The origins of Edward Charles Lousada and the other early Australian Baruh Lousadas and Barrows

For some of us, the story of the Barrows and Lousadas coming to Australia started at the bottom LH corner of the chart with Edward Charles Lousada. From Uncle Ben's family tree it was then not too hard to construct the LH column. Great was our surprise to progressively discover how many of Edward Charles' cohort were in Australia - the bottom line of the chart. Further work then allowed us to fill out the common ancestors, and to discover that Edward Charles was only a representative of a multi-generation influx - perhaps a not uncommon pattern in family migration to Australia! Our first arrivals in the 1820-1850 saw a very young Australia - before even the colony of Victoria separated from New South Wales. They saw the pasture lands west of the Great Dividing Range seized by the representatives of the nascent Tasmanian aristocracy. They saw dispossession of the Aborigines, and they saw (in the case of Samuel Barrow at very close hand) the way the colonies dealt with the convicts, and they had greater chance of financial fortune than the later arrivals who missed the gold rushes of the 1850s and 1860s and who had to contend with small holdings of uncleared land. Those with access to capital - the Barrow Montefiores and Levi Montefiores - did well but the others who relied upon dwindling remittances from England faced a struggle.

The previous generation led the way - represented by Edward Charles Lousada's uncle Samuel Barrow, Samuel Barrow's second cousin Joseph Barrow Montefiore, and Joseph Barrow Montefiore's brother-in-law George Mocatta. Joseph Barrow Montefiore had 13 children, while George Mocatta was survived by 3 sons and a daughter. A son-in-law and nephew of Joseph Barrow Montefiore - Eliezer Levi Montefiore - became prominent in the arts in Victoria and NSW. Samuel Barrow's 5 children went to England after Samuel's early death. The first member of this cohort to come to Australia, and in so doing was the pioneer of the Barrow Lousadas in Australia, was Walter Jacob Levi - though he was not strictly a Barrow descendant. After successfully growing cotton on Barbados, Walter came to Sydney in 1827 but died tragically a year later without replicating his Barbados success (ref 67) and without fulfilling his political and social conscience (ref 82). He and his brother Solomon Jacob Levi figure in the will of Rebecca Barrow #236. Walter Jacob Levi married a daughter of Lemon Hart, supplier of rum to the British Navy, and whose company still exists today! A key ancestor of the Australian Montefiores was Judith Joseph Levi, cousin of Simon Barrow of Bath.

In the same generation as Edward Charles Lousada, also coming to Australia were two brothers, three cousins and two third cousins - most of which (other than Blanche Henrietta Skipper and perhaps her brother Herbert de Symons Skipper) - produced offspring to complement the 13 Barrow Montefiore and 4 Mocatta offspring. The next generation also came and settled - a niece Norah Agnes Lousada (daughter of Reginald Robert Lousada) left no offspring, but John Graham Tyssen married here and did produce offspring. In the following generation, Peter Desmond Lousada (a grandson of St Leger Lousada) came to Australia with offspring. 

 The chart may not be completely comprehensive. Simon Greenfield reported that another Lousada descendant - Frederick Aguilar who was of Samuel Barrow's generation and descended from Rebecca Baruh Lousada #130 a sister of Jacob Baruh Lousada - lived in Sydney 1858-61 and married there with unknown descendants. He was however not the person who gave the d'Aguilar name to various geographical features in South-East Queensland - that was Major-General Sir George Charles D'Aguilar, a grandson of Baron Moses d'Aguilar, the father-in-law of Isaac Baruh Lousada (shown in the chart). Edmund Barrow advised that further Barrows were in Australia. And in the 1850s, an H M Montefiore (former Assayer at the Royal Mint) established the gold assaying firm Montefiore & Joseph in Melbourne.