Part Two: MADAM PRESIDENT

Marion Jane Macvean née Fraser and her Family.

So, back to Marion’s story, specifically her early life, which means John Macvean, Marion’s husband, my cousin, won’t make an appearance here.

It has been about three months since I published “Part One”, of “Madam President”, and since then, I have been researching the history of the house, “Norla”, around which Marion, the Fraser and Macvean family’s lives revolved in Toorak.

That research culminated in the post “Toorak Neighbours”, which explored the links between Marion, John, the Frasers and the families who lived around Irving Road where “Norla” sat.

In case you haven’t read that post, here is a photo of their house, pictured just after Marion and the family moved in.

There was a lot of crossover with the information I had found on Marion for “Part One” and the information for the new post, that it was hard to keep everything in order. On review, there were a few major milestones that I had missed discussing in Marion’s life.

First off, when and where she was born, and it wasn’t Melbourne as I initially thought. The reason for thinking it was Melbourne was the fact that Marion’s parents, Simon Fraser and Margaret Bolger, already had a daughter before Marion.

Marion’s older sister, Mary, was born in 1862 in Ashbourne, Victoria, just to the west of Mount Macedon. Interestingly, I couldn’t find a newspaper birth notice for Mary, but I did find her birth listed on Births, Deaths, and Marriages.

Here is a map to show where the district of Ashbourne is situated.

Unfortunately, Mary was only with Margaret and Simon for two years.

It must have been devastating for Margaret and Simon to lose Mary, their firstborn. I don’t have a copy of Mary’s death certificate, so I’m unsure what she died of, but according to information on “Statista”, the rate of infant and child mortality was very high, with almost 40% of children in 1860 not reaching their fifth birthday. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041779/australia-all-time-child-mortality-rate/

Mary’s death notice indicates that she and her parents had relocated approximately 130km north of her birthplace to Rochester, Victoria. It didn’t take too much digging to find out why they were there. Simon was working for Collier Barry & Co, building the Epsom to Echuca railway line.

I even managed to find a couple of adverts for the company and a bit of an exposé on Mr Collier, the head of the firm.

In an interesting side note, Simon and the rest of the Fraser clan become neighbours of Mr Collier and his family when they move into Norla. Mr Collier owned the estate opposite the Frasers’ on the other side of Irving Road, named “Werndew”.

I know, it seems like I have forgotten about Marion, but I haven’t. I’m sharing all of this information to show how it led me to find where Marion was born. While looking for a birth notice for Marion, this next article caught my eye.

The name Simme was one of the other names listed with Simon, as a contractor working on the Echuca rail extension. (Article 2) It could be a coincidence, but I’m thinking not. I then found this handy piece of evidence to support my argument.

A dissolution notice for the contractor company working on the rail extension, including the name George Simmie, which matches the G. Simmie in the Survey of Runs article (Figure 8).

Now that I had this link confirmed, I started searching Trove with ‘Queensland’ as a keyword, along with ‘Fraser’, and bingo! This was the first result.

This is Marion’s birth notice. 11th of November, 1869, at Mount Hutton Station in Queensland.

Mount Hutton was a large pastoral holding in the Maranoa Region of Queensland, lying east of the Great Dividing Range and just a couple of km south of Injune. https://visitinjune.com.au/historical-time-line/

I found this extraordinary map below on the Queensland State Archives site showing exactly where the Mt Hutton Station was situated, and check out the names of the runs surrounding it.

I then had the good fortune to stumble onto the actual “Ledger of Rent for Runs…” from the Queensland Treasury Department, and it had most of the runs from the map and survey above listed in it.

The register shows that Mr Craig, Mellish, Simmie, Fraser, and Forrest started leasing the runs from September 29, 1866. That is just 8 months from the dissolution of the contracting company for the Echuca Railway extension. Simon was certainly moving things along fast, and by the time he signed that lease, Margaret was only 2 and a half months away from giving birth to Marion.

The Treasury Department also shared the next set of Ledgers for the period of 1871-1885, and it too had some great information within it.

