Mary Rose, a 'beautiful lady'.

Having begun on the convict trail that wends its interesting journey back through the family trees that are my heritage, I take another detour through the forest.

I've looked into three of my maternal grandmother's grandparents and been  amazed at what I've found. Her father William Cupit with his father Martin, the convict from Derbyshire, and her mother Kezia Rose with Kezia's father Charles Rose, son of an Irish female convict and being born in the Female Factory.
Then there's Martin's wife, Sarah Murphy, coming out on the ship at age 10 with her convict mother from Ireland. Finding such a rich and diverse heritage has widened my knowledge of Tasmanian history greatly. 

I knew my grandmother well. When I now look back, I realise how tangibly close our early colonial history really is. In our last Convict UTas unit, we heard one historian's tale of  her grandfather, who she remembers well too. When he was a lad, he witnessed the final day at Port Arthur when he watched the last convicts file out of the precinct in the mid 1870's. This colonial era was in living memory of living memory. I feel like I can almost touch the memories of these ancestors in  my own mind, particularly when we can visit so many intact sites in and around Hobart.


I was in Grade 4 when we celebrated the Bicentenary of Cook's 1770 landing. We learned the story at school and studied the convict system.

 "Nanna, do you have convicts in your family?" her curious 9 year old grandaughter asked. Nanna squirmed and told me that perhaps there might have been one way back and dropped the subject quickly. 
I now know this "one" was her grandfather Martin, goodness, she could have actually known the man. The "one" was also her grandmother's mother and her grandfather's mother. She was too close to them in history to have been free of the dreadful convict legacy- shame. Van Diemen's Land changed its name and did everything possible to hide that legacy. The convict sons and daughters became loyal subjects to Queen Victoria and a collective amnesia settled over the population like a heavy, silent blanket. Our convict sites were ignored, left to decay, and re-purposed.

My final research was with Nanna's maternal grandmother. Mary Rose was Charles Rose's wife. Nee Lovell, her mother was Elizabeth Smith. With a name like Smith, I had been putting this research off.
Turns out the Lovells have been hard too, there's an awful  lot of them.
Mary Lovell first appears when she marries Charles Rose at the home of John Smith, Castle Forbes Bay. Charles is 21 and Mary is 15, very young. Doing the maths, Mary was born 1853ish. Castle Forbes Bay is just south of Franklin. Its my, unsuccessful so far, aim to find out how and why my ancestors ended up in the Huon. By the early 1850's, farming was well established in Castle Forbes Bay, but it was in the timber industry that the work existed. Men came here to work and this is probably what drew Charles to the area where Mary was already living. The Victorian Gold Rush meant extremely high demand for timber, and this was coming from the Huon. Local papers advertised. In 1856 and 57 Dr Crowthe and James Scully advertised plenty of employment for sawyers, splitters and bushmen at Castle Forbes Bay.

Charles and Mary started their large family with Kezia born in 1869. Charles was a farmer at Castle Forbes Bay then. In 1871 he was a farmer/settler in Franklin and with each birth register he was a bushman, a labourer, a farmer or a carpenter at Fleurty's Point, still at CFB. So clearly life for the man of the house meant working at whatever you could when it was available.
By the 1890's when Mary and Charles had their last two children, they had relocated to Port Esperence. Lillian Lockley registered her youngest brother's birth and stated her mother's maiden name incorrectly as Smith. On registering her youngest sister's birth she called herself Mary Lockley. It seemed christian names were interchangeable. Indeed, most of her 11 siblings changed, shortened, misspelt and used their middle name. It seems Percy Rheuben ended up being Luther Charles Garnet known as Charley. And Nalta Rummond ended up Charlie Jackson (these are the WW1 stories in a previous blog). So while Charles was working, Mary was child rearing.

 two of the Rose sisters, Eva Christie born 1875, and 

Kezia Cupit born 1869

Charles and Mary  lived out their lives in Dover where the youngest of the children went to the local school. They had many grandchildren and happily lived to see them.

In her latter years, Mary Rose joined the Salvation Army, which was active in Dover early in the 1900's. 

A group of Salvo's, taken from A History of Dover & Port Esperence by Norm Beechy & Dorothy Baker. Seated 2nd from right is Harry Schnell. Harry was born in 1874, so this photo would be right for Mary's era, in fact, I'd hazard a guess that that could even be Mary standing on the right.

She and her youngest son Ted both became officers. A War Cry indicates the Army presence in Dover as early as 1906 referencing Envoy Milsom, Brother Page, Treasurer Rose and Lieutenant Percival Stafford. In the early 1920's, Sister Mary Rose is listed as holding a post amoung 11 other women. 

In 1915, Dover Salvation Army opened, built, painted, fenced and completed out buildings in record time, their own new hall, 20 feet by 40 on a stone foundation. Now a private residence.

In August 1924, when Mary was aged 74, she accidentally drowned. My maths says she would have been 71, anyway, it seems at 6:30 Saturday evening a small fire started in a wooden part of her chimney. Mary went outside with a dipper of water. As she hadn't returned in 10 minutes, Charles called for her. The night was dark, Mary was very shortsighted and there was no answer. Eventually neighbours and police found her body in the water at the foot of the twenty foot drop behind their house. Charles, son Frank and granddaughter Connie gave evidence at the inquest.

Mary's death in the War Cry

 So poor Mary had a sad end, but she had reached a good age and Charles stated at the inquest that he had been happily married for 54 years, my maths says 56 years, but we won't quibble.

Charles and Mary Rose's house on the waterfront at Dover

behind the house down to the bay........

           .....and again, the drop behind the house, now safely fenced off

Aunty Rene, one of  Kezia's daughters said grandmother Rose was a 'beautiful lady'. Charles died 17 months later at age 81. They would both be buried in the cemetery which is now the War Memorial where their son Charley is now commemorated.

The cemetery can be seen centre at the front in this pic on what is now the War Memorial.

Cover of Dover history Group's leaflet.

A History of Dover & Port Esperance, Norm Beechy & Dorothy Baker
Caroline Haigh- transcript UTas Convicts in Context Unit
Librariestas: Tasmanian Names Index
Lydia Nicholson-Convict Heritage Sites transcript UTas Convicts in Context Unit
Trove: Huon Times, 5 August 1924 article136038628
Trove: Tas Daily News 19 August 1857
War Cry, unknown source