The Hollis family of the Thames Valley, England and the Yarra Valley, Australia

The Hollis family of the Thames Valley, England and the Yarra Valley, Australia

by Wayne David Knoll © 8 Nov 2005-April 2007

link to Hollis Family History by Barbara Hollis http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~barbarahollis/hollis_family.htm

Frontier Sacrifice

Father Hollis dead a year or so off the ship. Mother then married to a disliked stepfather, and soon she dies. The six Hollis children are orphans before their maturity. The oldest just eighteen. There very often is an original sacrifice in the birth of our people in Australia. The travail of the journey, the ordeal of leaving home, most often forever, the grueling sea-voyage, the half-year of being at sea, the breaking of horizons in crossing the vastness of half the world’s oceans, then thin gruel, the bad food, the likelihood of sickness, and death. Our ancestors gave much for us to be here

Though many a European took the risk of sailing out to the other side of the world to seek a better life, the hardships meant casualties, and the experience of free settler emigrants was very often not a prosperous one in the first instance. The vagaries of the sea trip, bad weather, bad water, disease riddled-hulks of ships, and then the lack of fresh food and adequate shelter on arrival in the raw settlements of Australia caught many out, left them out of the rewards, and took them down to untimely deaths.

The appearance of mean beginnings

When I at first began to search out the wider pattern of my own Hollis family in early Melbourne, I thought, because of the poverty of situations I found them in here, in early Collingwood and Fitzroy I thought that they were from a landless and comfortless background in England. Not so. They had fallen from a well-to-do standing into distress through the death of the family provider, and these were common frontier circumstances outside securities of those on the other side of the globe.

The well-established Hollis family fell into tragedy soon after their arrival in Australia. John Frederick Hollis, his wife and his family of six children departed the Port of London on the ship “Chalmers”, arriving in Melbourne in November 1852. The Hollis children were Hubert John, then age 11; Arthur age 10; Fanny (Frances) age 9; Edward age 7; Edith Rachel age 6; and little Lucy age 4. Their father John Frederick Hollis was then age 42, their mother Elizabeth Frances (Fanny) Hollis nee Close, age 38.

John Frederick Hollis is recorded as having died in 1854 in melancholy circumstances, but what they might be we know not. It is possible that he died in the recordless mullock of the goldfields. He could have died at sea, or interstate. But Fanny was left a widow, and the children left fatherless.

But further research revealed that John Frederick Hollis was the second son of minor gentry, the large-landed yeoman farmers on the Thames river flats near Reading. He would seem to be an ideal Australian settler, having already been a working farmer and raised on a large yeoman farm since childhood. He and his family had emigrated from the greater Reading area where they’d lived in the rich fields of middle Thames Valley of Oxfordshire-Buckinghamshire and Berkshire.

A sender-unaddressed letter dated 31 March 1854 from ‘Cousin Gus’ to the oldest Hollis child, young Hubert Hollis (my great great grandfather) is still extant. ‘Cousin Gus’ mentions a number of people he expects Hubert to know. These are Aunt and Uncle Pearman, a cousin and a neighbour, including Tommy, who was at nearby Oxford University. This letter seems to be written from Abingdon near Reading in Berkshire, England, just south of the University town at Oxford.

[Note: Tuesday 24 April 2007 - I have just discovered who Cousin Gus is. Hubert's father had a sister: Mary Eliza Hollis. I have just researched her marriage (on the CLDS Family Search International Genealogy Index [IGI] ) - to John Pearman - (Note: not Peaman as I have first interpreted the letter). So Aunt Pearman is Mary Eliza nee Hollis and Uncle is John Pearman. The IGI records also show that John Pearman and Mary Eliza Hollis had two sons: Augustus John Pearman, -and this will be the Gus of the letter [born 28 FEB 1832], and his brother, Morgan Thomas Pearman [born about 05 MAR 1835] - who is likely to be ' Tommy' who was at Oxford, as mentioned in the letter. The Pearman boys were born where their father was born, and where their parents married, at Mapledurham, Oxford, England - on the north bank of the Thames, upstream of Reading. ]


March 31st 1854.

