Of Chesters

Papua’S Five Generations

THE old photograph of the annexation ceremony by Henry M. Chester, at Port Moresby, in 1883, published in September PIM, and the accompanying article, were examined with keen interest in Papua by Mr, W. N. M. Chester, who is a grandson of the former Thursday Island Magistrate.

Mr. Chester writes that, since the flag was hoisted in 1883, there have been four generations of Chesters settled in or near Port Moresby—his father (son of Henry M. Chester), himself, his son, and his son’s two little children. The last three generations were all born in Port Moresby. Papua, therefore, actually has known five generations of Chesters. All the men have been Government officials.

Mr. Chester has sent us a cutting from a Brisbane newspaper of April 18, 1914, wherein a column article describes the remarkably interesting career of the late Henry M. Chester—then 82 years old, and a resident of Brisbane. From this it appears that, about 100 years ago, when he was an officer in the British Army, Mr. Chester had a good deal to do with the maintenance of order among the quarrelsome Arabian sheiks, in and around Bahrein Island (Persian Gulf) — then unknown, but now one of the world’s richest sources of oil supply.