A resilient woman and one who was a "first"!

 It seems over the last few months I have been blogging mainly about prominent men who call Rookwood "home". Today's blog is about a remarkable woman that I expect most of us haven't heard of. The details about her are relatively scarce but I have found some information that sets out her astonishing life. I have mentioned her briefly before in a blog about her second husband, but she is more than deserving of recognition of her own!

ADA HANNAH COFFILL nee AMBLER nee MORRIS!

Ada was born in May 1863 in Sydney Australia about the 9th child of 12 to John Morris and Sarah nee Hart.

Her mother Sarah came from Gloucestershire England. Sarah's father died when she was 11 and her mother Hannah together with his sister Ann took to theft to supplement their incomes. They were both caught stealing clothes including an expensive coat, subsequently went to court in 1835 were found guilty and transported to Australia for 7 years. Hannah with her daughter Sarah and Ann with her young son William arrived in Sydney in October 1836. Both women worked at the Parramatta Female Factory washing and mending clothes and other linen until their release in 1842.

Ada's mother Sarah was immediately sent to the Female Orphanage School in Parramatta but wasn't there long enough to gain any education, going into training as a housemaid.

In 1840, Sarah, aged 17, married John Morris aged 29 who was a Londoner and had arrived in NSW in 1826 becoming an auctioneer. He made a home for his growing family in Forest Lodge, an inner Sydney suburb.

Returning to Ada, at the age of 15 she eloped with a coachman, James Ambler and the two were married on Boxing Day 1878 choosing to live in Forest Lodge close to her mother (her father had died). The marriage seems to have been accepted by the family.

A young Ada - ancestry.com via public domain

The couple lived as hawkers selling goods from their horse and cart before purchasing the “Angel Hotel" in Pitt Street where they both worked. The couple had 4 daughters. James died in 1896 aged 44 leaving Ada a widow and sole proprietor of the Angel Hotel.

The following year, 1897, Ada, aged 34, married Joseph Coffill, aged 56, who ran a burgeoning funeral business near the Hotel.

Joseph Coffill - ancestry.com via public domain

I wrote a blog about Joseph Coffill on the 12th of April 2022 and you can read it by clicking onto his name below under "tags", but I will provide a summary of his life and achievements here.

Joseph was a young London man in the 1860's who wanted more to life and took a passage to Brisbane, becoming a carter in the greater Brisbane area. At times he would drove cattle to Sydney over days - nothing was too difficult - and he had a great affinity with horses. In 1878 he headed to Sydney where there were more opportunities. He bought a large property in Ultimo with stables to run a hansom cab company. He married and soon after his wife gave birth to their first son, unfortunately she died of pneumonia soon after.

Joseph worked through his grief making his business very successful and in 1881, remarried. He and his wife went on to have 9 children. Joseph diversified to wedding carriages and attracted the heights of society. In 1894 soon after their 9th child was born, his second wife died. He moved to a more generous property to accommodate his large family, and it was just as well as in 1897 he married for a third time, to Ada Hannah Ambler. The household now included another 4 children.

Three years after their marriage Ada gave birth to Dorothy Ada Coffill, making 5 children from Ada's marriages and 11 from Joseph's three marriages.

Ever the enterprising businessman, Joseph wanted a "one stop" business for all aspects to do with the funeral experience from the making of the coffin to the hearses and other aspects of the Victorian funeral. In 1909, Ada accompanied Joseph to San Francisco California where she attended an embalming course, meaning that Coffill’s business offered everything that could be requested of a funeral of the time.

Embalming was a way of preserving the body temporarily and restoring a natural appearance for viewing a body after death. This was done by injecting a variety of preservatives, sanitising and disinfectant agents. Even though it generally fell to the woman of the household to wash and cleanse the body of the deceased prior to viewing, embalming was not seen as a gentile procedure to be performed by the “weaker” sex.

By undertaking and successfully completing the embalming course, Ada Coffill became the first qualified Australian female embalmer, and she worked alongside her husband in his successful business.

Photograph showing Wood Coffill Ltd 1919 with "embalmers" cut short 

State Library of NSW 

In April 1919, Joseph died at his home in Homebush, survived by his wife, and most of his children. He was buried in the old Anglican area of Rookwood Cemetery with his second wife Anne, on the behest of their eldest son, Joseph.

Six years after her husband died, Ada Coffill left Sydney with her daughter Dorothy who was shunned by her father’s children, (although not her mother’s other children), and travelled the world for about six months.

The day they returned in September 1925, her daughter Dorothy married James Hobill and lived above his butcher’s shop in Croydon. They had two daughters in 1926 and 1928. Ada sold the home she had shared with Joseph in Homebush putting the proceeds towards a family home in Croydon where they all could live. In 1940 Dorothy gave birth to Peter, the very much younger member of the family.

Ada proved herself to be a great businesswoman and served on the board of advisors who consulted regularly for new businesses. ICI was one business that Ada helped grow from a used bottle collection into a large bottle recycling business. Besides having sharp business acumen, she was also known to have assisted the Catholic Church to help deliver babies to young single women.

An older Ada - ancestry.com via public domain.

Ada Coffill died on the 19th of October 1943 in the family’s Bullaburra house in the Blue Mountains with her daughter, Dorothy, and other family members by her side.

Her body was delivered to the Rookwood Crematorium the next day by Wood Coffill Ltd. Funerals and cremated on that same day.

Ada was one remarkable woman, always moving forward. No doubt she eloped to escape a small household full of people and had ambition. She is one relative to be proud of; resilient and always with a plan, a woman I could admire and one we should know more about!

For today’s references I have used Ancestry.com with google and trove searches but the best information was found on Wikitree with information firstly from 2010 and through to 2022 and compiled by Mandy Philip-Moody. Thank you for sharing this to the public domain as Ada's story needs to be known.

If you have any insights or comments about this blog, please add them below or head to the Group Facebook page found via

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or send me a personal message at

lorainepunch@gmail.com

Until next week