Joseph Williams (1836-1912)
As yet we do not know how Joseph viewed his mother’s liaison with John Propsting nor of his reaction to his father’s infirmity and subsequent death. It seems very likely James was depressed by events and this may have contributed to his drowning.
Joseph had married Keziah Danks in 1853 shortly after her father had also died by drowning in the Derwent at New Wharf. Joseph was 18 and she was probably just 16 and had been working as a live in servant for Dr Smith in Macquarie St. It seems her father, who lived alone, had committed suicide. She told the inquest into his death that as he had visited Keziah and her sister a few days before ‘He bid me goodbye and kissed me. I do not remember him kissing me before.’
Her father William had been transported for stealing and arrived on the John 29 Jan 1831. On arrival he was about 43 years old and had a wife and two children in Ludlow Shropshire. His wife, Ann and one child arrived on the Sarah 14 October 1832: the child was probably William Frederick. William and Ann were able to live together and Keziah was born in 1833 and her sister Mary the next year. William Danks was free by 1846 but Ann died two years later. (Mary married a master mariner William Baker in 1851 and had seven children. William Frederick married Ann Taylor in 1832 and then went to Aukland where a daughter, Matilda , was born in 1849 and a son William in 1852.)
As a young man Joseph was both a publican and a farmer. He was also the licensee of the Stowell Arms in 1856-7 where his sons, James Merrick and George Frederick in September 1856 were born in April 1855 and September 1856 respectively. He then briefly took over the Patent Slip Hotel on Battery Point where his daughter Catherine Margaret Maria was born on 21 December 1858. After being convicted for Sunday trading in April he transferred that licence to George Rose. In 1859 a fourth child, Kezia was born.
A newspaper report reveals that in June 1862 Joseph and Kezia lived in Moonah next door to the Prince Albert Inn. The inn was bought and closed down by the owner of the adjacent Cooley’s Hotel and for a time was known as the Claremont boarding house. At this time their sons were 7 and 6 and the girls and 3. The Claremont was next door to the Moonah Tram Depot and on the other side of the road circa 1899 was a shop owned by Henry James Propsting, a nephew of John Frederick. From 1863 until at least 1868 Joseph and his family lived on his mother’s Barossa Farm in what is now Kalang Avenue Glenorchy. Kezia Williams died in February 1872 aged just 39, when her sons James Merrick and George were 17 and 15 respectively; their sisters were a few years younger.
It seems that Kezia may have been ill for some time as she died in hospital and two months later Joseph married a 42 year old widow Eliza Wright, in the Congregational Church manse at 287 Liverpool St., Hobart. Her first husband Jesse Wright had died nine years earlier aged just 36; at the time of her second marriage she had three children aged 21, 20 and 17. In 1878 Joseph and Eliza lived at 268 Elizabeth Street North Hobart in a house owned by his next door neighbour Mrs Ring. By then Joseph’s eldest son had married Caroline Hepburn and had one son. Kezia married in September and already a nine-month old daughter and was again pregnant. Her husband was William Webb who had been a servant of John Tilyard in Glenorchy that suggests that Kezia was living with her grandmother at the time. John Tilyard’s two children would both marry children of Kezia’s brother James. George was also contemplating marriage and Catherine may have already been living in Sydney.
James Murrick Williams (1855-1918)
James Murrick Williams was the eldest child of Joseph Williams and Kezia Danks and was on born 8 April 1855. His brother George was a year younger and his sister Catherine was baptised in 1858 and the fourth child, Kezia (variously known as Cassy, Cassie, Kasia) followed soon after. While Joseph was running hotels in the city Kezia and the children may have grown up at Barossa. They were almost certainly there when their mother died in 1872. James Murrick became a carpenter and his brother a plasterer.
In March 1877, when he was 22, James M married the 17- year-old Caroline Louise Hepburn. Her parents were married in Launceston on 10 March 1845 and she was the fifth child of seven. Her mother Caroline Louisa Walbourne had been born in a large house in Wuston Circle, London in 1827 the daughter of a noted actor, dancer and comedian William Henry Walbourne. Caroline’s mother, Sarah Lowthorp was the second of the actors three wives; his first wife Dinah Smith had died eleven moths before. (Henry’s sister Caroline who was also a dancer, married William Kirby another dancer in the cast, on the same day and in the same church). Henry’s career ran into difficulties about the time Sarah died Caroline went to Tasmania in 1844 on the India with her uncle James. Two years later Elizabeth Barling became the third Mrs Walbourne.
