George Shapland Yeo was baptised at Swimbridge in 1833 to parents James Yeo and Elizabeth Shapland, who farmed at Bydown. His line of descent can be traced back to John Yeo and Elizabeth Fortescue of Huish.
He emigrated to Australia with other family members on the SS James Baines in 1855 (see On the James Baines), and two years later married Elizabeth Pender, who had emigrated from the Isle of Mull with her parents some fifteen years earlier.
George and Elizabeth had eleven children:
– Alfred James Yeo (1858–1859)
– Mary Ellen Shapland Yeo (1859–1934, married her first cousin James Yeo, four children)
– George Charles Yeo (1861–1939, married Alison J. Baird, three children)
– Florence Matilda Yeo (1864–1864)
– Hannah Caroline Clarendon Yeo (1865–1945, known as Clara, married William Hunt, four children including William Yeo Hunt, 1898–1991)
– Herbert Ernest Alfred Yeo (1869–1950, married Ethel Maud Hawkes, five children)
– Albert Frederick Thomas Yeo (1871–1881)
– Claude Septimus Maitland Yeo (1872–1916, died while on active service in France while serving with the Australian infantry, awarded the Victoria Cross, commemorated on the war memorial at Fromelles)
– Edith Francis Elizabeth Yeo (1874–1958)
– Minnie Ongiene Yeo (1877–1958)
– Frederick Yeo (1881–1881)
George Shapland Yeo died in 1891 and two lengthy newspaper obituaries tell us quite a lot about his life. He was a prominent farmer and stock breeder, a former president of the New South Wales Agricultural Society. He was a local magistrate and an active freemason.
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