Grave work

A wonderful article from the ABC in Tasmania.

Phyllis and Peter McLennan

"Visiting ancestors at a cemetery, Peter and Phyllis McLennan were shocked to discover below the seemingly vacant patches of lawn lay dozens of unknown bodies.
Ellesmere Cemetery, in Tasmania's north-east, was full — yet, many had been laid to rest without a headstone to mark them.
Believing all should have their names recorded for posterity, the McLennans acquired a hand-drawn cemetery map — only to find 100 of the unmarked graves belonged to babies.
"That really hit us hard," Mr McLennan said. "I thought, 'surely, we can do better than that'."
The McLennans set to work laying down plaques, until every grave in the cemetery was marked.
They have now expanded into other cemeteries in the region, as well as tending to deteriorating headstones.
Part of their joy comes from tracking down living relatives.
The McClennan's efforts have been a gift to people like Aileen Johnston, whose grandmother's headstone was so worn it was unreadable.
Visiting her at nearby Stronach Cemetery, Ms Johnston was thrilled to discover the fresh lettering on a polished surface. "I was just dumbfounded, this beautiful headstone that stood out, I could read my grandmother's headstone two rows back from her grave," she said. "I thought, 'who's done that'?"
Ms Johnston was one of the few people to know where her grandfather and uncle shared a plot at Ellesmere Cemetery.
She asked the McLennans to mark the mutual grave, only for them to say "that rings a bell, I think we've done that too".
"After 180 years, my grandfather and my uncle have got a name," Ms Johnston said. "It is wonderful that I know now I can take my boys up and say, 'well, that's your great grandfather'."
The McLennans have helped update official council records along the way.
With assistance from the Dorset Tasmania History Society, they have been able to correct names and dates on headstones.
President Nigel Mercer said the council's records had been thorough, but together they had been able to significantly improve them.
He said discovering graves could be like "detective work", digging into various maps and spreadsheets to uncover what became of people.
"You feel good when you think there was a good chance we've identified where that person is buried because the records have lost track," he said.
In less than two years, they have put down more than 200 headstones, and refurbished more than 150 in the north-east.
And they plan to continue for as long as they can.
"Sadly enough, we should have started 10 years ago because we're not far away from our own plot," Mr McLennan said.
"We've probably got about another good five years' work in front of us with the surrounding cemeteries, and when we've done that, we'll put our paintbrush away and enjoy what we've done."
In recognition of their work, the McLennans were awarded the 2023 Dorset Australia Day Citizens of the Year award."
(ABC News: Bec Pridham)

Gymbowen Cemetery re-discovered

Congratulations to all involved in having a sign erected at the Gymbowen Cemetery. Few people today were aware of its existence, and even fewer knew where it was located.

Gymbowen Cemetery, the row of pines are on the fenceline between Allotments 90B & 90C

The Gymbowen Cemetery was established on the east side of Marsh & Lowes Rd, south of Hennesseys Rd, in the Goroke Parish, alongside its boundary with the Gymbowen Parish.

5 acres 0 roods 16 perches of Allotment 90C were reserved for a Cemetery in June 1883. 

A further Extension to the north alongside Hennessey's Road, of 3 acres 3 roods 38 perches of Allotment 90C was gazetted in July 1911. 

In 1918 10 perches were excised from the Extension to create the sweeping bend into Marsh & Lowes Rd.

The sign is more than a sign, it details the record of the only known burials at the Cemetery. These and possibly others are in unmarked graves.

The earliest record is for Annie Bertram Byrne. Annie lived for 1 day in 1883. Both the Byrne & Bertram families lived in the district. Members of both families left in the migration to the Riverina in 1900s. Denis married Lucy in 1870. Their other children were Denis born in 1871, George 1873, Michael 1875, Mary Anne 1877. Edmund Bertram 1878, Alecia Jane 1879, William Bertram 1880, James Henry 1882-1883, Evelinne Stewart 1886, Bertram Roach 1888, John Blain 1890, Lucy Emily 1893. Both Annie Bertram & James Henry died in 1883, James' death place is recorded as Harrow.

Mary Frances Mottram also died in 1883, aged 10 months. Her father George Somerset took up land at Gymbowen in 1882 & 1883, but by 1890 was declared insolvent. He stated the causes were crop failures, family sickness & the pressure of his creditors. A son Peter had lived for 1 day when they lived at Mullagh in 1874.

