52 Ancestors 2022 - Week 7 - Landed

52 Ancestors 2022 - Week 7 

Landed

Fancroft

This is Fancroft, family home of the Whittens, my mother’s family, from the late 18^th century until it was sold out of the family in 2016.

My earliest record of it is as the home of my third great grandparents, William and Prudence Whitten (nee Clery, (or Cleary).  William and Prudence were married in 1780, and by the time their son Edward was born in 1795, they were living at Fancroft, just outside Roscrea in County Tipperary.

Edward was their sixth child and he and his bride, Martha Lucas also lived at Fancroft.  Death records are not clear, but Whitten family historians think that Edward was the oldest surviving son at the time of his father’s death.

Edward and Martha had 12 children.  Little is known about the first two sons, Robert (b 1822) and William (b 1823) The next three children were girls – Matilda, Eliza and Mary, and then the next son, Edward, died at the age of three.

Edward senior died in 1850, and perhaps Robert or William may have inherited Fancroft on his death, but it was John (b.1833) who eventually took over the property, and his family line which remained.

The five children who were younger than John all emigrated to Australia, but Fancroft remained strong in their memories, and they passed this on to succeeding generations.

The first to return were Anthony’s sons, Alfred and Albert, who visited in the summer of 1912.  Alf kept a diary which describes the house and many of the family they met while they were there. #

The story in the family is that John Whitten’s third son, Joseph Abraham Whitten was named as his father’s heir, but that the eldest son, Edward, who had gone to Canada, returned, burned that will and claimed Fancroft for himself.  Edward was married to Charlotte Wallace and had seven children and it appears that the first two sons both emigrated to Canada when quite young.

(When I met Marjorie in 1977, I asked her about all the emigrations to Canada and the USA in the family.  She said, “every time there was a family fight, someone emigrated”, so perhaps these two sons were at odds with Edward?)

I think that the third son, George Washington Whitten must have taken over the farm after Edward’s death in 1930.  There is a record of George and Lily and their son Eddie travelling back from Canada to Ireland in 1933, but I don’t know if they had been resident there or if it was a short visit.

George died in 1951 and I assume that this is when Marjorie took over the running of Fancroft At some stage she was joined by Billy Williams, son of her sister Frances, and he inherited the property on Marjorie’s death in 1977.

All the Australian members of the extended family who visited Fancroft have commented on the coat of arms (see below) and the enormous kitchen with its stone flagged floor and magnificent display of copper pots and blue and white china. The “Whitten descendant” who wrote a lengthy piece dated 1966 and reproduced on Tim Hobson’s “Whittens in Australia” webpage describes a busy working kitchen with a creamery and pantry and a churn still used by Marjorie twice a week.  Sadly, by the time of my sister Margie’s visit in 2012 the kitchen was empty of all but a table – Billy Williams was taking his meals with his neighbours.

When Billy died in 2016, Fancroft was put on the market and when I was there in 2017 it presented a sorry site.  We were told that the new owners had wanted only the land and had no interest in the house, which was empty and abandoned.  After 300 years in the Whitten family, it is slowly falling into disrepair.

 

 

 

#Monday 5th

In the morning we went out to Joe Whitten’s and had dinner. He has 45 Irish acres of land. Irish acres are 1¼ acres. Had tea there and met Francis Rorke who asked us to her (his?) place.

 Tuesday 6th

Went into town and had a good look through the co-operative bacon factory. Killing, scraping and singeing etc. The we called on John Mason once more. Had dinner at Luttrells, called on Daley the C of E curate who was out then back to tea at Luttrells where we met old Mrs Drought who knew Father well. After tea we went to the old Roscrea Castle. This seems to be a very old stronghold from the top of which one could see all the district round about. Singing and home.

 Wednesday 7th

Morning quiet time at Fancroft. Afternoon shooting. Evening chatting in the Home.

