Travels with my Ancestors #21: The Newton Story continued.
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 2024Travels with my Ancestors #20: Now for the Newtons!
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 ChannelA 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.8The 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 LibraryThe 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…
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Marriage of William Newton & Ann Long 15 Nov 1827 in England Select Marriages 1538-1973 Via Ancestry.com, accessed 29 Sept 2023
- 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
- 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
- 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
Travels with my Ancestors #19: In the Shadows of War (Part Two)
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
Travels with my Ancestors #18: In the Shadows of War (part one)
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.10And 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.17 At 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 2024Travels with my Ancestors # 5: Kentish men and women – The Heather / Eather family
I am in Kent, in the southeast of England. There are two villages and one town I’m here to see. All three places are related to the story of my Heather/ Eather ancestors, my paternal grandmother’s forebears, who lived in this little corner of England from the 1600’s.
Robert Heather and his wife Mary moved to the village of Chislehurst in about 1640. Together they had a daughter and five sons; each successive generation naming their eldest son Robert. For over twelve decades the Heathers were baptised, married and buried at St Nicholas’ church in the village.
Today that church stands sturdily, overlooking the expansive Chislehurst Common, a swathe of green within the suburban landscape of southeast London that has overlaid the village of yesteryear. The Common is threaded with quiet walking paths through stands of spreading oaks. Squirrels scamper up trees as I pass, a spring chorus of birds follows me through this timeless place.
A strange circular depression in the grass is a puzzle – a former pond? A bomb crater from the war? – until I see a small plaque labelling it as ‘Chislehurst Cockpit’. I have an awful feeling that I know what this was.
Later, I google it and my suspicion is confirmed – it is a leftover from the days when village pastimes were bloodier and more violent than today’s football or cricket matches. Cockfighting, single stick fighting and other such entertainments were pursued there until banned by more squeamish authorities in Victorian times.
Now to the church. St Nicholas has stood since the 15th century, though the site has seen worship for over a thousand years. The Norman font is still in use today: all those Heather babies baptised with water from its stone basin. When I look closer, I notice a very sweet modern addition: a garland of knitted babies’ booties and tiny socks around its base.
I stand at the altar, where I imagine successive Robert Heathers and their brides reciting their wedding vows. Were their eyes fixed on the embroidered tapestry or intricate carving behind the Reverend? Unable to read, they may have enjoyed the storytelling in these artworks.
The Heathers were not wealthy, too poor to have afforded a stone monument to mark the life and death of one of their number. Many Heather bones lie beneath the soil in the churchyard; if they once had a simple wooden cross to mark their places, they have long since rotted away. But the earth here has been enriched by the blood and bone of generations of the Heathers.
In Maidstone, I want to find the place where one of the Heather sons, Thomas, was tried, sentenced and imprisoned in 1788. I have researched the town’s history and learnt that the Court House and Gaol were once in what today is the Town Hall.
When I get there, I am disappointed to find the doors firmly closed and locked. This I had not anticipated. Then I notice a small old-fashioned doorbell with a sign above it that reads ‘Please ring.’ Should I? I decide that yes, I should: I am here for this one day; my only chance to see where these events played out. So I press the button. Nothing happens.
I swallow my disappointment and am about to turn away, when I notice a more modern-looking button. I press it. Long moments pass, before a young man pops his head around the door.
Quickly I say, ‘I’m from Australia, and an ancestor of mine was tried and imprisoned here. I was hoping to see the place where this happened.’
He hesitates, then smiles. ‘I was just about to do the fire drill, but I’ve got a few minutes. Come on in.’
Scarcely believing my luck, I follow him inside and up a flight of stairs to a large room where, he tells me, the local council meetings now take place. High on the wall at one end of the room is a plaque with the insignia of British justice, and the young man, whose name is Russell, tells me that it was here that judges meted out punishment to those who, like Thomas, had broken the law.
