The
Life & Times of
John
Hinton EDMONDS [1846-1889] & Mary Louisa PUPLETT [1852-1899]
*
John H Edmonds(1st) and Mary L Puplett were the parents of Ernest Harry
Edmonds.
*
Ernest Harry Edmonds married Mabel Jane Haines in 1910, and were the parents of
John Hinton Edmonds(2nd), who married Ella Osborn in 1934.
Their
Family Backgrounds
I’ve covered John’s distant English
origins in “The Edmonds Families of Bradford-on-Avon”, and I’ve done his
parents William & Elizabeth Edmonds’ “Life & Times”. And likewise
Mary’s larger homeland story is in Thomas & Elizabeth Perry’s “Life &
Times”, and her parent’s colonial story is covered in James & Lucy
Puplett’s “Life & Times”.
So,
some of this may sound a touch familiar, but I’ve tried to only re-visit the
parents’ lives enough here to see it from these two kids’ own point of view.
JOHN’S
BEGINNINGS
 |
| John Hinton Edmonds |
At the time of John’s birth (he was
possibly named after his father’s somewhat imposing maternal grandfather John
Hinton, a successful Bradford-on-Avon woollen mill entrepreneur and travelling
minister), he already had three elder sisters – Mary 5, Ann 3, and Ruth nearly
2. Also in the house was his maternal Grandmother Evans, who had emigrated to
SA from England with Will and Beth on a return trip the couple made in 1840
before the girls were born.
It’s
unclear if John’s dad was actually present on the day John popped into the
world, as Will was either about to be, or had just been, released from the
Adelaide Gaol after a stint for insolvency. Like so many new South Australians,
Will lost everything in the colony’s 1838-40 property speculation bubble, that
burst in 1841-2 and left the young family on hard times. It could have even
been that Beth stalled on her son’s registration, knowing that Will’s release
was close.
But, at the very least, dad was definitely
there four weeks after John was born to personally register his new son in
Adelaide, describing himself as an “Agent” of Hammersmith, having already
unsuccessfully tried Chief Clerk of the Lands Office, Real Estate Speculator,
Commission Agent, and Farmer, and now set about dabbling in some shoe repairs
and a little home brewing while he waited for something better to turn up.
One
thing that surely had a significant impact on all or part of John’s life, was
that he was either born with a seriously deformed (or completely missing) right
hand, or he lost it some time between birth and adult life. I’ve scoured the SA
newspapers from his birth through to 1870 but there’s nothing, and an accident
like that would surely have made it into print in those times. I also
corresponded with John’s eldest daughter’s son in the 1980s, and while he was
able to give me some great oral history bits that he’d been given by his
mother, he had never heard how his grandfather lost his hand. More on the
impact of that later.
In late August 1846 John was baptised at
Holy Trinity on North Terrace, as each of his sisters had been, and it was
about then that the family’s next tilt at a little prosperity was made. They
packed their few bits and moved down south, about 25 kms to the little town
that was then known as “The Horseshoe” – now Old Noarlunga – on the Onkaparinga
River. Dad had either taken over, or maybe set up, a brewery, in an existing
cottage and on a seven year lease, adjacent to a ford crossing at the side of
the “Horseshoe Inn”, and it was here that John was to spend all of his
childhood and teen years.
 |
| Old Noarlunga c.1850 |
At
the time, other than the pub and a fair population of cottages, the town had a
church up on the hill, quite a decent steam flour mill, and a set of wharves
where local produce was taken down-river to Port Noarlunga for coastal
shipping. And, along with the fact that the main South Road through to the rest
of the Fleurieu Peninsula and Goolwa, crossed here on the new (1841) bridge, it
made this small town quite a focal point.
So,
the Edmonds family brewery had location location location, they had thirsty
travellers, they had all the right paperwork, and Dad was a valued speaker, committeeman,
and singer(!) at all the local ag shows and ploughing contests. Surely Will
must’ve thought him and his brewery had a licence to print money. Things were
looking up.
In
March 1849 – John would’ve been nearly three – his younger brother William
Bennett Jr was born, the last of Will and Beth’s brood of five, and although
dad was starting to have some trouble keeping on top of his expenses, to the
point where he had to mortgage the balance of his lease (but only on the
strength of his elder brother back in England going surety), things were
ticking along well enough. Especially when the brewery and its output received
quite a public and very positive write-up by a travelling correspondent for
“The Register” in 1850.
By the time John was around seven, say
about 1853, he would have had to been given some basic education, but the first
school at Old Noarlunga didn’t open until 1860, so presumably his mum had to
step into this role. She’d probably done for the girls also, as Beth seems to
have had a good education herself, although they may have had intermittent
access to something more formal when they lived closer in. One thing we do
know, John became adept at maths, suggesting that Beth realised he would always
have to earn a living with his head not his hand(s).
The family’s money worries though were
ever present, and while Will re-leased the property in 1853 for an optimistic
14 more years, within a few weeks he used this “going concern business” lease
as collateral for yet another mortgage, but also wrote to his elder brother
back in England and organised £400 as a further surety against the bills of
some nervous creditors.
