Category Archives: photographs

Beggs family visit to Ireland

07 Saturday Jan 2023

Posted by in Beggs, Great great Aunt Rose's photograph album

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On the reverse of the picture, which is the size of a carte de visite or visiting card, is a plan; the cabins occupied by the Beggs family appear to be indicated with red ticks.

My great-great Aunt Rose’s photograph album consists mostly of portraits of members of her family, but it does include one picture of a ship, Brunel’s SS Great Britain. This has the caption:

S.S. Great Britain 1868
September 1868. We all returned from Ireland in the Great Britain.

The ‘we’ is the Beggs family; the caption was probably inserted by Rose’s husband Frank Beggs, a boy of seventeen at the time of their long journey back to Australia.

From the Geelong Advertiser, Tuesday 8 September 1868, page 2:

The following old colonists, late residents in Geelong and the "Western District, returned to the colony by the steamer Great Britain;—Hon. Niel Black, of Glenormiston, Mrs Black, Masters Archibald, Stewart and Niel Black, and servant; Mr and Mrs F. Beggs, of Beaufort, Misses Elizabeth, Charlotte, Maria, Clamma, Gertrude, Masters F., H., R. and J. Beggs; Mr. and Mrs D. Stead, of Ballan; Mr Robert Richardson, formerly Inspector of Police, Geelong; Mr Fairfax Fenwick, of Chevy; Mr Alex. Hunter, and Mr George Staveley of Geelong, also Master E. G. Staveley.

The SS Great Britain was a steamship designed by the famous Victorian-era engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Launched in 1845, until 1854 she was the largest passenger ship in the world. The Great Britain made her first voyage to Australia in 1852 and operated on the England–Australia route for almost 30 years. Still afloat, she is now part of a Bristol maritime museum. (The Great Britain was not Brunel’s famous SS Great Eastern, a different vessel.)

The Beggs family left Australia for Southampton on 26 January 1865 on the ‘Bombay‘, a steamship of 608 tons. The passenger list includes Mr and Mrs Beggs, a daughter and son aged over twelve years old, three daughters aged between one and twelve, two sons aged between one and twelve, one infant daughter: eight children altogether.

In 1866 the Beggs’s youngest child, Gertude, was born in Ireland during their stay there.

The photograph album contains many portraits of the Beggs’s relatives and friends from Ireland, presumably people Frank Beggs and his family met at the time of their 1860s visit.

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Wikitree:

Hugh Lyons Montgomery Beggs (1815 – 1885)

06 Friday Jan 2023

Posted by in Beggs, Great great Aunt Rose's photograph album

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My great great aunt Rose’s photograph album has a picture of Hugh Beggs (1815 – 1885), her husband’s uncle.

Hugh Lyons Montgomery Beggs was born 15 June 1815 in County Dublin, Ireland, fifth son of a Linen Hall linen-factor (dealer, chapman) named Francis Beggs (1766 – 1839), of The Grange, Portmarnock, Dublin, and his second wife Clamina Lyons née Montgomery (1786 – 1821).

Hugh’s brothers Francis, George, and his sister Sophia, emigrated to Victoria, Australia, on the Statesman, arriving in March 1850.

Hugh followed his brothers and sister three years later on the Africa, arriving in Melbourne on 16 April 1853.

In that year, Hugh Beggs, in partnership with a man called Precious Willan (1812 – 1900), purchased the Bushy Creek property of John Kidd, near Glenthompson in Western Victoria.

In 1860 Beggs bought out his partner and expanded the property from 8,000 to 14,700 acres. Bushy Creek remained in the Beggs family for 125 years. 

On 27 April 1853, shortly after his arrival, Hugh, then thirty-eight years old, married Elizabeth Smith (c. 1830 – 1864), twenty three, in St James’s Church, Melbourne.

At St. James's Church, Melbourne, on the 27th inst., by the Rev. George Studdart, Hugh Lyons Montgomery Beggs, Esq., of Malahide, County Dublin, to Elizabeth Smith, second daughter of Richard Horner Smith, Esq., late of Tullaghcop, County Meath, Ireland.