I can imagine it: Thomas in the dock, the bewigged judge stern-faced on a high bench above him. Thomas’ crime had not been a trivial one: he was accused of ‘Highway Robbery’, having stolen goods from a man on a road while brandishing a weapon – a hoe? A pick? Or even a musket or pistol? The place where this happened was very possibly a road near the same Chislehurst Common I recently walked across.
Whether he knew it or not, this was one of the many offences that attracted the Death penalty. Thomas would hang.
He was taken to a cell, which is where Russell and I now go. Up a flight of narrow stairs, through a heavy door with a small square peephole cut into its thickness. What was once a gaol cell is now an empty room. In places, letters and dates have been carved into the the bare walls and floor – this is Georgian-era graffiti by educated prisoners who could write.
I ask Russell how many prisoners would be accommodated in this room.
‘Up to sixty, at times,’ he tells me. ‘Men, women and children.’
Fortunately for Thomas (and his descendants) he did not hang. His death sentence was commuted to a term of transportation: fourteen years across the seas in the new penal colony of New South Wales. He spent a total of two years in that cell in Maidstone, before being transferred to one of the prison hulks on the Thames in London.
Then in 1789 he was on board the prison ship Neptune, bound for Sydney. He survived that voyage on the worst ship of the worst convict fleet to leave Britain – but that is a whole other story.
For now, I am grateful that he made it to Australia, and that I pressed that bell at the Maidstone Town Hall in order to see where these life changing events took place.
PS. If you are wondering how Thomas Heather became Thomas Eather, imagine this: You have just been disembarked at Sydney after a hellish voyage, and a pasty-faced clerk demands your name, quill poised over a ledger book. In your Kentish accent, you reply ‘Thomas Heather’, dropping the ‘h’ as you always do. What the clerk hears and records is ‘Thomas Eather.’ And so the Australian Eather family has his origins in a dropped ‘aitch.’
Travels with My Ancestors #4: People of the West Country – the Newtons
This is the fourth in the ‘Travels with My Ancestors’ series. You may like to read the first in the series to provide context – you can find it here.
Beautiful Bath Abbey My little travel party drive out of Bath, Somerset’s – and arguably England’s – most beautiful city. The gracious buildings of smooth Bath stone carry echoes of Georgian prosperity and indulgence, while the Roman baths and statues and the soaring Abbey remind us that people have worshipped and socialised here for more than a millennia.
Now we venture into the unknown – rural Somerset. My father’s forebears hailed from a cluster of small villages that circle the Quantock Hills in the northwest of the county. As we leave the busyness of Bath behind us, the landscape changes almost immediately, from crowded streets and town houses to lush, green farmland blanketing gentle slopes. Black faced sheep and spring lambs are dotted across the fields, their woolly bodies a contrast beside the vivid yellow of canola crops.
The Somerset Newtons were not people of means. Most worked as labourers on the many farms of the district, though there were occasional tradesmen such as butcher or carpenter, skilled trades in demand everywhere. Farms and farming have changed and grown since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but the soil the Newton men and women tilled and the animals they tended, are much the same today.
The villages connected with the Newtons and the families they married into have almost unbearably quaint names: Crowcombe, Combe Florey, Nether Stowey, Bradford on Tone, Dunster. From Australia I have been searching out these names on Google Maps, drilling down to Street view on Google Earth to glimpse the places the Newtons called home. I was delighted when thatched cottages, green fields and timbered woodlands appeared on my screen: many of these places were still small rural settlements; the years had not transformed them or carved multi-lane highways through their hearts.
Now, I am here in person, for real, to see and smell and hear these places I’d been learning and writing and dreaming about for the past three years.
I am excited, of course. Mixed in with that is a hard to define emotion. A sense of arriving at a place that some part of me recognised. Despite all my research, Googling and map reading, I had not really known what to expect. A backwater, left forlorn as other parts of the county progressed into the modern age? Tattered villages populated by elderly folk suspicious of ‘outsiders’?
Instead, what I find are stunning landscapes and well-preserved towns and hamlets. The pleasure and relief I feel is almost overwhelming, and surprising. I feel connected with this country in a visceral, unexpected way.