Then, in late 1854 (John would’ve been
about 8 and, who knows, possibly even there when it happened) the “SA Register”
reported…
ACCIDENT - Last week a valuable horse, belonging to Mr.
W. B. Edmonds,
of Noarlunga, while engaged in drawing water from the Onkaparinga,
backed the cart into a deep waterhole, and, being drawn in with it, was
drowned. The driver made every attempt to disengage him from the cart,
but without effect.
of Noarlunga, while engaged in drawing water from the Onkaparinga,
backed the cart into a deep waterhole, and, being drawn in with it, was
drowned. The driver made every attempt to disengage him from the cart,
but without effect.
And if that wasn’t annoying enough,
everyone (that is, everyone without an income dependent on people passing
through the town) was bitching about the road!! The grizzles had been going on
for some years but now hardly a month went by without a Meeting in the
District. Voiced raised. About the road. About the selfish nature of the
rate-paying locals. And by 1856 people were even writing this sort of stuff to
the papers...
The part at present most deserving of
condemnation is the descent into Noarlunga, which is truly execrable... the
only conceivable reason for making the road take its present dangerous and
circuitous route is that all travellers should be compelled to pass along the
Horseshoe township.
It is quite true that main roads should be so laid out as to furnish the maximum of accommodation to the districts through which they pass, but they should not be diverted from their natural course simply to improve private property.
The inhabitants of Noarlunga have surely no right to demand that every traveller to Willunga shall risk his life by driving down a breakneck hill, and then travel along a flat which is sometimes under water in winter time, when the danger and discomfort might all be avoided by making the road straight instead of crooked. They have no vested interest in the lives and limbs of passers-by, nor any right to insist that all travellers shall pass their doors. If there must be a sacrifice of interest anywhere, the little township should give way to the great public, and not the great public to the little township.
It is quite true that main roads should be so laid out as to furnish the maximum of accommodation to the districts through which they pass, but they should not be diverted from their natural course simply to improve private property.
The inhabitants of Noarlunga have surely no right to demand that every traveller to Willunga shall risk his life by driving down a breakneck hill, and then travel along a flat which is sometimes under water in winter time, when the danger and discomfort might all be avoided by making the road straight instead of crooked. They have no vested interest in the lives and limbs of passers-by, nor any right to insist that all travellers shall pass their doors. If there must be a sacrifice of interest anywhere, the little township should give way to the great public, and not the great public to the little township.
John was by now about 10, his sisters 12,
14 and 15, and Will Jr 7, and no matter what kind of life they had had so far
in this rustic little town, it was starting to once more come apart, and in the
Sept of 1856 Will was once more swamped by his creditors and declared
insolvent, with the ignominy of another spell in the Adelaide Gaol while they
picked over the family’s assets, then out on bail for a while, and then back in
again.
You
can’t imagine how hard this must have been on them all, but Beth and old Mrs
Evans, and the kids, struggled on as best they could, staying on in The
Horseshoe where they seemed to have had quite a lot of local support and
goodwill, even hanging on to their home/brewery for the moment. If nothing
else, Will seemed to have been popular and well-liked in the district.
But things weren’t about to get any
better, and in Sept 1857, Beth’s mum became ill, to the point where she made
out her will, and just two weeks later they were laying the old lady to rest in
the little churchyard on the top of the hill. It must’ve been a pretty low
point for them all, and Will wasn’t cleared of his bankruptcy until early in
1858, but there was no way anyone was going to stake him again in business.
Enter
Edward Dutton – local, young, energetic, good business head – and he had an eye
for Mary the eldest daughter, now 17, and had probably been running the brewery
in Will’s absence anyway, keeping the family afloat.
Will returned to the district for a while,
but in April 1859 (John was still only about 13) he upped and left the family
in Dutton’s care and returned to England (“in the cabin”, presumably borrowing
the money for the round trip) to plead his case personally to his elder
brother, now head of the family estate after the recent deaths of both of their
parents. Not that this ploy appeared to improve the family’s position long term.
At 13-14, John would by then have been
finished with boyish things and, like his three older sisters, working full
time in some capacity, but reading between the lines I get the distinct
impression that Edward Dutton now had the reins (and probably the assets) of
the business, and John was working for him.
His childhood now behind him and an
uncertain (and probably one-handed) future ahead, what sort of a young man had
arrived? Going by the facts of his life to come, my guess is that he was strong
of frame and character (like his namesake), had grit and a sense of adventure,
good with numbers (and horses!), maybe a bit of a loner, loved his mum, not
sure about his dad, probably liked him but accepted that he was hopeless with
money, and the sibling he seemed to be closest to was his immediately older
sister Ruth, now about 15,
Around about this time young go-getter
Edward Dutton began to expand his business interests, and on a map of
Yankallila said to be how the town looked in 1860, "Dutton's Brewery"
is shown on the Bungala River at the far south-eastern end of town, on a dirt
road that (at that time) crossed the river. Personally I think the map is a
touch out, as another reference says it was on Lot 1170[ ], a little further
west.