My dear Hubert,

We were all exceedingly sorry to hear of the death of your poor Papa so far from England and under such melancholy circumstances, but we hope that as you always have been a very good boy, you will continue to be so and try to do all you can to be a comfort to your poor Mamma and your little Brothers and Sisters who will naturally look up to you to set a good example now that your Papa is called away to another world. If you do this, as I do not doubt you will, I am sure that you will get on well, for God never fails to help those who try to please him.

You can tell your Mamma that we often think of her but have never received the letter which she told Susannah she had written to your Aunt Pearman. You may also say that Mrs Hodson (late Miss Wells) died suddenly at Abingdon not long ago, and that Mr Lewis Rose is also gone. I think you heard that your cousin Frank West was engaged to be married to Miss Key. I have now to tell you that the engagement was broken off, at the desire of the lady, shortly after it was formed. This will amuse your Mamma if it does not much interest you.

The chief subject of conversation in England is the war with Russia which has now been formally declared. Everything is in consequence dreadfully dear and some of the taxes have been doubled. The past winter (your summer) has been the dreariest and most severe which has been known for many years. But the weather is now very beautiful and at present there is every prospect, with God’s Blessing, of a productive season.

Your Aunt Pearman is as well as usual and would no doubt send her best love if she knew that I was writing to you. Your Uncle has been very poorly and seems to me to be much changed in appearance and habits during the last few weeks. Tommy has been some time at Oxford, has passed one examination, and was never in better health than at present.

Give my best love to your dear Mamma, kiss her for me, and tell her how sorry I am to hear of her loss in poor Uncles’ death. Also kiss all your brothers and sisters, especially those who are old enough to remember me.

and Believe me ( I am) your affectionate
Cousin Gus

Cousin Gus, Augustus John Pearman obtained his MA from Oxford, and became the Reverend A.J. Pearman, vicar of St. Margaret's Church, Bethersden, near Ashford, Kent; & The Precincts, Rochester, Kent, & Minor Canon Row, Rochester (1898), and the author of the History of Ashford, as well as several papers on the church archaeology of Kent. He later was ordained Canon Augustus John Pearman. His brother Tommy [Morgan Thomas Pearman], also obtained his M.A., of Pembroke College, Oxford and became the Reverend M.T. Pearman, and was the vicar incumbent for 37 Years at Iwade, near Sittingbourne in Kent, England. Both the Reverends Augustus John Pearman and Morgan Thomas Pearman became historians and writers. The Reverend M.T. Pearman wrote "Historical Notes on Caversham' the Hollis's homeland. So The Hollis cousins were certainly of the professions, and able to take up incumbencies in parishes far from Mapledurham or Cane End, and to make a lasting contribition to the life of the mind and spirit.

For the once-yeoman Hollis family in Melbourne, with this obvious history of a highly literate and respectably affectionate family who kept in correspondence with cousins at Oxford, with a former networks of neighbours with mixed prospects, found that their fate soon reduced to a grim mean and then straightened some indeed. I do not know of their movements in the first years in Victoria. The Hollis family ended up living in the Richmond-Collingwood area of Melbourne. Mrs Fanny Hollis remarried, to Pennsylvania USA-born, widower and Richmond brickmaker, Mr Thomas Simmonds, at St Stephens Church, Richmond on 2 June 1857, and at that time she gave the date she’d become a widow as 11 Jan 1854. So we presume this to be the date of John Frederick Hollis’s death. No death certificate exists. His death is not listed in any index to be found. His place of burial is unknown.

For the children’s mother and guardian, Fanny Simmonds, had soon gone herself, dying on the 4th of June 1860 in Crown St, Yarra-Berg, Richmond. She was buried in the Melbourne General Cemetery. The Hollis children were now orphans, and their stepfather Simmonds seems to have been no parent to them. When they became orphans Hubert was age 18; Arthur age 17; Fanny age 16; Edward age 14; Edith age 12/13; and Lucy age 10 or 11. The younger Hollis children were made wards of the State of Victoria and put under the guardianship of Mr Septimus Martin J.P., of Collingwood.

