Travels with My Ancestors #17: Josephine Eather and John Creek

This is the continuing story of the family and descendants of convicts Thomas Eather and Elizabeth Lee in Australia. You can find the very first post in this series here. That one deals with my journey to discover Elizabeth’s beginnings in Lancaster; following posts explore the Eather roots in Kent, then the journeys of both on convict ships to NSW, where they met and created a family and life together.

This chapter in the Eather family story is about my great-grandparents, Josephine Eather (1862 -1942) and John Lamrock Creek (1857 – 1924).

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The Bush Nurse

West Maitland, NSW

In 1919, Josephine Creek (née Eather) received an official-looking envelope. It didn’t look like a bill—the kind of mail she was used to receiving. Inside were two thank you letters and a certificate, the second signed by the NSW Governor, the Premier and the Minister of Public Health.[1] When she’d read them, she carefully packed them away to keep.

Why had a fifty-seven year old mother of eleven, unaccustomed to public attention or recognition, received these messages from such prominent people?

~

When the Great War (1914-1918) ended, men and women who had served in the military or as nurses began the long trek home. With them came rumours of a deadly illness that was striking people down with frightening ferocity across Europe. Across Australia, some veterans returned with more than their injuries, kitbags and uniforms: they unwittingly also carried the virus that people began calling the Spanish Flu.

In the Maitland papers, Josephine (often known as ‘Jo’) no doubt read about the ratification of the longed-for peace treaty with Germany; but also the unwelcome news of rising influenza cases. There were long queues for the inoculation clinic at the Town Hall. Locals exchanged worried remarks about this invisible enemy. Wearied by four long years of war, worry, and loss, here was a new threat to contend with.

The government brought in travel restrictions, cancelled public events, closed schools and other institutions. Mask wearing in public became compulsory. [2] An Influenza Administrative Committee in the Hunter region managed and organised the local responses. They even ordered the railway station be fumigated. But four Maitland cases were diagnosed in March, the sufferers quarantined in their homes.

With more cases likely, an infectious ward was needed, and the Maitland Benevolent Home (known as Benhome) was repurposed, with existing residents of the home relocated to the Technical College building.[3]

What could she do to help? She was a woman of action, someone who’d not easily watch from the sidelines. When she heard the callout for people to care for those diagnosed with this troubling virus, she responded.

She joined a team of hospital and community nurses, those willing to work with the sick. She had worked as a bush nurse for several years, visiting homes, caring for people discharged from hospital, assisting with births and patient care in their homes. [4] She had the skills and experience to assist in this crisis.

With such a highly infectious disease, the work carried the risk of getting influenza herself. The hours were long and the work physically tiring: washing bedpans, scrubbing floors, cleaning medical equipment, feeding and bathing patients, changing bed linen, and many other tasks to keep a sick person clean and comfortable. She’d done it all before and could do it again now.

The death of young Maitland trainee nurse Molly Carr, struck down by flu in mid-June, brought other local women forward to help. At Maitland hospital, Matron Skullthorpe conducted education sessions on home nursing to more than fifty women who volunteered to assist when a shortage of nurses meant extra hands were needed.[5]

The Maitland Mercury gave daily reports of the donations that came in from the community for the influenza ward: eggs, butter, meals for the nursing staff, household goods, cloth to make masks and gowns.[6]

For several months it was all people could talk about. The energy that had kept everyone going during the war years was channelled into influenza relief. Of course, fear of the virus meant some people believed the silly ‘cures’ advertised in local papers, such as gargles or eucalyptus oil. Jo and her fellow nurses knew better.

By September the pandemic was contained. Maitland had weathered the worst of it; Benhome ceased its function as isolation ward and its long-term residents returned to the home. Jo and her community could breathe a collective sigh of relief.

~

The certificate she received, signed by the Governor, stated:

Nurse Creek volunteered and worked in the District supervised by the Newcastle Influenza Committee in connection with the stamping out of the pandemic of Pneumonic Influenza (1919) and for caring for sufferers, and thereby rendered eminent service in the cause of humanity [7].

