The Nook

The Nook


As a recent UTas assessment I had to write a 750 word narrative. This is a small window into the lives of my gggrandparents Sandy and Christina Hamilton, of The Nook, Tasmania.

“Church of England….Brethren…. Congregational,” Sandy Hamilton bellowed out in his thick Scottish brogue. As he listed the denominations, he noted the show of hands from the townsfolk who were gathered together on the site of their new church building.

“Wesleyan Methodist it is then,” he announced, as that was the denomination most represented by the neighbours who were gathered. That was to be their new church denomination.

 Sandy and his wife Christina were Scots Presbyterian.

They, like most of the districts pioneers, had arrived in Van Diemen’s Land nearly thirty years previously in the 1850’s, and had been hand-picked by ministers as being upstanding and strong Christian folk suitable to populate the far-flung colony. Many of them had left the British Isles because of famines, crofting clearances or perhaps just a wish for adventure.

Sandy and Christina had cleared the dense forest of their land, built a homestead and established a fine farm in the township of The Nook. Sandy must have foreseen the need for their own local church as he had donated the land and had helped the overseeing of the administration of the site.

                                                 Nook Church

The Nook was a pretty little corner of the Kentish district, flanked by a range of hills on one side and the Don River on the other. The roads in and out of the town were precarious and sometimes unpassable. The track to Latrobe passed through impenetrable forest. The roads were a constant topic of conversation and planning for Sandy and the other men on the Roads Trust Board. When Sandy and Christina first arrived at Nook with all their wordly possessions on a bullock dray, it was found that one child was missing! Upon backtracking, they found the lad waiting on the side of the track, he had no option, the bush was too dense to allow any alternatives.....or so the family story goes.

While access may have at times been problematic, the growing township was providing residents with their needs. The picturesque Nook Falls cascaded by the nearby flour mill.

 A school was constructed and was soon followed by the opening of a Post Office. 

From the window of her home, Christina could see over her picket fenced verandah, beyond the front paddock, to the church. As was common then, Christina had borne eleven children. As was less common, she had lost only one child in his infancy. Her bonnie lads and lassies had all attended the school and they participated eagerly in church activities.

                                                Hamilton Homestead

 She had a rare, quiet moment as she gazed over to the church. She had sent the younger children off to gather ferns. Tomorrow was the first Harvest Thanksgiving service at the church and she was helping the decoration of the interior with fruits, flowers and ferns. Her mind wandered back to her old church her parents attended in Ayeshire, half a world away. Her children would never grow up hearing fine Scottish Presbyterian prayers or thick renditions of Robbie Burns poems. She seldom let her thoughts run along old, forgotten paths. She could not afford time in wistfulness. She, and her peers, did not have the luxury to indulge in self-serving thoughts and divisions. They had put aside religious and theological division, class and cultural tradition. They needed to work together and support each other in what had often proved to be a difficult life. They had to baptise, solemnise, inter, worship and all sit under the same spiritual instruction together in that little chapel under the teaching of the Rev J.W. Edwards. Edwards was the newly appointed minister of the Sheffield circuit and his message tomorrow was to be The Harvest: The End of the World.  

Christina’s thoughts were abruptly halted when the children ran inside with armfuls of beautiful fern fronds they had gathered from the river gully. Christina helped the children with the ferns, took her basket of apples and pears gathered from the backyard orchard, and headed over to the church to join the other women.

When she arrived, the choir, which included her eldest girls Elizabeth, Mary and Jessie, were practicing their hymns and anthems for tomorrow’s service. Miss Bell was preparing children’s activities and Christina’s sons William, Jim and Tom with other local lads were helping to hang bunting and clean up after the ladies had trimmed and rejected some of the foliage and greenery.

It was April and the autumn was cooling. Sandy and Christina sat that evening by their fire. The days were growing shorter and The Nook, being a secluded hollow, could be cold and damp as the winter months came upon them.  

“The church looks mighty fine,” Sandy commented to Christina, “You ladies did a beautiful job.”

“We have plenty of reasons for thanksgiving,” Christina answered. The community had pulled together. Nook residents had a reputation for being unobtrusive and hospitable to a fault and the Hamiltons were a part of that founding group of brave and quietly achieving pioneers.      

