Emma Maria Annear was married in 1890. Her grandfather, Joseph Bilson, had died when she was not quite three years old, yet the wedding announcement in the local newspapers, shows that Emma and her parents clearly lived in a world where their link to this man – who had arrived free – was important to them, almost half a century after the end of transportation.
Unlike her own extended family and West Tamar roots, Emma’s new husband, Henry had left his parents and siblings in Yorkshire and come to Australia alone. However his family connections were also strong. When their first child, Catherine Mary (Kate) was born on 22 November 1890, she was likely named after Henry’s little sister Catherine and his mother and sister, both Mary, back in Yorkshire.
When Kate was born, Henry was a miner, and the couple was living in Sidmouth. Perhaps with or near Emma’s parents. When their second child, George William, was born on 1 July 1892 Henry was trying his hand at farming – no doubt with much effort and contribution from Emma, however it seems that while they remained in Beaconsfield, Henry soon returned to mining.
After Kate, Emma and Henry had four sons, before their final child was, Pearl, was born in 1905. In total Emma and Henry had 6 children, in fifteen years, but also immense tragedy. Emma’s own mother, Sarah died in 1901, after an illness, leaving Emma to raise her children – including two week old Leonard – without their grandmother. In 1904 Henry lost his leg “in the mine” – possibly it was actually an accident at Beauty Point, when goods for the mine were being unloaded from a ship. While electoral roles continue to list him as a labourer, the loss of his leg would have greatly decreased his ability to work and earn and impacted the family’s life.* Then, in 1905, their third son, ten year old Joseph, drowned on Boxing Day, and three years later, two year old Pearl died.
Henry was an “energetic” in the church and Sunday school at Beaconsfield and Sidmouth, so likely both he and Emma had social lives that revolved around church events. When Joe drowned, Emma and Henry were described as in the Examiner as, “greatly respected.” With most of Emma’s seven siblings still in the West Tamar area where they had been raised, there would also have been plenty of family events.
The Annear siblings with their parents, c1890s. Emma is far right, back row.
Just as Emma’s children were reaching adulthood, the mine closed. The boomdays were over. And then the war began. Two of her three living sons – George and Len – enlisted (Percy wasn’t old enough). While both returned home alive, Emma still sacrificed a lot during those years of worry and fear, and she herself was awarded medals as a mother. Early in the war, the wife of Emma’s eldest son, George’s, and their young daughter, were living with George’s inlaws when the home caught fire – perhaps Eva and baby May moved in with George’s family to see out the war. Then, in the last days of the war, Emma also lost her father, William, who passed away in Emma’s sister Alice’s home.
After the war George and his wife and their two children, moved to Hobart. Percy and Len were even further away, moving to South Australia and NSW respectively. Of her four living children, only Kate – who had married a local boy, James Richard (Dick) Garrett – stayed in the local community.
Emma and Henry lived on Launceston Road, on land they owned, a few kilometres south of Beaconsfield, just where people start to say that they are west of Sidmouth. They were visited there by their children and grandchildren.
Emma and Henry at home with family, c1930s
Despite his disability, Henry continued to work when and how he could. With her background as a “Farmer’s daughter,” Emma would have continued to grow much of what they needed.
At Christmas 1939 Emma celebrated her and Henry’s fiftieth wedding anniversary.
The Second World War, saw Percy take his turn to serve, and Len enlisted for a second time. Also overseas were Emma’s grandsons, Harold (Tas) and Henry.
Less than a year after their 50th wedding anniversary, Emma died, age 72 in her home in Launceston Road. She was buried in Beaconsfield and was later joined there by Henry, who died in 1945.
In the years after the war, as her children grew older, they began to return to the West Tamar. The land where Emma and Henry had spent their life became home to their eldest two children, Kate and George, who lied out their own lives there, visited by their own children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
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*While Henry was certainly victim of an accident in 1904 that severely damaged his left leg, there is a chance that the amputation didn’t happen until years later.
My Grandma didn’t have any cousins on her mother’s side, but on her father’s side, her father was the youngest of 10 siblings and step siblings, and Grandma and her sister had around 33 cousins!
One of those cousins was Joy Gentle, the daughter of Grandma’s Uncle Albert.
Joy was born on 15 April 1914 in Broken Hill.
When Joy was about 6 the family moved briefly to northern Victoria, before settling in Sydney.
Joy likely received some level of further education, because as a young adult in the 1930s, she was able to live independently and support herself.
The 1936 and 37 electoral role has 22-23 year old Joy working as a stenographer and living in a flat on the northern shore of the harbour. Her wage would have been a “woman’s wage,” so it’s likely she shared the flat – if not the room – with a friend. It was still the depression and not yet the war – which was when women in the workforce and living independently from their family became much more common.
This is the block of flats across the road from Joy’s 1937home
I wonder if Joy was in touch with her younger cousins in Adelaide? During the war, Grandma, then in her late teens, moved to Sydney. Could that move have been inspired in part by stores of this cousin Joy?
Grandma was too young during he war to show on any Sydney electoral role, but the 1943 role shows Joy having moved, this time to a house in Darlinghurst at 86 Elizabeth Bay Rd. Today there’s no number 86, however there are a number of large houses along the street that would pre-date the war. Perhaps one was divided into flats and given the number 86? If street numbering has changed dramatically, then the are also blocks of flats on the other side of the street.
Or, perhaps this was a large family home?
The 1949 electoral role has Joy still at this same house, and still listed as a stenographer, but this time there’s another member of the household – Albert William Michael Lette, a naval officer – and Joy’s last name is now Lette.
Back in 1943, Mr Lette wasn’t listed in any electoral role. Perhaps he was at the war? Or, perhaps, he was trying to hide whether he was living with Joy or with his wife?
Albert was seven years older than Joy, and have previously been married. In 1943, with a twelve year old daughter, Albert and his wife Irene Amelia nee Davis divorced.
A year later Albert and Joy married.
I haven’t searched for any data, but it seems that divorce probably became more common and, as a result, slightly less scandalous in this period. Certainly, the Lette divorce only made it into the papers in regards to court lists; there are no articles giving blow by blow accounts of who did what to whom (no fault divorce wouldn’t be a thing until the 1970s).
Albert’s first wife, and Elaine’s mother, was born Irene Davis in Sydney in 1909. She was 34 when she divorced. Unlike Joy, always listed on electoral role as home duties. By 1954 she was married again, this time to Bryce Lang – another sea-focused, man – a ship’s joiner. The couple had no children together. Elaine was her only child.
