Telford Family of Ellinbank
The Orr Family in Australia
William 44 years
Jean 39
Jane 17
Margaret 15
James 13
Janet 11
Thomas 9
William 9
John 7
Juliana 2
The South Australian immigration records available at the Maritime Museum, list the above family as passengers on the "Gloucester" , 531 tons, which arrived at Port Adelaide on Friday 13th August 1852. Below is the reference to the Orr family on the ship's list of passengers - no mention of the children by name; however the Adelaide Observer of 14th August reports the full list as "W., J., J., J., J., J., J., T., W., and M. Orr as well as some 300 others. There were 23 deaths on board including 14 from measles and 3 from scarlatina.
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The Gloucester departed Plymouth on May 1st, a voyage of 105 days.
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Adelaide was a busy port - in the Adelaide Morning Chronicle of 26th August the Gloucester was listed as still in harbour along with 30 others.
Port Adelaide in 1836
In 1852 the settler population of Adelaide was about 65,000; before the beginning of colonisation in 1836 the indigenous population is estimated to have been about 15,000.
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After a few months in Adelaide William took the family to Victoria and in 1855 the last child, George, was born at Prahran ( Melbourne). Thus the family was complete - Jane, Margaret, James, Janet, Thomas, William, John, Juliana and George.
The obituary at right of Jane Hunter Orr was in The Argus of September 26, 1908.
It is apparent that some time shortly after their arrival in Australia William Orr and family made their way to the Victorian goldfields, specifically Forest Creek and Fryers Creek ( near Castlemaine). Howeever in the Argus of September 1854, William Orr Esq. advertised land for sale in Prahran ( 30 building allotments) which had been under cultivation for the previous two years. This suggests that William bought land in Prahran shortly after arriving in Australia in 1852, probably had a residence there and made periodic visits to the goldfields at Castlemaine / Mt Alexander.
About 1859 William and most of the family moved to Queensland; by this time Jeannie was married and living at Beechworth Victoria.
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Jeannie Orr married John Henry Gray, founder of J.H. Gray, auctioneers, at Beechworth, Victoria in March 1856 when she was 21 and he was 26 years old; Jeannie and John had 3 children - John Henry), Maria Agnes and Frederick, before John was tragically killed at Chiltern in June 1861 in an accident involving a horse and cart which he was breaking in. He was 31 years of age having come from Canada in 1852, initially to the Fryer's Creek goldfield ( Castlemaine) where presumably Jeannie and John became acquainted
3 years later in 1864, Jeannie married William Telford who had been a witness at her marriage to John Gray, William was 8 years older than Jeannie. Jeannie died at the young age of 37 in July 1871 after suffering chronic metritus of the uterus for the previous 2 years.
Jeannie and William had 2 children - details are given on the "Telfords in Australia" page.
Jeannie is pictured here at right -
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Jeannie’s brother William became a well known figure around Wangaratta as a politician and mining entrepreneur. He was for a time a member of the Victorian Legislative Council. His entry in in the Australian Dictionary of Biography is reproduced, in part, below:
The family spent ten years on the Castlemaine and Daylesford goldfields. Orr then accompanied his father to Queensland where they mined gold at Gympie and ran sheep. On returning to Victoria he joined J. H. Gray & Co. at Beechworth. When the firm opened a Wangaratta branch Orr moved there and became active in local affairs. He was mayor in 1878-79 and secretary of the Ovens and Murray Agricultural Society for seven years. He married Mary Fraser in 1878; they had no children.
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During the early 1880s Orr decided to try his luck at the newly discovered silver mines at Broken Hill, NSW and remained there for six years. The timing was fortuitous: in 1885 as a partner of A. E. Bowes Kelly he was an original shareholder in Broken Hill Proprietary Co. Ltd. In 1888, riding on the boom at Broken Hill, Orr persuaded Kelly to join him in floating a silver mine at Zeehan on the west coast of Tasmania. Although Zeehan failed in 1891, the nearby Mount Lyell copper mine, purchased in 1892, became an outstanding success. Orr took up 15,000 shares in the newly formed Mount Lyell Mining Co. and became a director of the firm. Two years later he resigned his directorship and undertook a world tour, during which he visited copper-mines in Spain and in Montana and Colorado, United States of America, and the Comstock gold-mine in Nevada.
When he returned he became chairman of Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Ltd, Queensland. Orr purchased a grain and sheep farm near Shepparton. In 1901 he was elected to the Victorian Legislative Council at a by-election for North-Eastern Province. Orr died at his home at Toorak in February 1929. His estate was valued for probate at £63,042.
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William Orr is pictured right and his 2 siblings Jessie and John below.
These photos were taken at Queenstown, Tasmania in 2015; they show the mine workings at the “Iron Blow” and the plaque at the Iron Blow lookout recording the purchase of the Mount Lyell copper mine in 1891 by Bowes Kelly and William Orr, and a view looking past Orr Street to the bare hills of Mount Lyell.
