Old Wedding photos – something to treasure

In the 21st century, we take photography for granted.  Almost all of us have a good quality camera in our pocket all the time, as part of our phone.  We snap photos all the time, for all sorts of purposes.  However, not that long ago, photography wasn’t that easy.  Even twenty years ago, before digital photos became a thing, film was limited (12, 24 or 36 photos to a roll) and had to be sent away for processing.  You didn’t know if you had a good photo until well after the event was over.  For many families (mine included) the cost of this process meant that photographs were chosen and posed carefully, and a bad shot was mourned – because it couldn’t be snapped again in the moment.  Families tended to take photographs to document the important events in their lives, and weddings are definitely in that category.  Some families are lucky enough to have wedding photographs going back through generations.  For others they are lost, descended to a different branch of the family or were never taken.  I’m lucky – I have a few, going back into the 19th century (just).

24 June 1896 – Freestone Creek, Queensland (near Warwick)

Emily Smith married Henry Thomas Eastment

A cherished family portrait, which was actually reprinted for us by the original photographer’s firm in the early 1980s.  Unfortunately, while having the photograph is amazing, the only source we have for who is in the photo is the couple’s daughter, who wasn’t born until twelve years after the event.

The information we have is:

Back Row, standing, l to r
Annie Eastment (nee Shaw) (half hidden), Alfred Smith, Leslie Staff (short man), Isaac Ball, Edward Latter, William Noble.

2nd row, standing, l to r,
Charles Eastment, Lucy Smith, Alice Eastment, Annie Ball nee Eastment, Mary Jane Latter nee Eastment, Mary Jane Noble nee Smith, Edith Noble, Annie Smith (we think), Ada Brunckhorst nee Smith, Charles Brunckhorst.

3rd row, seated, l to r:
John Eastment, Salome Eastment, Henry Thomas Eastment, Emily Eastment nee Smith, Elizabeth Smith, Henry Smith

Front row:
Maude Eastment, next two possibly Annie Ball’s daughters, last two probably Smith girls.

I live in hope that someday, somebody, somewhere, will be able to confirm what we have and fill in the gaps.  However, as it’s now over 120 years ago …

We have photographs from the weddings of three of Emily’s siblings (Ada Priscilla and her husband, Charles Brunckhorst, married 1895 on the left, Alfred and his wife Lucy Mundey married 1889, and Thomas and his wife Jane Gomm, who married in 1898on the right.

That we have surviving photos from four out of the nine weddings in that family, suggests to me that this family strongly valued photography and the photographs produced.

Queensland – date unknown

Beatrice Maud Haid married William Henry Richard John Benjamin Thomas Foster

On a completely different branch of the family, but not too far away (somewhere around Ipswich, Queensland), Beatrice Maud Haid (half-sister of my great-grandmother Gertrude Ihle) married Mr Foster.  According to the Queensland birth, death and marriage indexes, this marriage took place in 1909.  A very formally posed portrait.

The Next Generation

By the 1920s, the children of Henry and Emily Eastment were themselves getting married.

On the left, the first wedding of Elsie May Eastment.  She married Laurence Bale, in 1928.  The attendants were her sister Vera, and Vera’s husband Dudley Francis (left hand photo).  The right hand photograph shows Leslie Charles Eastment with his wife, Ethel, who he married in 1931.    Their younger brother, Alan, married in 1943, to Ruby Lickiss (photo below).

1976, Elsie, having been widowed in 1971, married again to Nolan George Taylor (really awful newspaper photo)

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Auntie Elsie’s Stories

Long, long ago in the dim and distant past (I think it was 1979) my mother and I sat down with a tape recorder to interview my great auntie Elsie (my grandmother’s sister).

Elsie Eastment (aged about 8)

Elsie was born in 1908 in Warwick, Queensland, the seventh of nine children of Henry Thomas Eastment and Emily Smith.

Although Auntie was nervous to start with, she soon forgot the recorder was there as she started to tell the stories, some familiar and some new.  She was ten years younger than my Nan, so had a different view of some of the stories to those we had heard before.

She spoke of many things from their childhood, games and events with her brothers and sisters.  She spoke of their pony, and of taking a sulky to school (and parking the horse in their aunt’s paddock for the day) as if it were the most normal thing in the world.  To them it was:

We had a pony, “Taffy”, for us kids, he was a drafting pony, and he’d be racing after cattle.  When a cow would veer away he would turn practically on a halfpenny.  Eric could never ride him, he would just go straight off.  If Ve or I fell off he’d go for his life, but if Merle and Alan were on him (and one day he went straight under the clothes line and swiped both off his tail) he just turned around as if to say “well, what are you doing down there, hurry up and get on”.  He’d wait for them to get on, but if it had been us, he’d have long been gone.  He must have liked them better , or perhaps it was because they were little.  One day I was after a cow and he turned quickly, and I got round his neck, hanging on with my arms and legs, and he put his foot up on me and pulled me down.

