The little girl scrambled under the whirling machinery to retrieve the cotton bobbin, breathing air filled with micro threads that made her cough. The images in the restored cotton mill at New Lanark, Ayrshire, showed a smiling, happy child but, nonetheless, there was a dark lining to the narrative that made it ‘a lovely day out’. My cousin and I were there to better understand the life of my great-grandmother Sarah Miller Hendry, who laboured in just such a mill in the nearby town of Catrine.
Sarah was born on 21 March 1852, the ninth child of eleven of Peter Hendry and his wife Mary Miller.[1] Of these eleven children, five died in infancy and one died aged 14. Peter was a carpenter and probably worked at the Catrine cotton mill, the main employer in town.[2] Life was hard, but besides employment, the mill provided workers with vegetable plots and a school for the children. In 1861 Sarah was nine and a scholar, but her older sister Janet, aged 11, was already working at the mill.[3] By 1872 Sarah was a power loom weaver operating a huge, rushing machine.[4]
Sarah married John Cameron at the United Presbyterian Church in Catrine on 3 June 1872.[5] Born about 1846 in Newmilns, John was an engine man in the Darnconner iron mine about five miles from Catrine by the time he married.[6] It’s likely that, after her marriage, Sarah also worked at this mine, doing surface jobs such as carrying ore or preparing it for the smelter. They managed for three years before seeking a better life.
They left Glasgow in October 1875 on the St James, travelling ‘free’, and arrived in Brisbane four months later.[7]
Sarah and John moved north. John became a hotel proprietor, doing well enough to own the Royal Hotel in Charters Towers, which he sold in May 1880.[8] They moved to South Brisbane, where Sarah gave birth to John Hendry Cameron, known as Jack, on 8 June 1881.[9]
By July they were in Hughenden, running the Hughenden Hotel.[10] The town had been officially surveyed and allotments made available in 1877, so Sarah and John were amongst the early European settlers of the district.
Tragedy struck on 10 December 1882 when John was struck down with apoplexy, dying in the midsummer heat of north-western Queensland.[11] He was 35 years old.
Sarah took over the hotel licence and ran the Hughenden Hotel herself, with Jack just 18 months old.[12] She was beautiful, capable, and the men in the district would have vied for her attention–there were few other women about. She chose the likeable stock and station agent David Swiss Davies, marrying him on 26 September 1883 at the Hughenden Church of England parsonage.[13]
Both Sarah and David continued in their occupations for five months, then Sarah sold the hotel, David resigned from his government positions, and they left for Sydney.[14] Cecil Beauchamp St Andrew Stuart Swiss Davies was born on 3 April 1884, seven months after his parents’ marriage, at their boarding house at 221 Elizabeth Street, opposite Hyde Park in Sydney.[15]
The family returned to Brisbane soon after Cecil’s birth. In July 1884, David opened the Queensland Club Hotel in Mary Street, precursor to the gentleman’s club of that name.[16] He soon sold this for the more favourably situated Longreach Hotel, on the corner of Queen Street and North Quay.[17]
Sarah’s third child Ida Mary, known as Mary, was born on 16 September 1886.[18] During the next few years, the children began their schooling at the Kelvin Grove Girls and Infants State School. Jack moved to the Kelvin Grove Boys School in 1891.[19]
From mid-1891, David moved the family around Queensland, staying from one to four years at each place until 1906. He ran pubs in the gold rush town of Croydon, the hub of the pearl shell industry of Thursday Island, Gympie, Brisbane, and Townsville, before settling in Georgetown from 1906 to 1916.[20]
Did Sarah have a role in managing the pubs? After all, she introduced David to the business. She sewed her family’s clothes, including making lace, a skill learnt in her childhood in Ayrshire. The boys attended Townsville Grammar School and Mary, Brisbane Girls Grammar School. These were private schools; how much did they stretch the family budget?
David was a genial ‘mine host’ of the many pubs he ran across Queensland. He had trained as an accountant and was an opportunist, moving the family every few years, running pubs and also working as a business manager, an accountant, an agent, and an investor. He was a soft touch when it came to the latter and lost his money as often as not. Tales were passed down in the family of the gold mine that flooded, the pearl shell lugger that sank, and other such events.
