Newcastle's Roland Bannister has delved deep into the past of his ancestors and Hunter history.
He has published a book titled Hunter Valley Ancestors, which chronicles the lives of the families Burns, Puxty, Hewitt, Longworth, Poile, Pascoe, Kenny and Hancock.
Roland said the book was about "Mum and her ancestors and the communities in which they lived - especially Paterson, Vacy, Singleton, Camberwell and Rix's Creek".
"Some were rural labourers, others were farmers, some were miners and a few were publicans. A very few became wealthy, most did not," he said.
"Half a dozen came to Australia as convicts, but most came free. The earliest were given compulsory free passage on the dreaded Second Fleet of 1790."
Among his ancestors were Paterson publicans Ellen and Elhanan Puxty.
"Elhanan held the licences, but Ellen was often the public face. In turn, they had the Wellington Inn, the Woolpack Inn and the Royal Oak all during the 1870s and 1880s."
Puxty's hotels were places for social, commercial, community and political meetings.
"They offered convenient rooms and a degree of comfort and hospitality.
"In her work around the pubs, Ellen heard the goings on of local people. She was sometimes called to inquests and inquiries and these were reported, often in great detail, in the papers.
"Stories of what the barmaid heard make fascinating reading, and some of them make a gentle soul like me blush."
In a detailed 3000-word court report about an argument and fight at Paterson over strong words regarding the sale of a horse, "Mrs Puxty was present in the role of a hospitality worker at Wilson's Public House".
"The story begins on an April day in 1878, outside the Paterson Court House, right beside the hotel, when Mr Fry and Mr Wells argued about a mare sold to Mr Mackenzie. Their disagreement led to assault, deep bitterness and six months of dispute and court appearances."
Small Communities
Roland said the Hunter population was much smaller when "my people came here and settled in small communities, where they knew and married each other".
"Life for the families depended very much on their station. For the half dozen convicts in my family, life was a hard grind of labour. In some cases, they suffered unrelentingly harsh treatment from their superiors.
"But I also sense that they enjoyed the beauty of the lush, fertile valley - a place much warmer than where they came from."
Roland knew his maternal grandparents Harrie and Henrietta Burns well.
"As a child, I would spend school holidays or weekends with them at their home in Broadmeadow. They had been dairy farmers at Mount Thorley, where their experience reflected that of many family farmers.
"The vagaries of the weather and the inadequacies of their small holding drove them to move to Broadmeadow, where Harrie set up a butter and egg run."
He said Harrie found great satisfaction in his garden, family and cricket. He told Roland he was "manager" of Central Ice Works in Heddon Road, Broadmeadow.
"He and I would rise at the crack of dawn, share a hot breakfast of eggs, rissoles, gravy and grilled tomatoes.
"Then we'd go to the ice works, where the great draught horses would lumber into the stalls to dine on the chaff that Harrie provided, before setting out on their day's work pulling ice carts around Newcastle.
"I loved the horsey smell and the warmth of these beasts, as I sat on a rail just above their heads."
Harrie would attend to security concerns like "checking the ice works doors to see that they were secure".
"I later realised that he was the caretaker of the ice works and in that sense he really did 'manage' the place."
Roland said stories of his Longworth ancestors were "told and retold in our family".
"These were the ones who became wealthy. Family anecdotes were about how Thomas Longworth Snr had come to Australia as a miner for the Australian Agricultural Company in their Newcastle mine, and how he went on to start his own mine at Rix's Creek, where he met his death at age 64 while cutting coal when the roof collapsed on him and some of his employees.
"William and Thomas Jnr made generous donations to churches, hospitals, towns, bands and other worthy causes. What is less well known, and what my book reveals, is that William Longworth as a young man spent two years in Maitland Gaol when found guilty of perjury. To his credit, William rebuilt his life and became a respected figure in the Hunter, Cobar and Lithgow, where the family set up a copper smelter."
As for Roland's great great grandmother Betsy Hancock, her first husband was James Simpson Pascoe.
"Betsy and James lived eventful lives. She was the daughter of a soldier in the Spanish Peninsular War. She and James became parents to 14 children. Betsy came to Australia with her parents, but James travelled here as a convict serving a seven-year sentence. At age 40 he reoffended: he refused to work."
Roland was astonished that refusal to work, even as a free man in the mid 1800s, was a crime. James was jailed in Newcastle.
He said the unspoken story behind the lives of his forebears was "the dispossession of Aboriginal people and the destruction of their culture and society".
"My ancestors worked on the land of the Worimi, Gringai and Wonnarua peoples. There would have been interactions between them and the native inhabitants. Yet the Aboriginal people are almost always absent from the sources I found that relate to my family."
The book will be launched on Sunday, August 7 at Newcastle Museum. Order copies from Roland on 0403 324 487 or rsbannister@gmail.com.
