Trove Tuesday: John Brown of Camperdown

John Brown

John Brown, brother of my great grandmother, was born at Camperdown in western Victoria in 1858 and in 1865 he was one of the first pupils at the Cobden school. His father, also John, was a bootmaker. (You'll find several blog posts about this family if you click on the 'Brown' in the label list in the side panel.).

John was 13 years old when his older brother, David, drowned in a lake near Camperdown, and 17 years old when his father accidentally died. Effectively these two deaths left him the 'man of the house' because he was the oldest surviving son with a number of younger siblings. In 1879 his mother remarried so that probably eased his burden, but sadness in the family was compounded when another of his siblings died accidentally - his sister Isabella drowned in a well in 1880.

John appears to have worked as a station hand on properties in the Camperdown district all of his life, especially Manifold's 'Purrumbete' estate at Weerite.

Manifold's 'Purrumbete' homestead, 2012. Source: The Australian

 In 1887, when he was 28, he married a local girl, Mary Ann Dews (daughter of Bridget and Joseph Dews). At Trove I found this newspaper item that provided a bit more detail of his life at that time. It describes an incident involving the threatening behaviour of Mary Ann's father at John Brown's home.

Camperdown Chronicle 21 Dec 1887

Sadly Mary Ann's mother, Bridget, died several years later and, in the same year, 1892,  her daughter Mary Ann, John's wife, also died. Their son, Francis (Frank) George Brown was born earlier the same year so possibly there were complications following his birth. Frank Brown was brought up by Mary Ann's sister, Sarah (Wyles).  John published memorial notices in the local paper for several years. 

Camperdown Chronicle 3 Sep 1892

Camperdown Chronicle 3 Sep 1892

Camperdown Chronicle 4 Sep 1894

In 1895 John married Flora Cooper, daughter of Charles and Elizabeth Cooper. She was born at Lismore, an area not far from Camperdown. They had seven children but one son, Arthur, died when he was three, and the two older boys, John and Gordon, enlisted in the army during the first World War and both died in France. His four daughters survived childhood and married.

Camperdown Chronicle 19 Jul 1930, published a few days before John Brown's death.

I was about to finish this post when I realised that John had yet more deaths in his immediate family when his younger brother, James, died as the result of an accident in Cobden in 1925 and another brother, Frank, died at the age of 55 in 1919. Their mother had died in 1907 but she was 73 so, unlike the other family members in this story, had reached her full 'three score years and ten'.

Was John's life a sad one? I have no idea but hopefully he had a lot of happy times and relationships in between it all. There is obituary in the paper but the copy is very poor and I can't read it all but it appears that the pallbearers were fellow employees on the Purrumbete Estate so that means they held him in esteem, and it also states that he had a 'huge circle of friends in the Camperdown district' so that is also reassuring.

PS. There is a lesson here for researchers. I was able to find all of the above articles on Trove despite the fact that my great-uncle's name was 'John Brown' so don't give up if you too are searching a common name. I am researching Brown, Green, Taylor, Smith, Carter, Andrew and Cook ancestors!

A bread and milk poultice was applied

This is the next instalment in the series about the accident-prone Brown family. You can read my previous blogs about the deaths of three siblings Isabella, David and James. This blog is about their brother John.

In April 1858 the mother, Mary Ann Brown, was 24 years old. She had already given birth to four children, one of whom had died, and she was six months pregnant with her fifth. Some time in the last year the family had moved from Geelong to Camperdown where the father, John, worked as a bootmaker.

One day Mary Ann put the water on to boil to wash up the dinner things. Her eldest child took the pot off the fire and put it on the floor and little John, less than two years old,  stepped backwards and fell sitting in the pot. The father removed him immediately and applied salad oil and a bread and milk poultice to the scald that extended over his buttocks, back and chest. He was later given a dose of castor oil. But baby John died two days later after a fit. The parents didn't call in a doctor because they "did not think the scald to be serious". The Coroner and jury at the inquest brought a finding of accidental death with no blame attached to the parents.

Mary Ann's next baby, born three months later, was also named John.

John BROWN, son of John BROWN and Mary Ann HOWE was born 1856 in Geelong, Victoria, Australia. He died on 05 Apr 1858 Leura Marsh, Camperdown, Victoria, Australia. Inquest: John stepped backwards and sat in a pot of boiling water that had just been taken off the stove. His father applied salad oil and a milk poultice but he died two days later.

Verdict? Accidental drowning

Some families are accident prone. The Browns certainly were. This account, for Trove Tuesday, is about one of the sons who drowned. The fate of the other family members is a story for another day.

David Brown* was the son of John Brown and Maryanne (nee Howe). Both his parents were Irish but met in Victoria, Australia. They married in Melbourne and moved to Geelong where John worked as a shoemaker. David, the second of  twelve children, was born there in 1852.

In about 1857 the family moved to Camperdown and then Cobden about ten years later. By that time David was about 15 years old and would have begun working as a labourer in the district. Apart from his baptism record, at St Mary of the Angels Roman Catholic church in Geelong, David didn't generate a paper trail ... until he died accidently at the age of 20. Then there are newspaper reports and inquest papers as well as a death certificate.

This is one of the newspaper reports that I found on Trove.

BALLARAT.
(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)
FRIDAY, DEC. 20.

The Camperdown correspondent of the Geelong Advertiser reports the following fatality :-" On Saturday evening, December 14, about 8 o'clock, a young man named David Brown, about 20 years of age, met with a fearfully sudden death, being drowned in Lake Purrumbete, near the residence of the Messrs. Manifolds, about five miles from Camperdown. It appears that Brown, who was an expert swimmer, went out in a flat-bottom boat for a pull. Shortly afterwards, some lads who were fishing near heard screams, but could see nothing but the boat, it being just dark. They at once gave information, and drags have been continually going up to the present time without the body being found. Just about where the boat was seen the water is about 40ft deep, but a little further out it is upwards of 150ft, so that it is probable some considerable difficulty will be experienced in finding it. It is conjectured that Brown must have become cramped, for though the water is deep, it was but a short distance from the bank where the accident occurred."

The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1956), Saturday 21 December 1872, page 6

I also used Trove to look for pictures of Lake Purrumbete which is a freshwater lake near Camperdown and Cobden in Victoria's Western District. Under the 'Pictures, Photos, Objects' tab I typed 'Purrumbete' in the search box and found thumbnails of several interesting photos including this one and an oil painting (on display in the National Gallery of Australia) by Von Guerard that depicts the lake as it was in 1858, 'Purrumbete from across the lake'. Von Guerard is well-known for the detailed accuracy of his paintings so I can readily imagine the scene of the accident. Here is a photo of what the lake looks like today.

I've also used the Trove website to start a List for the Brown family, called, well, Brown Family. OK, OK. It was my first List. I'll use a more useful title next time. If you've haven't yet started a List (or two or three) on Trove I can fully recommend that you give it a go.

*David BROWN, son of John BROWN and Mary Ann HOWE was born on 19 May 1852 in Geelong, Victoria, Australia. Baptised: 10 Jun 1853 (St Mary's Catholic Church, Geelong). He died on 14 Dec 1872 in Lake Purrumbeet, Victoria, Australia. Inquest: 24 Dec 1872 in Camperdown, Victoria, Australia