The final link in the families, the Sandfords bring an American influence to the family. The earliest, Thomas Sandford was a ‘drayman’ Bert thinks and his wife Deanne McGregor might have been a negro or a Red Indian! Bert's father used to say, ‘I've got dark blood in my veins!’. Either way, this record is a long way back. This Sandford and his wife Deanne must have been born around the turn of the century (1800-1815) as the only child we know about, James Sandford, was born in 1831. This makes this branch of the family about the earliest we have traced.
James Sandford (1831-1865) was born in Broadway, New York in 1820 and family legend has it that he was a professional gambler who emigrated to Australia during the gold rushes. Certainly there seems little other reason than gold to bring a thirty year old American to Ballarat. It seems he arrived in Ballarat around 1853. Bert Sandford wrote:
‘My father often told me that his father was a professional gambler and had two armed men who guarded him and his bags of gold. He also told me that his father had a fine brick house in Peel St. Ballarat East and requested that I search for it as he firmly believed that it belonged to us. I wrote to the Titles office in Ballarat who wanted to know if it was freehold or minders (?) right and there the inquiries lapsed as we did not have that information. I was about 16 at the time (1924)’
Very successful and rich, according to Bert, he lived in Peel St., Ballarat. (Confusedly enought, there was another James Sandford living in Peel St Ballarat at the time) If he was a gambler he didn’t make it well known. His occupation was listed as "Cook" on birth certificate of Henry Sandford. James made his mark "X" on birth certificate of Henry Junior and listed address as Ballarat East.
James married Anne Worsley, six years his junior, from Bristol, England in Ballarat in 1859. He was 28, she 22 and they had five children including Henry Sandford. Anne came to Victoria, presumably with her parents, around 1846. Their marriage certificate entry is 13394/1861)
After having two children (Hannah and James Jnr) However, the life of the family took a tragic, sudden turn when both parents died living their seven children orphaned and presumably split up. James died of heart disease on the 4th of December 1865 (entry 8136/1865) He was buried at the old Ballarat Cemetery on the 6th of December 1865. Anne died at the Ballarat Hospital less than six months lateter on the 6th of May 1866 (entry 4035/1866) She was buried the following day at the old Ballarat Cemetery. Apparently three were adopted and two, James and Henry, made wards of the state. The oldest was ten. Bert says that he died of a broken heart after his wife died of a 'chill when Henry Sandford was eight years old. However, the documents are more prosaic indicasting that he died first, of heart disease, and she died less than a year later of ‘brain fever. They were both buried at Ballarat’s old cemetery and the grave should be locatable from the death certificate or the date of burial though I spent a couple of hours there in 1991 without success, surprised at the number of Sandfords in that area at that time. I think I did find the grave but it is not marked by any headstone.
The death of the parents took the Sandford’s from Ballarat, an older, lesser known home of the family than we know, and set them free to travel to other parts of Victoria; in Henry’s case to the Wimmera to meet a girl named Clara of German parents. The oldest boy, James, apparently died when a dam burst in NSW, and the youngest, Alexander, was a station master who was killed by a train, apparently cutting the Bible is his pocket in half like a knife. Henry went on to the Wimmera but nothing more is known of Hannah or Henrietta, the 10 and 5 year olds who were adopted.
Henry Sandford (1863-1930)
[pictured left] was therefore orphaned at the age of 8 and went to the Sunbury
Orphanage and was then transferred to a training ship, the ‘Nelson’
where he stayed for six years and eight months. An intriguing missing link in
this period is what happened to the other Sandford children including two younger
than Henry. Of their fate nothing is known.