Hugh Knight & his mother Janet, both died in the typhoid outbreak of 1889. William Henry lost his wife Janet, son Hugh, brothers Thomas & Alfred to typhoid fever. Bill too, was admitted to hospital, but recovered. (Cemetery Trustee David Houston's son also died of typhoid in 1888).

On 26th February 1895, 14 year-old William John Lear helped milk the cows but began vomiting blood and complaining of chest pain. After he was put to bed his mother found him lying on the floor dead. The doctor diagnosed syncope due to heart disease & accelerated by vomiting.

John Norman Frederick Scott was another childhood death at Gymbowen. Both his birth & death were registered in 1913. His siblings were Leila Annie born in 1904, Alexander Henry 1905, Peter 1907. Hugh Andrew 1908, Maurice 1911.

More than most the Gymbowen Cemetery shows the hardships & tribulations faced by young families in the district.

Warracknabeal RIP

 Seriously impressed with the Warracknabeal Cemetery's deceased search functionality.

"Warracknabeal Cemetery Chronicle is an online digital mapping system which indicates the exact location of a gravesite by simply inserting a deceased name. It gives the plot details, date the person was buried, other people in the grave and shows where the plot is in the cemetery. 

 Eventually more burial details on each deceased person will be available on this system. It is helpful for family historians as it shows the exact location of the gravesite. It also assists cemetery administration as it readily indicates reserved, occupied, and vacant gravesites in the cemetery."

The Chronicle people say their software makes securely managing your cemetery easy and affordable by allowing you to 

• Create your digital cemetery
• Manage your interment register
• Share with the community

and that it is free for small cemeteries (up to 1,000 plots)!

Other Victorian cemeteries using Chronicle (you can search) are Beechworth, Bendoc, Boort, Bunyip, Carlsruhe, Chiltern, Lang Lang, Macedon, Maddingley, Murchison, Ouyen, Phillip Island, Rosedale, Yan Yean & Yarram.

 

Michael's Hell Ship

For more than a century and a half, a grim tale has passed down through Michael Veitch's family: the story of the “Ticonderoga”, a clipper ship that sailed on a calamitous voyage from Liverpool for Victoria in August 1852.Crammed on board in cramped, overcrowded conditions, often without sanitary facilities, fresh water and barely enough food, were 800 poor but hopeful emigrants- mostly Scottish victims of the Clearances and the potato famine. A better life, they believed, awaited them in Australia.

Three months later, a ghost ship struggled into Port Phillip Bay flying the dreaded yellow flag of contagion. On her horrific three-month long nightmare voyage, deadly typhus had erupted, killing a quarter (nearly 200) of Ticonderoga's passengers and leaving many more desperately ill. Sharks, it was said, had followed her passage as the victims were buried at sea. 

The plague-stricken sailing ship struck panic in Melbourne. Forbidden to dock at the gold-boom town, the ship was directed to a lonely beach on the far tip of the Mornington Peninsula, a place now called Ticonderoga Bay. 

The Quarantine Station administrative building

James William Henry Veitch was the ship's assistant surgeon, on his first appointment (and last) at sea. Among the volunteers who helped him tend to the sick and dying was a young woman from the island of Mull, Annie Morrison. What happened between them on that terrible voyage is a testament to human resilience, and to love.

Michael Veitch is their great-great-grandson, and the book “Hell Ship” is his brilliantly researched narrative of one of the biggest stories of its day, now all but forgotten. Broader than his own family's story, it brings to life the hardships and horrors endured by those who came by sea to seek a new life in Australia.

But there’s more...this story was repeatedly told to Michael all his young life by his own father, he has carried it and explored it all these years. 

You can hear the story directly from Michael in a performance at the Horsham Town Hall. Told with pieces of music from the era performed by Michael’s son, there will be the web of four generations of Veitch on stage. This is truly a family story.

Michael captures the human aspects in what is essentially a dark story. Even in a dying ship’s hull there is always some small thing that a wry sense of humour can find to lift us out of the putrid desolation that marks our history.

Michael Veitch’s story of the Ticonderoga delves into our Australian emigrant history, explores the themes of unimaginable courage, of family, and shines the light on a monumental, but almost forgotten, human story. This one, his own.

Upon the arrival of the “Ticonderoga” on the 22nd December 1852, a quarantine station was hastily erected at this site.  Sadly, a cemetery was also immediately required as of the 170 people that died due to Typhus Fever that engulfed the ship, 70 people were to perish upon their arrival to Port Phillip.

