Edward Richard Connor

  Noted events in his life were:

• source. Mary-Ann Cook who writes:
Edward Richard Connor joined the Royal Navy in 1861, and was appointed sub-lieutenant five years later. In 1872 he was appointed lieutenant, and eventually retired from the navy in 1881.
Most of his career was spent in the hydrographic service surveying in the Channel, in the Straits of Magellan and in Queensland. There were some more dramatic periods when he spent two years on the East Coast of Africa in the suppression of the slave trade and he was severely wounded in the engagement in Terra de Fuego.
From 1879 he served as commander of the Royal Chartered British North Borneo Company and commanded the Governor`s armed yacht. In 1881 he retired from the Company and settled in Sydney. In 1885 he joined the N.S.W. Naval Brigade and in 1891 he succeeded Lavington as Commander.
From 1901 to 1902 he was second in command to the contingent from the N.S.W. Naval Brigade, which was sent to China to join the international force which had assembled to put down the Boxer Rebellion and lift the siege of the foreign legations in Peking. The Boxers were a large group of Chinese extremists in Northern China; organised as a secret society the movement arose about 1898 and rapidly gained strength.
Initially the group was successful enough to seriously alarm the European powers, which had interests in the newly and brutally colonised China and when the hoards laid siege to the centres of European power in Peking, an International Field Force was raised.
Great Britain, already engaged in the Boer War and short of suitable shops approached the Australian Colonies for assistance. Eventually a joint contingent of 500 sailors from the Victorian and New South Wales Naval Brigades and the HMCS Protector from South Australia were despatched and sailed from Sydney on 8th August 1900 with the rather elderly Commander Bosanquet of the Naval Artillery Volunteers in command and Commander Connor, second in command and responsible for discipline.
The contingent arrived in China too late to take part in any real fighting, the siege in Peking had been lifted a week after they left Sydney.
Connor, who received the C.M.G. for his service, died in January 1903, less than two years after his return. He was buried at Rookwood Cemetery in Sydney, New South Wales.

Edward married Adelaide Manning, daughter of Arthur Wilcox Manning and Hester Donovan, on 11 Jul 1872. (Adelaide Manning was born on 29 Sep 1854 in Pambula, NSW Australia and died on 11 Mar 1943 in Sydney, NSW Australia.)