Some ‘Golding’ family connections

Some ‘Golding’ Family Connections

Barry Golding b.golding@federation.edu.au

last updated  13 Nov 2016

Family trees are like rivers: finding out where you come from is like swimming in a stream and wondering which of many forks to follow in the headwaters. Beyond my four grandparents, on my father, John William Golding’s side of the family, I could follow the Golding stream via William Golding and wife Elizabeth Golding‘s immigration (at age 26 and 20 respectively) to Australia in 1851 from rural Suffolk, via his son William Golding (born 1863 in St Arnaud), my grandfather, Walter James Golding (born 12/5/1892) and father John William (‘Jack’) Golding (born 17 April 1920).

I could instead follow the Pearse stream via my grandmother Golding, born Amelia Geake Pearse on 11/12/1897 leads back to rural Devon and Cornwall. In both cases it appears to have been economically driven immigration from England to Australia during the 1850s. While many of my Golding and Pearse forebears ended up on the Victorian goldfields, in the case of the Golding connection at least, the exit from England just preceded the discovery of gold.

The detailed family trees on my parent’s side confirm that there has been a move by successive generations  over two centuries from grinding poverty and very large fMilies in rural England to relative opportunity in Australia, at first on the Victorian goldfields, but later to the Western Australian goldfields, small north western Victorian towns and more recently to Melbourne. The number of Golding descendants is relatively small because in many early generations women predominated and many children died relatively young.

This account concentrates mainly on my fathers family. On my mother, Joan Ethel Lane’s side I could follow either her father, Ralph Lane’s family back to London, England, or back to London via my maternal grandmother, born Mary Robinson Gudgion. Ralph and Mary married in England and emigrated to Australia in the early 1900s, around sixty years later than the Golding’s and the Pearse’s. Their emigration to Australia appears to have been more related to what became Ralph’s lifetime profession in the Royal Australian Navy.

To keep it simple I will later separately research and write an account of ‘The Lane & Gudgion Connections’. Given our three children Dajarra, Karri and Tanja Rose Golding also have Bracks connections back to Lebanon via my wife, Janet Elizabeth Bracks ( her father Stanley Salem Bracks and wife Marion  nee Davis) I optimistically plan to later research and write a complementary ‘The Bracks & Davis Connections’ account. Both these accounts will be based on more limited evidence. Everything that follows is based either on documentary evidence from previous family research or confident recollections from people still alive in 2016.

My method and acknowledgements

This blog follows just my ‘Golding’ origins that I inherit in my surname and that our three children also inherit. To be consistent I have bolded only the names of my directly connected forebears and asterisked * people alive during my life and known to me. In brief, the Golding connections story is most simply told via three sub-stories. The first and most fragmentary story goes back to the Golding family in England pre-1851.

The second sub-story covers my ‘grandfather’s grandfather’ William Golding’s (born in Stansfield, Suffolk, England on 22 February 1824) immigration to Australia in 1851 with his wife Elizabeth Golding (born in Cavendish, Suffolk in 1830) through his son, also William Golding (born 2/1/1863 in St Arnaud around the time his parents were on ‘The Peters’ Diggings (now Carapooee, near St Arnaud, Victoria), to the birth in 1892 of my grandfather Walter James Golding * in St Arnaud. Much of this sub-story is centred on the area around St Arnaud.

The third and most recent sub-story covers my grandfather Walter’s marriage and move to Donald, My father, John William Golding * was born in Donald (17/4/1920). Most of this sub-story focuses on Donald where I was also born in 1950, 101 years after the first Golding’s arrived (on 8/8/1851) at Port Adelaide from London on the barque Sultana.

I acknowledge that this small summary, like all research, rests on the shoulders of previous ‘giants’. My sincere thanks to all those who, living and dead, who have assisted by researching information from within and beyond our extended families. This is very much a work in progress. My particular thanks to Dale Watts for researching the Golding family tree, Sincere thanks to Ross Proctor and Gail Remnant of St Arnaud, Golding family descendants via Ellen Golding  (born 1871 in St Arnaud) and Emma Golding (born 1868 on Peters Digging)s for a huge effort researching all of this on behalf of the hundreds of descendants. It was Ross Proctor who generously did all of the organisation for the Golding family commemorative plaque in Nov 2016.

Why does all this matter?

I understand why our children, now in their 30s ask me this question. For me it is important to make sense of the past in order to make sense of the present. As a UK academic colleague I greatly respect, Professor Peter Jarvis once said, there can be no more important quest in life to make sense of the life you have lived before you die.