They had five children:

  • Catherine Beggs (1854 – 1939)
  • Rose Ann (Beggs) Wood (1856-1932)
  • Francis Beggs (1858 – 1919)
  • Jane Frances (Beggs) Dodds (1860 – 1934)
  • Martha Florence Beggs (1864 – 1867)

Elizabeth died at the age of thirty-four on 1 August 1864 at Bushy Creek, two months after the birth of her daughter Martha.

The following year on 23 Mar 1865 at Bushy Creek Hugh married again, at Bushy Creek, to Lavinia Mary Eugenia Heney (c. 1839 – 1925). She was twenty-five; he was forty-nine.

BEGGS—HENEY.—On the 23rd March, at his residence, Bushy Creek station, Wickliffe, by the Rev. David Kaye, Hugh Lyons Montgomery Beggs, Esq., to Lavinia Mary Eugenia, fourth daughter of the late William Godwin Heney, Esq., of Dublin.

They had six children:

  • Sophia Beggs (1866 – 1866)
  • Lavinia Beggs (1868 – 1869)
  • Sophia Montgomery Grattan (Beggs) Champion de Crespigny (1870 – 1936)
  • Hugh Lyons Montgomery Beggs (~1872 – 1949)
  • Matilda Cairns Beggs (1876 – 1969)
  • William Goodwin Beggs (1878 – 1957)

Hugh Beggs died on 13 November 1885 at the age of seventy at Bushy Creek and was buried in the cemetery there. 

BEGGS.—On the 13th inst., at his residence, Bushy Creek, Glenthompson, Hugh Lyons Montgomery Beggs, aged 70, fifth son of the late Francis Beggs, The Grange, Portmarnock, Co. Dublin, Ireland.

Hugh Begg’s daughter Sophia was the second wife of my great great grandfather Philip de Crespigny (the bank manager).

Related posts:

See also: Bushy Creek, Victoria. (1901). The Pastoralists’ review : a journal and record of all matters affecting the pastoral and agricultural interests throughout Australasia Retrieved January 6, 2023, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-539017377

Wikitree:

Catherine Beggs (1854 – 1939)

05 Thursday Jan 2023

Posted by in Beggs, Great great Aunt Rose's photograph album

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The photograph album of my great-great aunt Rose Beggs has several portraits of the relatives of her husband Frank Beggs.

One, a cousin of Frank, is annotated ‘Catherine Beggs, Bushy Creek’.

Called Kitty, Catherine (1854 – 1939) was one of Frank’s cousins, the oldest daughter of Hugh Lyons Montgomery Beggs and his first wife Elizabeth née Smith.

Catherine’s birth notice appeared on 30 August 1854 in the Empire newspaper (Sydney):

July 27, at Bushby [sic] Creek, Geelong, the wife of Hugh Lyons Montgomery Beggs, Esq., of a daughter.

Hugh Beggs married Elizabeth Smith in Melbourne on 27 April 1853.  The Argus of 29 April 1853 has:

At St. James's Church, Melbourne, on the 27th inst., by the Rev. George Studdart, Hugh Lyons Montgomery Beggs, Esq., of Malahide, County Dublin, to Elizabeth Smith, second daughter of Richard Horner Smith, Esq., late of Tullaghcop, County Meath, Ireland.

In 1853, the year of his marriage, Hugh Beggs purchased the Bushy Creek property of John Kidd, near Glenthompson in Western Victoria. It remained in the Beggs family for 125 years.

Catherine’s mother Elizabeth died in 1864, when Catherine was ten. Her father Hugh remarried the next year.

One of Catherine’s half-sisters was Sophia Montgomery Grattan Beggs, the second wife of my great great grandfather, Philip de Crespigny, a bank manager.

Catherine never married. At the time of her death, on 20 October 1939, she was living in Hawthorn with her niece, Queenie Wood, the daughter of her sister Rose (Annie). She was buried in Box Hill cemetery.

 From the Argus 23 October 1939:

BEGGS.—On the 20th October, at Carboona, Riversdale road, Hawthorn, Katherine (Kitty), eldest daughter of the late Hugh Lyons Montgomery Beggs, Bushy Creek, Glenthompson, aged 85 years. (Privately interred, Box Hill Cemetery.)
BEGGS.—On the 20th October (suddenly), at Carboona, Hawthorn, Catherine, eldest daughter of the late Hugh Lyons Montgomerie and Elizabeth Beggs of Bushy Creek Estate, Glenthompson, loved aunt of Eileen (Mrs. Gordon Langridge).

