GRANT, George Henry

1858 - 1936  (77 years)

• Name	GRANT, George Henry
  Birth	17 Dec 1858	Ironmungie near Nimmitabel, New South Wales   [1]
  Gender	Male
  Occupation	Miner, farmer - Whipstick, on the Pambula side of Wyndham NSW
  Reference Number	MP10237
  Religion	a Protestant
  Residence	to 1929
  	Whipstick
  	Property burnt out in bushfire.
  Death	20 Jul 1936	Pambula, New South Wales   [2]
  	Cause: Coronory thrombosis and arterioscleroses
  Burial	21 Jul 1936	Wyndham Cemetery, New South Wales
  		Grant, George and Maria nee Robinson
  Notes	"George had a farm at Whipstick, Pambula side of Wyndham. He must have made some money because he spent his life there. When George turned 60 he was too proud to take the pension and when I last saw him in 1931 he still refused it. I was told he took the pension the last couple of years of his life." (excerpts from Jim Grant's Reflections). George Grant: Memories 1935. The original document was supplied by Mal Dibden of Tilba Tilba NSW and transcribed by Ian Harvey May 2006. George Grant, the youngest son of Henry Grant and Janet Campbell was born December 17 1858 at Ironmongie on the Monaro. These memories attributed to him contain details, which in some respects are not historically correct. They may seem inconsistent as George describes happenings told to him rather than as he claims were experienced by him. The baby born at Ironmongie can only be George himself, James or "Big Jim" was born in Scotland. The Kiandra Gold Rush began in 1860, five years after the Grant family arrived in NSW. The memories then, seem to be a composite of stories that George heard or later experienced within his family circle, stories in many respects true but out of sequence. When the family left Scot's Hut and moved to Whipstick the information given closely follows the family's life as it actually happened. Obvious inaccuracies in the memories have been removed to make a genuine account of the story of the Grants during the period 1855-1936 (B. Cornell). "Emigrating from Scotland the family sailed from Liverpool England on the sailing vessel "Nepaul" skippered by captain George Cossey.  She was a 1278 ton tea vessel carrying immigrants confident of making their fortune on the goldfields in Australia. The voyage took 89 days and reached Sydney on the 14 March 1855. There was much talk about a great gold strike on the south coast (may be referring to the Araluen Valley). So my parents got aboard another sailing vessel bound for Twofold Bay Eden Town. We purchased two old bullocks and a bullock dray, and set out on the long journey to Monaro. The first day we reached Saltwater Creek. The next day we pushed on to a place called the Lakes then up the peak to Whipstick. We were told Whipstick got its name from early teamsters cutting sticks to tie whips on. We moved on to Honeysuckle Inn on the Myrtle Creek where we rested our two old foot sore bullocks. The Honeysuckle Inn was conducted by an old woman who sucked a clay pipe and supplied lodgers with over proof rum and turned on some wild parties, playing up considerably and doing the Irish jig. The next stage was to the Boyd Inn, just over the Towamba River. We went on over the Mataganah River. We crossed that twice and then entered a place called Stony Batter. On the Towamba River which we found a good fresh running stream. It was a bit swift to attempt a crossing. We could see the Boyd Inn on the other side. We had to camp there about two days until the water went down. There were lots of other folks coming through. Some riding horseback, some leading packhorses, some walking leading horse and spring cart. Lots walking carry big swags. Next morning the place looked like a circus ready to start up. As the water went down we moved across. The water was up over the axle but just managed to scramble through. As we drew closer to the Inn, we walked over and there were about nine kids standing around the door and a big Irishman walked to the door. He had such a large beard; it was hanging down round his knees. He said, "Where are you going to?" I said Kiandra "You'd never pull that load over the Coal Hole. Mary has baked a big hot damper. You had better bring that Scotsman in and give him a feed". So we went in and had some hot damper and butter. Just what we really needed, and pushed on up Rocky Hall to approach the Coal Hole. The two old bullocks were puling along well. Their names were Pilot and Spot. Still following the left side of the Towamba River and along comes a Police Constable on horseback. He called out "Where are you heading for?". We said the Kiandra gold strike. The Constable said he'd just come back from there and was going to Eden Town. "Kiandra is swimming with miners. There are hundreds of them coming in from all directions and they're really getting a lot of gold, big nuggets, I think they have really struck it rich. They are pegging out claims everywhere. On my way here I must have passed over a hundred men making their way to the gold rush. A lot of settlers are packing up and moving as well, hoping to make their fortune". This gave us great courage to hear such wonderful news. The Constable then rode off and said "Good luck at the diggings". We then moved on. The going starts to get a bit rough. Mum's walking along behind the dray picking up anything that falls off as the wheels go over big stones, swaying from side to side. We get along into the thick forest looking up into this big Coal Hole forest. It's getting very steep. The two old bullocks are giving it all they've got. All at once the old dray tipped over on its side and spilled all our things into a ditch. It was late in the afternoon and the tall trees were making it very dark. Dad unhooked the bullocks and tied them up to the trees. Mum stacked all the belongings up in a heap. By this time it was pitch black dark. We managed to make a fire, then the dingos started to howl all around. They seemed very close. We couldn't see any of them. They kept up howling for over two hours. By this time we had fixed up a bit of a possie to bed down for the night. We won't be able to sleep with the noise. We pulled some lighted sticks out the fire and pelted them as far as we could round in the