sydney, Australia

Nationality: Australian

First Date: 1899

Last Date: 1906

Profession: Trader, partner in firm of Palmer & Grey; holder of Game Licence Sept. 1899; His name was originally Griffin and he changed it back to that in 1904

Married: 1. In Sydney 1895 May Ellen Murray b. 13 June 1879 Fitzroy, Melbourne, Australia; 2. In Bombay 8.5.1902 Eunice Adelaide Powell b. 17 June 1882 Kamatipura, Bombay, India, d. 13.12.1974 Sydney

Children: 2. Ethel Gladys (1904 Mombasa-1958) ; Hugh William Powell (13 Apr 1906 Girgaum, Bombay-1993); Aubrey Ernest (23 Jan 1908 Moulmein, Burma-1976); Matilda Eunice (10 Aug 1911 Marsden Park, NSW-1987); Owen Eric Powell (13 Dec 1914 Riverstone, NSW-1987); Linda Ella (1919 Marsden Park-1994); two other sons

Book Reference: North, EAHB 1904

General Information:

North - born E.W. Griffin at Carroll, NSW, Australia; NOT married to Olive Grey; partner with Charles Palmer in firm of Palmer & Grey Nairobi; Holder of Game Licence Sept 1899; Changed name back to Griffin Jan 1904; daughter born at Mombasa, Ethel Gladys March 1904; Ordinary Broker's Licence issued 31-3-1904
EAHB 1904 - Mombasa & Kilindini Residents - Grey, E.W., Ndia Kuu
Old Africa - 18-11-13 - Christine Nicholls - Olive Grey is a woman of mystery who led an unusual life. She was born Matilda Elizabeth Gainey in December 1855, in Tamworth, NSW, Australia, the daughter of Humphrey Sylvester Gainey and Mary Thorpe. She was baptised as a Roman Catholic in West Maitland, New South Wales. She married William Dickson in 1877 and had a daughter Violet May in 1884. She became a missionary in India, and some of her letters are in the Coral Missionary Magazine in 1878 (pages 28, 77 and 122). She returned to Australia and took over the care of one of her sister Honoria’s step-children (there were ten of them) He was Ernest William Griffin (born on 23 January 1875), and she took him back to India with her in 1879 or 1880. But her daughter Violet did not seem to accompany them. It is not clear whether her husband died or when she assumed the name Olive Grey. Did she marry someone called Grey?
Ernest (who was calling himself Grey rather than Griffin at this stage) returned to Australia and got married in 1895 – to May Ellen Murray, in Sydney. But the marriage was not a success (it was eventually dissolved in 1902) and Ernest went to East Africa, to join Olive. He was there in 1899, whereas we know Olive was there in 1895, working as a ‘typewriter’. By 1897 she was with the missionary Stuart Watt in Machakos. Now there appears another man in her life – Charles Palmer, an Anglo-Indian. It is not known if Olive and Charles were married, but they lived together. Charles had arrived in East Africa in February 1892, working for the Imperial East Africa Company customs and shipping department. When the British government took over IBEA he continued to work for the government, as assistant customs collector and deputy governor of Mombasa prison (1898). Apparently he was sacked and we find him cutting timber for the Uganda Railway in 1901. The following year he started up the firm of Palmer & Grey with Ernest Grey, who had returned to India and married again – to Eunice Adelaide Powell, in Bombay, in 1902. Then back came Ernest to East Africa and resumed the surname Griffin; he worked as an auctioneer in Mombasa and he and his wife had a daughter in Mombasa in 1904 – Ethel Gladys. Eventually they were to have six children. Ernest was joined by his father William Griffin in 1905 and brother Sydney Gordon Griffin, who worked for the East Africa Syndicate and lived at Naivasha, in 1904.
Ernest probably went to India at the same time (he was there in 1906), while his father and half-brother returned to Australia by 1910. Ernest went back to Australia post-1910 and resumed the surname Griffin. He became a bookkeeper, mail officer and photographer and served in World War I, taking part in the Gallipoli landings. He died in Redfern, Sydney, on 20 January 1931. ‘Gulligimbi’, the home built by his father William, is still standing north of Jackson in Western Queensland. We don’t know when or where Olive died, but she was alive in India in 1914, living in Warangal, Deccan.

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