This cover has a total of 8 cents US postage, a single red 2c plus a pair of brown 3c postmarked with 3 examples of a NEW YORK/ AUG 22/ 3 PM/ D/ 85 duplex with a large ‘D’ in an oval of six thick bars. It was sent ‘Via San Francisco’ to Edwin Daintrey Esq, 33 Castlereagh St, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. There was a vertical manuscript in a different hand ‘Rec Sept (?)/ 85. The reverse was not seen but had Sydney backstamps (Figure 1).
Edwin Daintrey was born 2 September 1814 at Petworth, Sussex England the son of George Daintrey and Mary Woods-Sandham. He trained to be a Doctor of Medicine in London but ill-health forced him to N.S.W. in 1840, where the Governor ( Sir George Gipps , Governor 1838-46) appointed Edward Daintrey and two other gentlemen, Edward Burton and Robert Shadworth, Clerks of Arraigus (responsible for arraignments) and Clerks of Assize in the Circuit Courts.
Edwin married Susan Dickson in 1845 at Paddington N.S.W., and he became a solicitor who was involved on many committees, and his office was at 33 Castlereagh Street, Sydney as on the cover. Edwin became an expert amateur botanist and a founder of the Linnean Society of N.S.W. In 1860, he delivered an address to the Randwick Mutual Improvement Society on the subject “The Microscope – its results and uses”. He had been an early Randwick Council alderman, and lived in a substantial home he had built in 1859, nearby Daintrey Cescent, Randwick. He died at Randwick, Sydney on 3 October 1887. His homesite now forms a part of the Brigidine Convent.
He also became a significant land developer particularly in the Sydney seaside suburb of Manly and both Edwin Street and adjacent Daintrey Street were named after him (referred to as a lawyer). Edwin Street formed a part of the huge subdivision, known as Daintrey’s Manly Estate, which was auctioned in 1904. The land grants to Edwin were made on 2 July 1857, and comprised 12 acres plus another grant of 11 acres in the Daintrey Estate. A further 5 small portions were granted to him on 23 December 1857.
Edwin Street’s predominant character of workingmen’s weatherboard detached cottages rmained largely unchanged until the gentrification of the area in the 1980s and 1990s. Not all of his land was sold in the 1904 auction for the following Richardson & Wrench Auction on the grounds of Daintrey’s Estate, Manly was held on Saturday 18th April, 1914 (Figure 2).
A photograph of Edwin Daintrey is shown in Figure 3.