This is the West Country, the land of origin of my father’s people, and I am loving what I see.
Village Life
Of all the villages, the one in which I will leave a little piece of my heart is Crowcombe. Here I visit the wonderfully named Church of the Holy Ghost, where I stand at the baptismal font where generations of Newton babies were welcomed into the community of the then Church of England, back to at least 1630.
Like pretty much all of the village and parish churches I’ve gazed at on this visit, the Norman era tower is very tall and square. Sometimes they look more suited to top a castle than a place of worship. Inside, though, it’s a different story.
This particular church is famous for its mediaeval intricately carved bench ends: the wooden partitions at the end of each pew. They break the mould of church decorative art, depicting among the Christian symbols an array of folk tales and pagan imagery. The most imaginative ones, in my opinion, are those that tell of the battle between two men and a giant and fearsome ‘Gurt worm’, a kind of dragon, which they cleave in two. The divided creature went on to form two local hills. As I snap photos of these vivid carvings, I imagine young Newton children endeavouring to sit still during Sunday service, being transported out of the church into a world of legends from Somerset’s past.
Carved pew ends at Crowcombe church 
The Crowcombe pub, the Carew Arms, has been the village meeting and drinking place since the 1500’s, when it was known as the Lion, then the Three Lions. Many Newtons would have enjoyed an ale or a local Somerset cider there. Today the pub shows its venerable age: the flagged floor, low heavy beams along the ceiling, and the stables (the stalls now cleverly converted to booths.)
The Crew Arms pub in Crowcombe 
There remains a sense of community and connection in the village. The Carew family have lived in the manor house for centuries, and continue their time-honoured role of support for community projects and events. In the village I spot a lovely mural of tiles, a Covid lockdown initiative, in which residents were invited to decorate a tile. It now hangs proudly on the wall of the pub.
The Crowcombe Mural, a Covid community project 
It is Coronation weekend when we visit (the May 2023 Coronation of King Charles III) and Crowcombe, along with most of the villages and towns we pass through, is celebrating with a village BYO picnic in the field of one resident. I’m an avowed Republican but I am moved at the level of community connection this event has inspired.
Coincidence? Or a new family mystery to investigate
In Nether Stowey’s Church of St Mary, my husband spots a plaque on the wall commemorating three members of the Buller family. Husband Robert Beadon Buller and his wife Ann, both of whom died and were buried in the churchyard in 1841. Their son, also Robert Beadon Buller, was also remembered there after his death in 1880.
Martha Buller married a Newton man in that church in 1798. Were the Buller family members on the plaque related to Martha? Looking at the birth and death dates, it seems possible that Martha and the elder Robert were siblings, cousins, or some other close family relationship.
The intriguing thing is that ‘Beadon’, the Buller father and son’s middle name, is a name that appears several times in the Newton family tree. I have always assumed that it was a Newton family tradition – but is it possible it came from the Buller family, brought with Martha to the Newton line when she married? If Robert Beadon turns out to be her relative, that theory might well hold water.
That same day, a Crowcombe local suggests we look at a house in the village Main Street, which has ‘Beadon’ on a name plate on its front fence. Then I turn around and – directly opposite – there is a house with the name Newton Cottage on its gate. A coincidence? The tingle in my fingers and toes suggests not. I learn that Newton Cottage was built in the 1870’s – after my Newtons had emigrated to Australia – but surely the people who built and lived in that cottage were part of the larger Newton clan in and around the village. And surely, Beadon could be connected somehow.
For now, I don’t know, but it’s a theory I will be exploring once I am back home in Australia. The tingling fingers and toes can’t be wrong. Or perhaps I will uncover some other previously unknown connection or branch of the family tree.
As we leave Somerset, I feel an invisible skein unravelling behind me, connecting me to this West Country, the land from where the Australian Newtons came, one hundred and eighty years ago. I take with me that connection, surprising but so very welcome, and I hope I will return one day.
All photos by the author
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