The photograph was taken by Stewart & Co at 217 & 219 Bourke Street East. The company operated at these premises from 1881 to 1889.

The photograph shows Catherine Beggs posed in half-profile. She is dressed in the fashion of the early 1880s, firmly corseted, with a very small bustle. Her hair, parted in the middle, seems to end in a small bun. 

Lenore Frost writes in Dating Family Photos 1850-1920: “From late 1870s skirts were no longer full, but rather sheath-like with a train until about 1882 when they again expanded into a bustle. The bustle of the eighties was at times even larger than that of the seventies, reaching its maximum size between 1886 and 1888.”

Catherine’s bustle does not look large suggesting the photograph is from earlier in the decade.

Catherine appears to be wearing a coat-basque, a long, coat-like bodice that fully encased the torso and often extended into coat-tails resembling the back of a man’s frock coat; the coat-basque was extremely fashionable during the 1880s. In the early part of the decade waists were fairly long.

The pleated ruffle at the hem is typical of the early 1880s. The use of gauging, (pleating) was a notable decorative feature between 1880 and 1882. The asymmetrical line is a feature of the early part of the 1880s and apparently swathes of contrasting fabric across the abdomen is a peculiarity of 1882. 

Catherine’s hair, plainly dressed and close to the head with a centre part and small bun is typical of the early 1880s.

Related post:

References

Wikitree: Catherine Beggs (1854 – 1939)

Philip Champion Crespigny born 4 January 1850

04 Wednesday Jan 2023

Posted by in CdeC Australia, Great great Aunt Rose's photograph album

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My great great grandfather Philip Champion de Crespigny was born on 4 January 1850 in St. Malo, Brittany. He was the son of Philip Robert Champion de Crespigny, who later became a police magistrate and goldfields warden in Australia, and his wife Charlotte Frances née Dana. Philip junior was the second of their five children.

With his parents Philip emigrated to Australia, arriving in 1852.

Philip Champion de Crespigny had a long career with the Bank of Victoria from 1866, and he became the bank’s General Manager in 1916. Early in his career, however, he resigned from the bank to travel in the Pacific islands with his cousin George Dana.

On 18 April 1871 P.C. Crespigny sailed on the cutter ‘Gem‘ from Melbourne for Port Resolution, Tanna Island, in the New Hebrides group.

On 28 July 1871 George Dana’s two partners, James Bell and William Ross, were murdered by natives on Tanna island. George Dana gave evidence at the inquest and conducted the burial service. Philip Crespigny is not mentioned in reports, perhaps because was not on Tanna at the time. Many years later he recalled to his grandson Philip George de Crespigny (1906 – 2001) the uneasy feeling of being moored in the evening on a small ship just offshore, with a strong sense of hostile eyes in the jungle a short distance away.

Port Resolution, Tanna, from A year in the New Hebrides, Loyalty Islands, and New Caledonia by F. A. Campbell (1873) opposite page 32 retrieved though archive.org

With his cousin George, and Henry Bell (brother of James who was murdered), Philip Crespigny, age 21, is recorded on the passenger list of the Gem when it returned from New Caledonia to Melbourne on 4 October 1871.

Philip decided that the life of an island trader was not for him and decided to return to the bank. He regarded himself as very fortunate in being allowed to rejoin, for it was a general rule that a man who had left that service should not be employed again.

Philip presented his sister Rose and his mother with photograph albums. The albums include portraits of Philip as a young man.

abt 1872
abt 1877

One portrait was taken at the studios of J. Botterill in Melbourne between 1869 and 1874 and the other by Bardwell studio in Ballarat, possibly at the time of his marriage to Annie Chauncy in 1877. The studio of J. Botterill was at 19 Collins Street from 1869 and moved to the Bee-Hive Chambers, Elizabeth Street in 1874, the second copy of the portrait is a reprint of the first taken in the early 1870s.

Philip died on 11 March 1927 in Melbourne and was buried in Brighton Cemetery.