It’s likely with the laws of the time, that Albert was awarded custody of his daughter, Elaine Mary, with little to no thought put into who Elaine would have preferred to live with. The teenager likely lived with him and her new step-mother, building some sort of relationship with Joy, who didn’t have any biological children with Albert. Albert had only enlisted in 1942, so he may have had a good relationship with Elaine. On the other hand, he remained in the navy until July 1949, so after his second marriage, he may have seen very little of his daughter.
In 1949, at the age of 19, Elaine Lette was no longer living with any of her parents. She was in Darwin – recently bombed in the war – where she married a young police officer, John Bryce Lambert, who had been posted 420km away to Mataranka.
In 1950 there would be just 80 police officers in the entire Territory, and in 1949 possibly John Lambert was the only on in Mataranka. Mataranka had only begun to become a place where white people went for anything other than to run pastoral stations (think, We of the Never-Never), in 1928, when the railway passed through. It became slightly more than a railway siding when WW2 bought an army hospital, ordinance workshop and munitions depot. By the time the Lamberts arrived in May 1949, there was a hotel and the beginnings of a tourist trade centred on the hot springs.
The nineteen year old Elaine, and her 21 year old husband, barely had time to have a honeymoon period in their new home.
Just six weeks into their marriage, and only two weeks after arriving in Mataranka, Elaine was shot and killed in her home.
None of her family would have been able to attend the funeral, although John was given two weeks leave to travel to Sydney to meet with his family and his in-laws. An in memoriam notice in a Sydney paper described Elaine as the “dear step-daughter of Joy.”
The death was investigated by police and it was found that she had been “looking” at her husband’s gun when it went off.
Now, I told this story to my sister, and from a 2023 perspective we were much more skeptical than this official story.
We were both surprised to see that John wasn’t a much older man. He was, however, a man in a position of authority in an extremely remote area where Elaine would have been incredibly isolated.
Who knows. Perhaps Elaine was keen for adventure and in love and couldn’t wait for her life in the savannah and hot springs of the Northern Territory and it was an honest accident – I did find a report of an almost identical incident in Melbourne during WW1.
Perhaps nothing had gone the way she expected and she took her own life.
For his part, John Lambert soon moved on. He became police officer in Alice Springs in August 1949, and later in South Australia, where he was imprisoned for masterminding a robbery. After his release he married again. Ancestry trees seem to be unaware that he ever had a first wife at all. Interestingly, John’s parents were well-known theatre people and communists and pacifists, with an ASIO file http://newtheatrehistory.org.au/wiki/index.php/Person_-_John_Lambert (note that in this article/wiki, NT refers to New Theatre, not Northern Territory)
Joy Lette nee Gentle died in 1992 and Elaine’s biological mother, Irene, in 1995.
Alfred Peace Kerrison (centre), with his brothers, c1920, from Ancestry
I read an article on line that interested me – it was about babies in the UK during WW1 who were named after battles and other names associated with the war.
I started with the names discussed in the UK study to see if the war influenced children’s names here as well, and to draw some comparisons.
There are some key difference between the UK study and the Tasmanian names database. One is, that I can see both first and middle names, whereas often middle names weren’t visible to the original researcher, so, where as the UK study found 901 babies named Verdun from a population of 43 million (1911 census), and I found 67 instances of the name from a population of 200,000, this isn’t to say the concept of “Battle Babies” was more popular in Tasmanian than the UK as my numbers include middle names. Because the original Tasmanian documents aren’t available on line for the war years, I’m also at the mercy of the skills and whims of the transcriber. For instance, there seems to be a lot of babies named Lourain during the war, and I think that these were meant to be written Louvain (a battle), but the transcriber hasn’t been familiar with the name and instead transcribed it as something more recognisable to them as a name. The UK study didn’t look at gender, but that information is also available in Tasmania.
The sorts of names used are very similar between the UK and Tasmania. In both places, the name Verdun was most popular. Verdun was the longest battle of the war, and, at the time, one of the best known. I first came across the name Verdun in an episode of the UK Who Do You Think You Are with Jodie Whittaker. Jodie’s grandmother was named Verdun and the family story was that it was because her brother had been killed there. However, it turns out that the battle was one fought by the French not the English or allies, and that in fact Verdun was just “a trendy name.” https://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/tutorials/tv-series/jodie-whittaker-who-do-you-think-you-are/
However, some names that were common in the UK study barely raised a mention here – there were just one baby named Ypres in Tasmania.
Other names were far and wide more popular in Tasmania. There were 11 babies named Haig in the UK, while Tasmania had 15 babies named Douglas Haig! And the name Belgium was used 12 times, plus variations (ie Belgiana), whereas as the UK study recorded none (although there’s no way of knowing which names they searched for).
There were also names that were uniquely Australian, the most obvious being Anzac. 33 Tasmanian babies were named Anzac between 1915 and 1920. However, battles that were major Australian battles don’t feature any more prominently than in the UK study. I found only 2 babies named Gallipoli. And Mena, the camp where the Australians trained in Egypt, inspired just two sets of parents (Mena Vicary, a sister of Betty Ypres Vicary whose grave is shown above, wasn’t christened Mena, it was just a nickname that stuck), although there were another two Menas born well before the war, so the name may have been chosen independently of its wartime connotations.
The use of war names, seem to have been more widely used for male babies than girls, however it may be that for girls the names are ‘feminised’ and therefore not showing up in my searching, ie I found babies named Dardenella, Belgiana and Anza. Many girls called Frances may have been in order to honour the site of many battle fields. Of the seven babies named Victory, only 1 was a girl, however there may have been many baby Victorias, named for the same reason but who are not as obvious in the records. Similarly, babies called Irene may have been named after the Goddess of Peace. Of course, patriotic names for boys, such as George for the King, are also hidden. Most war names were used for both girls and boys. In other cases names choices are clearly gendered, girls were named after female war heroes (6 girls were named Cavell, presumably after the British nurse, Edith Cavell, including 3 who received the first name Edith), whereas only one boy got Cavell, and there are no girls with any variation on Haig.
Where did people get the idea? There were rarely more than one “battle baby” name in each nuclear family, but often seemed to run in families, ie cousins, or in communities, for instance it seems (I don’t have the data to prove it) that Campbell Town was a hotspot for war names.
The original article claims, “mothers might name their child for the battle which had claimed their father.” It’s time consuming to chase up what fathers were up to, and there are certainly examples where fathers were away at war, or older brothers. However, due to the times and distances, even in these cases it’s almost impossible for a Tasmanian born child to be named after a battle that took their father.
