I am coming to realise that, as a vegetarian, I am probably a great disappointment to my forebears, as it turns out I come from a long line of butchers.
Alfred and Lydia Stonehouse
Alfred Stonehouse was my great great great grandfather, and he’s known as being an early pioneer of Beaconsfield, apparently arriving in the town 1877 and soon running a butchery in the town. He doesn’t appear to have had a history of butchering in his family, instead he and his wife Lydia were enterprising opportunists, providing what the rapidly expanding Tamar region needed in the 1870s.
Alfred was born in Port Sorell in 1842, but moved to Launceston with his family by the time he was two years old. He married another local born Tasmanian, Lydia Freeman, in Launceston in 1865. (Lydia had one convict parent, Alfred had a convict great grandfather). Alfred and Lydia made their home on the West Tamar soon after their marriage. The informants for the children’s births are all Lydia’s relatives, rather than ever being their father, suggesting she travelled “home” for the births.
From 1872 onwards, where birth or deaths are recorded as being on the Tamar, the place was Ilfracombe, where we would now call Beauty Point (although their second child Thomas Ernest, according to his obituary, was born in Supply River in 1870 so they may have been there prior to moving nearer the coast), and Alfred was listed as a farmer. Farming and butchering were closely related, as well into the 20thC, butchers grew the meat that they sold.
The first reference I can find to him being a butcher is an 1873 article about him having a shop and selling a bit sly grog. It says that he is a store owner and butcher living on land owned by the Ilfracombe Ironworks’ property (likely where the Australian Maritime College is now, or up Middle Arm Creek, along what is now Holwell Rd where the ironworks’ blast furnace was and where a small town asaociated with the works existed for a short time). The ironworks are a fascinating story themselves. The company closed in 1874, but Alfred and Lydia seem to have remained at Ilfracombe to farm.
In January 1877, Alfred and Lydia’s fifth child, Rosella Maud, was born and Alfred was a farmer in Ilfracombe. Gold was discovered in what is now known as Beaconsfield in June 1877. Two years later Alfred was recorded as a butcher in Beaconsfield when Elvina was born in 1879, so the August 1877 story checks out.
An enterprising couple, it appears from news articles, that they may also have been carrying on a butchering business in Lefroy in 1877, in partnership with someone named Griffiths (likely Lydia’s sister’s husband). While one article clearly says Alfred, another article about Lefroy the same year calls the butcher Jas Stonehouse. The archives only come up with one James Stonehouse, and that’s Alfred’s nephew, James William Kirkwood Stonehouse born 1866 in Launceston, so if it’s him, he would have been only 11 so probably not him, and perhaps a misprint in the paper. At the time Lefroy was the largest town on the East Tamar, and like Beaconsfield, rapidly increasing due to mining. Lefroy was larger than George Town, although the George Town name was often used to describe the district that encompassed Lefroy.
Alfred wasn’t just able to see the value in running a store for growing communities, he also got a bit of the gold fever himself, and invested in 300 shares in the Victoria Gold Mining Co, which was prospecting on the Blue Tier (between Beaconsfield and Supply River), where he had his own farm.
Unfortunately, in May 1881, after not quite four years of running his Beaconsfield business, Alfred died of measles. (Shortly afterwards, his baby nephew also died of the same disease and his sister of “inflammation of Brain & Lungs.” Harriet was the only death on the page not from measles.)
After his death, Lydia Stonehouse ran the business until her brother in law (and future husband) Peter Brown Snr took it over in December 1882 (he had returned to farming in his home town of Supply River by 1919).
Alfred and Lydia had three daughters who survived to adulthood, but they looked beyond the butchery business, and married a miner and two farmers. Their two sons, were a different story.
TE (Ernest) Stonehouse
Alfred’s eldest son, Thomas Ernest, was just 11 when his father died but that didn’t stop him following in his father’s footsteps.
When he married Fanny Lydia Page in Lefroy, he not only married a Lydia like his father did (!), but he was also the town’s butcher. He’d begun the business in about 1892-3.
