The Early Years

Francis Farrington Boult was born on September 26, 1879, in Dover, Kent, England, to Farrington Holker Boult and Mina Blanche Wallerstein. It was an odd place for Francis to be born but his parents had been living on the continent and made it back across the English Channel in time for Francis to be born on English soil. The address listed on his birth certificate was that of a lawyer's office.

Francis' father, Farrington Holker Boult, was born in Bath on June 12, 1852. Farrington's father, Edmund Holker Boult, was a surgeon at the Bath Eye Infirmary. He had previously worked as a surgeon in the Bengal Army and was stationed in India. Boult family roots were deep in the Chester region of Cheshire but a job after his retirement from the Bengal Army had brought Edmund to Bath.

Farrington's mother, Margaret Anne Farrington, was born in Nova Scotia, Canada, while her father, Henry Maturin Farrington was stationed there. Hers was an ancient family who traced their roots back to Alfred the Great and beyond. Her grandmother, Elizabeth Colden, gave them a connection to Colonial America. Elizabeth's grand father was Cadwallader Colden, a Scotsman who was the last Royalist lieutenant governor of New York, who died in 1776 just as America became a new nation.

Francis' mother Mina was a woman of her own means. She was the daughter of Edward Francis Wallerstein, a German Jew from Frankfurt, who moved to Costa Rica in 1836, where he made his fortune in coffee, and became known as one of the "coffee barons." He has been documented as introducing the cultivation of coffee to Costa Rica. When Mina was born, Wallerstein had been appointed Consul General of Costa Rica in London. Mina's mother was an English woman named Elizabeth Gaze from Dilham, Norfolk, whose family appeared to travel to South and Central America with some regularity. Perhaps Elizabeth Gaze, who was almost twenty years younger than Walllerstein, had met on one of those excursions.

Farrington and Mina's marriage was a short lived one. He died of consumption on May 21, 1882, in Marylebone, London, just shy of his 30th birthday. Francis was two-years-old when his father died.

Not much is known about Francis Farrington's early childhood. The 1881 census shows him living in Dover, Kent, with a family who was caring for him. By 1900 he is a shipbroker's clerk living at 11 Kelvin Grove, Sydenham, London.

How did he learn about Sarawak and the Brookes? Both the Boult and Brooke families had a presence in Bath and in London, and their paths could have crossed at any point. By February 1902, at the age of 21, Francis Farrington Boult, had arrived in Kuching, Sarawak, to begin his life in the Brooke administration. He would give 31 years of his life in service to Sarawak and retained a deep love of the country.