Barbara Neasmith

  Noted events in her life were:

• source. This is THE Barbara Short who notes:
I'll attach the information about my book, We Came with the Gold Rush which can be purchased directly from her.
Recently I was looking through a small white covered notebook amongst our family's relics. On the front it said Mining Mems T. Neasmith. Inside were lots of notes made by my grandfather, Thomas Neasmith which included many details about the mining leases that he had been involved in during the 1870s. So I had at last found accurate evidence that he had been involved in looking for gold, but not until the 1870s.
So the Neasmith story is rather complicated. Thomas came out to Sydney in 1854, at the age of 9 years, with his cousins, but his widowed father, Charles Stewart Neasmith, my great grand-father, had already arrived in Melbourne in March 1853, right at the height of the big Gold Rush to places such as Bendigo. But I do not think he went to the Gold Fields. He came with the Gold Rush but did not appear to be part of it.
Why did he come to Australia? He evidently was a man of strong Christian faith and he came out with a group of church people on a Temperance boat. Although a Scotsman, originally from Glasgow, he had been living in Liverpool and Manchester and he may have wanted to get away from the grimy, smoky industrial cities, full of cotton mills. He had lost two wives. In fact his second wife had only recently died. Maybe she had planned to emigrate as well. One of his sons had died but he had two children, Margaret and Thomas, who he left in the care of his relatives in Glasgow. He probably wanted to go to a place where he could make a new start in life and where his children would be able to have a good future. He was not to know that at the time he arrived in Melbourne his daughter died of measles back in Glasgow.
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His older brother, William, who had managed a cotton mill in Glasgow, had died in 1842 and in 1848 his widow, Margaret, and children had migrated as free settlers under Ben Boyd's scheme. So maybe he had heard good reports about this Great Southern Land from his sister-in-law, Margaret, and her children.
Charles Stewart was now aged 53 years and he was a trained lithographer and I believe that after he arrived in Melbourne in March 1853 he headed off to Hobart Town to see if he could carry on his trade there. But we have records that he left Hobart Town in June 1854 on the William Denny II and probably made his way up to Sydney to meet up with Thomas, who was sailing out to Australia with his cousins and arrived in December 1854.
After meeting up with Thomas, the two of them have evidently returned to Hobart Town and have spent most of 1855 living there and Charles Stewart has been involved with lithographic work. At the end of 1855 they have made their way up to Sydney and Charles Stewart has set up his own Lithography business in Sydney. But he was suffering from trouble with his eyes and he was finding it hard to do the very fine detailed work involved with Lithographic printing so in August 1857 they packed up and headed off to the Bush
Then followed many Adventures in the Bush, some of which we can now know about due to the copies of old Newspapers such as the Moreton Bay Courier being scanned and available on line. In one of them we can read how Charles Stewart was a witness in a court case where a man was accidentally shot. From this 1858 newspaper we can also gain an understanding of the attitudes of the European settlers to the Australian aboriginal people in those times, especially to the Burnett tribe, who were the traditional owners of the area where Charles Stewart and his son were now located. Charles Stewart was not looking for gold, rather, he was shepherding.
This book goes on to tell of the life and times of Thomas Neasmith as he settles down to live in Carcoar NSW and later in the nearby town of Blayney. The 1861 Census states that Carcoar had 374 residents and they included 16 year old Thomas Neasmith now working as a shop assistant in Mr E.J.C.North's store. He remained in Carcoar for about 25 years and so could be called "one of the pioneers of the Carcoar District". After the death of his father in 1881, in 1883 he married Annie Hosking, who had been born in Carcoar, and they set off for Balmain, Sydney, for a few years where some of Thomas' cousins were living. Annie's parents had also come out with the Gold Rush and her uncles were involved in looking for gold in the Braidwood-Araluen area. Her mother remained in Carcoar until her death 1907. Sadly, we can't trace what happened to Annie's father.
