The Bernards were the descendants of colonists in Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia, including Francis James Bernard, a London, England-born Anglo-Irishman whose great-grandfather, Arthur Bernard, was a member of the Irish House of Commons for Bandonbridge, and brother of Francis Bernard, Solicitor-General for Ireland, and ancestor of the Earls of Bandon. Francis James Bernard was the founder of the Singapore Police Force in 1819, "The Singapore Chronicle", the first newspaper in Singapore, was established with Bernard as owner, publisher, and editor in 1824 and he opened up Katong, now a densely populated-residential enclave, the first to cultivate a coconut estate there in 1823. Bernard married Margaret Trudeau's 3rd great-grandmother, Esther Farquhar, in 1818, the eldest daughter of Scotsman William Farquhar, a colonial leader in the founding of modern Singapore, by Farquhar's first wife, Antoinette "Nonio" Clement, daughter of a French father and an ethnic Malaccan mother.