Jane was my Great Great Grandmother. She was my grandpa’s maternal grandmother, and her own maternal grandmother was convict Jane Duff.
Why do I seem to have forgotten her? She’s another of the “Laura Ingalls” generation – born 1867, just like Laura. Her childhood coincided with boom in Beaconsfield and all the cliches we associate with the Victorian era. Her adulthood, in the 1890s, then coincided with the Tasmanian depression and when the mines closed her sons fought in WW1.
But who was she as a person?
In trying to find out more about Jane, I’ve come to see just how much women’s stories get told – or inferred – through information that’s publicly available about those around them.
Jane was the first child of Alfred and Lydia Stonehouse nee Freeman. Alfred was the butcher who tried so many things as he attempted to find stability for his family on the West Tamar, and her mother the one who raised all those kids on her own and took on the business, after Alfred died.
Her maternal Grandmother was named Jane, as was her mother’s only sibling. (Alfred’s mother was called Elizabeth, and he also had a sister called Jane, and another called Elizabeth.)
When Jane was born, she, Alfred and Lydia were living in the West Tamar – likely in the Ilfracombe area. Alfred was farming and dealing hay. However, Jane was likely born in her maternal grandmother’s house in Launceston.
Nearby her maternal aunt, Lydia, and husband George Griffiths had a daughter, Lydia in 1865, however she died just two months later. The two families were obviously close, with George and Alfred in business together, and it’s likely that young Jane and her siblings had a close relationship with their childless aunt and uncle. While Alfred, who was the third of eleven children, all born on the West Tamar, ensured that there were plenty of aunts, uncles and cousins nearby. At the time of her birth, all four of Jane’s grandparents were alive and living on the Tamar.
She quickly gained a number of brothers and sisters.
Her first sibling was Thomas Ernest. At this time the family were temporarily living in Launceston, as Alfred had been declared insolvent, a process that seems to have taken most of 1871 to resolve. However, by 1872 when Jane’s second brother, Alfred Robert was born the family were back on land in the West Tamar (Ilfracombe, modern day Beauty Point), farming again.
Ilfracombe was the home of the port associated with the Ilfracombe Iron Works. Alfred seems to have been living and working on Iron Works Land, where he was operating a shop and butcher. In 1873 he was fined for supplying “sly grog” from the shop – a charge a denied.
In January 1875 he was again declared bankrupt! But again managed to stay – or return to – the West Tamar, where the family were farming in August.
Also in August 1875, four day after Jane’s eighth birthday, baby George William was born, but just one month later he died. In January 1877, Jane finally had a sister, when Rosella Maude was born.
When Jane was ten, her life changed again. Gold was discovered in 1877. By August 1877, Alfred and Lydia were in the process of building a store in the town.
Alfred and Lydia became known in the town as butchers, storekeepers and entrepreneurs. In 1879 Elvina Lydia was born.
Then, in May 1881, when Lydia was pregnant with her seventh child, tragedy struck. Alfred Snr, Jane’s father, died of measles. Jane was just thirteen.
Lydia stayed in town, and took on running the business, with financial – and likely other assistance – from members of the extended family. There would still have been huge changes to everyone’s life. I think Lydia’s parents, Jane and Robert, came to live with their daughter and grandchildren in Weld St, and the farm was put up for sale, although I don’t know how much of this was “lost” or whether some of it was purchased by other members of Alfred’s family or even by Lydia herself. Beaconsfield School opened in May 1881, the same month that Alfred died, so if Jane had any formal schooling at that school it was likely to be minimal. There may have small private schools in the area, or her mother may have taught her at home. Seven months after Alfred’s death, just a few days before their first Christmas without him, Ethel was born.
In 1884 Lydia gave birth again, to Olivia Grace, her final child. Jane was by now 17. In 1886 and 1888 Jane’s maternal grandparents died her house. Rosella was still only eleven, but Jane was 18 and likely being to think about her life beyond her mother’s home, and with the death of her grandparents, may have felt that she was less needed to help?