We never rode him to school, we always took the sulky or walked.  We walked when we went to the Sladeville school, but when we went to Warwick school we always had the sulky.  Either Roy or Les would drive.  Aunt Janie Noble lived in Warwick, she had a big yard, and we’d leave the horse and sulky there.  That’s how we got to know Auntie Janie so well when we were kids.  We didn’t have that far to walk to school from her place.  She used to run a boarding house at that stage.

Apparently one of their houses was haunted! She didn’t remember it directly, but knew the story her sister and brother had told over the years.

In one house we lived in, your mother and Os were detailed off to do the washing up, and sometimes they’d go out and this apparition would be standing on the pile of plates on the table – it was transparent and if you got close to it it just faded through the wall.  It looked like a person.  I was only a baby, so I can only go from what they told me.  One night Mum went into the bedroom and it was standing on the bed, and she screamed, of course, and it just faded through the wall.  Anyhow, we shifted from that place afterwards down to Wood Street.  The place was demolished and they found a skeleton under the floor, so we presume it was him.

There were hard time as well as fun times.  When their house burnt down in 1926, the family lost almost everything.

The house at Sladevale on the Darling Downs burned down.  I wasn’t home at the time, but Ve was, and Merle and Alan, and of course Aunt Ethel was there with baby John and Dad.  Ve woke up first, she had her trousseau there, and she threw all the drawers out of that cupboard out the window and saves her trousseau.  Then she realized that Dad and Aunt Ethel weren’t up, so she tore in there and she grabbed the baby, and Dad panicked, of all people to panic, and he was running round and round the house saying “oh, it’s on fire, oh, it’s on fire”.  He just panicked.  I would never have thought that he would.  Ethel did, too.  She lost all her wedding presents – she had some beautiful wedding presents, she had beautiful linen, a lot of Madeira work and hand-worked stuff which would have been done in the islands, she lost all of it, also a Shelley china teaset she had, a Japanese afternoon teaset which looked like eggshell china, and all the silverware too.

Only for Ve, John would have been dead, because they ran out of the house and left him there.  He was only a little fellow, I’ve forgotten how old he was – seven or either months or something like that, but Dad and old Ethel forgot about him.  They didn’t save a thing, all that was saved was Ve’s trousseau and they jut got out in their night clothes.

The house was burned right to the ground.  That was a big place.  Ve always swore that she burned it down because it was Mum’s home, you know.  It had eight bedrooms, a big dining room and verandahs all the way round it.  Then there was a landing – it wouldn’t be as wide as this verandah (about 10’) and a small house at the back which had five rooms, and it all went.

The “Aunt Ethel” was actually Elsie’s stepmother – this happened after her mother’s

death and her father’s re-marriage.  The baby, John, was her half-brother.  Recent research has turned up a newspaper article confirming the facts of the story, if not the emotions:

She remembered her grandfather, John Eastment, probably the only one of the nine children to know him.  When her mother died (she was 15) she went to live for some time with an aunt in Lismore. John was also living with the aunt, his daughter Florence.  From her story of his learning to drive in his 80s, and his kindness to a granddaughter, a picture of a kindly old man appears:

 

(Valmai then commented that there was an article in the Warwick “Argus” in about 1912 about Mr and Mrs J Eastment visiting their son in Warwick, coming up by car

on account of Mrs Eastment’s health).

I don’t know about that, but when I came down here in 1923 he had a sulky and a little pony which he used to call “Topsy” and he used to sit up in that sulky and drive like mad everywhere.  He bought a car after that, so he couldn’t have driven in 1913 because he was learning to drive in 1923.  Once he drove into the garage and he was saying, “Whoa, whoa” to the car, but it ran through the end of the garage.  Sooner than having the back of the garage built up again, he had doors put in the back, so if he went “whoa, whoa”, he’d go through the door.

(I then commented that he must have been a bit adventurous learning to drive at his age, he must have been 85 – he was 88 when he died in 1926).

I don’t think they were very fussy about licences in those days and there wasn’t much traffic.

Grandfather Eastment was a gentle old man, nothing like Dad, and as I’ve told you, when I was scrubbing the floors at Aunt Flo’s boarding house, he would pinch me on the bottom, not hard, and he’d say “Sizzle-a-bob, here you are girl, here’s two bob, don’t you tell your Auntie Flo I gave you two bob”.  Of course as soon as grandfather’s back was turned I’d go out to Auntie Flo and say “look at what grandfather gave me”.  He was a dear old man, I loved grandfather.