It is also important because one day other family members will want to know some of these stories and they have some modern parallels. I was born approximately 100 years after the first Golding and later Pearse ancestors left Suffolk and Cornwall respectively seeking to make their fortunes and to be reunited with family who moved to Australia. They were an earlier generation of ‘boat people’, effectively English economic refugees, fleeing rural poverty like many generations of immigrant Australians – except for our First Nations people.

I was actually motivated to write when I heard about a project, generously led by relatives going back to William Golding (born 1824) – relatives that I did not know – to finally place a tombstone on his grave in the St Arnaud Cemetery on 13  November 2016, 165 years after William and Elizabeth arrived as recently married very young economic refugees in Australia, from Suffolk in England, looking for gold and a new life together.

The photo, below was taken at the unveiling of the ‘memorial to our ancestors’ generously organised by Ross Proctor on the site of William and Elizabeth Golding’s previously unmarked graves in the St Arnaud Cemetery on 13 Nov 2016, by Doris Jones (nee Golding, born January 1925) and our eldest son Dajarra Golding (born January 1981).

It is finally important because some of the information I have collected from my parents and grandparents is in danger of being lost. When my parents Jack and Joan Golding were interested in and explored family history I had little interest and it was very much harder without the internet. The family trees were painstakingly researched by collecting original documents, by ‘snail mail’ as well as by visiting cemeteries, birthplaces and churches in the UK, written in longhand or typed on typewriters. In the process lots of errors were made and repeated, including by me. This is just a draft: please let me know what I may have got wrong.

The Golding connections in Suffolk, England

Relatively little is know about the Golding connections in Suffolk, England prior to William and Elizabeth immigrating to Australia in 1851. William’s death certificate (copy below from 1876) records his father’s name also as William Golding (tailor) and his mother as ‘Mary Ann Golding ‘maiden name unknown’, but her maiden surname was likely ‘Mansfield’.

The William Golding who emigrated to Australia was recorded as a 15 year old on the UK Census from 1841 living in Stansfield. In the same census household was another ‘William Golding’ aged 60 with a profession that appears, from the written census form to be ‘shoemaker’). ‘Susan Golding’ also aged 60 was also in the same household, along with a 15 year old Mary Ann whose surname appears to be ‘Mashton’. The 60 year old William and Susan are more likely in those times to be grandparents than William’s father or mother.

 From Suffolk to life in St Arnaud

 The barque Sultana (588 tons, Mastered by Captain Mainland) left London on 24 April 1851 (via Plymouth, departing 2 May 1851) and arrived at Port Adelaide, South Australia on 8 August 1851. Its cargo comprised 256 immigrants including William and Elizabeth Golding. The free immigrants aboard were mostly families, including 56 children aged 10 years or under but also including 17 single women and 35 single men 15 years or over. Most of the people on board whose professions were identified on the ships passenger list were miners from Cornwall or rural English agricultural labourers (like my forebears) from a range of English counties but also included a small number of Scottish and Irish immigrants.

 

Whilst many of the immigrants on the Sultana would have later headed for the Victorian goldfields from South Australia to ‘try their luck’, they did not set out to do so when they left the UK. The Sultana was already at sea on its three month plus voyage to Australia at the time of the first widely publicised gold discovery in Australia near Bathurst in May 1851: by June 1851 the resultant ‘gold rush’ attracted over 2,000 miners at the Ophir diggings near Bathurst. The passengers on the Sultana were still in transit on 7 July 1851 when the news of the first gold discovery in Victoria at Clunes.

The Sultana passenger list includes William Golding, age 26, agricultural labourer from Sudbury, Suffolk, as well as his wife Elizabeth Golding. Four of the immigrants died at sea on the long journey across, and there were three births. William’s death certificate records that he lived for ‘about two years South Australia, 24 years Victoria’, most likely until approximately 1853when they appear to have headed for the Victorian goldfields.

Their first-born child, Hannah Golding was born one year later in 1853 in Avoca. By the time their second child, Elizabeth Alice Golding was born on 10 Nov 1856 they were in nearby Dunolly. Susan Golding (perhaps named after her grandmother) was born three years later in 1859 in nearby Bealiba, and Mary Ann Golding was born the following year (1860) in nearby Lamplough. While my direct Golding forebear, young William Golding and the next born, Sarah Golding were both born in St Arnaud in 1863 and 1865 respectively, Emma Holding was born on Peters Diggings in 1868.

