Tracing the Family Line
Thomas Livingstone-Learmonth Senior
The Peerage website is a genealogical survey of the peerage of Britain and the royal families of Europe, and is being put together by a man who says the website’s goal is to capture, in one place, all the members of the interconnected families of the British peerage. Apparently, this site is the result of around 17 years of work by a self-described “somewhat eccentric” person collating this information…Darryl.
The acquisition of the Livingstone surname came through the Mitchell family of Craigends. Alexander recorded arms in 1719 as ‘Mitchell of Mitchell’ and his son by the heiress of Livingstone of Parkhall assumed his mother’s surname and followed in that inheritance. Sir Thomas Livingston Mitchell was a scion of this family. (*In 1882 he gifted the hall to The Salvation Army on the condition that it was used for worship.)
Thomas Learmonth Senior
Thomas had apparently gone to the West Indies to manage a sugar estate when he was a young man. The Australian Dictionary of Biography states that he – ‘came from India, no doubt influenced by Captain Charles Swanston and the George Mercer connexion, (Captain Swanston had persuaded Mercer to invest in Van Diemen’s Land buying a property called ‘Lovely Banks’ near Oatlands) to Van Diemen’s Land, where by May 1835 he was a merchant in Hobart Town.’ Scottish immigration to India began with the union of Scotland and England in 1707, which created the United Kingdom. Under the deal, Scotland’s landed families gained access to the East India Company, and gradually became its dominant force, and Scots went to India as jute traders, teachers and writers, with almost half of the East India Company writers being Scottish by 1771.
The first three Governors-General of India were Scots, and when Jerry Dundas became President of the Board of Control in 1784, he ‘Scoticised’ India, and through his agencies, the Scots came to dominate the activities of the East India Company. By 1792, Scots made up one in nine East India Company civil servants, six in eleven common soldiers, and one in three officers, and by 1813, nineteen of Calcutta’s private merchant houses were dominated by them, and from 1830 they became involved as general merchants with Indian interests.
Scots began to export jute, tea, timber, coal, sugar, and indigo, as well as cotton, and by 1880, with the help of Scottish entrepreneurs, India overtook China as the leader in tea distribution. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the Scots founded some of the first modern colleges in India, which served as a ‘cultural conduit’ through which Enlightenment values permeated Indian society.
In 1803, the acting Surveyor-General, Charles Grimes, made the first detailed survey of Port Phillip, and the first European settlement was attempted under Lieutenant Governor David Collins at Sullivan Bay, Sorrento. But finding the conditions too harsh, he decided to travel to Hobart, Tasmania, and settle there, as did the Learmonth family, who lived at Green Ponds, now Kempton, until their father sent the brothers to find land for their sheep-breeding enterprise in Port Phillip. It is recorded that they were possessed of family capital, well-connected and well-educated.
Van Diemen’s Land Beginnings
When googling Kempton, it states that the district was first settled by Europeans in 1814 and was known as Green Ponds – a name still used by the local municipality. In 1816, Anthony Fenn Kemp, a thoroughly unpleasant and despotic soldier-merchant who seems to have spent most of his life fighting with governors and trying to manipulate the political scene in both New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, settled in the district. Kemp arrived in Australia in 1795 and served two years at Norfolk Island as a commissioned ensign in the New South Wales Corps.
In 1799, he established a shop on the corner of King and Georges Streets in Sydney, where, due to his privileged position as treasurer of the Committee of Paymastership, he managed to sell goods to his fellow soldiers at huge profits. The Wilmot Arms Inn (1844) in the Main Road was built by a convict and operated as a licensed inn until 1897. It is said that the proprietor suddenly got religion and stopped making alcohol and fed all his spirits to the pigs.
The first reported sighting of Tasmania by a European was in 1642 by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman who named the island Anthoonij van Diemenslandt, after his sponsor, the Governor of the Dutch East Indies, Anthony van Diemen. The second settlement, under Captain David Collins, became known as Hobart Town or Hobarton, later shortened to Hobart, after the British Colonial Secretary of the time Lord Hobart. The first settlement was by the British at Risdon Cove in 1803, by a small party sent from Sydney, under Lt. John Bowen for the purpose of preventing the French from claiming the island. When the British Government claimed New South Wales as a British territory in 1788, it declared Australia terra nullius (unoccupied land) and vested all land in the Crown.