Another relative she remember well was Auntie Jim Smith, who was married to her mother’s brother.  Auntie Jim (real name Anna Maria) appears as an eccentric, perhaps slightly unhinged, personality.  Perhaps raising a large family does that to you!

I remember once hearing about Uncle Jim Smith (Mum’s brother) and his wife, who was Anna Maria Allen (we always called her Auntie Jim).  They were having Christmas dinner, and they were having an argument, (they were always arguing, always). 

Anna Maria Smith

Anyway they were having a great argument this day and he got the better of her, apparently, so she just picked up the leg of ham and shot it at him, and he ducked and it went through the window at the back.  The house was high up, and by the time she got down the stairs the dogs had the ham.  She was a funny woman, there is no doubt about that. 

She always wore this old felt hat at the dairy, and she came in one day and it was full of holes, so she lined all the kids up, the whole 13 of them, and went right down the line – “Did you cut up my hat?”, “No”, “did you cut up my hat?”, “no”.  Della was on the end so she thought Oh well, I’d better own up to cutting the hat up because she was quite

Jim Smith

capable of giving the whole 13 of them a hiding, so Della said, “Well, I cut the hat up, mother” and Della got a hiding.  So when Uncle Jim came in, Auntie Jim said “look what Della did to my hat – she cut up my hat!”, and he said, “Della didn’t cut it up, I wanted some washers, so I cut it up”.  So Della got another hiding for telling lies. 

She always used to call him “Jim Smith”.  “Look here, Jim Smith” she’d say to him, that was the way she used to address him.  Audrey was supposed to be practicing on the piano once, and the piano wasn’t going so Auntie Jim slipped in to see what was happening, and there was Audrey reading a book.  Auntie Jim tore out again and got a bucket of milk and brought it in and tipped it over Audrey, piano and everything.

She also had some stories, but fewer memories, about both her grandmothers – Salome Eastment (nee Whitney) and Elizabeth Smith (nee Tottle).

 

Salome Eastment

The only thing I can remember about Salome Eastment was a little old lady with a long black dress and a black bonnet.  That’s all I can remember.  I was only about 5 or 6 at that time.  When I was up in Mackay last, I was telling them about us doing the family tree, and asked Eric if he knew anything about Grandma Salome.  He said, “no, the only thing I know about her is she was a cranky old bugger”.  She used to always give him the rounds of the kitchen.  Lil (Os’ wife) told me one time she was a real tough old baby, a real pioneer.  She had to be, as grandfather was a bit footloose, and it was quite a time before he finally settled down at Wyrallah.  

 

Grandmother Smith was a great one for poultry – she always had prize poultry – she

Elizabeth Smith

had this beautiful rooster and he’d eaten pumpkin seeds.  When a rooster eats pumpkin it goes down in the tail and his tail drags on the ground, and after a while he’d die.  This rooster just disappeared, and grandmother thought “oh well, he’s gone, my prize rooster”, but about a week later there was the rooster racing round as large as life and crowing and going on, so she wanted to know what was happening.  One of her sons had taken the rooster in the shed and operated on it and took all the pumpkin seeds out and sewed it up again.  The rooster went on to have quite a few more children. 

So many stories that will never be found from researching the records – how I wish we’d sat more of the older generation down and recorded their stories.  I wish I’d done it with my mother and father, too.

Another thing I wish is that I still had that tape, not just the transcript.  I’d love to be able to hear both their voices again.

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Andrew Leslie Michel

Andrew Leslie Michel (always known as Les) was born on 21 January 1900 in the small town of Lowood in southeastern Queensland (not far from Ipswich).  He was the younger of twins, the 9^th and 10^th children of Ewald Michel and his wife Gertrude Isabella, nee Ihle.

This part of Queensland had been settled by German immigrants in the second half of the 19^th century and German names and families were very common, well into the 20^th century.

Ewald was born in Germany in the village of Huckeswagen, near Cologne, and came to Australia at the age of three, along with is parents and some siblings.  His mother died in Brisbane shortly after they arrived and his father, Johannes, with his four children, took up farming land at Fernvale, near Lowood.

Gertrude was born in Picton in the southern highlands of New South Wales.  Her father was German and her mother English.  They moved to Fernvale when she was a small child.  Her father died when she was six and she was raised after that by her paternal uncle and his wife.  Her mother’s story (Amelia Barrett) has already been told in this blog.

