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.