This is my first Broken Memories post in over three years. This story of the Chadwick family has waited in my drafts all that time. There are more Broken Memories stories waiting too, so watch out for those. Hopefully, the wait won’t be as long.

If you would like to know more about the Broken Memories series, follow the link to an introduction covering broken graves, who is responsible for their repair, and the regulations Victorian cemeteries adhere to-Broken Memories…An Introduction. You’ll find links to three previous Broken Memories stories at the bottom of this post.

The story behind the grave of Sarah Chadwick and baby Rae is one about the twists and turns of life and left me wondering, as I do about many graves in the Hamilton (Old) Cemetery, how long since a loved one stood before the grave and remembered those within.

CHADWICK

Sarah Jane Morris was born at Geelong in 1858, a daughter of Henry Morris and Susan Best.¹ In 1880, she married Englishman Thomas Taylor Chadwick.² A son Edgar Henry was born in 1885 at Mortlake.³

In 1886, the death of Edgar Henry Chadwick, son of Thomas T. and Sarah Chadwick, was registered in Albury. It seems unfeasible for the Chadwicks to be so far north, particularly when they first showed up in Hamilton in the first half of 1886. However, aside from Edgar’s birth at Mortlake, there is no other reference to him aside from the death in Albury.

The Chadwicks arrived in Hamilton around May 1886 with Thomas taking over the business of John West in Gray Street, next to what is now the National Bank.

The Chadwick family grew in 1890 with the birth of Constance Winifred.⁴ In 1892, Sarah fell sick, and the doctor diagnosed influenza, but her condition worsened. Sarah had consumption (tuberculosis). She died on 5 August 1892, the day of her thirty-fourth birthday, leaving Thomas and infant Constance. Sarah was buried at the Hamilton (Old) Cemetery.

Thomas could easily have felt cursed when, two months after Sarah’s death, the fire bell he heard on the night of 7 October 1892 from his home in Lonsdale Street was signalling a large fire at his shop. He rushed to the scene to see the building engulfed in flames. The fire started at Miss McGowan’s fancy goods shop and spread to her fruit shop next door, and then to Thomas’s shop. Miss McGowan was in the backyard of her shops in a distressed state, suffering from shock.

Thomas had just received £1500 of his new season’s stock, with a total stock of £5000. A fire sale and his insurance enabled him to get his shop up and running again. A. Miller & Co. owned the building, which was insured.

Thomas remarried in 1894 to Annie Vagg.⁵ A son Rae Hamilton Chadwick was born at the Chadwick home Olinda on 29 May 1895 ⁶, but he died a month later.⁷ Rae was buried at the Hamilton cemetery in an unmarked grave to the left of Sarah’s grave.

Thomas and Annie left Hamilton in the late 1890s for Welshpool in South Gippsland, almost 500 kilometres from Hamilton. Thomas had a career change, taking up dairy farming at Hazel Park on the Agnes River.

He was soon running a successful operation.

In 1903, the Leader newspaper reported Thomas was milking ninety-five cows daily and had built a milk processing factory on his property to overcome the distance to the nearest factory. The same year, a daughter Dorothy was born to Thomas and Annie.⁸

Fire again brought despair to Thomas’ life in January 1908 when dozens of properties in the district were burnt out. Thomas was one of the “heavy losers”. By 1927, when Constance married ⁹, Thomas and Annie were living in East St. Kilda. Constance spent her married life in Sea Lake in the Mallee.

Soon after, Thomas and Annie moved to Caulfield North. Annie died in 1950 and Thomas the following year.

Constance, the only known living child of Sarah, died in 1975, aged 84. Her death registration shows her mother’s name as “unknown”.¹⁰

It’s been over 120 years since the Chadwicks left the Hamilton district. Life moved on, time passed, and with the barrier of distance, maybe there was never the chance to return to Hamilton to visit the graves of Sarah and Rae. Now, those who remembered them are long gone.

The passage of time has not been kind to Sarah’s monument, with the column having fallen from its mount and the slab broken. It is in the southeast corner of the cemetery, an area with many missing and broken headstones. On the crest of the Coleraine Road hill, this section faces exposure to the weather from the southeast. It is also within easy view of the passing highway, possibly making these graves more vulnerable to vandalism over the years.

I often pass Sarah and Rae’s graves and little changes, but on a recent visit, I noticed someone had plucked an urn from the rubble and placed it on the monument.

Broken Memories: Hamilton (Old) Cemetery Part 1  The tragic story of Frances and Samuel Hing

Broken Memories: Hamilton (Old) Cemetery Part 2 Joseph Lissiman…a ghost story

Broken Memories: Hamilton (Old) Cemetery Part 3 The Gorman family… victims of a ‘”dreadful disease”

Additional Sources

1. Victorian Birth Index, Sarah Jane Morris,1858, Registration No.12405/1858
2. Victorian Marriage Index, Sarah Jane Morris,1880, Registration No. 4925/1880
3. Victorian Birth Index, Edgar Henry Chadwick,1885, Registration No. 12134/1885
4. Victorian Birth Index, Constance Winifred Chadwick,1890, Registration No. 13549/1890
5. Victorian Marriages Index, Thomas Taylor Chadwick,1894, Registration No. 52/1894
6. Victorian Birth Index, Rae Hamilton Chadwick,1895, Registration No. 12727/1895
7. Victorian Death Index, Rae Hamilton Chadwick,1895 Registration No. 9486/1895
8. Victorian Birth Index, Dorothy Leila Chadwick,1903, Registration No. 14699/1903
9. Victorian Marriage Index, Constance Winifred Chadwick,1927, Registration No. 344/1927
10. Victorian Death Index, Constance Winifred McDonald, 1975, Registration No. 11361/1975