When
John’s dad arrived back from England in June 1860 – in the best cabin but
seemingly empty-handed – the family moved up to Mitcham, and in the Oct John’s
eldest sister Mary (now 19 and “of Mitcham”), married Edward Dutton (28,
“Gentleman” of Noarlunga), at the local church St Michaels.
Then around March 1861 John’s parents,
probably with Annie (18), Ruth (17), and William (12) in tow, moved to Kadina,
where dad had been appointed as Clerk of the (new) District Court of Wallaroo
and Kadina, where they soon became part of the community – younger brother Will
Jr taking a position as a Postal Messenger and elder sister Annie marrying
local man William Fisher. But John himself, now 15, seems to have stayed behind
in the southern districts, probably continuing to live at the Old Noarlunga
house/brewery with now the Duttons, who made John an uncle in July 1861.
Things ticked along quietly for a year or
two, until Feb 1863, when John’s dad had that unfathomable brain fade (refer
their story), which must have SO rattled the wider family, especially when he
was sentenced in the May to three years hard labour and facing his time in the
quarries of The Stockade out at Yatala. But it appears that John (now age 17,
and you can only imagine how he was feeling about what was happening to his
dad) quickly fixed up the loan of a horse so a Noarlunga local could ride up to
town to see the magistrates to get his dad “...removed from The Stockade to the
(Adelaide) Gaol, on account of his health...”, although it’s not clear if they
were successful[ ].
In the meantime, life in the brewing
business was going well, and in Sept 1864 Dutton built his big “River Murray
Brewery” at Goolwa, and soon disposed of the old one at Noarlunga, to move down
to his new place. Where this left John is hard to say, but somewhere along the
way he had to bump into young Polly Puplett over in Yankalilla.
But
while John was now about 18, Polly was still only 12 at this point, so maybe
John remained in Dutton’s employ for the next six years (Dutton didn’t dispose
of his Yankalilla brewery until 1871), and we can only assume that John spent a
good deal of time in Yankalilla while working for his brother-in-law.
There’s no record as to where the rest of
the Edmonds family lived between John’s dad’s release from prison about mid
1866, and 1869 when they re-appear in Goolwa, but John seems to have been
living permanently in Yankalilla by then, as he was on the committee of the
Mechanics Institute there that year[ ].
So, John was 23, was looking to move his
life along, and had surely by now cast an amorous eye on the local baker’s
daughter.
POLLY
PUPLETT’S BEGINNINGS
Mary Louisa (always known as “Polly”)
Puplett was born in the Liverpool suburb of West Derby, on the 17th of January
1852, the second of the two surviving children of James Puplett and his wife
Lucy (nee Perry). At that time her elder sister Elizabeth Kate was 3.
 |
| Mary Louisa "Polly" Puplett |
Polly actually arrived into a long-term
Quaker family, on both her dad’s Puplett side and her mum’s Perry side, but not
that she would have known much about this, as her family emigrated to South
Australia when she was only a toddler, and they seemed to have left their
“Quaker-ness” behind in the Old Country.
Polly’s parents’ relationship up until her
birth had been a touch rocky, her dad James (a baker for most of his working
life) always seemed to be somewhere between a fraction unreliable, and a total
waste of space. But, by late 1854 the marriage was sort of back on track, and
in the Dec James and Lucy and their two girls, along with Lucy’s sister
Margaret and her husband Charles Wickens and their three small girls, all
boarded the "Duke of Wellington" at the London Docks, bound for South
Australia, where – like so many emigrants – they had a relative or two already
established. James had William Puplett (a cousin of his father’s I think) a
trader who was doing well enough, and Lucy had her brother Alfred, down in the
Noarlunga area, wrestling with reluctant farmland.
At
a couple of weeks short of three years old, would Polly actually remember any
of this three month trip out? – even the pretty bad start, which clearly didn’t
bother her a scrap (taken from "Lucy's Log", a diary she kept of the trip out)...
"Friday
(Dec 22nd). Very rough and stormy all night, could not sleep. All continued ill
and all looked the most miserable set of mortals imaginable. If we had been
taken to market for sail none little or big would have fetched much. Amused
some by saying I could not be sick in the dark. Our dear Polly the only one of
our children who escaped sickness."
...
or maybe she remembered her third birthday, at sea ...
"My
Pollys birthday, 3 yrs old. Got up when called, on deck about six, found we
were just passing Teneriffe a most splendid sight. The top was enveloped in
clouds, the sun rising above them, Captain said we should have a good view of
it till about noon. Went down to breakfast, after went up again and watched the
clouds gradually disperse and at last saw distinctly the tops of the mountain,
that and the sides were covered with snow plainly seen by the naked eye and
really it was splendid, worth all the roughs of the voyage to see it. The sun
shining on the top and the dark rocks below, I never saw anything so grand."
They disembarked at Pt Adelaide mid April
1855, and it’s unclear how they filled in the next four years, but by early
1859 – Polly would have been 7 and her sister 10 – the Pupletts were
established as shopkeepers up north in the bustling copper-mining town of
Burra, although the Wickens had opted for a home in Coromandel valley in the
Adelaide Hills.
