Thomas Ellis

THOMAS ELLIS (1825-1888)

Thomas Ellis was born in 1825 in Cornwall, the son of Alexander Ellis and Ann Merryfield, and was christened on 23 August 1825 at St. Just in Penwith, Cornwall. In the 1841 Census the family were living at Kelynack, south of the township of St. Just, where Alexander’s occupation was given as labourer. Thomas, who was 15 at the time was working as a mason.

In the late 1830’s advertisements began appearing in Cornish newspapers for prospective emigrants for South Australia. Initially they encouraged people to settle the land which was cheap and devoid of forests and therefore needed no clearance of trees, and an emphasis was placed on the fact that South Australia was not a convict colony. “Emigrants will not come into contact with the mass of inequity that prevails in other Australian colonies, as no convicts are permitted to be sent to this part of Her Majesties dominion. The morals of the emigrants and of their children will not be liable to receive that taint and corruption which it is impossible to avoid when they constantly associate with persons who have been transported for the most heinous offences”. (West Briton newspaper April 1839).

In 1844 copper was discovered at Kapunda and shortly after at Burra in 1845 and there was a great need for experienced miners and so started an exodus of miners from Cornwall. In April 1848 an advertisement appeared in the West Briton newspaper saying that Mr Wilcocks of Plymouth (an emigration agent) was arranging for passage on first class ships to sail from Plymouth taking steerage passengers at a very reduced rate of payment. He also stated that emigrants sent out last summer reported they received 7 shillings per day as soon as they arrived, and that beef and mutton is one penny per pound. It is perhaps an advertisement like this that inspired Thomas Ellis to emigrate to South Australia.

On the 26 August 1848 Thomas Ellis, a labourer and miner from Kelynack, married Jane Merrifield from Bosavern at St Just in Penwith. On the same day Jane’s brother James Merrifield married Ann Hocking at St. Just in Penwith. Both couples would leave together for South Australia only days later.

The “Rajah”, a barque of 332 tons, captained by Charles Ferguson, left London on 30 August 1848 and arrived at Plymouth on 9 September. It is most likely that Thomas, Jane, James and Ann embarked at Plymouth for the journey to South Australia. The Rajah arrived in Port Adelaide on 6 Jan 1849 and the passenger list showed that an infant Elizabeth Jane Ellis had been born at sea. Elizabeth would soon die as an infant.

Thomas probably started work at the Burra copper mine in 1849 when over 4000 people were living near the mine and because the laying out of the townships and the building of cottages could not keep pace with the demand some 2600 people were forced to camp along the Burra Burra Creek. Some people burrowed into the banks of the creek and constructed two or three rooms as a family home. On 3 April 1850 a daughter, Margaret Ann, was born at Burra and a second daughter, Elizabeth Jane (later known as “Janie”) was born there on 18 August 1852. In 1848 the miners at Burra were earning thirty shillings a week but by the time Thomas started work there the wages had been cut to 25 shillings a week. 1851 saw the beginning of an exodus from Burra to the newly discovered gold fields of Victoria. The Burra Burra Creek flooded three times in 1851 causing many people to lose all their possessions. An advanced party of Cornish miners left Burra in September 1851 for the goldfields and returned in October with positive reports of the goldfields and collected their families and belongings and returned to Victoria.

Thomas Ellis and his family themselves headed for the goldfields sometime between August 1852 and June 1854, where he is recorded as being a gold digger at Campbell’s Creek near Castlemaine at the time of his next daughter’s birth (Ellen) on 8 June 1854. Sometime between 1854 and November 1856 the Ellis’ moved to Amherst near Maryborough where Thomas worked as a gold digger.

Amherst used to be known as Daisy Hill and gold was first discovered there around May 1852, when a party of Germans going overland from Adelaide to Bendigo, got gold near the Amherst Cemetery, close to Daisy Hill. The first important rush to Daisy Hill started following the discovery of gold in Blacksmith’s Gully in December 1852. The locality was about a mile east of the later town, and was known as Cowley’s Rush. The first Gold Commissioner’s Camp was started at this time at Amherst. Gold was again discovered in March 1853 at Kangaroo Gully, and Grecian Gully was opened in May 1853. It is to Grecian Gully that the Ellis family came to live.

Whilst they were living at Amherst several large nuggets were discovered in the area. In December 1856 a 100 ounce nugget was found at Daisy Hill and in January 1859 Chinese diggers found nuggets of 54 and 110 ounces in Grecian Gully.