Related posts:

Wikitree: Philip Champion de Crespigny (1850 – 1927)

The wedding of Rose and Frank Beggs 3 Feb 1876

03 Tuesday Jan 2023

Posted by in Beggs, CdeC Australia, Great great Aunt Rose's photograph album, Trove Tuesday, Wedding

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My great great aunt Helen Rosalie Champion Crespigny, called Rose, was born on 15 October 1858 at Daisy Hill, later known as Amherst, near Talbot, Victoria to Philip Champion Crespigny and Charlotte née Dana, the youngest of their five children.

On 3 February 1876 she married Francis Beggs in Ararat by license, according to the rites of the Church of England. Rose was 17 and her father provided his written consent to the marriage. Rose lived in Ararat, where her father was the Police Magistrate. Francis Beggs was 25, a squatter living at Eurambeen. Eurambeen is about 40 kilometers south-east of Ararat.

Marriage certificate of Francis Beggs and Helen Rosalie Champion Crespigny

From the Melbourne Argus of 9 February 1876:

BEGGS-CRESPIGNY. — On the 3rd inst., at Christ Church, Ararat, by the Rev. Canon Homan, Francis Beggs, eldest son of Francis Beggs, Esq., of Eurambeen, to Helen Rosalie, third daughter of P. C. Crespigny, Esq., P.M., Ararat.

[The marriage notice seems to be in error. The Anglican Church in Ararat was then known as Trinity Church, later Holy Trinity.]

Photographs from the albums of Rose Beggs née Champion Crespigny and Charlotte Champion Crespigny née Dana. The annotations are

The photograph album compiled by Rose Beggs includes photographs of them taken at the time of their wedding. The photographer was Johnstone, O’Shannessy & Co. of 3 Bourke Street, Melbourne. Perhaps they travelled to Melbourne after the wedding and had their photographs taken then as a memento. Or perhaps a photographer from the studio was visiting Ararat at the time.

Frank died in 1921. Rose Beggs died on 28 March 1937 in North Brighton,Victoria. They had no children.

From the Argus 29 March 1937: 

DEATHS. 
BEGGS -On the 28th March at her residence St Marnocks, Hampton street, North Brighton, Helen Rosalie, widow of Francis Beggs, of St Marnocks, Beaufort.

From the Argus 6 April 1937:

BEAUFORT.-The death occurred at North Brighton of Mrs. Helen Rosalie Beggs, widow of the late Mr. Francis Beggs, the original owner of St. Marnock's Estate, Beaufort. She lived in the district many years and was closely associated with the local branch of the Australian Women's National League. The burial took place in the family burial ground at Eurambeen Estate.

Related posts:

Wikitree:

George Dana 1849 – 1872

01 Sunday Jan 2023

Posted by in Dana, Great great Aunt Rose's photograph album

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The photograph album of my great-great aunt Rose includes many people whose portraits I had never seen. One of these is of her first cousin George Dana (1849—1872), who died accidentally 150 years ago on the remote Pacific island of Tanna.

George Kinnaird Dana, christened George Jamieson Dana, was born in 1849 in Dandenong, Victoria, fourth of the five children of Henry Dana, commandant of the Native Police, and his wife Sophia Cole Hamilton née Walsh. Henry was the brother of Rose’s mother Charlotte.

In 1852, when George was three years old, his father died of pneumonia, and his mother Sophia moved to Tasmania. In 1854 George’s older brother, William, died in Launceston. Henry’s brother—George’s uncle William—discovered that Sophia and the children were living in poverty and distress, and he arranged to have them provided with food and financial help. [At that time William was a Victoria Police Inspector at Kilmore, sixty kilometres north of Melbourne.]

In 1856, two years after Sophia was rescued by Uncle William, they were married in Launceston. She was 29; he was 30. The family returned to Victoria, and a son was born—half-brother to George. He died in infancy.

In 1860, when George was ten years old, his mother Sophia died of tuberculosis.

For about two years, from 1863 to 1865, George and his brother Augustus attended Mr Morrison’s College in Geelong, later known as Geelong College.

On leaving school George was employed as a clerk in the Bank of Victoria in Melbourne. He appears to have enjoyed football; he played for the South Yarra Football Club [following the code now known as Australian Rules].