William Henry Walbourne was the eldest child of John Walbourne and Mary Jones who were married in Bloomsbury London in May 1793. John was a soldier in the Royal Fusiliers and his younger children were enrolled in the Royal Military Asylum at Chelsea, now called the Duke of York’s Royal Military School. William Henry was born in August 1794 and his sister Caroline two years later: then followed four boys, Charles, John, Samuel and James. In a 1808 petition to the Asylum John’s wife said he had been sent on a secret expedition, she lived by charring but was now in capable of working and caring for her six children ‘aged between 12 and 5 months’. John Walburn was killed in action around 1808.
After two years as a tailor with Fitzgerald William Henry was assigned to a sheep farmer at Bothwell where he became a constable and was pardoned in 1838 for meritorious service.
Henry Walbourne on the stage in London.
Caroline’s first child, James Henry Matthew, was born in Hobart in February of the next year almost certainly at 268 Argyle St. (just north of the junction with Strahan St. now Upton’s Salvage) They were still at that address in March 1882 when James’ baby sister Millie died. Millie was Caroline’s fourth child. Quite regularly over the 23 years from 1878 Caroline gave birth to sixteen children. When the family moved from Mrs Lewis’ house in Argyle St to 22 Burnett St four more babies died in quick succession. Ruby died in March 1885 and Leslie on the same day four years later. Oliver died in February 1888. The six infants who all died in the summer were buried together in grave Y275 at Cornelian Bay. To add to her grief she had a stillborn girl in April 1898. (This house was on the southern side of Burnett St. midway between Argyle and Elizabeth Streets.)
The surviving children were Jim, Joseph Robert , born 6 April 1879, Ethel Caroline born June 1880 Myrtle Rachel born Dec 1882.
Caroline Louisa Williams (nee Hepburn)
For her 24th birthday in 1884 James gave Caroline an elaborate family bible in which she recorded the births and deaths of her children and a few other facts.
When the eleventh child, Hilda, was born in December 1892, the family had moved away from the deadly Burnett St to the corner of Roope and Swanston Streets Newtown but a month later James bought them an acre of Samuel Hurst Burrows’ land in Risdon Road for £170. Apparently known as Rays Estate it was on Risdon Road at Newtown Bay and is now near the intersection of Risdon Road, the Brooker Highway and Queens Walk. The National Trust home, Runnymede is behind the site. Burrows’ wife, Annie Marie Elizabeth, was a sister of John Frederick Propsting and Henry Propsting and cousin of William Bispham Propsting who became Premier of Tasmania in 1903. John Propsting was the second husband of James’ paternal grandfather.
At this time James was an engineer and Burrows was a tanner. My grandfather Bill Williams told me that his father was the engineer at the Wilcox Mofflin tannery. This was the large tannery in Montrose that you could sometimes smell from the Williams home at 3 Anfield Street Glenorchy. The tannery began life as the Kensington Tannery and when bought by Joseph Cook in 1870 already had 50 employees and was one of Glenorchy’s most important businesses. After a fire it was rebuilt in 1899 and a very large brick chimney built. Willcox Mofflin took over about 1937.
The house in Swanston Street Newtown where Hilda was born.
Daphne, Lily and Bill were born at the Risdon Road house. Their older sister Myrtle told her grand daughter that he father built their house and she would often sit under a tree on the edge of the river and read as a young girl. Myrtle was a clever girl and dux of her school (probably Newtown State School).
