family history - Denise Newton Writes

History, Writing

Travels with my Ancestors #23: ‘Dear Christian’

By Denise Newton / July 14, 2025 / 0 Comments

After several years of Travels with my Ancestors posts and a book, all about my father’s side of the family tree, at last I come to my mother’s side. Mum was, if anything, even keener than Dad about all things family history, so if she were still with us she might very well be saying About time, too!

My sister and I are looking forward to a trip later this year to explore the place where our mother’s great-great grandfather originated. He’s the outlier in the family tree: the only person I know of whose roots did not lie in England or Ireland (with the exception of one other as yet unconfirmed possibility who may have been born in France.)

Our 3 x great-grandfather arrived in Australia in the mid-19th century but I know so little about his life before then. When I sat down to write about him, I felt a bit stumped. How do you tell a story when you don’t know its beginning?

Rather than make things up, I decided to write a letter, of sorts, expressing my dilemma. Here it is.

Dear Christian,
(or perhaps I should call you great-great-great-Grandfather,
but that’s a little wordy)

There is so much about you that I don’t know. I’m doing my best now to rectify that, but it is difficult to dig about in records from another country when I am so far away, here in Australia. I know plenty about you since you arrived in Sydney in 1861 – where you lived, what you did for a living, who you married, your children, when you died and where you were buried. But before that? Not so much.

For example, there is the business of you being Prussian—or not. On your New South Wales Naturalisation document of 1880 your original citizenship was described as Prussian. When I found Kirn, the town where you were born, on Google maps and saw that it’s located in the Rhineland-Palatinate region (on the other side of the country from Prussia)—well, that was confusing.

I revisited my history books and learned that several of the many little states and kingdoms that later became Germany were controlled by Prussia at various periods, including the Rhineland at the time you lived there. One mystery solved.

Source: By Adam Carr at English Wikipedia – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34552576

Other questions have not been so easily answered.

Such as, why did you leave your homeland?

Your father had been born and lived near Kirn, and was a skilled tradesman: a tuchmacher or clothmaker. You likely grew up within a comfortable home, along with your six siblings. Your family was of the Protestant faith and you were baptised at the Kirn Evangelisch church in September 1838.

You did not take up your father’s trade in the cloth industry. Instead, you became a baker. Another skilled trade, but one involving flour, yeast, salt and sugar rather than wool or linen.

Your working day would begin early, well before dawn, as you loaded the ovens with wood and filled the heavy mixing bowls with flour. There must have been satisfaction as you brought out the dark rye loaves or sweet apfelkuchen, arranging them on the wooden shelves each morning, ready for customers. Your bakery would be redolent with the savoury scent of caraway seeds and the warming aromas of nutmeg and cinnamon. As you wiped your floury hands on your apron, did you give a nod of approval at another day’s good baking?

Source: https://germanculture.com.ua/german-bread/german-bread-the-heart-of-germanys-baking-culture/

Or were you wanting something different? Was Kirn, its small-town sights and familiar faces, too confining or commonplace? Did you dream of bigger horizons, new people and customs, adventures across the seas?

Or—and here historical events may have played a part—there were very different motivations for you to leave. Your homeland was experiencing seemingly never-ending turmoil, political and economic. In your father’s time it was the devastation of the wars wreaked by Napoleon Bonaparte. Then confusion as the Rhineland came under French control for a time.

You were just ten when the first of several uprisings began across Europe, led by people demanding more freedoms in how they were governed, and—amongst the German-speaking states—national unity. This was long before a German nation was planned and at a time when most Europeans were governed by autocratic, conservative rulers and officials.

Barricades at Alexander Platz, Berlin,
Source: By JoJan – Own work; photo made at an exhibition at the Brandenburger Tor, Berlin, Germany, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17630682

I wonder how your parents felt about this push for more freedoms for ordinary people, or if they even knew about the demonstrators and the movements’ leaders and their demands? Did they agree or did they just want to get on with their lives and be left in peace?

The revolutions largely failed but the effects lingered as new political ideas took root and grew. Economically, life was difficult for many. The spectre of famine hung over villages and towns with crop failures in the countryside.

Was Kirn affected? Perhaps you struggled to get flour for your bakery. Customers may have fallen away as money for a daily loaf of bread became harder to find. You could no longer see a prosperous future there.

The pickelhaube, symbol of Prusso-German militarism from the mid- nineteenth century.
Source: By G.Garitan – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25768801

Even worse, you may have dreaded the call of conscription into the Prussian military—then a requirement for all able-bodied young men. Given the number and ferocity of wars and internal conflicts in your lifetime, it would be understandable if you’d longed to be somewhere where these were not constant threats.

Maybe your family were among those who harboured a dislike of the militaristic nature of Prussian rule. If you had inherited such feelings, you may have decided that leaving was preferable to submitting to such authoritarianism.

Whatever your reasons, you embarked on a ship to New South Wales. As far as I know, you had no contacts or family already in the colony. You might have come as part of a government-sponsored immigration scheme, though so far, I have found no record of that. I don’t even know the ship you arrived on!

Recently, at lunch with a Uebel cousin, another of your descendants, my sister and I were stunned when our cousin mentioned a version of your arrival story which had you jumping ship here during the gold rush days. We looked at each other, amazed. How had we never heard this family legend? And my mind immediately went to the question: how can I find out whether that story is true? If so, you would have been amongst many hundreds of others, literally gambling on finding a fortune on the messy chaos of the goldfields.

I still hope to find those details, and to learn more about your travels here. However you came, what must you, born and raised near the river Rhine but otherwise nowhere near a body of water like the vast oceans you voyaged across, have made of that long journey to this southern continent?

I think you came alone—a young man of twenty-three. Within five years, you’d married an English girl from Plymouth, and with Sarah you had eleven children. You continued your trade, opening a bakery and shop in Sydney’s St Peters.

You had some tragedies in your life here—losing two children before they’d had a chance to fully grow—and you never saw your native Kirn again.

But I am grateful that you took that ship from Germany and gambled on a better life here, because otherwise I would not have existed. I hope you did not regret your decision to come.

I will continue my search about your life before you left Germany. I want you to be more than just a name on my family tree. Yours is a good name—Christian Uebel—and both names have been handed down through subsequent generations. Still, I want to be able to see your name and feel a connection, to feel that I know something of you, not simply your name.

With thanks, from your great-great-great-granddaughter,

Denise

Sources:

NSW Certificate of Naturalization No 866 1880 for Christian Uebel
Death Registration 10554/1906 for Christian Uebel
Einwohnerbuch Stadt Kirn 1544-1900 Teil 4 Familiennamen Schr – Z

read more
History

Travels with my Ancestors #22: Troubled Waters

By Denise Newton / May 19, 2025 / 0 Comments
This is the continuing story of my Newton family history. The first instalment can be found here.
Travels with my Ancestors is an ongoing series of posts in which I explore my family heritage, sometimes involving travels to their places of origin, sometimes travel through archives, online sources and history books.
All photos are by author unless otherwise indicated. Names in bold indicate those people from whom I am directly descended.

Troubled Waters

BEADON NEWTON (1836 – 1919) and
ELIZABETH TOPPS ROBINSON (1849/1850 – 1902)

Locked up

Greta, Hunter Valley NSW, 1876

Things began to go badly for Elizabeth Newton (née Robinson) when Constable Powell entered the Newton’s cottage, one step behind her husband Beadon. They were followed by Mr Leaver, one of Beadon’s employers from the Greta store where he worked. What was going on? Why were they here?
When the constable began looking through the rooms of the house, under beds and in cupboards, it was apparent that something was very wrong. Powell drew out assorted objects from various hiding places around the cottage: a man’s new shirt, sweets and tobacco, a bucket and garden spade, canned goods, crockery, calico…They were hidden under their bed, beneath the old couch in the living room, and in the lean-to shed outside.

Mr Leaver looked on with dismay. At one point, he exclaimed: ‘Beadon, what made you rob us in this way? Have we not given you everything you required?’

The goods recovered by Constable Powell and identified by Mr Leaver by his store’s mark, amounted to £20 in value, the equivalent of six month’s wages.²

Why had Beadon stolen? His employment at Chapman and Leaver’s store in Greta paid him a wage of 15 shillings a week, and the family had lodgings in a cottage provided by his employers. His duties weren’t overly demanding—he delivered goods to customers, helped keep the stock tidy and swept out the store at the end of each day. He was sometimes alone then, and now he admitted to taking things he found on the floor, protesting that he thought there was no harm in that.

Had he became trapped in a cycle of petty theft, neither being able to own up and return the items, sell them, or use them? Elizabeth must have noticed the things appearing in their cottage. Perhaps he lied and told her he’d bought them. Or, if she suspected them to be stolen, she was bound to silence as mother of two small children, dependent on him and unwilling to force an issue which could see him go to gaol.

Constable Powell told her that he had spotted several items partially hidden under a tree in nearby bushland. Suspicious, he’d replaced them under the leaf litter, and returned at dusk, climbed a nearby tree, and waited. A man on horseback approached, stopped at the tree, and began stowing the goods in his saddlebag. The constable nabbed him in the act. It was Beadon, who claimed to have paid for them at the store and left them there to retrieve later.³

Constable Powell was having none of that story. He returned to the Leaver and Campbell store in town, and asked Mr Leaver to accompany them both to Beadon’s home, where the other stolen goods were then found.

NSW Police Gazette 9 February 1876, from Trove

Beadon was taken to Branxton police lock-up, about fifteen kilometres away, there to await trial.⁴ As he left the cottage with the constable, Elizabeth probably looked with despair at their sons: three-year-old Albert and baby William. What was she to do now that Beadon was arrested and she would no longer have a house to live in? She would have to take up domestic service work again, as she’d been doing before the boys were born. But who would care for them while she worked? The future looked bleak.

Above: Branxton police station in 2021

Above: The tiny window in the police lock up at Branxton. What went through Beadon’s mind as he peered out from the cell?

To date, she’d not had much luck in marriage. She’d wed her first husband, James Pendall Morley, in 1870 when she was twenty. They married at her father William Robinson’s home at Down Park, the estate where he worked near Hinton, on Wonnarua land near the Hunter and Paterson rivers. The young couple didn’t have much between them: she was a servant and he a labourer. The ceremony was conducted by a minister from the Primitive Methodist/ Wesleyan church, the faith that her family had brought with them from Lincolnshire.⁵

They had a child, named after the baby’s father and his maternal grandfather: James Hardy Morley, born around the year of their marriage. If Elizabeth had been pregnant with this child before the marriage, it was likely a rushed wedding. It’s possible that he was several years younger than her. These circumstances could have made for a difficult start to married life for both.

