Still Exploring the Victorian Connections

Welcome back to the next leg of our Victorian Family History Tour! It is a new day, Thursday the 2nd of November 2023, and it is a big day full of discoveries. But just before we start out… A quick update.

You might recall from Part Two of these posts that I had some great success in finding a photograph of George Edward Porter and Catherine Isabella Barbara Porter’s house, Hartpury. It was featured in a St Kilda Historical Newsletter and stated it was courtesy of the Villiers Trust.

Well, I heard back from the Trust and Jodi, the Operations Manager, sourced the original scanned file of the photograph and very kindly shared it with me.

This image was taken over 138 years ago and it shows members of my family. Two of my 1st Cousins, 2x Removed, Petrena and Catherine and three of my 2nd Cousins, 3x Removed, Nellie, Jack and Queenie. And the photo, even though aged and discoloured is so clear you can almost make out their features.

And here below is a wonderful description of Hartpury given when it was being sold by Catherine in 1911.

So back to Thursday the 2nd of November. The plan was to start off at Springvale Botanical Cemetery and then to work my way over to Cheltenham Memorial Park and finish off at Brighton General Cemetery. I know, it sounds like family history nerd heaven but you know what? I’m not shying away from that, it was and I loved it.

Anne had some urgent “shopping” to do so couldn’t join me for this part of the nerd fest tour. We planned on meeting up later in the day.

Below is a record of the tour kept on Google Timelines.

The traffic once I hit Melbourne was insane. I arrived at Springvale around 11.30am.

I did a quick visit to the office to collect some maps and a not so quick visit to the most fantastic cafe, Café Vita et flores , for a phenomenal coffee and to work out my plan of attack.

I had seven family members to find here but as you will see it turned out only one was available to visit.

The office confirmed there was no one spot where remains were scattered, it happened throughout the gardens, so there was no way to track down those family members who’s ashes were scattered.

So let me start with the one person I was able to find. My great aunt, Alison Victoria Cox, sister to my great-grandmother, Agnes (Annie) Brookman Macvean née Cox.

It took about 40 minutes of searching, even with the map but I eventually found the wall that Alison’s ashes are housed in.

Alison was born on the 25th August 1888 at the family home in Footscray, Victoria, named, “Torwood House”.

Torwood was still standing in 2019, just.

This is the site today. Torwood is gone after 140 odd years of standing there and in it’s place the emerging new Footscray Hospital. I have marked in yellow where the front garden of Torwood would have been.

Alison is virtually non-existent online. She only comes into view through the death notices of her family, a few Electoral Roll listings and some amazing recollections very generously shared by a cousin, Alec D.

Alec’s grandmother is Jean Stewart Ross Duke née Cox, sister to Alison and Annie. You will note Jean is one of the family members mentioned above who’s ashes were scattered at Springvale.

We first pick Alison up in 1912 when she is 24 years of age.

“Kinross” immediately took my interest. It is the name of a property owned by the Ross family in Germanton (Holbrook). Alison’s aunt, Jean Strachan, sister to her mother Agnes, married James Ross.

This is the site of Kinross on Carinya Crescent, Caulfield today.

I’m fairly sure the original house is long gone, the present building looks like a 21st century architectural construction. Another interesting fact here is that Alison’s sister, Jean, as we mentioned above, has Ross as one of her middle names. I wonder if this was to honour the Ross family in some way?

We can’t move on without noting that Alison was working as a “saleswoman” at this time. This is 1912, just ten years since the new Commonwealth gave white women the right to vote and a time when women were moving out of their traditional working roles of domestic service and farming and moving into factory, shops and office work. https://www.nma.gov.au/audio/glorious-days-australia-1913/transcripts/women-in-white-australia

Oh to be able to have a chat with Alison or to find a diary that she might have penned to find out if she felt those shackles of the past breaking off and to see just what obstacles she faced as a young unmarried woman at this time.

I have spent the last couple of hours reading articles on Trove from 1912 under the search heading of “Working Women” just to get a bit more of a picture of what Alison’s world was like. What an eye opener. If you are interested check these couple of examples out.

The Modern Girl: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/135668871?searchTerm=%22unmarried%20women%22

The Passing of the Old Maid: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/228861740?searchTerm=%22unmarried%20women%22

The First Women’s Labor Conference: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/148413566?searchTerm=%22women%27s%20labor%20conference%22

I went looking to see if Alison had any family living in the area and look who I found living at Kinross with her.