The dissolution of the adulthood of the family and the loss of family memory caused by the early deaths of both parents must have been traumatic for the young Hollis’s, for the geographical and emotional contrasts within nine years were great indeed. For, on the 30 March 1851 when the British Census man paid a visit, the whole Hollis family were found at home at the ‘Albert Cottages’ in the village of St Giles, near Reading, Berkshire. John Frederick Hollis was then registered as being ‘formerly a farmer’. It seems likely that he had eased himself off the farm in preparation for his family’s journey of relocation to the other side of the world, which they were then a little over a year from embarking upon. I’m not sure how he was making a living at that juncture, maybe in property. They had not always lived in Berkshire, though they’d always lived with an hour’s walk from the rural English River Thames or its tributaries. The youngest girl, Lucy, was born at Hurley, near Crookham, Berkshire in 1849 and Edith had been born in 1846 nearby where they were living in 1851, at Burghfield, near Reading, Berkshire. So the John F. Hollis family can be seen to have lived in Berkshire only since about 1845 or 1846. The older children were all born where they had their farm, at Long Crendon, near Thame, in Buckinghamshire, on the borders of Oxfordshire, about ten miles east of the city of Oxford. Hubert was born in 1841, Arthur-1842, Fanny-1843, and Edward Payne Hollis in 1845, all at Long Crendon, near Thame in Buckinghamshire. This is not far away. Thame is only about twenty or thirty miles north of Reading.


But the Hollises were Yeoman farmers on 450 good acres with 20 Servants

John Frederick Hollis was a second son of the yeoman farmer William Hollis, Esq. and his wife Elizabeth nee Pottinger. His Sire is listed for Reading in the 1830 Directory of Berkshire, among the Nobility: as ‘William Holles, Gentleman and Farmer, of Cane End, Caversham’. William’s brother, Thomas Hollis, was a professional Surveyor who lived as a neighbour with his family across the river Thames at Sonning, Berkshire. William died in 1828 and his three adult children still lived with his widow Elizabeth, recorded in the census of that year as proprietor of his ‘Lashbrook Farm” an establishment still employing 20 labourers then, at Cane End, Caversham.

The William Hollis children were: the eldest, William Pottinger Hollis, who established his family on the Thames at ‘Charville Farm’ of 450 acres, with a force of 15 farm servants, in Sonning, Berkshire. Of his own children, his eldest, also William Pottinger Hollis (II) was later a surgeon in London. Second son Frederick Hollis established himself later as a farmer with 4 servants on ‘Borough Farm’ Sonning, Berkshire, after he married Fanny Hayden Masters and raised their children during the 1870s.

The second son was our John Frederick Hollis who came to Melbourne.

The other siblings were: Thomas Adolphus Hollis b. 1810/1; Harriet Hollis b. 1912; Richard Augustus Hollis b. 1813-15; and Charles Ernest Hollis b.1816.

Richard Augustus Hollis went to London and established himself as at first as a master grocer, and then as a Tea Dealer at 25 Chapel Street in Somerston, St Pancras. His nephew William P Hollis lived with him while he was a medical student. Charles E. Hollis, who was working in 1861 as a Tea Dealer with his next older brother Richard, in London, is back on the home turf, recorded in the Directory for Berkshire of 1864 as a farmer on ‘Charville Farm’ along with his eldest brother William P. Hollis.

In Collingwood, Victoria, Australia

I do not know how the young Hollises survived financially during those years. But there is evidence that Hubert was loaded with the responsibility of being big brother and proxy father to his sisters and brothers, a load which was often, no doubt, too much for him to bear. But the respect with which his sister Fanny Smith (nee Hollis) regarded him can be seen in the fact that her children named their children after their Uncle Hubert, including Hubert Thomas Stott, born 1888 in Collingwood, his son Lindsay Hubert Stott, born 1918 Clifton Hill, and George Hubert Smith, born 1913 in Clifton Hill.

