Ɛpsilon

From B. J. Sulivan   [14–20] April [1878]1

Bournemouth.

April.

My dear Darwin

There are two orphan boys, grandsons of Jimmy Button now at our Mission station, and they the missionaries are anxious to help these boys there and train them up.2 The expense for each would be 10£ a year and the elder one has been provided for by the Beckenham Branch of the Mission under the name of “William Beckenham Button”.3

I think it would be a nice thing if the old Beagles would adopt the younger one and call him “Jimmy FitzRoy Button”— He is now called “James” B— If we were each to give 1£ a year it would provide for him, as I think FitzRoy’s family would help. I am writing to all our old party.4 Hamond was here recently and he was glad to join. He has gone out to Gibraltar to take his daughter in law (a neice of my wife). and baby out to her Husband who has lately gone out to command a gun boat there.5

I hope you are all well. I have been again confined for a month with cough & cold, and could not go with my wife & daughter to our younger son’s marriage at Dover last week.6 I am getting all right again and all our party are now out of Doctor’s list.

With our kind regard to Mrs. Darwin and all your family | Believe me | very sincerely yours | B. J. Sulivan

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter to B. J. Sulivan, 22 April 1878. The date range is established by the reference to Henry Norton Sulivan’s wedding having taken place the previous week; he was married on 9 April (see n. 6, below).
2
Jemmy Button, originally named Orundellico, was a Fuegian of the Yahgan tribe. He was brought to England in 1830 by Robert FitzRoy, captain of HMS Beagle, and returned to Tierra del Fuego in 1833; he died in 1861. The South American Missionary Magazine, 1 February 1878, pp. 32–3, had listed orphans in need of support, including Jemmy Button’s ‘unnamed’ (that is, with no Christian names) grandsons aged 10 and 8, whose parents had died two years previously. These orphan boys (whose Yahgan names were Pucananlacitanjiz and Cooshaipunjiz) were the sons of Jemmy Button’s eldest son, Coofyinuganjiz, and his wife Loocoīliceepa (ibid., 1 February 1878, p. 32, 1 October 1879, p. 223). They were at the mission that had been established for Fuegians at Ushuaia in the Beagle Channel, Patagonia (Hazlewood 2000. p. 343).
3
The adoption of 10-year-old ‘Willy Beckenham’ (Pucananlacitanjiz) by the Beckenham and Shortlands Association was reported in the South American Missionary Magazine, 1 March 1877, p. 76, in a note emphasising the importance of ‘Juvenile Associations’ and ‘Children Collectors’.
4
Sulivan, who had been second lieutenant on HMS Beagle when CD was on board during the 1831–6 voyage, was a long-time supporter of the South American Missionary Society; CD had made a donation in 1867 (see Correspondence vol. 22, letter from B. J. Sulivan, 5 January 1874 and n. 2). FitzRoy’s family included his widow, Maria Isabella FitzRoy, their daughter Laura Maria Elizabeth FitzRoy, his son and two daughters from his first marriage, Robert O’Brien FitzRoy, Fanny FitzRoy, and Katherine FitzRoy, and his brother, George FitzRoy.
5
Robert Nicholas Hamond (1809–83) had been a midshipman on HMS Beagle when CD was on board. Hamond’s eldest son, Robert Nicholas Hamond (1844–94), was in command of the gunboat Composite, stationed in Gibraltar (Navy list 1878). He had married Janetta Tucker, daughter of Sophia Sulivan’s sister Sabine Anne Tucker, in 1877 (Burke’s landed gentry 1952, s.v. Hamond). The baby was Philip Walpole Hamond; he died in Gibraltar before November 1878 (see letter from B. J. Sulivan, 3 November 1878).
6
Henry Norton Sulivan had married Grace Mary Griffin on 9 April 1878 (England, select marriages, 1538–1973 (Ancestry.com, accessed 1 February 2017)). It was probably Sulivan’s daughter Sophia Henrietta Sulivan who accompanied her mother, Sophia Sulivan, to the wedding.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11459,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11459