Raymond Anzac Horsham (at centre, youngest child) and family – including his father who did not serve and brothers who were not old enough to serve without parental permission, Zeehan c1917, from Ancestry
If babies were named to honour particular serviceman, it’s more likely an older brother or uncle. From my research, it seems that very few of these babies with war names had fathers who served at all. I think it’s much more likely that these sorts of names were chosen by families who did not have a serving member, in order to demonstrate patriotism and commitment. In one Queensland example (I know, not Tasmanian!) two parents with vary German names themselves, named their baby daughter Anzac Isobel (Wagner), perhaps as an overtly patriotic gesture to show without doubt where their sympathies lay in the conflict.
Also, was a war name honouring a fallen family member a memory a family would really want? A reminder of death rather than of life? In the Aherne family in Launceston in 1918, a baby was named after the battle of Mouquet. After the war, when her younger sister was born, the completely opposite style name was chosen, and she was named Joy.
War names appeared in Tasmania right through into the 1920s (when records are no longer available), and likely longer – my own grandfather was born in 1925 and his middle name is possible an homage to his uncle lost in 1916. In Tasmania, the use of war inspired names peaked in 1916, the same as the UK. War names did drop off in popularity markedly after the war, and the types of names changed to ones that were more generally patriotic, rather than as closely linked to individual events, for instance only one Verdun was born in the 1920s, and no Belgiums, whereas there were four Anzacs and variations. In Tasmanian, just two babies were named Armistice, and neither of these was born within a month of 11 November 1919! Seven babies were named Victory, and all of them were born prior to the armistice.
One thing that was clear between the UK and Tasmania, was that the infant death rate was markedly better in Tasmania. The UK study found a death rate of 14% amongst “battle babies.” Looking just at the 67 Tasmanian babies named Verdun, only 4 died during the period 1914-1920, giving a death rate of closer to 6%.
Launceston born Lorrimer (Lorrie) Anzac von Steiglitz, far left, serving during WW2, Ancestry. Despite having other siblings born during the war, Lorrie was the only one with a war related name.
Of course my exploration, soon led to me looking at names within my own family. I didn’t find any in my direct family, however going a bit sideways, here some examples:
Emmaline ANZAC Kerrison
Emmaline Anzac was born in Beaconsfield on 15 December 1915. Her father was William Ernest Kerrison and her mother Emmeline nee Best.
With the baby and her mother sharing the same first name, Emmeline Anzac was known as Anzac, throughout her childhood and youth. A fair number of ‘battle babies’ dropped their more outlandish names during their lifetime, and indeed while Anzac Kerrison held onto Anzac as a middle name, she may have either everted to using Emmaline or to shorting Anzac to Annie, once she was an adult.
Anzac was the youngest of eleven children. None of her siblings have any names that are obviously political or patriotic. Her father didn’t serve in the war, and Anzac herself was already two years old when her eldest brothers, Gordon and Ernest, enlisted.
Gordon Kerrison, left, and Ernest Kerrison, right, who left behind a bay sister called Anzac when they enlisted in 1918
Interestingly, Gordon’s military records show that he followed up with the Department to find out about the death of another soldier, Thomas Page who had been killed. Thomas had been born and raised in Beaconsfield and was likely a friend of Gordon’s. His mother had died prior the war and his father died while he was overseas, which didn’t mean that there was no one left to be effected by his death and to mourn him.
Anzac spent her life in Beaconsfield. As a child in the interwar years, she was heavily involved in the community, and often put forward to hand over bouquets and take part in weddings. I wonder if this was to do with her personal qualities, or if a community in mourning saw a child called Anzac as a symbol of something about war and peace and hope that they wanted to project.
Photo from findagrave.com
Working out how Anzac is related to be is an interesting exercise! The Kerrisons and my Stonehouses, came together when two sisters of my GGG Grandfather Alfred Stonehouse married into the Kerrison family.
However! Anzac’s husband was John ‘Jack’ Bilson. Jack’s GGG grand parents were Joseph and Mary Bilson, who happened to be my GGGG grandparents, making Jack and I cousins of a sort.
Alfred PEACE Kerrison
Alfred Peace Kerrison was one of three brothers born in Beaconsfield in the early 20th century. He was a first cousin of Anzac Kerrison (their fathers were brothers).
His eldest brother’s name was Horace, which may also have been to signal some sort of meaning about patriotism.
After the war two sisters were born, but neither had war related names.
Alfred was born prior to peace being declared, so his name was likely about hope and desire. He had several uncles and cousins old enough to serve – including his cousins Gordon and Ernest, brothers to Anzac – so would have had family links to the war and likely deep desire for the war to end.
When Alfred Peace was 21 there was another world war, and he enlisted. Is there any more tragic than a baby named Peace during a ‘War to End All Wars,” having to go and fight in yet another war?
In the 1990s, when Alfred was in his seventies, he seems to have spent a lot of time thinking about his war service, and contacting the Department to get clarification on where he served and to follow up on memorabilia and medals.
Like his cousin, Alfred held onto his war middle name, using it throughout his life. One Ancestry tree suggests that to those he was close to, he was known by another name suggestive of a broader identity and meaning, Tas.
Una ANZAC Vinen
Una Anzac Vinen, and I share William Annear and Sarah Dinah nee Bilson as direct ancestors.
Una was born in October 1918, in Sidmouth, to Claude Vinon and Emmeline nee Davis.
Ancestry trees suggested that she had an younger brother called Neon. Neon? Why yes, that really was his name – it appears on electoral and his obituary. Neon’s middle names was the family name, Bilson, so Una was born into a family where names were carefully chosen to have deeper meaning.
As an adult Una was known as Ann however, I can’t find much else about her.
Barbara BELGIUM PEACE Triffett
Belgium was another name not mentioned in the UK study, but which I found 14 occurrences of – including Belgian and Belgiana and some uses of it as a first name.
Barbara Belgium Peace Triffett was born in November 1918 in Queenstown (or Gormanston). According to Ancestry trees she was the youngest of 10 children born to Barbara nee Krivan and Hugh Derwent Triffett. While other children in the family have “Family” names, and Barbara herself kept the name Barabra in the family when she chose a middle name for one of her own daughters, no one else seems to have been given a name relating to the political times.
Barbara doesn’t seem to have held onto or used her war names during her life: on all official documents I can find, she’s known simply as Barbara.
