Charles Henry Martin was born on 23rd December, 1827, at Islington, London. His father was a butcher In 1851 he trained as a teacher, though he continued to work as a clerk. In 1852 he migrated to Australia. His wife to be Elizabeth Hitchcock also migrated in 1852, ( turning 16 on the trip) with her mother Charlotte and four siblings. Charles had probably arrived two or three weeks earlier. I do not know if he and Elizabeth had become "romantically involved" prior to migration, as Elizabeth was very young, but it would appear probable that that was the case. They married less than a year after her arrival in Australia.
Charles worked in non teaching jobs for a couple of years befre taking his first teaching job at the Point Napean school. The building was of "wattle and daub" construction with a thatched roof, and whitewashed inside and out. It measured 17 feet by 13 (in today's measurements that's about 5 metres by 4). It had no floor - but I guess that the kids were quite happy with the sand. It also had good lighting and ventilation, and a good fire place. The main items of furniture were two writing desks about 13 feet long (4 metres) with long seats for the children to sit on. In addition, the various books, etc, supplied by the National School Authorities, were new. The school yard was officially two acres, but as it was unfenced the size was probably not all that relevant. It was quite close to the beach on the bay side of the point, so that the sea was mostly calm and there would have been some protection from the wind. All in all, a great little spot. There were no toilets, but as the District Inspector noted in his report under the heading "Privies" - "There are plenty of bushes about when the children retire and are perfectly concealed." A residence for the teacher was attached to the school (I'm not sure if it had one room or two - I think one). Charles received a salary of £100 per annum from the National School Board, and about an extra £30 from the school fees (it was standard practice at the time for the school to pay part of the teacher's salary). It is also noted in the D.I.s report that he had to supply wood and water for the school (again standard practice apparently) - the wood was no problem as there was plenty of vegetation around, but the water wasn't so easy. About 15 children attended the school. A small "extended family type" atmosphere no doubt prevailed. The objective of this page has been
to make available on the web a faithful implementation of Len's
book. Len's text has not been altered, but the new environment
has prompted a few changes
(1) Photos, copies of letters, etc were generally included at
the end of the appropriate section. They have now been included
as links at the appropriate point in the text
(2) The text has been divided into sections, with a front home
page to provide convenient access. Each section has a computer
generated table of contents for the same reason. Incidentally,
the format of the front item of the TOC is obviously wrong. I do
not understand why, but it works
(3) Various articles from the Australian Christian Pioneer were
included by Len as copies from the original magasine.
Unfortunately the original text was extremely small. The images
are supplied on the web as they were in the book, but where I
have been able to generate normal text, I have provided a link
to that as well.
(4) The base text of Len's book was read by OCR from a loose
leaf copy. The copy used had photocopies of the photos used in
the book. These have been scanned into the web version.
(5) Hannah Anderson. She married Charles after Elizabeth died,
Her life before marrying Charles was mentioned briefly in Len's
book, but much more information is now available online. I have
added a link to a brief page of her own. Hannah
A word from the author
“I hope you enjoy meeting Charles as much as I did. As an ex teacher in the distant past, the insights into education in those days were fascinating. The theological debate (war) that Charles got embroiled in was also interesting. Charles writes like a university don, debating bible texts in the original Greek. He must have never let up on self-education. Where did he find the time, with daunting education challenges and a large family?”