bush. That scared them off. Mum was very scared, she said "I think we're at worlds end". Next morning it looked a pretty sick dray tipped over, with things everywhere. This place was so steep a billygoat needs spikes on his toes to stand up. Two bagmen came along, one said "You're in a spot mate". They helped us get the dray out of the ditch and lift it back on its wheels. The two old bullocks had been tied up all standing on the 90-degree angle. We managed to get yoked up and get started up the next two miles of steep terrain, hedging up a bit at a time. By the time we reached the top the old bullocks tongues were hanging down just dragging on the forest floor. Once over the top, the land became fairly flat and we were able to travel along at ease. The next stopping place was called Yellow Waterhole and on across Cranky's Plain and on for several days until we reached the Snowy River, where beautiful icy cold water was flowing through coming from the Kosciusko Alps. The fields were grassy and green and very few trees. We called it Ironmongie. Mum said this would be a great place to start a farm. "It's wonderful, we'll stay awhile. I am expecting a baby (George himself)". We only had a tent fly and a few boxes. Dad tried to build a bit of a shelter. He cut a few sticks for the posts, they were so crooked he had a job to try to stand them up straight to hang the tent fly on. Dad said we can't build much with this, so he thought of a settler we passed on the way, about ten miles back. He might have some bullock hides. He went back and saw him, sure enough he had some. "He sold me seven and was good enough to lend me his pack horse to carry them back". This gave us some building material. We lay the bullock hides over the cracked sticks and made quite a little hut. We painted the hides white with some pipe clay we found nearby. The two bullocks are having Christmas on the green grass around the hut and didn't attempt to stray away. You can see for miles around as there are very few trees". (George does not mention the fact the family were first employed by a Mr. Bradley on Bibbenluke Station from 1855 until 1858). "We decide to squat here. We pegged out a big claim and we tried to select it from the Government as a selection (1861 Free Selection Act) and were successful. The nearest place to get supplies was Cooma, some forty miles away. We saw blacks on the way here and were a bit worried about them. So when Dad had to go to Cooma to get supplies, we all had to go. It took us four days to reach Cooma and four days back to reach our little place we called Ironmongie, where we had squatted on the Snowy River. Dad still wanted to go to Kiandra to the gold field. It's now April 1860. The snow started to fall and we were told Kiandra was covered with snow; about four feet deep and the miners were snowed in and couldn't work. We gave the gold field idea away. We had a few pounds left. (Henry Grant received a 20 pound grant on arrival in NSW) In July we went into Cooma and bought a little flock of sheep and a few cows with calves and drove them back to Ironmongie and started up our farm. The next problem we had, the native dogs started to attack the sheep. We had to build a yard so as to pen them up every night close to the hut. They also attacked the calves and killed one. We had to also pen the calves up. The bigger cattle could scare them off. The first sheep we killed, the blacks arrived and wanted the fat. The first visit we had from them. We gave them the fat, and they built a big fire nearby and melted it and rubbed it all over their skin so as to keep the cold off their bodies. Otherwise they never bothered us. Every time after that, if we killed one, they would seem to know and come and want the fat. January 1861. Nearly all the ewes have got nice lambs, and the cows have all new calves. We now have almost doubled our flock. January 1862. We have quite a mob. It's shearing time. We have our first clip. Dad got to work shearing all the sheep with the thick shears on the grass outside the yard, and then bag it all up. The wool had to go to Sydney to be sold, so the teamster picked it up and some other settler's wool also. The first load took six months to do the trip to Sydney and back. Sometimes they would have to wait for one or two weeks to cross a flooded river and had great difficulty crossing some. When the wool was sold in Sydney they would buy linen and other goods for the return. Our teamster arrived home in Ironmongie in June, six months and four days later. Among some of things he bought with some of our wool cheque money was a brand new concertina and a bottle of whisky. That night Mum started to play the concertina along with a couple of nips of whisky and Dad doing the Irish jig. The volume of noise nearly lifted the roof off the Ironmongie hut. Mum's new baby, she called him Jim (George himself actually, Jim was born in Scotland), just started to run about, took off up the paddock and got in the pen amongst the sheep and hid. Once we had the concertina we got many visitors, we could have a good old party at Ironmongie. We kept on building our flock at ironmongie. By 1865 they started a road down the Coal Hole. They called the road Big Jack. How it got its name, one of the workers, a big husky man about eighteen stone, they called him Big Jack. He was reputed to have won a bet for carrying a bag of potatoes from Bega to Eden, a distance of 40 miles. They finished the Big Jack mountain road in 1867. That made it better for us. We could take our wool down the mountain to Merimbula wharf for shipment to Sydney. 1870: Mum says it's that cold here at Ironmongie we want to try and get another place down the mountain. It's a lot warmer down there. Little Jim wants a schooling. Dad says that little Jim is growing that fast I think we will call him Big Jim, and ever after that everyone called him Big Jim. (The Henry Grant family first selected at Jincumbilly).1871: We went down the mountain looking for a place. We found a place and took up the selection. We called it Pretty Point on the Mataganah River. 1872: We came down and built a hut at Pretty Point. Everybody called it Scots Hut at Pretty Point. 