Initially the Governor was instructed to set aside some lands for public purposes and to make grants of land to Government officials and men of capital. The squatters had been described by William Westgarth as having ‘a cormorant capacity for land’ and in 1844 there were only four squatters occupying 7.7 million acres and owning 1.2 million sheep. Eventually the British government asked the squatters to pay £10 per annum as a lease on their runs. By the 1840s the squatters wanted security over their holdings and were able to purchase 320 acres, their pre-emptive right, for £1 an acre. When gold was discovered the miners revolted against the hated gold licence, which was huge in comparison to the squatters’ annual licence fee, and their anger culminated in the Eureka Stockade of December 1854, when 30 miners died for their beliefs.
The Government introduced a Miner’s Right and access to the land and for an annual payment of £1, they had the rights to dig for gold and build a home in what was called a Residence Area, thereby miners and their families began to settle the country towns of Central Victoria. Of course, if gold was discovered on Crown Land, the Government could confiscate it, so any finds were kept secret where possible. The 1860s saw the Government pass a series of Selection Acts that allowed the public to buy land to farm, and another 10 million acres of the best land also passed into the hands of the squatters, thereby employing many people from the area.
The Learmonth Brothers also managed to provide schooling and religious education to their employee’s children. They grew wheat, English barley and oats, and sometime in the 1840s built a two-storey flour mill, probably one of the first ones in the area, and there are quite a few entries in their Diary about the problems they had in getting it to run properly.
Crossing to Port Phillip
Throughout 1837, the year Princess Victoria at only 18 years of age was to be crowned Queen of England, there had been a constant stream of traffic across the notoriously unpredictable body of water called Bass Strait from Tasmania to Victoria, a journey of 500 kilometres in length, and on occasion whole shipments of sheep were lost due to the stormy weather, overcrowding, lack of food and water. Pastoralists wanted to open up the new colony because opportunities had declined in VDL. Thomas and Somerville Learmonth first acted as agents for their father and eldest brother John and shipped 2000 ewes over and drove them up towards the head of the Barwon River where they formed the first of their stations.
Most pioneer settlers were afraid to venture more than 25 miles inland because of the disappearance of the explorers Hesse and Gellibrand, but were then worried that if they didn’t, then the Government could sell off their land. Eventually the Learmonth brothers ‘pushed up’ towards the Pyrenees, and once they’d decided on their run, crude watch boxes were first built for the shepherds’ accommodation. There were no fences, just temporary ‘folds’ or corrals built with hurdles, into which the sheep were put overnight to protect them from being stolen or from more opportunistic four-legged carnivores like dingoes. According to Western District Footprints by J. L. Betheras – “Shearing sheds were a tarpaulin stretched over some poles, or maybe just a convenient shady tree. Wool-presses were worked by sheer manpower. Scab became rife, and the overly succulent soil caused extensive foot rot. The Western District men were noted for their horses, which were generally thoroughbreds.”
Major Mitchell had passed through the Ercildoune area in 1836. In August 1837, they were in the expedition that explored the country round Buninyong, then undertook a second expedition where they crossed the Wardy Yalloak and came across the dormant volcano that looked a lot like a sleeping elephant, and so it was named Mount Elephant, and it is possibly the best known example of a breached scoria cone in Victoria and maybe even Australia. From Mount Elephant they struck across to Cloven Hills, then they crossed the Pirron Yalloak, and returned to Geelong. Undertaking a third expedition in January 1838, they travelled from Macedon over the Coliban to Mt. Alexander. They reached the Loddon, and, turning, crossed the site of Bendigo. From there they struck south-west till they reached the site of Ballarat. After leaving that spot, a curious thing happened to the party.
After a long march, they were without water at nightfall, and they could find none in the country about them. Some reports say that it was the freezing weather that led to the naming of Mount Misery, whilst others say that they had run out of water, but from this point they struck back to the Barwon. As an outcome of these expeditions, the brothers removed their flocks from the Barwon to the Buninyong district, which, like Burrumbeet, was favoured with what seemed to be an abundant supply of spring water.
