Fredricksons
Turku, Finland
Eric Fredrickson
Born: ?
Died: before 1919
Charlotte Unknown
Born: ?
Died: before 1919Children
Erik Ernst Fredrickson, also known as Eric Ernest Frederickson, born 18XX, Turku, Finland
At this point nothing is known of my maternal great grandparents except that, according to my grandparent's wedding certificate, they lived in Turku, Finland and they were both deceased by 1919. From their name, they were clearly of Swedish ethnicity, though the family may have been in Finland for many, many years. The fact that my grandfather used the Swedish name for Turku, that is, Abo, on the wedding certificate tends to confirm their ethnicity.
Finland had historically been Swedish for many centuries with Swedish-speaking settlers arriving in some coastal regions during the medieval period. Swedish kings established their rule in 1249 and present-day Finland became a fully consolidated part of the Swedish kingdom. Swedish became the dominant language of the nobility, administration and education; Finnish was chiefly a language for the peasantry, clergy and local courts in predominantly Finnish-speaking areas.
On 29 March 1809, having been taken over by the armies of Alexander I of Russia in the Finnish War, Finland became an autonomous Grand Duchy in the Russian Empire until the end of 1917. This meant my grandfather and my Finnish ancestors were Russian citizens. Indeed my born-in-Australia grandmother had to apply to become an Australian citizen again after her marriage as, at that time, the wife automatically took her husband's nationality.
Due to its location, Turku is a notable commercial and passenger seaport city with over three million passengers travelling through Port of Turku each year to Stockholm and Mariehamn. My grandparents wedding certificate states that my great grandfather was a merchant, perhaps dealing in goods coming through the port. I wonder why my grandfather didn't follow that profession, becoming a sailor instead. Perhaps he was a younger son and didn't inherit the business? Or, maybe he was sent away to learn more about trade?
I remember my grandmother saying in the 1950s that my grandfather still got mail from Finland. It would be very interesting to see if contact could be made with our Finnish family, a task for some future day!
Baileys
Thomas Gillam Bailey (Taylor)
Born: 1873, Westbury, Tasmania
Died: Unknown
Florence Jane Gregor
Born: 1871
Died: 1961
Children
With William Henry Jackson
Lillian Jackson: born 1890
With Thomas Gillam Bailey (Taylor)
Muriel Florence Bailey: born 1898 - my grandmother
Thomas Ormonde Bailey: born 1903
Hilda Gillam Bailey: born 1906
Herbert Osborne Bailey: born 1913
Thomas Gillam Bailey (Taylor)
A view of Westbury, Tasmania in 1895
Though he went by the name Bailey, my great grandfather was actually a Taylor. Born the same year as his father died, 1873, his mother married William Bailey the next year and he seems to have gone by that name. I guess he was named Thomas for his smuggler grandfather.
He may well have grown up believing he was Bailey's son as he gives William Bailey of Westbury, Tasmania, carpenter, as his father on his marriage certificate.
According to his wedding certificate, he was a miner, but later electoral roll information indicates that he worked as a builder.
According to one side of the family, Thomas was originally English (clearly not the case) and after he returned from serving in World War 1 he and Florence 'didn't get on' and went their separate ways. There's a grain of truth in that, but as usual with family stories the real story is somewhat different.
According to a statement Thomas made in a government document in 1917, he'd been working full time in the Melbourne's inner city of (around Sth Melbourne, Port Melbourne and Richmond) for at least three years. Whether he and Florence had separated about 1914 or he had gone to Melbourne in search of work is unclear, but by 1917 he was living at 45 Howe Crescent, Albert Park. This is a pretty up-market part of the city now, but must have been of a quite different nature in those days.
We know this because Thomas applied to participate in a scheme whereby Australia sent munitions workers to Britain to assist in the war effort. Oddly, Thomas, who was a carpenter, applied to work on building airplanes using his carpentry skills.
He was accepted, arrived in England on 19 July 1917 and initially began work at Sopwith Aviation in Kingston on Thames (near London). He doesn't seem to be have been a happy camper, requesting that someone from Australia House come to hear complaints from him and other Australians about the conditions at Sopwith. He also seems to have been unwell claiming to have had pleurisy, saying that he could not stay at Sopwith 'as I have been ill all the time I have been here'.
He was subsequently transferred to United Aircraft Co in Gosport in February 1918. This doesn't seemed to have resolved matters for Thomas and by May he was again requesting that someone be sent to hear his complaints.
The rest of his file contains mainly correspondence regarding his irregular support for his wife and family. Florence stated to the local police constable that she had only received 7 pounds from him since he left for England and that she had run up debts of around 10 pounds.
Towards the end of his stint in England Thomas requests that at the end of his work agreement he be allowed to stay in England as it would be 'very much against his interest to return now'. Following that up he states that he wants to bring his family to England.
This was news to Florence it seems who said 'I have no thought of going with the family to England, and as regards where he terminates his agreement he can please himself, but I hope he will make some provision for there are the children to be cared for'. (In my mind I can hear her saying this in that broad, laconic Australian accent that used to prevail before we all became speakers of mid-Pacific English.)
