Jane Williams nee Dennis Update

This entry corrects and updates the information on pages 127-131 of Louise Wilson's book 'From Buryan to Bondi', based on information kindly supplied by Jane Dennis' descendant Narelle West. For details of how to buy this book, see here.

Jane Dennis, 1847-1918, was born in Chirgwidden, Sancreed on 7 December 1847. She was christened in Sancreed on 26 December 1847 as a daughter of George and Susan Dennis, her father described as a miner of ‘Chegwidden Veane’ (sic). Census records show that she lived with her family at Higher Treeve, Saint Buryan on 30 March 1851, and at Trevorian, Sennen on 7 April 1861.

At the age of 18 she married 22-year-old farm labourer William Williams, in Penzance on 29 July 1866. William was born in St Just in Penwith on 6 September 1843. His marriage certificate stated he was the son of a stone mason, William Williams, and Mary Harvey. A descendant claims that Jane was a member of the Salvation Army at the time of her marriage.

Eleven days later, on 9 August 1866, Jane and William sailed from Plymouth aboard Peeress, having been selected by the Plymouth agent Wilcocks & Weekes to settle in Kadina, South Australia. They arrived in Adelaide on 7 November. North west of Adelaide, on the Spencer Gulf, Kadina was the centre of a boom copper-mining era in the 1800s and early 1900s, when thousands of Cornish miners were brought to the area by agents like Wilcocks and Weekes.

A son William Williams, named after his father, was born at Kadina on 6 August 1868. This child had died by 1877, when another son was given his father’s name. His parents’ death certificates both attest the birth of another son, outlived by his parents, and not identified by name on their death certificates. A handwritten list of names held within the family lists this child as George Arthur Williams, born 10 May 1870 (in South Australia?).

By 1872 Jane and her husband had moved to Currawang, Goulburn in NSW, William Williams being listed as a householder at Currawang in Greville’s Post Office Directory for that year. Currawang was a mining town near Lake Bathurst, a short distance south of Goulburn along today’s railway line between Goulburn and Queanbeyan. The birth of their daughter Jane Williams on 5 December 1872 was registered at Goulburn. It is not known why, or how, the family moved the long distance from Kadina, SA to Currawang. If both their infant sons had died in South Australia, possibly they wanted to make a new start.

In January 1874 most of Jane's brothers and sisters emigrated from Cornwall and joined the Williams family at Currawang. Between February and June 1874 they all moved to Cow Flat near Bathurst, where a copper mine flourished briefly at this time. In the middle of 1874 Jane's mother and remaining siblings also arrived from Cornwall to join the others at Cow Flat. Further details of the years at Cow Flat are provided in the story for Jane's mother Susan. The birth of Jane's daughter Elizabeth Williams on 8 November 1874 was registered at Bathurst. The birth on 27 April 1877 of a second son named William Williams was also registered at Bathurst.

In 1877 William’s widowed mother Mary and his sister Mary Jane Williams arrived in Australia aboard the Kapunda.

William Williams (Snr - Jane's husband) was recorded at Cow Flat in the 1878-79 electoral rolls for West Macquarie, with a residence at ‘Mountain Run’. It is presumed that he was employed by the Cow Flat Copper Mining Company, described in the story for his mother-in-law Susan. By a rather remarkable coincidence, there was another William Williams at a place known as ‘The Cow Flats’ near O’Connell, south east of Bathurst on the road to Oberon. The son of two convicts, he was married to Mary Dwyer (or Devine), with five daughters.

By 1880 the extended Dennis family had moved on from Cow Flat and they dispersed around NSW. Jane and her husband lived in various mining communities, the first being Hartley Vale where their son George was born on 7 January 1880 and their daughter Susan Maude Williams was born on 9 June 1882. The birth of son James H Williams on 28 May 1885 was registered at Penrith, signifying another move. (Jane’s sister Grace lived at Penrith with her husband and family.) The youngest of the nine children born to Jane and her husband was Percy Arthur Bertram Williams, who was born in Rylstone (near Mudgee) in June 1888. The Williams family then spent some years at Broken Hill, William working as an underground mine captain at least until 1900.