By the 2nd of November, 1871, Mr Mellish and Forrest are gone, leaving the lease to Mr Craig, Mr Simmie and Simon. They run it together for the next 10 years, and then Simon takes over the lease on the 17th September 1881. He runs it solo for the next three years, eventually handing the lease over to a Mr Broad on the 6th of June 1884.

Below is a close-up of the last line in (Tile 8) above, which puts everything into place.

How is that? All the runs combined become Mount Hutton. I next found confirmation in the press at the time of the sale in 1881.

I know I say this regularly, but I can’t believe it! The State Library of Queensland had a photo of the homestead in its collection.

This is where Marion was born and presumably where she spent the first 15 years of her life. I can be pretty certain that it is the homestead she was born at, as the Library also had a photo from 1953 of the Highland Plains Creek in flood, also showing the homestead. This is the creek running behind the homestead above.

This 1953 photo had a description with it stating that it shows “… the newer homestead at the right of the photograph was built in 1956.”

Yes, you might have noticed the problem with the dates. The photo is dated 1953, but the homestead was built in 1956. Probably a data entry mistake. Regardless, you can make out the old homestead in the background of the photo, sitting right on the water, whose structure matches that shown in (Figure 12).

Here is the site today, thanks to Google Earth. This view matches that shown in the runs map above. (Figure 11)

My last find concerning Marion’s birthplace, this amazing watercolour, painted in 1890 by Joseph Lister of Mt. Hutton. I’m sure this is a view Margaret and Simon would have been very familiar with.

The next major milestone I missed in Marion’s life was the birth of her younger sister Ethel May Fraser.

The Cornelia Creek estate, where Ethel was born, was owned by George Simmie and his family. Yes, the same George Simme, who was Simon’s business partner in the Echuca Rail Extension and Mount Hutton. Obviously, the ties between the two families were firm. https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/374602893748514/

I found a history of the Simmie family by Mike Hamblin online, and it had this photo as the front cover.

Perhaps the entrance to the old estate.

The town of Strathallan, Victoria, was founded on the old Cornelia Creek Estate, situated on the banks of the Campaspe River, in 1911. Here is an outline of the old estate today.

Unfortunately, tragedy strikes again for Margaret and Simon, and Ethel passes away in the January of the following year, aged only 11 months.

Marion is six years old at the time, and her younger sister, Kayte (whom we discussed in Part One), is just four. Ethel is buried in the Geelong Eastern Cemetery in an unmarked grave somewhere. Her exact burial place has been lost over time.

The next milestone for the family is the death of Marion and Kate’s mother, Margaret, only six years after Ethel’s passing.

The really sad thing here, apart from the death of her mother, is that Margaret passes away just two days before Marion’s 11th birthday.

Margaret’s funeral notice, printed the next day, contains a vital piece of information.

The name of the house in Alma Road, St Kilda, where they were presumably staying. It was called “Molina”. I started searching through Trove, and this was the first find.

This is just four months before Margaret’s passing. Maybe the Governess was for Marion and Kayte’s tutoring and to take some of the stress off their mother while she was unwell.

The only other mention of Molina on Trove was this next advert from 1882.

A Mrs Catto, selling all her worldly goods before going abroad. The Fraser & Co. got me excited, but I don’t think there is any link there with Marion’s father, Simon, as this firm was advertising in the early 1870s and at that time, our Simon was running Mt Hutton in Queensland. So I think it’s just a coincidence.

I couldn’t find any other link with Mrs Catto, so I thought I would see if I could find Molina. I did my usual trick and started trawling through the “Board of Works Maps” on the State Library of Victoria website, and guess what? Molina did not appear written on any of the mansions, but wow, there were some amazing properties on Alma Road. The maps were dated from 1895, so perhaps the house had been renamed or just forgotten.

I then went over to the “Sands and McDougall’s Melbourne… Directory” (thanks to my cousin Anne’s suggestion, as I’d forgotten this option on my last map trawl) and look what I found for “Alma Rd, St Kilda” in 1880.