In any event he returned to Australia on 21 March 1919, disembarking on 7 May 1919 at Port Melbourne and being discharged on the day he disembarked. Thereafter he disappears. In answer to a query from the Department of Neglected Children and Reformatories the Department of Defence says his last known address is care of the post office at South Melbourne. Looks very much like he didn't want to be found - further work to be done!
Florence Jane Gregor
Eighteen ninety (1890) was a tumultuous year for my great grandmother. She'd moved pretty recently from her birthplace of Moonta in Sth Australia to Broken Hill and married a young miner, Wiliam Henry Jackson, aged 24, in the Wesleyan Parsonage on 29 March. By year's end, Florence had lost her husband to a mining accident around August, moved to Eaglehawk in Victoria and bore her dead husband a daughter, Lillian May, there in December 1890. All in all, quite a year!
It was natural for great gran to move to Bendigo. Her elder sister Annie (and her husband) had been there from at least 1888. Her sister Kate and her mother Hannah also moving there in the 1890s or early 1900s. The family congregated in the Eaglehawk area.
Bendigo would also have been attractive to great gran as a mining town with a thriving Cornish community. Originally a series of sheep runs known as Bendigo's Valley (Sandhurst was the official designation before a plebiscite in 1891 in favour of Bendigo settled the matter), the city grew quickly out of the Victorian gold rush from 1851. Large numbers of miners were attracted to the diggings from New South Wales, Tasmania and Sth Australia. The Sth Australian contingent included many miners of Cornish heritage who had been working in the copper mines at Burra Burra.
Once the initial gold rush was over, many Cornish miners were encouraged to stay in Bendigo as their expertise in underground hard rock mining was valuable when the mining of gold switched from 'diggings' to deep quartz mining. The local Cornishmen were supplemented by many thousands of direct immigrants from Cornwall. The Cornishmen, of a clannish nature, tended to stick together in the Eaglehawk, Long Gully and California Gully area of Bendigo.
In 1898 Florence married Thomas Gillam Bailey, a carpenter from Tasmania, in the Bible Christian Parsonage in Long Gully, Bendigo. The Bible Christian Church was a Methodist church founded by William O’Bryan, a Wesleyan Methodist preacher, on 18 October 1815 in North Cornwall. Primarily concentrated in Cornwall and Devon, the church sent missionaries all over England and then the world. By 1850 the church reached Australia, carried by Cornish settlers.
Eventually Florence and Thomas were to have four children together, including my grandmother, Muriel, in 1898. A family story has it that Thomas served in World War 1 and that on his return, he and Florence parted and he disappeared. However, there is no record in the National Archive of him serving in WW I.
On her death certificate, it states that she was a widow, so perhaps she was aware of his fate, but this might just be an assumption.
I don't know too much more about Florence, indeed I didn't know or had forgotten that she'd been alive in my lifetime until I got her death certificate and found that she'd passed away in 1961. However, thinking about it, I believe I saw her at least once. I remember my parents, my grandmother, perhaps my grandfather and my Uncle Cliff taking a trip to Bendigo (a two hour trip from Melbourne) in the 1950s to visit two old ladies in a house out the back of Bendigo in Eaglehawk. Looking out from the back door of this house you could see the mullock heaps from mining in the area. One of the old ladies I knew, Auntie Hilda (my gran's sister), from her visits to our home in Yarraville. The other lady was unknown to me, but I now think she was my great grandmother and this was her long term home in Eaglehawk.
Apart from the mullock heaps, I remember two things about the visit. One was stopping along the way to eat cold pasties my gran had made - they were delicious even cold. Uncle Cliff said they were called 'tiddy oggies' in England (actually, in Cornwall). The other was the old lady saying she had found a snake under her bed recently - this fired up my ophidiophobia and made me very unwilling to go into the backyard of the house.
I also have a very vague memory of being on a country train with my mum and gran one time. I remember asking mum where we were going and being told we were going to a 'back to Eaglehawk' celebration and that mum and gran had been born in Eaglehawk. I can't remember anything else about the visit.
Great gran lived in Job's Gully Road from at least 1909 until her death. Her death certificate lists her address as 20 Job's Gully Road. I visited the area in October 2010, but couldn't identify her house as there is now no number 20. There were several Victorian or Edwardian style houses in the low numbers, whether one was the Bailey homestead I can't say, but I assume that great gran would have known these houses and the people who lived in them.
It's a very quiet place, in the fifteen minutes or so that we were there, we saw no-one, not even a dog or cat. I was hoping to see an older resident who might remember great gran, but no luck!
She died on 6 February 1961 at the age of 90 in Bendigo Hospital and was buried in the Eaglehawk Cemetary.
Methodism
Bendigo
Bendigo as little Cornwall
Sources
Thanks to Kellie for some of the family information in this article.
Some of the information on Bendigo is from Wikipedia.
Philip Payton: The Cornish Overseas
