Henry Hickmott

Henry was born on 30 Jul 1825 in Pembury, Kent. He died of ‘senility exhaustion’ on 16 May 1914 in Rochester, Bendigo, Vic. Australia. At the age of 24 years, he and Sophia (21) and their daughters Emma (1) and Eliza (infant) boarded the sailing ship EMILY at the port of London on 6pm on 3 May 1849. They departed soon after and arrived in Port Adelaide on 8 August 1849.

GEDCOM Note

<p>As described above, Henry was born in Pembury in Kent on 30 July 1825. He moved back to Lamberhurst with his father and brothers after his step-mother, Eliza Tester, died in 1829. Henry would havehad no memories of his own mother, Harriet, who died not long after he was born. While in Lamberhurst, Henry and his brothers were lodged in the local parish poor house from at least December 1833 until April 1835. Also present were a number of other members of the Hickmott clan including Thomas’ wife Jane and their five children. In spite of the family’s parlous financial circumstances it islikely that Henry and his brothers and cousins received a basic education, initially in the poor house - where children were said to be ‘well instructed and conducted’ - and, on leaving, at the Lamberhurst National School. This was established in 1836 by Robert Hawkins using money obtained from both the government and the ‘National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in Accordance with the Principles of the Established Church’. At the time the National School had as its master and mistress a Samuel and Ann Beslee who lived in part of the Poor House and had their normal salaries supplemented by weekly payments of 3d, 2d or 1d by the children’s parents. </p><p> </p><p>Henry was probably working as a labourer or an apprentice brickmaker when his father was arrestedand tried for sheep stealing in 1840. He eventually gravitated to London where he married his first wife, Sophia Goldsmith, in the Parish Church of Hackney in Middlesex on 18 June 1848. Henry and Sophia both lived at Lea Bridge Terrace at the time. The marriage was witnessed by a James and Mary Ann Goldsmith who, like Sophia, signed the certificate with a ‘mark’ (Henry signed his name). Henry’s father, Samuel, was said on the certificate to be a labourer while Sophia’s father, John Goldsmith, was a carpenter.</p><p> </p><p>Less than a year after their marriage, the couple decidedto migrate to Australia. This momentous decision may have been motivated by Henry’s desire to be reunited with his father or by a simple determination to escape the bustle and grime of London life.The incentive to go was probably heightened by advertisements appearing in the London newspapers at the time encouraging artisans of all kinds - including brickmakers and bricklayers - to take up offers of free passage to Australia. Perhaps because he had had news from people who were already there, Henry chose to emigrate to the newest of these in South Australia. And so, at the age of 23 years,he and Sophia (21) and their daughters Emma (1) and Eliza (infant) boarded the sailing ship EMILY at the port of London on 6pm on 3 May 1849. They departed soon after and arrived in Port Adelaide on 8 August 1849. </p><p> </p><p>Henry and his family spent little time in Adelaide which then consisted of tents and other forms of temporary housing interspersed among a scattering of more substantial but only recently constructed buildings. They were destined for the town of Mount Barker which was situated some 21 miles inland and on the outskirts of which, at a place called Littlehampton, were a number of recently established brickworks. The journey, most likely by either horse and cart or bullock-drawn wagon, took several days and required them initially to negotiate the steep climb from the port of Adelaide to the top of the surrounding bush covered ranges. On reaching the top they could look back and see the whole of the Adelaide township, the creek and all the vessels lying at anchor, and the sea stretching beyond to the horizon. In front of them were deep, tree-covered valleys with other hills rising directly behind them. While tired from the climb, much of which had to madeon foot in order to reduce the stress on the animals, it is likely that they, like travellers before and since, were struck by the sheer beauty of the scene before them, and exhilarated by thought that they were to be pioneers in this strange and silent land.