In the end it was Ercildoune, that could support the greatest number of sheep and they had found some of the best pastures in Australia and that no doubt helped their vision to become a reality, as the British sheep breeds thrived in the cool climate and prolific nutritious pasture, an environment that was similar in the Ballarat region to that of the British Isles, more so than most other parts of Australia. They grew abundant amounts of the highest-quality wool.
Buyers in every State of the Commonwealth of Australia set a high value upon the sheep bred and reared in this region and knew that they were well grown and healthy, and there was a constant demand for the flock rams for fat lamb raising.
They became the first of several Scottish families to settle and influence the expansion of two towns, and Buninyong’s transition to a village began with several employees of the Learmonth’s. With their permission, a store and eating-house were set up, and it was soon joined by a blacksmith and some sawyers and splitters. Hugh Anderson in Flowers of the Field, A History of Ripon Shire states that it was reported that Somerville Learmonth was engaging some families to be ‘sent out’ from their home country, and that he was ‘awfully particular’ and wanted to see all of the men, women and children and that he reprimanded the wives if they had dirty houses. If wives were suitable as cooks and hutkeepers, they received additional wages and a second ration.
Many of these stations had many outbuildings and cottages added to them to accommodate all of the workers, and Warrock Homestead, also built by an intrepid Scot called George Robertson who hailed from Dundee and arrived in the colonies in 1843, originally had 57 mostly timber outbuildings, but now there are 36 classified outbuildings undergoing restoration. It is also where the Australian Kelpie evolved.
Marriages and Children
Thomas Senior ended up marrying three times, with Thomas and Somerville being his third and fourth-born sons by his second wife, Christian Donald, a cousin of his first wife with the same name. They were born only 18 months apart and would ultimately make the Learmonth name well known throughout Australia and the world. Andrew, his sixth child and seven years younger than Thomas, also joined the brothers later. He was living in Van Diemen’s Land with his parents and brothers in 1835 and left in 1845 to serve in the East India Company’s army at Bombay, now known as Mumbai.
He was invalided out as lieutenant after five years’ service, and he then joined his squatter brothers in Victoria.
Thomas Junior’s first marriage was to Louisa Valiant in 1856, and they had seven children, although the first daughter, Louisa, sadly died at fifteen days old. Thomas had another four children with his second wife, Jane Reid, whom he married in 1879. His brother Somerville married his wife’s sister, Maria Reid, in 1860, and they went on to have six children. The eldest brother, John, married Anne Macwhirter and had nine children, whilst the youngest brother, Andrew, had six sons. Their children didn’t sit on their laurels either. Thomas Learmonth’s third son, Frederick Valiant Cotton Livingstone-Learmonth, embarked as a corporal with the 1st New South Wales Mounted Rifles and fought at Osfontein and Driefontein, after the outbreak of the South African War, and also took part in the advance to Pretoria.
He saw action in the battle of Diamond Hill, and in the Orange Free State and Cape Colony. He was promoted to Lieutenant and awarded the Distinguished Service Order for excellence in the field and mentioned in dispatches. He became General Superintendent of the Australian Agricultural Co. in 1905 and a Manager of BHP, Newcastle. Two of Somerville’s sons also fought in the wars. Cecil gained the rank of Commander in the Royal Navy and Captain in the Manchester Regiment. He fought in the Benin River Expedition in 1894, the Boer War and the First World War and discovered the North Nigerian tin fields. Another son, Maxwell, also fought in the First World War and gained the rank of Major in the Irish Guards.
Their daughter, Winifred, married Vice-Admiral Norman Palmer. Andrew’s sons also followed suit, and five also fought for their country; his son Nigel was listed as wounded and missing in Gallipoli, Turkey. Most of them had been educated at Eton or Harrow, and even though they were favoured by having money and the best of education, they nearly all went off to war, some even going twice.
Between the first two owners of Ercildoune, the Learmonth and Wilson families, I’ve come up with a total of twelve sons putting their hands up to fight for their country, with five of them paying the ultimate price, and it was probably a blessing that Sir Samuel had not lived to see it. Three of Thomas Senior’s daughters had married Major-Generals, and the third owner, Major Henry Alan Currie, also fought in the trenches for four years.
