#52 Ancestors #Week 19 - Nurture

#52 Ancestors #Week 19 – Nurture

At different times many families have been called on to nurture children whose own parents are missing – through death or desertion. 

In my family, it was my grandmother Josephine and her sister Elsie who were deserted by both their parents.  I don’t know the circumstances, but sometime in 1887, my great grandmother Mary Jane left her husband, taking baby Edward Morgan with her. 

Clearly George Morgan, the children’s father, was unable to cope with two little girls; Josie was 5 and Elsie 3 at the time.  He took them to his sister, Mary Josephine Fleming and her husband William who lived in Summer Hill.   Her mother, Bridget Mary Morgan (known as Bedelia), who had been widowed a few years before this, was also living with them.

The girls never saw their mother again and must have lost touch with their father when they were quite small, as they grew up believing they were orphans.  In fact, George died in 1921 and their mother went on to have two more “marriages” (at least one of which was bigamous) and 12 more children.  When they learnt of her death in 1933, Josie and Elsie discovered a whole new family of half siblings.

Mary Josephine and William had been married only 8 years and had already had six children when they took in their two nieces.  (One of their daughters, also Elsie, had died in infancy in 1883).  What a generous couple they must have been.  Josie and Elsie were absorbed into their growing family (there were five more children born between 1888 – 1899), and they spoke lovingly of their “Aunt Sis” all their lives. 

The Fleming family had many misfortunes.  Four of the other children died young.  Virgil, the eldest was married with four children of his own when he died at the age of 32.  Arthur Rudolf Fleming died at Fleurs, on the Western Front in 1916.  Norman accidentally drowned in a local swimming hole at the age of 8, in 1896.  Bruce died of Bright’s disease at the age of 26.

                                                 William and Mary Josephine Fleming

The house in Summer Hill where the Flemings raised their 10 children as well as their 2 nieces

Paul’s great grandmother, Esther, was 2 months pregnant and had four small children when her husband, Charles William McCann was swept from his horse and drowned in the flooded Wilsons Creek, in 1889.  The eldest of the children was Paul’s grandfather, Charles John McCann, who was 9 years old.

The family story is that Esther’s brother-in-law, John Beale McCann, proposed to her on the way home from the funeral.  We will never know if this was expedience or duty or true love, but she married him.  There is some doubt about how this was initially received in the family.  John and Esther went to Casino and were married quietly at the Manse with no family witnesses – she actually gave her name as “Esther Johnson”.  And Charles William’s grave in the old North Lismore cemetery says ”leaving his mother, brothers and sisters to mourn their loss"

Nevertheless, tensions appear to have settled down and family harmony resumed.  Esther went on to have three more children, although only one survived babyhood, and by the time she was an old lady she seems to have been much loved and held in high esteem in the family.  John McCann raised all her children as his own.  He and Esther are buried together in the Alphadale cemetery.

#52 Ancestors #Week 18 - Road Trip

#52 Ancestors # Week 18 – Road Trip

It’s 730ks from Lismore in Northern NSW to Sydney, the State capital.  These days the trip from Lismore to Sydney can be a pleasant 1 hour flight.  Or an 8 and a half hour drive, most of it on a dual carriage motorway.  If absolutely desperate you could take the train from Casino – about a 12 hour trip in air conditioned comfort.

My father, born in 1913, had his first trip to Sydney at the age of 17.  In 1931, he had finished the Leaving Certificate and won a scholarship to attend the University of Sydney, which was the only University in NSW at the time.  In the next four years, he would make the return trip three times a year.  It was complicated and uncomfortable, and for a student on a very small scholarship, expensive.

There were three ways he could do this.  The first was by boat, from Byron Bay to Sydney, after a short (30 mile) train ride from Lismore to Byron Bay.  The boat left on Saturday afternoon and arrived in Sydney early on Monday morning.  Dad’s grandfather did it regularly.  His mother did it once and was so sea sick she vowed never to do it again.  Dad seems not to have considered this an option.

The second was by train.  Until the bridge over the Clarence at Grafton was built, this was actually three train trips.  The first one stopped at Grafton and passengers took a ferry across the river to South Grafton for the trip to Raleigh.  Here they disembarked and boarded a “bus” to Macksville, where the line began again.  This train went to Sydney.  The whole trip took about 23 hours.

The third was another combination of road and rail.    Sydney and Brisbane were linked by a railway which travelled up the New England route, crossing the border between the two states at Wallangarra.  The nearest this route came to Lismore was about a hundred miles away at Tenterfield, on the New England Tableland.  It was a regular route for the intending passenger to catch a New England Motor Co. service car (a sort of charabanc) and travel through Casino, Mallanganee, Tabulam and Drake to Tenterfield, a journey occupying most of a day, to catch the Sydney-bound train from Brisbane.  This train followed the tablelands to Sydney, arriving there the next morning.

This is how Dad described it in his memoir:

For people prone to car-sickness, the bus journey over the winding and badly-surfaced road was sheer hell!

The road between Lismore and Tenterfield, in 1930, was very different from the highway of today.  Even this highway is not, by any means, the best road in Australia, but it is infinitely better than the winding, undulating dirt and gravel and loose blue metal horror of 1930.

Lismore is about at sea level, Tenterfield is about 1000 metres above sea level.  To rise to that elevation the road has to travel through the Great Dividing Range.  At times, it rises by comparatively gentle gradients, then it twists in one hairpin bend after another while at the same time going up in a low-gear rise or down in a sickening decline, sometimes seeming to descend but actually rising all the time until it reaches the top of the range at Tenterfield.

For the traveller in the charabanc, there was the continuous roar of the hard-working motor, the swish of tyres, the constant clatter of stones thrown up by the wheels to hammer the undercarriage of the bus, the grinding of moving luggage, and the creaking of straps, while as a constant background there was the smell of hot oil and the over-riding odour of petrol.  And all the while, a fine layer of dust was settling upon the passengers.

The passengers were usually crammed together, shoulder brushing shoulder, and legs unable to move without hitting someone else’s legs.  From time to time, the rapid variations in the motion would cause an overstressed stomach to protest, and an unfortunate passenger would discharge his breakfast over the side ( if he was lucky enough to be in an outside seat) or over himself and his neighbours if he wasn’t, and all the time the bus charged forward determined to reach its destination in time to catch the afternoon train from Brisbane.  

(On one occasion, some years later, when I was teaching at Quirindi, I travelled on this service intending to catch the train which would pass through Quirindi on its way to Sydney.  It was the last day of the September vacation so it was important that I catch the train.  My luck was out, however.  When it was about 25 miles from Tenterfield, the bus broke down.  Since, in addition to its other deficiencies, the Tenterfield road was one of the loneliest and most unfrequented roads in NSW, this mishap was serious, as our only hope of relief came from the possibility of flagging down a passing motorist to ask him to relay our plight to the bus company in Tenterfield.  Fortunately, a motorist did indeed come and within an hour a relief bus had arrived.  As we still had plenty of time to catch the train, we were not unduly worried and we set off again for Tenterfield.  We rejoiced too soon.  We had only gone a few miles when that bus too broke down.  This time there was no hope of relief.  Not another vehicle appeared for an hour.  By this time, the train had already arrived in Tenterfield and gone on.  By the time we eventually reached Tenterfield, we were more than an hour late.  As I had very little money on me, and as the night was balmy, rather than cold, I finished by sleeping that night in the park at Tenterfield and next morning I caught a slow train that got me to Quirindi too late to report to work that day, as a result of which I was docked a day’s pay.

                                       A New England Motor Company vehicle of the period 

#52 Ancestors Week 17 At Worship

#52 Ancestors Week 17 -   At Worship

I have written before about my Methodist ancestors, the Whittens.   In a family of staunch Methodists, perhaps the most pious of them was my great grandmother, Charlotte.

Charlotte Mason was born at Bathurst on 17 July, 1842, the daughter of immigrants Richard and Jane Mason.  Her parents had arrived in the colony in March 1842, with their four young children, Phoebe, Grace, Giles and Eliza.   Richard is described on his immigration papers as an agricultural labourer, from Tipperary in Ireland and on Charlotte’s birth certificate  is listed as a shepherd at Johnson's Stockyard Station.

Eliza died soon after their arrival in Bathurst and is buried at Kelso. Charlotte was born that year, too.  I think about what it must have been like for the heavily pregnant Jane to cross the Blue Mountains from Sydney to Bathurst with her small children, while no doubt wearing layers of petticoats.

Before long, the family left Bathurst and travelled by bullock dray to Emu Creek in the Hunter Valley, to the country around Cessnock.  Here, at the age of 12, Charlotte was “converted to God under the ministry of Rev John Watsford of West Maitland.” (1)

At 23, Charlotte married Anthony Whitten at Scone, NSW.  Anthony had 40 acres of land and a slab hut on a place he called “Lowestoft” at Lowes Creek, near Wallabadah.  The young couple set off on horseback on their “honeymoon” – a trip which took them about 100 miles, over a mountain range.  With them went their stock, consisting of 17 head of cattle ,a bullock dray, 2 horses and a dog.  Charlotte was to live at Lowestoft for the rest of her long life.

“In the early days, her nearest Church was Wallabadah, 10 miles away.  For many years she attended that church, at first on horseback, and then by means of a cart.  During her 63 years at Lowestoft, she was late for Church only twice.” (2)

Charlotte and Anthony had 13 children in 19 years.  Twins Richard and Joseph died in infancy but 11 grew to adulthood.  It seems as if all of them were good members of the Church and two of their sons, Alfred and Albert, became Methodist ministers.  My mother spoke of the Church being the centre of family life when she was young (despite having been born a Roman Catholic, my grandmother Josephine became active in the Quirindi Methodist church) and  I remember attending a service in honour of my late grandfather sometime in the late 1950s when my grandmother donated improvements to the Church organ.

We have a report from the Quirindi Advocate about a party given to celebrate Charlotte’s 84^th birthday. Many family and friends had gathered for the occasion and, “as Rev E Barber was present, Mrs Whitten requested that a service should be held during the afternoon.  Therefore a suitable service was held wherein gratitude was expressed for God’s goodness in the past and that for her words of the psalmist were being fulfilled, “With long life will I satisfy him, and show him my salvation.”(3)

Charlotte (above) - hand on bible

Charlotte was no doubt tested by her granddaughter Gladys’ pregnancy in 1922.  Gladys’ mother had died in childbirth and so she was practically raised by her grandmother and her uncles – at least until her father remarried when she was 8 years old.  The story I have heard is that the then 19 year-old Gladys became pregnant to one of the men working on the property but was prevented from marrying him because he was a Catholic.  She went on to have the child (Rex) and raise him alone, and she never married.  Both she and the child seem always to have been accepted within the family.

Another of Charlotte’s challenges would have been the suicide of her daughter, Lottie in 1937, and it seems that it may have been family propriety that caused the damage.  Lottie was in love with her cousin, Albert Moore, but the relationship was thwarted by her parents, who had a fear of inbreeding.  Lottie was 27 when she took her own life, and Albert died a bachelor at the age of 66.

Charlotte’s obituary speaks of her good works.  “To know Mrs. Whitten was to admire her. Her stalwart Christian character, her keen insight, her loyalty to her Master, her generosity to her church, were some of the outstanding traits of her character. No worthy appeal was made to her that did not receive a worthy response, and many a good cause will miss her practical sympathy.”(4)

She was a member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and a donor to many good causes.  I have found evidence of her donations to the Japanese Disaster Fund (1923), the Starving Children of Europe Fund (1922) and the Bellbird Mining Disaster Fund (1925).  She gave generously to her Church, which erected a memorial tablet to her in 1944 in gratitude for her beneficence.  More recently, after the unification of Methodists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists under the Uniting Church banner, the old Methodist Church in Quirindi was deconsecrated.  It is now known as “The Whitten Room” and forms part of a collection of buildings used for accommodation and events.

Charlotte and Anthony are buried together in the cemetery at Wallabadah.

1.       From an article in “The Methodist” 12 Feb 1944.

2.       Ibid

3.       The Quirindi Advocate 23 July 1926

4.       Obituary in “The Methodist” 5 Nov 1927

#52 Ancestors #week 14 - Brick Wall

#52 Ancestors #Week 14 - Brick Wall

All family historians have brick walls.  The ancestors who simply seem to have vanished into thin air; the ancestors who left no footprints; the ancestors from places with poor record keeping.

These are my big brick walls:

1.       William George Morgan, maternal 2 x great grandfather. 

On his marriage in Sydney in 1853, he claimed to have been born in New Zealand in 1831.  On his death certificate his father is named “John”. 

This is almost all we know.  1831 is too early for NZ records, and newspaper searches have failed to find him.  There weren’t many people in NZ in 1831 except Maori, whalers and  missionaries.

I haven’t been able to find his entry to NSW either – sometime before 1853.

So the search continues.

2.       William Barry, paternal 3 x great grandfather

William was the father of Mary, who married 3 times, the first time to our 2x great grandfather, William Crummy.

Mary was born in Bathurst NSW in about 1842.  It’s possible that her father was a sawyer, and also possible that he was an ex-convict.  There are several convicts called William Barry but the lack of any other information makes identification difficult.

3.       The Irish

a.       Ancestors of Kathleen Keogh, my mother -in – law. 

Kathleen knew who her grandparents were, but beyond that is very hard, especially as they have common Irish names: Kelly, Dolan, Kilroe and all of them with alternative spellings (O’Kelly, Doolan, Kilroy etc)

b.       Ancestors of Michael and Ann Gleeson, my paternal 2xgreat grandparents.

I had high hopes when I visited Ennis, in County Clare, Ireland in 2017 that I would be able to crack open this wall, but in fact I ended with more questions.  Michael’s wife is clearly Ann Hehir, but the local genealogists questioned the origins ascribed to her by other members of my family on the basis that she had been born too far away (in the next county) to be his likely spouse. 

Perhaps the single biggest lesson from all of these – particularly the Irish – is that the poor and illiterate are the hardest to keep track of.  They owned no property, they kept no records, they wrote no letters.  If not for the Church records of their baptisms, marriages and deaths, their lives would be without any official markers.

All of this makes me grateful for the convicts in the family.  Nobody has better and more comprehensive records than a prisoner.  Paul’s late cousin, Dick Sansom, who wrote the McCann story in his book, “With Conviction” had reason to be very grateful to all the felons in the family for the abundance of paperwork they left behind.  Dick died, however, with a huge brick wall – the fate of Mary Fitzgerald, convict wife of Peter McCann, who was the first member of the family to come to the colony.

Peter McCann drowned in 1806, and Mary quickly married again, to James Neill (Neale) another convict.  Mary had small children – another marriage was the best form of protection both for her and the children.  She and James Neale had two children, James and Bridget, before she was again widowed, in 1811.

Mary married a third time, to John Hill (another convict) in 1813.  Two more children, Eleanor and Elizabeth, were born.

No death has ever been found for John Hill but some of the McCann family genealogists have concluded that he did die, and that Mary married again.   In 1845, a Henry Cooper (bachelor) married Mary Hill (spinster) at St Andrew’s Church, Sydney.  This same couple appear two years later as witnesses at the wedding of James McCann, at the same church.

Mary Cooper died in December 1870 at the age of 85.  Her birthplace is recorded as Ireland. All of these pieces of circumstantial evidence have pretty much convinced me that this is the solution to Dick’s brick wall.