#52 Ancestors Week 38 - Cousins

352 Ancestors Week 38 – Cousins

This week, with many possible cousin relationships I could write about I have chosen to write about my husband’s great Grandmother who married twice – to brothers, who were her first cousins.

Esther Johnson was born in Ballarat, Victoria in 1860, the eldest child of Lavinia Roberts and John Johnson.  Like thousands of others, the Roberts and Johnson families had been attracted to Ballarat for the gold and had then stayed on to work in activities that supported the miners – in their case in the provision of wagons and timber.  In this endeavour, they had joined forces with members of the McCann family, and John’s older sister Mary had married Charles McCann, a wheelwright.

All three families relocated to the North Coast of NSW in search of “red gold” – the rich cedar which grew abundantly in the dense rainforest known as the “Big Scrub” which had covered 75,000 square miles of the country.  Many of them worked as timber cutters and then gradually they acquired their own patch of land and became small farmers. *

Esther was only a small child when the move north took place.  All five of her siblings were born in the Ballina/Emigrant Creek area of the timber country.  Then there was a tragedy.  Her mother Lavinia, still only 36 years old, and pregnant with her sixth child, died.  The baby died with her. There is a story in the family that she went into early labour from the shock of learning that her husband and his brother had been arrested (see #52 Ancestors Week 24 – Dear Diary).

Esther was only 12 when her mother died, and it is reasonable to assume that she looked after her younger siblings during the next four years, until her father married a second time.  She herself married in that same year (1876) – she was 16, and her new husband was her first cousin, son of the older Charles and Mary (nee Johnson).  Charles William McCann, was 25.  As the McCann children had also been born in Ballarat, it is likely that Esther had known Charles all her life.

The young couple settled on land near the rest of their extended family and began a family of their own - Charles John (1880), Herbert (1883), Lavinia (1885) and Mary Ellen (1887). Then disaster struck.  Charles William was swept from his horse into the flooded Wilson’s River and drowned * Esther was 39 years old and pregnant again.

The family legend has it that Charles’ younger brother, John Beale McCann, proposed to her on the way home from the funeral.  We will never know if this was a love match, or a pragmatic decision about the family property, but Esther and John were married within a year, shortly after the birth of baby Ettie.

There are a couple of clues that indicate that this relationship was initially contentious in the family.  Charles William’s headstone in the North Lismore cemetery was “erected by his loving mother, brothers and sisters.”  No mention of Esther.  And the second marriage took place in the next town (Casino) witnessed only by the Minister and his wife.  Esther gave her name as “Esther Johnson” and her status as “Spinster”.

Nonetheless, Esther and John settled on the family farm and lived out their lives together.  They had three children together, but only one survived infancy – she became the much loved Auntie Kate to my husband’s father, so the family seems to have blended successfully.  None of the children in either family exhibited any problems which might have been caused by their genetic closeness.

Esther died in 1937 and is buried with John in the family corner of the Alphadale Cemetery.  We have one photo of her – wearing at her throat a gold nugget from the early years in Ballarat.

 *From an environmental point of view, the Government was wrong in their requirements.  As a condition of receiving land grants the selectors had to clear all the vegetation.  Not the 15% along the streams – all of it.  By 1900, 99% of the Big Scrub had been cleared and today there are only a few small pockets remaining.

*from - The Northern Star, 20 April 1889.

DROWNING.  We are sorry to hear that a well known man named Chas. McCann, was drowned fording Wilson's Creek, above Eureka on Tuesday last. It is stated that McCann was crossing the creek, which had risen several feet, when his horse slipped, McCann was washed out of his saddle, and drowned before assistance could be rendered. The police are now searching for the body, but it has not yet been recovered, owing to the flooded state of the creek.