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.
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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.
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