The Graham family came to Sydney from County Monaghan, Ireland. Three married daughters moved to the Southern Highlands.
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By the 1920s the children of Elizabeth McFarlane and Margaret Tyrrell, two of the daughters, had growing families of their own in the local district.
The other of the three, Kate Smith, known as Nurse Graham, matron at a Mittagong Cottage Home until destroyed by fire in 1906, appears not to have had children.
A daughter of Margaret married in June 1920. The Robertson Advocate reported that: “St Stephen's Church of England, Mittagong, was the scene of a quiet but very pretty wedding, when Oswald Hines, younger son of Mr and Mrs Hiram Hines, of ‘Amblecote’, Bowral, was married to Ella Graham (Kittie) Tyrrell, younger daughter of Mr and Mrs Walter Tyrrell, of 'Derrycreevy', Mittagong.”
“The bride's linen and cutlery, with a cheque for 20 pounds, were the gift of her aunt, Nurse Kate Graham. Among the presents was a handsome silver tea pot, the gift of the staff and pupils at Mittagong Superior Public School.”
In 1917 Elizabeth McFarlane (nee Graham) had purchased a property named Ravensdale, located between Braemar and Colo Vale Rd. By the 1920s this locality was known as Aylmerton, the name of a nearby station on the new Picton-Mittagong section of the Southern Railway which opened via Bargo in 1919.
Her two young sons Sid and Blayney worked on the property. Sid became a sawmiller and proficient builder and around 1920 he erected a substantial brick residence at Ravensdale. A news report from 1923 reveals that a fire, assumed to have been caused by a tramp, occurred on the property in an old, untenanted weatherboard cottage. Only the external kitchen, a brick chimney and iron remained.
Sid became involved in local community activities and Blayney married, as mentioned in the Robertson Mail of 19 February 1924: “The junior branch of the Agricultural Bureau is at present holding competitions in growing vegetables. Members have been growing beans, tomatoes, radishes, lettuces, cucumbers, squashes. The judges are Miss Westmoreland and Messrs Charles Long and Sid McFarlane.”
“The pupils and teachers of Colo Vale School are arranging to send a presentation to Mrs Blayney McFarlane, nee Miss Pearl Trist, who has been transferred as assistant teacher to Mathowra School near the Victorian border. As her parents reside at Deniliquin, the change should be suitable.”
Blayney’s marriage did not last, for by 1930 he was living at Ashfield and, after a divorce for desertion, he remarried. He died at Ramsgate, Sydney in 1977.
Sid also found a wife. He married Vera Kendrick of Colo Vale in 1924 at Picton.
The Southern Mail reported in November 1924: “The Companions of Chapter Gibraltar Masons gave Mr and Mrs Sid MacFarlane a surprise party in the form of a kitchen tea on the occasion of their recent marriage.”
The couple resided at Ravensdale, where they would raise four children: Enid, Colin, Gordon and Mavis. Sid had seven older brothers, of whom most were married and living in Sydney. On occasion they would visit him and their mother at Ravensdale and enjoy the country retreat.
Sid became a professional builder and was a key player in forming a local rural co-operative.
- Part 3 of a 4-part series. To be continued.