Chapter 5 - Family Recollections

    On 19th January 1885 the mortgage was discharged, and the Grant transferred to J. Fry & Co. George Briant had won. When a search for the whereabouts of the land at Boort was in progress, another Title was found; the purchasers of the original Crown Grant of land on which the old Boort Methodist Church was built.
    Two blocks of land had been bought for the sum of four pounds for each block on 13th January 1880 by George Briant the elder, John Taylor, William Drake, George Keast the elder and Mark Merriman. On 5th May 1982 the title was transferred to the Uniting Church in Australia Property Trust. When we were at Boort in 1991 and showed the Minister the original Title he said a huge debt was owed to the pioneers' spiritual foresight. We bought a booklet about the Boort Church, and in it G. Bryant the elder is mentioned as being the person who procured the organ.
    In 1882 James Briant married Mary Ann Odgers (known as Aunt Polly to my mother) and on 16th December 1884 my grandmother, Louisa, married Edwin Farr, whom I remember telling me when I was a little girl that my grandparents were at Eureka. I thought he meant his parents; but researching his family history they didn't go to Ballarat until after the death of their baby who died in 1855. Whether that bit of news stayed in my subconscious mind, I don't know - there is no positive proof of where George and Emma went to in 1854.
    I asked my mother whether she remembered anything about her grandmother, Emma Briant, but her only recollection was when she was a little girl staying at Ballarat. She recalled that Emma went out early each day - she thought she must have been socialising, but more than likely Emma was going to the bakery. My mother remembered Aunt Vicky at this time, as well as her Aunt Emily.
    It must have been in the 1890's, because my mother was born in 1890, and George died on 21st December, 1900. Julia Victoria married George Raymond Scott in 1893, so she may have been there for the wedding, but her memory would have had to be good for her to remember something when she was only three.
    The last years of life on the land must have been hard and lonely for George Briant. Perhaps his son, George Pateman Briant stayed to help him out after his land had been purchased by J. Fry about 1880. Louisa may have gone to visit her father with James or one of her brothers in a horse and cart. She remembered her time at Boort with great joy all her life. She loved that episode in their lives.
    Charles remained a baker at Ballarat; James had a dwelling and confectionery at Victoria St. East Ballarat in 1888, according to the Ballarat Trades Directory. Later he moved to Allensford, near Warrnambool, where he was a baker.
    By the mid-1880's, the family was splitting up. Alfred may have lived in Colac before he married Emma Jane Campbell at Colac in 1891. In the Trade Directory he is listed as a baker and confectioner at Colac in 1891; in 1892-1902 he is a baker and confectioner at Maryborough; and in 1903 he is listed in the Trades Directory as the proprietor of Seymour St. bakery.
    In a Will dated 18th December 1900, three days before he died, George left his Seymour St. property and all his chattels to his dear wife Emma for her sole use and benefit provided on her death she equally divided the property between the children. After his death, Emma lived at 217 Lydiard St. Ballarat with her daughter, Emily, until her death on 20th November 1910. Emily remained at Lydiard St. until she died late in 1944. Louisa died in January, 1945.
    After his father's death, Alfred returned to Ballarat, and became the proprietor of the Seymour St, bakery in 1903. From 1905-1932 he was the proprietor of the Red Tea shop 98 Sturt St. Ballarat; also "The Savoy" catering at 316 Sturt St. Ballarat from 1911-1922. His private address was 219 Mill St. Ballarat.
    George Pateman Briant worked for the Railway Department, and my mother remembers his lovely wife, (Fanny Brooks) whom he married in 1888. He was 48 years when his father died, and was the informant on the death certificate. He listed his address as Seymour St., and may have stayed with his parents when his father was ill. He provided the details of the family on the death certificate; he knew the details of his grandfather, James, who was a maltster and James' wife, Phyllis and her father's name, M.S.Picking.
    His address was Lydiard St. Ballarat, so he would have been a close neighbour to his mother. Emma was not well after George's death; she had a heart problem, but she must have been glad to have her sons near her. Her daughters, Louisa and Vicky, were in Melbourne, and James was in western Victoria by that time.
    Charles remained in Ballarat. He was unfortunate, in that two of his wives died in childbirth - an event which was not uncommon in those early days. Either a woman had large numbers of children, or else died early. Charles' first wife, Annie Augusta Briant, died giving birth to her third child on 29th August 1904, a year after the death of their first girl, Victoria, who died from a perforated appendix. A second girl, Maude, born in 1897, was the only surviving child of Charles.
    In 1907, he married Isabella Kerr, who died on 16th November 1907, at the age of thirtynine. Her baby died on 12th March 1908. His first wife's little son had died on 17th May 1905; nearly three years later another baby boy died. It would have been very sad and traumatic for the little girl Maude, who had lost a mother and stepmother, a sister and two little baby brothers from August 1903 to March 1908. It was fortunate that Alfred lived nearby with his family, who were very happy and Maude spent a lot of time with them.
    The Briant family were fond of animals, and birds, as well as horses. I asked my Aunty Vern whether she remembered anything about them. Her only memories were that both Alfred and Charles were very handsome, they loved horses and racing one another down the main street. True or false? Elinor says that they loved horses, and Charles was a judge at the local show.