</p><p> </p><p>The township of Mount Barker had been proclaimed in 1836 and surveyed three years later. At the time of the family’s arrival, it contained a local court and police barracks, a post-office, and two inns of which the Crown Hotel was thought the better establishment. Their initial impressions of the place were likely tohave been quite favourable since the first settlers had sought, with some success, to adapt the local landscape to reflect that of rural England. The district at the time was thus ‘a grassy park landscape with formal hedgerows of gorse and hawthorn … [where] the gardens abounded in British fruits and vegetables and the avenues were lined with the loveliest forest trees and garden flowers’ (Schmidt, p. 55). The impression of rural England was enhanced by the fact that most of the existing dwellings were ‘wattle and daub’ constructions, with whitewashed walls and thatched roofs. The rich black soil was also perfect for growing potatoes whose deep green foliage covered large parts of the valley and were cultivated by the many German and Irish labourers who had come to South Australia. Not everyone was entranced by Mount Barker however. A visitor to the area in 1851 subsequently reported that the place was neither very populous nor attractive:</p><p> </p><p>As a ‘London Brickmaker’, Henry would have been employed at either Hombin’s brickyards, which was located near the Great Eastern Hotel in Littlehampton, or McDonald’s brickyards that was on the northeast corner of the site of the present Mount Barker showgrounds. These had both been established in 1847 and supplied the bricks for the houses that began to replace the older wattle and daub establishments. These included Harrowfield House which remains in place today and, as Bob Schmidt described, attracted considerable local interest when it was first built: ‘people came from all parts of the districtto inspect it as it was the first brick house in the district, and was roofed with a new roofing material; galvanized iron’.[6] </p><p> </p><p>While at Mount Barker, Henry and Sophia had two further children: Rebecca (born in April 1851) and Henry Edward who was born on 17 May 1852. Since no government schools were established in the area until the 1870s, it is likely that their older children went to either the Saint James School at Blakiston, which was established in 1847 and to which many children from Mount Barker made the daily trek across the hill to attend, or one of the other privately run ‘cottage schools’ which operated throughout the district. </p><p> </p><p>Sometime after Henry Edward’s birth, Sophia Goldsmith died and Henry married Harriet Waters in Adelaideon 24 July 1853. Harriet, who was 20 years old, also came from Kent in England. The newly weds had two children while in South Australia: James John, who was born in Meadows on 24 December 1854 and Sophia who was born around 1856 and probably died soon after. Sometime after Sophia’s birth, Henry and his family packed up their possessions and travelled overland to Victoria probably, along with thousands of others, in search of gold. After spending some time at Pleasant Creek (now Stawell), where their son Samuel (1857-1877) was born, they moved on to Clunes where they lived for the next fifteen years.</p><p> </p><p>Clunes was named by the Scot Donald Campbell when he squatted there in 1839. The discovery of gold in the late 1840s led to an influx of people into the area and, in the same year Henry and Harriet left Mount Barker, the opening of a major underground mine which was jointly owned by the Port Phillip and the Quartz Gold Mining Companies. This saw the expansion of the earlier cluster of huts and tents into a sizable town at which there were considerable working opportunities not only for miners but a range of skilled artisans and craftsmen like Henry. By 1861 the population of Clunes was 1080 and the town contained over 470 dwellings. It had its own council, a number of schools and churches and, in the fashion of the times, a range of lodges and societies including the Freemasons, Oddfellows, Rechabites, Good Templars and Hiberians.</p><p> </p><p>While at Clunes, Henry worked mainly as a brickmaker[7] although his obituary indicates that he, and possibly the family as well, may have spent some time during this period at both the Ballarat and Bendigo diggings. He and his family initially lived out of town near the bridge on the Back Creek road. Whilethere Harriet was called before an inquest, held on 24 September 1861, into the death of a 12-month old boy, Samuel Snell. The one year-old Samuel had accidentally drowned in a hole that had been dugat the rear of his parent’s house. Living next door to the Snells, Harriet had heard the mother scream and had come to her assistance, placing the child into warm water and sending for the doctor.