His farm was out on the road to Beechford, and he also had land on the road between Lefroy and George Town.
Ernest maintained links with Beaconsfield and was working there as a butcher in 1905, with business in both towns in 1910 (below). He also served on both the Beaconsfield and George Town councils.
In February 1935 another man from Lefroy who was a butcher, was riding on a cart that belonged to Ernest, when he fell and was hurt. This man was Charles Gordon Brown – one of Thomas’ cousins/step-brothers.
At Ernest’s funeral he received a message of sympathy from the Premier, and the Minister for Lands and Works attended.
Alfred Robert Stonehouse
Alfred and Lydia – the first ones! – had a second son, who was Alfred Robert.
Without doubt, the loss of his father when he was eight effected Alfred Robert’s early life. He was just ten years old when he began working as a grocer’s boy in Beaconsfield.
He had moved into the butchery business by the time he married in 1896 when he was a butcher himself.
Alfred Robert married Emma Cowap, the daughter of another of Lefroy’s butcher’s, Samuel Cowap.
In 1914 Alfred Robert was on the electoral role as butcher in Weld St, Beaconsfield, and in 1921 he ran for the Beaconsfield Council.
This would be the Alf Stonehouse who gets a mention in Coultman Smith’s 1978 book on Beaconsfield, which describes Alf’s business in 1908 as opposite the Wesleyan Church (which would put it near the current IGA?), and Alf himself as undertaking his work expertly. It also says that sometime shortly afterwards there was a fire there! Interestingly, this book has Peter “Nosy” Brown (Peter Brown Snr) and his son Tom (Thomas Graham) as having a butchers business where the “old” post office now is. So Alf didn’t take over his father’s business from his step-father, but started independently – or Peter Brown liked it so much he went independently after Alf took the family business, or it’s all sort of one business with several outlets…?
Samuel Cowap
In 1881 Samuel was a butcher at Lefroy when witness in a sheep stealing case, and in 1883 when his eldest daughter died she was described as the daughter of a butcher at George Town. Samuel’s farm was “Belle Vue,” 2 ½ miles from Lefroy.
By 1888 when he married his second wife, Annie Viney Wood, he was a storekeeper, and when his daughter Emma, married in 1896 he was described as a cordial manufacturer.
As well as their daughter Emma, who married the butcher Alfred Robert Stonehouse, Samuel and his first wife, Mary Scott, had two sons who lived to adulthood (another son and a daughter both died as children).
Samuel Charles Cowap
Samuel Charles Cowap was the eldest son of Samuel and Mary Cowap. He didn’t stay in the Tamar. Beginning in 1916, electoral roles put him in Queensland… where he was working as a butcher!
Robert Cowap
Robert was the second son of Samuel and Mary. In 1892 he took over his previously shared butchers and bakery in Shaw St Lefroy. (The former business partner wasn’t his father or brother, or any other relation – I think). On his death in 1936 he was a farmer at “The Glen,” near Lefroy.
Alfred Samuel (Sam) Stonehouse
Sam was a son of Alfred Robert and grandson of the original Alfred.
Sam was a Beaconsfield butcher in 1930. In 1942 and 44 he was declared bankrupt, but butchering wasn’t a passing phase; when his sister Doris died in 1983 he was executer of her will and described as a butcher.
To continue the theme, his second wife was Liz Dornauff, daughter of a Lilydale butcher, William Dornauff!
Mr A L Stonehouse
Mr A L Stonehouse owned a butchers (and shoe shop) in Beaconsfield in 1953. He didn’t “occupy” the butchers shop, but was living in house adjoining it when it burned down. (I remember a shoe shop burning down in BF in the 1980s?)
I have to wonder if this another mistype, and it should be A S Stonehouse. If not, he could be a fourth Alfred??
Stonehouse Butcher in Illfraville
In 1947 the Illfraville (Beauty Point?) polling place was Stonehouse’s Butchers’ Shop. I wonder who was running that business??