James and Lucy seemed to have worked
themselves into the Burra community of the day, with James taking an interest
in the running of the Anglican day-school of St Marys at Kooringa (March 1859),
and Lucy in some kind of teaching role, presumably at St Marys with Polly and
Kate enrolled.
But it wasn’t long before James was
struggling again, and in May 1860 there’s a series of Public Notices in the
papers that “...James Puplett, late Storekeeper of Aberdeen (a ‘suburb’ in the
middle of Burra)… assigned his stock to… creditors…“, but this seemed to only
be a hiccup in their lives, and they must have somehow “traded out” of their
problems as there was no insolvency, and things continued on pretty much as
before, James doing baking and grocery retail, Lucy teaching, and their two
girls at school.
He was elected foreman of an inquest into
the SIDS death of a 5 week old baby in Kooringa (Burra) in Jan 1862, but
there’s nothing else on them until Nov 1863 – Polly would’ve been going on 12
and Kate nearly 15 – the oddest thing happened. This notice appeared in the
“Marriages” column of “The Register”, the main SA paper of the day ...
"DREW/PUPLETT
– On the 22nd November at Clare, by the Rev Mr Hill, Mr Thomas Drew of
Kooringa, to Miss Elizabeth Kate Puplett."
...
but the following week this was printed in the same paper ...
"A
STUPID HOAX - We
regret to find that some senseless persons have sent us advertisements of two
marriages said to have taken place — one at Kooringa, between Mr. J. Dawson and
Miss Sarah June Cox; and the other at Clare, between Mr. Thomas Drew and Miss
Elizabeth Kate Puplett. This, we suppose, was intended as a foolish joke; but
perhaps the persons perpetrating it are not aware that it is an offence
punishable by law. We shall transmit the copies of advertisements to the
gentlemen most aggrieved by the silly hoax, and if they can discover the writer
we shall take care to have them punished."
What the heck this might’ve been all about
I have no idea, as there was no more about it in subsequent papers. Interesting
that The Register sent copies “to the gentlemen most aggrieved” but apparently
not to the two poor girls. Thomas Drew was a local lad of about 23, from an up
and coming family that had only been in SA for about a year, and he went on to
found a minor dynasty of his own. Make what you will of this one!
Here
there’s another gap of several years, but some time before 1869, the family left
Burra, and it seems that mum and dad moved down to Adelaide, where James set up
as a baker, but the girls appear to have gone their own ways at this point,
presumably to find employment.
Polly,
who would’ve been 16-17, went down south to Yankalilla, and Kate, about 18-19,
to Virginia just north of Adelaide. Hard to say why not go together somewhere,
or why to these two well separated places a fair distance from mum and dad, as
neither seem to have connections with these towns.
We do know that in March 1869 – Polly had
barely turned 17 – she had herself baptised at the Anglican’s Christ Church at
Yankalilla, at a time when her dad was still shown as a “Baker” of “Adelaide”,
suggesting she was already living a fairly independent life.
But some time in 1869 her parents must’ve
moved down to join her, as one record tells that “... when the (Anglican)
archdeacon came (to Yankalilla) in 1869... (his) first care was to start a
church day school in Mr. William Skinner's cottage in the village...
occupied by the postmistress Mrs. Puplett, who gave up her front room for a
schoolroom. As numbers increased, a brick room was built on at the end... (but)
this became too small for the scholars ... (and) the foundation stone of the
present school was laid ... (and) Mrs Puplett was first mistress of the school.
Her husband was a baker, and had his oven in the schoolyard. The smell of the
new bread used to rise in a most tantalising manner, and tickle the nostrils of
the scholars as they sat at their desks inside...” (taken from "To Find The Way" by R F Williams).
So, Polly was now 17, and it would be a
fair bet that the young bookkeeper from the brewery was already swinging by the
bakery for a pasty and a berliner bun on a regular basis.
JOHN
AND POLLY’S LIFE TOGETHER
For
a while Polly’s parents seemed to be reasonably settled in Yankalilla – there’s
a letter from Lucy to the Perry family back in England that’s said to have
"...contained an account of a family gathering at Alfred's house (that is,
his farm, now at Morphett Vale) at Christmas 1870” – and they were to be in
the town for several more years.
But by this time John and Polly must have
had plans to marry, which meant John needed to pursue some better prospects,
and during 1870 he sought out and was given the Bookkeeper’s position by Bowman
Bros. on their pastoral lease of Minburra Station (about 20kms NE of Orroroo). John’s dad died at Goolwa
in the Aug of 1870, but whether this in any way influenced his decision is hard
to say, it’s even possible that John was already on the station when the news
came through.
And
if this wasn’t traumatic enough for the family, the following year in Sept 1871
John’s younger brother William died of TB aged just 22. John must have already
been feeling the distance that he had necessarily put between himself and his
extended family.