Henry worked with people called Guthreys (Guthries) in Sunbury after he left (farmers) Later worked for Sir Rupert Clarke who lived nearby. as a coachman, aged 19-20. According to some reports Henry was liked and respected by the family of Ned Kelly because of his ‘ability and daring as a horseman’
Henry took a farm in the Otways but walked off after two bad years. It is unclear how the Otways were decided upon. Next year was such a good year that 'they had to put rollers on to the harvester to cut it', a remark that I wish somebody would explain to me, though I now think it means that the harvest was so lush it was like long grass you cut with the motor mower set up high. He opened a stall selling butter and cheeses in the Victoria Market and then worked on the railways somewhere in the Wimmera district?. This crossing and changing between the Western District, Melbourne and the Wimmera is unclear too.
He was a skin dealer in Warracknabeal (sheepskins) and then between 1906 and 1908 moved to Jung, near the South Australian border?, where he and his wife, Clara Noske took up a mixed business in a two storey brick shop with a stone base and a brick upper. At the rear of the shop was a corrugated iron dwelling where the family lived. They didn't move to the pub at Diapur until 1914 (after the war began, Bert thinks) and it took two days to make the 66 mile journey in a buggy. The family stayed at Gerang in a mud brick hotel overnight now long demolished, though Bert remembers seeing it when he first went back up there again around 1960.
They had the pub for eight years (Diapur) and in 1921 the hotel was de-licensed owing to the lack of business and it was sold and demolished, though there is a good picture of the family outside the hotel that was copied and now exists in several families. The family moved in to Nhill and took up a boarding house in Victoria Street. (next to the Bank of Victoria?) Bert only remained there a couple of years. Henry and Clara stayed on until 1925 and then came to the city and lived at Essendon with Alma Sandford and her husband, Stan. (Bert was boarding there too - at Clarinda Rd.-Moonee Ponds) The whole family lived there together for a while until the family had a house built in Fawkner St., Essendon.
Henry’s wife Clara Noske (1870-1959) brings a German influence to the family. Her father Johan Frederick Noske was born in 1826 in Hamburg or Pogen, Germany and was married in a Lutheran church in Hamburg, Germany. He emigrated to Australia with his sixteen year old wife Pauline Noske who was actually born in Posen, near the German, Poland border. They were Lutherans who spoke German in Poland and were persecuted and it seems they came to Australia to escape religious persecution in a general exodus from Germany. One of the few details I know of her is that she supposedly said she was the 'goose-girl' on the farm in Germany. Another anecdote is that Bert's grandfather said, "You are going to marry me, and come to Australia". She was married at 16, even though she said, "I'm not going to marry you and I'm not going to Australia!" (but she did!!) Two other Noske brothers founded the Noske Flour Mills that were well known around the Wimmera region. It is unlikely we will find much more about the European connection as many of the records pertaining to these families were probably destroyed during the second World War though the Wimmera region might yet yield some secrets.
The Noskes are thought to have arrived in Australia in 1854 and to have disembarked in Adelaide. A child was born to the couple on the voyage but it died shortly after birth. By 1859 the family were farming at Tarrington, near Hamilton, in Victoria. By 1870 they had moved to Mt Gambier in S.A., and by 1874 they moved back to Victoria to a farm at Coromby near Murtoa. Abut 1896 they moved into the township of Murtoa where Pauline opened a maternity hospital in Lake Street. It is understood that Pauline had some medical or nursing qualifications in Germany which were not fully recognised in Australia. Her daughter, Augusta, assisted in the running of the hospital and became a qualified nursing sister. When Pauline died at the 'Marma' Private Hosptial in 1926 Augusta took over the running of the hospital till her own death there in 1933. Johann, who had adopted the Anglicised name, William John, died at Murtoa in Mach 1918. All three are still buried at Murtoa.
The Noskes were pioneers in the wheat growing region and the Noske parents both lived to be over ninety years old. The same could not be said for all their children. The Noske Family history says that they had twenty-one children born, but only fifteen were named as others died at birth. It is a wonder that Clara survived too in some ways. Born in Mt Gambier in 1870, eleven of the fifteen children failed to live beyond one! The family left Mt. Gambier when Clara was about three and took land at Coromby (Murtoa). Henry died in 1930. Clara lived on until 1959. They are both buried in Fawkner Cemetery. There was a Noske family reunion in 1975 and photographs exist of those who attended.
