WW1, The ANZACs: Part 2

The Daisy Patch, Gallipoli

On the Gallipoli Peninsula there was an open field, covered in long stemmed white daisies interspersed with red field poppies. This description belies the Hell that happened there nearly 103 years ago. Writing and researching my great Uncle Charlie's war has been an incredibly emotional experience, learning about the events that took place there in 1915. I cried as I found each new piece of the harrowing account of  the 8th of May 1915, the day Charlie Rose died  in Gallipoli. 

                                                              Soldier Profile: 

 Charlie Rose’s World War 1 role was a short nine months in its duration. It began with his smeared signature on his recruitment form at Ngahere, New Zealand on the 13^th August 1914, and ended with his death at the Dardanelles on May 8^th, 1915.

Charlie’s father, Charles Rose signed his 1868 marriage document with an X. His bride was Mary Lovell. They began their family of at least fourteen children with the birth of Kezia in 1869. Charles snr was a labourer, carpenter, bushman and farmer. Luther Charles Garnet (Charlie) was their fifth son.He and his siblings grew up in the town of Dover in Tasmania.

Charlie presented himself for enlistment within the first week of the mobilization at the outbreak of war. Charlie had relocated to New Zealand, enlisted there and was assigned to the 1^st Canterbury Battalion, 13^th Company, NZEF. Charlie’s occupation was a bushman. Charlie would no doubt have been a fit, able bodied and capable young man, confident in risky and physically challenging situations.

Training began at Addington, near Christchurch, and equipment was issued to the men as quickly as it became available. Every man was keen, as he realized that if he failed to reach the required standard, there were dozens of men anxiously waiting to take his place.

Presumably, an unmarried and capable young man like Charlie, was keen to embark on an adventure like this.  On October 16th, Charlie boarded the Atltentic in Wellington Harbour and two escort ships lead a fleet of thirteen ships into the Tasman Sea.

On the 21^st, the fleet called in to Hobart. Troops disembarked for a route march.. Briefly back on his home ground, was he able to contact or see his family? Did Charles and Mary know their son had enlisted?

The Australian transports joined them at Albany when they reached there on the 28^th. This now formed a large and imposing fleet.

Charlie and the men on board spent their time in military exercises and organized amusements. Food was reportedly good. Before breakfast there was physical training, lectures, musketry, rifle exercises, and as much drill as the limited space allowed.

When the fleet arrived at Suez, orders were received that the Australians and NZEF would not be going on to France as expected. They were to complete their training in Egypt. The NZEF were camped at Zeitoun, four miles out of Cairo. Here the men worked on their drill, field training, route marches, night work and entrenching practices in their makeshift, sandy and dirty camp. By the end of January, Auckland and Canterbury Battalions were sent to Ismalia, half way between Port Said and Suez to defend the Suez against advancing Turks. After a successful three-day attack, fighting ceased and Canterbury remained there training and manning the area until they were shipped back to Zeitoun in late February.

Charlie and the 12^th and 13^th Company men arrived at Anzac Cove at 5 pm on April 25. Each soldier carried weaponry, water bottle, entrenching tool, haversack and a pack containing 30 kg of rations, water, firewood and clothing. They were immediately dispatched to Walker’s Ridge. The night was spent under infantry attacks and heavy fire. The enemy was invisible to them and the men were launched into the complete confusion of an unknown and difficult landscape. For the first day alone, Canterbury had 198 casualties, 21 dead, 87 wounded and 100 missing, an indication of the desperate nature of fighting conditions that the men were suddenly and chaotically thrown into.

The next two weeks were spent in the less than four square miles of their occupied area. With about 25,000 men in such a small space, conditions were harsh. Charlie and his mates had a staple diet of tinned bully beef, army biscuits and jam.

“Bully beef and biscuits. You couldn’t eat your biscuits dry. It was like chewing rock. You had to soak it. For pudding we used to have biscuit soaking in water and the jam all mixed up together.”

Conditions warmed up with the approach of summer. Overflowing latrines, body lice, disease, flies, unburied dead and a steady stream of enemy fire and casualties made physical and psychological conditions increasingly difficult. On the 8^th of May the New Zealanders moved into an attack on a piece of ground named “The Daisy Patch”. This would also become known as the “Gardens of Hell.”

The Daisy Patch was an open field, totally devoid of cover and was overgrown with the common red field poppy and thick long-stemmed white daisies.

