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Mordecai Solomon (1800
-1883) and Elizabeth Haines (1809 - 1852) |
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![768px-New_icon_shiny_badge.svg[1]](solomon_fam_8_files/image004.gif){kind=small}
Joseph
Solomon
Joseph Solomon, the third youngest of
the eight children of Mordecai and Elizabeth Solomon, was born in Sydney on 26
July 1844. He was only eight years old when his mother died in 1852 and so
would have then been raised by his father with the help of his older brothers
and sisters.
Until he turned the age of 33 we have
no record of Joseph’s whereabouts but given his ongoing attraction to
goldfields, I have little doubt that during the 1860’s he made his way to
Victoria to be a part of the great gold-rush of the time
Continuing on this theme, at some
stage before 1877 Joseph made his way to Thornborough, in the hill country NW of Mareeba,
on the Atherton Tableland. Thornborough was the
centre of a thriving goldfield called the Hodgkinson,
where gold was discovered in 1876. By 1877 Several thousand people were living
there, with hard rock miners and business people like butchers, shopkeepers,
and hotel keepers setting themselves up on the goldfield. Thornborough
had a school, church, hospital, court-house and newspaper. It even had a jeweller.
This extract from the Rockhampton
Bulletin (14 December 1877) not only mentions Joseph Solomon but also gives a
good description of the harshness of life and of problems on the Hodgkinson goldfield:
Northern
Mall News.
THE
GOLDFIELDS
Watsonville
has enjoyed the celebrity of turning out the only gold that has been got on the
Hodgkinson, with the exception of the few ounces
turned out by the Hercules, during the past month. A good deal of stone is
being raised that is certain to be crushed at the Magnet, to which mill a lot
of forty tons of stone is being carted from the Richmond-about a mile and
a-half distant. Several noticeable improvements have been made in the town :
Messrs. Hides and M 'Coll have erected a
comfortable-looking store and hotel building at the corner of the main street
and the road leading to the mill ; and Mr. J. W. Crowley, have a good wood and
iron structure for his butchering and hotel business. The other hotel and
storekeepers "don't feel certain" about the permanency of their reefs
and the prosperity of that part of the field-and so will weather the season in
bark and calico.
At Stewart
Town (says the same paper) business has diminished until now it is a struggle
between the storekeepers for the trade of the Chinese-of so little value is the
custom of the European miners, the trade with them being almost entirely on
credit, and store- keepers, hotelkeepers, the butcher, and the baker alike have
to "keep a book." The Chinkies, on the
contrary, bring gold with which until lately has been bought by the
storekeepers at the bank rate of 70s. per oz. So great bas been the competition
that, not content with lowering the price of rice three half-pence per lb,
sugar a penny, and flour twopence, gold has been
raised by sixpences and shillings from the above-quoted rate to 74s.
This system of "cutting both ways " with a double edge is certain to
prove disastrous to tho "merchant princes"
of Stewart Town. The Chinese are benefitting by it materially,
and if the business people are so foolish as to play a "cut-throat"
game it is of little use our legislators putting a duty on rice or
imposing a heavy fee upon the Mongolian for Business Licenses and Miner's
rights. The aspect of the country around Stewart Town is exceedingly dreary.
But one light shower has fallen lately, and none of the refreshing rains that
visited Thornborough reached that locality. The river
bed is but a mass of sludge, dotted with a few pools of ooze. The drought has a
deadening effect on the residents. The process of separating the gold from the
sand now is "dry blowing," which Europeans and Chinamen
alike have bad to resort to. The Chinese are pretty hard pushed, and
have spread far and wide on the Hodgkinson-even to
its junction with the Mitchell. At China Town there are not more than
forty settled, and the Chinese butcher kills but two bullocks a week,
Rain cannot be far off now, and the first heavy fall will prove a real
blessing, as many European diggers are living from hand to mouth. Occasionally
a "slug" is picked up on the lower Hodgkinson
; one of 4 1/2 oz. was found last week, and several of an ounce were brought in
at the same time ; but the process of "dry blowing" necessarily loses
a lot of fine gold, and brings the digger's average earnings very low.
Tho idea of employing the Chinese to carry quartz
(says the News) has been discussed by the miners, and the general opinion favours their employment where teams are not to be got. It
is likely the "boss" Chinamen will find plenty of work when the mill
dams are full.
