| Notes |
- A widow and a mother at the age of sixteen.
Eleanor Louisa Liffiton, the eldest daughter of Thomas Huntley Liffiton (1819 - 1881) and Caroline (Nolloth) Liffiton (1823 - 1878), was born in Littleham at Exmouth, in the county of Devonshire , England, on 17 May, 1845. Eleanor and Edward, her elder brother by two years (born 1843), and her three younger sisters, Caroline (born 1847), Maria (born 1848), and Annie (born 1850), were all from Devonshire.
All were baptized in Littleham at Exmouth on the same day, 25 March, 1854 . Their father, Thomas Liffiton, a tailor and woolen draper, and his wife Caroline, sold the family business and Caroline's share of ownership in a sailing vessel, the "Favourite," to finance a move to New Zealand where they hoped to purchase and operate a sheep farm.
At the age of eleven, Eleanor sailed with her family to New Zealand. They departed England's port at Gravesend on June 1st 1856, aboard the sailing ship Hastings. The passengers on the Hastings numbered sixteen, including the Liffiton family and the Joseph Burnett family, relatives and partners in the proposed venture. On 14 October, 1856, the Hastings arrived in Wellington on New Zealand 's North Island. Contrary to their earlier plans, the Liffiton and Burnett families decided not to pursue sheep farming. The Burnetts opened a general store, and Thomas Liffiton presumably took up tailoring again. Both families however settled in or near Wanganui, a town on the west coast of North Island. Also at some point a conflict developed between Eleanor's parents, as sometime between 1858 and 1866, Thomas Liffiton left his family and returned to Devonshire. In 1858, Eleanor's mother Caroline is known to have been teaching music lessons in Wanganui. In October of that same year Caroline Liffiton's parents, Joseph and Sarah Nolloth, immigrated to New Zealand .
When Eleanor was fourteen, she married Frederick Smith, a soldier with the British Imperial 65th Regiment of Foot. The register of the St. Paul 's Presbyterian Church, Wanganui, documents the ceremony took place on February 28, 1859 , at the house of the officiating minister, Reverand David Hogg. It indicates Ellen Liffiton, age 15 (sic), spinster, with the signature "Eleanor Lifition," (sic) married Frederick Smith, age 28, a Military Corporal in the 65th, in the presence of William Snelling and Sarah Hogg. The following year, on 12 May, 1860 , Eleanor and Frederick had a child, Frederick Smith, Jr., but on 2 July, 1861, Frederick Smith the elder died. Discharge records for the 65th indicate Number 2879, Private Frederick Smith, born in Newcastle (but given as Cumberland), enlisted 5 February, 1851 , and sailed on the Egmont from Cowes ( England ) on 7 March 1854, arriving at Auckland on 26 June, 1854. He had a child named Frederick, and died at Wanganui in hospital pending discharge. The Index to Casualty Returns of the 65th Foot indicates No. 2879 Frederick Smith died on 2 July, 1861. Civilian records for the District of Wanganui indicate Frederick Smith, a tailor, age 28 years, died of consumption in hospital.[xi] There is some confusion as to the location of Smith when he died, as Eleanor and her son are said to have been with Smith at his death of a lingering illness in hospital at Auckland, not Wanganui.
After the death of her husband, Eleanor became the housekeeper for Sir Robert Douglas, 3rd Baronet of Glenbervie, and an officer of the 57th British Imperial Regiment of Foot, known as "The Die Hards." Although Eleanor and Sir Robert would marry in 1866, their first and only child, Robert D. Douglas, was born in 1863. On 31 March, 1866 , however, at the age of twenty Eleanor became Lady Eleanor Douglas.
Sir Robert Douglas married Eleanor when he was twenty-eight, having been born in London, England, in 1837. At the age of seventeen, by purchase he had joined the 57th, a Middlesex Regiment, as an ensign, and he had served in the Crimea, the Arab Peninsula, and India before being ordered to New Zealand. Just a few months prior to wedding Eleanor, on 20 January, 1866, Douglas commanded a detachment of the 57th Regiment of Foot in an attack on a Hauhau village as part of a column led by a Lieutenant-Colonel Butler.
Although they initially planned to build a house in Wanganui, Eleanor and her husband built their house, at Glenbervie, North Auckland . They called it "Bleak House," perhaps a reference to the Charles Dickens novel. Sir Robert became prominent in New Zealand local and national politics, but died in 1884 at the age of forty-seven. On 28 February, 1884, the Wanganui Herald reported his death earlier in the day at the house of his brother-in-law, Mr. C. H. Ashcroft, the husband of Eleanor's sister Maria Huntley Liffiton.
Eleanor outlived her second husband by almost thirty years, as she died in Whangarei, New Zealand, on 4 December, 1914 .
Eleanor's eldest son, Frederick Smith, Jr., married Emily Clotworthy, and their descendants live today in New Zealand and Australia. Her son Robert married Mary Helen Shore in 1895, and they had several children. Like his father, however, Robert Douglas the younger died early, in 1910, at the age of forty-seven.
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1845 - 1914 (69 years)