Sisters' reunion at the goldfields

The story my grandmother told me:  The two Rochester sisters met again on the Ovens goldfields after many years apart.  The chain is a fine gold lady's watch chain made from a nugget found by the Griffiths at the Ovens and given to Elizabeth to have the chain made.  The chain is shown above with a gold bracelet for comparison.

It is only recently that the chain, which I remembered my grandmother telling me about as a teenager, fell into my hands.   It was the chain that set me off sifting through the known facts about Susan and Elizabeth Rochester and investigating them further.  We have already traced the Griffiths to the Ovens goldfields and the Hitchmans as newly weds most likely at Oaklands Junction on the Deep Creek.

Disappointingly, the Hitchmans, perhaps due to illiteracy, did not register the four known children they had in Victoria, but my grandmother told me that her father James, the eldest child, was born at Donnybrook in 1854.  The descendants of their third child, Elizabeth, had also heard Donnybrook as a birthplace for the daughter Elizabeth, about 1858.   The fourth child Anne was stated on her death certificate to have been born in Wangaratta,  circa 1862-63.  She died aged five at Wool Shed Farm, Gobbogombalin in 1868, the details being verified by her father.

Donnybrook is about twenty kilometres north of Oaklands Junction, along the Sydney Road.   A cluster of businesses had grown up around a permanent water hole known as Rocky Water Holes near  the Sydney Road, including two inns, a post office, watchhouse, flourmill, coaching depot and accommodation houses.  Small mixed and dairy farms were nearby and provided more opportunities for work. (See Historic Views of the City of Whittlesea by Robert Wuchatsch and Gwen Hawke, Whittlesea Historical Society, 1988). The locality may also have included the area of Mickleham on the western side of Sydney Road.  In 1874 the name of the town was changed to Kalkallo.

The Town of Donnybrook Parish of Kalkallo County of Bourke [cartographic material] / Robt. Mason Assist. Survr.; lithographed by R. Meikle, 1855.  Courtesy of the State Library of Victoria Collection.

In October 1861 James Hitchman was charged with being drunk in charge of a team by Constable Jones of Moonee Ponds.  When he appeared at the Flemington Police Court on 21 October 1861, James was fined five shillings by local JP, Patrick Phelan.  Phelan had lost his seat in the Victorian Legislative Assembly just the year before.

Presumably James was just passing through Flemington or Moonee Ponds  with a load, after possibly stopping off for a quenching ale at the Flemington Inn, but it is some indication that he was still in the vicinity of Melbourne in 1861.  By 1863 the family had moved on to Wangaratta where a daughter Anne was born.  The Register for Births and Deaths is missing for the period, so we don't know any further details about their stay in Wangaratta. Thank you Jenny Coates for the information regarding the missing births and deaths in Wangaratta.

Leaving Donnybrook via the Sydney Road (now the Hume Highway), Wangaratta was on the way to their final destination in the vicinity of Wagga Wagga. Phil Sheather, a relative in Wagga Wagga, NSW, tells the story that the Hitchmans were accompanied part of the way north by Ellen and John (Red) Kelly, the parents of Ned Kelly.

We don't know if they intended Wagga as their final destination when they first left Donnybrook, and we can't be sure just when they left Donnybrook.  The previous child to Anne was born at Donnybrook circa 1858, and Anne in Wangaratta in 1863.   The background to this movement north may have involved the dwindling of readily available alluvial gold in Victoria and the associated recession in the economy, with a peak in the number of bankruptcies occurring in 1862.  The through traffic from Melbourne to the goldfields in the north declined significantly, and the goods and services that a town like Donnybrook would provide to that traffic would have also declined.   The Hitchman departure may have occurred in response to loss of work.  It is interesting that they headed north at this time rather than return to Melbourne, but James' acquisition of a 50 acre conditional purchase farm at Malebo, near Wagga, in 1866 might indicate that the couple had a plan for their future.

Whether they spent any time at Wangaratta, or were resting there while awaiting the birth of their child I don't know.   We do know that the Griffiths were still in Beechworth in 1863, but had returned to Melbourne by 1865.  It would seem therefore that the fabled meeting of the sisters on the goldfields after many years' separation most likely occurred in Beechworth around 1863.  From Wangaratta, Beechworth was not overly far out of the way, with another route through to Albury north of the town, though the road may not have been as good.

The Sydney Hotel, formerly known as the Hope Inn, Wangaratta, 1868. Courtesy of  Museum Victoria, MM 6080. 

The story of the gold chain made from a nugget found on the Ovens goldfield hangs on whether or not the chain is made from gold.   This was a question recently resolved by calling in at a jeweller's in Moonee Ponds, Micheli Eurogold, and discovering that in fact the chain was machine made and gold-plated.

