Trove Tuesday: In which Lemuel is shockingly injured

Gold mining was a dangerous occupation. I have quite a few horrible stories attached to various people on my family tree, stories of men and boys trying to earn a living from digging into the earth to gain the gold (or other metals) and being injured or killed in the process. This is one of them.

In 1909 my great-grandfather's cousin, Louisa Cameron, married Lemuel Williams who was a miner. In 1917 they were both about 30 years old and living at Beechworth in northern Victoria. They had six young children.

Lemuel was badly injured in a work accident. He was working at a molybdenite mine at Everton when an unexploded explosive exploded. [Don't you love the English language? Those last three words do actually make sense!] I had to research what molybdenite is. Apparently it is used, amongst other things, as an alloy for strengthening steel and the Everton mine was Victoria's most productive. Lemuel had charged a hole with explosive using two charges and only one fired so after a while he went to check and was standing close when the second charge fired.


Ovens and Murray Advertiser (Beechworth), 5 Dec 1917

Lemuel was taken to the Ovens District Hospital at Beechworth - that's a journey of eight miles, probably by horse and cart, that must have been dreadful - and then he was treated in the hospital for fractures on his skull and damaged eyes. What did Louisa do while he was in hospital? She had children to care for and their income had ceased so it must have been a very worrying time for them.

A month later there was a newspaper article about the state of Lemuel's health. He is deeply scarred and is still having trouble with his eyes but plans to go back to work 'in a week or two'. As it turns out that might have been a little optimistic because four months later there was another newspaper notice stating that he had only just gone back to work. So he was about five months off work and there was no such thing as unemployment benefits or compensation in those days. I wonder if his eyesight was permanently damaged.


Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 5 Jan 1918

 

Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 5 May 1918

Lemuel and Louisa had four more children before Louisa died in 1937 at the age of 52. Lemuel married again, to Helena Roy, and lived until 1963 when he was 77 years old.

Eldorado

El Dorado (Spanish for 'the gilded one') was a fabled city in South America, rich in treasure and sought by Spanish explorers in the 16th century. 'Reid's Creek' (now called Reedy Creek), in north-eastern Victoria, was named after David Reid who held a station in the area in the 1840s but when gold was discovered there in the 1850s an influx of miners arrived. By the 1870s there were 4000 people living along the creek, including several members of my family. The name Eldorado was applied to the town that developed but previously it had been the name of another station in the area - in 1842 the prescient Furey Baker subdivided his 'Barambogie' station and the western section was named 'El Dorado'. The gold mining district became known as 'the Ovens' because of the main river that flows through the valley.

I'm not sure of the chronological sequence of events but generally it looks something like this. In July 1863 Annie Chellew (nee Chaundy) was living at Beaufort near Ballarat with her husband Arthur who was a goldminer. One day Arthur and his mate went down their mine and both died as a result of suffocating in the foul air. Annie was a widow at the age of 23. James Taylor must have been also mining in the area because he married Annie at Beaufort in April 1864.

Some time in the next few years Annie and James Taylor moved to Eldorado, and so did Annie's sisters, Emily Rachel Chaundy  (who married a miner, Thomas Young at Eldorado in 1874), Leah (who married a miner, Gregory Raby, at nearby Beechworth in May 1864) and Alice Julia Chaundy (who married Peter Cameron in 1883). I don't know which of the four sisters arrived first but their children all grew up in the area between Wangaratta and Beechworth, including my great-grandfather Henry Taylor who was born at Eldorado in 1869. It was 'Kelly country', and Henry would have known of several members of the Kelly Gang who also lived near the town and hid from authorities in the surrounding hills.

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Eldorado, Victoria 1909
Source: Museum Victoria Reg. No. MM6166

Today the vegetation around the town and along the creek has regrown after the devastation that goldmining creates and when we visited last week it was looking very pretty - the wattle was flowering and the first of the spring wildflowers emerging. The population is about 300 now but with modern transport it is close to Beechworth, Chiltern and Wangaratta so isn't as isolated and distant as it must have once been.

We went out to the cemetery where James Taylor, my direct ancestor, is buried. (None of the Chaundy sisters are buried there.) I already knew there wasn't a headstone but it was good to visit, to pay respect and get a feel for the place. He's a long way from Durham in England where he was raised in a small back lane right next to the magnificent Durham Cathedral.

Durham Cathedral, Durham. Old postcard.

Postcript: On a lighter note, while at the cemetery we found this stone with a plaque attached.

"Plot 12 & 13, Reserved for M & M, one day"
Eldorado Cemetery, Victoria