[8] The proceedings of the Clunes Police Court showed that Henry’s brickmaking business, and his fortunes generally, waxed and waned over the ensuing years. Faced with mounting debts he was declared insolvent on 16 May 1862 and forced to start again. In 1863 he was brought before the court on three separate occasions for failing to pay for a range of goods and services. In spite of these problems he was able, on 8 June 1864, to pay 14 pounds, seventeen shillings for another block of land at Clunes to which the family moved. On 18 November 1864 he successfully sued a John Edmonson for twelve shillings and sixpence for ‘damage done by pigs trespassing’ but was ordered, in August the following year, to pay nearly four times this amount to a James Greenhill for ‘firewood sold and delivered’. That Henry continued to work as a brickmaker was clear from a report contained in the 27 August edition of the Creswick and Clunes Advertiser of an inquest, at which Henry was a witness, intoa fire in the stables of a Jesse Wellington. </p><p> </p><p>While at Clunes Henry also saw his three eldest daughters marry: Eliza to Robert Osborne in 1863, Emma to Ritchard Mitchell in 1866 and Rebecca to a Cornish farmer, Joseph Colmer Smith, in 1869. After giving birth to two boys in Clunes in 1865 and 1867, Eliza moved to Amherst and then to Eganstown where she died in 1912. Emma and her family remained in Clunes before moving to East Charlton in 1878 where they settled on land at Buckrabanyule. Rebecca and Joseph lived initially on a farm at Waubra (located about 20 miles southwestof Clunes) before moving to the area around Lalbert in around 1878.</p><p> </p><p>In 1872, Henry and Harriet and their family moved to East Charlton in Victoria where Henry established a brickyards in the township and bought a farm at Wooroonooke which was then known as Watson’s Lakes. Although white people first moved into the Charlton area in around 1844, the numbers there remained quitesmall until after the Land Enactment Act of 1869 which enabled people like Henry and Harriet to settle on 320 acre blocks and pay them off over a period of twenty years. Other families who moved intothe area at this time included that of James Jenkyn who had been a miner at Creswick and Ballarat and who settled on land at Buckrabanyule in April 1874. James’ son Thomas would later marry Henry’s granddaughter Mary Sophia Mitchell and have five children all in Charlton. A second pioneering family whose descendents would marry those of the Hickmotts was the Dews who lived on an adjoining property at Watson’s Lakes. </p><p> </p><p>As Grace Cadzow described in her book Charlton and the Vale of the Avoca, by 1874 most of the land that had been made available in 1869 had been taken upand the area was thriving. ‘Huts and cottages were built, using local timber, paddocks were fenced and the roads were busy with wagons and bullock drays. The newcomers arriving during a period of good years, found abundant pastures and the country seemed a veritable paradise’. There were some 2000 people in the area with 300 living in the township itself. This contained four churches, a flourmill and a general store that described itself as ‘the emporium of the north’. Following petitions from the locals, a school - State School No 1480 - was opened at Charlton East on 14 January 1875. According to an article published in the East Charlton Tribune a few years later, the initial school was a pretty ordinary ‘edifice’ which ‘the meanest Chinese hut in the colony surpassed…both in symmetry and comfort’. Nonetheless, within this initial timber and bark construction, which measured a mere 14 feet by 10 feet, some 42 children were taught, including a number of Hickmotts and their relatives. </p><p> </p><p>But the good times did not last and the settlers around Charlton were soon confronted by the droughts, dust storms and rabbit plagues that were a feature of Mallee life and made it difficult to fulfil their licence requirements (the records of the local licence boards showed that, throughout this time, there was an enormous turnover in licence holdings). As the East Charlton Tribune complained in 27 July 1878, returning a profit was made still more difficult by the absence of any rail link to the area. This placed the farmer ‘at a great disadvantage [since] when produce has to be carted fifty or sixty miles, it leaves a very small margin for profit after all expenses [including] the wear and tear of wagons and other vehicles used for the conveyances’ are paid for. The main problem that faced the early settlers of Charlton, however, was obtaining a reliable water supply. In the drought years, water had to be carted from surrounding rivers and lakes, and families would have to do their washing at communal washing points such as the ‘Sheep Wash Dam’.</p><p> </p><p>The hardships facing Henry and his family were compounded on 14 February 1877 when Harriet and her 19-year old son, Samuel, were struck by lightning on the front step of their home in East Charlton and killed instantly. The St Arnaud Mercury recorded the event as follows:</p><p> </p><p>OBIT: About 5pm on Wednesday a severe thunderstorm burst over East Charlton, and an hour later Mrs Hickmott and her son Samuel (a youth of 18 or 20) had just returned to their home in that township after a visit to a selection belonging to the family at Watson’s Lakes, when a flash of lightning struck them both dead in the doorway of their house, at the same time killing a dog that stood near them. Mrs Hickmott was thrown several yards out of