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.