About 1867 or 1868 George left the Bank of Victoria with the intention of setting up as a trader in the islands of the South Pacific. Within a year or so he had established a trading firm in the New Hebrides group (present day Vanuatu) in partnership with two young men: James Fraser Bell and William Alister Ross. His partnership with James Bell gave him a share in a small cutter, the Gem 52 tons, and he took up land on the island of Tanna to establish a plantation for the production of copra. [Copra is the dried meat or kernel of the coconut, from which coconut oil is extracted.]

Port Resolution, Tanna, from A year in the New Hebrides, Loyalty Islands, and New Caledonia by F. A. Campbell (1873) opposite page 32 retrieved though archive.org

On 28 July 1871 Bell and Ross were murdered by Tanna tribesmen. Australian newspapers published several reports of this, with the Melbourne Leader and the Geelong Advertiser of 31 August carrying a full account of an inquest held immediately afterwards, with statements from George Dana and several other witnesses, including natives whose reports were taken by translation.

Bell and Ross had been on their way to a plantation owned by a man called Henry Lewin, guided there by a native employee. A group of five tribesmen offered to take over, killed the two young men, and stole their clothes and revolvers. The five murderers were described and named, but nothing more could be done: they were members of a tribe known to be troublesome, and there was no military or police presence to make arrests or undertake a punitive expedition.

On 20 December 1872 George Kinnaird Dana also died tragically, of tetanus, contracted when he accidentally shot himself in the leg.

A traveller passing through, named Frederick Campbell, who in 1873 published an account of his journeys, described George’s death:

Port Resolution, Tana,
December, 1872.
AFTER a stay of two months at Kwamera, I went round by boat to visit Mr. and Mrs. Neilson at Port Resolution. The station here occupies a fine position on the banks overhanging the bay, and commands a very fine view towards the lofty Mount Mirren. The general aspect of the country is much the same as that around Kwamera, only the land is more flat and the forests are more free of underwood. There are two traders’ establishments here, the occupants of them being engaged principally in the manufacture of cobra from cocoanuts and the collection of sulphur. Until lately one of these establishments was in charge of a young man named Dana. He was one of that unfortunate expedition that left Melbourne some years ago to settle upon this island. Two of them—Messrs. Ross and Bell—were killed by the natives ; and now Dana, poor fellow, has met his death here too. Going out one Sunday alone, with his gun, it went off accidentally, inflicting a very bad wound in the leg. He was conveyed home by natives, and Mr. Neilson went down to attend to him. For some days he seemed to be in a fair way of recovery, but then, quite unexpectedly, he took lockjaw, and shortly afterwards died. It was sad to see a young man like that dying alone, on a heathen island, far from his friends and relatives, with no one to care for him except the kind-hearted missionary, near whose station the accident happened to occur.
Mission cottage at Port Resolution from “Nineteen years in Polynesia: missionary life, travels, and researches in the islands of the Pacific” by George Turner (1861) page 133 retrieved through archive.org

An announcement of George Dana’s death was published in the Melbourne Argus just over three months later, on Tuesday 1 April 1873:

DANA.– On the 20th December, 1872, at Port Resolution, Tanna, of an accidental gunshot wound, George Kinnaird Dana, aged 23 years and seven months, the last surviving son of the late Captain H E P Dana.

Related posts

Wikitree:

Photograph albums from great great aunt Rose

23 Friday Dec 2022

Posted by in Beggs, CdeC Australia, photographs, Uncategorized

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A few weeks ago I received an email from my father’s cousin, the son of my great aunt Nancy Movius nee Champion de Crespigny (1910-2003), offering me the custody of several collections of photographs: 

“We have unearthed three Victorian photo albums that my mother seems to have brought from Adelaide with her.  They came to light when we moved out of our house by the seaside, and are filled with deC's and others among our forebears. We are no longer living in space sufficient to store them safely. You should have them for your archive. It would be a shame not to have them preserved and I am happy to ship them to you. Please say you want them and furnish an address.

The three albums have arrived, a most exciting event. They include more than 200 photographs, most of them cartes de visite, with some cabinet cards.

Pages of cartes de visite. Not all the photos are identified.
Cabinet cards of Rose and Frank Beggs

Cartes de visite, first produced in the 1850s, were small photographs. They were usually made of an albumen print, with the thin paper photograph mounted on a thicker paper card. Cabinet cards, of a larger format, date from the 1870s.