In about 1888 Thomas and Annie returned to the Carcoar district but settled in nearby Blayney, where they raised a family of eight children. They remained there for over 30 years before moving to Bathurst for the sake of my father's education at the Bathurst High School. A few years later they moved to Carlingford in Sydney where Thomas died in 1927.
With the aid of old documents, old letters, old photographs and old newspaper cuttings we can gain an insight into life in New South Wales in the second half of the 19th Century and the growth of the various colonies into the Australian nation, as we know it today. I have also included information on life in New South Wales in the first half of the 20^th Century as the book continues up until the death of Thomas' wife, Annie, in 1948.
One of Thomas Neasmith's sons, William Thomas Neasmith, my uncle Bill, was a soldier in World War I and kept a detailed diary of his time there. So this book includes a section on The Great War with Uncle Bill's diary inserted at the relevant places to explain his involvement in the War. This includes especially the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917 and the Battle of Amiens in 1918.
At the back of the book I have written briefly about each of the children of Thomas and Annie Neasmith and explained a little about their lives and families. But the book mainly covers the life and times of Thomas Neasmith and his wife, Annie, and the wider Neasmith Family, from the 1840s to the 1940s i.e. about 100 years.
It includes references to the Industrial Revolution, the growth of cities like Manchester and Glasgow with their many cotton mills using much child labour, emigration to New South Wales, the 1850s Gold Rush, life in Melbourne, Hobart and Sydney in those times, lithography, shepherding on the early sheep properties, attitudes to the aborigines in those times, the anti-Chinese riots at Lambing Flat, life in Carcoar, an early frontier town in western NSW, bushrangers, the Presbyterian Church, the 1870s Gold Rush, the growth of the Railways of NSW and its impact on Blayney, the Sydney International Exhibition of 1879, Sydney in the 1880s, the growth of technical education, mining in the Carcoar-Blayney district, the 1890s "the decade of social change" - strikes, the rise of the Union movement and the Australian Labor Party, the 1890s Recession and Drought, the Rev James Adam and his wife, horse transport, the chaff industry, the role of women, Federation, the White Australia Policy, early Maternity Hospitals, Freezing Works, the Post Office, rabbits, the Great War, the coming of the motor car, doing apprenticeships, the growth of Sydney, the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the World Depression, shipping news, our New Zealand connections, World War II, Anzac Days and many more! All of these events are interwoven into the Neasmith Story and for a young reader will help their understanding of them and "place them in the family context" and hopefully give them a concept of "historical time" and an interest in history.
At the back of the book you will find copies of various documents that back up information in this book as well as a number of letters written by Charles Stewart Neasmith to his son, Thomas.
I think we can safely say that our Neasmith forefathers "Came with the Gold Rush", but didn't put "gold" first! Rather, they wanted a better life for their family, away from the industrial cities of England and Scotland, with their "dark satanic mills"!
She is also writing a second book The Neasmith Letters which can also be purchased directly through her. She writes about this book:
As a child, back in the 1940s, I can remember that one of my great delights, when having a day home from school due to illness, was to grab a bundle of these old family letters and take them back to my bed and try to read them. Each letter was in its own envelope and they were tied up in various bundles with string. The handwriting was often difficult to read but if you persevered you were transported away to life in Glasgow in the second half of the 19^th Century.
I realized that a lot of the letters had been written to my grandfather by his cousins back in Glasgow, Scotland. As well as giving me a picture of life in Scotland they also revealed a lot about my grandfather who was living in Carcoar (1859-1883) in central NSW and working in a Bootmaker's Shop (1862-1883).
In the 1990s my brother Donald, and his wife Diane, took on the mammoth task of transcribing these letters. Donald would try to decipher the writing and Diane would type it out and together they added notes to try to help people to understand the letters. There were lots of spelling mistakes in the original letters and they have included these errors.
In 2009-2010, with the aid of these transcribed letters and many other documents and old newspapers and books on the history of Carcoar, I have written a large book on the Life and Times of Thomas Neasmith and his family called, We Came with the Gold Rush, and it explains in detail much of the life of Thomas and his father, Charles Stewart Neasmith. For people reading these letters, without a copy of my book, I will try to give you a brief outline of what they are about. If you would like to buy a copy of my book please contact me.