Esteemed Visitors and Slow News
Many esteemed visitors were entertained at Ercildoune over the years, including many members of the British Royal Family, Australian Prime Ministers and Government officials, and many other famous identities including Australia’s ‘first lady of opera,’ Dame Nellie Melba, pictured on the Australian $100 banknote, who was apparently hoping to recuperate in some warmer weather, as she said she hadn’t seen the sun in London for weeks. She was born Helen Mitchell, another surname associated with the Livingstone side of the family, but I am not sure if she is related. She leased the property for six months in 1907, and even had the hard-surfaced tennis court built east of the front lake.
She was also the aunt of Gerald Patterson, one of Australia’s greatest-ever tennis players, who had won three Grand Slam Tournaments, including two Wimbledon Singles titles. He and Norman Brookes became the first Australians to win an American national tennis title when they won the American Doubles Championship of 1919. There are some interesting stories about her trying to mimic bird calls, and that she had trouble copying the Magpies, and would go up and sit near the fish breeding ponds to practice until she conquered their ‘quite musical warbling’.
There was also a rumour that she fell down the cellar and consequently had it filled in, but we never find out where it was located, and the contents of the Ercildoune wine cellar are mentioned in Sir Samuel Wilson’s Will.
Receiving news of any kind back then was extremely slow, of course. The first overland mail service between Melbourne and Sydney began operating in December 1837. The distance between Edinburgh and Melbourne is over 16,000 kilometres, and the voyage took several months, depending on unpredictable weather conditions. Sometimes important news arrived weeks or months after the event, if it arrived at all, but almost every little snippet of news about anything or anyone was printed in the local newspapers. The Learmonth brothers even heard about their father’s death by mail.
From the 1850s to 1920s, many people relied on the famous Cobb and Co. coaches to deliver mail and provide transport to the once isolated communities. There is a note in the Learmonth Diary by Louisa Learmonth mentioning Thomas writing letters in his wee writing room, and there is a letter dated 13th April 1859, from her –
A Letter from Louisa Learmonth
My dearest Father and Mrs Learmonth,
As I am trying by this mail to make up for some of my silence to so many relatives and friends, I must endeavour to send you a few lines. We were very sorry to hear by the last letters from home of your indisposition, dear Father, though thankful to find you were getting the better of it. How very kind you have been, dear Mrs Learmonth, in constantly writing to us; your letters are always so interesting. I wish I could make mine equally so, but I am at all times a bad correspondent, and then we have too little here to write about. I forget whether Tom told you last herewith of our dear baby’s baptism on the 6th March and receiving the name of “Louisa Harriet”. God, I am sure, will rejoice with us that the dear wee thing is thriving very nicely, under the care of a wet nurse, though, which I regretted very much being obliged to get for her.
She is very intelligent, and good-tempered and entices all our servants as well to be fond of playing with her. Yesterday I accompanied Tom into Ballarat for the first time in about the last six or seven months and enjoyed it very much. We made enquiries about getting the baby vaccinated, and I believe that if the day after tomorrow is fine, we are to take her in for that purpose when we also bring in our letter for home. The weather seems now to be beginning to break a little since the day before yesterday, and not before the country needed it, for we have been threatened with great deaths from want of water. The Cockpit swamp that Tom and Andrew know has dried up so much this year that Fred walked across it the other day, but yesterday we observed a little water lying there. Tom is busy just now planning the improvements in the garden with the gardener, who is a good, steady, hard-working man.
Will you tell Andrew that we heard lately that the poor silly daughter of our late gardener Duke was burnt to death not very long after they left us. We have also been busy planning as we thought very pretty and comfortable additions to the house, but have stuck fast frightened at the estimated cost of our improvements, but as the place has been drawn and the estimation made, Tom thinks it best to let these go home for his brothers to see and that they may so be something of a pride to them in estimating the expense. I dare say you remember that I used to teach the children of the Station until I became so very ill.
My dear sister Josephine is most kind in managing them now for us, but it is a great tax upon her time and patience, for the numbers are much increased, the new Storekeeper’s and Ploughman’s families being much larger than their predecessors, with two or three very difficult children to manage among them. We are also now anxious to have some of the children of the Shepherds and Mrs M…’s two boys from the Black Hill to receive education, and all this would be much more than I’d undertake, so we are waiting to see if Mrs Perry can recommend us a good one.