“I watched the 12^th Nelson Company make an advance over open country called the Daisy Patch. There was absolutely no cover for them. They lost their commanding officer……Our turn to go across came next, and we went over the top in good order, with the best of luck. At once we were greeted with a terrible fusillade of rifle and machine gun fire…..the man on my right had his brains shot out into his face, and the chap on my left was shot through the stomach”, Bill Leadly remembered.

All day advancements were unsuccessfully attempted. Charlie Rose’s death occurred on the 8^th of May. Charlie was one of the young Canterbury Battalion men just like the ones who died next to Bill Leadley that day at the battle for the Daisy Patch. That night was a rainy one and many men were wounded and had to spend the night on the battlefield, as evacuations were impossible.  Two hundred Canterbury men were killed, wounded or missing that day on the Daisy Patch.

The following morning was fine. Reinforcements arrived that evening and burial parties were sent out at dusk when all the dead within reach were buried. Fir Tree Wood was the small cemetery where Charlie and his fellow New Zealanders were buried when the opportunity had presented. On May 24, an armistice was declared. The day broke with a steady drizzle the allies mingled freely with “Johnny Turk” on ‘one of the strangest days of the campaign’. Thousands were buried as chaplains searched for identity discs and read burial services. Conditions made order and appropriate burial impossible. Charlie’s final grave is at Twelve Tree Copse. There are 2226 unidentified burials here. Charlie is commemorated here as one of the six Australians who fought with the New Zealand forces along side the 179 names from the NZEF Battalions most of whom were killed at the Daisy Patch on the 8^th of May.

News of Charlie’s death didn’t hit home for several months. A local NZ newspaper announced in August:

“Private advice states that Pvt Charles Rose……. was killed in action at the Dardanelles on May 8^th. The deceased was very popular in the Ngahere district, where he worked for Mr John Wright, sawmiller. He was 26 years of age, a good hearted man, took a great interest in chopping, athletic events, and was a prominent footballer.”

Charlie’s death notice appeared in local Tasmanian papers in August too. Handwritten family records recall this event many years later:

“She could still see her mother’s face (Kezia) when she was told of her brothers Charlie's... death, killed in WW1. She was weeping.”

In November the family received a letter from the New Zealand exchange from Charlie’s mate.

“I was very fortunate in only getting wounded, as the whole air was a mass of lead; but it is not about myself I am writing this. It is about poor old Charley Rose. Charley was the best friend I had in the army. He was with me always, in gay times and hard times, ever since we joined in August of last year: but he is dead now, and I deem it my duty to write to you. Though I miss him very much, and you and your family miss him too, we have this one consolation- he died like a real soldier. He faced the shell, bullet and bayonet for thirteen days. During that time he showed splendid courage and only a few minutes prior to his death when we were all in a hollow preparing to rush across an open patch, which was literally swept with lead, even as we sprang out of the hollow into this leaded hell. I heard Charlie laugh and give a cheer- alas his last laugh, his last cheer. We had to run about 200 yards to reach our next position such as it was- a mere rising in the ground, hardly sufficient to cover our heads. Indeed about 26 were killed while we lay under this cover, and this in less than five minutes. We rushed across the hill in sections of about 12 or 14 men. My section had only started when I saw two of my comrades fall, one along side me, the other about two yards away. Then Charley fell, he just dropped to his knees, his head sank, and he rolled over stone dead. He never spoke a word or uttered a cry. He just rolled over and I knew what that sign meant. It was indeed a fearful sight, made hideous by the cries and groans and curses of the wounded, but there is no need to dwell on these things. Poor old Cummings fell the day after we landed, and ‘Bumper’ Smith was killed the same day as Charley. The weather here in Egypt is fearfully hot, quite the hottest I have felt anywhere. I believe we are going back to Gallipoli on Wednesday. I could stay until the next boat, but it wouldn’t be fair, as I am fit enough to scrap again, and every man is needed there.”

 As well as at Twelve Tree Copse, L.C.G. Rose is memorialized on the Port Esperance Soldier’s Memorial and the Greymouth War Memorial in New Zealand. 

