Elizabeth. Adams was born at Winslow, Buckinghamshire, England in 1842, and was only five years old when she came with her parents and sisters to Australia. The sailing ship in which she came out was the Lady Northumberland.

Death of Richmond Lady Who Saw Aboriginal Corroborees in Park 70 Years Ago – Bridge Road Was Punt Road and Punt Road Did Not Exist. Quite one of the very oldest-if not the absolute oldest-residents of Richmond passed away when Mrs. Elizabeth Adams died at the residence of her daughter, Mrs. Peat, 18 Gordon street, last Saturday. She lived in one of the first houses built in Richmond-a two-roomed weatherboard place-on the crest of Church-street hill, and she could look out through the doors and windows, except where many trees interrupted the view, down to the Yarra on three sides of the scattered settlement, and towards Melbourne, where the glow of the camp-fires was seen in the sky. A tribe of aboriginals ran wild and lived in mia mias in Richmond Park. Water rushed along a gully where is now Collins-street. Her reminiscences were in many ways full of interest.

After her marriage she lived in Cremorne-street, and three of her eight children (including Mrs. Seabourne, Gordon-street), were born there.

The family joined in the rush to the Ballarat goldfields, but came back to Melbourne to see the opening of the first railway in Australia. That was the old Hobson Bay Co’s line from Flinders-street to Sandridge (now Port Melbourne. The principal means of transport then was by bullock waggon.

Mrs. Adams was on the gold fields at the time of the Eureka Stockade. She returned to Richmond later and found that the settlement had progressed a good deal since her departure to the goldfields. but Mrs. Adams was wont to say that, Richmond was very flat and South Richmond very marshy. People of later days here are wont to complain of the fierceness of the summer sun. Mrs. Adams could recall when a bush fire was started by the sun and swept the sides of Church-street hill. The first shop on Bridge-road, according to Mrs. Adams, was Turner’s Store ‘almost all mud and grass and trees.’ There was, of course, no bridge over the Yarra to Hawthorn then, and the street was called Punt-road, being changed to Bridge-road when the structure was thrown across the stream.

Mrs. Adams registered the birth of her first child at an office where the Flinders-street station now stands. Mrs. Adams was born at Winslow. Buckinghamshire, in 1842, and was only five years old when she came with her parents and sisters to Australia. The sailing ship in which she came out, the Lady Northumberland, had in front a wooden figurehead of Lady Northumberland, after whom the vessel was named. She attended the first Church of England here, on Church-street hill. One of her sisters, Mrs. Williams, is 86 years of age, .still hale and hearty, and resides in Richmond. Other sisters are Mrs. Shaw and Mrs. Rowe, of Inglewood.

Mrs. Adams, with all her years, was not too old to rejoice in the fact that she had a son, not only at the South African War, but also one nobly serving Australia on active service in the present struggle, while still another served in the expedition to New Guinea. There are 12 grandchildren.

Richmond Guardian, 7 July 1917; http://www.eurekapedia.org/Elizabeth_Adams