A Londoner, a Boat to Australia, and the Ferry Brothers' Pottery
Updated: Sep 17
The story of my 4th great-grandmother Esther Pilgrim Ferry (née Berry), her potter sons, artist daughter and the brother who stayed behind.
When I first started pulling on this thread, one detail really caught my attention. My 4th great-grandmother, Esther Pilgrim Ferry, died in 1909 not in the north of England where she'd raised her family, but in Brunswick, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. She was 87. So I kept asking myself the obvious question: what took a woman in her later years halfway around the world?
I was excited to discover the answer. She didn't drift to Australia by accident - she followed her sons, two of whom became some of the first true art potters in the country. And the trail to get there runs through a London christening register, a widow's years as a governess, a famous Victorian designer, and a ship's manifest where the family name got written down wrong.
Here's what I've been able to piece together.
A Westminster girl
Esther was born on 28 March 1822 in Westminster, right in the heart of London. Her parents were Augustine Berry, who came from East Molesey in Surrey, and Mary Maria Deacon, both were teachers.
The earliest record I have of her is the 1841 census, where she's a fifteen-year-old living at 19 Great Smith Street in the parish of St John the Evangelist in Westminster with her family. She was a city girl, born and raised within sight of the Thames.
That changes in 1845. On 27 April that year, Esther — then 23 — married Thomas Graham Ferry, a man with a very different background. Thomas had been born in 1812 in Lamesley, County Durham, the son of Robert Ferry and Dorothy Wright. He was a tradesman: a plasterer and moulder. Marrying him meant leaving London behind for the industrial north-east.
Nine children in the north-east
By the 1851 census the couple were living at Victoria Street in Gateshead, County Durham, and the family was growing fast. Over roughly fifteen years Esther gave birth to at least nine children, the family moving between Gateshead, Darlington and South Shields as Thomas found work:
Maria Dorothy (born 1845)
Graham Robert (born around 1847) — future brickmaker and potter
Augustine (born 1849)
Edward (born 1851)
Emma Brinton (born 1853)
Hephzibah (born 1855)
Zephaniah Deacon (born 8 June 1857) — my direct ancestor
Esther (born 1859) - future pottery artist
William (born around 1860–61) — future potter
My ancestor Zephaniah carried the middle name Deacon, which was his maternal grandmother's maiden name (Mary Maria Deacon). Families often pass surnames down as middle names like keepsakes, and seeing it on his baptism record in 1857 is a quiet thread tying him back to Esther's own mother.
Widowed — and a governess
Then the family's luck turned. Thomas Graham Ferry appears to have died around 1866, aged about 54. By the 1871 census Esther is listed as a widowed head of household, with a string of children still living at home — several of the boys already working as plasterers and apprentices, following their father's trade.
What strikes me most is the 1881 census. By then Esther was 59 and living at 47 Devonshire Road in Linthorpe (Middlesbrough) and her occupation is recorded as "formerly governess." A widow with a large family, supporting herself by teaching other people's children — that takes grit. It's easy to glide past two words on a census form, but they tell you a great deal about the kind of woman she was.
Yorkshire, clay, and a famous designer
This is where the family's most remarkable thread begins, and it's hiding in plain sight on that same 1881 census.
Living with Esther in Linthorpe was her son Graham, whose occupation is given as "Artist in Modelling (Earthenware)." There was also a young lodger (Arthur Fuller) working as an assistant in pottery painting. The household had pivoted from plastering into pottery. Esther's youngest daughter, also named Esther, lived at this address, her occupation is listed as vocalist / musician, making her another of the family's creative talents. Further research since I first wrote this post has revealed that this younger Esther went on to work alongside her brother William as a pottery artist.
The location is everything. Linthorpe, in Middlesbrough, was the home of the Linthorpe Art Pottery, which ran from around 1879 to 1890 and was one of the most celebrated art potteries in Victorian Britain. Its art superintendent in its early, defining years (1879–1882) was Dr Christopher Dresser — a giant of Victorian design, one of the first European designers to study Japanese craft first-hand, and a man whose clean, modern-feeling work still turns up in design museums today.