Christina Mary (Tina) and her husband John Holmes. That is Alison, Jean and Annie’s other sister and her husband. Alec my cousin said that he remembered Tina being “…a very well spoken and strongly opinionated lady.” He said that the the expression, “…my way or the highway” might have been coined just for her. He also shared that despite this gruff exterior, Tina was very good to him as a child at a time when his own mother was very ill.

Obviously this living situation was working for them as a family, as Alison is still with Tina and John nine years later and still working in sales.

Alison next appears in my great-grandfather, Alexander Ballantyne Smith Macvean’s death notice.

What a fantastic notice to have placed by your sister-in-law. Hopefully my great-grandfather knew how much he meant to Jean. Of course Mrs W. F. Duke, is Jean, she was married to Walter Frederick Duke and another interesting thing to note here, or it could be just a huge coincidence, the name of Jean and Walter’s house, “Carinya”. This just happens to be the name of the crescent where Alison, Tina and John are living at “Kinross”.

Circumstances obviously changed in 1924, we find Alison, after twelve years at Kinross had moved to a new address.

I wondered if she had made the move out on her own as an independent woman. So I went looking for Christina and John. Look where they turned up.

Same address as Alison. They obviously moved as a family. I have no idea what prompted the move.

Unfortunately, like the Kinross property I can’t find any historical photos of the Dunraven property but I did find out from John’s death notice, which is coming up, that it was situated at no. 1 Dunraven Avenue in Toorak. This house also had a name, “Branxholme”.

This photo from 2009 shows the best image of the house on Google Maps and I think this might still be the original house just renovated.

I just found the house listed on the “Property Value” website and it confirms that the house was built in 1920 which fits with our timeline and confirms it is the home Tina, John and Alison’s lived in. https://www.propertyvalue.com.au/property/1-dunraven-avenue-toorak-vic-3142/13580990

Now I know I’m making a big assumption here but I think all the Cox sister’s might have been very close. This Electoral Roll listing below shows where Jean and Walter or Wally as he was known were living in 1924.

133 Finch Street, Malvern. This map shows they were only 3 miles away from Alison, Tina and John.

It looks like Jean and Wally’s house has survived the years too with minimal renovations. Here is their house pictured below from 2013. I had to use this photo as the latest photo in Maps from 2019 has a massive removal van blocking the view of the house but from what I can see it is still the same.

Searching to see who was living where, in the group of sister’s, got me thinking about my great-grandmother, Annie and where she was after my great-grandfather’s death.

I have known for ages that Annie had moved to Melbourne after my great-grandfather’s death but had never put any of this together with the fact that her sister’s were living there as well . Did Annie move the family down to Melbourne from Holbrook to be near them?

I knew from Electoral Listings that Annie and her three daughters, my grand aunts, Jean, Jessie and Marjorie, had moved to 162 Kooyong Road, Caulfield.

Bloody Hell!, Caulfield! The same damn suburb. Here is 162 Kooyong Road, Caulfield in 2022.

This is how close they all were.

I know, they probably had the same problems as we all do within families, misunderstandings and dramas but this makes me so happy to learn that they were this close that it mattered to be living near each other. Especially for my great-grandmother Annie and my grandaunts. My grandfather, John and his brother, Alexander stayed in Holbrook to work on another Ross family property called Hillside.

The next mention of Alison is in the death notice of her father, George Fairbairn Cox. My 2x great-grandfather.

There is my great-grandmother, her brother and their sisters all listed together.

I have one photo of George, thanks again to that very generous cousin, Alec D.

Alec also shared some insight on George that his father, John shared with him.

Alec said that his dad’s memories were from when he was about five years old and George was in his eighties, not long before his death. John said that he remembered George as a very large man, very gruff and standoffish like his daughter. He said that he always thought that this was probably because it was the way of the world in those day and particularly from an old Scotsman and not just that he couldn’t be bothered with them.

In relation to George’s funeral, unfortunately I don’t think there would have been any way that Alison or her sisters would have been able to attend the funeral, which was in Sydney, unless they had been told earlier about their father’s illness and were already in Sydney at the time of his death.

From my extensive research on Trove, (30 mins) it looks like there was only one rail service from Melbourne to Sydney that might have got them there in time for the service. The Sydney Express left Melbourne at 1.55pm arriving at Albury at 8pm where the next train departed from, arriving in Sydney at 7.55am the next day. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/214237605?searchTerm=%22train%22%22sydney%22

This is where George was buried at Randwick. No headstone or plaque marks the site. I brought the plant you can see in the photo last time I visited.

We next find Alison two years later in 1927 still at Dunraven with Tina and John.

