#52 Ancestors Week 4 I'd Like to Meet

#52 Ancestors Week 4 - I’d like to meet...



I knew both of my grandmothers, but not well.  We didn’t live near them, and our visits were short and irregular.  I knew them really through the stories told by their children, my parents, and other members of the family.

What I knew for certain was that they were as different as chalk and cheese.  So I think I’d like to meet their parents, to find out what had formed their characters and influenced their behavior.

Here are their fathers, George Frederick Power Morgan, father of Josephine, and Robert White, father of Alice.

Unfortunately, not much is known about George.  He was born in Sydney in 1855, to William George Morgan, a wood turner, and Mary Bridget, sometimes known as Bedelia (née Power).  When he married Mary Jane Black on 3 March 1880, he gave his age as 26, and his occupation also as “wood  turner”

In the next 6 years, George and Mary Jane had four children, the second of whom was my grandmother, Josephine, born in 1882.  Tragedy struck when the eldest, Max Pedro Power Morgan, was hit by a cart in the street at Surry Hills and died of his injuries in 1887, but there is a mystery
here.  His death notice refers only to his father, so we assume that George and Mary Jane were already living apart by this time.  We know that when she left, she had taken the baby, Edward George, with her, and George had delivered the others to his mother and sister to be cared for.  Mary Jane’s life from this time is a whole other story.....

To return to George.  Almost nothing is known about his life from this point.  We don’t know if he visited his children in the early years or not.  We don’t know if he is the George Morgan who is the subject of numerous police reports during the 1880s for drunkenness, disorderly conduct and obscene language in the Surry Hills area.  Mary Jane married again in 1899 and gave her status as “widow”.  Did she not know that George was still alive?

He died in the Rookwood Asylum in 1921.  This place was also known as the Rookwood State
Hospital for Aged and Infirm Men, so although George was only 66, it appears that he was frail and
destitute.  The only one of his children named on his death certificate was Elsie, who, like Josie, believed that she was an orphan.  I’d like to have met him for some answers to some of these questions.

My other great grandfather, Robert White, could not have had a more different death.  Crowds of mourners lined the streets of Lismore to watch his funeral procession in July 1932.

Robert was the fifth and last child of English immigrants Charles and Eliza White, and the only one born in Australia - in Lismore, NSW in 1867.  At the age of 21, he married Elizabeth Stanford, daughter of another pioneering Richmond River family, and they began a lifetime of devotion to their family (there would be 7 children) and their community.

Originally apprenticed as a blacksmith, Robert became a farmer and cane grower for a few years,
then returned to Lismore and was involved in various businesses before becoming an Inspector for the United Insurance Co, a position he still held at his death.  At the same time, he held a remarkable number of voluntary positions.

A great believer in social justice, he was a leader in the Friendly Society movement ( the precursors to health funds) and held every position in the Manchester Unity Friendly Society.  He became an alderman of Lismore Council in 1901, and remained an alderman for the rest of his life, filling the Mayoral chair on several occasions.  He was one of the pioneers of hyacinth eradication in the Richmond River, and the inaugural Chairman o f the Richmond River County Council.  He was a keen gardener, and won hundreds of awards and scores of championships for his flowers and vegetables, as well as being largely responsible for the planting of street trees in the town.  At his death he was President of the North Coast Agricultural Societies Association, having been an early supporter of the Lismore Show, and a judge in many categories at shows around the North Coast.

As his grandchildren were growing up in the area around his home in South Lismore, he saw the need for a Primary School in the area, and helped to make it happen.

In the tributes that flowed after his death, he was described as “ forthright and candid”; his Council colleagues regarded him as a man in whom one could place implicit trust and a loyal friend.  I wish I had met him.