The letters from the Committee applauded the work done by volunteers and nurses:

The Committee desires to sincerely thank you for your splendid work in assisting those unable to help themselves during the recent serious Epidemic. This work was carried out under conditions which were always trying and often dangerous…The whole community is indebted to you for your noble efforts which undoubtedly saved many lives… Without your spontaneous and continued help the work could not have been carried on…It will gratify you to know that your assistance brought comfort and relief to many cases of deep and genuine distress…[8]

This was quite a moment for a woman who had previously served both family and community with little recognition for her work. She had stepped up to help in the crisis and could be proud of what she and others had collectively achieved. She kept that certificate, and the two thank-you letters signed by Mayoress Edith Cracknell, until she died; after which they were carefully preserved by her family.

Before the Pandemic

Like many others in the large Eather clan, she had strong links to two major rivers and their valleys: the Hunter and the Hawkesbury. Born in 1862 when her parents Robert and Ann were living in Newcastle, she was the middle child of thirteen.[9]

Her older sisters might have sometimes spoken sadly of their tiny brother Robert, who had been born and died before her arrival. When she was ten, her sister Lucretia was buried, dead before her third birthday. Jo had helped care for her other little brother and sisters, just as her older siblings had done for her. She knew all about the risks and dangers for babies and young children, being born and getting through childhood.

When Lucretia died, Robert and Ann were living at Sally Bottoms (Tennyson) in the Hawkesbury Valley, with nearby Howes’ Creek meandering past paddocks and bushland. Here they farmed their thirty acres; the children working too, while never missing an opportunity to roam and explore the neighbouring creek and bush when their chores were done.

There were plenty of jobs to keep them busy: chopping wood, fetching water, looking after the littlies, peeling potatoes or kneading bread dough in the kitchen with their mother. There were animals to care for: cows to milk, chickens to feed and eggs to collect.

At least some of the children went to school for a few years, learning to read, write and do basic sums, likely at the provisional school established in the 1870s.[10]

In between they went rabbiting, fishing for yabbies in the creek, swimming to cool off on a hot day. They shared the creeks and paddocks with eels, snakes, tortoises, goannas and many kinds of birds.

They may have come across cave paintings or axe grinding grooves in sandstone ledges across waterways, mysterious signs of the Dharug people who lived on this country before white settlers had arrived to put up fences.

It was a busy, crowded childhood with few comforts; but they learnt everyday skills they carried into adulthood.

~

When Jo was seventeen, she married John Creek in St Stephen’s Church, then ten years old, perched on its hill at Kurrajong.[11] Pausing a moment on the pathway to the little church, she’d have seen beautiful undulating fields laid out around her, cradled by blue-tinged mountains in the distance.

 Her new husband was a saddler, twenty-two years old, whose parents George Creek and Sarah Webb had emigrated twenty-five years earlier, as assisted immigrants from rural Cambridgeshire in England. They’d arrived in December 1854 on the ship General Hewitt, having packed their hopes for a better life into their trunks, stowed securely in the ship’s hold. [12]

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Married life

John was George and Sarah’s only son. After their wedding Jo lived with her new husband on the north side of the river, where their first baby was born in 1880.[13]

John worked as a saddler at North Richmond. Saddlery was a skilled and respected trade, as almost everyone needed his wares: saddles and bridles for horses, harnesses for bullock teams, other leather items such as belts. In his day to day work John used an array of specialised tools, saddle frames, and hides, surrounded by the rich smell of leather and the oils used to soften and nourish it. It was honest, satisfying work.

The next three children were baptised at St Marys.[14] John had either found work at a saddlery business there, or opened his own.

A township with a strong industrial base, St Marys had tanneries, sawmills, brick makers, blacksmiths and wheelwrights, all making use of local resources. The railway arrived in the 1860’s and encouraged further development in industries such as sawmilling and tanning. The well-known Bennett’s wagon building business incorporated a number of these trades and their wagons were used by timber getters, farmers, and builders.[15] A saddlery business was guaranteed to do well there. The Creeks could look forward to their future with optimism.

But by the late 1880s they were back in the Hawkesbury at Kurrajong, where seven more babies were born over a fifteen-year period.[16]

~

Just like her mother and grandmother before her, Jo’s adult life was dominated by childbirth and the care of children. All the practice she’d had as a young girl looking after her siblings came into its own.