Electoral role showing Barbara Fisher nee Triffett with no middle names
As an adult, Barbara entered my family, when she married Norman Wilfred Fisher, whose mother was a Bilson.
When Max Gray died in 1962, his friends remembered him as an adventurer, a strong fit man proud of what his body could do, and a man who loved the earth.
Max had been born Maxwell Arthur Gentle in Broken Hill, in 1911. His mother was Maud May Gentle nee Bollen and the father on his birth certificate was Arthur James Gentle. Through Arthur, Max was my Grandma’s cousin, as she and Max shared a set of Gentle grandparents.
Max was the second child of Maud and Arthur, who, in total had five children in ten years. In Broken Hill the young Max was surrounded not only by his immediate family, but by aunts, uncles and grandparents on both sides.
In that era around WW1, boys were raised in a highly militaristic society. Health and strength were prized, with these qualities also linked to the “new” nation of Australia and discussions around what this new country and its inhabitants could and should be. One of Max’s enduring childhood memories from the mining town of his youth was of his admiration for the men he saw around him.
Max, left, age 19 months, Maud and Bruce, posing patriotically with a British flag, c December 1912, from Ancestry
A second memory that stuck, was that of finding a seed, taking it home and planting it, only to be completely awed by the way it grew into a magnificent pumpkin vine.
For his family, a memory of the young Max was when he one day wandered off, hoping to go exploring or to have an adventure, and instead brought back what must have been terrifying memories for his mother, whose own father had died in 1896 after being missing for several months in the “outback’ areas around the town.
Max completed most of his schooling at Broken Hill North School. He also took piano lessons and performed. His father was heavily involved in sport, and in alter years there are records of the children’s involvement in church, so it’s likely that young Max’s life also included these things. However, about the time that Max entered his teens the Gentle family moved to Mildura and then Sydney.
In Sydney in the 1920s the Gentle children seem to have been encouraged to take on further education. Their father, Arthur, had left school to being work at age 10. Max completed his Intermediate Certificate and then learnt bricklaying at a Junior Technical School. At some point he undertook compulsory military service, which would have been a part time commitment. https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/encyclopedia/conscription/universal_service
These years also brought him more ability to plan and undertake adventures. As a teen he walked 43 miles (69km!) across Sydney in a single day, presumably just for the sake of it! Possibly, at the time, it was actually a walk across unurbanised areas, to what then was more of a separate settlement considered very much the fringes of Sydney society.
“Max’s first walking achievement of any note occurred when – a thirteen-year old schoolboy – he walked from Hurstville to Liverpool and back, via Sutherland – a distance of 43 miles – in a day. As training for this big event he had previously covered 33 or 34 miles from Hurstville to Kurnell and back. Those were the simple days when there was nothing to be carried but a packet of lunch in the hand, and shorts were worn for the very good reason that he had not yet graduated into long’uns.”
He soon graduated to catching the train up into the Blue Mountains and going walking for days at a time.
In 1929, on the train to the Blue Mountains, Max ran into another young man on his way to go walking. This man was Gordon Smith. Every biography of Gordon talks about wo good looking he was – tall, muscly, blonde – he was the epitome of Australian manhood for the era, and perhaps even since. He and Max quickly decided that they would prefer to walk together and set off on the first of many bushwalks they’d do.
Gordon Smith came to know Max as a walker, who didn’t like to rest, who was modest, and rarely initiated conversation, but was always happy to reply if someone else began. He carried as little as possible, and what he did have was carried in two jute bags, tied at the neck and slung over one shoulder.
At the end of the trip, Max left Gordon at the railway station and retreated back into the bush to continue his exploring.
In 1927 the Sydney Bushwalking Club (SBWC) had been formed and Gordon introduced Max to the Club, which he would remain a member of for the rest of his life.
Despite his reputation for enjoying walking on his own, Max also happily took part in and led club walks, where he was described “as a ruddy-cheeked youth whose only topic of conversation was his description of solo walks.” https://history.sbw.org.au/wiki/194810?s[]=gentle
In the reports he wrote for the SBWC it’s clear that for Max the thrill wasn’t solely about the physical feats, but that he did get great joy out of being the bush.
In the early 1930s Max rode his bike to Queensland, where he spent four years working, but still also finding time to climb and explore.
He was back in Sydney by 1936, where he continued his associated with the Blue Mountains and the bushwalking club.
He still preferred to walk alone, and at times drew some ire form other club members who thought his light and fast approach was both bordering on dangerous, as well as not really leaving time for any enjoyment of the area.
However, he found likeminded walkers, and “The Tigers” were formed. This was a group of Sydney BWC members who, like Max, liked to travel light and fast and do trips that were about daring and records and exploration with their focus increasingly becoming doing trips in as little time as possible. The Tigers went into areas that had no maps – and the information they gathered was often what was used by Myles Dunphy when he came to make his iconic maps of the area.
When WW2 began, Max was in his thirties and living with his parents and younger sisters Marion and Joy. Constance was living out of home as a nurse, and Joy also lived out of home while working. Bruce was a teacher and had been moving around in regional NSW for work, before resigning to take up farming, north of Sydney, in the late 1930s.
Tragically, Max’s mother, Maud, died in late 1940. As the war in Pacific escalated, Max, like so many other fit young men, enlisted. It seems that at first, the Army were uncertain about taking him, with a hernia and perhaps working in a trade that was required, however by July 1943 he was in Milne Bay, serving for a total of 919 days including 392 overseas.
Max c1942-3, Army Records, National Archives Australia
Sometime around this time Max began to call himself Max Gray in most situations. On his military attestation papers he lists Marion as his next of kin, and calls her his step-sister. Therefore, I think that something to do with his mother’s death, he either became aware, or became more able to talk about, not being the biological child of Arthur Gentle. This mustn’t have caused in huge rift between the men though, as they continued to live together even after the war.
As to who his biological father is… he seemed to use the name Gray with confidence. It wasn’t his mother’s maiden name, so I assume it was chosen because he knew who his biological father was and that his name was Gray. There were plenty of Grays in Broken Hill in 1910, but no one who – more than 100 years later – is an obvious candidate with the information publicly available.
Tragically, the end of the war brought the news that Gordon Smith had died in Borneo.
Everything I’ve read about these two men talks about how close they were, how much they admired one another. Each one preferred to walk in another way (Gordon in a crowd, Max alone) unless they were able to go as a pair.