Within two years, James was gone. He may have deserted her or died. Either way, he’d disappeared from her life. A ‘James Morley’ was in and out of Sydney’s Darlinghurst Gaol around this time, usually on charges of drunkenness.⁶Was this the man who had so briefly been her husband?

What happened to the baby after Elizabeth and James parted ways? He lived to adulthood, married, and eventually died in his fifties at Lithgow, NSW.⁷ It’s unclear whether he stayed with his mother during his childhood years.

In 1872 she tried marriage for a second time. This ceremony was held in the Trinity Church of England in Lochinvar. Her new husband was Beadon Newton, twenty-six, a labourer.⁸

Lochinvar Trinity Church, 2021

On the marriage record, Elizabeth declared herself a widow – was this a convenient lie to erase the mistake of her first marriage?

On the day, she juggled baby Albert Harvey (Bertie) in her arms. He’d been born almost eight months earlier, in February.⁹It’s possible that the delay in the marriage of his parents was due to the need for authorities to confirm that Elizabeth was, as she claimed, a widow.

They settled into life at Greta, just up the Old North Road from Lochinvar. Beadon worked in Chapman & Leaver’s store; in his free time, he probably enjoyed a drink at one of the four pubs in town. He also served as church verger for the Reverend Walsh.

The railway had arrived along with exploratory mines to dig for coal; Greta was an up and coming place, though still quiet enough for a young family. The village was surrounded by expansive paddocks of pasture with scrubby patches of eucalypts and pockets of more densely forested woodlands.

Their next baby, William, arrived in 1875; Elizabeth’s days were busy.

Something the couple shared were their experiences as young immigrants from England: Beadon from Somerset when he was thirteen; Elizabeth from Lincolnshire at three years of age. Both transplanted, but young enough to make New South Wales their home.

Perhaps he told her the story of attempted mutiny by some of the crew on the immigrant ship Una. She may have spoken sadly of her mother whom she barely remembered, because Mary had perished on board the Irene before reaching Australia. Elizabeth’s baby sister Hannah had died too, not long after their arrival.

And now, for the second time in a few short years, she faced life alone without a husband by her side.

Back to Hinton

Fortunately she had family still in Hinton. Her father Hardy lived there with his third wife Anne and their children, so Elizabeth took the two little boys and moved back to await Beadon’s trial.

In March, Beadon came before the Maitland Sessions court. He was found guilty after a ten minute deliberation by the jury, although they recommended mercy on account of the nine testimonials in his favour, including one from the Reverend Walsh, which stated that Beadon had assisted him at the church for the previous four years.

The magistrate was less impressed. He said sternly that he’d liked to have passed a severe penalty, but given the character references, he sentenced Beadon to imprisonment with hard labour in Maitland gaol. Elizabeth’s husband would be gone for eighteen months and she would need to get on with her life for the duration.¹⁰
Old Maitland Courthouse, 2021
Outside old Maitland Gaol, 2021
Mailtand gaol cell
Two months after the heavy door slammed shut on Beadon’s cell, little William took ill with a cold or infection. A fever set in and he began crying irritably and shivering, even though his little body was hot to touch. The crying stopped—but Elizabeth’s relief must have turned to alarm when he became listless and refused to take any fluid. Soon after he began convulsing and he died in her arms.¹¹

She had to deal with the grief of burying their baby without her husband. Her father and stepmother were doubtless some comfort. She occupied herself with Bertie, now three, and may also have needed to find work until Beadon returned.

Troubled Waters

Once Beadon was released in 1877, it seemed their life together had at last settled. He found work in carpentry and they moved into Plaistowe Street, West Maitland. All their remaining six children were born in Maitland: Robert (born 1878), Mary (1880), Frances (1882), John (1885), Ernest Beden (1888) and George (1891).¹²

Their street ran straight to the banks of the Hunter, so they had to cope with numerous river floods over the years, including a devastating one in 1893.

After sudden torrential rains, warnings came from upstream about rapidly rising levels and a bell rang through Maitland sounding the alarm. The fast current and a huge load of debris in the river swept houses and farm structures away, inundating shops and homes in the central areas of town. People had to be rescued off roofs and out of trees; despite heroic efforts, at least fifteen people died.¹³

Maitland Flood Scenes by Elijah Hart, Photographer, West Maitland. Dated as 1857, but according to researcher Peter F. Smith probably circa 1867 or 1870.
Courtesy of State Library of Victoria.
Retrieved from
https://hunterlivinghistories.com/2019/02/26/maitland-floods-elijah-hart-1857/
24 April 2025

Added to the heartache, the terrible economic effect compounded the pain of the 1890’s depression.

Elizabeth endured the death of another child in 1879; this time it was Robert, still a baby.¹⁴ There was more sadness when Beadon’s father died in 1881 and Elizabeth’s father in 1900.

However, their surviving children were growing, some were marrying and establishing families. Like the rest of their community they had to try to move on.

Elizabeth was only fifty-four when she died in August 1902.¹⁵ She’d developed septicaemia, or blood poisoning. This meant high temperature, headache, chills, nausea, and pain. She was admitted to hospital but there was nothing more that could be done for her; all they could do was hope and pray.

They buried her at Campbell’s Hill cemetery in West Maitland on a wintery day six weeks after she became ill.¹⁶

Elizabeth’s gravesite in West Maitland, 2021

Beadon was left alone; now in his sixties, he was doing general labouring work where he could find it. He’d moved from Plaistow Street to a house he built at 16 Cross Street.

The house at Cross Street Maitland, where Beadon Newton lived after Elizabeth’s death.
Image taken during 1930 flood of Hunter River. Photo courtesy of Kerry Newton.

In 1912 he suffered the shock of hearing the news that his youngest son, George, had been arrested and imprisoned for indecent assault.¹⁷ At twenty-one years of age, George was getting off to a very bad start. He spent three months in gaol and was released on a hefty bond. Beadon’s own time in front of court and in gaol must have come rushing back to him. George appeared to have learnt from this experience and did not come before a court again.

Beadon died a few years later in August 1915, when the nation was in the throes of the Great War.¹⁸ Perhaps he was glad to close his eyes on a world convulsing in violence and suffering. He was laid to rest alongside his wife at Campbell’s Hill.¹⁹

Photo from 2021

Beadon and Elizabeth merged the Newtons and the Robinsons, people from either side of England: the west country of Somerset and the Lincolnshire fens in the east. As children, they didn’t choose to come, but by making the journey with their families they planted successive generations here, in Australian soil.

Travels with my Ancestors will be continued in future posts…
1. Maitland Mercury & Hunter River Advertiser, 16 March 1876 p3, Maitland Quarter Sessions. Via Trove, accessed 11 June 2024
2. NSW Police Gazette & Weekly Record of Crime, 9 Feb 1876 p209. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 March 2024
3. Maitland Mercury & Hunter River Advertiser 29 January 1876 p10 Via Trove, accessed 11 June 2024\
4. New South Wales, Australia, Police Gazettes, 1854-1930, 9 Feb 1876 p42. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 March 2024
5. Marriage of James Pendall Morley & Elizabeth Robinson, Transcript of reg no 2703/1870.
  State Archives NSW; Kingswood, New South Wales;
6. Gaol Description and Entrance Books, 1818-1930; Series: 2134; Item: 1921; Roll: 276. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 22 June 2024
7. Death of James Hardey Morley https://centralcoastfhs.org.au/Unrelated%20Death%20Certificates_Mar%202014.pdf p11; State Records Authority of New South Wales; Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia; Indexes to deceased estate files; Archive Series: NRS 13341; Series: “Pre A” Series (1923-1939); Reel Number: 3231 Accessed 22 June 2024
8. Marriage of Elizabeth Morley & Beadon Newton reg no 2864/1872 NSW Births Deaths & Marriages, Marriage. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 March 2024
9. Birth of Albert Harvey Newton reg no 12927/1873, Via Ancestry.com, accessed 22 June 2024
10. State Records Authority of New South Wales; Kingswood, New South Wales, Australia; Clerk of the Peace: NRS850 Returns of Criminal cases heard at Country Quarter Sessions, 1875-1877; Series Number: 850; Reel: 3638. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 March 2024; Maitland Daily Mercury 16 March 1876 p3, accessed 22 June 2024
11. Australia Death Index, 1787-1985, William R Newton, Reg no 7761/1876. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 March 2024.
12. NSW Birth Reg no’s 15531/1878; 17562/1880, 20854/1882, 24921/1885, 27288/1888, 20815/1891. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 March 2024.
13. Chas Kays, ‘The Great Flood of 1893’ 2022, in Maitland Stories at: The great flood of 1893 — Maitland: Our Place, Our Stories (maitlandstories.com.au)
14. Death of Robert Newton 1879, reg no 6502/1879 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 22 June 2024
15. Death reg for Elizabeth Tops Newton 1902, Cemetery, Military, and Church Record Transcripts, 1816-1982″, FamilySearch https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVB6-B2BV: Sun Mar 10 14:35:15 UTC 2024 Accessed 13 June 2024
16. Burial of Elizabeth Newton at https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/80623438/elizabeth-newton Section A1 Plot 3, accessed 22 June 2024
17. State Archives NSW; Kingswood, New South Wales; Gaol Description and Entrance Books, 1818-1930; Series: 2232; Item: 3/5978; Roll: 5122 NB: the estimated birth year on this record is incorrectly given as 1893 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 22 June 2024
18. NSW Death Reg no 9561/1915. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 March 2024
19. Burial of Beadon Newton 4 Aug 1915 in Australia and New Zealand, Find A Grave Index, 1800s-Current, accessed 22 June 2024
read more
History

Travels with my Ancestors #21: The Newton Story continued.

By Denise Newton / April 21, 2025 / 0 Comments

People from the West Country, Part Two

Portsmouth Harbour, 2023

In Part One of People from the West Country, we saw William and Ann Newton and their family embark in 1849 on the long voyage to New South Wales as bounty or assisted Emigrants. They knew they were in for a long journey with all its discomforts and dangers, but they faced an unexpected added threat of a mutiny at sea by some of the crew.

Those passengers not in the married and family section of steerage class, were separated into single male and female sections, with a dividing wall between them. This is what led to a dramatic stand-off between the Una’s Captain Causzer and several of the crew.