Our last Ploughman, Baldie, has gone to his farm and Tom and Andrew will perhaps be interested to hear that he has dug a well close to his hut and found water coming in from 7 feet and has now got down to solid rock at a depth of 20 feet and found two feet of standing water, this before the rain commenced the other day, during this late dry season. Tom joins me in sending much love to you both and our brothers, and he also begs me to say that he hopes to write to you, dear Mrs Learmonth, by the next mail, not this, as I am writing.
Very affectionately yours, Louisa Learmonth.
Sadly, there aren’t many old photos in existence, and I guess that many of them were taken back with them to Scotland, so luckily the newspaper articles available here in Australia help paint a picture of their lives, including the family births and deaths. We did get given a few over the years from people who had relatives connected with the property. Many stories about Ercildoune were published in most of the 200 Victorian newspapers that came into existence prior to 1901, and it seemed that the Australian newspapers liked to report their every move, with concerned people even writing in letters questioning how the Learmonths amassed such great tracts of land in the first place, or how they managed to win so many first prizes at the various shows.
But according to their Statement of Property dated 1 January 1855, they list numerous other properties, apart from ‘Borrumbeet’ and ‘Boninyong’, with one house listed as being let in Hobart Town, several being rented out in Geelong, along with a share they have in a Beach Unit, a total valuation of £96,143.9.2, if the figures are correct.
Land Boom and Station Life
Australia’s population in 1830 was 70,039, and there was a land boom and economic highs, but the early-mid-1840s saw a fall in land values due to a slump in the prices of Australian wool, wheat, and livestock. Sheep that once provided fine wool for export to England, which experienced its own recession in 1839, were now being boiled down for tallow to make candles and soap. Free immigration was encouraged on the basis that newcomers would bring money and stimulate consumption and investment. Eventually rising wool prices brought returned prosperity and Victoria’s wool exports nudged £5,000,000. The discovery of gold in 1851 caused an influx of over half a million immigrants in a decade, with one immigrant ship arriving in Port Phillip each week.
In 1854 The Victorian Gold Discovery Committee wrote: “The discovery of the Victorian Goldfields has converted a remote dependency into a country of world wide fame; it has attracted a population, extraordinary in number, with unprecedented rapidity; it has enhanced the value of property to an enormous extent; it has made this the richest country in the world; and, in less than three years, it has done for this colony the work of an age, and made its impulses felt in the most distant regions of the earth.”
According to Earth Resources, it was the discovery of gold in Ballarat in 1851, the year that coincided with the Learmonths selling their property at Buninyong, that resulted in Victoria’s gold boom and Ballarat was then recognised as probably the richest alluvial goldfield in the world at its peak between 1852 and 1853. They state that Victoria has produced two per cent of all the gold mined in the world and was only eclipsed by Western Australia in the last few decades, when new technology has played a crucial role in both the discovery and extraction of gold.
The Learmonth brothers kept a detailed station diary that recorded the daily comings and goings, and I’ve included some of their entries amongst these newspaper articles. It states that the original run was 60,000 acres in size (90 square miles approximately), then held under Lease from the Crown, and the boundary was apparently marked by a plough furrow that ran from Mt. Buninyong to Lake Burrumbeet, then on to the Beaufort Ranges, then to Mt. Mitchell and back to the point of commencement.
These measurements seemed to use trees and other geographic landmarks to mark the boundaries, so many disputes arose as a result. I’d imagine it could have been quite disastrous if a bush fire went through, so the innovation of wire fencing would have been a blessing. By 1858, Thomas and Somerville Learmonth had purchased 20,973 acres for £75,000 and were leasing 26,000 acres of Crown Land that was carrying 76 horses, 4,139 head of cattle and 9,622 sheep. There are many entries about employees absconding, or getting as drunk as fiddlers, or about the bullocks being lost. Some drunken bullock drivers were given up to the constables and, after an appearance before Captain Fyans, ended up spending four hours in stocks.