Between 1911 and 1916 David was a councillor, then Chairman, of the Einasleigh Shire Council.[21] He also stood, unsuccessfully, as a Labor candidate in many state elections from 1902, each time travelling around his proposed electorate in the months before the election, with Sarah ‘holding the fort’ of family and pub in his absence.[22]
By 1905 her son Jack had emigrated to New Zealand, where he was a linesman and then an engineer for the Telegraph Company.[23] How Sarah must have missed him. She never met his wife or children, but perhaps letters kept them in touch.
In1907 Cecil was admitted as a solicitor in the Supreme Court in Brisbane, and in 1910 he opened a law firm in Bowen.[24] Sarah was a constant visitor to Bowen.
Mary was 21 in 1907 when she became engaged to Riccardo Moni, the town doctor.[25] Sarah was furious. She planned for Mary to marry into the landed gentry and had already decided on the lucky man – no traipsing about Queensland for her beautiful, gentle daughter. But Mary was wooed with opera music by her smitten, well-qualified, Italian beau and was having none of Sarah’s plans–she married Riccardo in the Townsville cathedral on 27 May 1909.[26]
David stayed in Georgetown running the hotel while Sarah took Mary to Townsville for the wedding. David’s heartfelt letter to Mary on her marriage expressed his feelings:
“I didn’t wish to keep you with me forever, but, oh, it does seem such a short time that you have been with us – so short that it is hard to bear.”[27]
In mid-1914, with two small children, Mary and Riccardo travelled to Italy for a holiday. With the outbreak of war, all civilian transport ceased. They returned in December 1919, settling in Brisbane where Sarah and David had moved in 1916.[28]
Sarah didn’t forgive Riccardo for marrying her daughter. Not only was he a foreigner to Mary’s Scottish and Welsh heritage, but he owned no land (that anchoring asset), and he took her beloved daughter and grandchildren to live in what was effectively a war zone for five long years.
It was not long after the Moni’s return from Europe that Sarah became ill. She died of diabetes and gangrene on 4 April 1921 at St Helen’s Private Hospital, South Brisbane, aged 69.[29] David placed a memorial to her in the newspaper every year until his death in 1929.
Sarah was born into poverty, crossed the world with her husband only to lose him in the heat of western Queensland, married again and moved constantly. Her three children were well educated, had successful marriages and gave her 12 grandchildren. Her strong personality resonates down the years. Was she a likeable woman? Did she marry David for love or for necessity? Was she happy? Difficult questions to answer, but undoubtedly she was loved and respected, and she created and left a thriving, well-established family.
[1] Scotlands People, Old parish registers, Births, Sarah Miller Hendry, 1852, Parish Sorn, Reference 30/389.
[2] Ancestry, 1851 and 1861 Scotland Census, entries for the Hendric or Henery family in Catrine.
[3] Ancestry, 1861 Scotland Census, entry for the Henery family in Catrine.
[4] Ancestry, 1871 Scotland Census, entry for the Hendrey family in Catrine.
[5] Scotlands People, Statutory registers Marriages, 613/ 13; John Cameron and Sarah Hendrie, 1872, Sorn parish.
[6] Findmypast, ‘1871 England, Wales & Scotland Census’, (findmypast.com.au) entry for John Cameron, Auchinleck, Ayrshire. Original data: schedule 79.
[7] Queensland State Archives, “Registers of Immigrant Ships’ Arrivals 1848-1912”, Series ID 13086, entries for John and Sarah Cameron, aged 28 and 22. ‘Free’ immigration to Queensland was available to married couples without children who could not afford the fare, on payment of £1 each, provided they resided permanently in Queensland. The St James left Glasgow on 9 October 1875, arriving on 13 January 1876.
[8] “Local and General News.” Towers Herald and Mining Record (Charters Towers, Qld: 1877 – 1882) 29 May 1880: 2. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article288635518.
[9] Qld Births Deaths Marriages and Divorces, 1881, image of birth registration, John Hendry Cameron, registration reference 1881/B27827.