It appears that William and Elizabeth Golding and several of their youngest children were part of the gold rush at the Peter Diggings near present day Carapooee, a locality 12 km south east of St Arnaud crossed by the both Carapooee and Strathfillan Creeks. The Strathfillan pastoral run was first taken up in 1844, and in 1857 the run came into the hands of David Peters. When gold was discovered there in 1858 the resulting tent settlement became known as Peter’s Diggings. During 1859-60 there was a population on Peter’s Diggings of around of 1,300 miners.

William and Elizabeth Golding had nine children in the 22 years between 1854 and 1875, seven of whom were girls (Hannah, Alice, Susan, Mary Ann, Sarah, Emma and Eileen). William Golding (senior) died relatively young, apparently at age 51 in St Arnaud in August 1876 (his death certificate records his age at death as 50 years and cause of death ‘carcinoma of liver’). At the time of his death their youngest child, Walter James Golding (same name but not my grandfather, who died aged 10 in 1887) was only 2 months old.

 

William’s wife Elizabeth, undated studio photograph below, remarried in 1883 to John Perry (a ‘labourer’, born 23 August 1829 in Kent, England) and lived to the ‘ripe old age’ for those times of 82, dying in St Arnaud on 31 July 1912.

William and Elizabeth’s middle child from whom I am descended, William Golding (junior) was named after his father and was the only male family member to have children and carry on the Golding name to the next generation. He was born 2 January 1863 in St Arnaud, working much of his life as a miner there in the Lord Nelson gold mine and dying in St Arnaud in 1935. Young William’s six sisters who lived into adulthood married into some then well known St Arnaud families with the surnames of Tucker, Perry, Rigoll, Jeremiah and Cockburn.

Several generations of Tucker descendants mostly lived in Melbourne; many of the Perry descendants remained in St Arnaud, while many of the Rigoll descendants followed the gold west to Western Australia. In 1933 Emma Jeremiah was still living at Strathvale in Carapooee.

William Golding (junior, often referred to as ‘Wally’) was only seven years old (in approximately 1870) when his parents moved from Peters (Carapooee) to St Arnaud and only 13 years old when his father died. An article from the Donald Times (23 May 1933) fills in some of the gaps. His parents and their nine children including young William lived in a bark hut off Butcher Street in St Arnaud. He has attended the Common School, later (by 1933) called the Church of England Sunday School but at age 13 with the death of his father became the family breadwinner at the Chrysotile Mine (renamed Lord Nelson Mine). His first job involved washing the pyrites from the gold battery. Later he did some ‘tributing’, a mining term for doing work on a mining lease where the proceeds are shared by those doing the work. William Golding junior spent a total of 38 years working at the very rich Lord Nelson mine, which was worked to the great depth of 3,380 feet (over 1 km). When the mine closed William worked ‘with Mr McMullen repairing Shire bridges’. For four years in later life he was in charge of the St Arnaud Bowling Green and put a lot of time into ‘improving his property and growing vegetables’. ‘Wally’ was an active member of the Methodist Church for many years and a prominent local preacher.

William Golding (junior) married Olivia Trewin (from Ballarat, born 1859) on 28 July 1890 in South Melbourne. They had four children and lived in Mackay Street opposite the now St Arnaud Secondary College. My own grandfather, Walter James Golding * was their first live born on 12 May 1892 (a stillborn child was born to them in May 1891). Walter lived as a child in St Arnaud and only moved to Donald after he and his wife (born Amelia Geake Pearse * 11/12/1897, died 15 July 1981) married on 21/3/1921 and set up a hardware business, details of which follow in the next section below.

My grandfather, Walter had three siblings: Doris Olivia Golding, known as ‘ Dot’ and employed ‘as a salesgirl in a St Arnaud business’ was born on 18/8/1893 and died in her 20s (on 21 March 1921), so the family story goes, ‘of a broken heart’ but it seems her cause of death was actually tuberculosis, then known as ‘consumption’. My grandfather’s brother Rupert William Golding was born in 1895 and died in 1967. Rupert married Vida Lillian Digby * (who I do remember) died in 1986) and in 1933 was manager of the drapery branch of Tyler’s Stores in Port Fairy. Their son, Geoffrey Gordon Golding * born in 1927, contracted polio and also lived in Port Fairy and married Opal June Kitching on 18 March 1950, very close to my own birth date. Geoffrey and Opal’s son Chris Eric Golding born in 1952 had children who carry on the Golding name.

