Adelaide Elsie Pearl Telfer

Role: Daughter of Adam Francis Telfer and Margaret Dougal Telfer

Born: 7 July 1889 — Tantanoola, South Australia
Died: 1976

Father: Adam Francis Telfer (1842–1925)
Mother: Margaret Dougal Telfer (1849–1936)

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Family

Relation	Name
Father	Adam Francis Telfer (1842–1925)
Mother	Margaret Dougal Telfer (1849–1936)

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Life Summary

Adelaide Elsie Pearl Telfer was born on 7 July 1889 at Tantanoola, in the South Australian south-east, the eleventh of Adam and Margaret's twelve children. She was known in the family as Elsie. She died in 1976.

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Timeline

Date	Event
7 Jul 1889	Born — Tantanoola, South Australia
1976	Died

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Source: South Australian Birth Registrations — Book/Page 442/344, District Grey — read live 11 Sep 2026 (Genealogy SA online database, member access No. 24964):

• `TELFER | Adelaide Elsie Pearl | 07-Jul-1889 | F | Father: Adam Francis TELFER | Mother: Margaret Dougal TELFER | Birth Residence: Tantanoola | District: Grey | Book/Page: 442/344`

Source: Find a Grave — Memorial 245337994 — memorial for Adelaide Elsie Pearl Telfer, buried Mitcham General Cemetery, Adelaide (read directly 11 Sep 2026). Transcribes the same register line (07-Jul-1889, Tantanoola, District Grey, 442/344). Note: this memorial's compiled sibling list is incomplete and inaccurate (see Margaret Wright Telfer (1869–1890) and Corrections Log 11 Sep 2026) — it is reliable only for Adelaide's own transcribed register data.

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Family Stories

🖊️ Anecdote — as told in From the Borders to the Bush (book pp. 329–330): Elsie was the family's nurse, and not just in name. She trained properly and worked in a string of hospitals — out at Broken Hill among them, where the nurses were made of iron. Later she and Violet ran the little private hospital in Rochester together, sisters in charge of a ward. And Elsie carried the family in her head like a ledger — every niece and nephew's name and birthday, every last one, she could tell you without missing. When Violet had her fall Elsie finished up in a Norwood nursing home, and later at the Home for Incurables in Fullarton, but she never lost that memory that made her everyone's favourite aunt. She came back to lie with her parents at Mitcham when her turn came in 1976.

(Anecdote only — family colour, told as the elders tell it. Does not establish any relationship, date or place.)