Fanny (Frances Elizabeth) Hollis was first to marry, in 1864 in Collingwood. Her husband was John Thomas Smith, a brassfounder born in London. They had five children from 1865 to 1877, three daughters and two sons. Their eldest Rosa Frances Smith later married Thomas Stott, who had a wholesale produce agency at Melbourne’s Victoria Market which lasted generations.
My father tells me that my grandfather and my great grandfather sent produce from the (Hollis-linked) Knoll, Shaw and other Hollis descendant farms in South Wandin (Burleigh) to be sold by the Stott Market Agency.

This Stott family would show respect for their Hollis ancestry both in naming their third son Victor Hollis Stott, born at Collingwood in 1891 and dying at Ringwood in 1968, as well as their eldest son Hubert, mentioned above.

Survival and non-Survival is our true story

The job these orphan Hollises had to survive, let alone make a seat in pioneering a new country, with or without patronage, was, more often than not, an overtaxing one. The more bare-footed travail and pain of the orphan is not often appreciated by children of the well-heeled. Hubert’s lot was helped by the patronage of his wife’s Wiseman relatives. Sister FannyElizabeth had the good fortune to marry a provident husband, John Thomas Smith, a brassfounder, a raise a large family in Melbourne.

But not many of this Hollises lived very long. Either their health, their circumstance, or their self-possession seems to have broken down by middle age. The pioneer of Wandin South, Hubert, died of Brights Disease in 1888, at age 47, also leaving six children fatherless at ages from 7 to 20. His brother Edward, who had long suffered from recurrent mania, died in the unrelenting lovelessness and loneliness of an incarceration which ended in a fit of epileptic convulsions in Beechworth Asylum in 1892 at age 46.

Of his sisters, Edith, who had been deserted when her husband, William Henry Grass, fell into the pickled grip of the cheapest alcoholism, was made a widow when Bill died as he had lived, in the stables of a Richmond hotel in 1883, at age 44, in a state of ulcerous neglect and godforsaken dereliction. Edith responded to that lifelong devastation with compassionate dignity and lamentation for her children. She soon died herself, in 1892, aged only 46, leaving the two Grass children orphans. By then the youngest, Lucy Hollis was already dead, dying in 1891 at age 43. Who with a heart among us would dare boast before them of the so-called blessings or deserved merits of a long life, or to judge one of them for the foreshortened sufferings of an often bitter pilgrimage?

Only Fanny and Arthur, a bachelor, lived longer. Arthur died age 67 and Fanny nee Hollis lived to be 83, dying in 1928, the same years as her husband John Thomas SMITH, in Armadale.

An orphan heritage on the far side of the world

While these Hollis orphans were struggling to find a way ahead in life in early Melbourne, their cousins, were being educated at public schools in England, and the oldest cousins William Pottinger Hollis, son of their father's older brother of the same name, was studying to be a doctor and then became a surgeon, in London. For these first generation Australian Hollises, a family with connections in Oxford, where cousin and associate could take studies which might lead to life in the professions, that fateful life of loss, servitude or the unrelenting hardship or drudgery of pioneering Australia must have held disappointments indeed.

Such things are often put out of mind of children who do no grow up with such expectation. Despite these disappointments, life yawned to be lived, so offspring of the English-born Hollis pioneers went on to make lives as best they could by the more constrained lights of their circumstances, in the opportunity which Australia offered.

Hubert John Hollis married in Fitzroy on 5 March 1867. His wife, Eliza Suckling, also an orphan, had lost her parents earlier, in England. But in the census of 30 March 1851 she had been in the Ware Union, with her younger siblings. The Union was more commonly known as the workhouse or the poorhouse, this one in the town of Ware, Hertfordshire, north of London where she’d been born. The Suckling parents had died tragically of the epidemic in 1848 leaving all their children orphans. Us Australians are often of an orphan heritage on the other side of the world.