About a month into the journey, a group of around a dozen crewmen tried to destroy the dividing partition between the male and female passengers. They had armed themselves with knives and other weapons, demanding that the bar across the sections be removed and a chalk line drawn on the deck instead. They threatened the ship’s master, vowing they had a right to throw him overboard if their demands were not met.¹ Will and Ann must have feared for Eliza, Martha, Mary Ann—all young women in their early twenties. Possibly even young Elizabeth was not safe at eleven years old.

The next day the threats to the Captain and First Officer continued, as rebels tried to convince some of the male passengers to join them. Then they refused to work the ship, which forced the captain to ask for help from any of the passengers who could assist. The mutineers continued their strike for several weeks. They passed the time singing loudly and behaving like boorish fools. Everyone’s safety was on a knife edge: mutinies at sea endangered all on board. What if there was a storm, or another crisis needing all hands?

For the Newtons and others in steerage, their proximity to the loud, defiant, cursing sailors must have been disturbing. The shouts and threats of the mutineers and the tight faces of the ship’s master and other officers made for a time of high tension. Many passengers must have longed for the return of the usual shipboard routines.

The mutinous crew were finally restrained. A newspaper report in Sydney, a week after the Una’s arrival, recounted how the men were committed to trial for their actions.² Mutiny at sea was a serious offence and could result in a sentence of death.

Extract from The Shipping Gazette & Sydney General Trade 24 Nov 1849, from Trove, accessed 29 March 2025

The rest of the voyage passed peacefully, and the ship arrived at Sydney in November 1849, four months after setting sail. The Newtons made their way to Newcastle in the Hunter valley; the traditional lands of the Awabakal and Worimi peoples. They were in New South Wales at last, ready to begin their new life.

Life and death in the Hunter Valley

As Will and his family voyaged to Australia, he could not have known that back in Somerset, his sister Mary Ann was dying.³ His father had gone thirteen years earlier and the family had buried Martha, his mother, just a few months before they left England.⁴ Some of his strong ties to the west country there were already fraying.

They settled in Newcastle; he may have found work in an established butcher’s business there, or taken up work as a labourer. In the 1850’s his occupation was recorded as a fisherman.⁵ Perhaps he had decided that, living so close to the sea, harvesting the bounty of the ocean made for a better living than land animals.

The young adult children all began to marry; grandchildren arrived. Eldest son Thomas moved to work in Sydney. They gradually grew accustomed to the different ways and landscapes here, starting to put down tentative roots. Young children are adaptable, so the sounds of Australian birds and the smell of the eucalypts would quickly begin to replace their memories of the west country of their birth.

After all the preparations, the long voyage, the excitement and anxiety about the move, Will only had Ann for eight years in their adopted country. She became ill with a heart and liver complaint, suffering for six months until she died in May 1858, aged fifty-seven.⁶ Eliza, the daughter born before Ann’s marriage to Will, had the sad duty of notifying the authorities of her mother’s death.

Soon after Ann’s grieving family had buried her in the grounds of the little Christ Church in Newcastle, Will got news that their son Thomas, who had moved to Sydney, was sick with scarlet fever. His neighbour had summoned a doctor, who diagnosed the infectious disease from Thomas’ high temperature, the raised scarlet rash over his body and his swollen, mottled ‘strawberry’ tongue. Within two weeks he was dead at twenty-five years of age.⁷

It was a double blow for his father. Will’s dreams of his family’s future in the colony had surely not included the deaths of two of them within the first decade. There was nothing to do but to carry on. At least all the children were now grown, no longer needing their mother’s care. That was a small mercy.

Berry Park

Sometime after the tragedies of 1858, Will moved to the town of Morpeth, a bustling Hunter River port on the traditional land of the Wonnarua people. Produce from all over the valley went by steamer to Sydney, and via Morpeth to Maitland, and the coal industry was expanding in the valley. Water transport was growing in importance. Morpeth also had a mill which ground the wheat brought in by farmers across the district. The town had a promising future and some fine buildings lined the main street near the wharf.

Swan St Morpeth 1898 Courtesy University of Newcastle Library Special Collections

Will had a connection with Berry Park, an estate built on the edge of the river near Morpeth by John Eales, originally from Devon, who had become a prosperous grazier and pastoralist. In the 1840’s coal was discovered on Eales’ property and he established a private railway line to carry coal from his Duckenfield collieries at Minmi out of the district. His prosperity allowed him to build a mansion he called Duckenfield Park House, and he employed many workers like Will on the estate.

Source: Google maps

Two years after moving here, Will married for a second time.⁸ His new bride was Irish-born Bridget Chadwick, twenty-seven, who had arrived in Australia on the ship Matoaka five years before.⁹
Together they had four children: George, Sarah, Richard and Lucy, all born between 1860 and 1874 and all (except Sarah) at Berry Park.¹⁰

Berry Park was where the Newtons and the Robinsons first connected: Beadon Newton would meet Elizabeth Robinson there, as her family also lived on or near the Eales Estate.

But bad news kept arriving from Somerset. His siblings were dying: brother George in 1873, sister Charlotte in 1876, another sister Ann in early 1881.¹¹ They were all getting on in years.

Will’s own time was up in 1881; he died at Berry Park and was buried at Hexham Cemetery.¹² By then he had lived for more than thirty years in the colony.

The decision to bring his first family across the seas to settle here could not have been an easy one; at the end of his seventy-seven years, was he able to reflect on that choice and be satisfied it had been a good one, despite the setbacks they’d suffered?

He left behind his second wife and their children, then aged from twenty to eight.

A few years after his death, the family suffered an awful loss: their home and possessions were razed in a house fire in April, 1888. Volunteers from the local community came to their assistance, collecting funds to allow the family to rebuild. George, then twenty-eight, put a grateful notice in the Maitland Mercury and Hunter Valley General Advertiser, expressing their thanks.¹⁴

Bridget lived for another sixteen years, passing away at Newcastle in 1904.¹⁵

Meanwhile the children who had emigrated with their parents from Somerset had made lives of their own, mostly remaining in the Hunter district.

Eliza married twice; first to Thomas Dawson (1850) then after his death in 1859, she wed George Barry in 1861.¹⁵ She lived in the Newcastle area until her death in 1896.¹⁶

Martha married William Wilding, a druggist and chemist, in 1851, and they had one child, a son (also William) who was born and died in 1881, the same year his father died.¹⁷ What a traumatic time for Martha, losing both husband and baby in one year. Perhaps it because of this that she suffered for some time from a mental illness and spent years in what was then the Gladesville Lunatic Asylum, Parramatta, where she died in 1895.¹⁸

Elizabeth (known as ‘Biddy’) had nine children with David Avard who she married in 1860, but suffered the loss of three infants.¹⁹ She died in Berry Park in 1890.²⁰

Youngest son John married in 1864 to Mary Lindores; they lived in Muswellbrook.²¹ He died in 1907 at Minmi, outside Newcastle.²²

The Newtons had become firmly established in the Hunter Valley. Somerset and the West country of William and Ann’s youth were now places on the map to these younger immigrants.

SHipping at Morpeth 1860 Courtesy University of Newcastle Library Special Collections

The Newton family story will be continued in the next chapter of Travels with my Ancestors

^{1.‘Revolt on Board the Emigrant Ship “Una”’, Shipping Gazette & Sydney General Trade, 24 Nov 1849 p 293 Via Trove, accessed 30 September 2023}
^{2.Bells Life in Sydney & Sporting Reviewer Sat 24 Nov 1839 p3 Via Trove, accessed 30 September 2023}
^{3. Burial of Mary Ann Dyer Oct 1839 in Somerset Heritage Services Taunton, Somerset England, Somerset Parish Records 1538-1914, Ref No D\P\ wal.sw/2/1/39 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 6 March 2024}
^{4. Death of Martha Ann Newton March 1849 in Somerset Heritage Servicesd Ref No D\P\stogs/2/1/8 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 6 March 2024.}
^{5. Death registration of Thomas Newton in Registry of Births Deaths & Marriages, Reg no 1858/736}
^{6. Death registration of Ann Newton in NSW Registry of Births Deaths & Marriages, Reg no 1858/4629}
^{7. Death of Thomas Newton in Registry of Births Deaths & Marriages, Reg no 1858/736}
^8. ^{Marriage of William Newton & Bridget Chadwick Australia, Marriage Index, 1788-1950, , reg no 2524/1860. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 18 March 2024}
^{9. Australia; Persons on bounty ships (Agent’s Immigrant Lists); Series: 5316; Reel: 2137; Item: [4/4792] Via Ancestry.com, accessed 18 March 2024}
^{10. Australia Birth Index 1788-1950, George William Newton reg no 1860/9163; Sarah Jane Newton reg no 1863/10140; New South Wales Pioneers Index: Pioneers Series 1788-1888 Richard Henry Newton reg no 1871/13072; Catherine Lucy Newton reg no 1874/14112. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 18 March 2024}
^{11. Death of George Newton March 1873 in England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1837-1915 Volume 5c Page 281; Death of Charlotte Perrett (nee Newton) March 1876 in England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, vol 5c p259 1837-1915 Somerset Heritage Service; Taunton, Somerset, England; Burial of Ann Geen (nee Newton) 30 March 1831 in Somerset Parish Records, 1538-1914; Reference Number: D\P\stogs/2/1/8; Somerset Heritage Service; Taunton, Somerset, England; Somerset Parish Records, 1538-1914; Reference Number: D\P\du/2/1/18. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 6 March 2024}
^{12. Transcript of William Newton Death Certificate reg no 1881/8734}
^{13.Maitland Mercury and Hunter Valley General Advertiser 9 June 1888, p2. Via Trove, accessed 19 March 2024.}
^{14. Death of Bridget Newton 14 June 1904 in Australia Death Index 1787-1985 Death reg no 1904/10268. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 March 2024}
^{15. Marriage Eliza Long & Thomas Dawson1850 Australia Marriage Index 1788-1850, vol VB; Marriage Eliza Dawson & george Barry Australia Reg No 2463/1861, Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 March 2024 ;}
^{16. Eliza Barry at ttps://www.findagrave.com/memorial/177510222/eliza-barry
17. Marriage of Martha Newton & William Wilding Australia, Marriage Index, 1788-1950, Marriage Reg 1851 vol V. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 13 June 2024; Death of William T Wilding NSW Death reg 1881/8445; Death of William Thomas Wilding (snr) reg 1881/8365; Via Ancestry.com, accessed 22 June 1
2024; 1882 ‘Family Notices’, The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser (NSW:1843 – 1893), 25 February, p1 accessed 13 Jun 2024; http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article848178; accessed 13 June 2024
18. Death of Martha Wilding reg no 1895/2499, Death Index 1787-1985, Pioneer Index Federation Series 1889-1918 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 13 June 2024
19. Marriage of Elizabeth Newton & David Avard reg no 1860/2050, NSW Pioneer Index – Pioneer Series 1778 – 1888, Via Ancestry.com, accessed 8 March 2024; Australia and New Zealand, Find A Grave Index, 1800s-Current; Harriet Avard 1860; Alice May Avard 1880; Mary Avard 1877. Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 March 2024
20.Burial of Elizabeth Avard https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/170978688/elizabeth-avard Via Ancestry.com, accessed 19 March 2024
21.Marriage of John Newton & Mary Lindores reg no 1865/2683, Marriage Index, 1788-1950, Via Ancestry.com, accessed 8 March 2024;}
^{22. Death reg no 5627/1907 in Australia Death Index, 1787-1985 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 8 March 2024}

read more
History

Travels with my Ancestors #20: Now for the Newtons!

