During this quiet, socially isolated period (Covid pandemic 2021) in which I haven’t been visited, or visited others, for months at a time, I’ve been visiting and reuniting families virtually, ‘time travelling’. I’ve been photographing documents and photographs found in old albums, shoe boxes, old suitcases and drawers to add to the ‘gallery’ of a multitude of grand, great grand, and even some great, great grand ancestors on ancestry.com. In doing so, I’ve experienced the sense of ‘time travelling’ I’ve often felt when immersed in researching the life of a particular family member, a sense of almost being with them Allowed to visit once again, I've been spending time with my sister, who is collating records collected while researching our maternal grandmother's family history thirty years ago and records secreted away by our mother and grandmother in old suitcases and drawers. Large envelopes labelled for particular ‘great grand’ relatives have been brought into action. My grandmother’s siblings, Beatrice, Ada, Minnie, Edie, Alf, Charlie, Ruby, Violet and of course my grandmother Lily, each have an envelope. We’ve been conferring over old scrapbooks and albums containing photographs, many of which I’ve not seen before. I’ve taken photographs of a multitude of photographs, documents such as my grandfather’s passport; ephemera such as a leather collar box containing my ballerina grandmother's grease paint to add to my family history collection. At least 110 years old - Lily Devitt nee Hooper's grease paint (stored in a collar box) There are so many photographs! Where to start? With a goal of adding at least one photo to ancestry.com a day I have found myself immersing myself in the lives of two great aunts, ‘Auntie Beat’ (b 1872) and ‘Auntie Min’ (b 1877). ‘Auntie Beat’ (Beatrice amy Maud Hooper 1873 - 1959) 'Auntie Beat', my eldest maternal great aunt, never married, looking after her parents until they died, then living with nieces and nephews’ families until she passed away. My only memory of Aunty Beat is peeping into a bungalow to see her while holidaying with an aunt who was caring for her not long before she died. Just yesterday Janette found a loose photo of Beat with a postcard back on which is written ‘Beatrice Hooper – the eldest’. What a find! A dressmaker, Beat is wearing a dark trimmed check dress, standing in front of a rose bush. It was probably taken in the early 1900’s. It’s now sitting in her ancestry ‘gallery’ alongside other gems found in her scrapbook which suggest that she may have travelled with a theatre company to New Zealand. While most of her younger sisters were dancers with J C Williamson’s, perhaps, being a dressmaker, she was in the wardrobe department? Auntie Beat’s profile on ancestry now includes photos across her life span, including some in which she appears to be enjoying time spent travelling with friends. There is a wonderful photo of Beat playing cards with a group of friends, another in an outfit suggesting she may have been a suffragette! ‘Aunty Min’ (Fanny Emily Mary Hooper 1876 - 1964) Do you have a person in public life in your family tree who other relatives all lay claim to? ‘Auntie Min’ is that person in our family. Family stories of her abound across the generations. ‘Auntie Min’, my grandmother’s older sister Minnie Hooper, became quite famous as a choreographer and ballet mistress for JC Williamson and is remembered for having taught Robert Helpmann to dance. While I have many photos of Auntie Min, until my visit to the farm last weekend they were almost all quite theatrical, revealing little of her life. I’d met Auntie Min when visiting Sydney as a child and remember her as a rather serious woman of considerable wealth who lived in a house looking over Sydney Harbour which had a path down to a private boat ramp. I remember her son, John Rose, as being quite eccentric. John was always described by my mother as a change of life baby, born after Min’s husband, Ernest Rose, then aged 51, had already had a stroke. Family research revealed that Min, who had married ‘Uncle Ern’ at 20, had two little boys who only lived for a few months during her twenties, followed by decades working in the theatre, before having a baby, John, at aged 46. John was born with a disability which affected his development, and Min’s beloved husband died at 59 when John was 8 years old leaving her to care for John. Janette’s envelope for Auntie Min contains portraits of Uncle Ern pasted on a textured card and a portrait of John in early adulthood. The photo in the envelope which somehow provides a deeper glimpse into their lives is a photo of Min and Ern sitting together, reading material in their hands. Ern appears to be convalescing. It is an evocative photo in which Min looks less severe than I remember her in latter years. Adding this photo, and the portraits of Ern and John, to their profiles on ancestry a day or two ago, somehow ‘rounded off’ my ‘time travels’ with Auntie Min’s family—at least for the moment.
