There was an elopement in Warwick, Queensland, one hundred and fifty-nine years ago in which the true identities of those involved remains a mystery to this day. I told a version of this story on radio 4WK.

In January 1865, the townsfolk of Warwick woke up to be shocked that a girl only fourteen-years-of-age, the only daughter of respectable parents in Warwick, had left her home in the middle of the night in a clandestine getaway.

She decamped by moonlight with a young man who was well-known in town as a horse breaker.  The cause of her abrupt departure was suspected by her distraught parents, and inquiries confirmed their painful suspicions.  Information was given to the police, and a warrant issued for the apprehension of the runaways.

The hearts of the parents relented, however, and a horseman was seen careering along the road bearing tidings of forgiveness from the girl’s parents if only couple would just return and be united in matrimony. The young escapees had too good a start and weren’t overtaken on the road. But they were apprehended at Drayton just outside of Toowoomba.

The girl had frequently been forbidden by her parents to keep company with the young man. The day before the elopement her father had chastised her for speaking to him. The romantic affair generated huge public interest, and the elopement was reported across the colony.  

Facts of the elopement changed. It moved from Warwick to a town less than hundred miles from Warwick. It changed from a young girl of fourteen-years-old and a horse breaker, to a rich heiress with a poor but respectable parish schoolmaster who taught her the organ.

So who was the young couple?

Seven months after the elopement, at Leyburn just forty miles from Warwick, a new school master’s residence was built. It could be that the schoolmaster at Leyburn required a home for his young, eloped, bride.

The teachers at Leyburn were Mr and Mrs Michael McSweeney. But when McSweeney died in 1869, he was aged forty-seven, had four children, and was held in high esteem, none of which match the description of a eloping young man.

Back in Warwick, the schoolmaster was Mr Arthur Narracott. But he was already married to Fanny, and the year before the elopement he appears to have moved permanently back to South Brisbane.

Perhaps the mystery man was a music teacher. The same year of the elopement, a music teacher Mr George Grau was advertising his services in Toowoomba to teach the piano, and so was capable of teaching the girl the organ as one of the reports suggested. After the elopement happened, Grau lived in a room adjoining that of an unnamed the servant girl. Grau died not long afterwards never having recovered from almost being burned alive.

Perhaps the young man really was a horse breaker as one newspaper reported. A year earlier at Jondaryan, a Warwick horse breaker and his two mates were suspected of stealing three saddles and three horses. The three men going by the names of Herbert, Williams, and West, were captured by a young Dalby constable. That means the Warwick horse breaker was in prison at the time of the elopement so he could not have committed the romantic act.

Then there’s Harry Mitchell who was Warwick’s first horse breaker. He was much respected by all classes and was a recognised authority on all horse flesh. In 1864, Mitchell was an uncalled witness in the murder trial of Alexander Ritchie who claimed that had Mitchell testified, he would have been proven innocent. As it was, Ritchie was convicted and became the first person hanged in Toowoomba gaol. The eloping horse breaker could have been Mitchell, except that he was married a few years earlier making him unlikely.

So the trail of the 1865 elopement has gone cold.

I’m calling on history followers to help solve this mystery and search your family tree. Who were the eloping couple from the Warwick district one hundred and fifty-nine years ago. Was it a fourteen-year-old heiress and her horse-breaking, music teaching school master. Were they your great-grandparents?

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY AS IT WAS TOLD ON RADIO 4WK.

Photo credits:
Eloping in Regency England – historicalhussies.
Leyburn State School c1875 – State Library of Queensland.
Treatment of the Horse in Australia by George Hamiton.