---

[1] discoveringanzacs.naa.gov.au/browse/records/551762/2

[2]www.linctas.ent.sirsidynix.net.au/client/en_AU/all/search/results?qu=charles&qu=rose accessed 25 Feb 2018

[3]www,linctas.ent.sirsidynix.net.au/client/en_AU/all/search/detailnonmodal/ent:$002f$002fNAME_INDEXES$002f0$002fNAME_INDEXES:1072033/one?qu=nalta&qu=rose accessed 20 Feb 2018

[4] www. discoveringanzacs.naa.gov.au/browse/records/551762/2 and 571694/1 accessed 2/2/2018

[5] The History of the Canterbury Regiment, N.Z.E.F. by Captain David Ferguson Witcombe $ Tombs Limited, 1921. New Zealand Ekectronic Text Collection

[6] www.nzhistory.govt.nz/war/the-gallipoli-campain/early-battles accessed 5/2/2018

[7] Russell Weir, Wellington Battalion, in Jane Tolerton, An Awfully Big Adventure: New Zealand World War One veterans tell their stories, 2013

[8]Walter (Bill )leadley of the Canterbury Battalion Gavin McLean, Ian McGibbon and Kynan Gentry (eds)The Penguin Book of New Zealanders at War, Penguin, Auckland 2009, p136

[9] The New Zealanders at Gallipoli, Fred Waite. Whitcombe and Tombs Limited 1919. New Zealand Electronic Text Collection

[10]Gallipoli, The Battlefield Guide Mat McLachlan Hachette UK 2015

[11] Gallipoli, The Pilgrimage Guide Garrie Hutchinson Black Ins 2007

[12] The War, Greymouth Evening Star, 10 August 1915 www. paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers

[13] Huon Times Saturday 7^th Aug 1915 trove.nla.gov.au

[14] Joan Cupit, handwritten family memories and interviews. interview with Rene Tuck, daughter of Kezia Cupit, in possession of family member

[15] Huon Times 10 November 1915 trove.nla.gov.au accessed  8/3/2018

[16] http://monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/conflict/multiple/display/70227-port-esperance-soldiers%60-memorial/  accessed 5/3/2018

[17] https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/greymouth-war-memorial  accessed 4/3/2018

WW1, The ANZACs: Part 1

World War 1

My recent utas unit was called Families at War. For the last six weeks I have gone on a journey from not knowing if I had a family member who went to this war, to researching the life, service and post war life of several men in my family.

Like many of my generation,  my war history is woeful. The most I knew about Australians in WW1 was from the 1981 movie Gallipoli. As a then twenty year old I saw this at the cinema. A very young Mel Gibson and Mark Lee played the eighteen year old mates who went optimistically off to fight and ended up at Gallipoli. I cried and felt the shock and anger at the end when Archie Hamilton (Lee) was gunned down along with the hundreds of other young men. I think this movie may have been the start of a cultural turning point and awareness for my generation, whose lives had never been touched by war.

Through my lifetime ANZAC day services had declined and appeared to be dying out along with the ex servicemen who attended. When my own sons joined the Boy Scouts, we started attending. Through the 1990's, the services grew. Now twenty years on, an ANZAC Day service attracts more crowds than ever.

My personal soldier research began with searching the unorganised handwritten records I'd had in my genealogy stash for years.

                                                             Kezia Rose
Kezia was the eldest of  the large family of Charles and Mary Rose. She was born 1869 at Castle Forbes Bay

                                                           Corrie Cupit
Corrie Cupit was my maternal grandmother born 1902, daughter of Kezia and William Cupit, Franklin.

My search for a soldier to research I found in my maternal grandmother's family.
Mary and Charles Rose's eldest daughter was Kezia.
One of Kezia's daughters was Corrie, my grandmother. These photos would be about the right era for the onset of World War 1.

My records showed two of Kezia's brothers died at Gallipoli, Nathaniel and Luther.
Ahh, here's my start I naively think.

The two Charlies:

I trove through Trove, I trawl through Ancestry and I wade through the War Memorial. No luck.
As it turns out, the brothers had moved to New Zealand and enlisted there. Luther, known as Charlie, enlisted in 1914 within the first week of mobilisation with the NZEF, and he became my soldier profile for my assignment.
His brother Nalta enlisted in December 1915, also in New Zealand, most confusingly under the name of Charles Jackson.

                                                                                                              www.findagrave.com, posted by Judy Robinson

I was excited to find a photo of the Rose brothers on Ancestry, Charlie (Nalta) standing and Charlie (Luther) sitting. I haven't figured out when this would have been taken as their enlistment dates were a year apart.
Ancestry informed me of the death of their brother Frank in 1915 too. After much searching, a Frank Rose did die on the front, but not our Frank, a different family. Nathaniel Rose is still a mystery too. Perhaps the family records are confusing Nalta and Nathaniel?