With Covid moving from pandemic to endemic, I’m likely to continue to lead a quiet life. Underlying chronic illnesses have already impacted on my capacity to travel to places in which my ancestors lived to find out more, and now Covid! However, I can always resort to time travelling! I’m enjoying my current bout of time travelling and have so many more photos to ‘ground’ my research. I sense that I’ll continue to enjoy ‘This ‘time travelling’ Life’, immersing myself in family photographs, documents and other ephemera, well into the future! Beverley Lee October 2021 *This story was originally written as a topic for 'As Time Goes By' - writing memoir stories class at U3A. ‘Beatrice Ada; Minnie; Edith; Alf; Charlie; Ruby, Violet’- I learnt my ‘Hooper side’ great aunts and uncles names off by heart as a child. I remember meeting them all at least once and have built up pictures of them over time based upon family stories, conversations and old photographs. Portraits of their parents, George Charles Beech Hooper and Emma Jackson, could be found hidden in a dark cupboard at my grandparents’ house. My grandmother Lily was their youngest sister.
‘Aunty Beat’, born in 1873, was already over 80, with arthritis and mobility problems, and possibly slowly dying, when I first met her in the 1950’s. I remember being frightened of going into her darkened bungalow bedroom at my aunt’s dairy farm near Dandenong when on holiday there. A woman of rounded curves who had never married, my memories of her have softened as I’ve aged. I feel sad that I was frightened of her and do hope that seeing me and my cousin peeping around her door as she lay in bed had given her pleasure rather than pain. Auntie Beat had cared for her parents as they aged, then in later life rotated amongst family members when she needed care. Reputed to have been a beauty when young, Auntie Beat apparently had a suitor who wanted to marry her, but Grandpa Hooper had forbidden this. ‘Aunty Ada’, next in line, was petite and finely boned like my mother, very approachable and loving. I have warm memories of visiting her and her interested, well-educated husband, Uncle Wal Kemp, in Dandenong as a child. Mum told wonderful stories of going on hayrides to country dances with her cousins May and Les when visiting the Kemps’ farm in Cranbourne during her youth. A chance discovery concerning Auntie Beat and Auntie Ada surprised my sister and mother during a family history quest some years ago. Checking out the death certificate of my great grandfather, George Charles Beech Hooper, they found him listed as having children with two women. A marriage certificate was found only for the first, a Janet ‘Jessie’ Wipers. Jessie was the mother of a boy George, two girls, Beatrice and Ada, and a baby girl who died shortly after birth. We will never know the story behind the collapse of this marriage. Perhaps Jessie, who had four children in a short time one of whom died, became unwell, perhaps with PND, and moved to Sydney to live where here parents lived, taking young George with her. Perhaps George wasn’t free to marry again? It seems that he and our great grandmother, Emma Jane Jackson, were never married. How did great grandfather George meet my great grandmother Emma Jane? We know he was a clerk at the Melbourne Steamship Company which was owned by a member of Emma Jane’s late brother’s family. Perhaps Emma Jane had been employed as a governess for little Beatrice and Ada? Was she ‘in the picture’ before Jessie relocated to Sydney. We will never know. The existence of our great grandfather’s first wife Jessie Wipers came as quite a shock to my mother and her cousins! Whether married or not, my Hooper grandparents, George and Emma, are remembered as a loving couple. Beatrice and Ada were raised as their children. They had seven other children together who all, interestingly, appear to have worked with J C Williamson’s Theatre Company in some capacity, the girls as dancers and choreographers, the boys in stage management, book-keeping roles. Born to Emma Jane in 1876, ‘Auntie Min’ was, by the time I knew her, a formidable woman who achieved acclaim and some notoriety as a ballerina/actress, then as J. C. Williamson’s ballet mistress and choreographer. Music scores and programs from the ballets Auntie Min had choreographed were kept amongst theatre memorabilia at my grandparents’ house; hearing about them was a magical part of my childhood. The family was particularly proud that Auntie Min ‘had taught Robert Helpmann to dance!’ Clearly a woman of spirit, Auntie Min had taken J C Williamson’s to court when they refused to pay her for two weeks when the theatre was closed during the Spanish influenza epidemic. Although Auntie Min received recognition and accumulated considerable wealth, her life was affected by sadness. Her son, John Rose, who mum described as a ‘change of life baby’, had a disability related to encephalitis and struggled throughout his life. Through family history research I discovered that Auntie Min had given birth to two little boys prior to John, both of whom had died not long after birth. A devout Christian Scientist who owned a beautiful house overlooking Sydney Harbour, widowed Auntie Min left her wealth to the Christian Science Church in Cremorne who had promised to watch out for John. John died alone and anonymously, with our family not being informed of his death until making enquiries many years later. ‘Auntie Ede’ or Edie was always spoken