Over summer 1947-48 Max rode his bicycle from Sydney to Adelaide and back. Echoing the way he’d bushwalked, he took minimal belongings, eating in towns along the way.
Despite the possibility of some sort of falling out with the Gentles over discussions about his parentage and name, Max remained living in Wright St with Arthur during the 1940s, and only seems to have moved out live alone sometime in the 50s.
Max died in his own home in July 1962, possible from heart failure “brought on by the flu” (Meredith, p101). He was just 51. His name lives on in features in the Blue Mountains, still being explored by bushwalkers today.
I am perhaps not biologically related to Max Gentle, but I none the less see myself in his desire to go walking on his own, and in his fear of heights! I’m much more likely to plan for disaster than he was, however I’ll still chose lightweight over luxury anytime I’m packing.
I assume the Grandma knew Max. He seems to have had no issue with the Gentle side of the family, even if he perhaps wasn’t genetically one of them (his epic bike ride took hm to Walter/Bob and to Melbourne which I presume meant Frank), so there’s no reason that Grandma, while living in Sydney during the war, didn’t come across him and perhaps even go walking with him, and similarly, once he had family so close to Cradle, perhaps he came down to visit?
So, why do other people have books written about them and Max Gentle always seems to be just another name in the list, not the star? Because he died young, but not heroically, tragically young like Gordon Smith? Because he died before the Club’s strong links with modern conservation? Because of some sort of class thing – being very much a blue collar worker compared with the others in the Club? Because none of us “descendants” of him have got it together to keep his memory alive?
For the role of the SBWC in conservation history – and where I first saw Max’s name – I read the book Myles and Milo by Peter Meredith. (I think I may had read this at uni as well, but clearly didn’t take in the names in the same way!)
The NSW Mitchel Library have some information about Max, which I think might be part of the Dunphy Collection, so I assume it’s what’s been used to write the bits about Max in M&M.
The M&M book has references to two Gentles who were part of the story of Blue Mountains conservation. The other one was the Minister for Forestry (?) in the 1980s… not a hero of the story. Ultimately, it might tell us more about the nature of inheritance and history and family if he was also a relative, however assuming people’s Ancestry trees are correct (and that’s big assumption, I know!), then no, Wal Gentle, was from a family line that was unconnected to “my” Gentles.
*Trove brings up several newspaper references to a teenage Max Gray who, with a friend, undertook an epic voyage down a river in the 1920s. While it sounds completely like something this Max would have liked to have been part of, I’m 99% sure it’s a different person – the age doesn’t match up, it’s a very early use of the name Gray and there are no other records of the family being in that area at that time.
*The SBWC magazine has multiple references to another Gentle – Jack. I haven’t been able to find out anything much about how he might fit into the family.
Anyone who ever visited a Tasmanian National Park and was glad it was there, but was even more glad that there were toilets there, and signs, and a guide book that allowed them to find the place, has benefited from the passions of Evelyn Temple Emmett. Here’s his Wikipedia entry, and some other biographies:
I was vaguely aware that there was some family link between him and me.
When I say “vague,” I do really mean it. So, for some self-indulgence, here’s my link to ET Emmett.
My Great Great Grandmother Jane Stonehouse (who was the daughter of the butcher), had a younger sister, Rosella Maude (known as Rose or Ella).
When Rosella was in her twenties she was living with her mother and step-father, in Supply River/Exeter.
Somehow, Rosella met a man, sixteen years her senior, called Leslie Jackson Emmett, who was working as a miner in Beaconsfield, and who happened to be not just the man Rosella would marry, but a brother of ET Emmett. According to Ancestry, this makes ET my “brother-in-law of 2nd great-grandaunt.” Or, the other way over, I am the great great niece in law of ET Emmett.
The two were married in 1898 when Rosella was 21 and Leslie 37. They were married in the house of Rosella’s stepfather, Peter Brown, at Supply River, with ET Emmett as one of their witnesses.
The couple stayed in the Beaconsfield area, where they had three sons in quick succession (Eric Buckley, Reginald Freeman and Stanley Gordon). I’m not sure what Leslie was doing for work during that time – potentially he remained working in the mine.
By 1914 the electoral roll has the family having made a big move. They were in Moonah (a larger area than where the name applies to today), where Leslie was an insurance agent and Rosella was at home raising their sons, the eldest of whom would have been 16. Three years later, in 1917, at the age of 40, Rosella gave birth to their fourth son, Alfred Raymond Ernest (known as Ray), thirteen years after her last. (They may have moved long before 1914, as in 1910 Leslie Emmett was fined for allowing goats to wander on the road in Moonah.)
The Emmett boys went to school, and did very well – winning prizes and going on to secondary education.
What drew the Emmetts to Hobart? Leaving Beaconsfield for Launceston seems to be as far afield as most of Rosella’s family had ever been. However, the Emmetts had been in the city for a while. ET was appointed head of the newly formed Tasmanian Government Tourism Bureau in 1914, moving from Lindisfarne on the Eastern short to New Town, and at least one other Emmett sibling was in Hobart for the 1914 electoral role (Laura).
When war began, Rosella and Leslie were in Lampton Ave. In his fifties, Leslie was too old serve. The eldest of their sons, Eric – who was working as a labourer in Beaconsfield at the time – enlisted at age 19, but was found medically unfit.
The 1920s was when ET really got involved in all the things he is now remembered for: he was the director of the Government Tourist Bureau, he joined the board of the Scenery Preservation Board, he formed the Hobart Walking Club, brought skiing to Mt Field and assisted Weindorfer in the protection Cradle Mountain. I wonder how involved Rosella and Leslie and their children were in this outdoor life of their brother and uncle?
The 1920s were a period of change for Rosella, Leslie and their sons. The 1922 electoral role puts Rosella, Leslie and son Reginald on a farm at Forcett. Leslie was farming and Reg working as a clerk. Stan and Alfred may have been there, too, but too young to be shown on the role. Even though he was living and working in Kingborough, eldest son, Eric, was clearly spending time in the Forcett area, as in July 1922 he married local, Edith Caroline Newitt (whose mother was Cissy Long from Woodvine https://wildcaretas.org.au/branches/wildcare-friends-of-woodvine/ ) in his maternal grandparents’ house in the Glebe. In 1924 Stan, at the age of 21, married Alice Myra Langford, who does appear to have sort of South Australian connection, so may also be an extremely distant relative of mine!
The property at Forcett is now 395 Gillingbrook Rd. it was burnt right through in the 2013 Dunally fire, so it’s unlikely that the house that’s there now is anything to do with the Emmetts.
