People Australia

John Piper was born on Norfolk Island in c.1807, the son of Captain John Piper and young Margaret Eddington (1792-1822). He was baptised, together with his sister Eliza, daughter of the subsequent liaison between Margaret and Lieutenant-Governor David Collins, in Hobart in January 1810. He was initially known as John Eddington and was the beneficiary of government grants of land and livestock, together with his sister Eliza, who was always known as Eliza Collins. In the 1814 Hobart Muster John Eddington became John Piper, in apparent recognition of his paternity. Very little is known of his short life.

His slight biographical significance lies in the need to distinguish him from his stepbrother John Connelly (c.1810-1860), whose father was Charles Connelly and two other sons of the prolific Captain Piper: Norfolk Piper (c.1807-1827) and John Piper (1806-1860). Norfolk Piper, who was born on Norfolk Island, was the child of Captain Piper and Elizabeth Haywood. He died aged 18 in March 1827 at Pleasant Banks near Launceston. John Piper (1806-1860) was the child of Captain Piper and Mary Ann Shears who subsequently married. He was a grazier who lived in New South Wales and died at Bathurst in 1860.

The separate identity of John Eddington/Piper is established by the circumstances of his death in 1826. The Colonial Times reported the death of ‘Mr John Piper’ on January 22nd, 1826 at the home of ‘Mr Edington’, adding the fulsome tribute that he was a ‘youth universally respected and esteemed’ and only 18 years of age, whose funeral was attended by a ‘numerous and respectable’ crowd of mourners. John Eddington, Margaret’s brother, was John Piper’s uncle.  The registration of John Piper’s death describes him as a ‘publican’s son in law’ or stepson, in the conventional locution of the times, John Eddington/Piper became the ‘son in law’ of Charles Connelly, proprietor of the Bricklayer’s Arms, when he married Margaret Eddington in 1819. He did not take the surname of his stepfather, Charles.