The fourth of the six children
of Clara Noske and Henry Sandford, Herbert Sandford (1908-1993) was
born in 1908 Born in auntie's hospital (*Augusta) at Murtoa he was brought up
in the Wimmera district of Diapur (at Jung and Diapur near Nhill, Victoria)
He moved to Essendon in Melbourne and to various jobs including curator of the
Buchan Caves and work in the Botanical Gardens (where he lived with Katie) An
athletic young man, Bert trained with Essendon football club and played some
games in the Reserves before his love of Athletics took over. His main event
was the Pole Vault where he placed in the top 2 or 3 in Victoria the pole vault
on a number of occasions. Bert served with the RAAF in World War II [see picture
left - he is on the left ] and was stationed in Borneo for some time. Later
he moved to the public service in the Education Department as a truant officer
for schools around the state.
A great lover of the early Australian poets such as Kendall (Bell-Birds) and Paterson (Clancy...) as well as Omar Kayam and others such as Longfellow, Bert loved to recite from memory some of these verses. This aspect of his character and some others may be deduced from two poems fellow Lodge members dedicated to him. They are reproduced below:
A TRIBUTE TO BERT
I wandered lonely as a cloud
from Lodge to Lodge on each cold night
when all at once I saw a crowd
of Masters on the road, who might
assist me thru’ my arduous year,
and problems which I might fear.
To the foremost of them all stood BERT
from the Lodge of EQUITY,
not a spider would he hurt,
he quelled fears that used to be,
a school inspector checking truant
and with poetry most fluent.
His favourite echoed o’er the hills
and filled our hearts with glee
T’was William Wordsworth’s DAFFODILS
that proved good company,
until in agony late one night
Many Masters cried aloud, ‘BERT ALRIGHT!!’
When oft he thinks of THOU and THINE
In vacant, or in pensive mood,
he likes to think of GREEN GINGER WINE
which gives the bliss of solitude
and then receives his greatest thrills
to Dance among the Daffodils.
BERT’S KATE whom we love so dear
and we’ll love her till the end,
for pleasures given throughout the year
please accept for her DEAR FRIEND.
with all its furbelows and frills
THIS HOST OF GOLDEN DAFFODILS.
O. Robins (With apologies to W.W.)
AND YET ANOTHER
Across the stony pavement,
Above the city’s drone,
BERT - the Aussie poet -
Is reciting words from Home.
And well his lungs are working
For loud of voice is he -
And softly his dear KATIE
Is prompting at his knee.
‘I love a sunburn country’,
He bawls with might and main,
Whilst on the London window
Beats down the summer rain.
‘No, No’, they cry, ‘Not that one -
It makes us feel so hot.’
‘Well, what about the Drover -
You ungrateful Pommy lot?’
They wring their hands
and write in pain
‘He gone five times this week.
The dogs worn out with trying
To cross that swollen creek.
The Drover’s in his watery grave,
Sweet Uncle - let him sleep!’
Beyond the far horizon
Too soon they’ll disappear,
But the voice of ‘BERT the Poet’
Will sometimes catch our ear.
Remembered words and phrases,
‘The Wide Brown Land’ recall
And in the chimes of old ‘Big Ben’
His Bell Birds may be heard again.
JT (Apologies to HK)
Bert went on to help officiate at the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games and his picture may be found in one of the souvenir books produced at that time. He died in March 1993 and ‘Bell Birds’ was read at his funeral, which had representatives from the Lodge and the RSL. He is buried at Mornington Cemetery in Victoria.
Bert Sandford Photos
Bert Sandford (left with football) at the front of their family hotel near Diapur, Western Victoria.