My grandfather’s youngest brother Eric Golding *, born in 1897 died in November 1964. In 1933 Eric was employed in Mildura by Risby and Company. Eric and family lived much of his life on a ‘fruit block’ with grape vines in the Mildura area with his wife, my ‘Auntie Eva’ * (born Eva Townsend, who died in 1966). They also had two sons. William, better known as ‘Bill’ Golding * born in 1932 became a schoolteacher and later Principal in Mildura, Dimboola and Portland. Bill Golding retired to Portland with Val (born Valerie Jean Murray) to create and maintain the now iconic Great South West Walk. Bill was is alive and very well in 2016, Bill and Val had two children, Jennifer and Stephen, born in 1963 and 1964 respectively. Stephen’s children carry on the Golding family name.

From St Arnaud to life Donald

 My grandfather, Walter and my grandmother, Amelia were from St Arnaud and Donald respectively. Their ‘courting days’ involved a lot of travel in between. At first Walter went into partnership with Rowe’s hardware store in St Arnaud, to become Rowe & Sons and Golding with a Donald store that was still functioning by this name in 1933.

James Rowe and Sons was first established in St Arnaud in 1869. In 1908 a Donald branch was opened under the management of a Mr Cole. A photograph in the ‘Shanty at the Bridge’ book taken in 1910 shows J Rowe and Sons store in Woods Street, Importers, of furniture ironmongery, stationery, crockery. In 1912 Walter James, W J. Golding succeeded Mr Cole. In the mid 1920s there  was also a branch of the store in Mildura and Melbourne. Fire destroyed the store in 1927 as well as adjoining W.H. Gray stock and station agent store. The fabric of the store that became W. J. Golding and Co was presumably rebuilt of both sites after 1927.

Amelia’s parents helped Walter and his bride  build a new brick house in Donald in Meyer Street that was for a long time my sister Judith and Wayne Hastings’ family home. Walter was a keen musician and in 1917 a member of ‘The Donald Minstrels’ that gave concerts in Donald, St Arnaud, Corack and Watchem. He was accomplished at bush recitations, a keen sporting shooter and cricketer. In the mid 1920s he was President of the Donald Cricket Club.

When the business partnership with Rowe broke up the Donald hardware store became ‘W. J. Golding & Company’, which became a long running family business that sustained and employed not only my father John William Golding * better known as ‘Jack’ (born 17/4/1920, died 26/4/2002) and my mother Joan Golding * (born Joan Ethel Lane, died 5 April 2011), but also my Auntie and father’s ‘young’ sister, Doris Golding, born Jan 1925, who became Doris Jones * when she married Graham Jones (born Dec 1924) in 1947. ‘Auntie Doris’ is the only ‘Golding ‘family member still alive (and very well) from my father’s generation in 2016. Doris and Graham had one child, Shirley Faye Jones * (born Jan 1949). Shirley married Richard Riordan (now deceased) in 1970 and they had one child Bryce Richard Riordan in 1980.

I am the middle of three children, born in March 1950 at the Donald Bush Nursing Hospital as Barry John Golding, changing my middle name by statutory declaration to Goanna. My only sister Judith was born August 1948, and married Wayne Alfred Hastings (born July 1947 in Maryborough) in 1972. After their marriage they lived in Maryborough, Wangaratta and Yarrawonga while Wayne worked in the bank and Judy taught in primary schools. in 1979 they took over the family business, W. J. Golding and Co. and moved back to Donald. The business was sold to Onley Holdings in 2004. Their two children Sean David Hastings (born Dec 1978) and Lachlan Wayne Hastings (born August 1981) are both married, to Jean ( Maiden name Oi) and Emma respectively, and are living and working in Melbourne. Lachlan and Emma (maiden name Schmidt, originally from Nhill) in 2016 have one very young son Daniel Joseph born in April 2015..

My only brother Peter Golding was born in March 1950 the day after my fifth birthday. His first marriage was to Martina Callahan, whose father Frank Callahan was a passionate musician and the former Donald Postmaster. Frank and his wife Margaret retired to Ballarat, was well known around Ballarat in later life as ‘The One Man Band” and died quite recently. Peter and Martina had three children together: Sarah, Hannah and Simon, born in 1985, 1987 and 1990 respectively. Sarah was born in Australia. Hannah and Simon were born in the US where Peter has worked using his PhD as a physics academic, first at Columbus in Ohio, and later in University of Texas in El Paso where he still lives. After Peter and Martina separated and divorced in 1994, Peter married Diane Schlueter and they have two children, Walter Golding  (born Jan 1994) and Joan Golding (born Feb 1996( as well as Aaron Macelunas from Diane’s first marriage.