This was followed by the death notice of my great-grandmother, Annie.

Ancestry confirms that Alison is still at Dunraven Avenue at the time of Annie’s funeral.

And then another two years on from Annie’s death, we find Alison mentioned in John’s death notice.

Alec also shared with me that John apparently used to own racehorses and the thinking is that Tina must have continued the association after John’s death because Alec remembered as a boy, going to the races with her in her chauffeur driven Buick.

The next Electoral Roll listing shows that Alison and Tina were still sharing Kinross three years after John’s passing.

Then this next listing is the final one that Alison appears in for the Dunraven Avenue address. It is very poor quality and didn’t even come up in the list of entries for Alison on the Ancestry site. I had to go searching in the 1937 roll myself.

Tina is also still there.

After this 1937 listing there are no other Electoral Roll listings in Ancestry.com.au until 1942 and neither Alison or Tina appear in it.

We next find Tina at a new address in the 1943 listing but interestingly I couldn’t find Alison listed anywhere.

I think we would be safe in assuming that this house shown below is not the house that Tina would have been living in but it is certainly the site.

Next we have a death notice listing for Alison’s brother Josiah George Cox in 1945.

It is interesting to note that neither Alison or her sisters, Tina or Jean are mentioned in the notice.

I finally found Alison again in the Electoral rolls but not until 1949, that is twelve years since her last appearance and she has made a major move.

Because there has been no listing since 1937 we can’t be sure when Alison actually made the move to Sydney.

Here is 105 Spencer Road below. It looks like it could be the actual house Alison would have lived in.

The Sydney move must have worked out for Alison as she was still there in 1954.

My cousin Alec shared that Alison worked for the department store, David Jones when she was in Sydney. She was 66 years of age at this time.

Our next mention of Alison is not for another eight years and this time she and Tina appear in Wally Duke’s death notice. Remember Wally is Jean’s husband.

Unfortunately it doesn’t state which suburb they were from like the older notices but I managed to find both of them in the Electoral Roll listing for 1963 and Alison was back from Sydney and had moved in with Tina again.

This fits with what Alec recalled, he was told, that when Alison retired from her job with David Jones in Sydney she moved into “…the large house in Melbourne with Tina.“

I wondered what had become of Jean since Wally’s death in October of the year before, 1962. I found her still living in the home she had shared with Wally since 1928, when they had moved from the Finch Street address.

The three remaining sister’s were still close to each other.

Then the inevitable happens, Tina passes away just eight months after her husband Wally. Alison and Jean appear for the final time in a family notice together.

I know that they are possibly just standard death notice vocabulary but I like seeing the “…loved, beloved and loving,” references. I hope this is how they felt about each other.

With Tina’s passing I’m assuming that the St. James Place house would have been sold and Alison would have moved on. There is no other Electoral roll listing for Alison till 1967 so again I’m unsure as to when she might have moved to this next address.

It looks like 32 Edgar Street might be the same building that Alison moved into just with a refurb on the exterior.

The one thing I can be certain of is that Alison had gotten closer to Jean, who is still in the Barina Road address.

Then seven years later we have Alison’s final mention, her own death notice.

Alison was 85 years of age when she passed away at the Cedar Court Hospital in Glen Iris. This is the site of the hospital today pictured below.

It looks like it could be the original hospital building situated at 370 Burke Road, Glen Iris.

From what I can tell the Epworth Foundation acquired the hospital sometime in 2006 and it became the Rehabilitation Hospital you see above. https://www.accc.gov.au/public-registers/mergers-registers/public-informal-merger-reviews-register/epworth-foundation-proposed-acquisition-of-cedar-court-private-hospital

You might recall from Figure 6 way back at the beginning of this post that Jean was also listed as having had her ashes scattered at Springvale. Yes, Jean passed away just fourteen months after Alison on the 9th of May 1975.

You might have noticed my cousin Alec, mentioned above, in Jean’s death notice. He also has a link to the last person I want to mention from the list in Figure 6. John Walter Duke, Alec’s father and son of Jean and Wally Duke.

John passed away at the age of 84 in 2004, John’s story is not mine to tell, I will leave that to those that knew him. But what I will say is, I wished I had started this family history journey earlier, then I might have had the chance to learn more about the lives of Alison, Jean, Tina, Annie, Josiah and their families, my family.

So that is Springvale done. The other family members scattered there, mentioned in Figure 6, I will pick up in another post in the future, as I know next to nothing about them as yet.

I’ll be moving on to Cheltenham and Brighton, the other two cemeteries I visited on the 2nd in the next post.