the building, the apparel around her chest and shoulders being set ablaze, and her face much disfigured by the electric current, which appears to have struck her on the head and travelled down her right side. Her son Samuel was smitten on the right shoulder the current passing diagonally across his body until it came to his heart, his clothing being burnt even to the undershirt. Another son, named James, who was indoors at the time, was struck on the left forearm and hip, and for a time was paralysed, but has since recovered. A man who was also in the house at the time was rendered insensible for several minutes, and when he returned to consciousness, found Mrs Hickmott and Samuel dead, and their clothes burning. The Hickmott family resided at Clunes and St Arnaud before they went to East Charlton, and were much respected in each of the places named.</p><p> </p><p>In the following year, Henry’s son-in-law, Richard Mitchell, had his hand caught in a stripping machine while helping harvest Henry’s crop at Wooroonooke. He was taken to the St Arnaud Hospital where, unfortunately, he had to have the hand amputated. The East Charlton Tribune reported, on 30 November 1878, that, although very weak, Richard was improving slowly and ‘no serious symptoms have presented themselves’. </p><p> </p><p>It is likely that, on 27 November 1878, Henry attended the farewell for his friend and neighbour, the proprietor of the local sawmill William Nalder. This was held at Yates’ Hotel at West Charlton where ‘about 40 persons sat down to a sumptuous repast’. Following the speeches, ‘the room was cleared for dancing which was kept up until an early hour in the morning’. It is possible that Henry was accompanied by the widow Margaret Ann Kaye, who he married three months later at a Mr Burton’s at Wooroonooke. The wedding certificate showed that Henry was then aged 53 years and that he had had 15 children (eight living and seven dead). Margaret had two children (both living).[9] The couple, together with Henry’s older children, may also have gone to see Madame Sibley, the ‘renowned phrenologist and mesmerist’, who visited East Charlton in January 1879 and greatly entertained her audiences in the Globe assembly rooms. They almost certainly would have joined the crowd of onlookers who applauded ‘the antics of the lords of the soil’ in a grand corroboree held in the square adjacent to the East Charlton Hotel on 22 March of the same year.</p><p> </p><p>After his marriage, Henry continued to live on his farm at West Charlton. While normally helped by his sons, he often also took on casual labourers to do specific jobs. One such person was a John Cooper who was hired, in the second half of 1879, to grub mallee roots from Henry’s land and who subsequently took Henry to court for not paying him his dues (even though he had not finished the work). The case attracted the attention of the editor of the East Charlton Tribune who reported on it with some glee:</p><p> </p><p>The complainant [Cooper], who possessed only a sinister daylight, stated his case in grandiose language. He had engaged with the defendant to do certain grubbing, but claimed to have expressly stipulated that he was not to be required to work after the beginning of the harvest …[andso was simply] to do all he could by 1 December. The bench which had occasionally to control the hyperbolic flights of the complainant, who, while he addressed the court, indulged in the lavatorial process of ‘washing his hands with invisibles soap, in imperceptible water’, decided on the complainant’s own showing that they had no jurisdiction and dismissed the case. </p><p> </p><p>The 1899 referendum recorded Henry Hickmott as a ‘gentleman’ who lived at Barrakee. In 1913 he went to live with his youngest son Joseph and his family at Pine Grove near Rochester where he died of‘senility exhaustion’ on 16 May 1914. He was buried the following day at the Pannoobawawm Cemetery. According to the Rochester Express, a number of friends attended the funeral including, as coffin bearers, a M. Dullard, G. Windridge, B. S. Whinfield and A. and O. Chappell. Henry’s grave, according to Emma Hickmott’s great, great-grandson Wal Jenkyn, ‘is marked only with a plain metal name-plate "Henry Hickmott", a seemingly inadequate testimony to Henry’s long and eventful life.</p>

GEDCOM Note

