16_RESEARCH TRIP 2016

Research Trip 2016 - He married a Marks

Key locations on our journey are highlighted on detail from a map in Explore Historic Australia by Margaret Barca p. 300.

In April 2016 Rob and I had an absolutely wonderful couple of days at the Markdale Homestead Binda, New South Wales. We stayed in the stone house that is behind the slab hut shown in my photo.

The tiny slab cottage was built by my great, great, great-grandfather, William Marks. He owned part of "Markdale", from 1858 until his death on 19th Mar 1861. William had arrived in Australia as a convict on 25 April 1825. He was transported aboard the ship Asia III having been sentenced in June 1824 to seven years for stealing. By 1828 he was working for the Anglican clergyman, Rev Thomas Hassall, on his property at Cobbity (southwest of Sydney). By 1831 he was working as an overseer of Hassall’s Mulgowrie property Salem Vale. On the 1st September that year he received his Certificate of Freedom. When the Rev. Hassall sold Salem Vale two of his men, John Hearne and William Marks, remained in the district. In 1836 Hearne bought 640 acres of present Markdale land, it was known then as Slete’s Gully.

(More Information on Marks: http://familypedia.wikia.com/wiki/William_Marks_(c1803-1861) AND http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~yewenyi/715.htm )

On 27 December 1833 Ann Maria Lamb aged 17, arrived in Sydney as a Bounty immigrant aboard the Layton. Bounty immigrants were free immigrants whose passage was paid by the colonial government under the `bounty scheme'. Under this scheme a bounty was paid to recruiting agents in Britain to find suitable working class people and then ship them out to the colony. Under the `bounty scheme’ newly married couples, or single men and women were given preference. Ann met William Marks while she was working in Sydney and by 1834 they had entered a defacto relationship. Ann moved to Mulgowie, and in 1838 she married William, and their first child was born.

(More Information on Lamb: http://familypedia.wikia.com/wiki/Ann_Lamb_(1816-1894) AND http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~yewenyi/387.htm )

From 1840 to 1858 William was employed at the boiling down works in Mulgowrie. In 1858 William bought the property now known as Markdale from Richard Moses. The land was part of the deceased Elias Moses’s estate. Elias was a Jewish merchant of Goulburn who had taken over the property from John Hearne during the 1840’s depression. - William Marks built the tiny slab cottage that is shown in the photos above.

William Marks was christened on 29 Feb 1848 at the age of forty-five. This fact, coupled with his surname being ‘Marks’ has led many to suspect that William was previously a Jew. This certainly fits with what my great aunt Lilly ‘Grace’ Frazer had muttered to me as a child: “one of those old Frazer men was supposed to have married a Jewess”. The ‘old Frazer man’ of this mythical tale would have been Grace’s grandfather, Alexander (Jnr) Frazer who had died a decade before Grace was born. In 1861 Alexander (Jnr) Fraser married William Mark’s daughter, Martha Alice Marks. The ceremony was conducted by Rev. William Ross, the Presbyterian minister of Goulburn. Martha had been baptised as an infant (26 Mar 1843), but if her father had at one time been a Jew it would have been sufficient to have given rise to the myth that she was a Jewess.

Alexander (Jnr) and Martha Fraser’s first child, William, was baptised at St James Church Binda on 1st November 1864.

The youngest of Alexander (Snr)Fraser’s daughters, Mary Ann Fraser, married John Robert McDonald in the Binda Church of England on 1st August 1866. Their first child, John Robert (Jnr) McDonald was born two years earlier, on 31st August 1864. He was baptised in a joint ceremony with his cousin William Fraser. Isabella Crilly (nee Fraser) lived her last years alone in a small house opposite St James Church.

View opposite St James Church, looking towards Binda Creek.

St James Church, Binda.

Isabella Mary [Larkham; Brownlow] Crilly (nee Fraser)

6.8.1832 - 20.11.1920

Ann Maria [Marks] Campbell (nee Lamb)

(1816 - 16.6.1894)

Crookwell Gazette, Wed 20.6.1894 OBITUARY

One of the oldest residents in the whole of the surrounding districts, in the person of Mrs Campbell, died on Satuday last at the residence of her son-in-law, Mr Josiah Eldridge, Lost River, at a very advanced age, being nearly eighty years old. She was the wife of the late Mr William Marks, of Markdale, so called after his name, who was killed at Binda over thirty years ago by being thrown against a tree. A large family of sons and daughters were born to them, among them being Messrs Richard, Elisha, and Alfred Marks, of Binda and Bigga, and Mrs Picker, wife of Mr William Picker, Bigga, and Mrs Eldridge, wife of Josiah Eldridge, Lost River, all of whom are well-known throughout the district. After Mr Marks' death his widow married a Mr Campbell, whom she also survived. The remains were interred in the Church of England cemetery yesterday, and were followed by a large concourse of sympathisers, the Marks family being everywhere highly respected.

While we stayed at Markdale I had the joyful experience of meeting some Marks descendants who lived in the area.

A gentleman who is a great great-grandson of William and Ann Marks, had a look about the eyes that strongly reminded me of a great aunt I knew very well: Alma Dorothy Frazer (pictured here). She was a great-granddaughter of William Marks and Ann Marks (nee Lamb).

Sletes Creek runs behind the Markdale slab hut that is pictured below. The chimney (above right) is all that remains of an early stone house.

RESEARCH Part A.