[10] “Charters Towers to Hugbenden via the Cape.” Towers Herald and Mining Record (Charters Towers, Qld: 1877 – 1882) 30 July 1881: 3. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article288683668.
[11] Qld Births Deaths Marriages and Divorces, death certificate, John Cameron, registration reference 1883/C365.
[12] “Advertising” The Northern Miner (Charters Towers, Qld: 1874 – 1954), 16 January 1883: 3. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article77186319.
[13] Births Deaths Marriages Queensland, 1883, image of marriage register entry for David Swiss Davies and Sarah Miller Stuart Cameron, registration reference 1883/C152.
[14] Queensland Family History Society, Queensland Police Gazette index 1864-1884, citing Vol XXI, page 50.
[15] NSW Family History Transcriptions Pty Ltd., NSW birth registration transcript, Cecil Beauchamp St Andrew Stuart Swiss Davies, 3 April 1884, registration reference 1884/1191.
[16] “LICENSING BOARD.” The Brisbane Courier (Qld: 1864 – 1933) 9 July 1884: 6. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3431855.
[17] “Advertising” The Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld: 1872 – 1947) 1 October 1884: 6. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article174672910.
[18] Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths, Marriages and Divorces, birth certificate, Ida Mary Swiss Davies, registration reference: 1886/C/37120.
[19] Jack in 1887, Cecil in 1889 and Mary in 1891: Queensland Family History Society, Queensland School Pupils Indexes, Parts 1-6 combined, online index (https://www.qfhs.org.au/online-access/qspi/ ), entries for Cameron, (illeg) 1887, Davies, Cecil, 1889, Davies, Ida M, 1891. Original data: Kelvin Grove Girls and Infants State School Admission Register, reference 1124. Also Cameron, Jno, 1891. Original data: Kelvin Grove Boys State School Admission Register, reference 541.
[20] Croydon: “A Thousand Miles Ride Across Queensland.” Cairns Post, 29 August 1891: 1 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article39438576; Thursday Island: “Advertising” Gympie Times and Mary River Mining Gazette, 18 January 1898: 2. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article171172019; Gympie: “Notes and News.” Gympie Times and Mary River Mining Gazette, 4 January 1898: 3. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article171172115; Brisbane: “Classified Advertising” The Brisbane Courier, 16 July 1898: 11. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3675277; Townsville: Ancestry, “Australian Electoral Rolls, 1903-1954”, 1903, entry for David Swiss Davies; Georgetown: QFHS; “Commonwealth Electoral Roll (Queensland): Covering years 1903,1906,1913,1922,1934,1941,1949,1959,1969”, https://www.qfhs.org.au/online-access/QCERc, entry for David Swiss Davies. Citing National Archives of Australia: BP94/2 (Commonwealth Electoral Rolls for Queensland.
[21] “SHIRE OF EINASLEIGH.” The Cairns Post, 12 January 1916: 5. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article40014367.
[22]“The Polling.” The Bundaberg Mail and Burnett Advertiser, 14 March 1902: 3. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article216937288; “The Maranon.” Worker, 16 June 1921: 16. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article71052647.
[23] “Family Notices” Queensland Times, 17 July 1926: 2. (http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article118639166.
[24] “Supreme Court.” The Telegraph, 12 February 1907: 5. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article178249970.
[25] “GOSSIP.” Townsville Daily Bulletin (Qld: 1907 – 1954) 27 September 1907: 3. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article57773468.
[26] Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths, Marriages and Divorces, marriage certificate, Riccardo Moni and Ida Mary Swiss Davies, registration reference 1909/C3054.
[27] David Swiss Davies, “My Dear Daughter”, letter to Ida Mary Swiss Davies, 19 May 1909, held by the author.
[28] 1916 ‘”A SOCIALIST!”‘, Daily Standard (Brisbane, Qld. : 1912 – 1936), 3 May, p. 5. (SECOND EDITION), http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article179845650.
[29] Queensland, Registrar-General, Deaths, 1921, copy of death registry entry for Sarah Miller Stuart Davies, reference 1921/34324.
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