I know it doesn’t say Molina, but Mrs M Catto on the north side of Alma Street (Road) between Crimea and Chapel Streets, that’s gold!. I went back to the Board of Works Maps, and here is that exact section of Alma Road. I’ve split the view into two so we can zoom in to have a look.

Mr Loraine Bell was the resident of No. 32, Crimea Street; the next article confirms he was on the corner block.

I checked Trove and “Clevedon” the next property had a number of residents over the time and none where Mrs Catto.

Surprisingly, there is no mention in Trove for houses 62-78 in the 1880s. Not even an ad for a servant or milking cow, oh damn, spoilers!

There were, however, a couple for Mr Alexander Webster, who was in residence at “Decomet” on the corner of Alma Road and Chapel Street.

At the time Marion and the Frasers were living at Molina, Mr Webster’s house was known by another name.

The St Kilda Historical Society had a photograph of Bidura/Decomet in their archives. These were Marion’s neighbours.

So it could be that Molina is one of those houses (62-78) I’ve highlighted in the middle of the block. (Map 1) Here is the same section today.

It looks like Nos. 70 & 72 are the only houses from this time to survive. You can see they match with their outlines in (Map 1).

The next major milestone for Marion and her sister Kayte was the marriage of their father to his second wife, Anna Bertha Collins, the daughter of a very successful pioneer pastoralist in Queensland.

Anna was 30 years old, and Simon was 52 years old at the time they took their vows.

Mundoolun was the station that Anna’s father, John Collins, owned just west of the Albert River in Queensland.

The red pin above is where the family church, “St John the Evangelist”, was built on the property, but this wasn’t constructed till 1901, sixteen years after Anna and Simon’s wedding.

So I’m fairly sure it means they were married at Mundoolun Station itself, and there just happened to be a photo of the homestead online.

Marion was 15 and Kayte was 13 years old at that time. I wonder if they were in attendance.

And I had to put this next photo in, it just seemed like the right thing to do, as he was part of Anna and Simon’s story. The Reverend James Gilbertson who performed the ceremony and married them.

I think I might have stumbled onto what the connection was between Simon and Anna, Marion’s stepmother. Anna’s father’s obituary (Mr John Collins) provided the clue. It mentions his friendship with other squatters at the time.

The Hon. William Forrest is the same Mr Forrest who runs Mount Hutton with Simon. Forrest becomes friends with Anna’s father, John, and they go into business together in the Northern Territory. So it is not a huge leap to think that this is where Simon and Anna’s paths crossed.

While writing this post, I have continued researching and reading a wide variety of resources for mentions of Marion and the family to try to clarify their movements on their timeline.

One of these new resources that came up was “Johns Notable Australians” (1906), published by Fred Johns. It was the precursor of the “Who’s Who in Australia” and had a listing for Marion’s father, Simon. https://able.adelaide.edu.au/student-support/scholarships-and-prizes/the-fred-johns-scholarship-for-biography

Lucky for us, someone has scanned the whole book, and there is now a copy on the “Internet Archive” site. The listing for Simon states that he only resided in Queensland until 1869, the year Marion was born. https://archive.org/details/johnssnotableau00johngoog/page/n142/mode/2up?q=simon+fraser&view=theater

And I think this just might be the notice of the family leaving Queensland.

So I suspect that Marion and Kayte, her sister, when she arrives, did most of their growing up back in Melbourne at their town residence.

See, as soon as you say something like that, it comes back to bite you.

I just found a couple of articles from 1874 showing that there perhaps was a stronger link to Cornelia Creek than I previously thought. Remember, Cornelia Creek is where Marion’s younger sister Ethel May was born.

And then this next article, the one and only mention of Margaret, Marion’s mother, in the press, showing that she was involved in the local community, suggesting that they were living there.

Article 3: Courtesy of Trove, National Library of Australia

Then this next article just might be the reason that Simon, Margaret, Marion and Kayte lived at Cornelia Creek on a more permanent basis.

