sketcher, fifth of the six daughters of Hannibal Hawkins Macarthur and Anna Macarthur, née King, and a sister of Anna , Charles and James , was named after her cousin Emmeline Emily Macarthur ( Parker ). She spent her childhood at the family home, The Vineyard, on the Parramatta River, New South Wales. In her 'Recollections and letters 1860-1894’ written in old age (1909), Emmeline relates a story about a particularly bad bush-fire which she and her younger sister Emma Jane witnessed and which Emmeline subsequently drew: '[we] dragged our mattresses on to the Upper Colonnade, and spent the night of Easter Eve, watching the most splendid fireworks at a distance … The trees on the right of my watercolour presented our spectacle on the safe side of the stream’. The whereabouts of this or any other of her sketches is not known.

On 2 December 1860, in All Saints’ Church of England, Parramatta, Emmeline married George Farquhar Leslie. After his death she married Vigant de Falbe, a commander in the Royal Danish Navy, with whom she had two sons. She died at Elm Cottage, Cheltenham, England, on 23 December 1911, aged eighty-three.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011