The move to Forcett didn’t last long for any of the family.
The property, which seems to have been in the names of Eric and Reg, was sold when the mortgage wasn’t paid in 1925.
In 1928 electoral roles put Rosella, Leslie and Reg (most likely eleven year old Alfred) back in New Town/Moonah. Leslie was a travelling insurance salesman. Stan and Alice were also in the area.
The next twenty years saw the Emmetts – including ET and his wife Sophie – all remaining in the Moonah/New Town area. All four of Rosella and Leslie’s sons married and raised their own children in the Hobart area.
Stan moved around a lot at first – including living for a time in Lennox Ave – but then settled in Moonah, where he and brother, Eric worked together as tinsmiths, while Eric had a hawkers licence until the late 1930s. Ray and Reg worked as Clerks. Reg remained living with his parents until he married in 1938 – when he moved in next door!
When the second World War came around sons Eric, Stan and Ray enlisted. At least one grandson also served, but records are not yet digitised.
Eric (left) and Stan, WW2
Rosella’s husband, Leslie Emmett, died in 1941.
In 1943 Rosella was living in the house where she’d lived with Leslie. Also in the house in 1943 was Rosella youngest son Alfred Raymond – and also her great niece, May and May’s husband Bob and their first child. May was my great aunt, and Rosella was her great aunt. Rosella didn’t need the company or the help. One of her sons was next door with his wife, and two others were not far away in Moonah, while ET himself was just up in Burnside Ave. So I’m assuming it was more of a family-helping-out-family scenario in an era when housing was in short supply. May’s husband, Bob, worked for the railways and wasn’t at war as he would have been considered an essential worker. At some point ET Emmett was head of Tasmanian Railways, so another connection?
In 1944 Eric and Edith divorced. He soon remarried and seemed to be very happy, however his business had some trouble in early in the 1950s.
By 1949 May and Bob had moved out of Rosella’s house and were in Hopkins St – where most of the rest of the Emmetts seemed to have settled!
In 1955 Rosella died, at some point May and Bob moved to Springfield Ave, and in 1970 ET Emmett died.
Ten years later, I was born, and here I am, sitting in a National Park.
* In her will Cissie Gangell nee Long mentions Peter Murrell, but I don’t think that she was intimately involved with two great names of Tasmanian National Parks – there seems to be another Peter Murrell who came to Tasmania after the war, having been sponsored by a Mrs Young in Forcett, as he was to marry her daughter on his arrival.
* Street names: 1939 Alberton Rd became Butler Ave – house numbers stayed the same. Prior to October 1939, O’Grady St in Lutana was known as Haig St Moonah. So, I did wonder if they were actually all living in Lutana, not New Town? However, they are in 6 Haig St from the 1928 electoral role and still there in the 1950s (when a subdivision map shows them in Lenah Valley), so it seems that they were in the same Haig St the whole time, just with the suburb name changing – or a massive coincidence that they moved from one Haig St to anther!
*I have a lot of memories of my Auntie May and Uncle Bobby. They had a glorious garden with topiary animals and a space between the hedge and the back fence. When we went to visit, Uncle Bobby would leave to play golf. We’d play in the garden and come inside for biscuits that were sweet but also tasted of cheese. They had the biggest tv I’d ever seen, but much to my disappointment, I never got to watch it. When they moved to Berridale, there was a protea in the front yard, which had huge fluffy flowers that were as alluring, and just as forbidden, as the giant tv had been! I have no idea at all if they were ever walkers or skiers or picnickers in National Parks, or had any idea that one day the husband of the woman they’d lived with as newlyweds, would be someone their great niece would learn about at school.
Among the photos I recently got from a distant relative, was one of a little curly haired boy in a fantastic outfit.
That boy was Percy Harold Cotterill, one of my Grandpa’s paternal uncles.
Percy was born in Beaconsfield in February 1903, to Emma nee Annear and Henry Cotterill. He had an older sister and three older brothers, but he was 5 ½ years younger than his nearest elder sibling. When he was 2 ½, the youngest of the family was born, another daughter, Pearl Winifred. Four months later, 10 year old Joseph (Joe) was drowned on Boxing Day while swimming from a friend’s boat in the Tamar, and at age 5 Percy was again the youngest in the family, when his sister Pearl died.
As a child he lived in Sidmouth, a farming community on the river’s edge, near Beaconsfield. In mid 1913 he came first in the “Exercise Book” portion of an exhibition organised by the Methodist Church at Alicia Hall.
When war arrived, Percy was 12, and unlike his brothers, too young to volunteer. His only sister, Kate, had married in 1913, so he would have been the only child at home for much of the war.
In 1922, when he was 19, his eldest brother, George had a son, and George and his wife named that baby Harold, which was Percy’s middle name.
Sometime in the 1920s he went to South Australia, where, in November 1927, he became engaged to local, Josephine Jean Whitcombe (from Mile End, about 2km west of Adelaide city centre). The engagement was in multiple Adelaide papers that month. It was a rushed wedding, though, as the South Australian BDM lists their marriage as also occurring during 1927.
In October 1928 their first daughter, Zelma Dawn, was born in Hindmarsh, in Adelaide, followed by Josephine Ann (or Emma) Patricia (also known as Pat) in 1931 and Shirley Mary Teresa (Teresa Mary) in 1933 (names in their birth notices are different from those they were known by later in life).
Sometime prior to 1931 the family moved to the small town of Scotts Creek, in the Adelaide Hills, south of the city. Percy worked there as a Chairmaker (not the first one my family has had in its story… is Percy descended from Jane Duff? No.) Josephine looked after the home and continued to travel to the suburbs of Adelaide near her parents to give birth.
The girls attended school in Scotts Creek, where one week in 1938, Patty Cotterill was the top girl in the grade two class.
In March 1940 everything changed for the family when Percy enlisted for the war and was sent overseas.
The family stayed in Scotts Creek a little longer without him – in June 1940, “Little Tess Cotterill” extinguished the candles on the cake at a community event.
In 1941 and 1943 Percy was still on the electoral role for Scotts Creek, but Josephine had moved to 9 Way St Kilburn in Adelaide. This isn’t the same house as her parents, so I assume it was just her and the girls, living off Percy’s war wage.
From 1942 onwards the girls begin to appear in the newspaper as students of Catholic schools in the city, with Teresa and Patricia winning prizes and passing exams for academic work and music.
