11 minute read
The Prior-Adlam pioneer women
Inheriting family memorabilia
By Michelle Mabbott
Memorabilia and stories pass on. The generational link like a chain, that click together.
It’s been a challenging task to write this abbreviated family history with a longer version preserved for my family.
As the eldest child and executrix (I have a younger brother) I had to attend to the estates of both of my parents, when they passed I gathered any family memorabilia and heirlooms, and the special Bathurst history items that formed the vast acquired collections of all their lifetimes.
My mother inherited all the family goods of Hannah Adlam’s house in Croydon from her spinster Aunt, Heather Adlam, who lived there until it was sold. My mother supported Heather right up to her old age and was apparently the only family member who liked ‘old things’
The contents included the ancient family bible, with annotations of family names and dates going back generations of Adlams, a collection of family clothes and linens, sewing ephemera and Hannah’s steel crochet hooks, a collection of spectacles, Hannah’s rocker, photos and correspondence, much documentation, Henry Prior senior’s gentleman’s toiletry box, jewellery, just part of the precious hoard and of course her eldest sister Charlotte’s art.
My parents had retired from Sydney to Umina Breach, then Woy Woy on The Central Coast. In processing their estates, I became so weary from the years of the endless winding drive up and down the coast from Sydney One day I started to fall asleep at the wheel, and woke up just in time as a guard rail loomed towards me with a sheer drop below.
It was time to leave it alone. Ten and a half years later, I am back onto the family history hunt. We are a family of collectors I was able to find very old, original newspaper clippings, photos, and scrapbooks from my mother and grandmother, documents, birth and death certificates, and correspondence from relatives.
I’ve visited the Bathurst Historical Society and Museum and searched on TROVE. Several relatives, including my mother, had started the genealogical searches
My mother writes, that she knew all her country Aunts and Uncles, except for Charlotte who passed away when she was only three. Family correspondence reveals they all kept connected.
I’ve visited the Holy Trinity Church, on my last trip to Bathurst with husband Chris. Seen the family grave plot of Hannah and Alfred, including their baby son Albert. Hannah and eldest daughter Charlotte’s remains were transported there from Sydney. Hannah was a member of the Holy Trinity Church, being baptised, confirmed and married there. Next time I’ll view the Prior family graves.
My trip also included a lovely Prior family get together at Libby Dallimore’s new home on Freemantle Road at Milker’s Flat which overlooks the Prior’s ancestral land.
The Priors and Adlams farmed together at Eglinton with two of
Hannah’s young widowed daughters living at the ‘Hillside’ homestead on Freemantle Road for a while in the early days.
Mum always said, ‘Arlington’, the Eglinton farm, was a great example of a working farm and hamlet with its several outbuildings, dairy and yards, and should have been kept Alas, progress has seen it disappear into modern residential development.
In various family collections, we have the wonderful visual record of the farming activities of the Adlams and Priors. Building haystacks, chaff cutting, machinery like the large steam engine, horses, and the women were on site too in one picture Thanks to the archive (now digitised) by Libby Dallimore, and the family collection held by Andrew Prior.
Now is the time to enjoy grandchildren Our first two granddaughters, are eighth generation Australians The first, Elkie, has had each month of her first year marked by a photo on Hannah’s heirloom rocker
The Prior-Adlam pioneer women
Elizabeth Anderson (pictured) came to Australia from Haddington Shire in Scotland, on the ship ‘Nabob’ in 1855
I have a slim book of hers, given on that voyage about Bishop Leighton
She looks dramatic in this photo in a long black gown, cape with ribbons and bonnet, yet kind
She was our first matriarch in this country, and was seven years older than her husband Henr y Prior Jnr when they married at Kelso on the 8 September 1858
Henry Jnr came from Gloucestershire in England as a seven-year-old with his father Henry Snr on the ‘General Hewitt’ in 1843 His father left behind his other three siblings after their mother, Hannah Keeping, died. His youngest brother, Charles joined them in 1859.
Elizabeth and Henry Jnr had seven children: five boys and two girls.
My great grandmother, Hannah, was the eldest child of Henry Prior Jnr, and Elizabeth Anderson I have her grandfather’s (Henry Prior Snr) gentleman’s cedar, brass-detailed, toiletry box.
Jean Prior, their youngest daughter, was engaged to be married to John Anderson from Killongbutta But in 1891 Anderson broke off the engagement based on rumours affecting Jean’s reputation
Jean sued Anderson for 5000 pounds for breach of promise in the Sydney Supreme Court and a settlement was reached with Anderson paying 300 pounds in damages, expressing his disbelief “in any imputation against the plaintiff and regrets that she has been the victim of a slander ”
It was Jean who talked her father into changing the property name from ‘Milkers Flat’ to ‘Hillside’ during the 1890s (ref Freemantle vs
Bathurst by Jim Buchan)
Family legends were passed down, about my pioneering great grandmother, Hannah Palser Prior.
Born at the grand home 'Kelloshiel’, Roxburgh near Eglinton when the Prior’s leased the Rankin flour mill. She married Alfred Adlam, a farmer born in 1859 whose family lived at Dunkeld. My mother said that Hannah left a life of luxury to marry Alfred Her wedding dress is an exhibit at the Powerhouse Museum. The couple lived at ‘Arlington’ their farm at Eglinton in a small brick and timber cottage, raising 10 children - six girls, and three boys, and a foster child. It was a house full of children, but their youngest Albert died at 11 months.