This book, The Neasmith Letters, starts in 1855 with letters written to my great grand-father, Charles Stewart Neasmith (CSN) who was a lithographer who had come out to Melbourne in 1853. He had travelled to Hobart Town and was hoping to find work in his trade of Lithography. He was also trying to sell textiles sent out by his cousin, John Neish (Senior) who worked in a textile factory in Glasgow. (See Neasmith Family Tree).
In 1856 Charles Stewart Neasmith was in Sydney and was advertising himself in the Sydney Morning Herald as an Engraver and Lithographer and he had a business, firstly at 12 Park Street and later at 52 Hunter Street, Sydney, opposite the Union Bank.
In August 1857 Charles Stewart and his son Thomas left Sydney and travelled to New Gayndah, 144 km west of present day Maryborough. His eyes were playing up from all the fine work involved with lithography, and he was now doing shepherding for Wilkin and Holt on their grazing property at Yenda, 32 km from Gayndah. They were in contact with their cousins, the MacKinlay family, in Sydney, who told them of other members of the Neasmith family and how they were faring in Australia, but their relatives in Scotland were worried about them as they had not received any news of them for ages.
About this time Thomas Neasmith wrote a long letter back to his cousins in Glasgow entitled Adventures in the Bush which they found very interesting. Following from this George and Thomas decided that they would try to regularly correspond with each other telling each other of their vastly different lifestyles. Our greatest regret is that we do not have copies of the letters from Thomas to his Glasgow cousins.
By February 1859 Charles and Thomas were now in Carcoar NSW and could be contacted through Mr S. Meyer. Australian Steam Mills, Carcoar, and letters were also addressed to the Neasmiths C/- Rowlands Hotel, Carcoar and Thomas signed a work agreement with Edward J.C.North to work as his shop assistant in Carcoar.
From 1860 till 1887 there is now a regular correspondence between Thomas and the Neish family; a few wonderful letters from John Neish (Junior), who later visited the Colony, but the bulk of the letters are from George Neish, who was about the same age as Thomas Neasmith.
Through the letters we learn much about the life of Thomas Neasmith in Carcoar and about his father, Charles Stewart Neasmith, who often travelled far looking for work.
At times there are letters from other members of the Neasmith family (See Family Tree) such as Elizabeth Vallance, Thomas' Aunt Betsy, back in Glasgow, and from cousin Elizabeth Matthews, down in Victoria and cousin William Neasmith (Jun.) who went off to the Goldfields.
John MacKinlay in Sydney did his best to notify Thomas about the movements of his cousins, the children of William Neasmith and Margaret Murray. Note that Uncle William (Sen) died back in Glasgow in 1842 and it is his wife, Aunt Margaret Murray Neasmith, and her children who have also migrated to Australia. (Refer to Family Tree)
Down in Carcoar life was busy for Thomas as he did his apprenticeship in Bootmaking with William Darwin during 1862-64. At the end of his three years with Darwin he was glad to start working for another Carcoar bootmaker, Thomas Hosking.
To his descendants, the Hosking family are very interesting as, much later, in 1883, Thomas Neasmith went on to marry one of Thomas and Mary Ann Hosking's beautiful daughters, Annie Hosking. While Thomas is left in Carcoar, in 1864, his father heads off to Rockhampton to work as a cook at a hotel and we are able to read letters from Charles to his son during their separation.
Thomas came out to Australia with his cousins John and Mary MacKinlay in 1854, and Thomas had a good friendship with them and especially with their son, Adam, and there are a number of very interesting letter from Adam in Balmain, Sydney, to his cousin in Carcoar.
We read about Thomas moving to Forbes for awhile in 1866, hoping to buy a bootmaking business there but we can then read of his return to Carcoar to become a partner with Thomas Hosking in his Bootmaker's shop.
During the 1870s the letters are mainly from George Neish in Glasgow to Thomas Neasmith and his father in Carcoar.