At the time Les was born, his father owned a small general store in Michel Street, Lowood (the street was named after him).  Les’s oldest sisters were already married by 1900 and Les and Eddie (his twin) were uncles before they were born.  Les went to Lowood Stage School and acquitted himself well enough to be employed by the Commonwealth Bank, eventually rising to the level of accountant.  He kept this employment at least into the late 1930s, although during the worst of the Great Depression, he was working part time at the bank.

He was just too young to serve in World War I.  We don’t know if the family suffered any discrimination or hardship at that time because of their German heritage – perhaps not, in that very German corner of Queensland.

By 1923, Ewald’s business had gone bankrupt.  He was known as a kind and generous man who gave credit freely in his store.  Many unpaid debts led to the end of his business and Ewald and Gertrude were living in Northgate, a suburb of Brisbane and Ewald’s health was failing.

On 14 August 1924, Les married Irene Eastment, from Warwick.  Her father strongly disapproved of the marriage, because of Les’s German parentage.  Irene always insisted that the surname be pronounced in the French way, as mishel, although the rest of the family pronounced it as Mikkel or even Michael.  This pronunciation difference between the branches of the family still persists, nearly a century later.

The young couple moved to Sydney, probably for Les’s job, and lived mostly in the inner western suburbs, eventually settling in their own home at 13 Agnes Street, Strathfield.  They had four children:

Irene Merle (always known as Merle) born 24 August 1925

Shirley Mavie born 10 January 1927

Valmai June, born 17 June 1929; and

David Francis, born 6 August 1931.

Shirley died on & February 1928 at the age of thirteen months, from gastroenteritis. Merle was also gravely ill at that time but, being slightly older and stronger, survived.

Les and Irene’s marriage deteriorated and in 1939 Les left the family in Sydney and eventually enlisted in the Australia Army.  He rarely saw his children (then aged 14, 10 and 8) again, and then only after they were adults.  It is believed that Irene actively prevented him from seeing them immediately after he left, and then the war intervened.

In 1961 Les went to Perth as Manager of the Papuan Empire Games team, and saw his daughter Merle for the first time for many years.  He told her that he never knew why his marriage broke up, and that when he met her Irene was the prettiest girl in Warwick.

On his way home Les also called on Valmai and her husband Colin Strathearn in Sydney.  As Irene was present this meeting was rather difficult, but both Valmai and Colin felt they could have gotten on well with him.  Indeed, Merle and her husband in Perth felt the same way.

Not long before she died, Irene told Valmai that, if she had her life to live again, she would have done everything possible to prevent the breakup of her marriage.  Apparently the main reason for this breakup was the fact that Irene felt that Les had been “spoiled rotten” by his mother, and this was later confirmed by Michel relations who remembered that Gertrude had lavished all her love and attention on Les, while his twin brother, Edgar, had been more or less brought up by one of his older sisters.  Despite this fact, Irene stated that she was very fond of Gertrude, and that she was a fine woman.

In December, 1978, Valmai, who had traced some of her father’s cousins, and had been in correspondence with some of them, went with her husband and daughter to Brisbane, and met with all of them who could arrange to be there.  They had all been very fond of Les, and were always glad to see him.  They were all very pleasant, friendly people, and made Valmai and her family most welcome.

During the War, Les had become fond of New Guinea and its people and, after his discharge from the Army, was employed by Adelaide Steamships Limited as an accountant in its Port Moresby office.  He re-married in the early 1950s to Anne.  There were no children from this marriage.

In Port Moresby, Les worked with the children of the town, particularly in the area of sport and, in 1963 was awarded the MBE for his efforts.

Ex “South Pacific Post”, Port Moresby, June 11, 1963

M.B.E. for MICHEL:  Canberra, Monday:  Five men with Territory links have been honoured by the Queen in the Birthday Honours List.  Among them is the father of Territory sport, Leslie Andrew Michel (sic), who has been made a Member of the Order of the British Empire.

The citation reads, “Since 1952 he has been prominent in many sporting activities in Port Moresby, particularly for the native population.  In recognition of his fine contribution in the sporting interests of Port Moresby.”

Mr Michel has been an accountant and secretary employed by Steamships Trading Company since 1952.  He was the driving force behind efforts to send a Territory team to last year’s Commonwealth Games at Perth and is now a senior official of the organization sending Papuan, New Guinean and Australian athletes to Suva.

Mr. Michel is a respected authority on cricket and Rugby League and is well-known to eminent sporting officials throughout Australia.

For several years most of his leisure hours have been spent in the administration of sport.  He has worked selflessly for the full integration of sport in all fields and encouraged the expansion of all sports among Papuans.  The honour bestowed on him will be welcomed by people of all races.”

