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SHERWOOD
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| ALBUMS | GENEALOGY | ||
| BIBLES | REUNIONS | BIRTHDAY BOOK | RELATED SITES |
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ISAAC AND ELIZA FRY |
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(continued) The move to South Australia occurred sometime between Minnie’s birth in Kew on 6 May 1860 and the birth of her younger brother John William Fry on 18 April 1862. In the indexes for South Australian births John’s birthplace and the family’s residence is recorded as Nairne. Sadly for the family John died 6 weeks later. The following year (1866) Thomas Giles was born at Scotts Creek. Scotts Creek is 30 kilometres south-east of Adelaide. Isaac and Eliza’s daughter Helen Bertha was born in 1864 near Nairne and a son Ephraim in 1866 at Scotts Creek. Ephraim died the following year age 10 months. He died at Murdock Hill. Murdock Hill is situated in the Mount Lofty Ranges just north of the township of Nairne and was given as the family’s place of residence in 1867. The couple’s youngest child Arthur was born in 1868 at Dry Creek, near Nairne. I suspect this was meant to be Scotts Creek as Dry Creek is closer to Adelaide than it is to Nairne. From 1864 to 1871 Isaac appears in South Australian post office directories as a Farmer at Nairne. Living at Scotts Creek was Francis Fry, Isaac’s older brother. It had been more than 10 years since the brothers last met. The reunion must have been a special occasion, sharing news and meeting nephews, nieces and cousins, all of whom had never laid eyes on each other before. Isaac would have had news from home (albeit a couple of years old) about their father John and their brothers and sisters back home in Somerset. Francis Fry was a couple of years older than Isaac. They grew up together at Rooks Bridge and were the two youngest members of the family. Back in Somerset in 1841, Francis was working as a farm labourer for James and Rebekah Salter. The Salters were farmers in East Brent. Francis was 20 years old. Working for the Salters, alongside Francis was another farm labourer, 15-year-old Michael Atwell. Francis came to Adelaide in 1849 onboard the Himalaya. He married Grace Harry who also came out on the Himalaya with her parents that same year. The couple married at St. Johns church Adelaide 5 November 1850. They raised a family of 13 children. Francis and Jane were living in Adelaide (Hindmarsh) in the early 1850’s. They moved to Scotts Creek about 1855. Their son Francis Charles Fry died at Scotts Creek age 10 in 1873. Towards the latter part of the 1870’s the family moved back to Hindmarsh. Francis Fry died 28 April 1911, age 87 at Glanton Street West Hindmarsh. His wife Grace died at the same address 14 May 1907 age 75. It would have taken several months at least for news of the death of their brothers James and Robert Fry to reach Isaac and Francis. The brothers died at the Union Workhouse in Axbridge, Somerset. According to their death certificates James’ cause of death was ‘Decay of nature, diarrhoea certified’. Robert’s certificate reads ‘Diarrhoea of 17 days certified’. Their bodies were brought back to East Brent for burial on 18 May 1864. James was 61 and Robert 55. According to the 1861 census for the Axbridge Union Workhouse, Robert was unmarried and 46 years old and had prior to being admitted to the workhouse, worked as a farm labourer. A little over a year later Francis and Isaac’s father John died at Rooks Bridge, he was 88. George Denim, the Vicar of the East Brent church, performed the burial service. After 1871 there is no further mention of Isaac in South Australian Post Office directories. The family may have moved to Mt. Gambier. Minnie’s daughter Minnie Kelly is remembered as saying that her mother was a dressmaker. It is thought that Minnie learned dressmaking in Mt. Gambier. In the late 1870’s the family moved back to Victoria. The journey from Scotts creek to Mt. Gambier and then on to Victoria was probably made in a wagon. The family was larger and older now. Jane and Frank were in their early 20’s, Minnie was 18 or 19 and the youngest child Arthur about 10. The Frys were drawn to Victoria for much the same reasons the Sherwoods were at this time. They had, like thousands of other selectors, the opportunity to buy land from the government and pay it off over time. Large areas of crown land were made available in smaller parcels of around 320 acres. Prospective landowners would ‘select’ a piece of land by marking out the boundaries and then apply for a lease. In November 1879, Isaac applied for a license for 320 acres at Woorak West, 12 kilometres from Nhill. The property was next to land selected by Arthur Sherwood a year or so earlier. In April of 1880, Isaac Fry wrote to the Lands Department in Melbourne explaining that he had pegged out some land and paid the surveyors fees but had still not got the go ahead to move onto it. A transcript of the letter appears below.