The Pearse Connections

My great grandfather J. T. Pearse (my paternal grandmother’s father, born in 1869 at Hardy’s Hill south of Buninyong, who died when I was five) was the fourth and final child to an earlier W. N. L. Pearse born in Cornwall (not my grandmother’s brother). The word ‘Pearse’ in Cornish was pronounced more like ‘perse’. J.T.’s siblings Jane Mary Pearse (born 1860) and William Geake Pearse (born 1861) were both born in Creswick. Edward John Pearse was born in at Durham Lead near Ballarat in 1866 and only lived to the following year. The family tree starts to look very confused a few decades later since Lilly Lucretia Pearse (WNL’s daughter) later married her nephew, J.T Pearse.

J.T.’s father, the earlier W. N. L (William Nicholas Langman) Pearse was born on 16/6/1832 and christened at the South Petherwin parish (Methodist) church in Cornwall, England. W.N.L. Pearse was the second of nine Pearses – all born in Cornwall. He married Amelia Geake (born 22 April 1835 in Saint Germans, Cornwall: after whom my own grandmother, Amelia Geake Golding [nee Pearse] was named. Both died on the Pearse family farm, Devon Park near Donald: in 1897 (Amelia) and 5 April 1906.

Their father, William Pearse was born in 1804. William was a butcher by trade. William married Jane Langman (born in 1803, died in 1892). William died in Ballarat East in 1889.

Their first born was Thomas Pearse, born in Cornwall in 1830, married in 1861 in Victoria to Elizabeth Jane Sullivan. They both died in Dean, Victoria: Thomas in 1922, Elizabeth in 1938.

Third born Geddie Pearse (born in Cornwall in 1835) had four children all buried in Buninyong. Fourth born was Richard Thomas Pearse (born 1836) who became a grocer in Ballarat and had eight children, all of whom were born and died in Ballarat. Richard Pearse, who was at one stage Mayor of the City of Ballarat, and lived at 615 Skipton St, Ballarat) and Phillipa (mother of Lilly Lucretia who emigrated with William Caddy from Wendron, Cornwall around 1867.

Fifth born, Joseph Langman Pearse (born 1838) had five children. Sixth born, Mary Ann Langman Pearse. Both Joseph and Mary (died 1918 and 1915 respectively) were buried in Charlton.

William and Jane’s last-born,  Phillipa Langman Pearse (born in 1845 in Cornwall, England) who married William Caddy. It was their  daughter Lillian Lucretia Caddy also known as ‘Lilly’ (born 1870) who married her cousin, John Thomas (J. T.) Pearse (my great grandfather) in 1895.

The Pearse’s descended from W.N.L are a well know Donald family, most having been wheat and sheep farmers in the area around where their ancestors were born and lived as children at ‘Devon Park’ on the St Arnaud side of Donald. My great grandfathered fourth born  J. T. Pearse (born 1869 in Durham Lead near Ballarat) had three siblings, A younger sister Jane Mary Pearse was born and died in 1860 in Creswick.

William Geake Pearse was  also both in Creswick in 1861. His third born son (to Isabella) was my beloved ‘Uncle Jack’, John Frederick Pearse* (born 1891, died 1976). Uncle Jack was in my eyes, a very wise and philosophical man. He milked cows in the open paddock wherever he found them on the farm and brought fresh cream and milk to our home in Donald. He was a devout Methodist and Superintendent of the Donald Methodist Sunday School. Uncle Jack’s children ( Auntie ‘Eva’ [and ‘Jack’ Frankling]*, ‘Jean’ [and Ivan Clempson]* as well as Ivan [and Beryl] Pearse* were all very much part of my growing up in Donald.

William Geake Pearse and Isabella’s fourth child was Geddie Thomas Pearse, my Uncle Ged’* whose daughter ‘Lorraine’  Pearse ( nee Eleanor Lorraine Jenkins) married cousin ‘Bob’ (Robert Wyatt Pearse). Bob and Lorraine’,  brother Tom (& wife Margaret)  Stan (and wife Rilla) and Edmund (and wife Jean) farmed east of Donald and were well known to me. Barney (Edmund Palmer Pearse, born 1995) who married  Bethel (nee Mary Ethel McWhirter) was W. G.’s last born also farmed east of Donald.