One the albums is inscribed “Rose from her brother Loo”. Loo or Loup was the pet name for my great great grandfather Philip Champion de Crespigny (1850-1927). Rose (1858-1937) was his youngest sister. She married Frank Beggs. This album has an index to people in the photos, and my great aunt Nancy has also annotated some of the photographs.

The second album has no inscriptions nor annotations.

The third album has been partly annotated by Nancy, who refers to the album as belonging to Charlotte Frances Champion de Crespigny nee Dana. Charlotte was my third great grandmother, the mother of Philip and Rose.

Rose Beggs nee CdeC on her wedding day
Charlotte CdeC nee Dana
Philip CdeC (Loo)

I think that Rose gave the albums to Nancy, her great niece.

Most of the photographs are new to me. It is marvellous to be able to see photographs of people I had previously only known as names. I look forward to sharing the photographs, and perhaps some of the stories that go with them, in forthcoming posts.

Related posts:

Wikitree:

Jane Bailey Snell née Cross 1866 – 1930

17 Monday Oct 2022

Posted by in Carngham, Cross, Cross SV, photographs, Snake Valley

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Several of the great great grandfathers of my husband Greg, attracted by the lure of instant wealth on the goldfields, came to Australia in the 1850s and 1860s.

One was James Cross (1828–1882), from Liverpool, who married a Dublin girl named Ellen Murray (1837–1901) at Buninyong near Ballarat on 28 March 1856.

James and Ellen moved to Carngham from Green Hill at Durham Lead, a few miles south of Ballarat, after the birth of Frederick James Cross (1857–1929), their oldest son. Their second child Ellen (1859–1903), was one of ten more children, all born at Carngham, the youngest in 1878.

Carngham, 27 km west of Ballarat and 4 km north of Snake Valley, was a gold-rush settlement, surveyed and proclaimed a township in 1855. The Ballarat Star reported the rush to Carngham in November 1857; the Cross family’s move from the Green Hill alluvial diggings was probably partly in response to this news.

James Cross died in Carngham from dysentery on 31 January 1882. His youngest child was just three years old.

A photograph of Ellen Cross and ten of her children (Thomas had died young) taken about 1890.

Jane Bailey Cross, the sixth child of James and Ellen, was born on 3 August 1866. She is seated on the right of the above photograph.

On 26 December 1895 Jane Bailey Cross married George Snell at the Anglican Holy Trinity Church, Carngham. A marriage notice placed in the Melbourne Age 25 January 1896 reads:

SNELL—CROSS – On the 26th December, at Holy Trinity Church, Carngham, by Rev. M.D. Williams, George, youngest son of late Richard Snell, to Jane Bailey, daughter of late James Cross, both of Carngham.

Jane Bailey Cross and George Snell on their wedding day.
Photograph kindly provided by a great grand daughter of Jane and George Snell.
Jane Bailey Snell, photograph in the collection of her great grandaughter

George Snell was a Snake Valley butcher.

Jane and George had six children:

  • Marjorie Merle 1898–1959
  • Richard Murray 1900–1975
  • Reginald Cross 1902–1959
  • Mona Robina 1904–1905
  • Sydney Oswald (Peter) 1905–1946
  • Dorothy Isabel (Dorrie) 1905–2001

On a visit to Ballarat in 1993 Greg and I were delighted to meet Dorrie Brumby and her husband John at their home in Snake Valley. Dorrie was kind and warm; John, joking that he was not John Brumby the Leader of the Opposition in Victoria, showed us his collection of home-made windmills.

Jane Snell died on 3 March 1930 at Carngham and was buried in Carngham Cemetery near her parents and her brother Frederick. George Snell died in 1944.

The grave of Jane Bailey Snell and her husband George in Carngham cemetery photographed in 2011. The grave is next to that of Frederick James Cross (Jane’s brother) and three along from James Cross and his wife Ellen (Jane’s parents).

Recently I was contacted by a great granddaughter of Jane who shared the two photographs of Jane and photographs of other family members. She wrote “It has always seemed like something of a lottery in families as to who ends up with the photos so sharing images seems like the sensible thing to do.” I am very grateful to members of our extended family who help to preserve our history by sharing their photographs.