In Sept 1872 Polly’s sister Kate married
William Ridgway – he was from a local farming family, but he was the licensee
of the Wheatsheaf Hotel at Virginia – where Kate is described as being the
eldest daughter of James Puplett of Yankalilla. (The Ridgways would go on to
have two girls at Virginia, Ethel and Lucy, who both went on to marry and live
in Perth. It’s Ethel who it’s said had “Mother’s Bible” mentioned later).
But
it was soon after this that her mum and dad moved again, this time from
Yankalilla up to join Kate in Virginia, where James set up a small
grocer-cum-bakery business, and also in time "...Mrs Puplett ran a private
school... with about 12 pupils... mainly girls with a few young boys... (in a)
pug and straw building on Mr Jarmans property...", leaving Polly on her
own down south for a while longer, as in March 1873 “...a musical entertainment
was given in the Mechanics Institute... performers included … Miss Puplett...”,
but some time during that year Polly moved up to Virginia as well (maybe to be
at least a touch closer to John?)
And
finally, on the 28th of January 1874, the big day came, and their marriage
certificate tells us that John Hinton Edmonds (27, Bookkeeper of Minburra,
father William Bennett Edmonds [dec]) married Mary Louisa Puplett (22, no
occupation shown, of Virginia, father James Puplett) in St Augustines[ ] church
at Virginia, and the witnesses were W. Ridgeway the Virginia publican (Polly's
brother–in–law), James Puplett the father of the bride, Mary Perry of Noarlunga
(Alfred Perry’s dau, Polly's cousin), and Alice Stansbury of Adelaide (can’t
find anything on her) and the minister was William Scott.
And
the notice in the newspapers of the day...
EDMONDS
— PUPLETT. On the 28th Janaury,
at Saint Angustine's, Virginia, by the Rev. Wm. Scott,
John Hinton Edmonds, to Mary Louisa, youngest
daughter of Mr. James Puplett, Virginia.
at Saint Angustine's, Virginia, by the Rev. Wm. Scott,
John Hinton Edmonds, to Mary Louisa, youngest
daughter of Mr. James Puplett, Virginia.
John and Polly’s only son Ernest Harry
Edmonds wrote once[ ] that “...I always had the idea that they (“the Edmonds
mob”) were a bit uppish and that my mother did not entirely suit them as a daughter-in-law…”,
but as John’s dad had died about three years earlier (and after a stint at HM’s
pleasure!) it’s seems to be more likely that this attitude – if grandad was on
the money – came from Edward Dutton and/or John’s elder sister, or even his mum.
But more on that later.
 |
| John and Polly |
Polly would surely have returned to
Minburra Station with John, but some time before Nov 1874, returned to
Virginia, presumably to have their child Florence Kate there with mum at hand,
and then had her baptised two weeks later before returning to Minburra, and
then back again in Feb 1878 for their second, Mary Isabel who, according to one
of many entries in “Mother’s Bible” (that is, Kate and Polly’s mum’s Bible) was
baptised at Goolwa. But the Duttons had left by then, and it would’ve been a
long trip anyway, so not sure what that’s about, although there’s an outside
chance John’s mum could’ve still been there.
Then in Aug 1879 they (or just Polly?)
came south again for the birth of their third, Maud Hinton, but this wasn’t to
turn out well, with the baby dying at just six days.
Life would’ve been fairly basic on the
station, and the papers of the period carry a variety of news items from there
– one of the aboriginal workers killed when run over by a dray, a worker’s
child lost out in that unforgiving country and found dead six days later, the
account of some “Correspondent” who rode through there on horseback, there were
some large sales of lambs from the propery (5,000 and 8,500 in two lots), it
was the district distribution point for “rations and clothing for destitute
natives” for the Protector Of Aborigines, which created some paperwork,
including some argy-bargy about weevils in the flour, then there were
mysterious lights in the sky, and transport problems, and ticks, and everywhere
and endlessly the challenging landscape.
Then in Nov 1880, their fourth child
Gertrude Hinton was born, and while the BMD index data says she was registered
at "Baratta", which was a station a lot further north, out from
Hawker, “Mother’s Bible” says she was born and baptised at Virginia, so not
sure what that’s about.
THE
COMONGIN YEARS
In 1881 or 1882 John was appointed to a
position on Comongin Station[ ] in the pastoral flood channel country on Qld’s
Bulloo River, and “... the family set off ... travelling by boat to Brisbane,
train to Roma [480 km] which was the end of the line, & then bullock wagon
to Comongin – pronounced COME-ON-AGIN – station [650 km via Quilpie] near
Thargomindah in south west Qld. They must have carried a fair quantity of gear
to have needed a bullock wagon ... a total of 1,130 kms west of Brisbane. It is
only 1,050 kms from Adelaide to Thargomindah through Broken Hill and
Tiboorburra.[ ]”
John
would’ve been about 35, Polly 30, Flo say 7, Mary 4, Gertie 2, but travelling
with them was John’s older sister Ruth, who would’ve been about 37 and single.
You can only imagine that whatever the offer was it must’ve seemed too good to
pass up! But Henry Lawson (in "The Teams"), who was in that country for a while, summed it up
like this ...