“Rotary Newsletter”, Port Moresby, June 11, 1963:

“Congratulations ’96   LES MICHEL  ROTARY ‘SPORT   TERRITORY   HONOURED

Some of us heard the news when the Australian Saturday morning papers arrived in Port Moresby.  Others heard the news, as it was learnt from the Australian papers, and word passed here and there, and especially at the Sogeri Show.  Yet others heard the news for the first time on Sunday night, during the A.B.C. Territory news-session.

Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, honoured Rotarian Les Michel, by making him a Member of the Order of the British Empire.

It was typical of Les Michel, the real man, that he replied to a congratulatory telephone call on Sunday night:  “Of course I’m honoured and happy at receiving the award.  But … ”  “But what?”  “Well, I’ve been mixed up in sport a lot, and I feel that the honour is also a tribute to sport.”  Who will argue?  But the award is a tribute to Les Michel, the man.  Les Michel, the citizen.  Les Michel, the sportsman.  To his years of unselfish work.  The public knows a lot about what Les Michel has done.  He is chairman of the Empire Games Association.  Chairman of the Fund Raising Committee of the Territory’s South Pacific Games Association.

But few people – perhaps only his wife, Rotarianne Anne Michel  – could have an idea of all the work he does behind the scenes.  The raffle tickets he’s sold.  The football programmes he’s written –  and sold, too.  His love of sport is wide –   football, basketball, and, yes, believe it or not … cricket!

Les Michel is one person, at least, who has a true concept of the value of sport in a multi-racial society such as Papua and New Guinea.

If there is one place where a person can achieve results, according to merit, it’s on the field of sport.  White man, black man, yellow, red, or any other colour, atheist, Christian, communist, Hindu, or any other faith, or lack of faith, all men and women, fellow humans, can reach a common meeting place in sport.  People of different cultures, education, ideas, have the same motivation in a 100-yard spring, in a soccer, basketball, cricket, or tennis match.

Somewhere, in the long ago, the voice of England echoed through schoolrooms throughout the world in the words:  “Play up, play up, and play the game!”

You play the game, according to the rules, and you win or lose, according to the rules, and character and understanding and comradeship and the Australian word, “mateship” (which is not out of date as the alleged sophisticates claim) have a chance to develop.

These are some of the thoughts that occur when one thinks about Les Michel.  He is, in some ways, a complex man – and yet a simple man.  He has a gift for winning friends, who will do a great deal for him.  He is an earthy man.  He is a human being.  He has a rough, male sense of humour.  He is not a rich man, as far as this world’s material goods are concerned, but he is rich in the possessions that count.  He is, perhaps, too generous in the expenditure of his time and energies for any cause he thinks worthwhile.

He has the qualities that make a Rotarian.  Our Rotary Club, Rotary throughout the Territory, Rotary everywhere to some extent at least, shares the honour the Queen has bestowed upon Les Michel.”

Les retired in 1965 and returned to Sydney, living in Ashfield with his wife.  He died on 16 March 1968 when his heart failed following an operation to remove a brain tumour.  He was cremated at Rookwood Crematorium and his ashes were interred there.

As the only one of his children in Sydney at the time of his death in 1968 of heart failure following an operation for a brain tumour, Valmai attended his funeral at Ashfield with her husband, rather unwillingly.  During the service the minister spoke especially about the work Les Michel had done with young people, and her thought at that point was   “he did nothing for his own children.”

Ten years later, at the reunion in Brisbane mentioned, she met Les’ twin brother’s daughter –  Beth –  almost exactly the same age as herself, of whom she had never heard until that day.  Beth remembered her Uncle Les well, as apparently he visited his brother’s family quite often, and she also remembered the gifts he brought and the relationships he had with the children.  The thought then arose in Valmai’s mind:  “Did he neglect his own children by his own choice?”

 

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John Eastment – One Man’s Life

John Eastment was one ordinary man who lived an interesting life in the development of Australia. It has amazed me how much information is available on this man’s life and I have tried here to describe his life and times, in words and pictures.

John was my great great grandfather, born in England in 1838 and died in New South Wales in 1926. His lifetime encompassed great changes in his world. Please, join with me in my look at his life.

EARLY LIFE

John Eastment was born on 20th August 1838, in the small village of East Coker, just outside the town of Yeovil, Somerset in the southwest of England. He was the second son of Richard Eastment and his wife, Jane, formerly Cox.

Richard and Jane had also been born in East Coker, Richard in 1812 and Jane in 1809. Richard gives his occupation on John’s birth certificate as a weaver.

