Hume & Hovell District Schools Project 2024

First Settlers in Lade Vale: Frank and Catherine Lawless

Is this the house that Frank built? Remains of a substantial granite block house on land once owned by the first settlers in Lade Vale, Frank and Catherine Lawless. It may well have been built by Frank when the family took up their circa 1826 land grant. While we cannot be absolutely certain this is his work, there can be no doubt it is just the sort of house a skilled builder/bricklayer such as Frank would have constructed to settle his family in. Frank and Catherine Lawless – The Lade Vale Years The Story So Far This is the second chapter in our look at early colonial settlers Frank and Catherine Lawless written by their 3rd great granddaughter, Carmel Peek, in association with GDHS. At the end of our last episode: Bricklayer Frank [as he was commonly called rather than by his formal given name Francis] had been transported to Sydney from Ireland in 1809 following his conviction for highway robbery; He compounded his failings and misfortunes in late 1810 whe...

Two treadle sewing machines with a Touch of Old World Charm This post covers two nineteenth-century sewing machines displayed in “A Touch of Old World Charm” exhibition in the folk museum in Pye Cottage, Gunning, New South Wales. They are the Singer Sphinx and the Beale. Two hand-operated machines donated to Gunning and District Historical Society were described in an earlier blog, and a treadle machine made in 1910 will feature in a later post. A foreign country? “ The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. ” is the opening sentence of L P Hartley's The Go-Between (1953). But those words were first spoken by the writer’s friend in a 1949 lecture. (1.) Obtaining clothes was undoubtedly different in rural New South Wales in the late nineteenth to today’s easy shopping. Of course, then there was a local store or two and mail-order from the big city, for a price, for ready-made clothes. When the train line was extended from Goulburn to Gunning in 1875, ...

William Brown’s Bible – “The best book to read"

By Matt Friend Personal objects can often be overlooked when conducting family research. It may be that they are seen as merely possessions, however objects can provide us with rich and invaluable information and stories. While consulting a well-crafted genealogy publication, concerning the Holgate family, I observed an interesting note. On the pages that were of interest to me at the time (those detailing members of the Brown, Whittington, Noakes and Alchin families) there was a small note at the bottom crediting the information provided upon those pages to a bible that was, at the time the author put the book together, in the possession of Isabell Alchin (nee Whittington). Mention of the Bible as it appears in the Holgate Family Genealogy Book by Daphne Holgate Isabell Alchin was my Nanna, and when she died in 1996 the contents of her home, in Jobson Street Dalton, were sorted, moved into storage or dispersed among family. It was possible then that the bible, mentione...

Gunning & District Historical Society

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