And
thus with glimpses of home and rest
Are
the long, long journeys done;
And
thus - 'tis a thankless life at best! -
Is
distance fought in the mighty West,
And
the lonely battles won.
Actually two Comongin Stations were
created in the 1880s, “Comongin” (or sometimes “North Comongin”), and “South
Comongin” that was lopped off the bottom of the originally bigger holding
around the time the family was there, and in fact John may have been involved
in this.
But first, to fix a couple of bits of
family history that says the station was in the hands of the Bowman Bros and
John went there as Manager (implying a sort of promotion/transfer). This
possibly originated from Flo, the only one really old enough to remember any
detail of their 2-3 years in Qld. But the Bowmans never had leases up there,
and John’s part of Comongin in the early 1880s was in the hands of a family
partnership of William Pitt Barker, John Barker, Donald MacLean and Hugh
Chambers, who also had pastoral interests in colonial SA, some including the
mid north. Other than that I have no idea how John got onto this. And the
manager (in all of 1882 at least) was a J McNicol.
So, best bet is that John went as
Bookkeeper, but this was often seen as 2IC to the Manager, and an important
enough position on these big runs at that time, having to administer more than
just Income and Expenses of the station. And the original Comongin was a goodly
size.
Best I can work out, when John and the
family arrived there, it covered an area on today’s maps from where Sandy Creek
joins the Bulloo River north above Quilpie, went about 80kms south (about
half-way between Quilpie to Thargomindah), and was evenly spread east-west
32kms each side of the Bulloo, that’s say ap 5,000 sq kms, with modern day
Quilpie (established early 1900s) in the middle of the top third. It was about
one-and-a-half times the size of Wiltshire, and would get it into about 18th
place in Qld today.
The Comongin homestead at that time was on
the western bank of Lake Youngwoman, “...adjacent to the vegetable garden and
the Aborigines' camp...[ ]”, but there’s no obvious sign of it today, as it was
moved to the eastern side some time after 1890, and is still there today[ ].
The records are a touch confusing, but as
best I understand it, by the time John arrived, that country had been going
through 20-30 years of “grab as many leases – preferably contiguous – as you
can before the Govt wakes up and steps in” sort of thing, and Comongin had been
cobbled together from 32 pastoral leases north to south all along the Bulloo
River. The Barker-McLean-Chambers group seems to have acquired it about
1880-81, and who knows, this may have been part of the reason that John got the
job.
Amongst the Edmonds/Puplett/Perry stuff
that Grandad had on the farm is a map. It’s on a piece of tough greaseproofy
sort of paper/material about 40cmx45cm and tiled “Sketch of ‘Comongin’”, on a
“Scale 4 inches to the mile”, that John must have either drawn up himself, or
had as an essential part of his job, and kept for some reason. And it looks as
though it’s been unfolded and refolded to pocket size many times, but shows no
sign of coming apart.
On it, in painstaking detail in black and
red ink, are each of the 32 leases (with names like Gundorah, Annie Jo Jo, and
Balthazzar) showing a year ranging from 1867 to 1880 (but always July 1st),
presumably when each lease was originally taken up, and every watercourse and
every waterhole and every line of “ridges”, surely for official purposes but a
life saver of a map to have on your person if you ever strayed from home.
Strangest thing is – he wrongly marked the river as the “Paroo” (which is well
to the east), not the “Bulloo”. Even the newspapers of the day sometimes got
these two confused, but the Bookkeeper? IF it was John who drew it up of
course.
Newspaper ads of the day suggest that the
two parts of “old” Comongin parted about 1882 when John was there, and I
happened to turn his map over one day and you can see a faded red marker
outline that isn’t obvious from the front, and it goes right around the “top”
batch of leases that was to make up the latter day “(North) Comongin”,
suggesting that John possibly had a hand in all this to-and-fro of station
leases.
But bits of the other day-to-day life on
the station for the family can be touched on in the Queensland neswspapers of
the day ...
Jan
1881 – drought continuing, rainfall for Oct and Nov only 0.2in and 0.07in
respectively, “...a half-caste known as Billy Ross was found dead within a mile
and a half from Cowley station. He had walked from Comongin, a distance of
forty miles, and on reaching a dam in the creek, which was dry, his heart must
have failed him."
June
1881 – sale of “…Pure Shorthorn Bulls ex Comongin Station Bulloo River… stud herd of shorthorn cross of far-famed
Colac and Glenormiston blood…”
Aug
1881 – South Comongin up for sale, estimated area of over 850 sq miles, with
8000 Head of Cattle, 80 Horses ... about the best for sheep or cattle in
Queensland … permanently watered... double frontage to the river of over
twenty-five miles… never been known to be dry… lightly timbered, open salt and
cotton bush plains with unusually rich herbage… (could) carry 160,000 sheep in
all seasons… railways are being constructed into the interior…
May
1882 - There have been three days of steady rain at South Comongin. and it
seems to be general. The country is looking splendid. Fat cattle are being
mustered on several of the stations.
Aug
1882 – Comongin… two inches of rain… tho Bulloo River is flooded… weather is
cold, but the country and stock are looking well.