Many of those babies were likely delivered by Sarah Howard, who lived at Little Wheeney Creek at Kurrajong. She was the district midwife, travelling on rough roads across the surrounding district, often late at night and in all weathers. Her arrival was always welcomed in homes where a labouring woman needed her expertise.[17]

 Mrs Howard’s heroic commitment to local women and their families may have planted a seed in Jo’s imagination that was to bear fruit in her later life. How wonderful, to be a nurse bringing care to patients suffering in homes too far from a doctor or unable to travel! Perhaps she longed to be able to make this kind of difference in people’s lives.

~

In an awful echo of her mother’s experience, she found herself beside a tiny grave dug for her third baby, Robert, who died in 1884, after just one year of life.[18] He was buried in the cemetery of St Stephen’s at Kurrajong, the same church where four years earlier, she’d stood at the altar to marry John. At least her little boy would lie in a beautiful place, with the peaceful surrounds of the churchyard, and clear piping calls of bellbirds floating down from nearby trees.

Eighteen years later, she returned to St Stephen’s for the funeral of another child, baby John (Jack) who died at three months, from convulsions brought on by whooping cough.[19] She’d had to endure the appalling sight of her baby struggling for each breath and the hooting sounds of his cough. Young life was so fragile. Despite her practiced hand with infants, there was nothing she could do to ease or prevent his death.

Who could have blamed her if, when registering the birth of her last baby Francis (Frank) a year later in 1903, she’d silently hoped that there’d be no more babies to fret and worry over.[20]

At least, back in the Hawkesbury again, she was nearby to comfort her mother when her father died in 1879.

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In 1901, Australia made the momentous move to Federation—no longer a collection of separate states, now under one national constitution. Of course, women were not allowed to vote in Federal elections (and in most state elections, for that matter) until 1902.  December 1903 was the first occasion on which Jo had the right to cast her vote. Finally, this was a franchise extended to most—but not all—women across the new nation. Indigenous women and men and people of ‘non-European’ backgrounds had to wait.

As she slipped her ballot paper into the box the first time, she’d have had a great deal to think about, including her children’s futures—especially her daughters. Perhaps their lives could be easier than her own.

Return to the Hunter

Around 1910, the family returned to Maitland. Australia had suffered an economic depression in the ‘jobless 90s’, and many were on the move, desperate to find work. If John’s saddlery business had slowed because of the downturn, he’d have struggled to make ends meet.

 An opportunity arose back in Maitland, to work at the prestigious Barden & Ribee Saddlery business in High Street.[21]  Jo could leave behind sad memories now associated with the Hawkesbury.

They moved to Station Street Homeville, in West Maitland (now known as Brooks Street, Telarah.)

It was during these years that she began her nursing career.

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In 1914 the cataclysm of the Great War erupted. Andrew Fisher, who was elected Prime Minister that year, voiced the opinion of many Australians that they should support Great Britain, when he declared that:

Australians [would] stand beside the mother country to help and defend her to our last man and our last shilling. [22]

Australians responded enthusiastically, with 416,809 enlisting for service, representing nearly 40% of the male population aged 18 to 44.[23]

None of the Creek boys signed up, though it was always a possibility. Would Jo have felt proud of her sons, if they had come home in uniform? Pride mixed with fear, perhaps—though to begin with, most people thought the war would be a short-lived affair. Cyril was a grocer, an important occupation during wartime—people always needed to buy food. Still, there was pressure to join up by some who believed all young men should ‘do their bit,’ even workers in key jobs.

The difficulties of wartime life included higher prices for essentials such as fuel and food. While there wasn’t formal rationing, trade embargoes and the government’s decision to send essential commodities to Britain resulted in shortages at home. Already a thrifty homemaker with a large family to feed, she had to further reduce the family’s consumption of items such as butter and meat. Newspapers and magazines were full of ‘austerity recipes’ with ideas on how to make food stretch further.

Many local women volunteered with the Red Cross, raising money, knitting socks, making cakes and jams, all of which were bundled up as ‘comfort packs’ to send to the boys at the front.

Through all this, she continued her nursing work.