But it was hard to stop them frequenting the inns during the occasional visit to Geelong, especially after they’d spent months in isolation in the bush, and many wouldn’t work at all without receiving a daily quantity of rum that some employers were smart enough to water down.
A Timeline of Early Settlement
Now that I’ve hopefully exhausted all the other resources at hand, I’ve made a somewhat comprehensive list of newspaper articles that also help paint the picture of Ercildoune. Richard Twopenny noted in Town Life in Australia (1883) that Australia was essentially the land of newspapers. Nearly everyone, he said, can read, and nearly everybody has the leisure to do so… The proportion of the population who can afford to purchase and subscribe to newspapers is ten times as large as in England; hence the number of sheets issued is comparatively much greater.
In 1962, Ken Inglis noted that “Australians are more intensely addicted to daily newspapers than almost all other people in the world… We buy more than 40 papers per 100 people per day. Nearly 90 per cent of us usually read, or look at, a morning paper, and 70 per cent, an evening paper”.
Firstly, when the eleven vessels of the First Fleet of settlers reached New South Wales in January 1788, among the cargo aboard was a small second-hand printing press intended to print general orders, regulations, and official proclamations in the new penal settlement. Seven years passed before someone was found who could operate the press. George Howe became the original editor, typesetter and printer, his profession before being transported to Australia for shoplifting in 1800. The Sydney Gazette (1803-1842) was Australia’s first newspaper and initially had the picture of a female figure seated on a bale surrounded by the words “Thus We Hope to Prosper”, but later she was replaced by another picture representing the royal arms.
It was initially printed as a single sheet, folded into four foolscap-sized pages, with each page typeset in three columns, and its masthead was a locally produced woodcut of Sydney. For six weeks from 1 January to 10 February 1827, it appeared daily, but the postal service could not accommodate this schedule. Howe also printed Australia’s first book, New South Wales Standing Orders (1802), according to Wikipedia.
I found a post by Jonathan Auld’s dated 5 March, 2013 acknowledging the 210th birthday of Australia’s first newspaper. An introductory address by Howe appeared on the first page of the first issue and read:
“Innumerable as the Obstacles were which threatened to oppose our Undertaking, yet we are happy to affirm that they were not insurmountable, however difficult the task before us. The utility of a Paper in the Colony, as it must open a source of solid information, will we hope, be universally felt and acknowledged.
We have courted the assistance of the Ingenious and Intelligent: – We open no channel to Political Discussion, or Personal Animadversion: – Information is our only purpose; that accomplished, we shall consider that we have done our duty, in an exertion to merit the Approbation of the Public, and to secure a liberal Patronage to the Sydney GAZETTE”.
Auld also added:
“Today, everyone can view these early newspapers through the National Library of Australia’s wonderful and revolutionary search service known as Trove.
Take time out and see what treasures you can find…”
The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, March 5, 1803.
General Orders. Excerpt. The Governor having permitted to land 4000 Gallons of Spirits for the domestic use of the Inhabitants, from the Cape of Good Hope, it will be divided in the following proportion, viz.
For the Officers on the Civil Establishment, (including Superintendants and Storekeepers), 1000 Gallons ;
For Naval and Military Commissioned Officers, 1000 Gallons ;
For the Licensed People, 1000 Gallons ;
To be distributed to such Persons as the Governor may think proper to grant Permits to, 1000 Gallons.
The above to include the Civil and Military Officers at Norfolk Island.
By Command, & c. W.N. Chapman, Sec. Government House, March, 4, 1803.
The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, May 11, 1806
General Orders. Excerpts – To supply the inhabitants with good Beer at not more than One Shilling per Gallon, and Small beer at Sixpence.
Not to dispose of the Beer so brewed to particular individuals, but the distribution to be as general as possible. Not to sell, give, lend, or make any other use of the Malt he may make than for the purpose of brewing on his own premises.
Those under the Sentence of the Law who may be considered deserving of having the indulgence of a Ticket of Leave continued to them, are to appear respectively at the Secretary’s Office at Sydney, on Monday the 19th instant, at Eight o’clock in the Morning; at Parramatta on Wednesday the 21st, at the Court House; and at Hawkesbury on Friday the 23rd, at the Green Hills.
The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser 24 November 1829