Kezia Rose
Kezia was my maternal great grandmother, Charles and Mary Rose’s first
child, born in 1869.
Kezia died at age 70 in 1939, with an obituary published in the local
paper the Huon and Derwent Times.
From all reports, Kezia was quite an amazing woman. For many years she worked as a Nurse and Midwife, often moving in with the new mothers for two or more weeks and delivering hundreds of babies in the Franklin area.
One of her
daughters described her as the best mother a girl could want, and others have
written of the many reports of kindness and work for the families of the
district. ‘She was a wonderful woman and someone to be proud of’, wrote one of
her granddaughters. She also wrote, ’ I think she had a hard life as William
(her husband) was ill for a long time before he died, and she had to keep the
family going as best she could’.
William Cupit and Kezia Rose married at Dover in 1895.
Of Kezia’s life before her marriage, little is known. Possibly she
remained with her parents, helping with the many brothers and sisters she had.
Her youngest brother was born in 1894, the year before she married. Perhaps she
worked for other families, or as a domestic servant for one family. What is known though is that in 1886 at age
17, Kezia had a son. The Rose family then lived at Flutery’s Point, Castle
Forbes Bay. Her father registered the birth. The baby boy was registered as Sir
Wilfred Arnal, with the Sir written in smaller lettering. The father was stated
as a carpenter, Thomas Groves. The ‘Sir’ has long puzzled me. Sometimes Latin
or other words were used, perhaps indicating illegitimacy, but I cannot tie
this to any term seen on any other registers. My best theory is that if her
father Charles was an abusive man, perhaps he insisted that the Registrar, Mr
Ruddoch, write this in, as some sort of caustic stab at his daughter and his
first and illegitimate grandson. As was common then, Wilfred was almost
certainly brought up by Charles and Mary as their son. A baptism record from
1888 states Wilfred was baptized with the father listed as Charles Rose, and
the mother as simply Kezia.
I can find no Thomas Groves who might be a candidate for the father of
Wilfred.
In 1892, Kezia had another child, Ada Roseland, this time no father was
recorded, and Kezia kept her baby. Whatever
the circumstances, Kezia would have suffered from the social shame and
disapproval of her peers in these isolated communities of the Huon. When she
married, she brought her three-year-old to their home, and the newly wed couple
raised her as their own.
Together Kezia and William raised ten children:
Ada Roseland b 1892
David William Frederick b 1895 (David’s story is called WW1 Part 3 and
was blogged here in April 2018)
Martin Henry b 1897
Albert Edward Victor b 1889- known as Top
Alma Corrina Martina b 1901- known as Ivy
Coraline Ivy Victoria b 1901- Known as Corrie, she was my grandmother
and a twin to Ivy.
Jane Myrtle Myrene b 1903-known as Rene
William Leslie William Russell b 1905
Gordon Stanley Livingston b 1907-known as Dick
Robin Ernest b 1910- known as Slim
Kezia and William’s children were all born at Dover, but by the 1914
census, they had relocated to Franklin.
In the first decades of the
twentieth century, Franklin was a bustling town. It had branches of Hobart’s
big stores, busy Friday night shopping, dances, concerts and lantern shows with
music supplied by bands such as the Cygnet Joy Spreaders or the Middleton
Melody Makers, with moving pictures being screened regularly at the Franklin
Town Hall. The late 1800’s and early 1900’s saw the construction of substantial
dwellings with the availability of lathe and plaster and wallpaper. Upon
renovations in recent years, the Cupit’s attractive gabled home revealed
newspaper linings in the upstairs bedrooms.
Franklin was the only smaller town outside Hobart to have electric
lights. In 1916 a mini hydro plant behind the town on Price’s Creek, powered
both industry and domestic needs. For a flat rate of a six monthly £3 fee,
townsfolk could use all the power they wanted and had no metres. No one ever switched
off their lights.
The children all attended the State School in Franklin. The local
newspaper reports frequently the Cupit girls’ achievements at school and in
community life, while the boys feature more in their sporting achievements.
School attendance could be hit and miss in the Huon. In 1925 Glen Huon school
recorded only one student on the first day of the school year. Children were
expected to work alongside their parents picking fruit or look after the
younger children while their mother worked. January would have been the busiest
time of year for the less robust berry fruit picking. Corrie received
recognition for full attendance, while, young Martin had his father threaten to
pull his son out of school in 1910.
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William had reported physical cruelty
at the hand of Martin’s teacher Mr Ross. Mr Ross was vehemently defending his innocence
of the excessive canning of Martin, claiming, contrary to William's, that only two
cuts, through clothes, did not draw blood or severe bruising. After a full
enquiry into the matter, charges were dropped. Mr Ross in fact suggested that
William’s complaint may have been ‘a feeble retaliation for my reporting him
for his child’s irregular attendance’.
Photo: Franklin History Group inc Lady Franklin Hotel. www.fhgtas.com/gallery.html
My grandmother Corrie, rarely spoke of her childhood and only ever referred
to where her family lived as, The Huon, or The Channel. The one memory she once
shared fondly was of her and her twin sister stealing apples and laughing at
the angered orchardist from the roof of his shed. As they jumped up and down,
they fell through the roof. Family writings tell of Kezia walking to church
with her daughters and the local lads watching from behind the hedges!
Many published writings contain memories of these pre war years being a
very happy time.
William was a fisherman and later ran a grocery store in Franklin. Kezia
completed her training as a midwife in Hobart in 1918, probably to avoid prosecution
in the untrained delivery of babies, and to increase her earning capacity as
William was aging. Throughout the first decades of the twentieth century,
census records always list Kezia with ‘home duties’ as her profession. This was
a time that did not recognize a married woman’s profession. Her role as nurse
and midwife was obviously considered as an extension of her domestic duties, and
much of her care would have been unpaid for. Ada did not marry until 1925, and
it was her who cared for the family while Kezia worked in her role as nurse and
midwife. These women were both described as extremely hard workers by family.
Kezia in her midwife uniform. Photo E Cupit- Ancestry.com
William died in 1925 at age sixty. Family records indicated he was
unwell and possibly had contracted polio, as he had a limp. A newspaper report tells
of an incident in 1924 which tells of his physical disability. William fell
into the water while repairing his boat on the jetty in front of his Franklin
residence, “Being a partial cripple, he was unable to get out of the water’, is
reported. Eventually he was aided but had been in the water for over an hour.
Kneeling: Martin and Gordon Cupit & Cecil Berhens (Ivy's husband) Photo E Cupit, Ancestry.com
This does not include Wilfred’s children, the story of which needs more
detective work.
Bibliography:
Trove articles
Libraries Tas Names Index
‘Centenary of the Settlement of the Huon’ supplement in the Huon &
Derwent Times 1936
Days Gone by in the Channel. M Lowe
Full and Plenty, an Oral History of Apple Growing in the Huon Valley. C
Watson