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Once the war had ended and the flu pandemic brought under control in 1919, life settled down to a calmer pace. But in January 1924, John died of kidney disease and a heart condition which had been troubling him for over a year.[24] He was buried at Campbell’s Hill Cemetery, West Maitland.[25]

More sadness was in store for Jo: her sister Elvina died two years later in 1926; and in 1929 daughter Priscilla, aged forty-four.[26] In that same year another sister, Cecilia, known as Mother Mary de-Sales of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan, passed away at the age of eighty.[27] And in 1933, she was given the news of the death of her forty-two year old daughter Alma, who had moved to Victoria after her marriage.[28]

Australia was now in the throes of the Great Depression. Maitland, once a thriving, prosperous town built on an abundance of natural resources, suffered like the rest of the country, with high unemployment and hardship.

To make matters worse, in 1930 the Hunter River broke its banks in another flood, the worst since the previous century.[29] After the water receded, people spent long exhausting days sweeping mud from homes and shops, throwing out items onto huge rubbish piles, sorting through donations of clothing for flood victims. Just like the Hawkesbury of her youth, this river was both a giver of gifts and a deadly enemy.

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Another War

By 1939, Australia was once again embroiled in a world war. During her final years, she had to relive the anxieties of wartime. This time the government did introduce rationing, with the war raging in the Pacific as well as in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

As war broke out, Jo’s youngest son Frank was living in England, where he worked as a porter at London’s Australia House. He joined the Civil Defence Service as an air raid warden and had special training in dealing with any gas attacks.[30] Jo must have worried about him, especially when news of German bombing raids on London filled the papers and radio broadcasts.

In 1942 came the devastating news that grandson Harvey (‘Snow’) Newton, her daughter Florence’s eldest, was missing in action after the fall of Singapore to the Japanese. How on earth could she comfort her daughter, faced with such loss? They continued to hope for better news, but the anguish at not knowing Snow’s fate never left.

There was a price to be paid for a long life. By the time she died at the end of December that year, aged eighty, Jo had outlived seven of her siblings, her husband, and four of her children. She was at least spared the eventual understanding that her grandson Snow would never return.[31] She did not live to see the end of the war and the safe return of other grandsons who’d enlisted.

She was laid to rest near John at Campbell’s Hill cemetery.[32]

Witnesses to change

John and Josephine lived through tumultuous decades which ushered Australia into the modern era. Between them, they endured two major depressions, a world pandemic, two devastating world wars and numerous river floods. They witnessed the development of railways, motor vehicles, powered flight, telephone services, and saw Australia become a federated nation instead of a collection of British colonies.

Jo was among the first women in the British Empire with the right to cast her vote in federal and state elections.

They were ordinary people, living through extraordinary times. The legacy they left was not monetary wealth. Their names and photos did not appear in newspapers or history books. Still, their contributions to family and community were real and irreplaceable. Josephine’s certificate of thanks from the Governor and were testimony to that.