Myrtle was 27 when she married Robert Lucas at Holy Trinity in Hobart on 2 March 1910. Although he was born in New South Wales in 1881 his maternal grandmother was Mrs Robert Rosendale who was married at St John’s Newtown in 1858. Seven years earlier Robert was living in the house where Myrtle’s great grandfather James Williams was living before his death
End of the Century
Margaret Propsting (formerly Williams) died on 8 July 1890 aged 78. She was one of the last of the pioneer generation. Her late husband’s cousins James Collis, Eliza Blacklow (nee Davis) and William Thomas Davis still lived in the Brighton area. Margaret’s death notice in the Mercury referred to her as ‘wife of John of Barossa Glenorchy’. In 1868 the valuation roll said Joseph Williams lived there and the property was owned by Margaret Propsting whose address was given as the Woodpecker Inn. On the 1884-5 electoral roll (for Glenorchy) John Propsting’s address was given as Barossa farm and his qualification to vote was as the occupant of leasehold property at O’Briens Bridge.
John Propsting died in July four years later. In his will, drawn up shortly before his death the substantive beneficiary was his adopted son Frederick Webb. This boy, then 5, was the second child of Margaret’s younger grand daughter. When she married William Webb in the home of Rev Nisbet in September 1878 she was a widow and called herself Kezia Williams. When she registered her first child, nine months before the marriage, she then called herself Cassy Frances. Frederick was born three months after the marriage and it seems likely that Cassy still lived with her grandmother. William Webb died soon after Frederick was born and John Propsting apparently assumed the role of father and made the boy his heir.
In July 1883 Cassy married Henry John Cantwell in the manse of Chalmers Free Church in Hobart. He had been born in Launceston in 1858 and was thus they were about the same age. The year after the wedding Cassy had a daughter Mabel and over the next 20 years had another five children – Annie Louisa in 1892, Arthur Ernest in 1895, Ida Amelia in 1898, Violet Ivy in 1900 and Kezia Jane in 1904. Initially they lived in Queens Street Sandy Bay. Kezia died in May 1931 aged 72 and Henry Cantwell in December 1940 aged 82. They are buried together in Cornelian Bay Cemetery.
The electoral Roll for Central Hobart in 1884-5 records Cassy’s father, Joseph Williams, as living at 43 Melville St in a house owned by Henry Propsting. This house was near the Black Prince Hotel and the fruit shops he later ran at 110 and 104. Elizabeth St. He was still there in 1888.
Joseph, had a fruit shop in the city of Hobart from early as 1890 when it was at 53 Elizabeth St. between Collins and Liverpool St.: nine shops from the Collins St corner. In 1896-7 he moved to the other side of the street at 110, later 104 Elizabeth St , two up from Melville St. directly opposite the Stowell Arms Hotel. The house and shop was originally owned by James Whyte but by 1903 ownership had passed to George Adams, founder of Tattersalls. Campbell & Minchin saddlers were on the corner and a Chinese gift shop of the other side run by Mow Shang. In 1902 his shop was on the same side of Elizabeth St. three down from the junction with Melville St where he was nest to Chung's fancy gift shop. Then he seemed to go back to 104 Elizabeth St but he was not there in 1912. The shops were knocked down and rebuilt in 1914.
When his second wife Eliza died of a stroke in November 1910 they were living at 286 Murray St in the city. She was buried in Queenborough Cemetery and he was laid beside her after he died on 14 September 1912 in his grandson, Jim Williams’, house at 393 Main Rd. Glenorchy.
Joseph’s younger son George was working as a collier when he married Edith Sumner in January 1879. Their first child Edith was born in Ware St on 7 October of that year. Their first son, named after his father, was born in William Street on 12 Jul 1881. During the next twenty three years eight more children were born. Catherine was born in June 1883 and died in 1902. Janet Louise was born in Nov 1884, Amelia in September 1887, Ernest in April 1892 and Ursula in July 1893. The eldest son George died in November 1897 aged 16. Two years later Vera was born and she was followed by Gladys in April 1902 and Madeline in May 1904.
In the mid 1880s George and his family lived in Argyle Street and he had now become a plasterer. Like his brother George moved away from the somewhat unhealthy North Hobart to Newtown. However in February 1895 their house in Clare Street burnt down.
