#52Ancestors 2020 Week 8 Prosperity

#52 Ancestors 2020

Week 8 Prosperity

Prosperity is relative.  Many of my early ancestors would have considered themselves prosperous if they had a safe roof over their heads and enough food on the table for all the people sitting around it.

But Nicholas McCann, son of two convicts, became genuinely prosperous in his lifetime.  Described in the electoral roll of 1856 as a “gentleman”, he owned a house, land and a business and was highly regarded in his community.

Nicholas was born in 1803 to Peter McCann and Mary Fitzgerald, both Irish convicts.  He was baptised at St Johns Church, Parramatta on the day of his parent’s marriage – 9 January 1804. 

Peter drowned in October 1806, leaving Mary with two small children (Catherine was born in July 1805).  We will never know if Nicholas’ life would have been very different had Peter lived, but what we do know is that he was very lucky that John Norris, his godfather, took a great interest in him.

John Norris, a former convict, was a stone mason who operated a Monumental and Builders Yard on the main road between Sydney and Parramatta.  He is described in (the second) Peter McCann’s memoir as ”an splendid tradesman– sober, industrious and methodical (with ) a capacity for making money, and at the same time, the ability to take care of it – a wise principle not adopted by many in the early days of colonisation.”*(1)

Nicholas seems to have been “adopted” by John Norris who taught him the trades of masonry and building which were to stand him in good stead all his working life.

By 1827, Nicholas was married to his first wife, Catherine Johnston and his first child, Charles, had been born.  He applied for a land grant in Parramatta, and was described by a local magistrate who supported his application as, “an industrious clever tradesman …I do not hesitate to recommend him for the indulgence applied for”*(2)

At about this time Nicholas constructed a sandstone altar for the grave of wealthy grazier, Robert Townson which is still there in the St Johns Parramatta cemetery.  The sandstone altar is weathered but it is still possible to read the carving on its top, “Nicl McCann Sculpt”.  This is the first known example of Nicholas’ work in this field.

In 1828/29 Nicholas was consumed by a court case involving a wealthy landowner, James Elder and Nicholas’ alleged illegal acquisition of sandstone from land which Elder claimed was his.  There were three judgements and ultimately Nicholas was vindicated but it was obviously too much for him and he looked elsewhere for a new opportunity.

 John Batman, who was from Parramatta and a friend of Nicholas, had settled in Tasmania and sent back glowing reports.  Nicholas went to Tasmania, and Catherine, Peter (born 1828) and baby Anne (born 1831) followed shortly afterwards.  For reasons which have never been clear, Charles remained in Sydney in the care of his grandparents.  He never saw his mother again, as she died in Tasmania three months after their arrival.  Peter was sent to a terrible “boarding school” for about a year, and Nicholas gave up his baby daughter Anne*(3) to the care of a couple called Hopkins, who took her to England.

Nicholas married his second wife, Catherine Nelson in October 1836.  Catherine was eleven years his junior, Scottish, and had been a nursery governess before her marriage.  Nicholas, Catherine and Peter (then 9 years old) left Tasmania in 1837 and after an astonishing voyage (see #52 Ancestors 2019 – Week 42) they arrived at Port Fairy on the western coast of Victoria.  Initially, Nicholas was involved in the whaling industry, and later sheep farming which failed in part because of the hostility of the local native population.  The family, now with William (born 1837)*(4) and Catherine (1839), moved to Geelong.  Here they were to establish a business and a family which maintains connections to Geelong to this day.

Four more children were born in Geelong – Ellen (Helen), Nicholas, James and Janet.  When Catherine died on 7 October 1850, there were six children under the age of thirteen years.

During the 1840s Nicholas carried on in Geelong as a builder and stonemason.  He built some of Geelong’s earliest public buildings – the Gaol, the Hospital, Customs House, Christ Church and the piers for the original bridge across the river.  He also, during this time, made the momentous decision to become a teetotaller.  His action was recorded in the local newspaper reports of the Corio Total Abstinence Society.

“Mr McCann expressed himself happy in having the opportunity of speaking in favour of Total Abstinence. Having himself derived much benefit from it, he could confidently recommend it to all: he considered that no one would be injured by leaving off intoxicating drink at one, as he had abandoned it after fourteen years hard drinking, and found his health and circumstances were improved by the abstinence from intoxicating liquors, and was determined to practice it as long as he lived”*(5)

Nicholas gave the land on which the Temperance Society built their meeting house.

Temperance Hall at Ceres

By the early 1850s, Peter McCann had joined Nicholas in his business and together they looked for a suitable quarry to provide stone for the burgeoning building industry.  They found land at Ceres, about six miles from Geelong in the Barrabool Hills.  Demand for this stone grew so fast that Nicholas gave up contracting and built a family home at Ceres.  The stone from his quarries was used in the building of many of Melbourne’s fine colonial buildings including Scots Church, St Paul’s Cathedral and Ormond College. 

Nicholas was prosperous enough in the early 50s to send his son Peter to England on a trip to bring back Annie, his little sister.  While he was there Peter met and married Elizabeth Begley. On his return, it was Peter who consolidated the family fortune when he extended the quarry operations and acquired a limestone deposit which became the foundation of the Australian cement industry.

Nicholas died at Ceres on 1 December 1879 and was buried in the Highton cemetery.  When we visited Geelong in 1993 to meet some of the family, the house he had built was still there and it, and much of his land, was still in the family.  He was described by the Geelong Advertiser as “one of the greatest benefactors of Geelong.”

McCann graves at Highton cemetery - both Nicholas and his son Peter are buried here

*(1)”History of Descendants of Peter McCann who Landed in Australia in 1799 and the Establishment of the Cement Industry and its Develeopment in Victoria” By Peter McCann and Wesley McCann

*(2) quoted in “With Conviction” by Richard J (Dick) Sansom

*(3) An indication of the esteem in which Nicholas held John Norris is that Anne was called Anne Norris McCann.

*(4) William Nelson McCann.  At the age of 24, he had become the first Victorian born member of Parliament and he was also a part owner of the “Geelong Register” newspaper at one time.  He was convicted of forgery in 1867 and after serving a short sentence he moved to the United States where he was known as William Nelson/Neilson.  He worked there as a journalist and married a second time after the death of his first wife in 1895.  He died in San Francisco in 1903.

*(5) Geelong Advertiser August 1844