Any number of explanations might be put forward - that the gift of gold was sufficient only to purchase a gold plated chain; that the original gold chain is in other hands in the family; that the original gold chain was sold in times of hardship (and there would have been many of those).  Whatever the case, I am prepared to believe that the lady's watch chain does represent a joyful meeting of the sisters in the northern goldfields after many years' separation.  The value is in the associations attached to the chain. (Even though my sister told me to cash it in if the chain was real gold!  There's sisters for you.)

It is indeed the case that all that glisters is not gold.

Elizabeth and Susan Rochester of Chipstead, Surrey, daughters of a labourer, would have had few enough opportunities had they remained in England, most likely becoming the wives of labourers, if they could find a husband.  By accepting the challenges of migration to a very strange and different land, among strangers, Elizabeth became a farmers' wife and with her husband James Hitchman, helped to populate the inland areas of the Riverina. Susan, on the other hand, cast her lot with a musician with gold fever, who took her at first to the northern Victorian goldfields of the Ovens River, and then a suburban life in the growing city of Melbourne.  Both lives involved hard work to sustain themselves and their families, but also offered opportunities.  The two young girls from Surrey proved to be resilient pioneers in their own way. Neither of them became particularly wealthy, but they became the mistress in their own homes, which may not have been the case had they stayed at Chipstead.

Thank you to Phil Sheather of Wagga Wagga for helping with some birth and death details for this story.

Was George a 49er?

In the three years since I began this blog I have examined in some detail the movements of George Griffith, and discovered quite a lot more than I knew when I began, but that old conundrum of just when George arrived in Victoria is still unresolved.

I lately drew up a timeline for known movements built up through newspapers and birth and death certificates.  George first came to notice in Beechworth in 1855 when he advertised that he was available for weddings, parties, anything.  He had a child born in Wangaratta that year, and the child died in Wangaratta in 1856.  Later in that year he was at the Woolshed diggings, and in 1857 back in Beechworth.  They lived in Silver Creek in 1857 (and a child died there in 1859), with mentions in Beechworth and Woolshed in the same year.  In 1858 they were in Beechworth, and by 1859 had followed the rush to Indigo, later known as Chiltern.  Although the child died in Silver Creek in 1859, they were still in Chiltern (or back in Chiltern) in 1860.  The last reference to George was in Beechworth in 1863, and by 1865 the family had moved down to the Melbourne suburb on Fitzroy.

But George did not sit quietly in Fitzroy - by 1866 he had followed the goldrush to Hokitika in New Zealand, probably without his family, but had returned to Melbourne by 1868.

Whether the movements in the Ovens goldfields represents constantly moving around, or merely travelling from place to place taking up musical engagements is difficult to say.  Probably a bit of both.

 However, a pattern has emerged from all this, which is that there was a commitment to following the goldrushes, and it finally dawned on me that perhaps I had been too hasty in rejecting one arrival in Victoria in 1852:

"The other 26 year old George Griffiths who arrived by the Panama in 1852 is less likely as the ship appears (from advertising in The Argus) to have been engaged in a run from Australia to San Francisco and return".

Unfortunately there was a very well-known George Griffith who discovered one of the California goldfields, which tends to clutter up search results, but at this stage I think revisiting PROV to check the passenger indent of the Panama is the next item on the list.

I have in the past been unable to pin him down in Liverpool in the 1851 Census (though he may have been anywhere in England), and this would be explained by his taking off to California by 1849. 

Birth and death on the goldfields, 1855-56

"The Harp of the Valley", by William Stewart Ross in  Illustrated Handbook of Victoria, Australia. British Library HMNTS 10492.f.22

While George was busy with concerts in Beechworth, Susan was delivered of a boy, on 14 April 1855 at Wangaratta. They named the babe Edward George.   Susan registered the child at Beechworth on 23 May 1855.  She signed with her mark.   As usual when Susan was the informant, the surname was rendered as "Griffiths", but George always used the spelling "Griffith".

Ten months later, on, 24 Feb 1856, the infant died of cholera infantum,  also referred to as 'summer diarrhea', a contamination exacerbated by swarms of flies, and the insanitary conditions on goldfields.  The death was certified by Thomas Crawford.  The Ovens Directory 1857 described Crawford as MD, JP, and residing in Camp St, Beechworth.

The baby boy was buried at the Beechworth Cemetery, which had been surveyed in February 1854 and divided into rectangular denominational compartments. In I856 a Cemetery Trust was formed and the cemetery was in operation in January the same year.

The Minister Thomas Dowell of the Church of England presided, and the witnesses were William Haydon and Octavius Folkard.  These two gentlemen were involved in a courtcase against each other in the Beechworth Police Court on 30 March 1857, but the case was dismissed as neither party appeared.  Octavius Folkard later obtained a Refreshment License for Indigo in 1859.