Body snatching
Followers may have discerned that I enjoy exploring the stories of nutters. They provide the rabbit warrens that can steal away hours while you try to make sense of the crazy. Today's offering is not from my family tree, or even from Wangaratta. One of his victims...
Benalla and district cemetery records
I often talk about how wonderful the CD of Wangaratta Cemetery records produced by the Wangaratta Family History Group is.Now there is a new resource available from our friends at Benalla.https://www.benallacemetery.com/homeThis clear and easy to...
What to do about copyright infringement?
Sadly, like many other online publishers I am constantly attacked by varmints of one kind or another. Tonight I want to talk about the most insidious type of blood sucking leech - the Ancestry thief.I have just spent several days tracking down dozens of examples of...
The joy of postcards
Sending postcards in the early decades of the twentieth century was a past time with many uses. The sender could let someone know what train they would be arriving on, how their trip to Aunt Myrtle was going, or send good wishes on a special occasion. Sometimes...
Faking it with FindaGrave
Recently I was alerted to the fact that fellow blogger Janelle Collins had photographed all the extant headstones at Boorhaman cemetery north of Wangaratta.* Janelle's rellies were John King and Mary Anglim (sometimes Anglam), who came from the same area of Clare in...
Votes For Women!
Before women in Victoria gained the right to vote in Commonwealth elections in 1902, there were few ways that they could exercise any democratic right. They were yet to be granted the same rights as men in state elections despite a huge push in 1891 with the 'Monster...
Warra – a Murdoch Road icon
I recently stumbled upon a photo of the beautiful home below. This image was scanned by the State Library of Victoria but the cataloguers had not identified the house, the title being merely "House brick with porch and gabled roof, Wangaratta." I asked the lovely...
Rascally Places and Dubious Old Dudes
On the 30th November I had the pleasure of joining historian Robyn Annear on a guided walk around the north-western corner of Hoddle's grid in Melbourne as part of the soft launch of her new book of seven walking tours titled "Adrift in Melbourne". Funny, erudite, and...
Ada Cambridge and the Wangaratta Story – Part 9
Continuing on a study of the personal memoir of novelist Ada Cambridge titled Thirty Years in Australia we come to the young couple's housing in Wangaratta. When Ada Cambridge and her husband George Cross arrived in Wangaratta they had been married for several...
William Moore – death of an “honorable and meritorious” man
No one really knows how William Moore died. In the dust, noise and confusion that erupted around the movement of a mob of horses from the Wangaratta Sale Yards through Ovens Street to the railway station, no one actually saw the event that caused his death. On that...
Jonathan Harris and his Australian progeny
On the 3rd January 1826, Jonathan Harris (alias Alcorn) arrived in Sydney Cove as a convict aboard the Marquis of Hastings. Lucky to have survived the penal system involving a stay on the hulks and the long sea voyage, Harris had actually used up not two, but three of...
Ada Cambridge and the Wangaratta story – Part 8
As we saw in Part 6 and 7 of this study, life in Wangaratta agreed very well with Ada Cambridge. However in her memoir she hinted at a disappointment that wounded deeply, but which she could not elaborate on. ... we still found nothing to disagree with us - only one...
Wangaratta Agricultural High School
By guest blogger Rod Martin A question about the 1909 photograph shown above led to an unlikely coincidence as a blogger attempted to discover the real story behind it. The Albury Library and the State Library of New South Wales had both captioned it as being a...
Ada Cambridge and the Wangaratta Story – Part 7
After Ada Cambridge wrote about the people who became her closest friends during her short residence in Wangaratta, she took to observing the community and comparing it to life in England. And as for the cottage people - the marked thing about them was that they were...
Ada Cambridge and the Wangaratta Story – Part 6
As we saw in Part 5 of this series, Ada Cambridge remarked on the egalitarian nature of early 1870s Wangaratta society, and mentioned a few friends who were from the "tradesfolk" class. After recalling the wife of a stationer - identified as Anne Bickerton (nee...
Ada Cambridge and the Wangaratta Story – Part 5
Ada Cambridge, as we have seen in previous posts in this series, enjoyed an active social life. There were bazaars and church teas and such things - quite as exciting as the private functions - at which our circle of friends and acquaintances was augmented by the...
Ada Cambridge and the Wangaratta Story – Part 4
After doctors, bankers came next in social importance in Wangaratta according to Ada Cambridge's memoir Thirty Years in Australia. She described them as "the backbone of country society", remarking how important it was that "they should be popular with their...
Ada Cambridge and the Wangaratta story – Part 3
After discussing the Police Magistrate who she considered the upper echelon of Wangaratta society in her memoir Thirty Years in Australia, Ada Cambridge tackled the doctors. Next to the P.M. in the social scale came the doctors. There were two, English gentleman both....
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