East Coker is a typical west country village, but has two claims to fame. Firstly, it was the birthplace of the English pirate and adventurer, William Dampier (1651-1715), who was the first English man to set foot on the Australian mainland. Secondly, it is the ancestral village of the American poet, Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965), who named one of his poems after the village. There is a memorial to T.S. Eliot in the parish church at East Coker.

Richard and Jane Eastment had five known children:

Edward, born 1836
John, born 1838
Mary, born 1840

There were also Francis and Martha, who both died in 1846

Richard Eastment died on 5th July, 1845 of a chill, leaving his widow Jane, with three small children. Little wonder, then, that she quickly remarried, to John Young, also of East Coker, on 13th October, 1845. Two more children were born to Jane, namely Elizabeth in 1847 and Thomas in 1850.

Thus, by 1853, when the family made the decision to emigrate to Australia, the family consisted of:

John Young,
Jane Young
Edward Eastment
John Eastment
Mary Eastment
Thomas Young
Elizabeth Young.
We do not know why John Young made the decision to bring his blended family to Australia, although the most likely reason for that time and place would be agricultural depression in England, which led many farm workers to leave the country and travel to Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

NOTE: This post is taken from the website One Man’s Life which I made many years ago. There is no breach of copyright.

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My Grandmother’s Life Part 3

Irene was now comfortable enough to retire, and settled into her home in the Sydney suburb of Mosman.  Her daughter Merle married and moved, first to Tasmania and then to Perth.  Over the next ten years, Irene visited Merle and her family on several occasions, always driving herself in her own car.  In the 1950s a drive across Australia was a daunting prospect, particularly for a woman on her own.  The last car in which she made the trip was a Morris Minor 1000.  The trip was unusual enough to prompt this newspaper coverage in 1954:

 

Ex Perth Newspaper, 10.10.1954:

LONE WOMAN HAD CAR TRIP OF 1,800 MILES

Surprised mobs of wild horses, camels, donkeys, emus and kangaroos scurrying from her path broken the monotony of much of a lone woman driver’s 1,800 mile trip from Alice Springs to Sydney recently.

Mrs. I.M. Michel, of Sydney, who is holidaying in Perth, said yesterday that the trip, which she had undertaken alone when a friend had been unable to accompany her, had been a wonderful experience although it had sometimes been “an ordeal”.

She had had two punctures and had been bogged several times. At the Palmer River crossing she had managed to dig the car out of heavy sand with a Dixie because she had no spade with her. A straw palliasse and branches placed under the wheels had rescued her from a mud bog near Coober Pedy.

Mrs. Michel said that her small utility, which she had bought second-hand in Alice Springs, had proved a bad bargain.

It had developed faulty steering and she had had great difficulty in holding it on the bad roads.

She had taken five days to cover the 800 miles of rough, corrugated stony or sandy road from Alice Springs to Port Augusta although, later, on the bitumen road she had averaged 300 miles a day.

Mrs Michel said she spent the nights at station homesteads, but had slept outside on her faithful straw palliasse at one station where there were no spare beds.

Valmai also married, and she and her husband stayed in the Mosman house until they built their own home at Hornsby Heights in far northern Sydney.  Irene moved to Hornsby with them, and the Mosman house was rented.

In 1958 Irene was diagnosed with breast cancer, and had surgery.  She was cancer-free for a number of years, but in 1966 the cancer returned aggressively and she died on 7 April that year, at 67 years of age.  She was the first of the children of Henry and Emily Eastment to die.

She was buried in the Methodist section of the Rookwood Necropolis in Sydney with her daughter Shirley.

 

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My Grandmother’s Life Part 2

In 1924, Irene Eastment was married in Brisbane, Queensland, to Andrew Leslie (known as Les) Michel.  Les was the son and grandson of German Lutheran immigrants, who had settled in Fernvale in south eastern Queensland.  Les’ father owned a general store in the nearby town of Lowood.  the couple immediately moved to Sydney, where their first child was born in 1925.

Irene Merle (known as Merle) was followed by Shirley Mavis , Valmai June and David Francis.  Shirley died at the age of 13 months from gastroenteritis, and Merle was also very sick at that time.

 

Although Irene had little or no contact with her father after she left home, she remained in close contact with her siblings and maintained that contact all her life.  Her children had close relationships with their aunts, uncles and cousins.  The family eventually scattered over the length of eastern Australia, from Melbourne to Townsville, but always kept in touch with each other.

Unfortunately, Irene’s marriage wasn’t as successful and Les left the family in about 1937, when Merle was 12, Valmai 8 and David 6.  None saw their father again until they were adults.

Irene now had to provide for her young family and did so very successfully, in a number of ways.  Initially, she worked as a photographic model for newspaper and magazine advertisements – she was always a very attractive woman.  Later, after the start of World War II, she learnt to drive, and became a successful life insurance saleswoman.  She was able to invest her earnings and buy property, firstly in Agnes Street, Strathfield, and later in north shore Mosman.  She was also able to put her oldest daughter through University, when this was still unusual.

 

In 1947 her two younger children moved to the Northern Territory, Valmai to work for Qantas Airways in Darwin and David to work on a cattle station,  Undaunted, Irene also went to the Territory, working for a time as a cook on a cattle station.  After two years, Valmai and Irene returned to Sydney by car (an adventurous undertaking in those days), but David stayed in Alice Springs where he spent the rest of his life.

 

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Irene and Valmai’s car, in a photo taken on the road from Darwin to Alice Springs.

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My Grandmother’s Life, Part 1

My grandmother was an amazing woman, who did many very unlikely things for a woman of her time and place.

Irene Mayfus Eastment was born in Wyrallah, just outside Lismore in north east New South Wales, on 23 November 1898.  Mayfus is not an obscure family surname, but her father’s attempt to spell “Mavis” when he went to town to register the birth.  Great-grandma should really have written it down for him.  In later years, she changed the spelling to “Maffis” – she never used “Mavis”, the intended name,  that I’m aware of.  The midwife at her birth was her grandmother, Salome Eastment.  Her grandfather, John Eastment, had been an early settler in the area and the family was well known in the district.  Irene was the second child in a family of nine.

Irene’s mother, Emily (nee Smith), came from a similar family living at Freestone Creek, near Warwick in south eastern Queensland and, shortly after Irene’s birth, the young family moved to Warwick, where Irene and her siblings grew up. The photo shows the Eastment family home at Warwick, with members of the family on the verandah.  Unfortunately, information as to identity has been lost.

In 1979, Irene’s younger sister, Elsie, reminisced to her niece Valmai (Irene’s daughter) about her childhood in Warwick. 

We had a pony, “Taffy”, for us kids, he was a drafting pony, and he’d be racing after cattle. When a cow would veer away he would turn practically on a halfpenny. Eric could never ride him, he would just go straight off. If Ve or I fell off he’d go for his life, but if Merle and Alan were on him (and one day he went straight under the clothes line and swiped both off his tail) he just turned around as if to say “well, what are you doing down there, hurry up and get on”. He’d wait for them to get on, but if it had been us, he’d have long been gone. He must have liked them better , or perhaps it was because they were little. One day I was after a cow and he turned quickly, and I got round his neck, hanging on with my arms and legs, and he put his foot up on me and pulled me down.

We never rode him to school, we always took the sulky or walked. We walked when we went to the Sladeville school, but when we went to Warwick school we always had the sulky. Either Roy or Les would drive. Aunt Janie Noble lived in Warwick, she had a big yard, and we’d leave the horse and sulky there. That’s how we got to know Auntie Janie so well when we were kids. We didn’t have that far to walk to school from her place. She used to run a boarding house at that stage.

Schooling was at Sladevale State School, just outside Warwick (the area is also known as Eastment’s Ridge), then later at Warwick High school.  The family travelled to school by pony cart, with the pony being released to graze in the yard at their aunt’s farm.  The picture at the right shows Irene, aged approximately 15, with her younger sister Vera, who was about 7 year old.

After leaving school, Irene began studying nursing at Warwick Hospital, with the intention of going overseas to nurse.  This was during World War I and one of Irene’s cousins was a nurse at the Military Hospital at Cairo.  She wasn’t able to finish her training as her mother became ill with heart problems, and Irene was needed at home.

Emily Eastment died in July 1923, leaving her husband and nine children aged from 26 down to 8.  Her husband was not a grieving widower, as he had had a liaison with another woman for some time.  Irene left home the day after her mother’s funeral and went to live in Brisbane.

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Dead Ancestors. Or Not?

One of the things a genealogist likes to do is “tidy up and put away” the ancestors.  Have all their vital details, including their death, recorded.  Sometimes it isn’t possible.  People move to unexpected places or marry unexpected people and can’t be found, or these events are just never recorded.

There are three particular vital events we like to pin down – birth (or baptism), marriage, and death (or burial).  All our ancestors were born and, for British researchers, most were baptised.  Most were married, and they all died.  Finding those records isn’t always easy.

I have one ancestor who is being particularly difficult in this regard.  My great-great-great-grandmother, who appears to have never died.