Kiata
April 22 1880
Dear Sir I rigt this complaint as i don’t think i hav been delt
with ritly as I paged a block of land in the prash of woorack and it as
bean survyed nd I hav payed the survy fees on the 4 febuary but I hav
not bean called to the land and Mr mcdonald the manager of the station
tauld me that he ad rougt to master martin asking for the block to be
reserved and if he could not get it he would ask for a five chain road
wich would spoil the block as it would take a lot of the land.
I
don’t think it would be doing justis to me if eny of the land is
taking away from me as I hav bean waiting so long to get the land with
my family at a great expence and not geting a cropin this year and it is
not giving me a chance to get another block of land as the bstof the
land is going every day Dear sir I right this letter to you asking if
you would hav the kaindness to giv me sum information wat I best do I
remain yours humbel servent.
Isaac Fry.
Kaita
Isaac’s application for the land was eventually successful. He and Eliza went on to establish a farm at Woorak West. The task of converting scrubland into farmland suitable for growing wheat would have been a formidable task. It involved clearing trees and building fences to mark boundaries and keep the sheep and cattle in. A home had to be built in which to live and sheds and stables had to be erected. No doubt every member of the family worked together to do what had to be done. The following description of the Fry’s farm comes from Lands Department Files for the period 1885. The family home at Woorak West was almost square in shape. It measured 26 feet by 24 feet. It was made from Egyptian brick (mud brick) and had an iron roof. Two rooms of the house were “floored.” The farm had a stable with four stalls, a chaff house and yards. The land was used for growing wheat. The Fry’s neighbours were their son Frank Fry and Arthur Sherwood senior. Isaac and Eliza’s daughter Minnie married Arthur Sherwood in 1882. Jean Sherwood a great granddaughter of Isaac and Eliza was kind enough to write down some of the things she remembers her father Arthur Gordon Sherwood telling her about Isaac and Eliza. Things I remember my dad saying about the Frys, his
grandparents.
When the Frys left England to come to Australia Eliza Fry’s
father had just died but she couldn’t stay for the burial or they
would have missed their boat. Her
mother told her she would rather see her dead than come out here but as
she left gave her a bowl which was used as a christening bowl.
It was very old, made before they were able to put a bottom in so
had a cork to hold the water. All our family except Lorna and all the Kellys were
christened with it. It was
given to my grandmother and when she died to her oldest daughter but she
married a Catholic so I don’t think any of them were christened with
it. When my aunt died it
was given to her son Laurie Lynch and his wife Joan still has it. When
they first came to Australia they lived in Kew, Melbourne where my
grandmother was born. They
had two children when they left England Jane and Frank- Minnie was born
in Kew and Ellen and Arthur born in South Australia.
After they went to South Australia they worked on stations as a
married couple. Eliza would
cook for the men and Isaac worked out on the station.
The cooking was done outside in a camp oven.
One day she went out to cook the dinner and an old frill neck
lizard was in the oven. Each
time she went out near it, it stood up and puffed out its neck and as
she had never seen anything like it, got an awful fright.
There was no dinner for the men that day.
She told them there
was a terrible animal in the oven and she wasn’t going near it. They later came
back to Victoria and bought a farm at Woorak West.
Later my grandfather (Arthur Sherwood) bought the farm that
joined it and married their daughter Minnie so my dad saw a lot of his
grandparents (Eliza and Isaac) He was always very fond of Eliza but as a
small child was afraid of Isaac. Whenever he went to see Eliza she
always had an apple tart to give him and dad liked apple tarts. When he was
about five years old he went with his father who was clearing stumps
from a paddock and later that day went over to see his grandmother and
tell her about his busy day and have one of her apple tarts.
