Frontier Sacrifice
Father Hollis dead a year or so off the ship. Mother then married to a
disliked stepfather, and soon she dies. The six Hollis children are orphans
before their maturity. The oldest just eighteen. There very often is an
original sacrifice in the birth of our people in Australia. The travail of
the journey, the ordeal of leaving home, most often forever, the gruelling
sea-voyage, the half-year of being at sea, the breaking of horizons in
crossing the vastness of half the world’s oceans, then thin gruel, the bad
food, the likelihood of sickness, and death. Our ancestors gave much for us
to be here
Though many a European took the risk of sailing out to the other side of the
world to seek a better life, the hardships meant casualties, and the
experience of free settler emigrants was very often not a prosperous one in
the first instance. The vagaries of the sea trip, bad weather, bad water,
disease riddled-hulks of ships, and then the lack of fresh food and adequate
shelter on arrival in the raw settlements of Australia caught many out, left
them out of the rewards, and took them down to untimely deaths.
The appearance of mean beginnings
When I at first began to search out the wider pattern of my own Hollis
family in early Melbourne, I thought, because of the poverty of situations I
found them in here, in early
Collingwood
and Fitzroy I thought that they were from a landless and comfortless
background in England. Not so. They had fallen from a well-to-do standing
into distress through the death of the family provider, and these were
common frontier circumstances outside securities of those on the other side
of the globe.
The well-established Hollis family fell into tragedy soon after their
arrival in Australia. John Frederick Hollis, his wife and his family of six
children departed the Port of London on the ship “Chalmers”, arriving in
Melbourne in November 1852. The Hollis children were Hubert John, then age
11; Arthur age 10; Fanny (Frances) age 9; Edward age 7; Edith Rachel age 6;
and little Lucy age 4. Their father John Frederick Hollis was then age 42,
their mother Elizabeth Frances (Fanny) Hollis nee Close, age 38.
John Frederick Hollis is recorded as having died in 1854 in melancholy
circumstances, but what they might be we know not. It is possible that he
died in the
recordless
mullock of the goldfields. He could have died at sea, or interstate.
But Fanny was left a widow, and the children left fatherless.
But further research revealed that John Frederick Hollis was the second son
of minor gentry, the large-landed yeoman farmers on the Thames river flats
near Reading. He would seem to be an ideal Australian settler, having
already been a working farmer and raised on a large yeoman farm since
childhood. He and his family had emigrated from the greater Reading area
where they’d lived in the rich fields of middle Thames Valley of
Oxfordshire-Buckinghamshire
and Berkshire.
A sender-unaddressed letter dated 31 March 1854 from ‘Cousin Gus’ to the
oldest Hollis child, young Hubert Hollis (my great great grandfather) is
still extant. ‘Cousin Gus’ mentions a number of people he expects Hubert to
know. These are Aunt and Uncle Peabody, a cousin and a neighbour, including
Tommy, who was at nearby Oxford University. This letter seems to be written
from Abingdon
near Reading in Berkshire, England, just south of the University town at
Oxford.
[Note: Tuesday 24 April 2007 - Have
just discovered who Cousin Gus is. Hubert's father had a sister: Mary Eliza
Hollis. I have just researched her marriage (on the CLDS Family Search
International Genealogy Index [IGI] ) - to John Pearman - (Note: not Peaman
as I have first interpreted the letter). So Aunt Pearman is Mary Eliza nee
Hollis and Uncle is John Pearman. The IGI records also show that John
Pearman and Mary Eliza Hollis had two sons: Augustus John Pearman, -and this
will be the Gus of the letter [born 28 FEB 1832], and his brother, Morgan
Thomas Pearman [born about 05 MAR 1835] - who is likely to be ' Tommy' who
was at Oxford, as mentioned in the letter. The Pearman boys were born where
their father was born, and where their parents married, at Mapledurham,
Oxford, England - on the north bank of the Thames, upstream of Reading.
]
March 31st 1854.