But Eliza Suckling had then but lately come to Australia with her older sister Elizabeth following her cousins Parker, with two cousin sisters married to the prosperous Wiseman brothers. The sisters arrived in Melbourne on 26 Sep 1865 on the ship "Sam Cearns" from England and Eliza soon found work with her cousin at that Wiseman estate in Yarra Street, Collingwood.

Hubert John Hollis, made an orphan by the losses in transit and arrival of his family in trying to make a new life in Australia, married Eliza, an orphan of the English epidemics whcih were among a blacksmiths likely options. Hubert was loaded with the expectation of manhood and responsibility from the time he was eleven. And, if he failed Eliza, and his children, it was by a tough life, teh hard struggle to survive, and then dying young, carrying what may have been a too heavy a burden of responsibilty. He had witnessed each of his sisters marriages as a father would, even though the younger two were under age, and maybe saw the dissolution of their lives in tragedy as his partly within his own faailures. Hubert and Eliza had nine children, three in Collingwood area, and the rest born in the valleys of South Wandin, six of whom survived, four sons and two daughters. They lived in the deepest of bush after 1873 as its first co-settlers.

Hubert died at 48, and left his own sons and daughters fatherless. The eldest, Charlie Hollis, became a blacksmith with his maternal uncle, Charlie Suckling, in Prahran, and died young. Two of the fatherless sons George and Edward, went to the Boer war, and became policeman in South Africa. George became a missionary and stayed in Africa. Edward later brough his family back to Silvan. The youngest son, Alfred, a cripple, became a diarist and recorder of the life on the Burleigh farms of his nephews and neices, and managed 'Hillcrest' the rental property on Silvan road he inherited from his mother. Florrie married Albert Stewart, mine manager, and died young.

The yeoman legacy passed down through his daughter Ada, who married the son of a Schwabian vinedresser and German farmer, K. Wilhelm Knoll. who restored productivity and the building of public and private grace and spirit to the life of their Hollis-blooded sons and daughters in South Wandin, in Burleigh and Silvan.

But their is a residual nobility of freedom in all the Hollis scions.


The Character Trace of the old Yeoman Freedom

In the shadowy bush of South Wandin, Hubert Hollis carved out a square mile, not of his own land, but as proxy and site-manager for Albert Wiseman. With his brother Arthur working with him on wages, he set to falling trees, splitting and sawing them to length, and building a post and rail fence around the whole square mile, 360 acres. Building a hut, clearing land for crops, berry vines and orchard trees. The selection was the kind of size his yeoman ancestors were used to, but it was not his to claim. His reward for service to Wiseman's was in selecting his own property to be paid for in earned installments, in the next valley, sized to suit his reduced means at sixty acres.

And if he or his sons had some inner air of pride, or authority, as if they were not born to a life of drudgery and toil, maybe it was not because they were trying to big-note themselves out of bluff and false pride, but because they had come down in the world in truth. Their people had long been used to being in charge, in authority, and giving jobs and tasks in the thrifty oversight and management of a productive farm. And the noble freedom of their yeoman heritage gave urge to all the hopes of the gentleman in them, hopes which did not have much hope of being fulfilled in the constrained circumstances which necessitated the grubbing a living out from among the stubbornly rooted trees of the deep forests of Wandin Yallock. .

And yet, that heritage of yeoman freedom and enterprise is with us yet, for the land Hubert Hollis selected is still held in part by men who are turning it to a productive living, and men who are some of his great great grandsons, with sons of their own being raised on the land, and off it. Sons, and daughters, who might also take a degree to enter the professions, or else to farm.

The desire of the Hollis blood is to be in charge, to think for yourself, independent, one's own boss, and to have the means to do it, a task that has sometimes proved, as it is eroded by the bitter cracks of orphanhood, to be beyond the urge and passion of the old blood.


link with Hollis Family History by Barbara Hollis http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~barbarahollis/hollis_family.htm