Trove Tuesday: The old garage

We've owned the farming property near Heywood for over 40 years but we no longer live there, just visit a few times a year. We were there several weeks ago and I just happened to look more closely at the internal walls of a garage on the property.

Old garage

The walls are vertical slabs of timber nearly an inch thick and when I looked more closely I could see that they appear to have been recycled from an earlier building as there are notches where there shouldn't be. There was a house on the property that would have been built late in the 1800s and I'm surmising that it was pulled down to use the timber for this garage when the present house was built in the 1920s. The timber was probably milled on the property from stringbark eucalyptus trees.



Evidence that the timber has been recycled from an earlier building.

This is what I found on the internal walls. Newspapers have been used to line the walls, several layers over time, and on top of that is a layer of a flowered wallpaper. There are remnants and fragments of all the layers still on the interior walls of the garage, one hundred years later.

I used the resources of Trove to date the newspapers and found a spread of nearly twenty years from 1901 through to 1921.


The article refers to a court case in July 1901 in Yackandandah
but I couldn't find the exact matching article.

Hamilton Spectator 25 September 1917 (See newspaper image below)

Hamilton Spectator 25 February 1917. (See photo above)



Hamilton Spectator, 24 February 1917. (See photo below.)



Hamilton Spectator 24 February 1917 covered by a layer of wallpaper. (See newspaper image above.)

Try to imagine what the original house would have been like. The only material used for the walls was this timber. The newspapers weren't there for decoration, they were there to keep the drafts out, and probably snakes, insects and mice as well. The floor could have been packed earth. It would have been a simple building of several rooms with the kitchen, toilet and wash-house separate. At one end here would have been an open fire with a chimney. We know from Alexander Graham's selection files at the Public Record Office of Victoria that there was a cottage on the property. It was erected in January 1874 and is described as being 18 feet by 10 feet  in size and constructed of sawn and split timber slabs with a shingle roof. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the same timber.

Maybe it looked something like this hut at Beaudesert in Queensland.

Slab hut, Beaudesert, Queensland.



Trove Tuesday: In which Thomas Stone is assigned a convict

In my blog last week (Horfield Creek) I was chatting about the area near Bagdad in Tasmania where Thomas and Ann Stone had their property 'Horfield'. As usual I was checking the resources at Trove as part of my research and found a little snippet that adds another little piece of the jigsaw.

In 1969 Richard T Stone and Margaret M Stone published a little booklet called Early Pioneers of Tasmania: A History of Thomas and Ann Stone. They did a great job compiling information about the family and relied a lot on family letters and memorabilia as well as some information provided by the State Archives of Tasmania. There has been a lot of further research done since then by various members of the family but, as far as I know, no further publications have been published. I have a copy of some unpublished material distributed by Alex H Stone and Nancy Stone in 1992.

There is a paragraph in Early Pioneers that describes 'Horfield in 1842 when a Census was taken.

...there were three sons between seven and fourteen years living in the house, two sons between fourteen and twenty-one years, and two daughters between two and seven years. Also living in the house were three single men between the ages of forty-five and sixty years, one of these being a ticket-of-leave holder. The other two men were in private assignment. There was also a girl between fourteen and twenty-one years of age.

Do you know what a 'ticket-of-leave holder' is? This is one definition: A Ticket of Leave (TOL) was a document given to convicts when granting them freedom to work and live within a given district of the colony before their sentence expired or they were pardoned. TOL convicts could hire themselves out or be self-employed. They could also acquire property. Church attendance was compulsory, as was appearing before a Magistrate when required. Permission was needed before moving to another district and 'passports' were issued to those convicts whose work required regular travel between districts. Convicts applied through their masters to the Bench Magistrates for a TOL and needed to have served a stipulated portion of their sentence.  Convicts to Australia

So in 1842 Thomas Stone was employing a convict holding a Ticket of Leave. But on Trove I found this newspaper item from 1838 in which Thomas Stone of Constitution Hill is recorded as employing a convict, No. 1693 W Walton who arrived on the ship John 2, who had been previously assigned to J Hayes in Bagdad.

Hobart Town Courier, 30 March 1838

Transcription of the above newspaper item.

I checked the website Founders and Survivors for W Walton without success and then checked again using the convict's number 1693 and found a William Watson who arrived on the John 2 in 1833 so I'm assuming the newspaper spelling was wrong. On this website you can click on the images on the right hand side - this will take you directly to a scanned image of the original documents. Here I found that William Watson was convicted for stealing 27 shillings from his employer in London and was in trouble several times while serving his time in Tasmania before receiving his Conditional Pardon in 1842. One of the offences occurred while he was assigned to Thomas Stone -  he was convicted of misconduct because he put a beef steak in a bed and was sentenced to one month hard labour. What on earth??? Does that mean he stole the steak and hid it in his own bed, or did he put the steak in someone else's bed for revenge (as in The Godfather)?