Daughter Jane married Charles Kemister, from Liverpool, in Sydney in 1894. The Kemisters lived at Liverpool for several years, where two sons were born, one dying in infancy. From 1898 for at least five years they lived at Cobar, where another son and a daughter were born. The deaths of both Jane’s husband and a son were registered at Auburn in 1934. Jane Kemister died at her residence, 15 Cary St Leichhardt, on 12 April 1960 and was buried at the Church of England Cemetery, Rookwood.

Daughter Elizabeth married Frederick E W Wootten in the Penrith district in 1899. The births of several children were registered at Goulburn. Elizabeth's death in 1950 was registered at Rockdale in Sydney.

Son George married Elizabeth Ann Cannon at Newcastle West on 6 September 1906 and they had six children. Two were born in the Newcastle area before the family moved to Cobar for several years, where two more children were born. George was an engine driver at Bourke St, Cobar in 1909 electoral rolls, living with his wife Elizabeth Ann. By 1915 George was back in the Newcastle region and he worked as a Winding Engine Driver at the John Darling Colliery, Belmont. In 1917, when he was the informant for his father’s death certificate, he lived at Hogue St, Newcastle, and in 1939 he was still an engine driver, living with his wife and family at 55 Porcher St, Merewether. His death was registered at Mayfield in 1941.

Daughter Susan married James Sutton in Cobar in 1903 and they had five children. Susan's death in 1973 was registered at Helensburgh, NSW.

In later life William and Jane Williams moved to Sydney and lived at the house nostalgically named 'Penzance' in St George's Parade, Hurstville. In 1917, in the Marrickville area of Sydney, son Percy married Iris Frances Baker. (Her birth was registered at Cooma in 1884, to parents William Thomas Baker and his wife Annie.) In that same year son William married Sarah C Hay, the marriage registered at Newtown in Sydney.

Jane’s husband William died at his home ‘Penzance’ on 15 April 1917, his age recorded as 72 although he was 73 years of age. He was buried on 16 April 1917 at Sutherland Cemetery, Woronora, on the southern outskirts of Sydney. Recorded as a miner on his death certificate, he died of senility and miner's phthisis suffered for the previous three years. Miner's phthisis was caused by silica dust in the lungs, arising from a miner's attempt to keep his productivity up by drilling rock when it was dry rather than wet.

Jane died almost a year after her husband, on 7 March 1918. Aged 70, she died at Princess Street in the Sydney suburb of Brighton-le Sands. She died of gastric carcinoma which she had endured for two years, and was buried on 9 March 1918 in the Methodist Section of Sutherland Cemetery. Her youngest son Percy was the informant for his mother's death certificate. He was then a clergyman, living with his wife at The Parsonage, Coramba (near Coffs Harbour). Percy's death was registered at Newcastle in 1955.

Sources:
· Challinor, Graeme, Cemeteries in Gundaroo NSW and the Surrounding District (Second Edtn, Brolga Press, Gundaroo, 1998)
· Patricia Lay, Cornish-Australian Heritage, a biographical register of Cornish-Australians 1788-1998 (Australian Heritage Series, Vol 1), p 383
· UK 1861 Census, RG 9/1598 Part 1, St Just, ED 13, Folio 24 Page 10
· Williams, Jane, Certified Copy of Death Cert, 7 March 1918, Issued 4 Sep 2000, Registry of B, D & M, Sydney, NSW
· Williams, William, Certified Copy of Death Cert, Ref 5398/1917, 15 April 1917, Issued 18 Dec 2000, Registry of B, D & M, Sydney, NSW
· Greville, Post Office Directory, 1872
· Deaths, & Funerals, Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, NSW (Thur, 14 April 1960)
· Thomas, Jan., South Australians 1836-1885 (South Australian Genealogy & Heraldry Society Inc, May 1990), Book Two, M-Z, p 922, No W221
· Family History Research for William Williams of 'The Cow Flats' near O'Connell, NSW, by Ray Ryan, 23 Cameron Ave, Baulkham Hills, NSW, 2153
· Family History Research of Narelle West,
· For more information, refer to Furnace, Fire and Forge - Lithgow’s Iron and Steel Industry 1874-1932, by Bob McKillop, published by Light Railway Research Society of Australia Inc, Melbourne, 2006

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