The.Hodgkinson road question is of course of settlement by the
carriers themselves. The rates of carriage by both routes is £20 per ton. The
local journal of December 1, reports that a few teams havo
arrived from Cairns and Douglas during the week. Messrs. Clifton and Aplin Bros.' two teams arrived on Monday (from Smithfield)
bringing respectively four and three tons, both of them coming over the range
without unloading, and the round trip occupying twenty days ; rate of carriage,
£25 per ton. Messrs. Currie and Co. unloaded two teams, which brought three
tons each from Douglas, at £20 per ton-the trip down and up taking twenty two
days, Two waggons
arrived for Mr. J. Solomon, one from Smithfield and one from Douglas, at £20
per ton, and each carrying three tons. Mr. F. Middlemiss
received eight tons by two waggons from Douglas ;
carriage £20 per ton, and twenty-one days were occupied in the trip, Four teams
arrived from Douglas for Mr. D. N. Bice, bringing
nine and half tons. These teams left at the beginning of the month, and brought
their loading for £20 per ton. Two waggons came in
from Spear Creek on Wednesday with 2140 superficial feet of Kauri pine. A large
number of pack-horses arrived during the week, principally from Cairns and
Smithfield. The cattle are in good condition now, and it would be impossible to
find amongst them the sorry-looking animals that were employed packing to the Hodgkinson a short time back.
The bucks
continue troublesome on the Hodgkinson. The News of
1st instant reports that last week Mr. F. Martin found that the camp on the
Walsh bad been broken up and the horses dispersed. After a long search all but
six were found, and of course a few of them with spear wounds. A large number
of natives had been engaged in the work of destruction-tracks of scores of both
large and small being quite fresh in the river bed. On the Mitchell also they
have been on the war trail. Two of Mr. Shelson's
horses were found dead, and part of his team is still missing, though well-nigh
a month has elapsed since it was scattered by the darkies. On the Lower Hodgkinson they are numerous and dangerous-and cases of
horse-spearing are not infrequent.
So what was Joseph Solomon doing there?
Although there is a “Solomon” listed as being a watchmaker in Thornborough, it would
seem that from the size of the two wagon loads mentioned in the extract, Joseph
had most likely set himself up in business in Thornborough,
possibly as a general merchant and gold assayer, just as his older brother,
Myer had done on the Lambing Flat (Young) goldfields some 14 years earlier. His
supplies would undoubtedly have come all the way from Sydney, from the firm of
Myer & Solomon (Joseph’s brother Henry, his future father-in-law, Henry
Joseph and his sister Sarah’s husband George Myers all having being partners in
the business).
And how do we know he was even there? One of the small clues as to his life comes from this Australian Country Town & Journal (20 April 1878) announcement of his marriage to Adelaide Joseph, the daughter of Henry Joseph and Susan Brand, in Sydney on 10 April 1878 at the age of 33.
SOLOMON
JOSEPH.-April 10, at the residence of
the bride's mother, 295, George-street, by the Rev. A. B. Davis,assisted
by the Rev. A. A. Levi, Joseph Solomon, of Thornborough,
Queensland, youngest surviving son of Mordecai Solomon, of this city, to
Adelaide, eldest daughter of the late Henry Joseph).
(As a matter of Interest Adelaide’s cousin,
Adeline had married Joseph’s brother, Henry in 1865)
On 28 December 1879 the first of their
children, Elizabeth was born in Sydney (no address given in the 1879 Sands
Directory).
In late 1880 Joseph was successful in
applying for a Pawnbroker’s License and he established his business at their
residence at 276 Crown Street, Surry Hills, Sydney. He maintained the business
until at least 1888 and four of the next five children were registered at that
address. They were Rose Henriette (b 19 June 1880), Violet Maude (25 Feb 1882),
Henry Mordecai (13 June 1883) and Horace Joseph (22 June 1886)
Unfortunately, both Henry Mordecai and
Horace Joseph died in their infancy with Henry passing away at the age of 15
months on 8 March 1885 and Henry at the age two months on 26 August 1888. Both
were buried in the Rookwood Cemetery Old Jewish section.
If their final child, Vera, had also
been born in Sydney, all track of Joseph would have been lost. However, from
the NSW Registry of BDM’s we find that she was born in Lismore, NSW in
1891. Between 1890 and 1893 Joseph ran
the general store at Rous, a tiny village on the outskirts of Lismore with the
store situated next to the hotel on the corner of the Lismore, Wyrallah and Wardell Roads
I would hazard a guess that once again he
purchased his stock from the firm of Myers and Solomon in Sydney.
The final mention of Joseph living at Rous is
in an advertisement which appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on 10 January
1893, inviting tenders in the Assigned Estate (one which is assigned by a debtor to help pay
his debts) of Joseph Solomon, Storekeeper, Rous,
Richmond River.
