Henry Hickmott
Henry Hickmott was probably working as a labourer or an apprentice
brickmaker when his father was arrested in 1840 and transported to Australia
for sheep stealing. He married his first wife, Sophia Goldsmith, in the Parish Church at Hackney
in Middlesex on 18 June 1848. Henry and Sophia both lived at Lea Bridge Terrace
at the time. The marriage was witnessed by a James and Mary Ann Goldsmith who,
like Sophia, signed the certificate with a ÔmarkÕ (Henry signed his name).
HenryÕs father, Samuel, was said on the certificate to be a labourer while
SophiaÕs father, John Goldsmith, was a carpenter.
Less than a year after their marriage, the couple
emigrated to Australia. This momentous decision may have been motivated by
HenryÕs desire to be reunited with his father or by a simple determination to
escape the bustle and grime of London life. The incentive to go was probably
heightened by advertisements appearing in the London newspapers at the time
encouraging artisans of all kindsÑincluding brick makers and bricklayersÑto
take up offers of free passage to Australia. Perhaps because he had had news
from people who were already there, Henry chose to emigrate to the newest of
the colonies, South Australia. And so, at the age of 23 years, he and Sophia
(21) and their daughters Emma (1) and Eliza (infant) boarded the sailing ship Emily at the port of London on 3 May
1849. They departed the same day and arrived in Port Adelaide on 8 August 1849.
Henry and his family spent little time in Adelaide which
then consisted of tents and other forms of temporary housing interspersed among
a scattering of more substantial but only recently constructed buildings. They
were destined for the town of Mount Barker which was situated some 21 miles
inland and on the outskirts of which, at a place called Littlehampton, were a
number of recently established brickworks. The journey, most likely by either
horse and cart or bullock-drawn wagon, required them to negotiate the steep
climb from the port of Adelaide to the top of the surrounding Mount Lofty
ranges. On reaching the top they were able to look back and see the whole of
the Adelaide township, the creek and all the vessels lying at anchor, and the
sea stretching beyond to the horizon. In front of them were deep, tree-covered
valleys with other hills rising directly behind them. While tired from the
climb, much of which had to made on foot in order to reduce the stress on the
animals, it is likely that they, like travellers before and since, would have
been struck by the sheer beauty of the scene before them, and exhilarated by
thought that they were to be pioneers in this strange and silent land.
The township of Mount Barker had been proclaimed in 1836
and surveyed three years later. At the time of the familyÕs arrival, it
contained a local court and police barracks, a post-office, and two inns of
which the Crown Hotel was thought the better establishment. Their initial
impressions of the place were likely to have been quite favourable since the
first settlers had sought, with some success, to adapt the local landscape to
reflect that of rural England. The district at the time was thus Ôa grassy park
landscape with formal hedgerows of gorse and hawthorn É [where] the gardens
abounded in British fruits and vegetables and the avenues were lined with the
loveliest forest trees and garden flowersÕ (Schmidt, p. 55). The impression of
rural England was enhanced by the fact that most of the existing dwellings were
Ôwattle and daubÕ constructions, with whitewashed walls and thatched roofs. The
rich black soil was also perfect for growing potatoes whose deep green foliage
covered large parts of the valley and were cultivated by the many German and
Irish labourers who had come to South Australia. Not everyone was entranced by
Mount Barker however. A visitor to the area in 1851 subsequently reported that
the place was neither very populous nor attractive:
It contains about 250 inhabitantsÑperhaps rather
less than moreÑoccupying sixty tenements. The appearance of the township
itself, embedded in the valley, is not favourable as contrasted with the
scenery with which it is surrounded. The black soil of the flat (although
admirably adapted for potatoes), some rubbishing fencing, and the piles of
brushwood around the mill, together with the confusion of the blacksmiths and
carpentersÕ yards [around Littlehampton] give it a factory-like effect, which
the volumes of smoke heighten into dinginess. Matters seemed to us rather
backward considering the early survey made of the district (cited in Martin, p.
19).
As a ÔLondon BrickmakerÕ, Henry would have been employed
at either HombinÕs brickyards, which were located near the Great Eastern Hotel
in Littlehampton, or McDonaldÕs brickyards which was on the northeast corner of
the site of the present Mount Barker showgrounds. These had both been
established in 1847 and supplied the bricks for the houses that began to
replace the older wattle and daub establishments. They included Harrowfield
House which remains in place today and, as Bob Schmidt described, attracted
considerable local interest when it was first built: Ôpeople came from all
parts of the district to inspect it as it was the first brick house in the
district, and was roofed with a new roofing material; galvanized ironÕ.