My dear Hubert,
We were all exceedingly sorry to hear of the death of your poor Papa so
far from England and under such melancholy circumstances, but we hope that
as you always have been a very good boy, you will continue to be so and try
to do all you can to be a comfort to your poor
Mamma and
your little Brothers and Sisters who will naturally look up to you to set a
good example now that your Papa is called away to another world. If
you do this, as I do not doubt you will, I am sure that you will get on
well, for God never fails to help those who try to please him.
You can tell your
Mamma that we
often think of her but have never received the letter which she told
Susannah she had written to your Aunt
Peaman. You
may also say that Mrs
Hodson (late
Miss Wells) died suddenly at
Abingdon not
long ago, and that Mr Lewis Rose is also gone. I think you heard that your
cousin Frank West was engaged to be married to Miss Key. I have now
to tell you that the engagement was broken off, at the desire of the lady,
shortly after it was formed. This will amuse your
Mamma if it
does not much interest you.
The chief subject of conversation in England is the war with Russia
which has now been formally declared. Everything is in consequence
dreadfully dear and some of the taxes have been doubled. The past winter
(your summer) has been the dreariest and most severe which has been known
for many years. But the weather is now very beautiful and at present there
is every prospect, with God’s Blessing, of a productive season.
Your Aunt
Peaman is as well as usual and would no doubt send her best love if
she knew that I was writing to you. Your Uncle has been very poorly and
seems to me to be much changed in appearance and habits during the last few
weeks. Tommy has been some time at Oxford, has passed one examination, and
was never in better health than at present.
Give my best love to your dear
Mamma, kiss
her for me, and tell her how sorry I am to hear of her loss in poor Uncles’
death. Also kiss all your brothers and sisters, especially those who are old
enough to remember me.
and Believe me ( I am) your affectionate
Cousin Gus
Cousin Gus,
Augustus John Pearman obtained his MA from Oxford, and became the Reverend
A.J. Pearman, vicar of St. Margaret's Church, Bethersden, near Ashford,
Kent; & The Precincts, Rochester, Kent, & Minor Canon Row, Rochester (1898),
and the author of the History of Ashford, as well as several papers on the
church archaeology of Kent. He later was ordained Canon Augustus John
Pearman. His brother Tommy [Morgan Thomas Pearman], also obtained his M.A.,
of Pembroke College, Oxford and became the Reverend M.T. Pearman, and was
the vicar incumbent for 37 Years at Iwade, near Sittingbourne in
Kent, England. Both the Reverends Augustus John Pearman and Morgan Thomas
Pearman became historians and writers. The Reverend M.T. Pearman wrote
"Historical Notes on Caversham' the Hollis's homeland. So The Hollis cousins
were certainly of the professions, and able to take up incumbencies in
parishes far from Mapledurham or Cane End, and to make a lasting
contribution to the life of the mind and spirit.
For the yeoman Hollis family, with this obvious history of a highly
literate and respectably affectionate family who kept in correspondence with
cousins at Oxford, with a former networks of neighbours with mixed
prospects, found that their fate soon reduced to a grim mean and then
straightened some indeed. I do not know of their movements in the first
years in Victoria. The Hollis family ended up living in the Richmond-Collingwood
area of Melbourne. Mrs Fanny Hollis remarried, to Pennsylvania USA-born,
widower and Richmond
brick maker,
Mr Thomas Simmonds, at St Stephens Church, Richmond on 2 June 1857, and at
that time she gave the date she’d become a widow as 11 Jan 1854. So we
presume this to be the date of John Frederick Hollis’s death. No death
certificate exists. His death is not listed in any index to be found. His
place of burial is unknown.
For the children’s mother and guardian, Fanny Simmonds, had soon gone
herself, dying on the 4th
of June 1860 in Crown St,
Yarra-Berg,
Richmond. She was buried in the Melbourne General Cemetery. The Hollis
children were now orphans, and their stepfather Simmonds seems to have been
no parent to them. When they became orphans Hubert was age 18; Arthur age
17; Fanny age 16; Edward age 14; Edith age 12/13; and Lucy age 10 or 11. The
younger Hollis children were made wards of the State of Victoria and put
under the guardianship of Mr
Septimus
Martin J.P., of
Collingwood.