Thomas Valentine Brown
T V Brown was a butcher near Lefroy in 1894, with an Alfred Stonehouse (most likely Alfred Robert) working for him, when an account holder called G T Roberts refused to pay up.
Thomas Valentine Brown was a brother of Peter Brown Snr, who took on the business of the original Alfred when he died. In the 1914 census T V Brown was a butcher in George Town (which would encompass Lefroy, although the person above him in the role is recorded as being in Lefroy).
This photo (QVM:1995:P:0107) from the Queen Victoria Museum, shows at the back left, Mrs Tom Brown – and on a facebook page, she is also described as “the butcher’s wife.” Therefore she is either Eliza Veitch, wife of Thomas Valentine… or she’s Lilian Augusta Batchelor, wife of Thomas Graham Brown.
Charles Gordon Brown
Mr Brown was a butcher in February 1935 and living in George Town, when he fell from a load of peas on a cart. The cart was owned by T E Stonehouse.
Charles Gordon was one of Peter Brown’s children from his first marriage (to Caroline Stonehouse, so a nephew of the original Alfred) – and both step brother and cousin to Thomas Ernest.
He was still a butcher in George Town in the 1963 electoral role (43 Elizabeth St has been replaced with something modern in the 80s – it looks like housing comm or police or ed dep’t or hydro or something).
Prior to heading to George Town, he’d been a butcher on the North West coast.
Peter Brown & Thomas Graham Brown
Peter Brown was the brother in law and second husband of Lydia Stonehouse nee Freeman. When Lydia’s first husband died, Peter bought the business. He didn’t come from a butchery background, and may have moved back into farming when his eldest sons and step sons were able to take on the butchery. In the 1920s he, Lydia and his son Peter jnr and his wife, were on a farm at Loira, which may have been landed originally owned by Alfred Stonehouse’s father, Thomas. However, Coultman Smith’s book suggests Peter’s nickname was Nosy(!), and that he and son Tom Graham (born 1872) were still in the butchery business in 1908, with Alfred and Lydia’s son operating his butchery out of a different building in Beaconsfield. So, it’s more likely, that the butchery business got in his blood, and he and his Brown relatives stayed in the business – at least until 1917 when this receipt belonging to the Beaconsfield Museum was issued.
In what is fast becoming another theme, Peter was one of the first members of the Beaconsfield council.
George Edward Griffiths
When he was born in Launceston region in 1842 his father, George, wasn’t a butcher, so butchery may have come from that family. His father was a “dealer.” I assume it had a different meaning back then. Mind you, if his brother in law was sly-grogging, perhaps not 😉
George Edward was a grain merchant in 1864 when he married Lydia Freeman’s sister, Jane, which must be where he became involved in the butchery trade, possibly being the Griffiths that Lydia and Alfred were in partnership with in Lefroy 1877, and then gaining a butcher’s licence for himself in 1884..
Percy William Stonehouse
In July 1949 Percy Stonehouse opened a butchery in Wilmot, including deliveries to surrounding areas.
While a distant relative, he is still related. The original butcher, Alfred, had a brother called William, and Percy is one of William’s grandsons (William born c1837 married Catherine Connor Gatland. One of their sons was James William Kirkwood Stonehouse, who married Mary Ellen Cornelius, and Percy is their son.) As far as I can tell, neither Percy’s father, grandfather, nor any of his other direct relatives, were butchers.
Percy was born in Beaconsfield in 1897 where, although his own father wasn’t a butcher, he’d have known the name Stonehouse to be associated with butchers. Percy served in WWI, and married Caroline Grace Bishop in Spreyton in December 1920 (where his parents had been living since prior to the war, and where Percy applied for land through the Soldier Settlement Scheme on his return). Percy was a labourer in 1937, before being a farmer and butcher in by 1949 (and perhaps committing arson on his wife’s car in 1938…)
All photos of receipts are from the Beaconsfield Mine and Heritage Centre, accessed via ehive.com
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