While at Mount Barker, Henry and Sophia had two further
children: Rebecca (born in April 1851) and Henry Edward who was born on 17 May
1852. Since no government schools were established in the area until the 1870s,
it is likely that their older children went to either the Saint James School at
Blakiston, which was established in 1847 and to which many children from Mount
Barker made the daily trek across the hill to attend, or one of the other
privately run Ôcottage schoolsÕ which operated throughout the district.
Sometime after Henry EdwardÕs birth, Sophia Goldsmith died and Henry married Harriet Waters in Adelaide on 24 July 1853. Harriet, who was 20 years old, was born in either Bethesden or Tenterden in Kent in 1834. She emigrated from England to South Australia with her parents and five siblings sometime between 1838 and 1844. The family seemed initially to have lived at Mount Barker before moving to Green Hills sometime before 1848. They may have still been there when Henry married Harriet or they have moved back to Meadows. The newly weds had two children while in South Australia: James John, who was born in Meadows on 24 December 1854 and Sophia who was born around 1856 and probably died soon after. According to his obituary (described below) in around 1855 Henry and some colleagues travelled overland from South Australia to the Bendigo goldfields. He seems to have done well, returning to South Australia and bringing his family back to Victoria by sea. They stayed initially in Melbourne but then moved to Clunes in central Victoria.
Victoria and the gold rushes
Clunes was named by the Scot Donald Campbell when he
squatted there in 1839. The discovery of gold in the late 1840s led to an
influx of people into the area and, in the same year Henry and Harriet left
Mount Barker, the opening of a major underground mine which was jointly owned
by the Port Phillip and the Quartz Gold Mining Companies. This saw the
expansion of the earlier cluster of huts and tents into a sizable town at which
there were considerable working opportunities not only for miners but a range
of skilled artisans and craftsmen like Henry. By 1861 the population of Clunes
was 1080 and the town contained over 470 dwellings. It had its own council, a number
of schools and churches and, in the fashion of the times, a range of lodges and
societies including the Freemasons, Oddfellows, Rechabites, Good Templars and
Hiberians.
While at Clunes, Henry styled himself as a brickmaker advertising his wares in the 11 November
1859 edition of the Creswick and Clunes Advertiser as follows: ÔBricks for sale in
any quantities. Superior sandstone bricks, three pounds per thousand. Contracts
taken on most reasonable terms and executed at the shortist noticeÕ. Although his obituary indicates that he, and possibly the family as
well, may have spent some time during this period at both the Ballarat and
Bendigo diggings, it seems that in the early days the family lived out of town
near the bridge on the Back Creek road. While there Harriet was called before
an inquest, held on 24 September 1861, into the death of a 12-month old boy,
Samuel Snell. The one year-old Samuel had accidentally drowned in a hole that
had been dug at the rear of his parentÕs house. Living next door to the Snells,
Harriet had heard the mother scream and had come to her assistance, placing the
child into warm water and sending for the doctor but to no avail. Twelve months
later, Henry was taken to court by Snell senior for illegally detaining five
geese. In the court hearing, held 24 October 1862, it transpired that the geese
had been sold to Henry by SnellÕs wife without the complainantÕs knowledge and
shortly before she separated from Snell (possibly over the circumstances
leading to young Samuel SnellÕs death). The case was dismissed and Snell was
ordered to pay ten shillings in costs.
The proceedings of the Clunes Police Court showed that
HenryÕs brickmaking business, and his fortunes generally, waxed and waned over
the ensuing years. Faced with mounting debts he was declared insolvent on 16
May 1862 and forced to start again. In 1863 he was brought before the court on three separate occasions
for failing to pay for a range of goods and services. In spite of these
problems he was able, on 8 June 1864, to pay £14 17s for another block of land
at Clunes. On 18 November 1864 he successfully sued a John Edmonson for twelve
shillings and sixpence for Ôdamage done by pigs trespassingÕ but was ordered,
in August the following year, to pay nearly four times this amount to a James
Greenhill for Ôfirewood sold and deliveredÕ. All this while Henry continued to
work as a labourer, miner and brick maker was clear from a report contained in
the 27 August edition of the Creswick and Clunes Advertiser of an inquest, at which Henry
was a witness, into a fire in the stables of a Jesse Wellington.