The dissolution of the adulthood of the family and the loss of family memory
caused by the early deaths of both parents must have been traumatic for the
young Hollis’s, for the geographical and emotional contrasts within nine
years were great indeed. For, on the 30 March 1851 when the British Census
man paid a visit, the whole Hollis family were found at home at the ‘Albert
Cottages’ in the village of St Giles, near Reading, Berkshire. John
Frederick Hollis was then registered as being ‘formerly a farmer’. It seems
likely that he had eased himself off the farm in preparation for his
family’s journey of relocation to the other side of the world, which they
were then a little over a year from embarking upon. I’m not sure how he was
making a living at that juncture, maybe in property. They had not always
lived in Berkshire, though they’d always lived with an hour’s walk from the
rural English River Thames or its tributaries. The youngest girl, Lucy, was
born at Hurley, near
Crookham,
Berkshire in 1849 and Edith had been born in 1846 nearby where they were
living in 1851, at
Burghfield, near Reading, Berkshire. So the John F. Hollis family can
be seen to have lived in Berkshire only since about 1845 or 1846. The older
children were all born where they had their farm, at Long
Crendon,
near Thame,
in Buckinghamshire,
on the borders of
Oxfordshire, about ten miles east of the city of Oxford. Hubert was
born in 1841, Arthur-1842, Fanny-1843, and Edward Payne Hollis in 1845, all
at Long Crendon,
near Thame
in Buckinghamshire.
This is not far away.
Thame is
only about twenty or thirty miles north of Reading.
But the Hollises were Yeoman farmers on 450 good acres with 20
Servants
John Frederick Hollis was a second son of the yeoman farmer William Hollis,
Esq. and his wife Elizabeth nee
Pottinger.
His Sire is listed for Reading in the 1830 Directory of Berkshire, among the
Nobility: as ‘William
Holles,
Gentleman and Farmer, of Cane End,
Caversham’.
William’s brother, Thomas Hollis, was a professional Surveyor who lived as a
neighbour with his family across the river Thames at
Sonning,
Berkshire. William was died in 1828 and three adult children still lived
with his widow Elizabeth, recorded in the census of that year as
proprietor
of his ‘Lashbrook
Farm” an establishment still employing 20 labourers then, at Cane End,
Caversham.
The William Hollis children were: the eldest, William
Pottinger
Hollis, who established his family on the Thames at ‘Charville
Farm’ of 450 acres, with a force of 15 farm servants, in
Sonning,
Berkshire. Of his own children, his eldest, also William
Pottinger
Hollis (II) was later a surgeon in London. Second son Frederick Hollis
established himself later as a farmer with 4 servants on ‘Borough Farm’
Sonning,
Berkshire, after he married Fanny Hayden
Mastern and
raised their children during the 1870s. The second son was our John
Frederick Hollis who came to Melbourne.
The other siblings were: Thomas Adolphus Hollis b. 1810/1; Harriet Hollis b.
1912; Richard Augustus Hollis b. 1813-15; and Charles Ernest Hollis b.1816.
Richard Hollis went to London and established himself as at first as a
master grocer, and then as a Tea Dealer at 25 Chapel Street in
Somerston,
St Pancras.
His nephew
William P Hollis lived with him while he was a medical student.
Charles E. Hollis, who was working in 1861 as a Tea Dealer with his next
older brother Richard, in London, is back on the home turf, recorded in the
Directory for Berkshire of 1864 as a farmer on ‘Charville
Farm’ along with his eldest brother William P. Hollis.
In
Collingwood, Victoria, Australia
I do not know how the young
Hollises
survived financially during those years. But there is evidence that Hubert
was loaded with the responsibility of being big brother and proxy father to
his sisters and brothers, a load which was often, no doubt, too much for him
to bear. But the respect with which his sister Fanny Smith (nee Hollis)
regarded him can be seen in the fact that her children named their children
after their Uncle Hubert, including Hubert Thomas
Stott, born
1888 in Collingwood,
his son Lindsay Hubert
Stott, born
1918 Clifton Hill, and George Hubert Smith, born 1913 in Clifton Hill.
Fanny (Frances Elizabeth) Hollis was first to marry, in 1864 in
Collingwood.