Simon was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly representing the electorate of Rodney.

Cornelia Creek actually sat within the electoral boundaries of Rodney.

When we zoom in closely, we can see that Cornelia Creek appears just below Strathallan (the town that eventually takes over most of the estate) and Echuca, where Simon was working to bring the rail line extension just eight years earlier.

You will have noticed that I highlighted “Rochester”; this, of course, is the town where Mary, Marion’s elder sister, passed away. (Figure 4)

This was only the 8th Victorian Parliament for which Simon was elected, and he was to hold the seat for another three elections until February 1883. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elections_in_Victoria

I can’t find any definitive answer for this particular time period, but I don’t think candidates were required to reside in the electorate they were standing in, so perhaps it was more likely that the Frasers were living the squatter’s life, living in the city residence and then visiting the pastoral land holdings for holidays.

In my search for evidence that Simon was required to live in the district, I came across this interesting and somewhat confusing set of articles discussing a case of “dummyism” involving Simon.

Article 4: Courtesy of Trove, National Library of Australia

Dummyism came about in reaction to a raft of Land Acts brought about in the 1860s to try and break up the massive swaths of land that the Squatters held. To get around this, some Squatters would suggest to people they knew to be the selectors of the runs of land they were being forced to give up, so that it looked, for all intents and purposes, that new selectors were moving in, but in reality, they were being financed by the original Squatter, thus making the new purchaser a dummy selector. https://www.historyskills.com/finding-sources/modern-history/squatters-and-selectors-sources/#:~:text=Unfortunately%2C%20these%20Land%20Acts%20failed%20to%20redistribute,buy%20back%20the%20land%20taken%20from%20them.

I think I have that correct, with my hour delve into the world of “Dummyism”. If I have the gist of the article above, it appears that Simon and Mr Simmie, his partner, were alleged to be employing this tactic with the runs around the Cornelia Creek Estate.

It even went so far that one of Simon’s political rivals thought that he could capitalise on the allegations against Simon in the Legislative Assembly.

Simon was very keen to have his chance to address the court and clear his name. I can imagine that reading reports like this next article had him very worried about the damage his reputation was taking.

That opportunity came about at the end of the month.

Article 5: Courtesy of Trove, National Library of Australia

I found it a little difficult to find a definitive outcome to the charges brought against Simon. Still, it obviously didn’t affect his political career as he remained the member for Rodney till 1883, as previously mentioned.

I did manage to find an article that seems to suggest Simon didn’t forfeit the estate, but those who had made the selections around the estate were forced to give them up because they hadn’t taken up residency in the required time frames. Suggesting that they were indeed dummy selectors.

For the next milestone in Marion’s life, we have to take a step back in time again. Yes, new information came to light when I searched for information on Simon and Anna’s marriage. This new information centres around what Simon did when he finished his tenure as the member for Rodney.

At the beginning of 1883, Simon stood down and retired as the member for Rodney and in this next article, he shared what his immediate plans were going to be.

A trip back to Canada via the United States of America.

Before his departure, a farewell banquet was held for him in Melbourne.

Shown below is Gunsler’s Cafe in Collins Street, depicted in this fantastic illustration. I have not found a photograph of the cafe online.

What a shame those improvements didn’t last. This was the site back in 2023.

The other reason for Simon’s departure was his health, as revealed by Mr R. Harper in his remarks made at the banquet.

Simon also had the chance to speak at the banquet and shared some reminiscences and his motivations for the trip.

Simon needn’t have hurried; his mother, Mrs Jane McBain, Fraser née Aitken lasted for another seven years, passing away in May 1890.

I know this next article is a double-up of the information in (Figure 42), but I just had to share it.

OMG! I so hope that I get to use that phrase sometime in my life, “… untrammelled with any financial difficulties.” That, I suspect, is code for, “I’m filthy rich! So no problems here.” (No judgment)

I suspect that the comment about his eyes being wide open is referring to this next bit of information I found in the Government Gazette.