By Denise Newton / April 14, 2025 / 0 Comments
So far in the Travels with my Ancestors series, I have dealt with successive generations of Eather family and descendants, and people from other families who joined the spreading branches of that growing family tree. The final post of the Eather story concluded with my grandmother, Florence, who was born Florence Creek, but whose mother was an Eather before her marriage.

Florence’s married name was Newton.

So now I want to go back in time a little and tell the story of the Newton family’s beginnings: where did they originate; when and why did they come to Australia?

This is the Newton family story.
All photos by author unless otherwise indicated.

People from the West Country – Part One:

WILLIAM BENJAMIN NEWTON (1804 – 1881) and
ANN LONG (1800 – 1858)

Ship’s rigging at historic Portsmouth harbour, England, 2023.

A west country family
The Una was moored at busy Plymouth harbour when William and Ann boarded the ship. It was July 1849 and they were about to set off on a momentous journey that would forever change their lives and those of their children. Did they hear echoes of far-off lands in the cries of gulls wheeling above their heads? No doubt the rigging on the brigantine’s two tall masts was bewildering to them both, having never stepped aboard a ship until then. They had to hope that the crew knew the ropes, and the captain would keep them safe.

If the weather and their luck held, in a few months the family would be disembarking on the shores of New South Wales, far away from Somerset in England’s west country, where they’d been born and raised.

William Benjamin Newton came from a family with deep roots in Somerset. His forebears had lived there for at least four generations. There were stories about links to Wales, of a Newton who’d ventured across the Bristol Channel in search of a new place to settle. One story told of a Newton family amongst the wealthy nobility. It was possible, but so long ago that it hardly mattered. The Somerset Newtons had little to show from any reputed affluence of earlier generations.

Above left: Map of UK showing location of Somerset in England’s west. Source: Google maps
Above right: Northern Somerset, showing villages around the Quantock Hills where Newton & related families lived: Stogursey, Nether Stowey, Crowcombe, Dunster, Bridgwater, among others. Wales lies across the Bristol Channel

A good number had lived in Crowcombe, one of several villages around the Quantock Hills in the north of the county. Newtons had been baptised, married and buried at Crowcombe’s Church of the Holy Ghost since at least the seventeenth century, possibly even earlier. ¹

The church was like most in those parts: a tall, square tower topped with blunt pinnacles, fronting the rest of the building, all of dark stone. Always a little gloomy, even daunting, those churches. Inside it was a different story. Crowcombe’s church was known for its intricately carved bench ends on the pews. Hard to say how old they were, but they dated from the middle ages, at least.

Crowcombe Church of the Holy Ghost, 2023.

The carvings were lovely to look at, but what made them special were images from old Somerset tales, told to generations children by parents. Several depicted the legend of the Gurt Worm, a dragon, and the fearsome battle where two men cleaved the beast in half. This, so the story went, was how two local hills were formed, back at the beginning of time. Crowcombe children at least had interesting things to see, should a sermon be too dull.

The church’s carved pew ends depicting local legend of the
Gurt Worm

2023

Will had been born in 1804 in the village of Stogursey on the northern edge of the Quantocks, to parents Thomas Newton, a butcher, and Martha Buller. ²

Many Newtons had married into families from surrounding towns and villages: Bridgwater, Bicknoller, Combe Florey, Nether Stowey. His parents had lived at Nether Stowey when they married, then Crowcombe for a time, but moved to Stogursey before his birth.³ Stogursey had an old water mill, the ruins of a castle, and a cheerful brook that ran through pastures at the edge of the village. It was a pretty place, but not always easy to make a living for people of limited means.

Above: Scenes from Crowcombe, Stogursey & Nether Stowey in Somerset, in 2023

Will’s mother Martha came from a better-off family; her father and grandfather had both owned land, and were considered ‘gentlemen.’ Her father, George Buller, had left a will, in which Martha inherited an equal share of the property—with the provision that, should any one of his six children quarrel about the will or challenge it, they should be cut out without a shilling and their part divided among the rest.⁴ Perhaps after all, it was less troublesome to be a tenant farmer or employee with little to leave when you died, other than memories.

Most folk around the Quantocks made their living as labourers on farms, harvesting apples for the tasty Somerset cider; here and there a saddler, carpenter, or cordwainer (shoemaker.) There was also work to be found in the all-important wool industry, from shepherding to wool washing.

West country folk were proud of their independent nature, the bounty of their land, their small communities that wrapped like comforting blankets around individuals and families.

The youngest of five children, William had learned to read and write—both he and Ann signed their own names on their marriage record.⁵ He had probably received a basic education in the local parish charity school.

He’d taken up his father’s trade of butchery, which should have brought in a reasonable living. But his family had grown, with seven children; downturns in the economy meant unemployment, rising food costs, and less money for people to buy his meat. New machines and factories replaced workers on farms and home-based producers of goods, like rope makers, weavers or straw plaiters.

Though far away from London, the seat of government and royalty, Somerset was affected by these changes as much as the rest of England.

In the public houses and the market, there was talk of opportunities for emigrants to the southern colonies. Should he apply for assisted passage under the generous terms offered by the colonial government? Skilled men such as himself were in demand; and colonists also wanted domestic staff. Ann had experience as a housekeeper, while their three older daughters were housemaid and needlewomen, and son Thomas had taken on the family trade of butchery. All the youngsters could read and write, except for John; the lad was only eight and still learning. He’d be able to to continue his schooling on the voyage, at daily lessons given to the children on board.

The passage for one person to Australia was beyond William’s reach; for a family of nine it was impossible. Under the Bounty Immigration scheme, the government would pay the passage of those it thought would be useful in the colony.

To leave behind family and home, likely forever—it was not something a man would consider asking his wife to do if the rewards weren’t likely to be considerable. There were many risks; things could so easily go wrong. Still, they had to think of their youngsters and hope that they’d all find better prospects in the colony.

Ann Long was from Dunster, on Somerset’s northern edge. From the nearby beach she could look across the Bristol Channel to Wales. It used to be a busy port for trade in wool, wine and grain. Since the sea had retreated several hundred years earlier, it had become a centre for cloth manufacture: Dunster woollen cloth was rightly famous throughout the whole country.

Walking through the village, under the gaze of Dunster Castle on its lofty hill, Ann would have passed the ancient octagonal Yarn Market, a reminder of the days when the town dominated trade in wool and cloth.

Above: Dunster Castle on the hill; and the medieval era yarn market in the village centre, 2023

Ann’s father was William Long, a saddler: a skilled occupation which easily supported his small family of wife Martha Headford and their three children.

While still a single woman, Ann had given birth to a daughter in 1825. She’d had to endure the sting of seeing baby Eliza described as a base-born child in the baptismal record.⁶ After Ann and Will married at the majestic Church of St George in Dunster in 1827, that no longer mattered: they were a family, though Eliza kept her mother’s maiden name of Long.

The family had settled at Tower Hill in Stogursey, just across the hills from Crowcombe. Ann’s father went to live with them after the wedding, since his wife had died the previous year.⁷ Other children arrived quickly: Martha in 1828; Mary Ann the year after; Thomas in 1833. Then came Beadon in 1836, Elizabeth in 1839 and lastly John in 1841. They were all baptised at Stogursey’s St Andrew’s church.⁸

The voyage

Now the family was preparing for the Una’s departure. Most of their belongings were stowed below decks in trunks and boxes. They’d put clothes and items they’d need for the voyage in their allotted space in the emigrant quarters. Emigrants were told that there would be very little room on board, as the ship also carried cargo for stores and households in the colony, so they had to balance the needs of their family over a voyage of several months, and limited washing facilities, with the small area they would occupy.

They had to bring their own basic cooking equipment, plates and cutlery, as well as bedding and towels; and a ‘slop bucket’ or chamber pot for use as a privy, especially at night. Each family group would be issued with daily rations to prepare meals. The food would seem very monotonous after a while: salted meat or fish, dry biscuit, porridge of oatmeal or barley, peas and potatoes, and cheese. They’d have an allowance of tea, sugar, and dried fruits such as currants. The younger children would probably screw up their faces at the compulsory doses of lime juice, which they were told would prevent the dreaded shipboard disease of scurvy. Water would also be rationed. A plain diet: but at least they’d all be adequately fed during the voyage.

Images from on board HMS Victory at Porstmouth Historic Dockyards, 2023

The assisted emigrants’ quarters in steerage was a large space divided by a long wooden table down the centre, with berths arranged in rows on the sides. Passengers constructed partitions of sorts between family groups to give some privacy; a bedsheet or blanket if they could be spared. There were over three hundred emigrants just like the Newtons: married couples, single men and women, and about eighty children and babies.

‘Immigrants at Dinner, 1844‘, engraving.
With kind permission of Australian National Library

The odours in the stuffy space were terrible: so many bodies together along with the smell of mutton boiling or fish frying. It was a relief to go above and breathe in the tang of the sea breeze. The unfamiliar sensations as the ship lifted and sank with the swell made moving around difficult until people found their sea legs.

The youngsters were likely brimming with excitement at being on board, running along the deck, examining the rigging and all the other unfamiliar sights and sounds. Perhaps Ann and the older children had mixed feelings. As the Una drew anchor and sailed out of the shelter of Plymouth harbour, did they look on the shores of England for the last time with some sadness, wondering what lay ahead?
As it happened, the voyage was to prove more dangerous than they could have anticipated.

They’d been warned of the usual difficulties and perils of a long sea voyage: seasickness, shipboard fever or accidents, storms, hot weather through the tropical regions around the Equator. Boredom which would set in after the first week or so: shipboard routines were important for cleanliness and health, but repetitive; and after a while the experience of being surrounded by nothing but sea became tiresome.

What they had not expected was a mutiny.