So when family lore says Graham (and later his brother William) "trained under Dr Christopher Dresser," the census backs it up beautifully: there's Graham, working as an earthenware modeller in Linthorpe in 1881, in the exact place and at almost the exact time Dresser was shaping the most influential art pottery in the country. Pottery historians confirm both Ferry brothers learned their craft at Linthorpe under Dresser's direction — and you can see his influence in their later work.
The pottery story continues in the 1891 census, where Esther (now 69) is living in Leeds (at 6 Rock Square) with her youngest son, William Ferry (now 30), listed as a "Potter's Foreman" and a housemaid named Harriet Lancaster. Leeds at the time was another great centre of art pottery, home to the celebrated Burmantofts works. The Ferry boys were rising through the trade.
In an exciting new discovery, I've been able to confirm that the younger Esther held a position at Burmantofts. This is documented in Linthorpe Pottery: An Interim Report, published in January 1970 and written by Jonathan R.A. Le Vine of the Teesside Museums and Art Galleries Service (revised 2007 by Dorman Museum, Middlesbrough Council). The report names Esther as one of the artists who moved to Burmantofts following Linthorpe's closure. It also mentions the Ferrys' former lodger, Arthur Fuller — described as "Mr A. Fuller, a modeller at Linthorpe" — who is recorded as disputing the extent of Christopher Dresser's influence on the pottery.
The boat to Australia
Graham went first. He had emigrated to Melbourne in 1882, arriving via Hamburg, and by 1886 had set himself up in Brunswick — a Melbourne suburb so rich in clay and so thick with brickworks and potteries that it earned the nickname "Little Staffordshire."
And here, at last, is the answer to my opening question.
In November 1895, at the age of 73, Esther emigrated to Australia. She didn't go alone — she travelled with her son William, who was joining Graham in Brunswick. The two of them left London on 4 October 1895 aboard the SS Ophir, travelling on a single ticket, and reached Melbourne late in November. A side detail: on the arrival records Esther's surname was written down as "Kerry" rather than Ferry — the kind of small clerical slip that has sent family historians grey-haired for generations. So if you ever go looking for the original records, look under K (FindMyPast: Inward passenger list, Australia) as well as F (FindMyPast: SS Ophir outward passenger list).
Esther's emigration and William's were the same journey. She wasn't a frail passenger being shipped off; she was the matriarch following her family to the other side of the world to be with her sons in her old age. That's why she's buried in Australia.
"Little Staffordshire" and the Ferry potteries
In Brunswick, the Ferry brothers built something genuinely important.
Graham had leased a yard at 310 Albert Street and, from the mid-1880s, ran the Brunswick Terra Cotta and Enamelled Brickworks (more here). He made decorative Majolica pedestals, vases and jardinieres, but also the functional backbone of a growing city: roofing and ridging tiles, and vitrified stoneware pipes (the kind the Metropolitan Board of Works needed as Melbourne built its sewerage system). His brickworks office, built in 1887, was itself a piece of advertising — an ornate little building with a terra cotta turret and finely detailed mouldings, designed to show off exactly what the works could do.
Then, in 1896, Graham and William founded Victoria Art Pottery (V.A.P.) in Brunswick — considered one of Australia's first true art pottery firms. Under the brothers' guidance (with a collaborator named Richard Sturrock), V.A.P. produced colourful, decorative ornaments, jardinieres, pedestals and vases. Dresser's Linthorpe influence runs right through the work.
The firm had a darker side too. The pottery was notorious for accidents and unsafe conditions — a sobering reminder of how dangerous industrial work was in that era. And yet the quality of the output was celebrated: their craftsmanship drew praise from the chairman of the Metropolitan Board of Works and even the state Governor.