March
1883 – Correspondent at Comongin sends us the following telegram - "Rain
fell here for ten days… for seventy hours the rain was heavy and continuous…
about ten inches… tremendous floods throughout the district… Bulloo River is
4ft above last year's high flood level… country is frightfully soft, but is
looking grand."
July
1883 – mail deliveries now (up to) once a fortnight…
July
1883 - Manager at South Comongin
charged with having “…cruelly ill-treated an aboriginal female named Judy. The
evidence given… that Judy was in search of a cow, and unable to find it, Mr.
Imlay came up with a "little fellow gun" in his hand and said
something about shooting her. He then put a rope round her neck and passed it
over a tree, and subsequently took her to the homestead… with the rope still
round her neck, while he, who was on horseback at the time, struck her with a
whip on the way there. After arriving at the homestead the rope was removed,
and a chain and padlock - "big fellow chain" - were put round her
neck, and afterwards she was employed drawing water in a garden while in this
condition, and was in a state bordering on nudity… the case was adjourned.”
But amid all this, a very personal death,
and an important (for us) birth.
Sadly,
John’s sister Ruth became seriously ill (there seems to have been a lot of TB
cases in the area, but otherwise no suggestion of what Ruth had), and on 27th
Jan 1883 Ruth died at the Station, but only the Adelaide papers carried it,
noting simply that Ruth was the “…third daughter of E A Edmonds of Lucindale”.
I presume her grave is in the Comongin area but I can’t quickly find a record
of it, but I bet it’s in a fairly lonely spot.
But then, on the 28th Aug 1883, on the
Station, John and Polly’s fourth surviving child was born, a son, Ernest Harry.
But the death of Ruth must have hung heavily on them all, and some time in 1884
they re-traced their long journey back home to SA, where John returned to
Minburra, this time as Manager, and in July 1884, nearly a year after being
born, Ernest Harry Edmonds was baptised in the small church where his parents
had been married, St Augustines in Virginia.
It’s from about this time that (again,
channelling through her son Roy Dawson), their eldest daughter Flo – then about
10 – gives us a wonderful insight into the personality of John, how he “…always
used young fresh horses, and my mother told the story of the dramatic weekly
ride to church, when family would all get settled in the vehicle, a station
hand would be at the horses’ heads. When father called out "Let em
go!!" away they would bowl, everyone holding onto their hats & father
controlling the horses with only one hand and a hook for the other. He seems to
have had a zest for life & a readiness to take up challenges... but I never
knew how he lost his hand".
In the last few years of the family’s time
at Minburra they saw three more deaths in their extended family – John’s mother
“Beth” at Goodwood in April 1885, his brother-in-law Edward Dutton at Lucindale
in Jan 1887, and Polly’s dad James at Virginia in June 1887.
But
as always, day-to-day life at the station carried on, and during this time a
newspaper correspondent and a mate rode through the area, reporting –
“(We) left Orroroo on horseback, intending
to reach Minburra Station that night and push through next day. This ride,
though long, was very pleasant. Crossing the Walloway Plain the crops we passed
indicated the probability of a good harvest. Haycutting had started. Feed, too,
along the road was in abundance, and improved as we got into the Minburra
country. We saw no rabbits the first day, but about 5 miles from Minburra Station
we startled a lot of kangaroos. A number of wild turkeys we roused, too...
"We reached Minburra early, and that night
enjoyed the hospitality of the genial manager of that station. Next morning we
were in the saddle by half-past 7 o'clock. We had a 60 mile stage to make. The
first few miles of our road was through undulating country, and then for some
miles the track took a bee-line for a curious hill known as the Chinaman's
Hat... a few miles before reaching (it) the road took an abrupt turn, and in a
short time we reached a dam of water. Here we had our first taste of pannikin
tea given to us by an old man, who, with two sons, was camped at the dam on
their way to the diggings...”
These “diggings” were the silver/lead
prospects that had sprung up around Eukaby Hill and the Baratta Station, and in
June 1888 John "held in trust" Certificate No 148 for the
"Eukaby Blocks Silver Mining Co Ltd" , being a 99 year mineral lease
of 80 acres near Eukaby Hill, about 80 kms north-east of Minburra.
I’m not entrely clear as to what John’s
involvement was, but there had been a flurry of speculation for about the
previous two years after the manager of the nearby Glen Warwick Station
discovered siver/lead-bearing ore, which started a bit of a scramble for mining
leases, followed by Investment Schemes of various worth, naturally all sounding
like they were gunna be the next BHP!
One
of these was the Eukaby Blocks S. M. Co, floated in March 1888 (office in
Grenfell St), offering 216 shares at £20 each to get started. But while John
had a monetary interest in this, not sure it would have been huge, so maybe
they were just drawing on his local knowledge and standing, as he was holding
the lease “in trust”. Other than that I’m just guessing. (By late 1890 these twenty quid shares were trading for tuppence-ha'penny!)
 |
| The four Edmonds daughters |
The
family seemed to have moved first to Virginia (this studio photo of Harry in
some flowery kit, and his three sisters, was done in Adelaide about this time),
presumably teaming up there with Polly’s widowed mother for a while, who was at
that time still shown as a “Schoolmistress”, and then they moved to Murray St,
North Adelaide where, on the 4th of Oct 1888, bowing to inevitability, John
wrote his will, saying that he was “… late of Virginia... but now of North
Adelaide…”, and leaving his very modest
(valued as being under £45) “…real and personal estate... unto my dear
wife...”, and making Polly and Edward Dutton’s son down at Lucindale his
executors.