William and Ann’s story will be continued next week…
1. ^{Marriage of Thomas Newton & Edith Bossley 23 Dec; Burial of Thomas Newton 8 Feb 1690; Somerset Parish Records, 1538-1914; Reference Number: D\P\crow/2/1/1; Somerset, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials 1531-1812 From Ancestry.com, accessed 6 October 2023; Baptism of Abraham Newton 13 Jan 1663; Marriage of Abraham Newton & Sarah Sulley 31 Oct 1701 in Phillimore’s Transcript File line number 171, Somerset Crowcombe Parish Registers; Burial of Abraham Newton 27 July 1729; Baptism of Wm Newton 24 March 1703; Baptism of John Newton 24 Aug 1748; Burial of John Newton 1 May 1789; 1653: in Somerset Heritage Service; Taunton, Somerset, England; Somerset Parish Records, 1538-1914; Reference Number: D\P\crow/2/1/1 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 22 June 2024}
2. ^{Baptism of WIlliam Nurton (sic) 21 May 1804 in Somerset Heritage Service, Taunton, Somerset, England; Somerset Parish Records 1538-1914; Ref No D\Pstogs/2/1/4Via Ancestry.com, accessed 10 Oct 2023}
3. ^{Marriage Martha Buller & Thomas Newton at Nether Stowey 1798, in England, Pallot’s marriage Index, 1780-1837 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 22 June 2024; Baptism Charlotte Newton 6 Oct 1800 in Somerset Heritage Service, Taunton, Somerset, Somerset Parish Records 1538-1914 Ref No D\P\crow/2/1/2 via Ancestry.com.accessed 22 June 2024}
4. ^{Will of George Buller of Nether Stowey 1 Oct 1799,in National Archives, Kew Surrey, England, Records of Perogative Court of Canterbury Series PROB 11, class: PROB 11, Piece 1331 Will Registers 1799-1801 Howe Quire numbers 693-745 (1799) via Ancestry.com, accessed 5 Oct 2023}
5. ^{Marriage of William Newton & Ann Long 15 Nov 1827 in England Select Marriages 1538-1973 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 29 Sept 2023}
6. ^{Baptism of Eliza Long 13Nov 1825 in Somerset Heritage Services, Taunton, Somerset, Ref no D\P\du/2/1/6,Somerset, England, Church of England Baptisms, 1813-1914 via Ancestry.com accessed 7 March 2024}
7. ^{Burial of Martha Long 18 Oct 1826 in England, Select Deaths & Burials, 1538-1991, Dunster, St George Parish Reg no 195 Somerset Heritage Services Ref no D\P\stogs/2/1/7}
8. ^{Baptism of Thomas Newton 11/12/1831; Somerset, England, Church of England Baptisms, 1813-1914 Beadon Newton bapt. 13/10/1836; Somerset Heritage Service; Taunton, Somerset, England; Reference Number: D\P\stogs/2/1/7 Elizabeth Newton bapt 21/10/1839}
read more
History

Travels with my Ancestors #19: In the Shadows of War (Part Two)

By Denise Newton / March 17, 2025 / 0 Comments

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 grandparents: Florence May Creek (1896 – 1973) and Ernest Beden Newton (1888 – 1955). You can find part one of their story (Travels with my Ancestors #18) here.

In Part One of In the Shadows of War we saw Florence struggling with the devastation of the loss of her beloved eldest son ‘Snow’ during the 1942 fall of Singapore to the Japanese. At home, she had to deal with a volatile and violent husband. In this part of the story we learn a little more about that man: where his people came from and the life he made with Florence.

Son of English Immigrants

Ernest’s parents (Beadon Newton and Elizabeth Robinson) had both emigrated from England with their parents as children. Their families had settled in the Hunter district and that’s where Ernie was born, the second youngest of eight children, in 1888.¹

As a youngster he was involved in a scrape which brought him before West Maitland Police Court in early 1905. He was seventeen and with his brother George (aged fourteen) and two other boys, had stolen 40 pounds of lead from the roof of a local school. The little gang had crept out in the dark of night to purloin the material which they then sold to a second-hand dealer. Lead was a popular roofing material because of its flexibility, malleability, resistance to corrosion and wear, and it could be endlessly recycled—very alluring for a dealer.

While they initially succeeded in their plan, they were found, arrested, and charged with theft. They were fined £2 10s which was paid on their behalf by unnamed ‘friends.’ ² The boys could have fallen foul of an unscrupulous dealer offering money for stolen lead; otherwise it was youthful foolishness and hoping for a quick quid that led them astray.

Ernie learnt from this experience because he never came before a court again—despite his later behaviour at home. As Florence knew, a man’s violence towards his family was rarely punished, no matter how much damage he inflicted.

His father had been a carpenter but Ernie worked as a fettler for one of the private railway lines that operated around the Hunter then. With the expansion of coal mining in the district, rail transport was in demand to move coal and mine workers, and private lines ran to and from places like South Maitland, Kurri Kurri and Cessnock.³

He had a shed in the yard where he did work on saddles, bridles, fences and anything else that needed doing. Like most working men of his time, he could turn his hands to many practical tasks. The cows and chickens they kept provided milk, butter and eggs. He shot rabbits for the dinner table. He brought home coal for the fire, from mines near his work on the rail lines. They were poor, but his many flaws did not include a failure to provide for his family as best he could.

To the Mountains

After the war ended, Florence and Ernie made the move to Bilpin, to live on the property Snow had taken up there before his enlistment. Snow had named her as administrator of his will and his interest in the Bilpin land formed part of his estate.²⁹

Despite the official Army notification of Snow’s death, she continued to hope that he would return to her. Living in Bilpin meant that if he did come home, she would be there to meet him. She could feel close to him, in the mountain village he’d chosen as his future home.

Ernie agreed with the move; Snow had been the apple of his father’s eye, too.

The journey from Maitland to the Blue Mountains took over two weeks, travelling by horse-drawn wagon. Ernie had converted an old cart for the purpose; it was piled with their modest household items and possessions. Ernie took the reins and the horse plodded its slow way south.

It nearly ended in tragedy. When the horse reared up, startled by something on the road, Florence was tumbled from the cart which then ran over her prone body. A stint in hospital was needed for her injuries to heal before she could settle in Bilpin.

It was a difficult start for the family, especially for youngest daughter Isabel, who at thirteen had to cook and clean house for her father while her mother was in hospital. Making matters worse was the discomfort of the old house they rented from a local man, Mr Heyde; it was a dark and cold place where winter winds sent cold fingers into the many cracks in the floor and walls.⁵

From 1950 Florence leased Snow’s land while a cottage was built for them by Oswald Johnson, whose son Bill was later to marry Isabel. In 1953 Florence successfully applied to the Lands Department to convert her lease to a Conditional Purchase.⁶ Son Bob built his house on the other half of the property.

The Bilpin cottage c 1951

She had returned to settle in the mountains that edged the Hawkesbury valley, where she’d been born and where her parents, grandparents and great-grandparents had lived. It was the valley where her convict ancestors had farmed alongside the Hawkesbury river, the ancient winding waterway that ran from the mountains to the sea. New generations of Eather and Lee descendants would now regard the valley and its surrounding mountains as home.

Moving from Maitland to the tiny hamlet of Bilpin took some adjustment. First sparsely settled by Europeans in the early years of the colony, Bilpin was still small, with few services. There was a weatherboard School of Arts hall, a tiny school, post office and telephone exchange, a petrol bowser with hardware and produce store. Electricity was not available until 1953; before that everyone lit their homes with kerosine or pressure lamps, or had their own generators.⁷

Transport was often a problem, as the road from Richmond to Bilpin and out the other side to Lithgow always needed maintenance and upgrading. Many locals used horse and buggy or cart into the 1950s. Groceries, meat, bread and milk deliveries were made by stores at Kurrajong or Richmond; there were no doctors or other medical services in Bilpin.

Her new home was surrounded by hills thickly forested with eucalypts, tree-ferns and climbing vines, punctuated on the lower slopes by neat orchards.

The cool climate and productive soil suited fruit growing. Bilpin was known as the ‘Land of the mountain apple,’ with many flourishing orchards producing a variety of apples along with pears, plums, peaches and nectarines. From early times, the beautiful stands of tall native trees attracted timber getters; there were still sawmills near the village.

Their cottage in Bilpin was a simple one, with a vegetable garden and chicken coop in the back near the outhouse. Life was as busy as ever with many chores that needed doing.

She had left behind the ever-present risk of river floods, and exchanged that for a new worry—bushfires which could take hold on the thickly forested hills and threaten homes and lives.

Still, many of her children and grandchildren lived nearby, visiting often. Christmas afternoons were for the grandkids, who came to show their Christmas gifts to Nanna.⁸ She loved those times with the young ones all around her. And she was at home on the land chosen by Snow.

The Newton home at Bilpin c1960s

She cared for her aunt Isabella until Isabella’s death in 1955, and Aquilla, Florence’s eldest brother, during his illness a few years later.⁹ Florence was known and loved for her generosity and kindness.

She lived there with Ernie until his death after a stroke in 1955.¹⁰

On the January day he was buried, as Florence stood at the graveside at St Peters, Richmond, she was finally free.¹¹

She had eighteen years without him, peaceful years to enjoy her family. But she never forgot her first born child, keeping his memory alive, especially at Christmas.

A Quiet Courage

Florence died from pancreatic cancer in 1973 at Kurrajong hospital, at the age of seventy-seven.¹² She was buried alongside Ernie at St Peters, Richmond. She could rest at last, even lying so close to the man who had bullied and abused her for so many years. He could no longer hurt her.

The gravestone of Ernest and Florence at St Peters churchyard in Richmond, NSW. A plaque commemorating their son, Doug, sits beneath. Nearby are graves of other Eather family members and descendants.

She was a gentle and generous woman, a simple wife and mother who did not draw attention to herself, preferring to keep in the background. Her life with Ernie blunted much of her sense of self-worth. She did her very best for her family with the meagre resources she had, coped with a volatile and bullying husband, and raised her children in trying circumstances.

A photo of her as a young woman, taken before her marriage and all that came with it, shows a pretty girl with dark hair and a full mouth. She is not smiling: her thoughtful gaze is to the side of the camera. Was she dreaming of what her future might hold?

She deserved a better life than the one she went on to have. The undying affection of her children and grandchildren may have been some compensation for that. She made sure that her family knew they were loved; not by demonstrative hugs or declarations but by her hard work and kindness. All who knew her loved her; she was affectionately called ‘Aunty May’ (her middle name) by many.