V.A.P. wound down around 1912, unable to compete with cheap mass-produced English wares flooding the market. Graham kept his terra cotta works going until he retired in 1916, at which point it closed. He died on 24 November 1924, aged 77. William stayed connected to the pottery trade until his own death in 1934.
What endures? Their pieces are scarce, collectable and cherished by enthusiasts — I've found various items on the Leski Auctions site and the National Gallery of Victoria holds several of William's Victoria Art Pottery works, including a vase, a jardiniere, a shell vase and a wonderfully named "Grotesque."
Australiana magazine published an article, "Australia's first art potters" by Gregory Hill, about Graham and William Ferry in its November 2019 issue (Vol 41 No 4, pp. 12–17). It can be downloaded here (note: downloads automatically, 3.14MB). The article incorrectly states that William travelled on the ship Britannia, arriving in 1896 — which contradicts other sources (confirmed passenger list for the SS Ophir, mentioned earlier). Despite this discrepancy, the article includes a lot of other very interesting detail and photographs of the brothers and their work.
Back in Brunswick, the brickworks were mostly demolished in 1928, but Graham's little 1887 office survived: it was kept on as a public weighbridge office and still stands at Albert Street today — heritage-listed, and currently operating as a coffee shop. Old Brunswick and new Brunswick, in one tiny building.
Both Graham and his mother Esther are buried at Coburg (Pine Ridge) Cemetery. William rests at Fawkner Memorial Park.
Esther's last years
After arriving in Australia, Esther settled on Whitby Street, Brunswick — by 1909 at number 30, next door to (and perhaps once part of) Graham's Whitby House at number 28, which he had purchased in 1903 (interesting notes: the house sits on the corner of Ferry Crescent and, after decades of restoration, went on the market in 2019 — a sale covered in this real estate article).
In 1909, Esther's occupation is now simply recorded as "home duties." She had come a very long way from that Westminster christening in 1822: London girl, tradesman's wife, mother of nine, widow, governess, and finally a key figure at the centre of a family of Australian potters.
She died on 29 September 1909 at Whitby House in North Brunswick, aged 87. From the Thames to the clay pits of "Little Staffordshire" on the far side of the world — quite a life.
Whilst I haven't researched further as yet, it appears that more of Esther's children left the UK for the southern hemisphere too. Emma and Hephzibah are both buried in Victoria state as well, and their brother Augustine lived out his final years in Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand.
And what about Zephaniah, my direct ancestor?
I'll admit I half-expected the headline story to belong entirely to the famous brothers. But Zephaniah's own life turned out to make a lovely counterpoint.
Zephaniah Deacon Ferry was born on 8 June 1857 in Gateshead. Unlike Graham and William, he did not go to Australia — he stayed in the north-east of England his whole life. In 1879 he married Margaret Annie Lowes in Durham, and they settled in Newcastle upon Tyne, mostly around Camden Street in the All Saints district and later in Heaton.
Here's the thread I find quietly poignant. While his brothers were turning clay into art on the other side of the world, Zephaniah worked the functional side of the very same materials, right at home. The censuses track his trade across the decades: plasterer's apprentice, plasterer, tile layer, foreman plasterer, and finally tile fixer. The same family relationship with clay, brick and tile that their plasterer father Thomas had begun — Graham and William elevated it into vases and jardinieres in Melbourne, while Zephaniah laid tiles and plaster in Newcastle. Two branches of one craft, an ocean apart.
He and Margaret raised at least six children: Mary Lily, Esther M, Rose Edith, Daisy, Zephaniah, and Florence Violet. A couple of human details survive in the records — daughter Esther was noted as deaf, daughter Daisy worked as a draper's assistant, and young Zephaniah was an errand boy. And of course Zephaniah passed the family names down the line, naming a son Zephaniah Graham — Graham echoing both his father's middle name and his pottery-making brother.
Zephaniah died in March 1932 in Newcastle upon Tyne, aged 74; Margaret had died in 1928. He's the ancestor I descend from — the brother who stayed, kept the family in Britain, and is the reason this story eventually reaches me.