1873: We sold our selection at Ironmongie and brought our flock down to Pretty Point and settled into Scots Hut. There were no rabbits, but plenty of dingos. They kept attacking the sheep. We still had to pen them up at night. They used to howl all around the hills there at night. We worked the selection, producing wool and beef and then started milking cows. To produce butter we used to milk the cow and set the milk in dishes overnight and then skim the cream off the milk and then churn the cream to butter. We would pack the butter into wooden kegs and lower it down an underground well to keep it cool. The teamsters would pick it up once a week and take it to Merimbula for shipment to Sydney. 1878: Two men arrived at our place looking for a job. Two big hefty Swedes. They were timber cutters and pit sawyers. Dad told them "can't give you a job, go over and see Dave Collins a nearby settler, he wants a house built". They got the job. Dug a pit in the ground and one end of the log down the pit. One man would get down in the pit and the other up top. The top man would push the saw down and the other would push the saw back. They called it pit sawing. They cut big slabs and built Dave Collins house at Greenmount on the Rocky Hall road, about 1884. The best house about then. 1879: I thought I would try my hand at prospecting. Big Jim has now become a bullock conductor and is hauling wool from Monaro to Merimbula. Where we selected another property. 1880: We drove all our stock down from Monaro and settled on the property on the Mataganah Creek at Stony Batter near Wyndham. We increased our flock of sheep and cattle. The weather was much warmer here. 1881: I married a Miss Maria Robinson. We were married in Wyndham and went to Bombala on our honeymoon on horseback. My wife riding sidesaddle some thirty miles. We then settled at Stoney Batter a few years. Having problems with native dogs and droughts and poor wool and cattle prices, I decided to try my luck prospecting. 1889: I discovered Molybdenite at Jingera at Whipstick. The find soon got around and a mining agent got it going and that gave me a secure job so I branched out on my own. I have already had three young children. Being a few miles to ride to work I decided to take up some land at Whipstick near the mine and eventually built a house. Having the frame all up this friend I had helping me, I asked him to fell a tree nearby that might be a danger to the house. His name was Dan Grant (actually his nephew Daniel Joseph Grant, son of George's brother Henry), I said, make sure you fell the tree away from the house and sure enough he felled it straight over the house and flattened it to the ground. So it started all over again. The next day at two, he arrived at the house site with a melon. I asked him "Where did you get that melon?" he said "I picked it off the neighbors patch". I said to him "You take it right back". So after that I called him Melon Dan. That got around and ever after he was well known as Melon Dan and became a great friend of mine.The house building proceeded and was completed. I moved my family in, another baby had just arrived and this made it now four (Ambrose born 1889). So we had a conference about the cattle (with whom is not known). We decided we would split the cattle and take half each. Setting out on my own. You can have first pick, he did and I had the culls. So drove them out to the selection at Whipstick and now all settled in and working at the Jingera mine. 1892: The hours in the mine were long during the winter months. I always went to work in the dark and lit candles in the mine to see the workplace. At knockoff time we would have to walk home in the dark. The ore from the mine was brought out in small trolleys run on steel rails, to the surface and lots of other miners would pick out the best Molybdenite ore. My wife's father Mr. Jim Robinson had a team of four big horses and wagons. The ore was loaded onto the wagon and taken down to the new battery for treatment, when treated it was then transported down to Merimbula wharf for shipment. The Molybdenite was sold to Germany for the purpose of hardening gun barrels. Soon the Jingera mine brought quite a population around the area. A new school at Whipstick and a Post Office conducted by Miss Molly Schafer. By this time Whipstick is becoming very busy. Saturday afternoon's lots of miners would visit the Wyndham village and Robbie Burns Hotel where several squabbles broke out and fights etc. 1898: The Government in town built a big new Police Station just up on the hill in Wyndham village to handle the wild Jingera miners and some Saturdays would become quite full. 1900: The Jingera mine was still in full swing and some problems about separating the Molybdenite from the ore was overcome by using single tanks and a better grade of Molybdenite was produced which created more jobs. 1904: One January afternoon walking home from work I came across a man sitting on a log and I approached him. The man said "I can't get a job at the mine, I came a long way" I said, "What's your name? "He said "Jake Plumb" he said I haven't had a meal fro just on a week, I will die behind this log tonight". I said "No you won't, come home with me and have supper" He said "I will, I come from America in search of a mining job and now am right out of money" he said "I worked seven years in America for my wife. She died after the first year of our marriage, with the flu plague. So here I am in Australia, stony broke and homeless". I said "You will be right my boy when you get a good steak in your tummy". My wife Maria gave him a good meal and he became quite happy. He said to me "I will work for my tucker, if you will have me" I said "I only get four shillings a day at the mine and now have a family of seven I couldn't very well pay you a wage Jake" and Jake accepted to work for his food. We built him a little hut over in the nearby bush and he stayed with us for years, clearing and burning logs and made quite a nice clearing. Two of my sons are grown up now and are both bullock conductors. Ambrose and George, they are busy hauling materials to the Jingera mine".
  Person ID	I10237	Genealogy Connections | Monaro Pioneers Information
  Last Modified	5 Dec 2017