<p>As described above, Henry was born in Pembury in Kent on 30 July 1825. He moved back to Lamberhurst with his father and brothers after his step-mother, Eliza Tester, died in 1829. Henry would haveha</p><p><p>d no memories of his own mother, Harriet, who died not long after he was born. While in Lamberhurst, Henry and his brothers were lodged in the local parish poor house from at least December 1833 until</p></p><p><p> April 1835. Also present were a number of other members of the Hickmott clan including Thomas’ wife Jane and their five children. In spite of the family’s parlous financial circumstances it is li</p></p><p><p>kely that Henry and his brothers and cousins received a basic education, initially in the poor house - where children were said to be ‘well instructed and conducted’ - and, on leaving, at the Lamb</p></p><p><p>erhurst National School. This was established in 1836 by Robert Hawkins using money obtained from both the government and the ‘National Societyfor Promoting the Education of the Poor in Accordance </p></p><p><p>with the Principles of the Established Church’. At the time the National School had as its master and mistress a Samuel and Ann Beslee who lived in part of the Poor House and had their normal salari</p></p><p><p>es supplemented by weekly payments of 3d, 2d or 1d by the children’s parents. </p></p><p><p></p></p><p><p>Henry wasprobably working as a labourer or an apprentice brickmaker when his father was arrested and tried for sheep stealing in 1840. He eventually gravitated to London where he married his first wi</p></p><p><p>fe, Sophia Goldsmith, in the Parish Church of Hackney in Middlesex on 18 June 1848. Henry and Sophia both lived at Lea Bridge Terrace at the time. The marriage was witnessed by a James and Mary Ann Go</p></p><p><p>ldsmith who, like Sophia, signed the certificate with a ‘mark’ (Henry signed his name). Henry’s father, Samuel, was said on the certificate to be a labourer while Sophia’s father, John Goldsmi</p></p><p><p>th, was a carpenter.</p></p><p><p></p></p><p><p>Less than a year after their marriage, the couple decided to migrate to Australia. This momentous decision may have been motivated by Henry’s desire to be reunited with his father or by a simple det</p></p><p><p>ermination to escape the bustle and grime of London life. The incentive to go was probably heightened by advertisements appearing in the London newspapers at the time encouraging artisans of all kinds</p></p><p><p> - including brickmakers and bricklayers - to take up offers of free passage to Australia. Perhaps because he had had news from people who were already there, Henry chose to emigrate to the newest of </p></p><p><p>these in South Australia. And so, at the age of 23 years, he and Sophia (21) and their daughters Emma (1) and Eliza (infant) boarded the sailing ship EMILY at the port of London on 6pm on 3 May 1849. </p></p><p><p>They departed soon after and arrived in Port Adelaide on 8 August 1849. </p></p><p><p></p></p><p><p>Henry and his family spent little time in Adelaide which then consisted of tents and other forms of temporary housing interspersed among a scattering of more substantial but only recently constructed </p></p><p><p>buildings. They were destined for the town of Mount Barker which was situated some 21 miles inland and on the outskirts of which, at a place called Littlehampton, were a number of recently established</p></p><p><p> brickworks. The journey, most likely by either horse and cart or bullock-drawn wagon, took several days and required them initially tonegotiate the steep climb from the port of Adelaide to the top o</p></p><p><p>f the surrounding bush covered ranges. On reaching the top they could look back and see the whole of the Adelaide township, the creek and all the vessels lying at anchor, and the sea stretching beyond</p></p><p><p> to the horizon. In front of them were deep, tree-covered valleys with other hills rising directly behind them. While tired from the climb, much of which had to made on foot in order to reduce the str</p></p><p><p>ess on the animals, it is likely that they, like travellers before and since, were struck by the sheer beauty of the scene before them, and exhilarated by thought that they were to be pioneers in this</p></p><p><p> strange and silent land.</p></p><p><p></p></p><p><p>The township of Mount Barker had been proclaimed in 1836 and surveyed three years later. At the time of the family’s arrival, it contained a local court and police barracks, a post-office, and two i</p></p><p><p>nns of whichthe Crown Hotel was thought the better establishment. Their initial impressions of the place were likely to have been quite favourable since the first settlers had sought, with some succe</p></p><p><p>ss, to adapt the local landscape to reflect that of rural England. The district at the time was thus ‘a grassy park landscape with formal hedgerows of gorse and hawthorn … [where] the gardens abou</p></p><p><p>nded in British fruits and vegetables and the avenues were lined with the loveliest forest trees and garden flowers’ (Schmidt, p. 55). The impression of rural England was enhanced bythe fact that m</p></p><p><p>ost of the existing dwellings were ‘wattle and daub’ constructions, with whitewashed walls and thatched roofs. The rich black soil was also perfect for growing potatoes whose deep green foliage co</p></p><p><p>vered large parts of the valley and were cultivated by the many German and Irish labourers who had come to South Australia. Not everyone was entranced by Mount