Heaton’s Monument marks the location of the original cemetery established at the quarantine station on Point Nepean. The cemetery was relocated inland around 1854, but the neo-Egyptian style sandstone memorial to the Ticonderoga Tragedy and to all those who endured the lengthy passage in migrant transport ships to Australia remains. 

George Heaton was the Supervisor responsible for building much of the Quarantine Station. It is believed that he built the monument at great expense to himself, in memory of the migrants who died.

DATE: 8th September 2018

TIME: 8pm

VENUE: Horsham Town Hall Theatre

DURATION: 70 minutes (no interval)

PRICE: $40 – Adult, $35 – Concession, $30 - 2018 Member, $25 - 2018 Member Concession.

Contact the Box Office on (03) 5382 9555.

Tales from the churchyard

A word about the effort some organisations, trusts have gone to assisting family and history researchers.

Just a couple of examples from afar.

Old St Matthew's Church, Lightcliffe, is a former church in the village of Lightcliffe, West Yorkshire in England.

 

The original building on the site was a chapel of ease called Eastfield Chapel, which was built in 1529. This was damaged during the Reformation, and repaired in 1536. The chapel was rebuilt as a church in Neoclassical style in 1775. It was then replaced in the late 19th century by a new church a short distance away. 
The old church was then used as a mortuary chapel. It was severely damaged by a storm in the 1960s and its fabric deteriorated and the church suffered from vandalism. Now only the tower remains.

   
The tower is square in cross-section and constructed in hammer-dressed stone with ashlar dressings. 
On the west face is a round-headed window with a circular window above. At belfry level is inscribed stone taken from an earlier church on the site. At the top of the tower is an octagonal cupola with a ball finial. 
Inside the tower are an inscribed stone dated 1529, benefaction boards, and a monument from 1830 designed by Richard Westmacott.
In its accompanying churchyard there are over 11,000 grave sites.

Lots of centuries old history, but St Matthews has a website, a number of YouTube clips,
and a Friends Facebook page, and its churchyard cemetery has headstone photographs and transcriptions.

While the Prospect Cemetery in Toronto has affiliated with Google Maps to guide people in finding graves. Especially helpful in large cemeteries (148,000 burial records have been indexed for the cemetery), and when the cemetery concerned is halfway across the world.

Prospect Cemetery (part of the Mount Pleasant Group) has been in use since 1890, with a special focus on its 5 acre Veterans' Memorial, Canada's largest First World War memorial.

It has a Cemetery App with options to 'Find a grave', 'Find a tree' in the arboretum search, and a 'Notable person' search.

There's also a little video of where Toronto's original Potters Field cemetery was located in now downtown Toronto. 

This is what just two different cemeteries have been able to achieve by embracing a number of digital initiatives.

Honour boards & memorials

"Looking after War Memorials and Honour Rolls" is a Heritage Skills Workshop presented by the Heritage Council of Victoria, Heritage Victoria in the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, and the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet.

The ageing, flaking sandstone headstone of John Bell of Antwerp Station, 1861
Situated in the Horsham Cemetery
 
This workshop is aimed at owners and managers of War Memorials and Honour Rolls in the Wimmera and Southern Mallee area, and would be useful to members of Cemetery Trusts, local museums, and community halls.

Jeparit's War Memorial

 
The workshop includes sessions on:
• Documentation and records
• DPC - Veterans Affairs Branch grant programs
• Materials: stones, mortars, inscriptions, gilding, metals
• Care, including cleaning and graffiti removal
• Care of timber honour boards
There will also be a tour of relevant sites to inspect practical examples from the course
material. 
Workshop Presenters are David Young OAM, Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne, an experienced heritage consultant specialising in building materials conservation, and Jenny Dickens Heritage Victoria’s Materials Conservation Officer.

Mitre State School Honour Board now in the Mitre Hall

 
The workshop is on Friday 29th May from 9am to 5pm (registration from 8.45am). 
The venue is the Horsham RSL, 36 McLachlan Street in Horsham. Lunch, morning and afternoon tea is included.
The workshop is free, but Bookings are essential as places are limited, email paulinehitchins@delwp.vic.gov.au (including dietary requirements). Enquires 9208 3622

Starring Mullagh

The 'Victorian Aboriginal Honour Roll' is coming to the Horsham Library.
The Honour Roll recognises the many and varied contributions of Aboriginal people to the identity of Victoria.
One of the first Honour Roll inductees was a Wotjobaluk man - Johnny Mullagh (Unaarrimin), his athletic feats made him one of Australia's first international cricketing stars.
Johnny Mullagh was born in 1841 on Mullagh Pastoral Station (between present day Wombelano and Harrow). He worked on both Mullagh and Pine Hills stations as a shearer and as a groom. But it was as a member of the all-Aboriginal Cricket team for which he has been remembered.