Reflective Statement:

In this writing, I have tried to recreate a day in the lives of my Scottish GGGrandparents, Sandy and Christina Hamilton. Family anecdotes were always told about the Scotsman Sandy, but nothing was ever said about Christina.  I thoroughly enjoyed writing this and was thrilled to find much mention of the Nook Wesleyan Church in Trove newspapers.  The story of the choosing of the church’s denomination was told to me by Sandy’s grandson, so I cannot verify it. I have tried to stress the need our pioneer ancestors had to work together and put aside religious differences, and how important the function of a church was to them. Churches provided a means of coming together, entertainment, outlets for creativity, courting and marriage and support in deaths, regardless of an individual’s belief system. Sandy and Christina were to lose five of their adult children in the 1890’s, the next decade after the setting of this narrative.

Using one event, I have tried to bring the town of Nook and its landscape to life. Seven hundred and fifty words is a difficult task as there is so much more to say, but hopefully I’ve taken a snapshot, while still including some background context and some multi-generational information.

Writing this drew me into their world completely, so I really hope the reader may experience a little of that also.         

Bibliography

With The Pioneers, Charles Ramsay , Mercury-Walch, Hobart

Touring Tasmania in the 1880’s, the newspaper articles by Theophilus Jones transcribed by D.J.L. Archer

North West Post July 1909,  nla.gov.au

North Coast Standard, April 1894, trove.nla.gov.au

Conversation with Ross Hamilton  1989

                        

Annotated Map: Finding Oscar Marshall

Finding Oscar Marshall



I recently completed my first assignment for the History Unit I am studying, Place, Image Object. This assignment was to represent the importance of place and place based research in to history, particularly family history. The two parts are an Annotated Map and a Reflective Statement detailing the challenges and observations of the process.

In my last post I mentioned Oscar, Nellie's husband and my ggrandfather. My map tells some of his story. Oscar worked in the Golden Gate mine, Mathinna in the late 1800's.

Reflective Statement:

The story of my great-grandfather, Oscar Marshall, has always been told and even laughed about in our family. I chose to tell this story simply because it is such an intriguing one.

 I own my grandmother’s atlas, which I used as the base map. These maps marked with her own hand, show her planned voyage from her home town of Wynyard, Tasmania across the Pacific Ocean to Vancouver.

My intention was to tell the story, but I soon realized that this choice was backed up by virtually no objective evidence. The only provenance I had was her hat box with the date and details of her sea voyage written inside and my own memories of Eileen’s close relationship with her sister Kitty who lived in Vancouver.

I went through my personal documents and found Eileen’s marriage certificate. Her father was listed as deceased on this document. At this stage I had no idea when Oscar might have passed away by this date. Researching through various online sources, I found evidence of some of Oscar’s life and eventually his death. It was a challenge to research the information when so many of the facts I had were subjective and were one woman’s way of hiding her past and protecting her children from the truth of their father’s perceived sins.

Discovering previously unknown details of Oscar’s life has been most rewarding. I realise how little I knew and how much more I now have ahead of me to research this family story.

Below are some of the images and documents used to tell a little more of my grandmother's and her father's story.  I'm always fascinated how we look back on our families stories through our modern day lenses and cultural ideals and biases. Understanding someone's actions in the past is far more difficult than understanding motives and actions of people in our lifetime, even that is often almost impossible without empathy and understanding. The admonition to walk a mile in someone else's shoes means that before judging, you must understand his experiences, challenges and thought processes. What made Oscar leave is mere conjecture. Was he an uncaring waster? Did he leave to go to the Boer War? Whatever the reason, my first piece of objective evidence, having found no evidence to back up the Boer war claim, was his marriage in 1907 to Margaret Romney in England and the birth of a son in 1907 also. 

Mathinna in 1908

from freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.co

Margaret and Oscar immigrate to Canada aboard the Pretoria.

Census records show them living in British Columbia in 1911 and 1922. Their first child is not on these records, he may have died. By 1922 they have two children Gordon and Kitty (Catherine). Oscar works at a quarry.

In 1923 his eldest daughter, my grandmother, marries Bern Hamilton. Oscar is listed as deceased on their certificate. Eileen has children, works hard and lives her life thinking her father was dead.