She asked what he had been doing and said he felt quite important
telling her he had helped his father clear the paddock.
He went on to say he had lifted a stump and opening his arms as
wide as he could said it was this big.
Eliza pretended to believe him and turned to his grandfather and
said, ‘What do you think
about that Isaac?’ and
Isaac said ‘I think that
boy be a damn liar’. Dad
said he didn’t bother to stay for an apple tart that day. Dad said if
there was a shortage of feed in his paddock Isaac wasn’t beyond
cutting a few wires in the fence to let his stock in on the Sherwood
farm. The
Frys had been quite well off at one time and the older members had a
good education
but they lost all their money before Isaac was educated.
Later in life when one of his older brothers had a few drinks he
would give Isaac a lesson in how to speak properly.
As dad got
older he and Isaac got along fine and every second Sunday he would walk
down to their place using two walking sticks to get dad to cut his hair.
After Isaac died Eliza lived with my grandmother Minnie, dad said
she would sit up until he came in after he put the late feed in for the
horses (about 10 o’clock) and she would always have a cup of tea ready
for him and tell him stories about England but she didn’t write home
because she used to say there was nothing to tell. When my
grandmother (Minnie Sherwood) came over to live in NSW in 1910 she
(Eliza) went to live with her youngest daughter aunty Ellen Bone. Grandmother Fry was ninety years and a day older than my
brother Arthur who was born on April 15th 1913. When Isaac died in January 1904, the following obituary appeared in the local paper. Mr. I Fry, an old and well known resident of Woorak, died the other day at the ripe old age of 79. The deceased was interred in the Woorak cemetery of Wednesday last. After Isaac died Eliza went to stay with her daughter Minnie Sherwood, who was living on an adjoining property. Around 1909, Minnie and her eldest son Alfred decided to sell the farm at Woorak West and buy a larger property in the Riverina. Minnie sold the farm to a neighbour Bill Lynch. Eliza Fry died in September 1916, at Woorak West. The local paper, the Nhill Free Press wrote… ‘The death occurred at Woorak on Monday of Mrs. Eliza Fry, senior, aged 93 years, one of the pioneer residents of the district; deceased’s husband was one of the original selectors of Woorak. She leaves a grown up family. The remains were interred in the Woorak cemetery on Tuesday when the funeral service was conducted by the Rev. L.J.Fielding, of Lorquon… Eliza Fry’s name appears on the Nhill Country Women’s Honour Roll, which commemorates the memory of the pioneering women of Nhill and district.
The Fry family can be traced back to Rooks Bridge, in Somerset. We can be fairly certain of this as it is verified by two independent sources. The first is the Fry family bible, which records Isaac’s birthplace as Rooks Bridge in 1824. The other source is the 1851 census. On this census Isaac himself says that he was born at Rooks Bridge. Rooks Bridge was at that time a small rural community in the parish of East Brent. The Rooksbridge community was too small to support a church of its own. This meant that the Frys had to travel into nearby East Brent (which was about 3 kilometres away) to worship and have their children baptised. While church and electoral records give East Brent as the place where the family lived, I suspect the family home was located in Rooks Bridge. Isaac’s grandparents were James and Ann Fry nee Edwards. Ann may have been the daughter of James Edwards of East Brent. They were married in the East Brent church in 1769. A record of their marriage appears in… A register book of christenings, burials and marriages within the parish of East Brent bought Anno Dom: (in the year of our Lord) 1719 by us Richard Hardwidge and John Browne, Church parsons.