William Watson's record recording a misconduct incident whilst assigned to Thomas Stone in July 1838.
Source: Founders and Survivors

There is also a record of Thomas Stone being fined ten pounds in 1833. Alex Stone's notes (mentioned above) state that it appears that on occasions when Thomas sent a convict employee [John Day] of the school [the Male Orphans' School where he was a teacher] in a cart to Hobart Town for stores, he got the man to drop off a load of manure or wood at his farm in Elphinstone Road just off the Main Road. Thomas petitioned the Lieutenant Governor in an attempt to have to fine remitted, arguing that he wasn't harbouring a convict. The petition was rejected because the activity hadn't been authorised by the school's committee. Ten pounds was a lot of money in 1833 so it must have had quite an impact on the family's resources.

It is said that if you have any ancestors connected with Tasmania in the 1800s you can't avoid the possibility that they were either convicts or employed convicts. It seems that Thomas and Ann Stone were definitely in the latter camp, but all is not as it seems. One day I'll write a blog about their son who married the grandaughter of a convict.

Trove Tuesday: In which James falls off his bicycle

This is the next installment in a series about the accident-prone Brown family of Cobden. In previous posts here and here I wrote about two siblings who drowned in separate incidents. This time I tell the story of another sibling, James Wear Brown, who died at the age of 52. It appears that he was riding down a hill to work in Cobden, turned sharply to avoid a vehicle and fell off his bike. He died a week later as a result of the injuries.

The Argus, 10 January 1925, digital scan from Trove.

James and Agnes Brown, wedding photo 1900

Man faking fall from bicycle, SLV collection Image H84.201/90 accessed via Trove 'pictures, photos, objects'

James Wear BROWN, son of John BROWN and Mary Ann HOWE was born on 14 Feb 1872 in Cobden, Victoria, Australia. He died on 15 Jan 1925 Camperdown Hospital, Victoria, Australia as a result of injuries to head and mouth when he fell off a bicycle. He married Agnes Eleanor SPRUCE, daughter of James SPRUCE and Caroline FRANCIS on 19 Dec 1900 (St Mary's C of E, Cobden, Victoria, Australia). She was born on 22 Jul 1884 in Apsley, Victoria, Australia. She died on 04 Aug 1955 Austin Hospital, Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia.

Trove Tuesday: Private Leed K.I.A.

 Bendigonian 14 Sep 1916, p2

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/91387566

 

We know quite a lot about great-uncle David Ray Leed*, or Ray as he was known, because we have letters he wrote home from Egypt and France in WW1 as well as his enlistment papers from the National Archives of Australia.

But it seems there's always more. When I typed his name into the search box at Trove today I discovered that two months after his death two articles appeared in a Bendigo paper - one (above) included a photo and the other (below) a brief biography. His family lived at Central Mologa north of Bendigo. 

Bendigonian, 14 Sep 1916, p24

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/91387550

The telegram received by Ray Leed's mother.



P.S. The name RAY is actually a family name. It's the surname of his great-grandmother, Susannah RAY who was born in 1804 in Denford, Northhamptonshire, England.

*David Ray LEED, son of David LEED and Mary Ann ANDREW was born on 10 Aug 1893. He died on 16 Jul 1916 in France.

Military record: Enlisted 17 Jul 1915; Private 23 Battalion, 7th Reinforcement; Embarked 26 Nov 1915 on 'Commonwealth'; Killed in Action at Pozieres, Somme, France 15 Jul 1916; Buried Rue-Du-Bois Cemetery (Plot I, Row F, Grave 7), Fleurbaix, France.

A country ball

Margaret (Maggie) McKernan

When she was 23, in 1896, Maggie* attended a Military Ball in the small town of Violet Town in Victoria, and kept the little program card as a memento. It's now in my care.




Military Ball programme (front)

Military Ball program (back)

I chanced upon it today, when I was looking for something else, and decided to do some research following the clues on the card. A couple of hours later and I'd found out quite a lot.

The National Library of Australia (Trove) has put the local newspaper online and I was able to find a very detailed newspaper report about the ball and the associated sporting tournament held the same day.




Euroa Advertiser 1 May 1896

I discovered that V.M.R. stands for Victorian Mounted Rifles and the National Archives of Australia has holdings associated with the various companies that were established.

Mounted Rifles and Victorian Rangers – The Victorian Mounted Rifles (not to be confused with similarly named contingents to the Boer War) were first formed in December 1885, with companies recruited in rural centres. The Victorian Rangers, an infantry equivalent, were raised in 1888. A small allowance only was paid to members, and Mounted Riflemen were required to provide their own mount. Members of country rifle clubs formed significant components of both corps. No service records are held for these units, but information may be found in correspondence records for the period.

