page_title: Thomas Bridges (Anglican missionary)
section_title: Family
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas Bridges (Anglican missionary) / Family
caption_attribution_description: English: Reverend Thomas Bridges posing for a photograph with his family
context_page_description: Thomas Bridges was an Anglican missionary and linguist, the first to set up a successful mission to the indigenous peoples in Tierra del Fuego, an archipelago shared by Argentina and Chile. Adopted and raised in England by George Pakenham Despard, he accompanied his father to Chile with the Patagonian Missionary Society. After an attack by indigenous people, in 1869 Bridges' father, Despard, left the mission at Keppel Island of the Falkland Islands, to return with his family to England. At the age of 17, Bridges stayed with the mission as its new superintendent. In the late 1860s, he worked to set up a mission at what is now the town of Ushuaia along the southern shore of Tierra del Fuego Island.
  Ordained and married during a trip to Great Britain in 1868-1869, Bridges returned to the Falkland Islands with his wife. They settled at the mission at Ushuaia, where four of their six children were born. He continued to work with the Selk'nam and Yaghan peoples for nearly 20 more years. On Bridges' retirement from missionary service in 1886, the Argentine government gave him a large grant of land. He became a sheep and cattle rancher.
context_section_description: The Bridges had six children, four of whom were born in Ushuaia. Mary Ann Varder Bridges (called Mary) was born in 1870. Their eldest son, Thomas Despard Bridges (called Despard), was born in 1872. Stephen (Esteban) Lucas Bridges, called Lucas, was born in 1874; William Samuel Bridges in 1876, Bertha Milman Bridges in 1879, and Alice Couty Bridges in 1882. Mary Ann's younger sister, Johanna Varder, arrived from England in 1874 to join the mission and help care for the growing Bridges family. The children grew up speaking English, Yámana and Spanish.
caption: Thomas Bridges posing with his family
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