My ‘Grandmother Golding’ was born Amelia Geake Pearse on 11/12/1897. She was the second of five children born to John Thomas (J.T.) Pearse *, who I remember reasonably well, as he died when I was six in 1956. He lived for much of his later life with my grandparents in Donald since his wife ‘Lillian’ (born Lily Lucretia Caddy 25/7/1870) died 27 years before J.T. at only 58 years in 1929. J.T., my great grandfather was generally known to the family in my generation as ‘Grandpa Pearse’ and was quite a character. He smoked a pipe and had a bad habit of letting the pipe burn on through his waistcoat pocket through which he had a pocket watch on a gold chain. He took many solo fishing trips to the Murray River and beyond.

My Grandma Golding’s elder brother was ‘Uncle Os’ *, born John Oswald Pearse on 1/1/1896 and died 10/9/1988 without having children. His wife ‘Auntie Het’ *, born Henrietta Fleming Kerr on 1/11/1895 had family in Heywood and died at the great age of 96 on 13/7/1992. Both, particularly Auntie Het are well remembered, including by our own children as a grand and thoughtful lady. Het and Os travelled extensively overseas. Os was a keen and experienced breeder and judge of poultry. They were off the power grid on their farm for many decades with a very early Dunlite 32 volt wind turbine.

My grandmother Amelia had three younger siblings: a sister Phillipa Lily Pearse (born 22/12/1899), Thomas Geddie Pearse, (known to me as ‘Uncle Ged’ *) and my ‘Uncle Bill’ * colloquially known to some as ‘the flamin’ Uncle Willie’, properly called W.N.L. (William Nicholas Langman Pearse). Uncle Bill and ‘Auntie Leila’ * (born Leila Ada Ellis 2/9/1905) lived at Devon Park and had two sons. Like het and Os who lived on a farm nearby, they travelled widely and were very keen photographers. Auntie Leila’s ‘slide nights’ during my childhood were an early version of ‘death by Powerpoint’.

My ‘Cousin Billy’, William Ellis Pearse (born May1933) farmed with his father W.N.L. Pearse at Devon Park before marrying and moving into Donald with his wife Pat (born Patricia Jane Weeks). They had three sons: Grant, Aaron and Drew. John Stanley Pearse, their younger son born in August 1935 lived in Melbourne, worked for a time as a driving instructor and did not marry.

The Caddy Connection

 My connection to the ‘Caddy’ and Pearse family (above) is complicated by an earlier intermarriage between the Pearse and Caddy family in the 1860s. Firstly, as outlined above, I have Caddy ancestry via Lily Lucretia Caddy, known as ‘Lillian’, my paternal great grandmother who married my great grandfather J.T. Pearse in 1895. Lillian died quite young in 1929.

Secondly, Lillian was one of fourteen children (nine girls and five boys) born to William Caddy (born 18/11/1839, died 1906), his wife being Phillipa Langman Pearse (born 29/5/1845, died 1923/4). William and Phillipa married on 21/1/1867. William Caddy was himself one of 12 children from a marriage at Wendron, Cornwall 29/11/1831 between John Caddy (born 1810, died 1887) and Ann Perry (who died 28/11/1869).

A little about John and Ann, who are in effect my ‘great-great-great grandparents’ (following my Grandma Golding’s line) might be of some interest. John Caddy was born 10/6/1810 in Cornwall, England. He was a tin miner and engineer. His son William Caddy (who married Phillipa Langman Pearse at Ballarat on 21/1/1867) was also born in Cornwall. William’s father came to Melbourne, Australia with two of his brothers (Richard and William) on an unassisted passage in 1854. His mother and 8 siblings arrived in Melbourne, Australia on the Maldon three years later to join their father at 7 Tress Street in Mt Pleasant, Ballarat on 28/7/1857.

William Caddy and Phillippa had 14 children between 1867and 1889, nine of whom were girls including Lilly Lucretia Caddy who married my great grandfather J.T Pearse. The Caddy family history complied some decades ago by Ingrid Forrester in Southern River, Western Australia chronicles the literally thousands of Caddy descendants from Devon and Cornwall and runs to 90 pages. Many present day Caddy descendants are either in Victoria (including Ballarat) or to Western Australia, where many of the miners went as the Kalgoorlie-Boulder gold rush took over from the Victorian gold rushes by the early 1900s.