Catherine Williams, George’s sister and the elder daughter of Joseph and Kezia, seems to have gone to Sydney where she married in December 1883; he was then 25. Her husband was a 35 year-old Frenchman Peter (Pierre) Saintilan. Later they moved to Hobart where Kate could begin having children in familiar surroundings. Their first child Olive Marion was born on 22 April 1891 at 139 Campbell St. Mary Edith was born in Newtown on 10 June 1893. The Saintilans may then have been staying with either of her brothers who both lived in Newtown at the time as he was appointed keeper of the Newtown pound in August 1892. The Campbell St address is also near where George had lived. Catherine and Peter returned to Sydney soon after where they had two more children. Blanche E was born in St Peters in 1897 and Peter Frank in 1900. Catherine died aged 75 on 9 April 1934 in the home of her eldest daughter Olive Currie in Derwent St Glebe.
James Merrick Williams mortgaged his land in Risdon Rd. for £200 and then for £250 in Oct 1895. He sold the land to Margaret Munro in March 1899 for £450 and paid off his mortgage thus making £250. With this money James first leased and then bought Mary’s Hope Farm at Montrose. It was on the other side of the railway and Main Rd, and almost opposite, the tannery where he worked. It seems he rented this in 1899 from John Russell and owned it from the next year until his death. When it was advertised for sale in Feb 1856 it was described 'as a farm known as Mary's Hope' owned by Dr Andrew Henderson and leased to John Overell. Included 'a well finished stone cottage of 4 rooms, extensive views, 25 acres of rich alluvial soil in cultivation.' James and Caroline’s last child, Marjorie was born here. Rosetta Primary School is now in the centre of this land.
About the beginning of 1900 George followed his brother into orcharding on a property in Collinsvale (then Bismark) in the hills above May’s Hope farm.
The Twentieth Century
In February 1907 James decided to sell Mary’s Hope Farm. It now had 16 acres of orchard and another 10 acres under cultivation. Another two rooms had been added to the stone house and it also had a fruit store and stables. The advertisement in the Mercury of 23 February assured potential buyers it had ‘no codlin moth nor scale’ and the orchard had ‘a fair crop’. His decision to sell may have been influenced by the three eldest children having left home and Caroline may have been ill.
On Oct 5 1908 he acquired the title to two blocks in Windsor St Glenorchy. One of them being 'blocks 53, 54 and 55 of subdivision 515, part of the original grant to GF Read and subdivided by James’ employer, Joseph Cook. Houses were built at number 3, that he called Turanga, and number 7 probably by James, they are still there.
3 Windsor St today. The enclosed verandah is new as are the window frames. No7. Below still has most of the original verandah, although it is now enclosed and the wooden window frames.
Caroline Williams died at her new home in Windsor St Glenorchy in May 1911 when only 50 and her youngest son ‘Bill’ was 14 and his sister Marjorie 10. At this time Caroline had ten living children. She may have been failing for some time and James had employed Amy Scott as housekeeper and nurse, she was the 37. The family was devastated by the death of Caroline and there was some dispute about who would take her place.
Her eldest child, Jim, who was just a few years younger than Amy, was married with three children of his own. Jim and his wife Kate had recently set up home in what is now the middle of the large Northgate Shopping centre in Glenorchy opposite the church (393 Main Rd). It was a modest weatherboard house and Bill’s blacksmith shop opened on to main road. Kate was expecting her fourth child and third son.
Ethel was 31 and had married Charles Tilyard, member of a prominent Glenorchy family, in 1908. She had four children. Tilyard Street and the former Tilyard orchards are close to Mary’s Hope Farm on the Glenorchy side. Charles Tilyard’s grandfather, Thomas (1803-1894) was born in Cripplegate London and had been a mirror maker when convicted of stealing and transported on the Sir Godfrey Webster in 1823. After completing his sentence, including that for a local crime that sent him to Macquarie Harbour, he built a home in Kensington Street Glenorchy. Thomas and Ann Holmes spawned a large extended family and Tilyard Street was named in his memory. Charles Edward Tilyard was a teacher when he married Ethel Williams in May 1901 and taught at Chudleigh, a village 64 km west of Launceston near Deloraine. After several years there he abruptly resigned and became a policeman. Just before the start of World War I Charles went to New Zealand and disappeared. Ethel gained a formal separation in 1914 and she was left with four young children. The youngest, Lillian Doreen, known as Dawn, was my grandfather’s favourite niece. She was a toddler when her father left.