Defining features of Jane’s childhood, were likely her role as eldest daughter, helping in the house and with the younger children. There might have been uncertainty that would have come from the bankruptcy, but perhaps also the optimism her parents must have had, in relentlessly pursuing new enterprises, not just “settling” for something that might have felt safe.
Sometime during the early 1880s the Trezise family had come to Beaconsfield, and Jane met their son, Joseph Henry.
Jane and Joseph were married in the Beaconsfield Primitive Methodist Church on 7 April 1890 when they were both 22, and Joseph was working as a miner.
It’s hard to tell from the records, but I think that the newly wed Jane and Joseph may have gone to the West Coast together. Was this about an adventure, or something to be borne out of necessity of finding regular work?
Their first child, Eva May, was born during their first year of marriage (she was born in Beaconsfield, but Jane may have travelled home from the West Coast, or they may not have gone yet).
The young family were definitely in Zeehan two years later, in late 1893, when Joseph brought shares in a mining company on the West Coast. Like Beaconsfield in the 1870s, Zeehan was a rapidly growing town in the early 1890s, becoming the third largest town in the state by 1900. The Trezises were there when their second child, eight and half month old, Rosella Gertrude, died of acute bronchitis in Zeehan, a week before Christmas, 1893. https://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/Z/Zeehan.htm
Jane then had five sons, all born in Beaconsfield. There are no records I can find about where the family were living during this period. The mine had an upsurge in 1894 after Rosella’s death, so Joseph may have been able to find work closer to home again. However, when the youngest son was 3, Joseph was living in Waratah. As an adult, eldest daughter Eva, certainly considered herself to be “from Beaconsfield” and never told stories that led anyone to believe she’d spent any large parts of her childhood on the West Coast. In 1908 Jane’s half-sister, Ollie, was visiting their sister Ethel, on the NW Coast when she died unexpectedly. Jane may have wanted to be home, around her surviving siblings not far from home.
By 1914 Joseph was back in Beaconsfield. He was working in the mine, and playing cricket for the local team. Son Albert was doing well at school, passing the exam for high school entrance at the end of 1914 – don’t know if her was able to go, still plenty of costs and logistics associated with four years in Launceston.
Jane’s family were not all under one roof though, as in February 1914 her daughter Eva married local boy, George William Cotterill.
Jane’s first grandchild, May, was born in November 1915.
Then, as war broke out, Jane saw her eldest sons, Joseph Alfred and Clement Roy head off to war, plus her new son in law, George Cotterill.
Joseph Alfred was killed in France in 1916.
Then, in April 1919, with house on Blue Tier Rd (now known as Salisbury Rd) burnt down. As well as being Jane and Joseph’s home, it was also where the newly wed Eva and George had been storing their belongings while George was at war and Eva living with the Cotterills.
And after the war, in the middle of trying to deal with the paperwork associated with their son’s death, Joseph Snr died suddenly and unexpectedly.
Jane was awarded medals from the Australian Government for her sacrifices during the war.
The property on Blue Tier Rd was owned by Jane’s brother Thomas Ernest. Jane and Joseph are recorded as living there during the war. In June 1920 Joseph snr signed a document for the army, in which he said he was a Market Gardner, living on Blue Tier Rd, although the 1919 electoral role had him in Launceston Rd.
Jane remained in Beaconsfield, where electoral roles show her sometimes living alone and sometimes with one of her sons, or her mother with her. Three of her sons stayed in the Beaconsfield area. Eva and George were in Hobart between the wars, but came back to Beaconsfield in the 1940s.
WW2 again saw some of her sons, and this time grandsons, go off to fight.
It’s again hard to tell much about Jane as a person from the list of events of her adult life. No doubt insecure employment of her husband during the period she was raising small children, and then the stresses of seeing those boys go off to the two world wars were events that shaped how she lived. But newspaper articles didn’t show her on committees or performing in fundraisers. I’m sure she did have interests, passions, but not the sort that have been recorded. I look back to that photo of her as a teen, holding a book. Did she or someone chose that simply as a prop, or was it to say something about Jane at that age – keen for knowledge, keen for more?
Jane Elizabeth Trezise nee Stonehouse, 21 August 1867 – 27 September 1949
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