A station cricket match at Mt Talbot

Station owners and workers played cricket against neighbouring stations. Thomas Hamilton of Bringalbert started teaching the rudiments of cricket to the Aborigines on the Station in 1864, likewise Edgars on Pine Hills. The Haymans of Lake Wallace formed a cricket club including Aboriginals. In 1865, station cricket was so popular a match was organised between the Europeans and Aborigines. Played near the Bringalbert woolshed, the Aboriginals out scored the Europeans.

Johnny Mullagh and other station Aborigines formed an All-Aboriginal team, coached in Edenhope by Thomas Wentworth Wills (of Australian football fame, the Wills family held Lexington, La Rose & Mokepille stations) and managed by William Hayman.
Englishman Charles Lawrence organised a tour of England for the team in 1868. Led by Mullagh, who batted, bowled and kept wicket, they beat English teams of vastly more experience. 
The team also provided displays of traditional skills - boomerang & spear throwing, and shield parrying. They also successfully participated in ball throwing and running backwards events.
 
A photograph of Johnny Mullagh, the original hung in the Harrow Hall for many years until it was burnt down in the 1970s.
 

Mullagh's headstone, Harrow Cemetery

When the team returned to Australia, Mullagh played for the Victorian state side, and the Melbourne Cricket Club for a season, before returning to play for Harrow until his death in 1891. His bat and stumps were buried with him on the crest of the Harrow Cemetery hill.
Rising above racial taunts, Mullagh deliberately hit a catch rather than play in the face of discrimination. He is still remembered in Harrow with a stone memorial, the annual cricket match, and the Cricket Centre named after him.

The Aboriginal Honour Roll will be launched in the Horsham Library on 4th June at 11am, and will be on display in the Library until the 11th.

Upper Regions

Out in the country looking for school sites, I came across the 'Upper Regions Cemetery'.

The Cemetery Reserve site was gazetted in November 1877.
It's first Trustees were appointed in August 1881, and you can see the German Lutheran heritage of the area reflected in the names - Peter Koop, August  Petschel, John Menzel, Gustav Stephen and August Janetski.

 They obviously had grand plans for a huge population boost back then, which wasn't realised, as the plots are concentrated in a back corner.

Despite its overgrown state, you can make out the grand central corridor of pines dividing the site into the northern half which houses the occupied graves, and the southern half bordering Petschels Road.

The cemetery's Rules and Regulations of 1882 includes some gems -

Cemetery fees in 1882

• A drawing of every stone, tomb, pedestal, and a plan of every monument or tablet proposed to be erected, and a copy of every epitaph or inscription to be submitted to the trustees for approval, who may withhold permission and prevent the erection of any monument which shall appear to them inappropriate or unbecoming, and shall determine and fix the position of any monument which may be preferred  to be erected according to the description, size, and character thereof, having reference to the general plan for ornamenting the said cemetery in an appropriate manner. 
• No grave to be of less depth than 6 feet, except in the case of still-born children 3 feet. 
• Family vaults to be limited to 10 feet frontage by a depth of 8 or 16 feet.

Time stands still

In March 1845 William Patterson took up the license for the Upper Regions station by the right bank of the Wimmera River, adjoining Dimboola. The name referred to its location in the up-country district, part of Dimboola developed on the station site. The station was subdivided in December 1856 into Upper Regions and Lochiel, Upper regions was further subdivided in April 1858 into Upper regions and Bonegar. The Upper Regions license was cancelled in November 1884, and Lochiel cancelled in September 1881.  

AIF founder's resting place

A recently announced successful grant, will restore the grave of General Sir Cyril Bingham Brudenell White, KCB, KCMG, KCVO, DSO at Buangor.

The government has announced funding under the Anzac Centenary Local Grants Program which assists communities undertake Anzac Centenary projects commemorating the service and sacrifice of Australian servicemen and women in the First World War

Cyril Bingham Brudenell White was born September 23 1876 in St Arnaud and grew up on pastoral stations in Queensland. He went to school in Brisbane and at sixteen he started work as a clerk at the Australian Joint Stock Bank in Brisbane.

In 1897 he was a commissioned as an officer in the Royal Australian Artillery and during the Boer War went to South Africa with the Australian Commonwealth Light Horse in 1902. In 1905 he married Ethel Davidson and attended the British Army Staff College in England.