Now, in steps Mabel Miller. This is only subjective family anecdote, but it seems quite likely. Mabel Miller was the first woman to be elected to the Hobart City Council and one of the first two women to be elected to the Tasmanian House of Assembly. Mabel was visiting Vancouver where she met Kitty, daughter of Oscar. On hearing of Mabel's origins, Kitty told her that her father was from Tasmania and she'd love to find out anything about him. Apparently mabel returned and published an article in the Mercury newspaper. I guess this is how word spread to Eileen in Wynyard. I'm yet to start reading the Mercury from 1960 backwards to try and find this article (in my spare time).

Mabel Miller photo from Wikipedia 

By this time Eileen was well into her sixties. How she reacted to finding out her father had been alive all these years and that she had a half brother and sister on the other side of the world, I don't know, but in 1960 she left Wynyard to meet them. 

circa 1955

She traveled aboard the SS Arcadia on the destination voyage.

pictures from pandosnco.co.uk

Knowing her as well as I did, I can just picture her in the tourist lounge enjoying herself with fellow passengers. She was the kind of woman who would talk to anybody and become great friends quickly. But it must have been an awfully big adventure for her at age 66 to leave Tasmania and travel over the globe.
 I believe Kitty and Eileen hit it off very well, but the brothers on both sides wanted nothing to do with the scandal of it all. She corresponded lifelong with Kitty, exchanged gifts and photos. I still own a little Christmas decoration Kitty sent over for me. Eileen lived a full and long life.

Her 100th birthday celebrations.


Sadly when she died at age 101, all contact was lost with all sides of her family. She, like many women of that era, was a great communicator and letter writer, a skill which has diminished amoung my own and subsequent generations. Maybe with the aid of facebook and other online reconnect sites I may find my Canadian relatives in the future.
I found Oscar's death notice online. He lived to age 67, dying in 1942. Maybe someone over there has a photo of him, I'd love to see the face of the man who led such an intriguing life.

A Heritage of Women: Nellie Taylor

Nellie Taylor: Memories of Mathinna

I've been sticky beaking in the family gene pool for as long as I can remember. When I was younger it felt like it. I was made to feel like a bit of a pest and information from my grandmothers in particular was very hard to procure.
 I started a manilla folder on each branch of the family to try to collaborate my findings.
Over the years these folders have grown. Except for Nellie's.

My dad had very strong memories of his grandmother. She was referred to as Little Nanna.

There she is, same height as her grandaughter who looks about ten or eleven years old, my dad on the far right.

The story went that she left Leominster, Herefordshire for Tasmania at age eighteen as a governess for the Bethune family. This could explain why she can't be found on any immigration records.
My dad always doubted this story and thought there was more to it than that.

 In this pre-turn-of-the-century photo she sits with her friend Amy Wyllie. Looking very much like sisters, they are dressed the same, Amy stands with an affectionate and protective arm behind Nellie.


But the story of her life for our family starts in the gold mining town of Mathinna. In the late 1800's this was a booming, very large town. She married Oscar Marshall on July 2nd 1893. On their marriage certificate she was a domestic, he was a miner.

Mathinna Post Office circa 1907: from Tasmanian Philatelic Society web site

A group of miners 1902: Examiner web site

 Oscar worked in the Golden Gate mine, and by 1902 they had four children. By 1904 Oscar had left his wife and four small children. That's another story. But here is where Nellie began her big cover up stories. Presumably the town's folk knew he'd cleared out, but her children were told their father went to the Boer War and was killed. The War part might have been true, but I can find no military records of  old Oscar to back it up.

Life in Mathinna was by all accounts difficult. Homes had no power or water. Barrels of water were delivered to houses for five shillings a barrel, few homes had tanks. But Mathinna in its boom times is remembered with much affection as a close knit, social and active community. Nellie took in laundry and raised her children as a single mother.

In 1911 she married again. She married widower Frank Moses even though she herself was not widowed. Records show their son Jack was born in 1911 (more scandal to be covered up). Frank died at Mathinna in 1925. Nellie spent the next twenty years moving between family members. If she had her own home, I have no idea. She would have probably been with her daughter in Geelong when her twin grandbabies were born and perhaps she witnessed the subsequent death of their mother. She spent time in Wynyard with her remaining daughter, my grandmother and her grandchildren. She probably spent time with her youngest son Jack too. She would have witnessed two of her sons go off to war. She was in Queensland with her son Gray when she died in 1946. She died unaware that her other son Alec who had been in Changi had survived his imprisonment.