Barker however. A visitor to the area in</p></p><p><p> 1851 subsequently reported that the place was neither very populous nor attractive:</p></p><p><p></p></p><p><p>As a ‘London Brickmaker’, Henry would have been employed at either Hombin’s brickyards, which was located near the Great Eastern Hotel in Littlehampton, or McDonald’s brickyards that was on th</p></p><p><p>e northeast corner of the site of the present Mount Barker showgrounds. These had both been established in 1847 and supplied the bricks for the houses that began to replace the older wattle and daub e</p></p><p><p>stablishments. These included Harrowfield House which remains in place today and, as Bob Schmidt described, attracted considerable local interest when it was first built: ‘people came from all parts</p></p><p><p> of the district to inspect it as it was the first brick house in the district, and was roofed with a new roofing material; galvanized iron’.[6] </p></p><p><p></p></p><p><p>While at Mount Barker, Henry and Sophia had two further children: Rebecca (born in April 1851) and Henry Edward who was born on 17 May 1852. Since no government schools were established in the area un</p></p><p><p>til the 1870s, it is likely that their older children went to either the Saint James School at Blakiston, which was established in 1847 and to which many children from Mount Barker made the daily trek</p></p><p><p> across the hill to attend, or one of the other privately run ‘cottage schools’ which operated throughout the district. </p></p><p><p></p></p><p><p>Sometime after Henry Edward’s birth, Sophia Goldsmith died and Henry married Harriet Waters in Adelaide on 24 July 1853. Harriet, who was 20 years old, also came from Kent in England. The newly weds</p></p><p><p> had two children while in South Australia: James John, who was born in Meadows on 24 December 1854 and Sophia who was born around 1856 and probably died soon after. Sometime after Sophia’s birth, H</p></p><p><p>enry and his family packed up their possessions and travelled overland to Victoria probably, along with thousands of others, in search of gold. After spending some time at Pleasant Creek (now Stawell)</p></p><p><p>, where their son Samuel (1857-1877) was born, they moved on to Clunes where they lived for the next fifteen years.</p></p><p><p></p></p><p><p>Clunes was named by the Scot Donald Campbell when he squatted there in 1839. The discovery of gold in the late 1840s led to an influx of people into the area and, in the same year Henry and Harriet le</p></p><p><p>ft Mount Barker, the opening of a major underground mine which was jointly owned by the Port Phillip and the Quartz Gold Mining Companies. This saw the expansion of the earlier cluster of huts and ten</p></p><p><p>ts into a sizable town at which there were considerable working opportunities not only for miners but a range of skilled artisans and craftsmen like Henry. By 1861 the population of Clunes was 1080 an</p></p><p><p>d the town contained over 470 dwellings. It had its own council, a number of schools and churches and, in the fashion of the times, a range of lodges and societies including the Freemasons, Oddfellows</p></p><p><p>, Rechabites, Good Templars and Hiberians.</p></p><p><p></p></p><p><p>While at Clunes, Henry worked mainly as a brickmaker[7] although his obituary indicates that he, and possibly the family as well, may have spent some time during this period at both the Ballarat and B</p></p><p><p>endigo diggings. He and his family initially lived out of town near the bridge on the Back Creek road. Whilethere Harriet was called before an inquest, held on 24 September 1861, into the death of a </p></p><p><p>12-month old boy, Samuel Snell. The one year-old Samuel had accidentally drowned in a hole that had been dug at the rear of his parent’s house. Living next door to the Snells, Harriet had heard the </p></p><p><p>mother scream and had come to her assistance, placing the child into warm water and sending for the doctor.[8] The proceedings of the Clunes Police Court showed that Henry’s brickmaking business, an</p></p><p><p>d his fortunes generally, waxed and waned over the ensuing years. Faced with mounting debts he was declared insolvent on 16 May 1862 and forced to start again. In 1863 he was brought before the court</p></p><p><p> on three separate occasions for failing to pay for a range of goods and services. In spite of these problems he was able, on 8 June 1864, to pay 14 pounds, seventeen shillings for another block of la</p></p><p><p>nd at Clunes to which the family moved. On 18 November 1864 he successfully sued a John Edmonson for twelve shillings and sixpence for ‘damage done by pigs trespassing’ but was ordered, in August </p></p><p><p>the following year, to pay nearly four times this amount to a James Greenhill for ‘firewood sold and delivered’. That Henry continued to work as a brickmaker was clear from a report contained in t</p></p><p><p>he 27 