Oddly,
Polly’s sister Kate Ridgway witnessed the will, where she’s shown as being a
Saleswoman of North Adelaide, but her husband William Ridgway was to die of
“heat apoplexy” (really sunstroke) at Smithfield on 22 Nov 1888, just six weeks
later. William was from a Smithfield farming family, so either they’d split up
earlier, or Kate and William and their two girls were actually living in Nth
Adelaide at the time of the will, and William was just visiting back home,
during what was a particularly nasty heatwave.
I do know Polly’s mum moved from Virginia
to 115 Jeffcott St North Adelaide some time in 1888, presumably knowing that
John had little time left and her daughter was going to need some support. (On
the back of this photo of John, probably in Harry’s sister Flo’s handwriting,
is a partially readable “…same time as… before we went to Minburra... he was
ill…”).
On the 23rd of Jan 1889 John died at home
of pneumonia as a direct result of his spinal sclerosis, and was interred in
the West Terrace Cemetery.
POLLY’S
TIME AS A WIDOW
Polly was just 37, with four kids – Harry (5), Gertie (8), Mary (11), and Flo
(14) – and for a couple of years the three widows – Polly, her mum, and Polly’s
sister Kate Ridgway (and between the two sister’s, their 6 kids) – dealt with
life in North Adelaide as best they could, but in 1891 for some reason her mum
and her sister Kate and her two girls packed their few bits and moved to
Western Australia, and Polly was fairly much on her own. (Polly's mum died in Albany WA in 1899).
About this time, like some vague blast
from the past (and maybe indicating just how removed the family was by now from
its English beginnings), about 3 years after John’s death Polly received a
letter from Clarke & Son, Lawyers of 29 Broad St Bristol, dated 5th of Aug
1892 and addressed to "John Hinton Edmonds Esq, Goolwa, Pt Elliott Sth
Aust", concerning a bequest of John’s dad’s unmarried sister Ruth Edmonds.
It reads...
“This
lady died 10th March last and bequeathed the residue of her estate amounting to
about £500 to the children of her deceased brother Mr Wm Bennett Edmonds.
Seeing your name amongst the papers we write to enquire if you can inform us
the name and addresses of the children referred to.”
...
and presumably the letter went first to Goolwa, then chased them around until
it caught up. But ironically by then, of Will and Beth’s five children, only
their eldest daughter Mary (Dutton) was left, and she was well placed and
comfortable at Mitcham as Dutton’s widow, and needed it less than anyone! We
can only hope that at least John’s fifth share found it’s way to struggling
Polly and her kids.
Some
time soon after this Polly moved out to Young St Unley, and there for the next
few years raised the younger ones with the help of the older girls, but she as
well was ailing and not destined to make old bones.
On the 4th of May 1899, Polly died at home
in Young St Parkside (aged only 47) of "Phthisis Exhaustion" (related
to TB), and was put beside John at West Terrace. And the sad footnote to this
story of our two battling ancestors and their attempt to make a life for
themselves and their kids, in some hard and unforgiving landscapes in SA and
Qld, is that their last resting place is not only unmarked, but has been
resumed and is today headstoned to another family.
AND
THEIR KIDS?
Florence
Kate (“Flo”) became the head of the family at age 24, but married a Henry
Ernest Dawson (a brother of the singer Peter Dawson someone once said) in 1901
at Parkside, and later went to live in NSW. It was her son Roy Dawson who
supplied me with some great bits of oral history.
Mary
Isabella (“Molly”) only has a blank space in “Mother’s Bible” after the
“married to” was written in it, but she in fact married a Percy Kaines in NSW
in 1905, and lived out her days in the Waverley and Manly area.
Maud Hinton died as a baby and is buried
at Old Carclew, presumably with her grandfather James Puplett.
Gertrude
Hinton (“Gertie”) married a Frederick William Pyle in 1903 at Parkside. Fred
and his father were apparently well known house painters and decorators out in
the Unley area.
Ernest
Harry (always “Harry”, or “Skeeter” when he was young) – well, I’ll let my
grandad speak for himself... ”My
father... died when I was about 6 years of age and mother 10 years later, two
of my sisters married shortly after and the home was broken up and yours truly
being left to more or less paddle his own canoe took to the bush as offering
the only means whereby body and soul could be kept together, and like Banjo
Pattersons character it was a case of ‘drovers camps and shearing sheds and
lands of heat and drought, to follow on where fortune led, with fortune always
on ahead but always further out.’”
The Life & Times story of Harry
Edmonds and his wife Mabel Jane Haines of Manoora, is one that is still waiting
to be written.
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