Related posts

Wikitree: Jane Bailey (Cross) Snell (1866 – 1930)

The Mallee kids

10 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by in Carwarp, Cross, photographs

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A useful source of information about my family is an album of photographs that came to me from my parents-in-law Peter Young (1920 – 1988) and Marjorie (1920 – 2003).

A few years before he died Peter spent an afternoon going through the photos with me, explaining where they were taken and naming the people in them. I wrote this information on the backs of them, and I’m very glad that I did, for without this it would be very difficult now to work out who was who. Even so there are gaps. I can’t identify all the people in every photograph.

The photos below are of Peter’s cousins, who lived at Carwarp, near Mildura. He called them the Mallee kids.

Peter’s mother Elizabeth Young nee Cross (1900 – 1949) was one of ten children. One of her older brothers, George Murray Cross (1890 – 1962) served in World War I, was wounded in France and returned home in 1917. In 1918 he married Elsie Agnes Brown (1889 – 1959).

When they married George and Elsie Cross moved first to Ouyen then to Ginquam West, close to Mildura. Not long afterwards, they took up a wheat and sheep farm at Carwarp, about 30 kilometres south.

The Mallee dry and harsh, tough to farm, and many Soldier Settlers couldn’t make a go of it. George Cross, however, ran his farm there until near to his death in 1962 when his son Alex  took it over.

One of George’s grand daughters remembers the farm was

640 acres & dry land cropping. Wheat & sheep as l recall. He apparently said that if it were irrigated, he could grow anything. It’s now a winery !

Some of the frustration of Soldiers Settlers can be detected from a letter George Cross wrote to the Soldiers’ Settlement Board in 1923: “My wife and family left here on the 10 January last as I did not consider that the camp we were living in was fit for any woman to live in. I have since pulled it down and there is no possibility of their return until such time as someone at your end comes out of their trance and gets the job done.” His wife and children rejoined George Cross at the end of the year.

The Cross’s farm was 640 acres, 1 square mile (just under 260 hectares), the size of the average Soldiers Settler farm. It was new country, not previously cultivated.

In 1929 George Cross gave evidence to a committee looking at the size of viable farms (see below).

In 1935 an inspector of George Cross’s wheat and sheep farm noted “ the eldest boy assists with all the farm work”. Jim Cross was then 16 years old. “The Limits of Hope”, a history by Marilyn Lake of post-WW1 Soldier Settlement, notes that the work of grown-up children often contributed significantly to a farm’s success.

George and Elsie Cross had five children:

  • James Murray (Jim) 1919 -2007 born Ouyen
  • Alex Watson (Alex) 1921 – 2005 born Mildura
  • Caroline Elsie (Carol known as Elsie when young) 1923 – 2017
  • Frederick George (Fred) 1924 – 2003
  • Beryl Lillian (Beryl) 1934 – 2006

The following photos are from the collection of my father-in-law

cross jim and alec 1923

Jim 3 years 10 months, Alex 2 years; 1923

Mallee kids wood carting

Jim & Alex carting wood Christmas 1924

Elsie and Fred Christmas 1924

Elsie and Fred Christmas 1924

cross fred 10 months 1925

Fred Cross age 10 months in 1925

“This was taken at a Birthday party last August. I put a mark near Jim & Alex. I am in the shade of the tree with Fred in my arms & Elsie is along side of me.” Caption presumably by George Cross. Fred was born September 1924 and looks about 2 in the photo so I think the photo dates from August 1926. Jim would have been 7, Alex 5 and Elsie 3.

mallee kids 1

The Mallee kids: Jim Elsie, Fred and Alex Cross

mallee kids 2 dam

“This was taken from the lower end of the dam looking towards the house.”

mallee kids 5 dam and tank

“This is rather a good view, only the top of the mill is cut off. Better luck next time”

mallee kids 4 building

“Do you recognise this building?” I am not sure why FJ or Ann Jane Cross should recognise the building – was it moved from Homebush to Carwarp?

mallee kids 3 tank and mill

“This is a good view of the mill & tank. The three boys up the ladder. Alex at the top.”

cross george murray pioneer 1929 06 21 pg 8

“HOME MAINTENANCE” AREA FOR FARMERS (1929, June 21). Murray Pioneer and Australian River Record (Renmark, SA : 1913 – 1942), p. 8. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article109383159