Joseph Williams was 32 and married to Ethel’s sister-in-law Ruby Roselen Tilyard, they also had four children. Myrtle, 29, had recently married Robert Lucas and they were farming at Coolamon in New South Wales. Ronald was 21 and single, Hilda was 19, Daphne 18 and Lily 14.
Myrtle Lily at her wedding in Hobart March 1910 with, from left Lily, Ethel, Hilda and Daphne
Bill went to live with his older sister Myrtle accompanied by his cousin Charles Tilyard, son of Myrtle’s older sister Ethel. The property at Coolamon was called Coramandel. With one boy called Lyndhurst Mervyn and another Charles Merrick it is no wonder they were soon known as Bill and Mick. Myrtle’s granddaughter Rosemary Bray heard from her father that ‘they lived in a hut on the property which I guess was like shearers quarters. I think it was a wheat property’. There is a photo of Bob’s property held by Victorian Library. ‘Mick’ Tilyard married a Mary Stinson who was the daughter of one of the other old Coolamon families and property owners and so I suppose they stayed there. I am pretty sure grandma kept in touch with him at Coolamon.’
One of the AIF records suggests that Bill’s brother Roy had also gone to Coolamon where he enlisted as a driver in the Field Artillery of the AIF on 1 September 1915. But Roy’s detailed record says he enlisted in Tasmania, perhaps he came back to enlist. While in Egypt he re injured his back, which had been damaged in a fall from a horse in 1913 and he did not see any active service. In March 1916 Bill enlisted in the 12th Squadron of the Australian Light Horse at Narrandera NSW when he was 19 but said he was 21. He also said both parents were dead and his sister Myrtle was next of kin. He was discharged two months later due to loose knee cartilages. In September 1916 he tried again in Cootamundra, this time he lasted two months. He enlisted for a third time in August 1917. In November 1917 the Army wrote to his father requesting he repay £12 Bill had already been paid as he was underage. His father wrote back refusing to pay. As Bill would be of age in five months it seems the Army forgot about it but he was discharged two months later as medically unfit and underage. The cause of his disability was a fractured kneecap caused when a horse on Coramandel Station kicked him. Both brothers had their service curtailed by injuries caused by horses; Bill’s occupation was given as teamster and Roy’s as horseman. Roy did get to travel to Egypt and England and returned to Australia in March 1919.
James Murrick and Amy Matilda Williams
While Bill was away his father married Caroline’s nurse in the manse of St Andrews Church (now known as Scot’s Church) in Bathurst Street Hobart. The witnesses were Caroline’s eldest brother William and his wife Elizabeth Jane who had performed the same role when James had married Caroline.
Amy Matilda, youngest child and fifth Tasmanian daughter of Joseph Spiknel Scott and Eliza Brockwall of Green Ponds (near Brighton in Tasmania). Joseph had been convicted of burglary in York and sentenced to transportation for 15 years. He arrived on the David Malcolm in August 1845. Eliza and five children arrived on the Anglia in Feb 1850, we don’t know that they were Joseph’s children. Joseph obtained a ticket of leave in March 1853 and was pardoned in June 1855. He then married Eliza in Hobart in 1853 and by November 1854 they had another child, Joseph, possibly their sixth. Amelia, their sixth child born in Tasmania arrived in October 1865. Amy Matilda was born 10 Feb 1874, 9 years after her nearest sibling Amelia, and apparently her mother’s twelfth baby.
After just four years into his second marriage James died in Stowell Hospital on Battery Point on 11 Dec 1918 and was buried with Caroline in Cornelian Bay Cemetery. Nine months before he died he placed this advertisement in the Mercury
FOR SALE
One W.B. Cottage, 5 rooms and store-room, bathroom, washhouse, and copper and tubs, outbuildings, electric light, verandah (back and front). Also one Cottage, with 4 rooms,-verandah (back and front), bath and store-rooms, large rooms, electric light on, one-stall stable, and outer-buildings; and also 3 Blocks of Land, all fenced und water laid on ; the whole situated in Windsor-street, Glenorchv.
No agent. Apply to ,
J. M. WILLIAMS,
Turanga. Windsor-st., Glenorchy.