While at Clunes Henry and Harriet had nine further
children: Samuel (1857-1877), William (1859-1938), Walter (1862-1862),
Elizabeth Jane (1863-1875), Mary Ann (1865-1866), Emily Louisa (1868-1869),
Alfred (1869-), Richard (1870-) and Joseph (1872-1928). Click here to see known
details of the families of Henry and HarrietÕs children. During this time,
Henry also saw his three eldest daughters marry: Eliza to Robert Osborne in 1863,
Emma to Ritchard Mitchell in 1866 and Rebecca to a Cornish farmer, Joseph
Colmer Smith, in 1869. After giving birth to two boys in Clunes in 1865 and
1867, Eliza moved to Amherst and then to Eganstown where she died in 1912. Emma
and her family remained in Clunes before moving to East Charlton in 1878 where
they settled on land at Buckrabanyule. Rebecca and Joseph lived initially on a
farm at Waubra (located about 20 miles southwest of Clunes) before moving to
Lalbert in around 1878. Henry fourth child by Sophia, Henry Edward, went with his father to Charlton (see below) but returned briefly to Kingower (located between Clunes and Bendigo) in 1877 to marry Elizabeth Owen
East Charlton in Victoria
In 1872, Henry and Harriet and their family moved to East
Charlton in Victoria. Henry established a brickyards in the township and bought
a farm at Wooroonooke which was then known as WatsonÕs Lakes. Although white
people first moved into the Charlton area in around 1844, the numbers there
remained quite small until after the Land Enactment Act of 1869 which enabled
people like Henry and Harriet to settle on 320 acre blocks and pay them off
over a period of twenty years. Other families who moved into the area at this
time included that of James Jenkyn who had been a miner at Creswick and
Ballarat and who settled on land at Buckrabanyule in April 1874. JamesÕ son
Thomas would later marry HenryÕs granddaughter Mary Sophia Mitchell and have
five children all in Charlton. A second pioneering family whose descendents
would marry those of the Hickmotts was the Dews who lived on an adjoining
property at WatsonÕs Lakes.
As Grace Cadzow described in her book Charlton and the
Vale of the Avoca,
by 1874 most of the land that had been made available in 1869 had been taken up
and the area was thriving. ÔHuts and cottages were built, using local timber,
paddocks were fenced and the roads were busy with wagons and bullock drays. The
newcomers arriving during a period of good years, found abundant pastures and
the country seemed a veritable paradiseÕ. There were some 2000 people in the
area with 300 living in the township itself. This contained four churches, a
flour mill and a general store that described itself as Ôthe emporium of the
northÕ. Following petitions from the locals, a school - State School No 1480 -
was opened at Charlton East on 14 January 1875. According to an article
published in the East Charlton Tribune a few years later, the initial school was a
pretty ordinary ÔedificeÕ which Ôthe meanest Chinese hut in the colony
surpassedÉboth in symmetry and comfortÕ. Nonetheless, within this initial
timber and bark construction, which measured a mere 14 feet by 10 feet, some 42
children were taught, including a number of Hickmotts and their relatives.
Henry Hickmott and Harriet Waters and two of their two sons
Alfred and Joseph (taken in Charlton around 1877)
But the good times did not last and the settlers around
Charlton were soon confronted by the droughts, dust storms and rabbit plagues
that were a feature of Mallee life and made it difficult to fulfil their
licence requirements (the records of the local licence boards showed that,
throughout this time, there was an enormous turnover in licence holdings). As
the East Charlton Tribune complained in 27 July 1878, returning a profit was made
still more difficult by the absence of any rail link to the area. This placed
the farmer Ôat a great disadvantage [since] when produce has to be carted fifty
or sixty miles, it leaves a very small margin for profit after all expenses
[including] the wear and tear of wagons and other vehicles used for the
conveyancesÕ are paid for. The main problem that faced the early settlers of
Charlton, however, was obtaining a reliable water supply. In the drought years,
water had to be carted from surrounding rivers and lakes, and families would
have to do their washing at communal washing points such as the ÔSheep Wash
DamÕ.