The exhibition was actually the World Exhibition for 1883, titled “The International Colonial and Export Exhibition”. It was held in Amsterdam from the 1st of May to the 1st of October 1883. https://www.allardpierson.nl/blog/herinneringen-aan-amsterdam-1883

It was held on what is now the Museumplein, which was vacant land in the early 1880s, in purpose-built pavilions behind the Rijksmuseum. An illustrated travel guide of Amsterdam, created especially for the exhibition, showed their position. https://overamsterdam.nl/2017/05/17/toerist-in-het-amsterdam-van-1883/

Here is a fantastic illustration of the main building, designed by French architect Paul Fouquiau, that Simon would have gone through to enter the exhibition.

Although I couldn’t find a photograph of this main building, I did manage to find one for the Colonial Building shown on the left in (Figure 43a) where perhaps the Australian Colonies exhibitors would have been.

It was the first World Exhibition to focus on colonialism and came about because of the Netherlands’ substantial colonial empire at the time. There were exhibitions from 28 different nations presenting their colonial trade and wealth. https://americasbesthistory.com/wfamsterdam1883.html

Because of the theme, the organisers even exhibited people. 38 people from the former Dutch East Indies came to the Netherlands to sit in a purpose-built, in the round Surinamese Village. https://onh.nl/verhaal/bizar-mensen-tentoongesteld-amsterdam

The motivations for exhibiting the villagers do not sit well today. The thought at the time was that Surinamese people could be classified into three groups and that this grouping could somehow indicate their long-term survival as a race. https://onh.nl/verhaal/bizar-mensen-tentoongesteld-amsterdam

The event drew a million visitors to Amsterdam and was the city’s first mass tourist event. https://denroncollections.nl/de-wereldtentoonstellingen-amsterdam-1883-en-1895/?lang=en

Here is the site today, 142 years after Simon visited.

So, back to February 1883, Simon had retired from the Legislative Assembly with seemingly no worries. All his colleagues, even the opposition ones, thought he was fantastic, he had heaps of money, and was about to depart on a lengthy overseas journey, but where are Marion and Kayte in all of this? I searched and searched, but of course, only being teenage girls, there was no whisper of them anywhere.

I wondered if I could find the departure notice for the trip and see if that might confirm if they were going on the journey with their father or not. (Figure 37) above, had the key, the name of the steamer.

I went searching for the San Francisco Mail Steamer, City of New York. Turns out there were quite a few, but I was finally able to confirm which was the correct one.

It was actually the Pacific Mail Steamship Company that ran the City of New York and as you can see, the family departed from Sydney. The Sydney papers actually had more information printed in them.

How lucky is that? Marion and Kayte are actually named, but unfortunately, Simon has been miss initialled as J. Fraser by the looks of it.

I was hoping that we might have been able to spot the governess’s name and recognise it in one of these departure lists. I wondered if it might have been Anna Collins, but no Collins appears in the lists. My thinking behind this was that Simon, Marion and Kayte are actually away for the next two years and only arrive back in Australia a couple of months before Simon and Anna marry. When did their relationship have time to grow to the point of marriage, if not potentially on the world trip?

I managed to find a photo of the actual ship that they travelled on.

This photo, although undated, was taken by an employee of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, Alexander de Maus. It is thought that it was taken in either Australia or New Zealand. The City of New York actually sank just north of San Francisco in 1893, only ten years after the Frasers were on board. The wreck is still there today in the shallow waters off Point Bonita. https://www.shipwreckworld.com/maps/ss-city-of-new-york

Now take a look at this gem, a map of the actual route that Marion, Simon and Kayte would have taken in the City of New York.

I was really surprised to see this shipping route to the east across the Pacific and then across the United States via land. I hadn’t come across this before. As a result, I have just emerged from a very deep rabbit hole on the history of this route, but I will save that for the next post.

In addition to this, we are also very fortunate that we can track some of Marion, Kayte and Simon’s journey thanks to a journalist from “The Australasian” who made the same voyage on the City of New York and published his recollections of the trip. This, too, I will save for the next post.