As he died intestate and his estate was later vested in his widow Amy Matilda Williams on 25 April 1925 it seems likely that the proceeds from the sale were distributed amongst his children before he died. In May 1920 Amy sold block 53 to Louisa Edith Woolley for £600 and discharged the mortgage on the property. JMW had apparently obtained £850 by mortgaging the property to Joseph Francis Mather and Thomas Bowring Mather. He had paid off £400 in December 1914 and the remainder on 3 Nov 1915. He may have raised another £450 on the property from Lorald Huon Kile and George Hope Kile on 3 Nov 1818 at £6.10.0 per cent.
So money does not adequately explain why the girls seemed to shun poor Amy, unless only the boys got a share. Amy had simply followed the path laid down by Murrick’s grandfather and grandmother, probably her father-in-law and at least one of her stepchildren. Daphne continued to live in the family home for a year or so after her father died. Amy died 11 September 1959 aged 84, she had been a widow and probably living alone for over 40 years.. In her will she left her estate to a widow living in New Zealand, Vera Sutton (nee Saggers).
Bill and May
Bill moved back to Tasmania around 1920 and worked with his brother Jim as blacksmith in Main Rd Glenorchy. In December 1924 Bill married the 37 year-old widow Mary Jane Harrison (nee O’Neil) in Wesley Church Hobart. She had three boys Keith, then 14, Lionel, then 12 and Douglas, then 9 and had been caring for her mother Maria, then 65 and several of her seven brothers. She always called him ‘Will’.
At the time of their marriage, with the aid of War Service Homes Commission, they bought a house at 13 Baker St. New Town. Will took up work at the EZ Company and rode his bicycle to work every day for the next twenty-five years. Around 1935 they moved to nearby 64 Montagu St. that was on the corner of what is now Valentine St., and Maria died there. Although they may not have known it both houses were within the land grant given to Noah Mortimer and where Bill’s great grandfather lived as a youth from 1808 to about 1817. In 1939 Will and Mary moved to 4 Haig St. Lutana. Around 1945 they settled in to a rambling house at the river at the bottom of Anfield St. Glenorchy. After a few years there they bought a house at the other end of the street (No.3). Will took great pride in cutting his own firewood from the bush and hunting both rabbits and kangaroo. He kept ferrets and hens and was a great vegetable grower. Hunting trips were the highlight of my school holidays. Up before dawn and a walk to Glenorchy station to take the train to Austin’s Ferry. As it was getting light we boarded the little ferry to cross the Derwent to Old Beach. (Probably passing over the resting place of his great grandfather’s first wife and baby.) A long walk across the frost-covered slopes took us to the lighted wooded slopes. The sight of fresh paw marks signified the nets would be placed at all the likely exits to the burrows and the ferrets lifted out of the green plywood box and put into a burrow. The nets were secured with pegs made from fencing wire; as a bunny rushed out he would be grabbed, net and all, freed from the net and dispatched with a chop across the neck with the edge of Bill’s calloused hand. Over time I progressed from setting nets and boiling the billy to putting in the ferret and finally catching and dispatching. Fortunately I was not promoted to skinning and cleaning.
After retiring from the Zinc Works Bill still worked, this time in a Moonah car yard cleaning cars. He had acquired a Model T Ford utility some years earlier and this took us to hunting fields farther distant, particularly to his friend Mr Gunn’s property at Tea Tree. This is where he cut the family’s annual supply of firewood for the fuel stove, laundry copper and two fireplaces. After working at the car yard he bought a shiny second-hand sedan and put away the pushbike.
Bill Williams in his garden with May’s great grandson Steven 1964.
Bill died of emphysema in 1971. May lived a vigorous and independent life until her death in 1984. She cooked over a wood fired stove and washed in a wood fired ‘copper’ until the 1960s. A very smart dresser and keen shopper, she indulged her grandson with trips to the city and all the local regattas. She maintained a close relationship with her sister-in-law Pearl Haas (her first husband’s sister) and a small number of other relatives. Bill’s nieces Dawn Cresswell, a daughter of his sister Ethel and Maureen Dare, the daughter of his sister Marjorie were regular visitors. So was Thea, eldest daughter of Percy’s brother Harold (Joe). After Bill died she seemed content to be alone having outlived two husbands and two sons. During the last thirteen years of her life stubbornly caring for herself despite failing eyesight. She lived to be 97 years old.