    This fondness for animals and birds was evident among Louisa's family, who loved having birds, dogs and cats as pets I always remember my grandmother had a cat or two, and Grandpa had chooks in the backyard at Northcote, which in those early days resembled a country and not a suburban town. My mother was often chased by geese or a gander or a bull when she was a girl, out with her older brother, Les.
    During the great depression of the 1890's, I remember my grandmother saying that she lost money in a Bank that closed its doors before going "broke". She didn't trust banks again after that episode. My grandfather was a carpenter, and during that time he went as far afield as Western Australia seeking work. (His brother Arthur lived there.)
    The depression of the 1890's affected the bakery at Seymour St., because the details of the Will after George died in 1900 reveal that there were many bad debts, which Emma said she would try to collect, but many of the people who owed the bakery money had left with no forwarding address. It would be a common tale in those days.
    Despite setbacks, their faith and hope for a stable future seemed assured. The pioneers had worked hard, overcome obstacles, and now the future was in their children's hands.
    To George Briant and his sons we are indebted for a record of those early years between 1866 - 1880, when Land records were haphazard. In 1990, when we were at Boort, we learnt that the Boort Shire Office as well as the Uniting Church minister had no idea that original Land Grants had been made to anyone other than the present owners. The early records when settlers had abandoned or forfeited their land had been hidden in the archives. Those Land Acts of the l860's and 1870's are hard to believe today.
    I remember my grandmother as a lovely lady, even in old age. She never had a hair out of place, as she always wore a net in those days, and was always attractively dressed. Each Sunday afternoon she went to Wesley Pleasant Afternoon in the city, where she listened to a speaker, stayed for tea, then went to Church at night. Each Sunday night my grandfather went to the tramstop to meet her. As he was deaf and couldn't hear a preacher, he didn't go to Wesley with her.
    The dawn of the twentieth century saw an environment remarkably different from the nineteenth century. The thirty years between 1851 and 1881 had witnessed an amazing change. When George and Emma Briant arrived in Ballarat in 1854, they saw prisoners secured to a tree. Buninyong, five or six miles from Ballarat, was the Government headquarters, but a single cell lockup was erected at Ballarat in 1853 to protect prisoners from the weather. This lockup, as well as the prisoners, was guarded by military pensioners; there was a jail at Geelong.
    It was not until the end of l853 that Ballarat was made the official centre of the district, and not until after Eureka that lawyers came into their own at Ballarat. Before 1854 the first solicitor to practise in Ballarat only visited there occasionally, as he lived in Ballan. By 1884 it was different. It was during these thirty years that the Police Force and Government became stabilised.
    After thirty tempestuous years, a Police Force divorced from the military was born, and when the vexed question of the two Houses of Parliament in Victoria had been resolved, stable government was possible, and lauded by the populace. After the election on 14th July, 1880, an "Argus" editorial stated:
"Mr. Berry has been forced to abandon his wild ideas of substituting the plebiscite and a despotic Assembly for the Westminster system."
    Is it too presumptuous to assume that migrants from British villages had a hand in this change? They were strong, law-abiding and energetic, and had an abhorrence of absolute power.
    This abhorrence of power went back to the Magna Carta of 1215 AD when King John had his power curtailed. The British people had struggled for centuries to refine the corrupting influence of absolute power. They bought their ideals with them. For thirty years, between 1851 and 1881, they struggled to uphold British traditions of the freedom of the individual.
    I remember my grandparents saying: "People in government offices think they are little tin gods. May Heaven protect the little man from those who love the sense of power." British people mistrusted power - today's benefactor could become tomorrow's tyrant.
    When Peter Lalor MLA expressed the opinion that he hadn't advocated complete democracy for everyone, W.E.Withers wrote that one of the immutable facts of life was how power changed a man. "Absolute power corrupts"; in Britain the Monarch was seen as the controller of power - a person whose only power was the ability to return power to the people so they could vote once more when a deadlock occurred in Parliament.
    This idea worked well for the ordinary person, who was freed from the fear of a tyrant usurping the freedom of the individual. Everybody could concentrate on everyday life, certain that he was responsible for his future, free from unnecessary political control.
    Settlers like George worked hard, because they felt responsible for building a settled life from archaic beginnings. Philanthropists sponsored and contributed towards building hospitals, benevolent societies and orphanages to help the poor, and every religious group built Temples or Churches.
    Freedom from tyranny, freedom of worship - these were the ideals for which they fought. They might have seemed politically apathetic to some politicians, but within their hearts they were ready to passionately defend these ideals.
    They were willing to fight for their freedom - and in 1914 they rushed to enlist, NOT to defend Mother England as some commentators surmise, but to defend those ideals of freedom.
    My mother recalls going to see the young men marching to the 1914-1918 war. She often had tears in her eyes when the Anzac Day march was on, as she recalled seeing "those brave boys" marching along. Alfred's sons, Alfred and Calvin, went to the war; so did James' son, Reginald Wilfred.
    Alfred's son, Alf, was killed, and Calvin taken prisoner. James' son returned a paraplegic, Victoria's son was gassed, so was Louisa's son-in-law, Aunty Vern's husband.

Page last updated - 18 Jan 2006