The plaque reads:
This ground was first pegged by Mick and Bill McDonough and Steve Carlson in November 1883 in their search for gold. The lease was worked for gold with limited success until was recognised as a copper mine and bought by Bowes Kelly and William Orr in 1891. In 1893 they formed the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company Limited. A lucky bonanza of high grade silver ore was a major factor in financing Mount Lyell. While the copper smelter and the railway to Strahan were built from 1893 to 1895, 849 ton of ore was sold assaying 21% copper and 1923 oz. of silver per ton. Subsequently the Blow was worked until 1929 and yielded 5,497,468 ton of ore assaying 12% copper, 2 oz. silver per ton and 0.065 oz. copper per ton.
Commemorating the Lyell District Centenary November 1983
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James Galt Orr left Beechworth in 1886 after residing there for 22 years (newspaper report of his send off August 1886) i.e. went there in 1864, the year Jeannie married William Telford. He worked alongside William Telford with the firm of J H Gray.
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At some stage Juliana Orr came to Beechworth where she married Henry Newsam Stewart, a bank accountant in 1877. It is possible the 21 year old Juliana came to Beechworth on Jeannie’s death in 1871 to help look after the children. Certainly after her marriage Juliana and her family kept in close contact with John Dempster Telford, and after his death in 1931, with his widow (Lottie) and family.
Juliana and Henry had 3 children at Eaglehawk ( Ballarat) and one at Mt Gambier. They returned to Melbourne by 1903. At some stage Juliana moved to “Kooringal” Ellinbank, Gippsland to live with son Cyril Henry Stewart; she died there on New Year’s Day 1925. Cyril appears to have been the first of this family to move to the Ellinbank / Warragul area, first appearing there on the 1914 electoral roll as a farmer ( aged 24) and married in 1927 to Clara Wallace.
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The Stewart and Telford families of Ellinbank kept in regular contact and when Alan Telford was baptised at St Georges CHurch of England on St Bartholomew's Day ( 24 August 1941), Cyril Stewart was one of the godparents.
His sister Stella Ruby married Alban Newsam Hale in 1923. Alban Hale had already been farming at Dollarburn Rd, Warragul by 1914. They were still there in 1936 but by 1943 were living in Union Rd ,Kooyong ( Melbourne), children: Alban Newsam, Jeannie Hunter, Ronald Edgar .
Jeannie Stewart married Samuel Backhouse, a solicitor in 1916. They lived in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, children: Stewart Burder Backhouse who had a son Peter Stewart Backhouse in 1947. Olive Stewart remained single until her death in 1957. She seems to have moved between Melbourne and the Ellinbank / Warragul area.
Margaret Orr married John H Matthews in 1869 and had 3 children born at Beechworth.
George Orr married Frances Pearce in Brisbane in 1858 and they had 4 children, all in Queensland.
Thomas Orr died at Malvern, Victoria in 1907. unmarried.
John Orr married Mary Lankester in Sydney in 1883 - 2 children born at Rockhampton,Qld.
Jessie Orr married John R McWilliam, the son of Presbyterian minister from Northern Ireland, at Rockhampton in 1866 and they had 7 children - Thomas Moore 1868, Jeanie 1870 and Anna Russell 1871, Juliana Orr 1874, William Orr 1876, Mary Jessie Orr 1878, Russell Charles 1880.
For some of the information about the Orr and Hunter families, and particularly the photos of Jessie and John, I am indebted to Jill Glover of Brisbane who is the great granddaughter of Jessie and John McWilliam.
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When William and Jane Orr and their family arrived in Australia in 1852 they were following in the footsteps of close relatives already living in Australia.
Janet Orr ( born 1801), William's sister, married John Orr ( cousin ? ) in Irvine, Ayrshire and emigrated with their 8 children who on arrival at Port Jackson on 1st April 1839 were aged Jane 16, John 15, James 12, William 10, Margaret 7, Jessie 4, Mary Mayne 6 months. They came on the 482 ton "Hero of Malown" from Liverpool over a period of 4 months.
After spending some years in the south the family settled in Brisbane where they gave rise to numerous descendants. In particular Margaret married Thomas Boyland who ran a successful ferry service up the Brisbane River to ipswich; they had 11 children and numerous grandchildren.
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In July 1853 a notice appeared in the Melbourne Argus placed by John and James Orr looking to make contact with (their uncle) William Orr or any of his family, formerly of Bourtree Hill, Ayrshire. This would have been 11 months after William, Jane and family had arrived in Adelaide on the Gloucester.
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In about 1859, William Orr decided to move with his family to Queensland, initially taking up land at "Laurel Bank" close to Rockhampton, then subsequently bought 4300 acres on the Fitzroy River near Rockhampton which he named "Ayrshire Park" and his sons continued on there for some years after his death. At the same time he had 2000 acres of grazing land further north near Proserpine which was named "Cumnock" after Jean Hunter's place of birth.
His obituary says: "Mr. Orr was an excellent agriculturist. His dairy stock was always of the best description, and his farm has long been famed for its dairy produce (butter and cheese)" In fact he won first prize for his cheese at Brisbane Exhibition in both 1877 and 1878. The article here from "The Capricornian" applauds this as an extraordinary achievement under the circumstances of the time. He was also reported as being an innovator in the cultivation of sorghum.
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The photo below is typical of the country around Ayrshire Park.