Sources and further reading

  • For the Empire. Welcome to Corporal George Cross (1917, November 7). Avoca Free Press and Farmers’ and Miners’ Journal (Vic. : 1900; 1914 – 1918), p. 3. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article151687264
  • Wedding Bells. Cross – Brown (1918, July 17). Avoca Free Press and Farmers’ and Miners’ Journal (Vic. : 1900; 1914 – 1918), p. 3. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article151682981
  • “HOME MAINTENANCE” AREA FOR FARMERS (1929, June 21). Murray Pioneer and Australian River Record (Renmark, SA : 1913 – 1942), p. 8. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article109383159
  • Public Record Office Victoria
    • File of G. M. Cross, DSL 217. Cross to CSB, 22 March 1923. VPRS 749, item 69, quoted in Marilyn Lake, The Limits of Hope: Soldier Settlement in Victoria 1915–38 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1987) p. 155.
    • VPRS 5357, P0, unit 2667 : Land Selection And Correspondence Files 01695/198.6 GEORGE MURRAY CROSS THOMAS LANIGAN WILLIAM LEAMON CARWARP WEST 1 1A 695–2–0
    • VPRS 5714, P0, unit 2409 : Land Selection Files, Section 12 Closer Settlement Act 1938 [including obsolete and top numbered Closer Settlement and WW1 Discharged Soldier Settlement files] C11768 GEORGE M CROSS CARWARP WEST 1 1A 695–2–0
    • Will and probate VPRS 28/ P4  unit 2858,  item 595/791 and VPRS 7591/ P3  unit 477,  item 595/791 George Murray CROSS Date of grant: 23 May 1963; Date of death: 12 Aug 1962; Occupation: Farmer; Residence: Carwarp
  • Marilyn Lake, The Limits of Hope: Soldier Settlement in Victoria 1915–38 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1987) pp.155, 164

A picnic in the Ballarat Botanical Gardens

14 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by in 52 ancestors, Ballarat, Cross, photographs, Young

≈ 3 Comments

I don’t have a favourite photograph but I appreciate the photograph collection of my parents-in-law. I can remember sitting down with my father-in-law Peter Young (1920-1988) and asking him who was who in his collection of photographs. I noted down his answers in pencil on the back of each photo. Because we had that conversation, I have been able to work out the identity of many of those pictured. But despite these annotations there are still many puzzles.

91 2 Peter about 1924 Ballarat Botanic Gardens

Peter Young (1920-1988) sitting on a lion at the Ballarat Botanical Gardens about 1924

2 200 Peter and Elizabeth Young at Ballarat Gardens

Peter (wearing a tie) and Elizabeth Young nee Cross (wearing a striped dress) sitting on a cannon opposite the Ballarat Botanical Gardens in about 1924

2 197 3 73 perhaps Uncle Fred and Maggie

stamped “3 73” on the back, Peter identified this as perhaps Uncle Fred and Maggie. Uncle Fred could have been Fredrick Beswick Cross (1893-1959), brother of Elizabeth, father of Ethel and Freda Cross who might be the two small girls pictured picnicking. But it could also be Frederick Fletcher (1890-1967) who married Margaret Cross (1897-1926), Elizabeth’s sister and Peter’s aunt.

20 02 3 73 Peter and

A picnic near the Ballarat Botanical Gardens about 1924. Elizabeth young nee Cross (1900-1949) is wearing a striped dress. Her son Peter is the small boy seated wearing a tie. The older woman in a black dress is probably Anne Jane Cross nee Plowright (1862-1930), Elizabeth’s mother. I suspect the man in the hat might be Frederick James Cross (1857-1929), Elizabeth’s father but I am not sure. The two little girls might be Ethel and Freda Cross, born 1919 and 1920, Peter’s cousins and about the same age. I am not sure about the other two women, though the woman sitting by the tree is most likely one of Elizabeth’s sisters.

 

The last three photographs were all developed from the same roll of film based on the stamp of “3 73” on the back. I assume they were taken on the same day. Perhaps some cousins also have photographs taken on that day and can better identify those pictured.

The locations of these photographs are still recognisable. Children still sit on the lion and have their photos taken when visiting the Ballarat Botanical Gardens.