They were married by licence on the 14 December 1769 by the vicar Thomas Sparry. James signed his name in the marriage register in a neat hand, suggesting that he may have been able to read and write. Ann Edwards signed with an X. It’s worth noting that the couple were married by licence. Marriage licences were expensive and seen by some as a status symbol. Usually only the more wealthy members of the parish were able to afford them. One of the advantages of a marriage licence was that it allowed the marriage to proceed without the reading of banns in the church over 3 consecutive Sundays. Banns made public a couples intention to marry. Anyone who knew of a lawful reason why a couple should not marry had the opportunity to make this known to the minister. James Fry was a farmer and landowner in the tithing of Snighampton, East Brent according to a land tax assessment made on 22 April 1767. The parish of East Brent was divided into four regions or tithings, one of which was known as Snighampton. Rooks Bridge appears to have been included in the Snighampton tithing. A rate of 5 shillings was levied against his name that year. There is an entry for the previous year, 1766. The surname Fry appears with the given name erased by a watermark on the page. A tax of 6 shillings and 8 pence was levied on the property. The tax collectors that year were William Dinwidy and Richard Day junior, two local men from the parish. Land tax records only exist from 1766 up until 1832. Records do not survive for the years 1768 through to 1781, a gap of thirteen years. The Frys were more than likely landowners in the parish well before the start of these records in 1766. James Fry and Ann Edwards had at least six children, three sons and three daughters. The eldest Hannah was baptised in 1771, Ann in 1772, James junior in 1774, Deborah in 1777, John (Isaac’s father) in 1780 and William in 1782. They were all baptised in the parish church of East Brent. On 9 January 1782, James Fry senior was buried in the East Brent church. On that same day his son William was baptised there. In June of 1782 an entry appears in the tax assessments for the widow Fry. This was Ann Fry, James’s wife. She is shown as the owner and occupier of four properties in the tithing of Snighampton. Two of the properties appear to have belonged to Ann’s father the late James Edwards. They now belonged to Ann. The Edwards and Fry properties appear to have been next to, or very close to each other. Their names follow each other on the land tax assessments. A little over eighteen months after James’s death Ann remarried. In 1783 she married Thomas Stevens of Barrow. They were married on the 10 August by licence in the East Brent church. Ann no doubt would have been left in difficult circumstances when James died. She had a farm to run and a young family of six to support. The oldest child was Hannah who was about 12 and the youngest was William who was probably only a couple of years old. There are no tax assessment records available for the years 1784 and 1785. In 1786 Thomas Stevens appears as the owner of land that once belonged to James Edwards. Sometime between 1783 and 1788 Ann’s second husband Thomas died. Ann was left a widow once again. In 1788, (the year that saw the first settlement of Australia by Europeans) the widow Stevens (Ann) appears in the land tax assessments with Thomas Haines. Thomas Haines married Deborah Fry in 1774. Deborah was Ann’s daughter from her marriage to James Fry. Ann Stevens was the owner of the land and Thomas the occupier. Similar entries appear for the years 1790 through to 1797. In 1798 Ann’s son John Fry, (Isaac’s father) appears for the first time in the land tax assessments. He was about 18 years old by this date and recorded as the owner of the land. Thomas Haines was still the occupier. In 1805 John Fry was the owner and was also listed as the occupier along with Thomas Haines. Deborah and Thomas Haines were John Fry’s aunt and uncle. It would appear that the land was handed down to John about the time of his eighteenth birthday. From 1801 through to 1832 when records of the last land tax assessments were made, the owner and occupier of the property was John Fry. Isaac’s parents were John and Ann Fry. According to the registers of the East Brent parish church John Fry was baptised in 1780. His wife Ann, nee Norville, was baptised there in 1782. Her parents were James and Mary Norvill. John and Ann Fry had at least 10 children 8 sons and 2 daughters. Their children were baptized at the East Brent parish church. The oldest child James was baptised in 1805, Joseph in 1806, Ann in 1808, John in 1812. A second daughter Jane was baptised in 1821 and a son Francis in 1822. Isaac and his twin brother Abraham were born in 1824. Tragically for the family Abraham died when he was 4 months old. Two other sons Robert and Thomas were born about 1810 and 1816.
In 1832 John Fry appears in the Somerset electoral
registers. as the owner of a house and land in the parish. The house
referred to here could quite possibly be the same house, which appears in
a very old family photograph. The photo is of a charming old-English
farmhouse. A family story has it that it once belonged to the Frys back
in England. Perhaps the house in the photo is the same house in
which Isaac was born in 1824. The house no doubt was built many years
before. I suspect the family occupied the property and the house for at
least several generations perhaps even more.
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