However, more interest comes from this this article, written by Joseph and printed in the Northern Star, Lismore on 15 October 1890:
“Knowing it is usual for newspaper proprietors
to give space to ventilate any matter that is at all likely to benefit the
community, I ask you on behalf of the dairy farmers and butter factories in
particular, to publish the following:
The
way in which butter is packed in cases in Australia has not, so far, proved a
success, this I know only too well. It was said by one of the gentlemen at the
opening of the Rosevale Butter Factory, that butter packed in hermetically
sealed tins, packed in cases, had proved a failure ; .so it has in Australia,
though if any gentleman would write or call upon me, I can demonstrate to his
satisfaction that butter can be packed in tins, and then put in cases, more
secure than in kegs or any other method, as when in Croydon on the Gulf of Carpentaria, the only butter that one could use was that
which had been imported from Italy, and which no change of climate or careless
handling could affect, and the cases never broke, though subjected to the very
roughest of treatment, during transit by water and land.”
Here we find that in the year(s)
between running the pawn-broking business in Sydney and opening the store in
Rous, Joseph (and family?) had been to Croydon in Far North Queensland. The
historic goldrush town of Croydon is located in the
heart of the Gulf Savannah, 562 km west of Cairns. When first
settled in the 1880’s Croydon was a large pastoral holding covering an area of
approximately 5,000 km. Gold was discovered in 1885 and by 1887, the
town's population had reached 7,000.
As
this article, printed in the Cairns Post on 26 November 1887 relates, Joseph
Solomon was in Croydon at the height of this gold-rush. This is just a small
section of that article:
“By
favour of Mr E J Gorton we are able to give the following information
respecting Croydon conveyed to him in a letter from Mr J V
Mulligan the well-known Northern explorer which will doubtless be of interest
to our readers - "The stores are all full to the very teeth and there are
some big ones now …... Mr Joseph Solomon, late of Thornborough, has commenced business. I let him a piece of
ground in town. It is very hard to get a piece of ground there at
present, and when sold it brings as much as at Cairns.”
Ever
the person to look for opportunities, at the age of 50 Joseph was drawn to the
city of Charters Towers in
northern Queensland 83 miles inland from Townsville. During the last quarter of
the 19th century the town boomed as the rich gold deposits under the city were
developed.
Such were the boom years, between 1872
and 1899, that Charters Towers hosted its own Stock Exchange. During this
period, the population was approximately 30,000, making Charters Towers
Queensland's largest city outside of Brisbane.
It was here that in 1895 Joseph
Solomon established a business as an Auctioneer and Commission Agent and by the
1896 had become a Second-Hand dealer, while his wife, Adelaide , taught
pianoforte
. 
Ever attracted by the lure of gold, in 1897 Joseph found his way to the isolated Woodlark Island, just off the Suloga Peninsula, in the Milne Bay region of New Guinea, some 600 Km from Port Moresby.
It is here where gold was discovered
in 1895 and it is here where Joseph, decided he was to finally make his
fortune. However, as the opening of this first article shows, he was soon to
die a terrible death:
MINING IN NEW GUINEA, TERRIBLE SUFFERINGS FROM FEVER.
The special correspondent of the Townsville Bulletin at Samarai. telegraphs via Cooktown
that nearly everyman at Suloga, Woodlark Island, has
suffered very severely with fever. One man named Solomon died. Very little
is known of him, but his mate who is
returning by the Clara Ethel, says he was a married man, and his wife is
supposed to be a music teacher in Charters Towers. He only left 6 dwt of gold
in his camp and 10S. in silver.
There are about 50 diggers at Suloga and
a few traders, These bush merchants are kind to a sick man or stranger, and
although the surroundings are of the roughest, they make everyone as
comfortable as circumstances will permit. They charge nothing for lodgings, and
only 1s. for a meal. Medicine is supplied, at cost price, and if a man is ill
and unable to pay he is not bothered for payment at all. At one store eight men
are sleeping in a loft, all suffering from fever, and only waiting for a vessel
to carry them away. It is something terrible to see the amount of sickness on
Woodlark. To witness the poor fellows staggering over the sides of the ships,
and to hear their groans as they sink down on the deck, is heartrending indeed.
About 300 men are on the main camp, and every ship that calls takes away more
than it brings. As very little gold is being got, it is predicted that very
soon the number of men remaining will be less than 100 all told.