Charles Jackson’s enlistment date was ten days before Christmas 1915. Charlie listed his next of kin as his mother in Tasmania. Conscription was not to be policy in New Zealand until 1916, but pressure to fight the ‘hun’ and protect loved ones was widespread. In 1916, New Zealand press coverage of the war was widespread, with dire predictions of the length of the war and headlines such as Every Man Wanted. Perhaps the loss of his brother compelled him also.

Charles stated he was a labourer under the employ of J. Gorson at Tuatapere. His foreign service in the 11^th reinforcements, Otago Infantry Battalion D Company was to last three years and sixteen days, mostly in France until his return to Wellington in September 1919. His difficult to read war record shows Charles sustained some injuries and had illness, was transferred to varied duties and locations, but was to return home nine months after the official end of the War.

Charlie's (Nalta) life remains a mystery with conflicting records about who he married, no records of children or anything significant. he lived out the rest of his life in New Zealand, never reverting back to his real name, and died in Christchurch in 1959 leaving a wife, Mrs C.I. Jackson.

My next post tells Charlie's (Luther) story.

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.  

Hotels of Devonport

Having moved to an older part of the city of Devonport, my interest is piqued as to the history of many of the lovely old buildings that surround our house.

The pub down a block from us (nice walking distance for a counter meal) I wouldn't have described as one of these. The Elimatta , or The Elly as it is always affectionately named, follows the architectural genre of "Mish Mash Butt Ugly, Nobody's Put Any Thought Into AS They Changed It Over The Years". I will have to check with my architecture student friend as to the validity of the naming if this style.

                                                                   source:  The Advocate newspaper


I was delighted to see some old pics of it on the Devonport Historic Site on Facebook.

 What a gorgeous old place it once was.

All towns that sprang up in Tassie's early settling days had a multitude of hotels and guest houses and it was from either of these that our pubs of today have evolved.

Devonport had it's fair share in the early days, The Alexander (still here) The Formby, (still here), The Mersey, The Victoria, The British, The Tamahere to name a few.

The beautiful building that was the Elly has had many additions and alterations in it's life.

Looking slightly more recognizable now, this pic I would date at circa 1960 from the cars,

The grand old girl obviously now stripped of her verandahs, is slowly being swallowed up by modern additions.

Whenever I walk past The Elly, I wonder about the old parts. Are they still there, what remains of it?

As someone with a desire to connect and fossick among remnants of a past era, I always look for it.

I recently went around the back to the bottle shop. There beneath the wheelie bins, fire escapes and add on additions, behind a door is an old staircase and a glimpse of the old brickwork and windows.

It made me kind of happy to know there is still something of the past there. 

I reminds me of our own lives as we get on a bit more in years. We try and modernize ourselves, keep up with a changing world, hide some of our memories and experiences with facades, block off doors we no longer want to go through. From the outside we can really change our opinions and what we want to present to the outside world. We might not want to seem old fuddy duddys , and we might want to hide bits of ourselves that are maybe boring and passe.

But get in behind those bits we've covered up and that same person is still there. Deep inside that lovely old staircase still winds up to all those old rooms, those memories and that person you were when you were just a kid. I'd like to think so anyway.

                                         ****************************

Sadly some have all gone completely. I think the most mourned hotel of Devonport would be The Grand Hotel.

Demolished in 1968 to make way for a Brutalist banking institute (yes, that IS a real architectural genre). It must have made an impression on me as I can actually remember this building. I was 7 then. I remember standing on the corner of Rooke and Best Streets staring at this building thinking how lovely and grand it really was.

 Palace Hotel corner Rooke and Steele Street ( maybe not quite a palace)

 Royal Hotel corner Best and Fenton Street

 Metropole Hotel on Formby Road between King and Steele being demolished
.

" A home away from home is a term

that says concisely what The Metropole actually is. At this up-to-date board-

ing establishment guests not only can obtain the comforts and privacy of

their own homes, but they have facilities for reading, writing, the use of

commercial and smoking rooms such as few houses contain."

-as reported in the local newspaper 1922

AND I read it had hot and cold water systems installed throughout the building. Gee I'd really like to stay here!

And some are still quite recognizable , The Formby, only recently reinvented with a name change a slight facelift.

And the good old Alex. She hasn't changed a bit!

The Alex in the background and the earlier Formby in the forground.

                                                                                     from Shifting Sands by Faye Gardam

unless noted these pics are all from Devonport and Surrounds- A Pictorial History, Facebook group.