of in relation to farming however had also been a dancer, with an early photo of her in a Pierrot costume amongst family photos in an old trunk which found its way to her granddaughter in Yarrawonga a year or so ago. A beautiful young woman, Auntie Ede left the ballet to marry John Moore, a young Englishman who was keen to farm in Australia. They moved to Foster in Gippsland, establishing a farm and raising four daughters, Violet, Dot, and twins Ida and Ena, none of whom became dancers. Perhaps Edie told her daughters that working in the theatre was a very hard life, as my grandmother had told her daughters. I enjoyed visiting Aunt Ede in her 90’s when she was in care at Toora Hospital in 1971-2. Auntie Ede had my grandmother’s wide smile and reminded me of her. I was teaching at nearby Yarram High School - It was good to be able to report back to my grandmother about my visits to Auntie Ede when I returned to Melbourne. I met my grandmother’s eldest brother, ‘Uncle Alf’, once or twice in Sydney. He lived in Chatswood near my aunt who took me to visit him when I was there on holidays. A kind and friendly man, Uncle Alf struggled with health issues throughout his life. Tall and thin, he may have had polio as a child as he is reported to have had a limp. ‘Later in life’ Uncle Alf married a woman our family barely spoke of, however my understanding from her relatives is that she loved him deeply and that he was treasured by her family. Auntie Ede’s family told me Alf always corresponded with her and often visited their farm in Gippsland. ‘Uncle Charlie’, a rather dapper gentleman, didn’t really make an impression on me, however I do remember his wife, another ‘Auntie Ada’. Auntie Ada was a talented dressmaker who had taught dressmaking at the Sydney Technical College. I have memories of seeing a dressmaker’s dummy and beautiful embroidered lingerie lying on a table at their house. Ruby, their only daughter, was much loved by my mother. ‘Kindred spirits’ of the same age, they shared many memories. I loved diverting to Cooma to take mum to visit Ruby when we were en route to Sydney. They would talk for hours, then walk hand in hand back to the car like little girls when it was time to leave. ‘Auntie Rube’, possibly my grandmothers’ favourite sister, was still beautiful in her seventies when we had afternoon tea with my mother’s sister Joyce in Sydney. Ruby was with her loving ‘Studebaker’ car selling husband ‘Uncle Alva’ (Alva Moses), possibly the first person from the United States I met. Auntie Rube dearly loved my mother and her sister as children, spending time with them whenever possible and spoiling them with presents. Perhaps she couldn’t have children herself. Auntie Rube had apparently had other suitors before meeting and marrying Uncle Alva when she was 34. A dancer then dance mistress with J C Williamson, Auntie Rube lived in an apartment on the top floor of a blue stone building in ‘The Rocks’. We loved visiting there. My brother and I would spend as much time as we could in the beautiful wrought iron but rather clanky lift cage, going up and down as we pretended to be lift attendants. Like Auntie Min, and through astute investments, Auntie Rube at one stage was apparently one of the wealthiest women in Sydney. Finally, my grandmother’s closest sister in age, ‘Auntie Vi’. Regarded as a Melbourne beauty, Auntie Vi danced but also had a beautiful contralto voice and spent some time with the Royal Comic Opera. On a concert tour of New Zealand, Violet met the love of her life, tall and handsome widower ‘Jack’ Carl. My mother described them as a very close and loving couple. Jack became the doorman at Her Majesty’s Theatre when he moved to Melbourne where their lives continued to be involved in the theatre. Jack’s sudden death in 1942 left Auntie Vi bereft and lonely. I remember visiting her little single fronted terrace house in a square near Rathdowne Street in Carlton. My grandmother would always check to see how Auntie Vi was before children were invited in. I can remember sometimes waiting on the porch outside and suspect that, when we weren’t allowed in, Auntie Vi had been drinking. Auntie Vi and Jack Carl are still present in my life as I have her oval mirrored oak dressing table and Uncle Jack’s cedar chest in my bedrooms. I discovered during my family history journey that Uncle Jack had had a son in New Zealand and was able to send his tiny gold edged bible, signed by his mother in 1899, to his granddaughter Penny, who was thrilled to receive it. There you have it! I have cherished memories and stories of Beatrice, Ada, Minnie, Edie, Alf, Charlie, Ruby and Violet. My grandmother Lily, along with my mother and aunt, clearly loved her brothers and sisters and wherever possible included them in our lives. I feel so lucky to have known and be able to write about Beatrice, Ada, Minnie, Edith, Alf, Charlie, Ruby and Violet who were all born almost a century and a half ago. How truly amazing to be able to do this! Next project…. ‘The Devitts’…. Bev Lee February 2020 |
The Journey ...An 'occasional blog' recording elements of my renewed family history journey. This is the second wave in my 'family history' journey. The first lasted from 2010 to 2014. with intermittent bursts since then. It's time to revisit, to share more stories, to edit, to tackle uncertainties... Categories
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April 2024
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