See also
| Husband: | James Guy Thomson (1832-1890) | |
| Wife: | Mary Elizabeth Bussell (1856-1919) | |
| Children: | Alfred Thomson (1878-1937) | |
| Ellen Elizabeth Thomson (1880-1974) | ||
| Vernon Guy Thomson (1882-1899) | ||
| Grace Ermengarde Thomson (1885- ) | ||
| Edith Francesca Thomson (1888-1904) | ||
| Marriage | 1878 | Margaret River, Western Australia |
| Name: | James Guy Thomson | |
| Sex: | Male | |
| Father: | Guy Thomson ( - ) | |
| Mother: | - | |
| Birth | 31 Jan 1832 | Old Bank House, Baldon, Oxfordshire |
| Education | Winchester College & Oxford University, England | |
| Religion | Anglican | |
| Immigration | 20 Jun 1855 (age 23) | to Swan River Colony |
| Occupation | Pastoralist and stockbreeder | |
| Death | 10 Nov 1890 (age 58) | Brookhampton, Blackwood, Western Australia |
| Name: | Mary Elizabeth Bussell | |
| Sex: | Female | |
| Father: | - | |
| Mother: | - | |
| Birth | 1856 | Vasse, Western Australia |
| Death | 1919 (age 62-63) | Perth, Western Australia |
| Name: | Alfred Thomson | |
| Sex: | Male | |
| Spouse: | Elizabeth Viola Russell ( - ) | |
| Birth | 1878 | Busselton, Western Australia |
| Death | 1937 (age 58-59) | |
| Name: | Ellen Elizabeth Thomson | |
| Sex: | Female | |
| Spouse: | Charles Clarke ( - ) | |
| Birth | 1880 | Busselton, Western Australia |
| Death | 1974 (age 93-94) | USA |
| Name: | Vernon Guy Thomson | |
| Sex: | Male | |
| Birth | 1882 | Brookhampton, Blackwood, Western Australia |
| Death | 1899 (age 16-17) | |
| Name: | Grace Ermengarde Thomson | |
| Sex: | Female | |
| Birth | 1885 | Bunbury, Western Australia |
| Name: | Edith Francesca Thomson | |
| Sex: | Female | |
| Birth | 1888 | Bunbury, Western Australia |
| Death | 1904 (age 15-16) | |
James Guy Thomson (1832-1890) was born and raised in Oxford, England of a banking family. He was high spirited and refused to follow his father into the banking world, choosing instead to try his luck in the new Swan River Colony in Western Australia. He arrived in 1855 as first mate on the Avalanche. Travelling on the same ship were Samuel Pole Phillips and his wife Sophie, as well as Sophie's sister, Emma Roe. They were returning to the colony after a two year visit to England. Sophie and Emma were the daughters of John Septimus Roe, famous in West Australian history as the first Surveyor General of the Swan River Colony. They were accompanied by Augustus Lee Steere and another family friend. The three men had acquired three thoroughbred stallions, and were bringing them to their property near Newcastle (now Toodyay), in the hope of setting up a horse breeding partnership. The plan was to use the sires from England to breed mounts for the Indian Army.
Meanwhile, James Guy Thomson courted Emma Roe and gained permission to marry her. John Septimus Roe, as James’s prospective father-in-law, went into business with the other three men on James’s behalf, so James thus entered the horse breeding fraternity.
James and Emma married in 1856. Their first child, May, was born at Bolgart near Perth (Western Australia) in 1858, and the following year James moved to Bunbury where he invested in a large 80,000 acre property on the track towards the Blackwood which he called Brookhampton after a family home in England. He bred horses, cattle and sheep on the estate. Emma and the family joined him there in 1861 when the house was ready for them.
James was known locally as “Gentleman Thomson”, probably on account of his social status and upper-class upbringing in England. He was very enterprising. He was influential in the locality, and employed ticket-of-leave men from the penal colony who later settled in the Blackwood area.