The last two children to be born to Thomas and Jane were born in Amherst; Isabella on 10 November 1856 and Thomas on 2 December 1857. In February 1863 Thomas’ wife Jane contracted chronic hepatitis and died on 23 March leaving five children between the ages of 6 and 13. She was buried at Amherst Cemetery with Thomas performing the duties of undertaker. Two of Thomas’ friends, Charles Tyack and James Hornsby, attended the funeral.

On 17 July 1867 Thomas left home for 5 days as he was working some distance from Amherst and left the oldest child Janie, then almost 16, in charge of the house. About 5 pm on 21 July he returned home to find the house empty. He then called on Senior Constable Woods who informed him that his daughter Janie had died suddenly that morning. Shortly after Thomas left Amherst on 17 July Jane started having back pains and younger sister Isabella would help her apply mustard plasters to relieve the pain. On the evening of 20 July Isabella went to bed early leaving Jane sitting by the fireplace. Isabella slept in a different room to Jane and was to hear nothing unusual during the night. A nearby neighbour, Mr Albert Pauls, who lived only 30-40 yards from the Ellis’, also heard or saw nothing unusual during the night or the following morning.

At 9 am on 21 July, Elizabeth Collings, wife of Richard Collings, visited the Ellis’ to find Jane lying on the sofa saying that she had been sick – her lips looked white. When she said she was about to get up Elizabeth Collings decided to leave. Isabella woke up and made Jane some tea and gave her some food. She helped Jane stand up in front of the fire but when she withdrew her support she fell down. She then assisted her back to the sofa and then into the rocking chair where she died. Thomas and Isabella then carried her into the bedroom and placed her on the floor and went for assistance.

It was about 10 am when Isabella arrived at the house of Peter and Jeanette Pauls. Jeanette returned to the Ellis’ house where Jane was dead on the floor. Mrs Pauls sent her son to get Mrs Collings and Mrs Buchan. At about 1 am Maria Buchan, wife of William Buchan, who lived 400 yards from the Ellis’ house, arrived after being informed by William Wellington. Mrs Pauls, Isabella and Thomas were still there. Elizabeth Collings returned to the house and at 11.30 am Senior Constable Michael Woods arrived accompanied by William Wellington. They noticed garments and blankets saturated by blood. Mrs Buchan informed Senior Constable Woods that a child had been born recently but there were no signs of a child in the room or around the house. Mrs Buchan, Mrs Pauls and Senior Constable Woods then searched the abandoned diggings near the house. They dragged a waterhole where there were signs of clothes saturated with blood. After about ½ hour they discovered a spot where the earth had been freshly removed to fill a 3 foot deep hole. The hole was an old mining pit and was close to a track and about 80 yards from the Ellis’ house. At the bottom of the hole they discovered an infant girl wrapped in calico with a strip of calico tied tightly around its neck.

The inquest into the deaths was held on 22 July 1867 at Amherst. The Coroner was James Syme Stewart. The post mortems were performed by Walter McEwan, a medical practitioner from Talbot who examined Jane and concluded that the cause of death was “exhaustion upon imperfect parturition”, and said that her life would have been saved if she had medical attention at the time. The baby had died of strangulation and the comment was made that the baby was “not all European blood”. The father of the baby was a negro.

Early in 1867 the Victorian Government appointed Francis Joseph Dowling as the Public Vaccinator for the Borough of Amherst. They had a program to vaccinate children at a young age against small pox and on 29 March 1868 Thomas Ellis took his son Thomas (junior), aged 6 months, to be vaccinated. On 5 April 1868 he took daughter Isabella, aged 18 months for her vaccination.

On 1 January 1870 Thomas Ellis married Louisa Garrett whose maiden name was Logan and was born at Bride on the Isle of Man. Her first husband died in 1850. Thomas and Louisa were married at the Wesleyan Church by Rev Woodall and the witnesses to sign the marriage certificate were Charles and Jane Tyack. Charles was a friend of Thomas, being a Cornishman himself, and came from Sethny Helston and left for South Australia in 1856 and arrived in Victoria in 1857.

On 10 September 1873 Thomas’ daughter Ellen got married at St John’s Church, Dunolly. She married James Mayman, a farmer from Bet Bet, and the son of David and Sarah Mayman, also from Bet Bet.

Thomas Ellis suffered from Phthisis which was a common complaint amongst the miners. It was caused from the inhalation of dust in the underground mines. On 26 October 1888 he died at Grecian Gully in Amherst aged 62, and was buried two days later at Amherst Cemetery. His second wife Louisa died two years later on 14 January 1890 at Wellington St, Maryborough. Her step-son-in-law, James Mayman lived in Maryborough at the time. Louisa had suffered heart disease for two years and died from dropsy.