August edition of the Creswick and Clunes Advertiser of an inquest, at which Henry was a witness, into a fire in the stables of a Jesse Wellington. </p></p><p><p></p></p><p><p>While at Clunes Henry also saw his three eldest daughters marry: Eliza to Robert Osborne in 1863, Emma to Ritchard Mitchell in 1866 and Rebecca to a Cornish farmer, Joseph Colmer Smith, in 1869. After</p></p><p><p> giving birth to two boys in Clunes in 1865 and 1867, Eliza moved to Amherst and then to Eganstown where she died in 1912. Emma and her family remained in Clunes before moving to East Charlton in 1878</p></p><p><p>where they settled on land at Buckrabanyule. Rebecca and Joseph lived initially on a farm at Waubra (located about 20 miles southwest of Clunes) before moving to the area around Lalbert in around 187</p></p><p><p>8.</p></p><p><p></p></p><p><p>In 1872, Henry and Harriet and their family moved to East Charlton in Victoria where Henry established a brickyards in the township and bought a farm at Wooroonooke which was then known as Watson’s </p></p><p><p>Lakes. Although white people first moved into the Charlton area in around 1844, the numbers there remained quite small until after the Land Enactment Act of 1869 which enabled people like Henry and Ha</p></p><p><p>rriet to settle on 320 acre blocks and pay them off over a period of twenty years. Other families who moved into the area at this time included that of James Jenkyn who had been a miner at Creswick an</p></p><p><p>d Ballarat and who settled on land at Buckrabanyule in April 1874. James’ son Thomas would later marry Henry’sgranddaughter Mary Sophia Mitchell and have five children all in Charlton. A second p</p></p><p><p>ioneering family whose descendents would marry those of the Hickmotts was the Dews who lived on an adjoining property at Watson’s Lakes. </p></p><p><p></p></p><p><p>As Grace Cadzow described in her book Charlton and the Vale of the Avoca, by 1874 most of the land that had been made available in 1869 had been taken up and the area was thriving. ‘Huts and cottage</p></p><p><p>s were built, using local timber, paddocks were fenced and the roads were busy with wagons and bullock drays. The newcomers arriving during a period of good years, found abundant pastures and the coun</p></p><p><p>try seemed a veritable paradise’. There were some 2000 people in the area with 300 living in the township itself. This contained four churches, a flour mill and a general store that described itself</p></p><p><p> as ‘the emporium of the north’. Following petitions from the locals, a school - State School No 1480 - was opened at Charlton East on 14 January 1875. According to an article published in the Eas</p></p><p><p>t Charlton Tribune a few years later, the initial school was a pretty ordinary ‘edifice’ which ‘the meanest Chinese hut in the colony surpassed…both in symmetry and comfort’. Nonetheless, wi</p></p><p><p>thin this initial timber and bark construction, which measured a mere 14 feet by 10 feet, some 42 children were taught, including a number of Hickmotts and their relatives. </p></p><p><p></p></p><p><p>But the good times did not last and the settlers around Charlton were soon confronted by the droughts, dust storms and rabbit plagues that were a feature of Mallee life and made it difficult to fulfil</p></p><p><p> their licence requirements (the records of the local licence boards showed that, throughout this time, there was an enormous turnover in licence holdings). As the East Charlton Tribune complained in </p></p><p><p>27 July 1878, returning a profit was made still more difficult by the absence of any rail link to the area. This placed the farmer ‘at a great disadvantage [since] when produce has to be carted fift</p></p><p><p>y or sixty miles, itleaves a very small margin for profit after all expenses [including] the wear and tear of wagons and other vehicles used for the conveyances’ are paid for. The main problem that</p></p><p><p> facedthe early settlers of Charlton, however, was obtaining a reliable water supply. In the drought years, water had to be carted from surrounding rivers and lakes, and families would have to do the</p></p><p><p>ir washing at communal washing points such as the ‘Sheep Wash Dam’.