His wife Emma died suddenly in 1876 at the age of 39. In 1878, James married Mary Elizabeth (Bessie) Bussell. He died in 1890, leaving everything he had to Bessie.
Source: Fran Taylor, Bridgetown the Early Years, Book Two, pp. 197-199
History of Brookhampton: In the 1850s, a squatter named Mueller, which was anglicised to Miller, erected a slab hut on land that was taken up in 1858-9, as freehold and extensive pastoral leases, by James Guy Thomson (b. Oxfordshire, 1833; arr. 1855, d. 1890; m. 1856, Emma, d. 1876, daughter of Surveyor General J. S. Roe; m. 2nd 1878, Mary Elizabeth ‘Bessie’ Bussell). Until mid-1858, Thomson was in partnership with S. P. Phillips and A. Lee Steere, as Phillips and Co., graziers and horse-breeders, at Toodyay. He continued these pursuits at the place he named ‘Brookhampton’ after a family home in England. He was the first permanent settler in the district that took its name from his farm and pastoral station. In early 1860, he took his wife and family from Bunbury to visit the place, and the slab hut and kitchen became the nucleus of their home with the linear addition of three new rooms by May 1861, when they took up residence. At various periods in 1863-79, he employed a number of ticket-of-leave men, including carpenters and bricklayers, who probably worked on erecting some of the buildings and structures. His other employees included some Aboriginal people. ‘Gentleman’ Thomson as he was known had 14 children, nine from his first marriage and five from his second, and eventually the house comprised 15 rooms. Bricks were made and baked in kilns on the property to construct a number of buildings including a large separate kitchen, a school-room, cook’s bedroom, two staff bedrooms, a bathroom, dairy and storeroom. Two cottages and the school-room survive. Thomson was well known for his horse-breeding, including for the Indian Army, and there were stables for 30 horses and a racetrack. He planted couch grass from J. S. Roe’s garden in Perth on the flats by Thomson’s Brook, which became known as the best dairy land in the district. There were numerous other outbuildings. In 1882, two separate fires destroyed the hayshed and the carpenter’s shop. During Thomson’s lifetime notable visitors who stayed for an extended period included his friend the poet Adam Lindsay Gordon and the botanist Dr. Ferdinand Von Mueller (later knighted, 1879), who collected flora in the surrounding district. In 1890, James Guy Thomson (snr) died. When his ‘Valuable Farm and Station Property known as Brookhampton’, ‘one of the finest Station Properties in the South’, was advertised for sale in May 1891, it comprised 700 acres of freehold land and 80,000 acres leasehold, with about 800 cattle, 40 horses and 30 pigs (Inquirer 20 May 1891). The extensive improvements included the ‘roomy house with large kitchen, dairy, bath, store, and servants rooms and every requisite for a large establishment’, ‘excellent stabling and stockyards and all other necessary outbuildings’, ‘a large garden with vineyard and other fruit trees’ (ibid). It was not sold, and Thomson’s three eldest sons continued to work the property. In 1892, his widow married Captain L. H. Noyes and they moved to Busselton with her children. James Guy Thomson (b. 1860), who had returned from the North-West in ill health, kept the accounts at ‘Brookhampton’ until he died there in late 1895. In c. 1895-6, when the leasehold land was resumed for settlement, Mervyn ‘Bon’ Thomson (b.1874, d. 1966) acquired ‘Brookhampton’ (2,500 acres) and John ‘Jack’ Thomson (b. 1866, d. 1944) acquired the area to the east (2,000 acres, later expanded to 6,000 acres), which he named ’Woodperry’ after the Thomson home in Oxford, England. ‘Bon’ Thomson continued to work ‘Brookhampton’, where he and his wife, Frances (née Yelverton) raised their son, Kynaston ‘Ken’, and six daughters.
http://inherit.stateheritage.wa.gov.au/Public/Inventory/PrintSingleRecord/3f5d0f27-7a20-4492-bae5-ec1c45213233 (accessed 23.09.2017)