Brisbane Courier Monday 19 April 1897
It is stated that every two out of three of the men at Woodlark
are sick, and they are dying fast.
The reasons of the exodus from New Guinea are both many and
various. The chief of these, according to the stories told by the men, is that
there exist absolutely no facilities for mining. The spot regarded by most of
the men as most promising is the Mambare River,
situated on the north side of the island. The diggings, however, lie about 100
miles inland, and the intervening country is mountainous and extremely rugged.
No tracks have yet been cut, and horses have not been introduced there .circumstance due possibly to the desire to avoid the risk of
introducing the tick pest.
Another serious difficulty is that the natives are no longer
willing to carry the pro- visions and swags inland. One miner, evidently with a
melancholy turn of mind, remarked on Wednesday that since the last massacre Sir
William MacGregor (the Governor of British New
Guinea) and the missionaries have put their heads together, and prevailed on
" the niggers not to do any- thing at all for the whites." " It
would seem," he further observed, " that they don't want the country
opened up at all." " So far from being able to carry your own
swag," he continued, " you do very well if you can carry your own
carcass. At the commencement of last year there was comparatively no difficulty
in getting inland, for ' niggers' were obtainable in any quantity, and the
missionaries were not so officious, nor their influence so strong as it now
is."
Then, again, the mode of living is said to be unhealthy, even for
a lusty miner. Provisions are obtainable at reasonable prices; but the quality
is not super-excellent. The moistness of the climate renders flour mouldy. " In fact," said the gentleman quoted
above, " I never tasted worse flour in my life. When a bag of it is opened
you can smell it fifty yards away."
Perhaps not the least hardship that a New Guinea miner has to pass
through is the severe fever peculiar to the place. This is often followed by
dysentery, which often proves fatal. " I have known men lying down in a
fever-stricken camp," said our friend, " waiting till tracks were
cut, and at last come away disgusted." Numbers of men are still waiting at
Port Moresby for an opportunity to get across to the Mambare,
where many believe good gold exists. At present the total population of that
goldfield is said to be three miners. At Woodlark, an island off the
"tail" of the mainland, there are between 300 and 400 -a good many of
them fossickers. Gold has been obtained there in
small quantities, but it is now said to be " played out." In addition
to all this, it is stated that since about October last till within a week or
two ago continuous rain fell thirty days out of every thirty-one-a piece of
news, how- ever, to which it is not easy to give credence. Towards the interior
of the main- land the fall is not so heavy.
The following death announcement
appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on 10 April 1897:
SOLOMON.
—March 1897, at Suloga, New Guinea, of fever, Joseph,
the beloved husband of Adelaide Solomon,
of Church-street, Charters Towers, Queensland, and brother of Henry
Solomon, of 248 Park-road (Sydney)
Following Joseph’s death Adelaide
stayed in Charters Towers for at least another year before returning to Sydney,
where she lived at Erskineville, then Carlton and
finally Kogarah, where she died at the age of 71 on
29 February 1924 and was buried in the Jewish section of Rookwood Cemetery.
Elizabeth
(Lila) (b 1879) at first lived with her mother in Erskineville.
Although she was briefly engaged in 1908, she never married and lived for the
rest of her life with her sister Vera, firstly at Marrickville
and then at Chatswood, where she died, at the age of
83, on 2 November 1963. She is buried
in Macquarie Park Lawn Cemetery.
Rose
Henriette (b 1880) was the only one of the
surviving children to marry and until her marriage to David Paterson in Sydney
on 17 June 1908, she lived with her mother in Erskineville.
David and Rose had only one child, Adelaide Isabella Paterson who was born in Hurstville on 31 December 1910.
Tragically, Rose Henriette
took her own life at the age of 54 in North Sydney on 14 March 1934. The NSW
Coroner’s inquest found that she died of "Carbon Monoxide poisoning by wilfully inhaling a quantity of coal gas". She did
leave a suicide note, which apparently to her disappointment in her daughter´s
choice of husband.
Except for her death announcement, no
further record exists of Violet Maude (b
1882) who died at the age of 66 in Orange District Hospital on 4 January 1948.
The SMH death notice giving her address as ‘late of Belgrave
Street Kogarah’. She was buried in Rookwood Cemetery
on 5 January 1848.
There is also little information on Vera (b 1891). The Australian Electoral
Rolls list her as being an Accountant who, from before 1933 until 1963, lived
with her sister Elizabeth but no address can be found after this date. Vera died at the age 80 in Chatswood and is buried alongside Elizabeth in Macquarie
Park Lawn Cemetery.