Footnotes:

1 Birth registration of Ernest Beden Newton 1888/27288 Certified copy 31 Oct 1988
2 Newcastle Morning Herald & Miner’s Advocate 28 January 1905 Via Trove, accessed 12 Jan 2023
3 Stephen Miller Smith, The History of Rail Services in the Hunter Valley, University of Newcastle, at https://hunterlivinghistories.com/ Accessed 15 Jan 2023
4 Ernest Harvey Newton in Indexes to deceased estate files; Archive Series: NRS 13341; Series: A Series (1939-1948); Reel Number: 3277State Records Authority of New South Wales, Australia; Via Ancestry.com, accessed 26 Jan 2024
5 Isabel Johnson to Denise Newton, telephone discussion, 2024
6 Certificate of Granting an Application for Conversion of a Special Lease Tenure 54/5900, in family collection of Doug Newton
7 Meredyth Hungerford, Bilpin, The Apple Country: A Local History, p307
8 Kris Newton to Denise Newton, conversations 2023
9 Isabelle Johnson to Denise Newton, telephone discussion 2024
10 NSW Births, Deaths & Marriages, Death Reg 1955/427
11 Windsor & Richmond Gazette 25 Jan 1955 p12 Via Trove, accessed 21 January 2023
12 NSW Death Registration Florence May Newton No 1973/64407

read more
History

Travels with my Ancestors #18: In the Shadows of War (part one)

By Denise Newton / March 10, 2025 / 0 Comments

Ernest Beden Newton & Florence May 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 grandparents: Florence May Creek (1896 – 1973) and Ernest Beden Newton (1888 – 1955)

A Missing Son

On Christmas Day 1942, Florence Newton (née Creek) set the table as usual for the family lunch. Eight plates, knives and forks: a set positioned in front of a chair for each of her children and her husband, Ernest Beden Newton. She omitted a setting for herself—she would eat later, once everyone had been served and were enjoying their meal. Until then, she would hover, in case Ernie wanted something. She’d bring extra potatoes or peas, dashing back to stir the gravy pan over the fuel stove in the hot kitchen. Sweat trickled between her shoulder blades and ran into her eyes as she worked.
Once she could finally sit on the back step, a plate on her lap with a jumble of crispy potato skins and salty crackling from the roast, she’d fan her hot face with a corner of her apron and long for a cooling breeze.

One chair around the table would remain empty: the one facing the setting she’d laid out carefully for her eldest child. Lovable, kind, smiling Ernest Harvey—nicknamed ‘Snow’ because of his fair hair in a family of dark-haired and hazel-eyed children—would never again join them for Christmas dinner. But she refused to believe that he was gone forever.¹

Private Ernest Harvey (‘Snow’) Newton

In June 1940, after the German invasion of France, Snow had told her he was off to Paddington to enlist, where he joined the 2/18 Australian Infantry Battalion.²

At the time, he was living in Bilpin in the Blue Mountains, on a property he’d leased in 1939 and named Snow’s Carinya.³ He’d chosen Bilpin because a cousin, David Horsefield, lived there; the two lads were good friends.⁴ Most of the family were still at Homeville, the suburb of West Maitland where Snow had been born. Younger brother, fifteen year old Doug, had accompanied him to Bilpin, but returned to Maitland when Snow enlisted.

Like most mothers she’d have experienced a mix of pride and dread when her eldest signed up for war. She naturally assumed he’d be sent to the Middle East, where much of the action involving Australians had been to that point. It was hard to imagine her boy fighting in the desert against the Germans or Italians.

First, though, came training. Basic training began at the Army Camp at Wallgrove—not so far away, so that was reassuring. Then to Bathurst, for open field training to prepare for that desert war. The new year arrived, and in February 1941 he was on a troop ship, sailing out of Sydney to an unknown destination.
The surprising news came that he’d landed in Malaya. Far from desert warfare, his letters home described the tropical jungle environment, the sights, sounds and smells in the local villages, rest and recreation days in Singapore with its crowded streets and shops:
I rode {along} the waterfront where it is barricaded like a fortress with barb wire and pill boxes and the harbour is simply one mass of boats all shapes and sizes and coloures (sic).⁵

That was reassuring. Like most Australians, she assumed that the island of Singapore, controlled and fortified by the British, was protection against Japanese expansion into southeast Asia and Australia’s north.⁶ There were unsettling cartoons in the papers, depicting bayonet-wielding Japanese using the islands of Singapore and Indonesia as stepping stones on their way to Darwin⁷, but Singapore was safe. If Snow was in Malaya or Singapore, he really was defending his country.

His letters were full of stories of movie nights at base camp, the torrential rain of the wet season, shopping excursions to buy gifts for people back home, and messages of thanks for letters and parcels received.
The worst injuries he’d suffered so far had been fractured ribs in a footy match with his unit, and a head laceration from a fall, but nothing to worry about. He’d enjoyed dancing with Chinese women at the ‘New World’ dance pavilion in Singapore, set up for the entertainment and relaxation of the troops.

Snow had always loved motor bikes and had his rider’s license, so it was no surprise that he was tasked with the role of rider. He sent a photo of himself proudly astride his motorcycle. In one letter, he corrected his mother’s use of the abbreviation ‘DR’ (dispatch rider):

I see you are putting D.R. before my name. Well, I’m not a D.R. in the eyes of this Battalion as they pay an extra 1/- (one shilling) a day for D.R.s. They may want some later on they say, as a new organisation is being developed. Here’s hoping as 1/- would mount up each fortnight.⁸

In November he wrote to say that he was starting a month-long course to become a driver/ mechanic, and he’d be working on vehicles affected by the humid and muddy environment.⁹

In every letter, he asked after family and his girlfriend, Doris:

Has Doug been called up yet? And has Ralph heard anything about coming over since last you wrote? I will enclose a lot of {photo} negatives and match box tops for Doris…
Don’t leave yourself short by putting money in the Bank and don’t forget to help yourself if necessary.
Tell Ralph not to knock the bike around as it will have to do a long trip when I get back…
Bob seems to be doing alright for himself … I hope he does well, tell him to watch himself. Doug is also getting a good wage, damn near as we get in our pay. Ron is also doing well. You can tell them to keep it up and look after themselfs (sic) and wish them a merry Christmas and a prosperous new year for me please.
Will send a piece of poetry next letter and the boys all join in sending a merry Xmas and a happy new year.

Always her ally, he hadn’t forgotten how difficult his father could be:
Glad to hear Dad has gone back to work, I suppose it is a load off your mind to have him away.¹⁰

And every letter he signed off as: your loving son, Snow.

Now it was Christmas and she must have longed for another letter. His last had been dated a year earlier: 18 November 1941. While she waited, she couldn’t know that Japanese troops had received orders to begin an assault on Malaya.

As the new year dawned, they overcame key British targets along the Malay peninsula, covering hundreds of kilometres at a frightening pace.¹¹ They were better equipped, better trained and more professional than Australians had been led to believe.¹²

Snow’s unit was ordered to move south to defend Singapore Island, the last bulwark against further Japanese expansion. During the night of 8 February, they faced an all-out assault on the island, while Japanese planes rained bombs on Allied airbases. Waves of Japanese soldiers streamed through gaps in defences, seemingly unstoppable.
Fighting throughout that night and into the early hours of the next morning was hand-to-hand, much of it in thick mud and mangrove swamps. As men fell, they sank into warm, sucking mud.¹³ It was a chaotic frenzy of fear, violence and adrenalin, with little time to think. All the Australian boys could do was react, fend off the ferocity of the Japanese, try to survive the night.

Snow was last seen at a rubber plantation near the Tengah airfield, in the island’s northwest, probably killed during that first night of intense fighting, rather than the retreat that followed.

‘Missing Presumed Dead’ declared the Army casualty list, several days before Singapore surrendered to the Japanese.¹⁴ Another two hundred and twenty two families received similar news, while four hundred more heard their boys had been wounded.¹⁵

Survivors were marched to prison camps in Japanese occupied countries. Many died from their wounds or the terrible conditions in the camps.

Florence could never accept Snow’s disappearance on that dreadful night. Even when the official Army Certificate of Death arrived in May 1946, she did not want to believe the stark words on the page. A more hurtful notice arrived a few months later, in the form of a flimsy paper on which an Army clerk had typed a list of ‘war gratuity entitlements’ payable on her son’s behalf: his service and his life apparently valued at £ 270.¹⁶

She continued setting a place for him at the Christmas table for many years.

Snow’s disappearance echoed down the years for the whole family, including his siblings. Decades after the end of the war, his younger brother Doug began researching the events of February 1942 in Singapore and Malaya. He contacted Lynette Silver, historian and Honorary Member of the 2/18th Battalion and 2/19th Battalion AIF, who provided information on what was known about the fighting there, and the likely date and place of Snow’s death. This helped Doug and others in the family come to terms with the loss of their beloved brother.

A Mighty War

The frightening news of Singapore’s surrender meant that those back home had to consider the possibility of a Japanese invasion of Australia: something that before had seemed unthinkable. This was a new worry, added to the sorrow of the gaping hole left by Snow’s disappearance.

More anxiety was in store. In 1942, son Bob enlisted.¹⁷At least he would serve in the Citizen Military Forces (CMF) within Australia, as a motorcycle dispatch rider at Wagga Wagga and Bathurst army camps. Members of the regular Army often derided the CMF as ‘chokkos’ or ‘chocolate soldiers’ who would melt in the heat of battle, but for a time there were many more CMF than AIF soldiers, and CMF troops fought at Kokoda and other parts of New Guinea alongside the AIF. Bob, however, remained in NSW.
When she heard the news that he’d been in a serious accident while on duty, she must have feared the worst. He ended up with an amputated leg, but he lived, and was discharged as medically unfit in 1946, much the family’s relief.¹⁸

In 1943 her fourth son, Doug, decided to sign up.¹⁹ He first joined the Citizen Military Forces as his brother Bob had done, and spent time in Australia before transferring as a gunner in the AIF. Departing from Cairns on board the Mexico for New Guinea, he landed at Aitape, in northern New Guinea. He was twice admitted to the Australian camp hospital—for malaria and then bronchitis—but no telegram arrived at Maitland to inform Florence that he had been killed or was missing, like Snow.

He was finally demobbed in 1946 and arrived home, safe and sound—although as for many war veterans, there were injuries, illnesses and mental scars that would appear later. For Florence, the main thing was that he was alive and home again. The fear that she might lose another son to this war was very real.