In 1875 Thomas Neasmith was involved in gold mining in various areas around Carcoar, but especially in the Flyers Creek area near Burnt Yards. He discovered that the miners of Owens & Co were allowing pyrites containing gold to be washed away downstream. Thomas and his friend Findlay, a carpenter from Carcoar, decided to investigate whether there was money to be made from the pyrites. They took a sample and sent it away to be assayed. This book contains all the relevant letters associated with this venture. Unfortunately they were not allowed to have the pyrites.
In 1878 there is a letter from Elizabeth Gillespie, a grand-daughter of Thomas' Aunt Betsy, who was running the Dublin Bread Shop on Stobcross St Glasgow. Elizabeth wrote a few letters to her Carcoar cousin and uncle, and was able to inform them of the death of Aunt Betsy in 1879.
In 1880 we read a letter from Charles Stewart Neasmith, who, while on a trip to Sydney to view the Sydney Exhibition, was able to meet up with his sister-in-law, Margaret Murray Neasmith, who was now 84 years old and was living with her daughter Mary MacKinlay and family at Balmain.
In 1880 George Neish wrote of his father's death on 21 June 1880 in Glasgow. Later, after the death of Charles Stewart Neasmith in 25 February 1881 in Carcoar, George wrote a beautiful letter of sympathy to his cousin, Thomas, in Carcoar.
In the later letters we read of George Neish's move to Edinburgh and all the trials he faced in life and, sadly, the last letter we have is from 1887. At this time Thomas was living in Balmain in Sydney for a few years but was about to move back to live in Blayney, a town close to Carcoar.
There may have been later letters but as far as we know they have been lost. These letters were looked after by Thomas' son, Douglas, my father, who died in 28 March 1983 and are now available for others to read through the hard work of my brother, Donald and his wife Diane.
Barbara Short (nee Neasmith) June 2010.

• connection. The convoluted connection between Barbara Short & me is:
Barbara Short (nee Neesmith) (1939) was married to Colin Short
Her father was Douglas Neesmith (1905)
His father was Thomas Neasmith (c1830)
His father was Charles Neasmith (1800)
His father was William Neasmith (1770) who married Margaret McNeiladge (1771)
They had William Neasmith (1796)
He had William Neasmith (1825)
He had Margaret Neasmith (1864) who married Alfred New (1863)
His father was Thomas New (1838) & he also had Thomas New (1858) who with his second wife Catherain Wirth (1813) had Marizles New (1915) who married James Kirkwood (1913)
They had Lois Kirkwood (1943) who married Keith Shrimpton (1936)
His father was Claude Shrimpton (1904)
His father was William Shrimpton (1869)
His father was Richard Shrimpton (1826) & he also had Richard 3^rd Shrimpton (1855) who married Susannah Jeffery (1857)
Her father was John Jeffery (1834)
His father was John Jeffery (1808)
His father was James Jeffery (1781) & he also had William Jeffery (1803)
He had James Jeffery (1837)
He had Mary Jeffery (1860) who married William South (1854)
They had Annie South (1891) who married Leslie Rice (1885)
They had Hazel Rice (1913) who married Emmett Whyte (1899)
They had Sandra Whyte (1943) who married Colin Parker (1936)
His father was Arthur Parker (1894)
His mother was Martha Parker (1872)
Her mother was Elizabeth Roser (1844)
Her father was John Roser & he also had John Roser (1838)
He had George Roser (1868)
He had Charles Roser (1897)
He had George Roser (1923) who married Olive Elliot (1924)
Her mother was Doris Emery (1903)
Her mother was Phoebe Davies (1876)
Her father was Joseph Davies (1852) & he also had G. A. Davies (1894)
He had Colin Davies (1925)
He had me Robyn Bray (nee Davies) (1950)

Barbara married Colin Campbell Short, son of Charles Short and Margaret Campbell, on 21 Jul 2001 in Presbyterian Church, Eastwood, Sydney, NSW Australia. (Colin Campbell Short was born on 19 Apr 1934 in Eastwood, Sydney, NSW Australia.)