Her husband was John Thomas Smith, a
brassfounder
born in London. They had five children from 1865 to 1877, three daughters
and two sons. Their eldest Rosa Frances Smith later married Thomas
Stott, who
had a wholesale produce agency at Melbourne’s Victoria Market which lasted
generations.
My father tells me that my grandfather and my great grandfather sent produce
from the (Hollis-linked) Knoll, Shaw and other Hollis descendant farms in
South Wandin
(Burleigh)
to be sold by the
Stott Market Agency.
This Stott
family would show respect for their Hollis ancestry both in naming their
third son Victor Hollis
Stott, born
at Collingwood
in 1891 and dying at
Ringwood in
1968, as well as their eldest son Hubert, mentioned above.
Survival and non-Survival is our true story
The job these orphan
Hollises had
to survive, let alone make a seat in pioneering a new country, with or
without patronage, was, more often than not, an overtaxing one. The more
bare-footed travail and pain of the orphan is not often appreciated by
children of the well-heeled. Hubert’s lot was helped by the patronage of his
wife’s Wiseman
relatives. Fanny had the good fortune to marry a provident husband.
But not many of this
Hollises
lived very long. Either their health, their circumstance, or their
self-possession seems to have broken down by middle age. The pioneer of
Wandin
South, Hubert, died of Brights Disease in 1888, at age 47, also leaving six
children fatherless at ages from 7 to 20. His brother Edward, who had long
suffered from recurrent mania, died in the unrelenting
lovelessness
and loneliness of an incarceration which ended in a fit of epileptic
convulsions in
Beechworth Asylum in 1892 at age 46.
Of his sisters, Edith, who had been deserted when her husband, William Henry
Grass, fell into the pickled grip of the cheapest alcoholism, was made a
widow when Bill died as he had lived, in the stables of a Richmond hotel in
1883, at age 44, in a state of ulcerous neglect and godforsaken dereliction.
Edith responded to that lifelong devastation with compassionate dignity and
lamentation for her children. She soon died herself, in 1892, aged only 46,
leaving the two Grass children orphans. By then the youngest, Lucy Hollis
was already dead, dying in 1891 at age 43. Who with a heart among us would
dare boast before them of the so-called blessings or deserved merits of a
long life, or to judge one of them for the foreshortened sufferings of an
often bitter pilgrimage?
Only Fanny and Arthur, a bachelor, lived longer. Arthur died age 67 and
Fanny nee Hollis lived to be 83, dying in 1928, the same years as her
husband John Thomas SMITH, in
Armadale.
An orphan heritage on the far side of the world
While these Hollis orphans were struggling to find a way ahead in life in
early Melbourne, their cousins, were being educated at public schools in
England, and the oldest
cousins
William Pottinger
Hollis, son of their father's older brother of the same name, was studying
to be a doctor
and then became a surgeon, in London. For these first generation Australian
Hollises, a
family with connections in Oxford, where cousin and associate could take
studies which might lead to life in the professions, that fateful life of
loss, servitude or the unrelenting hardship or drudgery of pioneering
Australia must have held disappointments indeed.
Such things are often put out of mind of children who do no grow up with
such expectation. Despite these disappointments, life yawned to be lived, so
offspring of the English-born Hollis pioneers went on to make lives as best
they could by the more constrained lights of their circumstances, in the
opportunity which Australia offered.
Hubert John Hollis married in Fitzroy on 5 March 1867. His wife, Eliza
Suckling, also an orphan, had lost her parents earlier, in England. But in
the census of 30 March 1851 she had been in the Ware Union, with her younger
siblings. The Union was more commonly known as the workhouse or the
poorhouse, this one in the town of Ware,
Hertfordshire,
north of London where she’d been born. The Suckling
parents
had died tragically of the epidemic in 1848 leaving all their children
orphans. Us Australians are often of an orphan heritage on the other side of
the world.
But Eliza Suckling had then but lately come to Australia with her older
sister Elizabeth following her cousins Parker, with two cousin sisters
married to the prosperous
Wiseman
brothers. The sisters arrived in Melbourne on 26 Sep 1865 on the ship "Sam
Cearns" from
England and Eliza soon found work with her cousin at that
Wiseman
estate in Yarra
Street, Collingwood.