The Irish Scene July/August 2020 Edition

Page 72

IRISH FAMILY HISTORY

Mark Elliott, a long term member of the Irish Special Interest Group at Family History WA, shares stories of his grandfather, Robert Thomas Elliott (below). This story is about my grandfather Robert Thomas Elliott and some of the problems I have had in finding anything much out about him. I didn’t know him at all personally – he passed away a before I was born. My sister knew him, but only as a young girl. Thus I found that he had left very faint footprints! Finding out a few things about him has been a long process. What I do know: His parents were James Elliott and Sarah Jane Elliott (nee Laughlin / Loughlin). His father, James Elliott, was a station master for the Donegal Railway Company and stationed in Londonderry at the time of his birth. He was one of nine surviving children out of eleven births. Robert Thomas Elliott appears to have been born in Londonderry (Derry), Northern Ireland in 1881 at the residence of one of his relatives. He left Ireland early in 1914, not long before the start of the Great War. He seemed to mysteriously disappear from view for a while, before appearing in Australia in 1918. In Western Australi, my grandfather was a member of the Busselton Centenary Committee – the Centenary was held in 1932. There is evidence that that he was a Freemason, although I can’t directly confirm this. He was a member of the local rifle club and presented trophies to members of club at various times. He also appears to have owned or had a share in a race horse. He was licensee of the Esplanade Hotel in Busselton, WA from about 1918 until about 1940. After that, he moved to Perth and lived in a flat in Beaufort Street. He died in Royal Perth Hospital in 1946. Are there any juicy bits? Well… there just might be! These are some of my tentative findings. He was married, but his wife remained in Ireland and died there. I know that my Dad and an aunt had come to Australia in 1929, on the eve of the Great Depression. I assumed that grandfather had come with them, but I found out recently that this was not the case! Oh those family secrets! It seems that he left Ireland in early 1914 and appeared in Australia in around 1916, but I did not know where he was between 1914 and 1918. It turns out he was in Perth the whole time! From about late October 1914, he was Front-ofHouse manager for the relatively newly built His Majesty’s Theatre & Hotel. I am still not sure when he moved to Busselton. He left behind in Ireland a pregnant wife and three children. My father was born on the eve of the First World War. He was a Mason both in Ireland and Australia, and the Masonic connections may have taken care of my grandmother and the children after my grandfather left Ireland. Probably his Masonic connections enabled him to get the job at His Majesty’s in Perth, and becoming Licensee of the Esplanade Hotel in Busselton. It appears that he had a girlfriend when he was in Australia. I don’t know whether she came with him from Ireland, or whether he met her here. It’s possible he left Ireland with the best of intentions, but then met the lady here. He also seems to have had a close relationship with a lady named Nina Ramsay who was from Capel. He seemed to be permanently separated from his wife – effectively a divorce. He requested - or maybe demanded - that my father and my aunt be sent to join him in Australia, while his other two children remained in Ireland with their mother. My sister gave me the impression that the final separation from my grandmother was not pleasant.

THE IRISH SCENE | 72

Another aspect of this family is the brothers and sisters. Initially I thought that he had only one sister, but with the help of the staff at the Londonderry Public Library History Centre, I was able to find via the 1901 census that he actually had at least six brothers and sisters. With the release of 1911 census data I was able to determine that he actually had nine brothers and sisters still living, and two who had passed away by 1911, one as an infant. As I still know very little about the rest of the family, I wonder whether he may have been excommunicated from the family for some misdemeanour. It could also be that he just simply didn’t get along well with the rest of the family so didn’t remain in touch. My brick walls: What did he do between 1914 and 1918? I have a photograph of a house which looks like it could be overlooking the Belfast Lough. My dad had said that his father told him he had stayed there before he left for Australia. Perhaps he was working somewhere to earn his passage to Australia. What is the race horse connection? We have a photograph of a horse named “Lady Violet”. I don’t know if he owned it himself, or if he were a part owner. The horse was possibly a trotter or pacer rather than a racehorse. This is again guesswork, as trap racing (horse and buggy) was popular in Ireland, and there is a trotting track not far from the


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook

Articles inside

The Brendan Bowyer Story

1min
page 89

GAA Junior Academy

2min
pages 95-96

GAAWA

5min
pages 92-94

Shamrock Rovers

2min
page 91

Empress of Paraguay

8min
pages 86-88

Book Reviews

12min
pages 82-85

Minute with Synnott

3min
page 76

Cooking with Lee

2min
page 81

Family History WA

8min
pages 72-73

Dervla’s A Thriller Killer

2min
page 77

Paula from Tasmania

9min
pages 78-80

Australian Irish Dancing Assoc

3min
pages 74-75

Extra Rambles

7min
pages 70-71

Ulster Rambles

7min
pages 68-69

The Gramaphone

6min
pages 66-67

Irish Choir Perth

1min
page 62

Australian Irish Heritage Assoc

2min
page 61

Matters of Pub-lic Interest

6min
pages 53-59

Fionn O’Donaill

4min
page 63

Claddagh Report

2min
page 60

Tipperary’s Devil Advocates

10min
pages 50-52

Tony in Fine Fettle

1min
page 49

Eternally Grateful to SAT

2min
page 48

€600,000 for Sculpture city

4min
pages 44-45

Perth Judge Has Irish Roots

7min
pages 46-47

In Judgement of Joyce

4min
pages 42-43

Honorary Consulate of Ireland

3min
page 41

Two Irish Scene’s For One

2min
page 40

Ice Age Art Is a Chip Off The Old Block

4min
pages 37-39

Ireland’s Deep Rooted Legal System

6min
pages 35-36

Paddy Kavanagh is the Benchmark of Our Story

7min
pages 32-34

Poetic Justice?

2min
page 31

How Ireland Unceremoniously Dethroned a Queen

16min
pages 26-30

Isteach sa Teach

10min
pages 22-25

Sculpture By The We

7min
pages 18-19

Astral Weeks Ahead

13min
pages 4-7

Irish Women Raising the Bar

5min
pages 20-21

Irish Lawyers Thrust Into Legal Limbo

5min
pages 16-17

The Summer Ireland Went Stone Mad

4min
pages 14-15

Maurice Had The Midas Touch

16min
pages 9-13

Roo’s Bounced As Aussie Icons

1min
page 8
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.