Through all this she also dealt with wartime rationing, trying to keep house and home together through restrictions on some foods. As during the Great War thirty years earlier, mothers and housewives worked hard to make sure their families had food and clothing. In the back yard at Station Street, Homeville, Florence grew vegetables and kept poultry and a few cows, so they had fresh food, though she needed to save her coupons to buy sugar, tea, meat and clothing.

She cooked over a wood stove; lighting was from kerosine lamps and heating by a coal fire. She was handy with a needle to darn and mend; Prime Minister John Curtin himself had declared that the darning needle is a weapon of war.²⁰

She’d always dressed plainly, as had her mother. No fancy frocks or expensive shoes: just a homemade cotton dress with an apron or pinny to keep it clean. She never went to a beauty salon—they were for women with money to spend on professional haircuts or a weekly set in rollers. She wore her hair bobbed or scraped back into a simple bun—again, exactly as her mother had done. No makeup either. Her needs were few, apart from Sunlight soap and a warm wash with the flannel.

Her widowed mother, Jo, lived a few houses away on Station Street and was a great support. The children would often visit their grandmother and be treated to biscuits from an old tin on her kitchen bench.²¹Jo’s death in 1942 added another grief to the burdens piling up during those hard years.

Ernie’s wage did not bring in much, but at least now it was just the youngest children still living at home. They were all used to wearing hand-me-downs, so not much changed there.

Florence had given birth to six sons and two daughters, all of whom lived to adulthood.²² She had avoided the anguish of burying a child—the fate of her mother, grandmother and great-grandmothers. The children all attended school, but without government financial support, there was an urgent need to start earning, so most left after primary school. Higher education was not possible, even if they had dreamt of something different.

The children all had chores depending on their ages: milking the cows each morning, separating the milk, making butter, cleaning out the dairy shed, weeding the vegetable garden, feeding the stock.

On top of the constraints and worries of wartime, a different kind of threat hung over her every day.

When she’d married in 1916, like most brides she hadn’t expected to live in fear.²³ Ernie could be charming—indeed, people sometimes commented on what a pleasant fellow her husband was. But at home, it was a different matter.

She’d quickly learned to keep her mouth shut and her eyes downcast when he was in a ‘mood.’ The wrong look or word could result in a beating. At meal times, he kept a leather strap handy near his seat, so that if any of the children spoke out of turn, they’d get a beating, too. The whole family ate in silence, eyes on their plates, never speaking unless spoken to by him. She tried to make sure the kids had everything on their plates before they sat down, so they wouldn’t need to ask for the salt or butter. If Ernie exploded at someone and she tried to intervene, it made things worse for them all.²⁴

There were many small cruelties: if he cut one of the children’s hair, the scissors sometimes took a little piece of their neck along with hair. A hinged lolly tin sat by his armchair and sometimes the children were allowed to have two each. They learnt to be quick in grabbing the sweets—too slow and fingers would be caught in the tin as he slammed the lid down.²⁵

There was no possibility of leaving him. One by one the older children found jobs and lives of their own. Snow’s move to Bilpin had been in part because it was a comfortable distance from his father. That was a source of grief, but she understood. She stayed, making the best of things with the few resources available to her, enduring his outbursts and attacks. Where could she go? She’d had only a basic education and few skills for a job to support herself and the younger children were still in school.

She was needed most at home, making do—and worrying. This was the lot of wives and mothers, especially in wartime.

She was fighting a mighty war of her own.

Florence and Ernest’s story will be continued in the next Travels with My Ancestors (#19) post

Footnotes:

1 Personal communication of recollections by Doug, Doreen and Kris Newton, multiple dates
2 Ernest Harvey Newton NX27296 in National Archives of Australia; Canberra, Australia; Second Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1939-1947; Series: B883, Accessed 12 Sept 2023
3 Historic Land Records Viewer, Historical Parish Maps, County Cook, Parish Bilpin, Sheet ref 1, Edition 6, 1933 EH Newton Special Lease 39-9; Via Museums of History NSW, State Records Collection, accessed 1 Feb 2024
4 Isabel Johnson to Denise Newton, telephone discussion, 2024
5 Letter from Pte EH Newton to Florence Newton 13 May 1941 (copy in collection of family of Doug Newton)
6 Commemorations Branch, Department of Veterans Affairs, A Bitter Fate: Australians in Malaya and Singapore Dec 1941 – Feb 1942, 2002, p2
7 Commemorations Branch, Department of Veterans Affairs, p13
8 Letter from Pte EH Newton to Florence Newton, 27 Oct 1941 (family collection)
9 Letter from Pte EH Newton to Florence Newton, 18 Nov 1941 (family collection)
10 Letters from Pte EH Newton to Florence Newton, 13 May, 27 Oct, 6 Nov 1941 (family collection)
11 James Burfitt, Against All Odds: the history of the 2/18th Battalion AIF, Monograph published by the 2/18th Battalion Assoc, c. 1991
12 Email from Lynette Silver, Historian and Honorary Member of the 2/18th Battalion and 2/19th Battalion AIF, to Doug Newton, 11 Sept 2001, Copy in collection of family of Doug Newton
13 Email from Lynette Silver 11 Sept 2001
14 Commonwealth War Graves Commission Casualty details for Private EH Newton. Singapore Memorial, Kanji War Cemetery, memorial reference Column 120; Aust War Memorial Roll of Honour Canberra Panel 41; Certificate of Death on War Service dated 30 May 1946
15 James Burfitt, Against All Odds, p1
16 State Records of NSW; EH Newton Will Packet NRS-13660-28-8526-Series 4_338224
17 Arnold Robert Newton in National Archives of Australia; Canberra, Australia; Citizen Military Forces Personnel Dossiers, 1939-1947; Series: B884, Via Ancestry.com, accessed 20 June 2024
18 Arnold Robert Newton in N156695Australia, World War II Military Service Records, 1939-1945, Series B884: Army Citizen Military Forces Accessed 20 Sept 2023
19 Douglas Frank Newton NX174633 in National Archives of Australia; Canberra, Australia; Second Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1939-1947,. Accessed 15 Sept 2023
20 National Archives of Australia, Empty shelves: rationing in Australia | naa.gov.au Accessed 15 Sept 2023
21 Isabel Johnson to Denise Newton, telephone discussion, 2024
22 NSW Birth registrations Ernest Harvey Newton 1917/45938/; Edward Ralph 1920/16849; Arnold Robert Newton 1922/36722; Douglas Frank Newton 1925 from Australia, World War II Military Service Records, 1939-1945; Family records for Ronald George Newton 1927; Alma Newton 1928; Albert Newton 1933; Isabel Newton 1935
23 Marriage of Ernest B Newton & Florence M Creek, Aust Marriage Index 1788- 1950, 1916/15549 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 6 Jan 2023
24 Recollections of Doug Newton
25 Isabelle Johnson to Denise Newton, telephone discussion 2024

read more
History, Travel

Discovering family: summer ‘travels’ with my ancestors (and living relatives)

By Denise Newton / January 20, 2025 / 1 Comment

Fellow descendents of Thomas Eather & Elizabeth Lee, in the Narrabri district of NSW, at our meeting in January 2025.

One of my summer highlights this year was meeting up for the first time with Eather relatives who – until recently – I did not know existed.

I was contacted last year by Brian (pictured above with his lovely wife Em and their two little boys, and his mum Pam). Brian had read some of my online writings on the Eather family story. We ended up chatting by phone for ages and as my husband and I were going to be travelling home from Queensland in early January, we later arranged for us to meet up at their property near the Namoi River.

On the day, we were joined by another Eather descendant, Steve, in the centre of the photo above.

I am not good at the whole ‘second-cousin-three-times-removed’ thing. What I do know is that all of us in that photo owe our existence to Thomas Eather and Elizabeth Lee. We are descended from three of their eight children.

If you have read my Travels with My Ancestors posts over the past couple of years to do with the Eather family history, you may recall that several branches of the original convict couple took up land on Kamilaroi country on the Liverpool Plains of NSW, around Narrabri and Boggabri. The particular post relevant to this part of the story is here.

For me, it was a double thrill. Connecting with family I had until recently not known existed, of course, and on top of that, meeting such warm, genuine, lovely people.

And secondly, walking on country near to where the second generation of Eather sons and their families worked and lived. I had pinpointed locations as best I could on maps, and pored over historic records, but until then I had not actually been to these places.

I have Brian and Steve to thank for the information relating to the specific locations of what were the properties ‘Henriendi’ and ‘Baan Baa’. I love going to places and feeling that yes, they are real locations, not just names on a map or in a historic record.

Going to this part of NSW gave me some insight into its lure for the early colonial-settlers. It is beautiful country and must have held great promise for men like Robert Eather and his brothers seeking more open land on which to graze herds of cattle and sheep.

Thanks to Steve, Brian and his family for a lovely and informative afternoon.

read more
History, Writing

Breaking book news!

By Denise Newton / November 26, 2024 / 0 Comments

Check out the ‘Books & Projects’ page on this website for more info, but my big news is that my family history book is now published.

If you are interested in a copy, contact me via the contact form.

Am I excited? Just a little bit.

Photo by Belle Co: https://www.pexels.com

read more
Writing

She Married a Murderer: a short story

By Denise Newton / October 14, 2024 / 0 Comments

I entered this story in the 2024 EM Fletcher Family History Writing Award, an annual award presented by Family History ACT. The award aims to encourage story writing on a family history / genealogy theme. I was lucky to win this competition in 2021 with my story The Bitterness of their Woe and this year, was shortlisted from the 90 entrants from across the country. I thank Family History ACT for their continued support of this competition, unique in Australia for the broad range of genres and styles of writing that it encompasses.

She Married a Murderer is fiction: it is my reimaging of the experience of my 3 x great-grandmother Margaret Houghton, known as Ann.

She Married a Murderer

Campbell Town, Tasmania, 1862

She thought it all spiteful gossip, vicious rumours from people who did not like her or know Tom as she did.
If only she had listened.

Ann knew something of her new man’s past. A Ticket-of-Leave convict, transported from Ireland for theft of a sheep. Being Irish herself that never troubled her; so many of her countrymen and women had worn the broad arrow.

She’d lost Michael after he was trampled by a horse, the mangled mess brought home on a stretcher unrecognisable as the husband she’d loved. The memory of it haunted her for the next five years, spent alone.

When Tom arrived in Deloraine to work on Coulter’s sheep farm, they caught each other’s eye under the balcony of the Deloraine hotel where she was housemaid. He had no money to speak of, and a rough way with him, but none of that troubled her. Being poor, she was used to grimy hands, muddy boots and curses. She hoped for better times with a man around again; in six weeks, they were living as husband and wife.