I wonder if she ever thought about Oscar. Turns out he died in 1942 on the other side of the world. Turns out that their three remaining children eventually found out their father had been alive all this time. As for my grandmother, the skeletons falling out of the family closet did nothing to diminish the respect and love she had for her mother and her wonderful childhood memories she treasured all her life. Memories of Mathinna.

A Heritage of Women

A Heritage of Women

This post is about two women.

Mary Jane Battye

 and Mary Hainsworth.

Mother and daughter.

Mary Jane was a Yorkshire girl. I know nothing about her, but its on my bucket list next time I go to Yorkshire to research her.
Mary Jane married a Bradford man, Thomas Hainsworth. If I search the "H's" in any local history book, there's usually several mentions of him and all his achievements, but I've never known anything about his wife. Women are harder to research then men.  In Appendix V of "With the Pioneers" , I'm told the ship "Merrington" arrived in Tasmania in October 1854.
On board was Thomas Hainsworth and wife.

In 1860 she had her first child, Thomas Milton Rand Hainsworth, a fine name. Every two years another child arrived, the fourth one, the first girl was Mary.

Thomas was a highly intelligent, high achieving gentleman. Presumably Mary Jane reared the children quietly allowing him to do his noteworthy works.

Thomas and Mary Hainsworth

with their three daughters,

Selena, Martha and Mary (middle)

 and youngest son, James.

Mary Jane died in 1898 at age 65 and is buried, unmarked, in Section A, Row 18 at the Latrobe Cemetery.

Mary, I know a little more about. My dad knew this lady and remembered her well. She was his Grandmother and was called Big Nanna, as even more so in older age, she was a sizable woman.

Mary 4th from right, back row, her sister to her left'

in a ladies choir.

As a young lady Mary married the son of another local prominent pioneer, Thomas Hamilton.

By 1898 my great grandmother Mary Hamilton and her husband were raising their five young children and carving out a life and a farm for themselves at Nook, a quiet little community populated by the who’s who of Kentish pioneers. Her father in law had donated the land for a church to be built. Her children would have attended the local school. Her in laws were Scottish Presbyterians, but they must have made good use of that church which, after a show of hands, the locals all decided to make Methodist. As was common then Sandy and Christina Hamilton, her parents in law, had eleven children. As was less common, all but one survived into adulthood. Between 1888 and 1898 they lost six of their adult children. One of these was Thomas, Mary’s husband. On the 22nd of September  1898' Thomas died. A week and a half later just before her third birthday, their daughter Maggie also died, three days later four-year-old Mary died. It was typhoid.  I just cannot imagine, looking back into the past through my modern day lens, how a woman could survive this kind of catastrophic life event. I can write down all the dates and work out all the ages and access all the records, but I can’t research how she got herself up every morning and raised her three remaining boys, how she grieved and whether she ever cried or blamed God or pushed it all down neatly into its place and carried on. I suspect they did death much better in the old days. It must have been a unwelcome but well known, quiet, frequent visitor to the homes of early Tasmanians.  They must have either dealt with it a lot better than we do, or maybe because death was as normal to them as life, they did not even have had the need to ‘deal with it’ in the same way we seem have to. Perhaps the 'acceptance' stage of grief came a little quicker than it does for us.

Mary moved into the township of Latrobe with her three young sons to a small cottage in Cotton Street. Her sons grew to adulthood she was actively involved in their business interests, and she helped establish and run Hamilton & Co Pty Ltd, a chain of grocery stores in Wynyard, Myalla, Boat Harbour and Rocky Cape. She then went on to help establish Star Theatre Pty Ltd with her eldest son and his two brothers.

As a single mother she obviously inherited the ambition and drive of her father.

She died in Wynyard aged 71 in 1943, the last surviving member of her family.

 the Hamilton family farmhouse at Nook.

looking toward the Nook church

Luckily, my interest in family history began at a young age, as did my desire to scrounge for old things. Whenever anything was ready to be thrown out, I'd put my hand up, to be met with the rolling eyes and groans of my family. Hence I own Mary Hamilton's farmhouse kitchen table, her lovely blackwood carved sideboard, her white china vegetable dishes and her 1893 photo album which contains a collection of mostly unidentified photographic portraits.