After the war Percy returned to Beaconsfield. He may have been briefly in Adelaide, where his daughters were now aged between 12 and 17, as when his father died in February 1945, Percy was recorded as being in Adelaide, but, in 1947 he was in Beaconsfield when he was admitted to the Launceston General Hospital after having been hit by a ute, and he remained on the electoral role on the West Tamar for the rest of his life and a fixture in the lives of his extended family there.
Josephine Snr may have come with him to Tasmania, either full time or part time, but it’s unlikely, as the girls seemed to still be Adelaide-based. In 1946, 15 year old Josie wore an outfit that caught the eye of a reporter, while in 1948, 15 year old Teresa was photographed for the paper as a debutante. (The paper printed the pictures twice, with the names swapped the second time. Teresa Cotterill and Patricia Poling would have been at school together, and both studied music, so quite possibly were friends. Looking at other photos of Patricia, I can’t tell which way is the correct way around, but I’m leaning towards it being correct in the second version – in November).
Through the 1950s, Percy’s West Tamar address for the electoral role remained in Main Rd Beaconsfield, but in reality he seems to have been living in Beauty Point at least during the 1950s. In September 1950 Tessie Cotterill and Edith Quinn of Adelaide were guests of Mr P Cotterill in Beauty Point, and later in 1951 Patricia (“Mrs Harris” by then) moved to Beauty Point to live with her father. As the girls became engaged and married, the newspaper notices seem to alternate between saying the girls’ parents were in Beauty Point or Adelaide. Zelma and Patricia married South Australians, and Teresa married a man from Beaconsfield. All three weddings were in a Catholic Church in Adelaide.
Percy was a cabinet maker (in June 1949 he had made a table for the hallway of the Beauty Point Hospital). Mum remembers him living on the main road in Beauty Point, in a house between the apple sheds and the wharf (as this road is a continuation of Beaconsfield Main Road – and also known as Flinders Rd, which is where he owned house when he died – it’s likely the same house the whole time he was in the area, just with different street names), and I remember my aunt talking about the beauty and craftmanship of a cabinet in her house and either saying that it reminded her of something made by Percy, or that it was made by him.
However, at the age of 67, in 1970, Percy was living in inner Adelaide when he died, and he was buried in South Australia. His name is memorialised on the Scotts Creek Honour Roll.
There are a number of discrepancies and mysteries in his life as recorded on-line. Percy vs Percival? He was buried as Percival, but at a time in life when he would have answered for himself, he was Percy. His engagement notice gives his middle name as James, however also stuffs up the spelling of Cotterill (Teresa’s birth notice gets it wrong too). Similarly, there’s potentially a mystery over his birth date, too, but I think that might be digitisation error in his war records, because he’s obviously older than Pearl in the photo I have, so I’m confident that he’s not born in 1906. As for Josephine Jean Whitcombe, I can’t find record of her being born anywhere in the country! Her parents’ lived in Mile End, but their initials aren’t mentioned anywhere so I can’t sort of trace her back to them.
With those gloves, this looks like Madonna trying out a new look sometime in the 1980s, but really it’s my Grandma, aged 21, dressed for the Burnie RSL Ball, 31 July 1947. She and my Grandpa were probably yet to meet.
The 1947 RSL Ball was held in the Burnie Theatre, with supper in the adjoining Town Hall. Burnie had a number of theatres at the time. The Burnie Theatre had been reconstructed in 1931 to be a 1500 seat venue, which could have the seats removed for balls, and was considered the most modern venue in the state, with a striking art deco facade. It was in Mount St, near the corner of Cattley St. On Cattley St was the old Burnie Town Hall, which was where the ball’s supper was held – plus a ceremony where young women (each accompanied by a young man) were “debs” and presented to society. (The Town Hall and theatre were both subsumed into the Fitzgerald Department Store in the 1980s.)
This map from a 1961 guidebook shows the theatre at Number 9, and the Town Hall at 10. Photo in bottom right shows the corner most how it would have looked in 1947, with the tower on the town hall. https://www.theadvocate.com.au/story/4013351/framed-with-history/
An undated facebook photo of the Town Hall set up for a dinner event
My Grandma, her older sister and her sister’s husband moved to Burnie after the war. During the war (1942) Grandma had trained and worked in Sydney, while R and M had lived in Adelaide, where M was exempt from war service due to his role with the railways.
M had applied to work for the paper mill when they were expanding during the war (he found his work in Adelaide to be boring once his apprenticeship was over) but they hadn’t been to take him due to war time controls over “man power.” However, as soon as he was able to leave SA he did, beginning work in Burnie in January 1946. He and R already had friends in the town, but accommodation was tight in Burnie at the time.
Burnie had the opposite problem of much of the rest of the country;it was struggling to find enough people to do all the jobs the town required. The rapid rise in population meant that the post-war housing shortage was extremely acute in Burnie. The young coupleinitially stayed at a boarding house – provided by the company. But this was just for two days…ie only one night! The next few months they lived a variety of places, and were not always able to be living ohether. It was so hard to find a flat via the usual means, that M and resorted to putting ads in the paper, and eventually to going door to door asking people if they had a room. Finally they found a found a flat – a house with shared bathroom and kitchen – at 163 Mount Rd.
Shirley likely followed her sister and brother in law to Burnie, also arriving during 1946. Despite being by now a qualified tailor, with the war over and the return of tens of thousands of men, she was also likely also struggling to secure work and housing in Sydney. The Mill would have offered employment for a young single woman and possibly she was able to stay with her sister at least for a while to overcome the housing issue.
Grandma, on left, at her “first Christmas in Tassy” 1946 (From right is Charlie and Ida, and is that R next to Shirley?) at 163 Mount Road, Upper Burnie. Family photo.
Christmas 1946 was spent by the two sisters, R’s husband and also the sisters’ parents who came from Adelaide for an extended stay, at the flat in Mount Rd.
Charlie and Ida stayed in the state for over four months. During that time R and M moved into a new flat on Marine Terrace, near the Mill, and their first child was born.
Grandma remained in Burnie when her parents returned to Adelaide, perhaps staying with her sister or moving into a boarding house. During 1947 she attended balls, and assisted the Red Cross. At the end of 1947 she flew back to Adelaide for a holiday, accompanied by two friends. Something must have called her back to Adelaide, as soon after returning to Burnie she set sail for South Australia to live.