</p></p><p><p></p></p><p><p>The hardships facing Henry and his family were compounded on 14 February 1877 when Harriet and her 19-year old son, Samuel, were struck by lightning on the front step of their home in East Charlton an</p></p><p><p>d killed instantly. The St Arnaud Mercury recorded the event as follows:</p></p><p><p></p></p><p><p>OBIT: About 5pm on Wednesday a severe thunderstorm burst over East Charlton, and an hour later Mrs Hickmott and her son Samuel (a youth of 18 or 20) had just returned to their home in that township a</p></p><p><p>fter a visit to a selection belonging to the family at Watson’s Lakes, when a flash of lightning struck them both dead in the doorway of their house, at the same time killing a dog that stood near t</p></p><p><p>hem. Mrs Hickmott was thrown several yards out of the building, the apparel around her chest and shoulders being set ablaze, and her face much disfigured by the electric current, which appears to have</p></p><p><p> struck her on the head and travelled down her right side. Her son Samuel was smitten on the right shoulder the current passing diagonally across his body until it came to his heart, his clothing bein</p></p><p><p>g burnt even to the undershirt. Another son, named James, who was indoors at the time, was struck on the left forearm and hip, and for a time was paralysed, but has since recovered. A man who was also</p></p><p><p> in the house at the time was rendered insensible for several minutes, and when he returned to consciousness,found Mrs Hickmott and Samuel dead, and their clothes burning. The Hickmott family resided</p></p><p><p> at Clunes and St Arnaud before they went to East Charlton, and were much respected in each of the places named.</p></p><p><p></p></p><p><p>In the following year, Henry’s son-in-law, Richard Mitchell, had his hand caught in a stripping machine while helping harvest Henry’s crop at Wooroonooke. He was taken to the St Arnaud Hospital wh</p></p><p><p>ere, unfortunately, he had to have the hand amputated. The East Charlton Tribune reported, on 30 November 1878, that, although very weak, Richard was improving slowly and ‘no serious symptoms have p</p></p><p><p>resented themselves’. </p></p><p><p></p></p><p><p>It is likely that, on 27 November 1878, Henry attended the farewell for hisfriend and neighbour, the proprietor of the local sawmill William Nalder. This was held at Yates’ Hotel at West Charlton w</p></p><p><p>here ‘about 40 persons sat down to a sumptuous repast’. Following the speeches, ‘the room was cleared for dancing which was kept up until an early hour in the morning’. It is possible that Hen</p></p><p><p>ry was accompanied by the widow Margaret Ann Kaye, who he married three months later at a Mr Burton’s at Wooroonooke. The wedding certificate showed that Henry was then aged 53 years and that he had</p></p><p><p> had 15 children (eight living and seven dead). Margaret had two children (both living).[9] The couple, together with Henry’s older children, may also have gone to see Madame Sibley, the ‘renowned</p></p><p><p> phrenologist and mesmerist’, who visited East Charlton in January 1879 and greatly entertained her audiences in the Globe assembly rooms. They almost certainly would have joined the crowd of onlook</p></p><p><p>ers who applauded ‘the antics of the lords of the soil’ in a grand corroboree held in the square adjacent to the East Charlton Hotel on 22 March of the same year.</p></p><p><p></p></p><p><p>After his marriage, Henry continued to live on his farm at West Charlton. While normally helped by his sons, he often also took on casual labourers to do specific jobs. One such person was a John Coop</p></p><p><p>er who was hired, in the second half of 1879, to grub mallee roots from Henry’s land and who subsequently took Henry to court for not paying him his dues (even though he had not finished the work). </p></p><p><p>The case attracted the attention of the editor of the East Charlton Tribune who reported on it with some glee:</p></p><p><p></p></p><p><p>The complainant [Cooper], who possessed only a sinister daylight, stated his case in grandiose language. He had engaged with the defendant to do certain grubbing, but claimed to have expressly stipula</p></p><p><p>ted that he was not to be required to work after the beginning of the harvest …[and so was simply] to do all he could by 1 December. The bench which had occasionally to control the hyperbolic flight</p></p><p><p>s of the complainant, who, while he addressed the court, indulged in the lavatorial process of ‘washing his hands with invisibles soap, in imperceptible water’, decided on the complainant’s own </p></p><p><p>showing that they had no jurisdiction and dismissed the case. </p></p><p><p></p></p><p><p>The 1899 referendum recorded Henry Hickmott as a ‘gentleman’ who lived at Barrakee. In 1913 he went to livewith his youngest son Joseph and his family at Pine Grove near Rochester where he died o</p></p><p><p>f ‘senility exhaustion’ on 16 May 1914. He was buried the following day at the Pannoobawawm Cemetery. According to the Rochester Express, a number of friends attended the funeral including, as cof</p></p><p><p>fin bearers, a M. Dullard, G. Windridge, B. S. Whinfield and A. and O. Chappell. Henry’s grave, according to Emma Hickmott’s great, great-grandson Wal Jenkyn, ‘is marked only with a plain metal </p></p><p><p>name-plate "Henry Hickmott", a seemingly inadequate testimony to Henry’s long and eventful life.</p></p><p></p>

GEDCOM Note

<p>In 1849 Henry was aboard the 'EMILY' which left London at 6pm on 3rd May, arriving in Adelaide, SA, AUSTRALIA the same year.</p>While in SA he lived in Burra.