  
  

  Father	GRANT, Henry,   b. 30 Sep 1814, Linlithgow, West Lothian, Scotland d. 27 May 1881, "Bobundarah", Ironmongy, New South Wales (Age 66 years)
  Mother	CAMPBELL, Janet,   b. 4 Jan 1817, Linlithgow, West Lothian, Scotland d. 12 Aug 1898, "Wattle Hill", near Wyndham, New South Wales (Age 81 years)
  Marriage	8 Jun 1834	Linlithgow, West Lothian, Scotland
  Family ID	F1249	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	ROBINSON, Maria,   b. 15 Jun 1865, "Honeysuckle", near Wyndham, New South Wales d. 24 Jun 1935, Bega, New South Wales (Age 70 years)
  Marriage	26 Oct 1881	Honeysuckle Park, Wyndham, New South Wales   [3]
  Children	1. GRANT, Eva,   b. 6 Oct 1882, Wyndham, New South Wales d. 21 Apr 1966, Perth, Western Australia (Age 83 years)   2. GRANT, George Henry James,   b. 1885, Eden, New South Wales d. 1966, Bega, New South Wales (Age 81 years)   3. GRANT, Mary Ann Pearl,   b. 1887, Wyndham, New South Wales d. 22 Dec 1969, Nowra, New South Wales (Age 82 years)   4. GRANT, Harold Ambrose,   b. 1889, Eden, New South Wales d. 6 May 1917, Bullecourt, France (Age 28 years)   5. GRANT, Jessie Coralie,   b. 1893, Wyndham, New South Wales d. 24 Aug 1906, Wyndham, New South Wales (Age 13 years)   6. GRANT, Ruby Gladys,   b. 1895, Eden, New South Wales d. 7 Aug 1977, New South Wales (Age 82 years)   7. GRANT, Rupert Roy,   b. 1898, Whipstick near Wyndham, New South Wales d. 20 Sep 1963, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory (Age 65 years)
  Family ID	F3778	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	7 Nov 2018

  
  

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  Death - Cause: Coronory thrombosis and arterioscleroses - 20 Jul 1936 - Pambula, New South Wales Burial - 21 Jul 1936 - Wyndham Cemetery, New South Wales  = Link to Google Earth

  
  

• Monaro Pioneers Images » Slide Show		George Grant son of Henry and Janet Grant1.jpg
  		The sons of Henry and Janet Grant L-R Robert, George Henry, John Henry, Henry, James andDaniel (best guess)
  		Grant, George Family Back row Coralie, Ambrose, Pearl,  Second Row GeorgeSnr, Gladys, Maria, Coralie, George Jnr.  Front RowRoy Grant

  
  

• Sources

  [S1] NSW BDM Index, 6719/1859 (Reliability: 3). [S1] NSW BDM Index, 15125/1936 (Reliability: 3). [S1] NSW BDM Index, 3755/1881 (Reliability: 3).