After a year “at home,” Grandma again came to Burnie, this time for a Christmas visit, but ended up staying! This time she lived in a boarding house at 8 High Street. She shows on the electoral role in High St in 1949, and was there until she left Burnie the following year. In 1948 a J Peart was living there when he put an ad in the paper to sell his car, he may have been there before Grandma and her friends, or he may have been one of those friends.
Grandma found work in the paper factory. The 1949 electoral role shows her as a paper sorter. A glamorous sort of job, with those women known for their outfits and their good looks. I can just imagine Grandma sewing and planning her outfits – and probably for her friends, too! The sisters she travelled to Adelaide with late 1974 both regularly appeared in the newspaper with reference to their outfits. Another of Shirley’s friends was Nancy Marsden. Nancy was one of three sisters, who lived with their parents at 64 Marine Terrace. Nancy and Shirley may have met at work, or socially, or because the Marsden home was near to the one where R and M moved in early 1947. Like Shirley and the Harwoods, Nancy most have had an interest in clothes, as there are also several references in newspapers at the time to outfits she’s wearing to balls and other events. I’m not sure that in 1948 she didn’t repurpose the black dress Shirley had worn to the 1947 RSL Ball…
Does this sound like the same dress Grandma is wearing in the first photo??
Grandma looking glamourous in an outfit she probably made for herself, with a man who isn’t Grandpa (but we can possibly let that rest all these years later!*) And, a formal portrait taken in 1947 in Hobart and sent home to Adelaide. Family photos.
Late in 1948 Charlie and Ida came to visit their daughters, and new granddaughter, in Burnie. On this trip they holidayed at Cradle Mountain. Family photos of the Burnie years are full of picnics and trips to mountains and fields and beaches. I wonder if the move to Tasmania was not just about the practicality of work and housing, but also a draw to the beauty of the place? It’s a common reason half a century later, so why not back then.
Grandpa also came to Burnie after the war. He didn’t exit the military until May 1947, and first shows on electoral roles in Burnie in 1949, working as an electrician for the paper mill and living in “Camp B.” These “camps” were wooden huts for single men. Both Grandpa and his sister in law have the struggle to find appropriate housing in the post war years as strong themes in their memories of this time.
Photos of Mill workers and their camps, both from the same Facebook page
And here are the camps on the inland side of the mill, at the bottom of the page, undated photo from independantaustralia.net
The size of the Mill on the Burnie waterfront c1950-53, showing the camps on the inland side, and to the right, Marine Terrace looks like it might have been a pleasant place to live prior to the highway and the tioxide plant! https://stors.tas.gov.au/LPIC147-1-407
Grandma and Grandpa met at a cycling race in Burnie. The “first ball he took her to” was in 1949 – Trove shows several balls throughout that winter. He bought an engagement ring in Hobart in February 1949.
I obviously have no idea if this is even an event my grandparents went to, but I like to think that it’s the late 1940s and that it’s the day they met.
Grandma with Grandpa’s car, High St, Burnie c1949-50. Family photo.
Grandma and Grandpa left Burnie after their 1950 wedding, heading first for Moorina and then Storys Creek, before settling in Lutana. R and her family remained in Burnie.
*M spoke glowingly about their landlady in Marine Terrace with her kindness to them and their baby daughter, and said that in later years they were able to help out her daughter who lived at Moorina. That landlady was Mrs Hudson and her daughter was Mrs Burleigh, who was living at Moorina during the same time that Shirley and Tas were there in the early 1950s.
*The man in the photo is Ray Oleary. Absolutely no idea if it’s the right guy (there’s also a Ray Oleary the right sort of age living in SA), but here’s a Tasmanian one who so decidedly didn’t go to Grandma’s wedding that he got himself in the paper doing something else that day! Ray ended up marrying Grandma’s friend Beryl Harwood (who she had flown to SA with), in November 1950. Actually, this is probably not fair on Ray, as Grandma and Grandpa’s wedding was in evening of the 5th, so this event he went to that was reported on the 5th, would have happened a day or so earlier.
*”South Burnie” is east of the former mill. There aren’t any house on the waterfront there now, with most of the old houses converted to shops and the beach on the far side of a highway, railway line and six foot fence.
Jane, on the far left, with her daughter at the back, and her mother, Lydia, holding Eva’s daughter.
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.
Jane Stonehouse c1876 When this picture of her was taken. A time of hope and optimism? Or, following baby George’s death, a frantic rush to get their children memorialised in black and white?
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.
Jane Stonehouse. As a young teen perhaps?
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
Zeehan, 1891, TAHO PH30-1-7595
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.
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.
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 and Joseph c 1920
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
These photos of him caught my eye, because it reminds me of the photos that teenagers still take of themselves, saying to the world (and most particularly, to other young people), This is how I see myself, this is how I want to be seen.
The photos were taken at Tocumwal, in NSW, meaning it was likely taken sometime during 1944, the winter he turned 22. He would have just returned from his first service overseas, in PNG with the 24 SQN.
The photo shows him well dressed, confident, not too formal, serious about duty. All I’d add is a love of music, cycling, port, reading and camping and it’s how I’d describe the man I knew as my grandfather.
At Tocumwal he was with 7OTU, which trained bomber pilots. He would have been maintaining the Liberator planes used for training.
As I do, I googled Tocumwal. It was a military training base near built for Americans who never came. Designed to look from the air like a town rather than military base, the buildings looked from the outside like domestic houses, with a distinctive external look – seen in the photo – with the panelling half way up the external wall, but inside they were open like a normal barracks. After the wat, when they were no longer needed by the RAAF, many were removed to the new town of Canberra, where they are all in one suburb, and real-estate listings tell that they now go for over a million dollars!
54 of the big Liberator bombers were stationed at Tocumwal and they turned out new eleven man crews every eight weeks. Local residents watched the Liberators in mock battles with Kittyhawk fighters, or in gunnery practice with Vultee Vengeances towing drogue targets, and paratroopers jumping from Dakota aircraft. Accidents were inevitable and the Tocumwal Services Cemetery marks the graves of many young men and women who died in training. At its peak in 1944/45, there were 5,000 RAAF personnel on the base, including 400 WAAAF’s, these young girls fulfilling a vital role in the running of the air force. The impact upon the small township of Tocumwal was enormous – the shops and cafes and pubs were inundated. Church congregations swelled to capacity, romances led to weddings. There was entertainment in homes, cinemas and dance halls and cricket, football, tennis and swimming at our famous beaches were all popular forms of recreation. Touring entertainers gave concerts in the giant hangars, even Gracie Fields came to Tocumwal for a sell out performance.
The First Ball I Took Your Mother To 