The hardships facing Henry and his family were compounded
on 14 February 1877 when Harriet and her 19-year old son, Samuel, were struck
by lightning on the front step of their home in East Charlton and killed
instantly. The St Arnaud Mercury recorded the event as follows:
About 5pm on Wednesday a severe thunderstorm burst
over East Charlton, and an hour later Mrs Hickmott and her son Samuel (a youth
of 18 or 20) had just returned to their home in that township after a visit to
a selection belonging to the family at WatsonÕs Lakes, when a flash of
lightning struck them both dead in the doorway of their house, at the same time
killing a dog that stood near them. Mrs Hickmott was thrown several yards out
of the building, the apparel around her chest and shoulders being set ablaze,
and her face much disfigured by the electric current, which appears to have
struck her on the head and travelled down her right side. Her son Samuel was
smitten on the right shoulder the current passing diagonally across his body
until it came to his heart, his clothing being burnt even to the undershirt.
Another son, named James, who was indoors at the time, was struck on the left
forearm and hip, and for a time was paralysed, but has since recovered. A man
who was also in the house at the time was rendered insensible for several
minutes, and when he returned to consciousness, found Mrs Hickmott and Samuel
dead, and their clothes burning. The Hickmott family resided at Clunes and St
Arnaud before they went to East Charlton, and were much respected in each of
the places named.
In the following year, HenryÕs son-in-law, Richard
Mitchell, had his hand caught in a stripping machine while helping harvest
HenryÕs crop at Wooroonooke. He was taken to the St Arnaud Hospital where,
unfortunately, he had to have the hand amputated. The East Charlton Tribune reported, on 30 November 1878,
that, although very weak, Richard was improving slowly and Ôno serious symptoms
have presented themselvesÕ.
It is likely that, on 27 November 1878, Henry attended
the farewell for his friend and neighbour, the proprietor of the local sawmill
William Nalder. This was held at YatesÕ Hotel at West Charlton where Ôabout 40
persons sat down to a sumptuous repastÕ. Following the speeches, Ôthe room was
cleared for dancing which was kept up until an early hour in the morningÕ. It
is possible that Henry was accompanied by the widow Margaret Ann Kaye, who he married three months
later at a Mr BurtonÕs at Wooroonooke. The wedding certificate showed that
Henry was then aged 53 years and that he had had 15 children (eight living and
seven dead). Margaret had two children (both living).[1]
The couple, together with HenryÕs older children, may also have gone to see
Madame Sibley, the Ôrenowned phrenologist and mesmeristÕ, who visited East
Charlton in January 1879 and greatly entertained her audiences in the Globe
assembly rooms. They almost certainly would have joined the crowd of onlookers
who applauded Ôthe antics of the lords of the soilÕ in a grand corroboree held
in the square adjacent to the East Charlton Hotel on 22 March of the same year.
After his marriage, Henry continued to live on his farm
at West Charlton. While normally helped by his sons, he often also took on
casual labourers to do specific jobs. One such person was a John Cooper who was
hired, in the second half of 1879, to grub mallee roots from HenryÕs land and
who subsequently took Henry to court for not paying him his dues (even though
he had not finished the work). The case attracted the attention of the editor
of the East Charlton Tribune who reported on it with some glee:
The complainant [Cooper], who possessed only a
sinister daylight, stated his case in grandiose language. He had engaged with
the defendant to do certain grubbing, but claimed to have expressly stipulated
that he was not to be required to work after the beginning of the harvest É[and
so was simply] to do all he could by 1 December. The bench which had
occasionally to control the hyperbolic flights of the complainant, who, while
he addressed the court, indulged in the lavatorial process of Ôwashing his
hands with invisibles soap, in imperceptible waterÕ, decided on the
complainantÕs own showing that they had no jurisdiction and dismissed the
case.
The 1899 referendum recorded
Henry Hickmott as a ÔgentlemanÕ who lived at Barrakee. In 1913 he went to live
with his youngest son Joseph and his family at Pine Grove near Rochester where
he died of Ôsenility exhaustionÕ on 16 May 1914. He was buried the following
day at the Pannoobawawm Cemetery. According to the Rochester Express, a number of friends attended
the funeral including, as coffin bearers, a M. Dullard, G. Windridge, B. S.
Whinfield and A. and O. Chappell. HenryÕs grave, according to Emma HickmottÕs
great, great-grandson Wal Jenkyn, Ôis marked only with a plain metal name-plate
ÒHenry HickmottÓÕ, a seemingly inadequate testimony to HenryÕs long and
eventful life.
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