kiwipaul
Well-known member
- Joined
- May 21, 2013
- Messages
- 195
My forebears turned lead into gold. My late C18th ancestors on my Dad's side were lead miners from the Peak District of Derbyshire UK. It was a hard living. The lead mines and land were owned by the local aristocracy and the miners were tenants who paid a high tax to the local lord on the lead they mined.
However as the Industrial Revolution took hold in the early C19th there was a population explosion and urbanization increased. Think of those rows and rows of houses in Victorian England. Lead was used as a sealing material in slate roofs, and demand for English lead soared.
The miners' profits rose while the tithe to his lordship stayed fixed, and the miners soon became metal merchants, and paid others to work the mines. Lead turned to gold. Soon the mines depleted and foreign imports took over. However that didn't matter to the new merchant classes. They were free of the fetters of the landed gentry and had the capital to import and trade lead and other metals on their own account. They had literally climbed out of the pit.
While our merchant relatives traded their way up the ladder, our family fortunes took a dramatic change in another direction. In the early 1850's my great grandfather's uncle Joseph went out to the colonies to help build the railway for the new port of Adelaide, South Australia. Soon after he arrived gold was discovered in the nearby state of Victoria and he decided to chance his luck at the diggings.
Against the odds, for very few struck it rich, Joseph made a series of large "strikes". We know the details because Joseph wrote a letter home to his brother in England telling the story. That letter is now in the State Library of Victoria and is a rare account of life in the goldfields. The letter is an amazing tale and a rollicking yarn and you can read it here if you're interested: http://theholygrail.com/LetterfromtheDiggings.pdf
Can you imagine the impact this letter from the Colonies had on the folks in England? It must've been astonishing news back in Derbyshire. One consequence was that as soon as my great grandfather William came of age in 1859, he hot-footed it out to Australia to visit his newly rich uncle.
Unlike many others, Uncle Joseph didn't drink or gamble away his fortune, he invested in several ships, and set up a shipping line, trading out of Adelaide. When young William arrived, Joseph promptly sent him to Dunedin, New Zealand as his local agent. It's hard to believe this green 21 year old with no experience would succeed, however fortune smiled once more.
Not long after William set up the shipping agency, gold was discovered in Otago, New Zealand, and another gold rush started. Miners flooded in from Australia and needed to be transported towards the goldfields, and supplied with the necessities of life. It was a very good time to be a shipping agent running ships between Australia and New Zealand.
As the diggings developed, Chinese miners and merchants arrived, to escape the poverty of China and try and make a better life.
I believe GGF William probably traded the item I'm about to show you from a Chinese miner, for passage to the goldfields, or for supplies, or for both.
Let me quickly wrap up William's story. He went on to become a prominent citizen of Dunedin, and married, having eight children with his wife Kate. William made and lost several fortunes in the boom bust days of the late C19th, then died at the relatively young age of 54. Each of his children was given a considerable inheritance on their 21st birthday, however my branch of the family didn't hold on to theirs beyond the Crash of 1928 and the subsequent Great Depression. However a few possessions survived, including this rather rare Chinese Market Watch, cased in the Empire Style, with seed pearls picking out the borders.
However as the Industrial Revolution took hold in the early C19th there was a population explosion and urbanization increased. Think of those rows and rows of houses in Victorian England. Lead was used as a sealing material in slate roofs, and demand for English lead soared.
The miners' profits rose while the tithe to his lordship stayed fixed, and the miners soon became metal merchants, and paid others to work the mines. Lead turned to gold. Soon the mines depleted and foreign imports took over. However that didn't matter to the new merchant classes. They were free of the fetters of the landed gentry and had the capital to import and trade lead and other metals on their own account. They had literally climbed out of the pit.
While our merchant relatives traded their way up the ladder, our family fortunes took a dramatic change in another direction. In the early 1850's my great grandfather's uncle Joseph went out to the colonies to help build the railway for the new port of Adelaide, South Australia. Soon after he arrived gold was discovered in the nearby state of Victoria and he decided to chance his luck at the diggings.
Against the odds, for very few struck it rich, Joseph made a series of large "strikes". We know the details because Joseph wrote a letter home to his brother in England telling the story. That letter is now in the State Library of Victoria and is a rare account of life in the goldfields. The letter is an amazing tale and a rollicking yarn and you can read it here if you're interested: http://theholygrail.com/LetterfromtheDiggings.pdf
Can you imagine the impact this letter from the Colonies had on the folks in England? It must've been astonishing news back in Derbyshire. One consequence was that as soon as my great grandfather William came of age in 1859, he hot-footed it out to Australia to visit his newly rich uncle.
Unlike many others, Uncle Joseph didn't drink or gamble away his fortune, he invested in several ships, and set up a shipping line, trading out of Adelaide. When young William arrived, Joseph promptly sent him to Dunedin, New Zealand as his local agent. It's hard to believe this green 21 year old with no experience would succeed, however fortune smiled once more.
Not long after William set up the shipping agency, gold was discovered in Otago, New Zealand, and another gold rush started. Miners flooded in from Australia and needed to be transported towards the goldfields, and supplied with the necessities of life. It was a very good time to be a shipping agent running ships between Australia and New Zealand.
As the diggings developed, Chinese miners and merchants arrived, to escape the poverty of China and try and make a better life.
I believe GGF William probably traded the item I'm about to show you from a Chinese miner, for passage to the goldfields, or for supplies, or for both.
Let me quickly wrap up William's story. He went on to become a prominent citizen of Dunedin, and married, having eight children with his wife Kate. William made and lost several fortunes in the boom bust days of the late C19th, then died at the relatively young age of 54. Each of his children was given a considerable inheritance on their 21st birthday, however my branch of the family didn't hold on to theirs beyond the Crash of 1928 and the subsequent Great Depression. However a few possessions survived, including this rather rare Chinese Market Watch, cased in the Empire Style, with seed pearls picking out the borders.
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