Jane Cox was born, and baptised, in 1808 in the village of East Coker, Somerset, England.  She was the daughter of Edward Cox and Martha Young of that Parish and had a brother named Henry.  Thus, the first vital event, her birth, has been established.

On 1 June 1835 Jane married Richard Eastment in the parish church of St Michael, East Coker.  The couple lived in the parish and their five children were born there (Edward, John, Mary, Martha and Francis).  On 5 July 1845, Richard died, leaving Jane a widow with three young children (the last two having died in infancy).  Jane wasn’t a widow for long, as in October 1845 she remarried, to John Young.  They had two more children, Thomas and Elizabeth.

So, we have the second major life event, marriage, pinned down for Jane – twice!

At this point, another major event intervened when the family emigrated to South Australia in 1853.  We know Jane landed in South Australia with her family (although her oldest son, Edward Eastment, died on the voyage), but nothing more.

When he son John married in New South Wales in 1860, his father is listed as “deceased”, his mother’s status is not given, perhaps giving a clue that she was alive at that time.  Was she living then?  Was she still with her older children?  We don’t know.

By the late 1800s, all Jane’s surviving children, both Eastment and Young, were in the north east corner of New South Wales, with their own families, but no sign of Jane. 

I have search for:

1. Her death in every State of Australia from 1853 until 1910 under all known surnames.

2. The death of John Young in the same places and timeframe.

3. Any possible re-marriage for Jane, again using all known surnames.

4. Made enquiries in England in case she returned there. 

I have found no record of death for Jane, and no record of marriage or return to England.   Tracing a return to England would be difficult with such a common name, unless she returned to her home village of East Coker.  The likelihood of course is that she died somewhere on her family’s pioneering venture, away from civilisation, was buried and her death never registered.  There are many such lonely graves in the Australian bush.

Or – maybe not?  Maybe in some quiet bush nursing home, there is a 200 year old English lady, quietly enjoying her life and laughing at my efforts to trace her.

I would so like to find her, one way or another.

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Ship or swim?

If you are researching genealogy in Australia (or, I guess, anywhere outside Europe) one of the things you need to find out is where your ancestors originated and how they got here.

Immigration to Australia could have taken place any time from 1788 to yesterday and, depending on the time, the records vary.  For immigration after World War II, I know nothing – none of my people arrived that recently.  Perhaps, for more recent immigration, family stories exist and are enough.

For those before, there are a number of records available, for search both in person and on line (the wonderful Cyndi’s List has lots of links for Australia).

However, we did it the old-fashioned way.  In the 1970s, many records for New South Wales were held in the Mitchell Library in Macquarie Street in Sydney.  They weren’t indexed, but were microfilmed.  The only way to find a family or an individual was to find a range of possible dates and read the microfilms.

For example, to find the Smith family, we knew they were still in England in 1853 (marriage certificate) and in Australia in 1873 (confirmed birth of child in the colony).  Other children may or may not have been born in Australia, but certificates have always been expensive, and we didn’t buy five or six of them “on spec”.  Today, with online indexes to Birth, Death and Marriage records, we could have narrowed it down further.

So, with our pencils (no pens allowed in the Library!) clutched i our hands, we entered the microfilm room.  On the third day of wading microfilm, and after many false alarms (the name was “Smith” after all!), we found them.  In 1858, Henry and Elizabeth Smith and their two oldest children, William and Mary Jane, arrived in Brisbane on board the ship “Alfred” after a three month voyage.  The rest of their ten children were indeed born in Queensland.

By contrast, checking the details online tonight has taken me less than five minutes.

Using the same time-consuming methods, we tracked down the Whitneys to the “Walmer Castle” in 1848, the Barretts to the “Trafalgar” in 1853, and the Strathearns to the Themistocles in 1921.

By this time, my mother and I were on first name terms with all the librarians, and they let us use the staff lunch room and raid the biscuit tin.

Still,  it’s never that tidy.  We still had families we hadn’t found.  The Eastments, sometime between 1845 and 1958 and the two German families.  We had family legends, but the German method of filling in a shipping list was to say “369 people”.

John Eastment and his family were eventually found when we located his obituary.  It said that he had arrived in South Australia.  A friendly letter to the South Australian Archives found us a friendly and helpful librarian who went the extra mile.  The “Shackramick” mentioned in the obituary was actually the “Shackamaxon” and John and his sister were travelled with their mother and stepfather – so were indexed under the stepfather’s surname, not their own.  Without that librarian who got curious, we’d never have found him.

The Shackamaxon

 

And the Germans?  Well, I have to believe they are somewhere in those “369 immigrants”.  There are clues, but nothing definite.

Or they swam.

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