~

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[1] Copies in family collection[2] Janice Wilson, ‘Spanish Flu’, 2022, Maitland Stories at  https://maitlandstories.com.au/stories/spanish-flu, accessed 7 June 2024[3] Janice Wilson, ‘Spanish Flu’[4] Josephine Creek 1913 in Australian Electoral Commission; Canberra, Australia; Electoral Rolls 1903-1980, Homeville, Maitland NSW. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 10 December 2022; Maitland Mercury 12 July 1919 Via Trove, accessed 11 Dec 2022; Janice Wilson,‘Spanish Flu’ https://maitlandstories.com.au/stories/spanish-flu, accessed 11 Dec 2022[5] Maitland Weekly Mercury (NSW 1894-1931), 5 April 1919 p7. Via Trove https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/128058576#, accessed Sept 17, 2023[6] Maitland Daily Mercury, (NSW 1894-1939), 12 July 1919 p5 Via Trove, accessed 28 Sept 2023[7] Department of Public Health Certificate for Influenza Workers (copy in family collection)[8] Alderman Edith B Cracknell and Influenza Relief Committee to Josephine Creek, Maitland, July 1919 (copy in family collection )[9] Birth of Josephine Eather, reg 1862/ 10963, Aust Birth Index 1788-1922, via Ancestry.com accessed 28 Sept 2023^[10] Michelle Nichols, Pictorial History of Hawkesbury, Kingsclear Books, 2004, p35[11] Marriage of Josephine Eather and John Creek, 1879/4267, Australia Marriage Index 1788-1950. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 17 Sept 2023 June 2024 [12] State Records NSW, Persons on bounty ships to Sydney, Newcastle and Moreton bay (Board’s Immigrant Lists) Series 5317 Reel 2466, Item [4/4937] Via Ancestry.com, accessed 15 Dec 2022 [13] NSW Birth Certificate for John Creek, 1857/11943 Certified copy issued 12 Sept 1988 [14] Australian Birth Index John Lamrock Creek 1857/11943; Hannah Creek 1860/11726; Sarah Ann Creek 1866/14287 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 Sept 2023[15] Lorraine Stacker, Penrith & St Marys: A Pictorial History Kingsclear Books 2013, pp110-117 [16] NSW Birth Reg Cyril John Creek 1887/24289; Alma Creek 1891/30840; Isabella Creek 1893/31587; Florence May Creek 1896/16077; Ina Myrtle Creek 1899/15510; John Creek 1902/6579; Francis John Creek 1903/6619/
 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 Sept 2023[17] Nola O’Connor ‘Sarah Alexander (Howard) 1860-1948’ in The Millstone, Journal of Kurrajong-Comleroy Historical Society Inc, Vol 10 Issue 3, May-June 2012, p8 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/114298699/augustus-john-creek: accessed 21 September 2023; Maintained by Frances France (contributor 47744340). [18] Robert George Creek in Australian Death Index 1787-1985, reg 1884/10080. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 Sept 2023 [19] John Cleave Creek in Australian Death Index 1787-1985, reg 1902/2879 [20] Frank Creek in Australian Birth Index 1788-1922, reg 1903/6619 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 June 2024 [21] The Maitland Daily Mercury (NSW: 1894 – 1939) 15 Dec 1915 p2 Via Trove, 20 accessed Sept 2023 [22] Department of Veterans Affairs, ANZAC Portal, at Australia’s responses to World War I – Anzac Portal (dva.gov.au) Accessed 20 June 2024 [23] Australian War Memorial Enlistment statistics, First World War | Australian War Memorial (awm.gov.au) [24] Death of John Creek 1924 in State Records Collection; Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia; Indexes to deceased estate files; Archive Series: NRS 13341; Series: “Pre A” Series (1923-1939); Reel Number: 3216 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 Sept 2023; Death certificate 1924/2319, transcription of 5 March 2024 [25] John Creek 1924 in Australia and New Zealand, Find A Grave Index, 1800s-Current: Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 Sept 2023; Death Certificate 2319/1924 transcription of 12 March 2024 [26] Death of Elvina E Scott (nee Eather) 3 Jun. 1926 in Aust Cemetery Index 1808-2007, Compiler: Central Coast Family History Society; Collection Title: Index to the Charles Kinsela Funeral Directors Registers; Reference: Rookwood Church of England; Via Ancestry.com, accessed 29 Nov 2023; Death Priscilla Hayes (nee Creek) reg 1929/23773 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 Sept 2023 [27] Death of Cecilia Eather 1929/23773 in Aust Death Index, Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 Sept 2023; Obituary Sr Mary de Sales, The Catholic Press, Sydney NSW 1895-1942, 28 Nov 1929. Via Trove, accessed 2 Sept 2023 [28] Death of Alma Millership (nee Creek) 1933/8918 in The Victorian Registry of Births, Deaths, and Marriages; Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 June 2024 [29] Maitland Stories: Timeline — Maitland: Our Place, Our Stories (maitlandstories.com.au), Accessed 20 June 2024 [30] 1939 England & Wales register, The National Archives; Kew, London, England; 1939 Register; Reference: Rg 101/530c Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 Sept 2023 [31] Death Josephine Creek (nee Eather) Maitland NSW reg 1942/30857 Transcription of 31 Jan 2023 [32] Find A Grave Index, Josephine Creek 8 Dec 1942, Campbell’s Hill Cemetery Via Ancestry.com, accessed 5 Sept 2023