He returned to Australia in early 1908 and at the outbreak of WWI was appointed Lieutenant Colonel and Chief of Staff of the 1st Australian Division, AIF.

Lieutenant Colonel White landed at Gallipoli on April 25 1915. In October 1915 he was given the task of planning the withdrawal of the ANZAC forces from Gallipoli. It was White's organisational skills that saw the withdrawal was conducted without loss. Read more in ‘The silence ruse : escape fromGallipoli ; a record and memories of the life of General Sir Brudenell White’ byRosemary Derham.

From March 1916 until May 1918 he continued as a staff officer under General Birdwood in France and Belgium and was widely regarded as the man who truly ran the AIF. In May 1918, when General Birdwood was promoted to command the British Fifth Army, White accompanied Birdwood as his Chief of Staff, and Monash was appointed to command the Australian division (General Haig had suggested White should be given the command, but he declined).

After the armistice in November 1918, White was appointed to preside over the Demobilisation and Repatriation Branch in London. He was first knighted in 1919, and returned to Australia in 1920 and was appointed Chief of the General Staff.

He retired from military service in 1923 and took up the positions with the Commonwealth Public Board, then with the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency.

He purchased ‘Woodnaggerak’ at Middle Creek followed by ‘Challicum’ near Buangor.

In March 1940, White was recalled to active duty as a full general and reappointed as Chief of the General Staff .

Insiginia recovered from the crash

In one of the worst air crashes in Australia, on August 13 1940, General White was flying in an Australian Air Force aircraft from Melbourne when the aircraft crashed as it approached the aerodrome at Canberra, killing White and 9 others on board instantly. Others killed included Brigadier Geoffrey Austin Street, Minister for the Army, and Member for Corangamite, James Fairbairn, Minister for Air and Civil Aviation, and Member for Flinders, and Sir Henry Gullett, Vice-President of the Executive Council. The story of the crash and its effect on the Australian government is in ‘Air disaster - Canberra : the plane crash that destroyed a government’ by AndrewTink.

 

The funeral procession down St Kilda Rd

His funeral was held at St Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne, then returned soldiers from the Ararat and Beaufort areas preceded the hearse and a cortege of about 150 cars when he was buried in the Buangor Cemetery.His wife Ethel was buried there in 1975.

From the grave

Great headline on the front page of the West Wimmera Advocate - "Council keen to help preserve local history"
Old cemeteries and historical graves on private land help paint a picture of the past and West Wimmera Shire Council is keen to help preserve those in the shire. 
At a Council meeting Cr W. Wait expressed his concerns that cemeteries on private land in Ozenkadnook, Mortat, Neuarpurr, Pine Hills, Pleasant Banks and Gymbowen are in various states of disrepair.


Headstones, especially wooden ones, are susceptible to the vagaries of the climate

Council will take steps to ensure the sites are properly documented and ascertain if any grants are available to help maintain them.
There are a number of closed cemeteries and lone grave sites scattered across the municipality, and the Council would welcome information on any of the locations.

A lone grave located on the road verge of a busy highway

Approaching milestone

Just a reminder, as time is drawing near for the Horsham Library’s guided walking tours of the Old Section of the Horsham Cemetery. Two tours will be run, the first – the Daytime Tour – will be 12:30-2:30pm, the second – the Night time Tour will be 6:30-8:30pm. Both tours will be conducted on Saturday 20th April 2013.

The two tours will concentrate on the Old Section of the cemetery, where the tour guide will highlight various headstones and graves depicting local community milestones of historical events and local identities.

The purpose of the tour is to promote the appreciation of the role of cemeteries and cemetery research in compiling family research and knowledge of local history.

Entry is via the Pioneers Entrance in Kalkee Road, with parking near the Cemetery Trust Office. 

Refreshments will be available after each tour.

Attendees will need to wear suitable clothes for the weather and enclosed comfortable footwear. Also those on the Night time Tour will need to bring a torch or lantern.

Bookings are essential for both tours, and will be taken at the Horsham Branch Library in the Mibus Centre, 28 McLachlan Street in Horsham 
(Phone 03 5382 5707, email horsham.library@wrlc.org.au).

Attendees are required to complete a Cemetery Tour Agreement form prior to undertaking the tour.

The “Milestones & Headstones” cemetery walking tours, are part of the 2013 National Trust Community Heritage Festival, 18 April-19 May 2013.