Tom had kissed the blarney stone more than once—honey could drip from his tongue. He’d tell a tale to have her in stitches, then quick as lightening, tell a sad one to make her weep. She was happy to come home to him after a long day washing floors and making beds at the pub. Tom gave her laughter and loving, and then two wee boys: the first named for him, followed by Hubert two years after. A grand little family, she thought.

The whispers started when young Tommy was learning to walk, his pudgy thighs trembling, him grinning with astonished delight. Her heart squeezed with love for him as she walked to the grocer, Tommy on one hip and a basket on the other, to buy vegetables for a stew.

As she dropped the goods into her basket, she heard low voices from the corner and glanced across. Two women, who fancied themselves Deloraine’s better sort of ladies, deep in hushed conversation. She caught: his poor first wife, beaten and life sentence, before they saw her looking and their murmuring ceased.

Walking home she puzzled over what she’d heard. Were they talking about Tom’s first wife? She’d died, Ann already knew that. But beaten to death? And by who? Surely not Tom. The women said the killer had received a life sentence—Tom had his Ticket, wasn’t serving life. Whatever had happened to his wife, Tom had no part in it. Besides, he wasn’t a violent man, had not lifted a finger against her or the baby.

But that night she slipped in a question as they lay together in their narrow bed.
‘What was your first wife’s name, Tom?’
There was a brief silence. Then: ‘Catherine.’
‘How did she die?’
‘Met with an accident.’
‘The same with my poor Michael! What sort of accident?’
The blanket was dragged from her shoulders as Tom sat up. ‘What are all these questions for? I don’t pester you with questions about Michael. All that’s in the past. Leave it there.’
She lay very still until he slid down and she could pull the covers over her cold arms. Try as she might, she couldn’t halt the thoughts that bucked and spun in her mind like that panicky horse that had killed Michael. She had a sudden pang of longing for her first husband and for their lost years together.

The whispers did not stop that day. She heard them many times, always quickly swallowed when she came near or turned to look directly at the speaker. The same words repeated: first wife, killed. She began to hear new ones: murder, trial, mercy.

She never again asked Tom about the manner of Catherine’s death. But she couldn’t stop herself from questioning him about her: what was she like? Where did they marry? When did she die? It was a strange compulsion to learn about this woman who had once shared his bed.
He gave up snippets, small nuggets that she stored away to consider later. She learned that Catherine had been Irish, and a convict like him. She learned that they’d married in Launceston in March, 1851, but not had children.

Hubert was four in 1859 when Tom and Ann wed, in Saint Michael’s Church. A bright day, spring blossom everywhere as they stood outside, greeting well-wishers. Widower and widow, united by God as part of His holy plan. So she thought.
By then they’d moved to Campbell Town, leaving behind the rushing sparkle of the Meander River for the gold of wheat fields and brown of sheep paddocks. Here Tom found work on local farms and they settled into a small cottage, just one room and a sleepout at the back, but comfortable enough.

After the wedding Tom’s behaviour towards her began to change. He disliked it if she spoke to others, especially men. He cut short conversations at the hotel or the grocer. She couldn’t understand his jealousy—she had no interest in flirting or gazing at other men. He was all she needed, but as his manner became more abrupt and suspicious, she gradually became aware that she’d begun to be a little afraid of him. He had never hit her. He didn’t need to. His size and strength, the ugly glower on his face when he was displeased, his unpredictable temper— all told her to take care, to never give him reason to strike out.

She was happy when she made a friend in Campbell Town. They met at the store. Their children were similar ages; they all shyly regarded each other over stacks of newspapers. The woman picked up a copy and began to read from the front page.
‘There’s a conference of Temperance Societies in Launceston this week,’ she said as she paid for her purchases. ‘What do you think of the Temperance aims?’
Ann stammered, knowing nothing of Temperance but not wanting to show her ignorance.
The woman continued, ‘I support their objectives. So much grief comes from drink. Not just from men’s drunkenness, either. Do you remember the case from some years back in Launceston, a woman beaten by her husband when he found her drinking with other men? He killed her. Was sentenced to life, but that helped his poor wife none.’
Ann’s chest tightened. His poor wife. All those whispers. Before she could stop herself, she had grasped the other woman’s arm.
“Do you know her name? The murdered woman?’ The word murdered fell heavily from her tongue.
The woman thought. ‘Tipping was her last name, I think.’ She gave a small smile then looked closely at Ann. ‘Did you know her?’
‘No, no, I don’t think so.’ Ann went to gather the boys and leave, but hesitated. ‘Do you live near?’ she asked.
‘Yes, the blue painted house; it’s not far.’
‘I’m on the corner. Would you like to come to mine? I’ll make tea and our littlies can play. My husband is at work.’ She didn’t know why she felt a need to say that last bit.
‘Lovely! We’ve not been here long; I don’t yet know many neighbours,’ the other woman replied.
Over tea Ann learned the woman’s name was Martha, that her family had moved from Launceston but returned there often to visit her elderly parents, and that she was a staunch supporter of the Temperance movement, which she explained was about combatting the evils brought about by the demon drink. The two women became firm friends.

Ann tucked away the new nugget of information that had stopped her in her tracks in the store. A murdered woman in Launceston. It lay in her mind along with the others she’d secreted there, the whispers she’d heard. They gnawed away, troubling her as she went about her day and disturbing her dreams at night.

After months of this, she asked Martha if she knew of more about the dead woman from Launceston.
‘No, but we are visiting my mother there next week. The Examiner has its office in town; my husband is a friend of the Editor. Perhaps he can find a back issue with a report on the trial.’
‘Please don’t go to any trouble.’ Ann was beginning to regret asking.
‘No trouble.’ Martha tilted her head. ‘But I think something is troubling you.’
After a long hesitation, the dam wall of worries broke and out they poured. Tom’s harshness and jealousy. His first marriage in Launceston. The whispers. The murdered woman.
Martha’s expression changed and she said, ‘If you are correct, you could be in danger. Keep things calm at home until I return. Don’t question or upset him.’ Her tone was urgent; Ann promised she would try.

Two weeks passed. Long days in which she tiptoed around Tom, careful of word and deed.

When Martha finally knocked at her door, Ann could scarcely wait for her friend to take off her hat before asking, ‘Well?’
Martha sat down heavily, withdrew a paper from her pocket.
‘Edgar copied it from the news report. The killing happened in April and the trial in June, 1851. Eleven years ago.’ She made to pass it to Ann, who shook her head.
‘I can’t.’
Martha took it back and began to read.
‘Thomas Britt, convicted of murder, was brought up for sentencing. Catherine Britt came by her death from a kick given by him, but she was drunk, and he had reason to suspect her of other immoralities…His Honour said due allowance should be made for the excited state of his feelings; a manslaughter verdict would have been more proper. Mercy recommended.’
Ann felt sick.
Martha said, ‘I’m afraid there is more. The report on the inquest held after Catherine’s death gave more detail as to what happened. Do you want me to read…?’
At a mute nod from Ann, Martha continued,
‘Britt was inflamed by jealousy…he used revolting language towards his wife, swore he would do for her that night. On the way home he subjected her to most brutal assaults. A witness…placed himself between them but Britt knocked his wife to the ground and stamped violently on her head as she lay…she never spoke again and died the next day.’

Ann gave a choking cry. Murder. Those women had whispered the truth, after all. Why had no one told her to her face about Tom’s past crime? Would she have listened? She no longer knew, no longer felt sure of anything. She’d married a murderer, a man who had killed in a most brutal way. Would he do the same to her? Or her boys? Horrible visions engulfed her, the lads lying bloodied while their da stamped on their little heads. She buried her face in her apron, shuddering.
Then another horror as she remembered that Tom and Catherine had married in March, 1851. He had murdered his new bride within a month of their wedding! And the judge had recommend mercy? Where was the justice?
She would never be safe again.

She looked up at Martha, jaw clenched. ‘What can I do? I can’t leave; I’ve nowhere to go, not with two lads.’
She gave a half sob, half laugh. ‘My da would say: You make your bed; you must lie in it. Seems he was right.’
Ann had no more words for her despair and fear. She’d walked unknowingly into a trap and now she must live there, caught in a vice that only her death would release.

Postscript:
Friends of Ann Britt of Campbell Town are respectfully invited to attend her funeral on 12 June 1862, at the Roman Catholic cemetery.

Inspiration: My 3 x great-grandfather’s murder of his first wife brings into sharp focus the devastation of family violence, which continues to this day.

Marriage registration of Thomas Britt and Catherine Tipping at Launceston, Tasmania, 1851

Launceston Examiner, 23 April 1851

read more
History, Uncategorized, Writing

Travels with my…unknown cousins?

By Denise Newton / September 23, 2024 / 4 Comments

One of the delightful and unexpected side effects of writing and publishing Travels with My Ancestors, a series about my research and travels through all things family history, has been the out-of-the-blue contacts I’ve had from relatives I’ve neither known nor heard of. These people have (in the words of one) stumbled upon my blog articles and reached out via this website, or on Facebook messenger, to introduce themselves. They are all related to me, albeit distantly, and part of the fun is figuring out who our common ancestor might be.

It’s wonderful to know that many others like me, are delving into our ancestors’ past worlds. And I am always thrilled to hear when something in my articles, a photo or a snippet of information, sparks interest in others to know more.

The flip side is that I am open to being corrected – I’m not a professional historian or genealogist and no doubt there are mistakes or misinterpretations in my work.

Imagine my absolute delight in being told that something I’d included, shed some light for someone researching their own family story. (Thank you, Brian!)

As I move towards completion of my book (Travels with my Ancestors: Felons, Floods & Family) and get it ready for printing, the knowledge that others have found my research and stories useful or interesting is very reassuring. It’s all been worth it!

This book will be volume one in Travels with My Ancestors. It traces my father’s line of descent, from convicts Thomas Eather and Elizabeth Lee, to my grandmother Florence Newton. The narrative also encompasses the stories of the Newton and Robinson families, who came here as assisted immigrants in mid-19th century.

It has been an absorbing three years, researching, writing, re-writing, re-writing, re-writing…and of course, travelling. As I get closer to the time when I send it to the printers, I feel both excited and (if I am honest) a teensy bit nervous. Once printed, that’s it: potential mistakes and all.

Well, there is always volume two to work on: my mother’s side of the family tree.

Stay tuned!

read more

Troubled Waters

People from the West Country, Part Two

People from the West Country – Part One:

Son of English Immigrants

To the Mountains

A Quiet Courage

Footnotes:

A Missing Son

A Mighty War

Footnotes: