#52 Ancestors Week 31 - Brother

#52 Ancestors  Week 31 - Brother

The story of Ireland in the 19^th century is the story of emigration.  Of the 12 children of Edward and Martha Whitten of Roscrea,  the youngest five were to emigrate to Australia.  Russell Bell, in his history of the family, suggested that they came as a result of a tuberculosis scare in their home country, but we don’t know.  We do know that the story of Irish emigration is partly that the relatively small holdings could not support the large number of children generally born to them and Edward’s eldest son Robert had inherited the house on his father’s death.

The Whittens had occupied the property known as “Fancroft”, a few miles from Roscrea, in County Offaly (formerly King's County)  since about 1795, when Edward, son of William Whitten and Prudence (nee Clery) was born.  There were two older sons, Anthony and Robert but I assume both died young, as it was Edward and his wife Martha (Lucas) who inherited on William’s death.

Of Edward and Martha’s children, the four youngest boys, Edward (Ned), Anthony, Henry and Joseph came to Australia.  (Their newly widowed sister Ann Elliott came too, with her son, but that’s a story for another time).  It seems that Henry and Anthony came first – via America.  There is an entry in Alfred Whitten’s travel diary (written in 1912) which says, “we visited a John McBride, who went to America with Father (Anthony) in about 1860.  Father worked in St Charles, a town on the Missouri, in the USA, for William McBride, for two years”

On their arrival in Australia, Anthony and Henry lived in the Singleton area, where they got to know the Mason family who came from Ballingarry in Tipperary, not far from Roscrea.  They sponsored their youngest brother Joseph, who arrived on the ship “Sir John Moore” in 1863 and settled nearby at Chain of Ponds.  Ned came last, in about 1865.

Within a few years Anthony and Henry married two of the Mason sisters, Charlotte and Eliza and both couples took up 40 acre blocks near Wallabadah.  Anthony and Charlotte travelled there on horseback on their “honeymoon” with 17 head of cattle, two horses and a dog.  The distance is about 100 miles, over a mountain range, so Charlotte (aged 23) had an early introduction to the rigors of life as a farmer’s wife.

Anthony Whitten

Henry, who married Eliza in 1867, also began with a 40 acre block, but then moved about 4 miles north to Gowrie and acquired another 100 acres.  Between them, Anthony and Henry eventually owned about 2500 acres of this country.

Henry Whitten

Ned settled at Sugarloaf, on the other side of the hill from his brothers, and at the age of 46 married Elizabeth Freestone.  They had 7 children in 12 years, the last born after Ned’s early death at the age of 58.  He is buried at Wallabadah, near the graves of Anthony and Charlotte.

Edward "Ned" Whitten

These three brothers maintained close relationships throughout their lives.  They all had large families (Anthony had 13 children, Henry had 9) and many of their sons also became graziers and farmers in the area. There is a story that when Ned was dying, Anthony rode over the mountains to Quirindi for medicine, but the bottle broke on the way back.  Anthony was heartbroken when Ned died shortly afterwards.

Joseph is the brother that the family knows least about, as he became estranged from the others.  As good Methodists, the Whittens were teetotallers, but Joseph established himself as the licensee of an inn and wine saloon which was an important halfway house for coaches on the main northern road. (The inn was still there in the early 1990s but as it is on land owned by the Electricity Commission and occupied by the Liddell Power Station it was unoccupied and neglected.  It was rapidly falling into disrepair when I saw it then and had been vandalised so that all the fine timber joinery, including the staircase, had gone). 

Because Joseph dealt with alcohol, it seems that the other brothers never saw him again.

Joseph’s history lends some credence to the aforementioned tuberculosis story, as nearly all of his children died young.  He married 16 year old Joanna Devitt at Chain of Ponds in 1867, when he was 26, and they had 11 children but only four of them lived past the age of 30 and many of them left young families when they died.  Joseph is buried in Singleton with two of his children, Matilda (known as Barney) who died at 17, and Percival, who was only 7.

Joseph Whitten

#52 Ancestors Week 30 - Easy

#52 Ancestors Week 30 - Easy

The easiest branch of my family to research has been my mother’s family – the Whittens.  This is because so much research was already done by the time I came along – By one Russell Bell, who married my mother’s first cousin, Doris Whitten.

Russ was a teacher in Quirindi when he met Doris – he actually taught my mother, so was a colleague of my father on the staff of Quirindi District Rural School in the late 1930s.

When he retired from teaching (in the 70s, I think) he decided that a family history would be an interesting project, and he set about collating all the information he could find from all branches of the family.  My mother’s half sister, Gladys (born 1903) was a good source of information, and there were third generation descendants of the original migrating brothers (Edward, Henry, Anthony, Joseph) and sister (Annie) who all had stories to share.  He was lucky that the Whittens are all great storytellers, so everyone had interesting tales to tell.

Russ’s history is all the more remarkable because it came long before the internet made communication so immediate.  He had to write letters…. and wait for answers.  He had to apply and pay for for birth, death and marriage certificates that sometimes turned out to be for someone who wasn’t related at all.  The document he produced at the end, in 1984, was handwritten, and duplicated on that now-ancient machine known to all teachers – the gestetner.

More recently another family member – my second cousin Tim Hobson, has updated the entire Whitten family tree and placed it all on the internet on a site called, “Whittens in Australia”.  And I too have a tree on Ancestry which has, thanks to modern technology, expanded and enlarged upon Russ’s original story.

It’s not all easy, however, as any researcher of Irish history will tell you.  The Irish records are still a struggle and I have a few burning questions yet to be answered. 

Were the original Whittens in Ireland Huguenots?

Was their land really granted to them by Oliver Cromwell?

And (a true Aussie question) … Are we related to legendary AFL player Ted Whitten?

Russell Bell

#52 Ancestors - Week 29 Challenging

#52 Ancestors Week 29   Challenging

All of our ancestors lived lives that we would consider challenging by modern standards.  Everything –work, travel, health, childbirth – was more difficult in the past.

For Nicholas McCann, life was a succession of challenges.

Born in 1803, Nicholas was the first child of convicts Peter McCann and Mary Fitzgerald, who married at St John’s Church, Parramatta on the day of Nicholas’ baptism.  They had one more child together, Catherine, in 1805 and then in 1806, Peter McCann drowned in Rickerby’s Creek, Windsor.

Mary did the only thing possible for a young penniless mother – she married again.

Nicholas was fortunate that he had a relative (perhaps an uncle – we can’t determine) called John Norris who took young Nicholas under his wing.  Norris (another ex-convict) was a stone-mason who had opened a Monumental and Builders Yard on Parramatta Rd.  He seems to have been an excellent tradesman - sober, industrious and methodical, and he instilled these qualities in Nicholas.

Nicholas married at the age of 22 to Catherine Johnstone.  She too was the child of a convict (Rosetta Johnstone) and had come to the colony with her mother at the age of 6.  Her mother subsequently married another ex-convict called John Beal, who was highly regarded in the colony and in the family (for generations the name “Beal” was included in the McCann male names).

Nicholas’ second son, Peter McCann, recorded in his memoir that his father was inclined to be rash as a young man, and the first instance of this was his loss of large parcels of Sydney sandstone quarries to which he had laid claim.  Casting about for a way to make recompense, he decided to go to Tasmania at the urging of his young friends John Batman and John Griffith.  Leaving Catherine and  the three children, Charles, Peter and Ann in the care of John and Rosetta Beal, he set off.

Six months later, he sent for his family.  The eldest son, Charles stayed behind with the Beals (an action which was to reverberate through the family to this day)*, but the others set off on the 12 day voyage down the eastern coast and across Bass Strait to Georgetown.

Nicholas built his family a house and began to trade in lime and timber.  He obtained a large contract to build a hotel across the Tamar River, so leaving Catherine and an employee to manage the business he made the journey across the river by whale boat.  One Monday morning in 1832 he set off after assuring Catherine that the small pimple on her lip was a minor thing that would soon pass, only to be summoned home the following Wednesday to her death bed.  She died at the age of 24 from a bacterial skin infection which would be easily treated today.

The next four years were particularly challenging for Nicholas.  His baby daughter, Anne was taken in by a kind and wealthy couple called Hopkins, from Launceston who adopted her and looked after her well.  His son Peter, still only 4 years old, was sent to a “boarding school” which he later described as worse than Dickensian. 

Nicholas worked hard in these years – he discovered the best kind of building Freestone in the area around Fingall and built a couple of grand houses for young squatters.  He was successful in gaining the contract to build a bridge over the South Esk river but there was a huge flood which carried the abutments and piers away.  When the water subsided, he began again, but another flood came down and carried the structure away for the second time.  He gave up in despair and was forced to come to a compromise with his creditors.

During this period he was courting a young woman who was to become his second wife.  Catherine Nelson was the 22 year old daughter of a Master Tailor from Edinburgh who had come to Launceston with her sister to act as a nursery governess.  They were married in 1836 and Nicholas was soon off on another adventure.  This time he, Catherine and the then 9 year old Peter set off across Bass Strait for Port Fairy where his old friend John Griffith was establishing a whaling and cattle station.  They travelled on a small schooner with 29 other people and 200 sheep and had an eventful crossing.  Nicholas was actually swept overboard, but managed to stay afloat until he was rescued and treated with lots of rum and plenty of blankets.

In Port Fairy there was a thriving whaling industry at this time, and Nicholas was persuaded to spend a season in this activity.  He quarried stone on Griffith’s Island and built several houses, but in 1841, now with two more children, the family gave up their attempts at farming when the natives drove off all their sheep.  They departed to Geelong, where he was to spend the rest of his life.

Quarry at Port Fairy 

After his arrival in Geelong, Nicholas carried on his trade as a builder and stonemason, being responsible for some of the earliest buildings - the Watch House, the Lock-Up and the Courthouse. Many remnants of these remain, including the stone piers and abutments for the old Barwon Bridge.

Peter was taken on as an apprentice, and then a partner, and together they opened up the sandstone quarries in the Barrabool Hills about 6 miles from Geelong.  Nicholas built a fine house nearby at Ceres which is still owned by the family.  He was doing well now, so he sent Peter back to England to bring Annie home – she had been taken there by the Hopkins family when Nicholas left Tasmania.

There was sadness, though.  Catherine bore six children between 1837 and 1849, but in 1850 she died, aged only 36.  Three of the children were under 5 - we know that 3 year old James was given to a childless uncle and aunt, but don’t know how the other children were raised.  Nicholas lived on until 1879 in the house at Ceres.  By 1844 he had taken the pledge, and there is a Temperance Hall there that was built on land he donated.  His quarries were finally so successful that the company founded by his son, Peter, grew into the Australian Cement Co.  Nicholas, the son of convicts, was listed in the 1856 Australian Electoral Roll, as a “Gentleman”

·       *  The descendants of Charles McCann, left behind in Parramatta with his grandparents, and his brother Nicholas lost touch with each other and were only reunited in 1994 when Paul and I made the trip to Geelong to meet them.

Temperance Hall at Ceres nr Geelong

#52 Ancestors Week 28 - Reunion

#52 Ancestors  Week 28 - Reunion

One of the many pleasures of Ancestry is the finding of hitherto unknown relations.

A few years ago I was contacted by Neil Cook, who had seen my tree on Ancestry and concluded that we were second cousins, both great-grandchildren of James Patrick and Mary Gleeson.  We continued to correspond and share information, and then Neil suggested that we plan a family reunion in a significant place in James and Mary’s lives – the famous Regatta Hotel in Brisbane.

Regatta Hotel - about 1940

In 1915, James and Mary were the licensees of this hotel, which still occupies a prominent position on the Toowong reach of the Brisbane River.  Built in 1886, it has survived floods and two great depressions, and in 1915 it also survived a fire.

On 15 March of that year, all the Brisbane newspapers carried the dramatic story. 

From the Brisbane Courier:

“Everything was apparently in good order when the inmates retired to rest late on Saturday night. Shortly before 3 o'clock on Sunday morning Miss Grace Leis, the housemaid whose room was on the first floor at the front of the premises, and almost over the kitchen, was awakened by smoke in her room. Jumping out of bed she discovered that the hotel was on fire and in her night attire she ran screaming along the passage towards the front of the house  The girl's cries awakened Mr and Mrs Gleeson (whose bedroom was on the first floor, in the front of the premises) as well as their son (Mr James Gleeson), Miss Gleeson * aged 13 years and a baby girl* aged 1 year. The baby was picked up, and the others rushed out on to the front balcony. Meanwhile the fire was making quick headway from the rear. Mr James Gleeson climbed over the railing and slid down a post to the veranda and then stepped out on to the footpath. Mr Gleeson dropped the baby girl from the balcony into the arms of her brother and she was safely carried out of harm's way. Mr Gleeson then got hold of Miss Gleeson, lifted her over the Railing and dropped her into the arms of her brother. Mrs Gleeson and Miss Grace Leis both scrambled over the rails and then dropped to the ground. Mr James Gleeson tried to break his mother's fall by catching her before she reached the ground but Mrs Gleeson sprained her ankle and Mr James Gleeson also had his foot injured. Miss Grace Leis was also injured. After the fall she complained of pains in her back, and that her collarbone was broken.”

* Aileen

* the baby was Beryl - then about 4 years old

 The Regatta Hotel was insured for 1,260 pounds, and was restored by its owners but James and Mary Gleeson moved on from the Regatta to other Brisbane hotels, including the Alliance in Spring Hill.  In 1926, they bought the freehold of the Club Hotel in Warwick, Queensland.   James died in Warwick in 1933, and Mary continued to run the hotel for several years.  She died in 1947.

L to R Mary, Mick, Tom, John (Jack), James (Jim) and James snr..
Aileen in front.  The photo taken many years before Beryl's birth.

Neil’s plan was that as many descendants as possible would meet at the Regatta Hotel on 8 June, 2015, a little over 100 years after the fire.  Fortunately there was a living relative who had known James and Mary - their granddaughter-in-law, Zita, who was a mine of information.

Neil is the son of Tom Gleeson, brother to our grandfather Jack.  The two men barely met after they grew up and married and moved to different parts of the country.  Neil and I had not known of the other’s existence before we began our family history research.  When we all came together, there was much to talk about, stories and photos to be shared, and history to be compared.  And of course, the Regatta Hotel to be explored.

Cousins Donna, Neil and Julie with Zita and my sisters and me.

#52 Ancestors #Week 27 Independent

#52 Ancestors   Week 27   Independent

I went searching in the family tree for an independent woman and it became increasingly obvious as I searched that until the last fifty years, there were none to be found.  The contrast between the lives of our female forebears, and our lives – those of us born in the years since WW11 – is startling.

Two women in particular stand out.

My great aunt Charlotte Whitten, known as Lottie, looks at first glance to have been independent.  In 1906, when she was 27, she was single and living away from home, in the city.  At first I thought she must have had some kind of career, but perhaps she was being supported by her parents – I have no evidence.  What I now know is that she had been prevented from marrying the man she loved because he was her first cousin, and had gone – or been sent – to Sydney to remove her from proximity to him.  She was clearly deeply unhappy, because she was found dead, having hanged herself by a rope from her bedpost.

Charlotte ("Lottie") Whitten

It is unthinkable that any 27 year-old women of mine or my children’s generations would be so dictated to by their parents.  By 27 we were considered to be adult enough to make our own decisions because we were no longer financially dependent and not living under our parents’ roofs.  Education and social mobility were the main agents of this change.

The other sad story of failed independence is that of my great grandmother, Mary Jane Black. She married for the first time at the age of 18, in 1880 to my great grandfather George Morgan.  In the next 6 years she had four children.  When she fled (or was abandoned) she took only the baby.  A woman with no money and no education had only the option of a man in order to survive.  Between 1886 and 1895, she had six more pregnancies.  Five of these babies survived, but their father George Ellis, died in 1896 so she was once again in need of a protector.  When Mary Jane married Edward Sarchfield in 1899, they already had three children and she was committing bigamy as George Morgan was still alive, although she was almost certainly unaware of this.  There were five more children – two died in infancy – before Edward died at the age of 50 in 1905.

Mary Jane was finally able to have a small degree of independence only when she stopped having children – she had spent 25 years being pregnant or as a nursing mother.  When Edward died, she had a house to live in, and some of her adult children lived nearby.  One hopes that when she died in 1933, aged 72, she had had some happy years to compensate for her early struggles.

The world has changed for women like me – white, middle class, living in a first world country.  There are still millions of women for whom independence is constrained by the very things that hampered my ancestors in the 19^th century - poor education, limited mobility and lack of fertility control.