 Thursday 8th

Attended the Fair in Roscrea. It seemed strange to see cattle sheep and horses, pigs in the streets and the buyers and sellers chatting and driving a hard bargain. There was a fine little mob of Irish ponies, rounded up in the streets. 42 publicans in Roscrea...

  

52 Ancestors 2022 Week 13 - Sisters

 Week 13 - Sisters

                                           Violet and Nellie at rear, Alice and Weenie in front

 My grandmother Alice White was the second of Robert and Elizabeth White’s seven children and 4 of her siblings were sisters. She remained close to all of them through her long life.

First in the family was Nellie (Ellen) born in September 1888. (For a reason we will never know, her mother’s parents refused to give their permission to a marriage, despite Elizabeth’s pregnancy, so Robert and Elizabeth were not married until July 1888, the day after Elizabeth turned 21).

Nellie married at 19 to Victor John Lehman and I assume she too was pregnant at the time as baby Ann was born within eight months of the wedding.  She was the first of six children, who grew up close to their grandparents, in South Lismore.  Nellie shared her father’s love of gardening and was a very successful exhibitor at the local shows, winning 22 prizes at the South Lismore Horticultural Society Show of 1935 and also becoming a judge at other regional shows.  Two of her daughters became florists.

The marriage seems not to have been very happy – Vic was a moody and jealous man.  This came to a head one night in 1945 when he argued with a house guest who was the boyfriend of his daughter Marie – they were both living with her parents at the time.   During the night Vic took his rifle and shot the guest, then pointed the gun at Nellie, who hid from him.  When she emerged from hiding, he was gone.

The next morning, Vic’s body was discovered at the river bank near their home.  He had shot and killed himself.  Marie’s boyfriend recovered.

Nellie lived on for 42 years, with most of her extended family around her.  She died at 98 in June 1987.

The sister after Alice was Violet, born in 1893.

Like the others, Violet would have been educated to the standard of the time, finishing her formal education at the end of primary school.  I know little about her until her wedding, described in great detail in the Northern Star on 28 November, 1912.#.  Her new husband was Roy (Royal) Goldsmith, born in Napier, NZ,  who was a tailor with a business in Lismore.  I don’t know much about their lives but they had two children, Edwin (Eddie) born in 1914 and Edna (b. 1916). Eddie Goldsmith grew up as a mate of my father in law, Pat McCann, and was the best man at his wedding to Kathleen in 1936.

Violet and Roy are both buried in Lismore. She was 78 when she died – not a long life by the standards of the family.

I know very little about the next sister, too. Eliza Jane was born in 1895 and was immediately dubbed “Weenie”, a nickname she carried all her life. (I remember Alice referring to her as “Ween” when she was very old).  Weenie married James Henry “Jim” Wood when she was only 17.  They had five children and spent most of their married life in Nimbin, where Jim was a baker.  He died at only 51, and a few years later Weenie remarried.  Her second husband was Francis Harley, a dog trainer, and they lived in North Lismore.

Weenie was only 64 when she died in 1959.

I have a postcard that Weenie wrote to Alice in about 1910.

 

The youngest girl in the family was Mabel May, always known as “Sis”.  She was born in 1900 and outlived all her siblings except George, the baby of the family.

Sis married Walter Day in 1920, and they had five children in the next 11 years.  Two of their daughters, (Joyce b. 1923 and Merle b 1929) are still alive at the time of writing. Their son, Alan, died as a small child in 1927.

Apart from a short time in Sydney, Sis lived in South Lismore all her life, then moved to a Lismore Nursing Home.  Interviewed for the Northern Star when she was 88, she recalled the day that her father brought Billy Hughes home for lunch.  Hughes was campaigning in Lismore and Robert White would naturally have been involved in providing hospitality.

She died at the age of 91.

 

 

 

# I think the elaborate nature of this suggests that Violet was the first of Robert and Elizabeth’s daughters not to have been pregnant at the time of her marriage and therefore, in the manner of the times, able to have a big church wedding.