Bert’s second daughter, Kathleen Sandford
(1934- ) [pictured in the middle in the photo on the left with her sisters Pauline
and Irene] was born in 1934 at "Llandyssil" Private Hospital, Scott
St. Essendon. She was educated at Essendon High School (where she met Bill)
and lived-Originally 23 Beaver St. Essendon. After staying with Bert and Katie
at Beaver St. for a little time after the marriage, she and Bill moved in to
34 Xavier St., Oak Park, then 4 Orchard St., Frankston, and then 26 Ruth Road,
Mornington.
Kath originally worked at Morgans stockbrokers after leaving school. Originally stenographer.Stayed home looking after the children (4) until going back to work at Watsons (Mornington) and then at Crowder’s, Mt Eliza. Kathleen travelled overseas to England and Europe with Bill in April 1991 and had a marvellous time, spending some time researching family tree links at Cornwall. In 1993 she wrote some brief notes of her early time in Buchan.
My earliest recollections are of our home in Beaver Street Essendon. I must have been about five years old and can remember that I had been at school for about one year when my father accepted a position as the Curator or the Buchan Caves. To Pauline and myself it was very exciting to live in the country. Irene was only a baby when we moved there but Pauline and I attended a little country school and the whole school was in one room and taught by a Mr.Smith. I recall there being another teacher named Miss King. I can clearly remember that when the school sports came around Pauline and I won every race that we entered. I still have the certificate I won, I was only 6 years old. The locals were very put out that two city kids had come to their town and beaten all the other kids in the school.Our closest friends were the Donelley girls whose father had the local bakery. I can still smell the hot bread cooking as we passed the bakery on the way to school. Our life up there was wonderful, we would swim in the Buchan River, go walking through the bush to Spring Creek Falls with Dad, and Dad would dink Pauline on his bike and I would sit on his shoulders and we would ride through the camping ground or over the bridge to the other side of the town.
Much of our weekends were spent around the camping ground area as Dad was always around there taking people through the caves. We often went with him and we never felt nervous or scared going through the caves. Often there would be a power break down and we would have to wait where we were till Dad went back and fixed a fuse. It was quite eerie and there was a damp earthy smell but it never worried us. I cannot remember ever going through the caves with Mum. I guess she was always back at Caves House looking after Irene and Uncle Charlie who was an old man who had boarded with us at Essendon and who had come with us to Buchan.
I can remember when we would go to thfe local hall on Saturday nights to see a film. The Donnelley girls would sit with us and we became good friends with the family, a friendship that lasted many years. Gwenda taught us some lovely songs and quite often they would sleep over at our place on the weekends. Pauline and I slept in a double bed on a verandah, this verandah I might add was not closed in, and I can recall some very cold night spent out there. I can’t think where we slept in the winter time, it wasn’t a big house and what with Uncle Charlie living with us it must have been quite crowded.
[Below- The 'Sandford' women. From left, Monique Swift, Irene Swift, Kath Wynne, Monique Swift, Katie Sandford, Mandy Lewis, Paul Lewis, Sally Wynne]
Where to Now?
This seems one of the most fascinating of all the possible directions the family history could take from here. What happened to the other orphans? What really was Bert’s grandfather?: a professional gambler, a digger? A cook? Was there a Sandford at Eureka? Do we own a shop somewhere still in Ballarat? Peel St, Ballarat East, where James Sandford lived, would be an interesting place to see. Perhaps too, this romantic sounding couple are buried at Ballarat still? I visited the Ballarat Cemetery in July 1991 and was given the references for three James Sandfords buried there between 1865 and 1890. However, their ages (2, 30’s and 71) seem at odds with our presumed age at his death (about 51). Perhaps they weren’t buried at Ballarat at all? We would need to turn to New York, USA for details of his birth, though the marriage certificate of James Sandford and Anne Worsley, married in May 1855 in Ballarat would be a more ‘gettable’ attraction, and would give us details of their birthdates, and parents. The next ‘Sandford’, a drayman according to Bert, would have been born in the 1790’s, early for our history and living in interesting times in American history.
Warrick Wynne 18/10/2003