I found photos of uniformed men mounted on their horses in Museum Victoria's collection here, Victorian Mounted Rifles, and in uniform here.


And at the ALH (Australian Light Horse Studies Centre) I found this: 

This regiment [8th/16th/8th Australian Light Horse] sprung from the Victorian Mounted Rifles a volunteer unit raised i 1885. Detachments existed at Euroa, Longwood, Violet Town, Benalla, Thoona, Wangaratta, Rutherglen and Beechworth and formed part of the 1st Battalion Victorian Mounted Rifles until 1901. During the Federal organisation of 1903, these detachments were formed into a separate unit style 8th Australian Light Horse Regiment (Victorian Mounted Rifles). The regiment continued under this title until 1912 when four squadrons of the 8th were designated the 16th Light Horse (Victorian Mounted Rifles). In the following year, 1913, it became the 16th (Indi) Light Horse, reverting to the 8th (Indi) Light Horse in 1918, this was later altered to 8th Light Horse Regiment (Indi Light Horse). Extracted from RK Peacock, Evolution of Australian Light Horse Regiments 1841-1935, p. 8. Australian Light Horse Studies Centre http://alh-research.tripod.com/Light_Horse/index.blog?topic_id=1114026

*MARGARET ANNE (MAGGIE) MCKERNAN was born on 20 Jan 1873 in Balmattum, Victoria, Australia, the daughter of Daniel McKERNAN and Christina GORDON. She died on 24 Nov 1939 in West Preston, Victoria, Australia. She married William Robert PHELAN, son of Daniel PHELAN and Jane WELSH on 05 Jan 1897 in Balmattum, Victoria, Australia. He was born on 01 Jun 1861 (Pentridge, Victoria, Australia). He died on 04 Dec 1946 in West Preston, Victoria, Australia.

Verdict? Accidental drowning

Some families are accident prone. The Browns certainly were. This account, for Trove Tuesday, is about one of the sons who drowned. The fate of the other family members is a story for another day.

David Brown* was the son of John Brown and Maryanne (nee Howe). Both his parents were Irish but met in Victoria, Australia. They married in Melbourne and moved to Geelong where John worked as a shoemaker. David, the second of  twelve children, was born there in 1852.

In about 1857 the family moved to Camperdown and then Cobden about ten years later. By that time David was about 15 years old and would have begun working as a labourer in the district. Apart from his baptism record, at St Mary of the Angels Roman Catholic church in Geelong, David didn't generate a paper trail ... until he died accidently at the age of 20. Then there are newspaper reports and inquest papers as well as a death certificate.

This is one of the newspaper reports that I found on Trove.

BALLARAT.
(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)
FRIDAY, DEC. 20.

The Camperdown correspondent of the Geelong Advertiser reports the following fatality :-" On Saturday evening, December 14, about 8 o'clock, a young man named David Brown, about 20 years of age, met with a fearfully sudden death, being drowned in Lake Purrumbete, near the residence of the Messrs. Manifolds, about five miles from Camperdown. It appears that Brown, who was an expert swimmer, went out in a flat-bottom boat for a pull. Shortly afterwards, some lads who were fishing near heard screams, but could see nothing but the boat, it being just dark. They at once gave information, and drags have been continually going up to the present time without the body being found. Just about where the boat was seen the water is about 40ft deep, but a little further out it is upwards of 150ft, so that it is probable some considerable difficulty will be experienced in finding it. It is conjectured that Brown must have become cramped, for though the water is deep, it was but a short distance from the bank where the accident occurred."

The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1956), Saturday 21 December 1872, page 6

I also used Trove to look for pictures of Lake Purrumbete which is a freshwater lake near Camperdown and Cobden in Victoria's Western District. Under the 'Pictures, Photos, Objects' tab I typed 'Purrumbete' in the search box and found thumbnails of several interesting photos including this one and an oil painting (on display in the National Gallery of Australia) by Von Guerard that depicts the lake as it was in 1858, 'Purrumbete from across the lake'. Von Guerard is well-known for the detailed accuracy of his paintings so I can readily imagine the scene of the accident. Here is a photo of what the lake looks like today.

I've also used the Trove website to start a List for the Brown family, called, well, Brown Family. OK, OK. It was my first List. I'll use a more useful title next time. If you've haven't yet started a List (or two or three) on Trove I can fully recommend that you give it a go.

*David BROWN, son of John BROWN and Mary Ann HOWE was born on 19 May 1852 in Geelong, Victoria, Australia. Baptised: 10 Jun 1853 (St Mary's Catholic Church, Geelong). He died on 14 Dec 1872 in Lake Purrumbeet, Victoria, Australia. Inquest: 24 Dec 1872 in Camperdown, Victoria, Australia