They fostered a baby boy called Tommy Braghetta, as the father had seven other older children to raise. His mother had passed away of the flu when he was only a few hours old. Sadly, little Tommy also passed away aged two Hannah, bore children for nearly 18 years, and was described by my mother as ‘ a bush nurse and midwife’ travelling out in her horse and sulky to aid local birthing mothers
Hannah had a home help for her own brood, a woman called Silly Sally who I’m led to believe had an intellectual disability. She also worked for the Prior family at ‘Hillside’ where she lived in the attic.
Home life at ‘Arlington’ would have been crowded with 10 children and two adults.
My mother (Norah Clark) drew a house layout from memory from her visits and holidays at ‘Arlington’ It provides an invaluable insight into a settler’s cottage. It had only four bedrooms, and two enclosed small rooms on the verandah. Often called sleepouts, for expanding families, which often happens with old cottages Fitting all those children into that space, with some quite young and babies, must have been a challenge.
By modern standards only having one bathroom, for bathing about once a week, and an external kitchen and laundry, it would have been tight. The dining room was in the kitchen next to the fuel stove An eat-in diner as the British would call it The dining table had long benches, there was a walk-in pantry, a hanging meat safe, a hanging hessian water bag and water was rationed.
Later on when owned by Violet, Hannah’s daughter, one front verandah room became a dressing room and one of her son's slept in the other sleepout verandah room Violet had an office near the kitchen At one side of the kitchen was a parlour, only opened for visitors, with beautiful antique furniture
There was lattice screening both sides of the front verandah, and a long corridor hallway ran through the house, with bedroom doors left open at night. Maybe to cool it down? The space between front and back sections of the house was also a breezeway. Next to the bathroom but entered from outside, was a sewing room.
The women were as industrious as the men As a farmer’s wife, Hannah can be seen in a photo wearing a sturdy full-length apron with pockets, a coverall Hannah’s daughter.
Violet, (Auntie Vi), her second husband Walter and two sons, moved into ‘Arlington’ when Hannah moved to Sydney Vi sold eggs to The Egg Board, and grew asparagus for Edgells. They also grew corn Vi also wore a hessian apron. She had an office near the kitchen, as she had to keep a record of the eggs sold to the egg board I still have a box that says ‘Eggs’.
There was a dairy on the land there, originally wattle and daub, but later rendered The thatched roof also upgraded to a tin one. Plus a poultry run, chickens and turkeys.
In one photo of Hannah and Violet, both women wore leather boots whether buttoned or laced Auntie Vi gave Mum a family heirloom, velvet-lined box set, of button hook and shoe horn I also have a timber spice chest made by her husband Mum last stayed there in 1953 four years before her marriage with her sister Charlotte. I saw the farm from outside in 1964 when a child with my family at age six.
As well as losing a baby son, another son Cecil aged five, lost half his arm in a chaff cutting accident The limb had to be amputated below the elbow. Years later our family drove over to his address in Sydney to collect the first of two heirloom rocking chairs.
Alfred’s father Matthew, from Dunkeld, had a threshing machine and a chaff cutter, which was used in conjunction with the Prior family.
Possessions are reminders of loved ones lost, a holding on of the essence and memory of family members.
It wasn’t all hard work. There were little luxuries and social occasions Finer y was there, and adornment as I see in jewellery collections I have. Hannah did exquisite crochet, (some donated to The Powerhouse) with Australian motifs There was money for professional photo studio shots in Bathurst town.
They also had good books, music, art, homelife, beautiful clothes of their own, or admired others clothes for their style and craftsmanship. Violet sewed beautifully, did the finest pintucks, and won prizes at the agricultural show. Heather was a perfectionist sewer, already a teacher, this was done in the school holidays when she went back to stay at ‘Arlington’. Charlotte was the artist in the family, but Violet painted too. By all my mother’s accounts, they lived full and enriched lives, and were well educated.
I have inherited the two antique china dolls that were my grandmother Thelma’s and Heather’s, so hopefully there was time for play amongst the chores.
Family fortunes shifted dramatically for Hannah and her family after Alfred’s sudden death at 65 years on 16 January 1922 when he collapsed in the garden at ‘Arlington’.
Hannah moved to Sydney settling into her new home ’Glen Isla’ at Croydon with her two youngest daughters: Heather and my grandmother Thelma.
Charlotte, after living an independent life as an artist, died aged 50 years in her mother’s home on 24 June 1933 Hannah died five years later on 16 July 1938 aged 79.
I think of that house of women. Hannah, losing her baby, her foster child, her husband, and her eldest daughter. There is a beautiful quote from the newspaper death notice about her ‘By her gentle disposition she endeared herself to all who knew her, and leaves behind a fragrant memory of many kindly deeds’. Possessions are reminders of loved ones lost, a holding on of the essence and memory of family members I’m starting to feel that too, never thought of myself as sentimental. Each day I see, and often use, the tin tea caddy from that home, in blue with windmills.
It would have been held by each of them.
Hannah and Alfred Adlam’s wedding por trait and their home at ‘Arling ton’, Eglinton (1907)
Hannah and Alfred Adlam’s wedding por trait and their home at ‘Arling ton’, Eglinton (1907)
Hannah and Alfred Adlam’s wedding por trait and their home at ‘Arling ton’, Eglinton (1907)
