Elizabeth McCaskie 1851-1943
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Elizabeth McCaskie 1851-1943 |
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Kindly contributed by Jack Brown of New South
Wales - |
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"Aunty Lizzy"
Elizabeth Johnson McCaskie (1851-1943) was the eldest child of John and Catherine McCaskie, who emigrated from Ireland and Scotland separately, and met and married in Sydney Australia.
Elizabeth was born onboard the sailing ship "John Calvin" as it entered San Francisco harbour. The family were on their way from Australia to the Californian gold rush.
Whilst the family were in California a son James (Jimbo to me ) was born.
Family folklore and some later snippets published in Sydney newspapers indicate that the family endured some very hard times before deciding to return to Sydney.
They bought land now enclosed by Robert St, Crescent St, Parsons St, and Mullins St in that part of Balmain called Rozelle.
It was here that Lizzy was to spend her whole life in the family home. She never married.
She was really my mother's aunt but to all of us children she was Aunty Lizzy.
She was 76 years old when I was born. Early memories of her were of a strong framed lady always dressed in black wearing a black straw hat with two very large hat pins securing it to her hair which was long and greyish but still showing the remains of a brownish colour. To my mind she had a strong and attractive face.
In the rambling two-story house which was home to all the McCaskies lived my grandmother Agnes, her husband Henry (Heindrich) and their four children as well as Lizzy and Jimbo. |
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| The house had several entrances all off Crescent St. The first was a solid front door that opened into a long hall and the first room on the right was Lizzy's drawing room. It contained a well-tuned upright piano and quite a series of bookshelves that were filled with an assortment of books. | ||
| Notable
amongst these was volume after volume of "The Scottish Christian Herald". There
were also books on animal husbandry and farming generally. Particular treasures that I now
hold are "McClintock's Voyage of the Fox" that tells of an expedition to try and
find Franklin who perished trying to find the north west passage to Alaska and beyond.
Another is the family bible handed down from her mother's people in Scotland. |
| The second and third entrances to the house were to two shops. Both had narrow double doors and were flanked on either side by two biggish windows that provided light and contained showcases. | |||
| The first of the shops was Lizzy's. Down the right hand side were arranged wooden fruit cases and all sorts of greengroceries. A lot of these came from Jimbo's farms. |
Arnotts Biscuits |
Down the left hand side was a counter with glass showcases . One large one I well remember was for all sorts of sweets. On shelves on the wall behind this counter were tins of Arnotts biscuits, tea and other corner shop items | |
| At the rear of the shop was a screen with a counter behind. From this position Lizzy would manage her business and sustain herself during the day by sipping what we kids were told was "Aunty Lizzy's medicine". In reality the medicine consisted of two bottles of stout which she mixed with lemonade from the shop. | |||
Her day began long before dawn when she would go off to the vegetable markets at the Haymarket in Sydney. |
Campbell St. Market Sydney |
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| Taken from
Sydney Markets:-
Markets have been in the Haymarket area for 150 years.- a “fringe market” in second hand goods and clothes, novelties, toys and pets operated alongside Sydney’s produce market from the very early days of white settlement. By the 1860s the Haymarket, or Campbell Street market, as it was known, had become a second farm produce outlet. The George Street market was demolished in 1891. Not long after the demise of the central market, the circus owners at the Campbell Street site were asked to find another venue. The vacant block was to be used for a new Belmore fruit market. |
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| Lizzy would return home for breakfast and then take down the heavy wooden shutters that were covering the windows and door. When the White Bay Hotel opened at 10am she would leave one of the family to mind the shop and walk up to the hotel, buy her two bottles of stout and return back to the shop. Of an evening the last job was to erect the shutters for the night. All this was when she was in her late seventies. | |||
| She had a powerful well modulated voice and when she sang at the piano it was always at concert pitch and volume. My most vivid memories were of "Scotland the Brave" "Loch Lomond" "The bluebells of Scotland"' Annie Laurie" | |||
| Lizzy and her mother Catherine were very enterprising and extremely hard working and quite intelligent women who stamped their ideals and aspirations on the whole family. Lizzy's mother had ten children in all two of these did not survive early childhood. | |||
Her mother's ambition and Lizzy's strong desire was to become a schoolteacher. To this end she was sent a "Ladies School" for the more affluent in the community. She was a bright pupil and in time became a "pupil teacher" She records that she was never accepted by the other "ladies" because she came from a tradesman family. In time the owner of the school sold it and returned to England. The new owner offered to keep her on as a pupil teacher if she severed all connections with her family and came to live in the new owner's house. This was too much for the McCaskies so Lizzy returned home and helped her mother who by this time had established a "Bazaar" in Sydney Town.The Bazaar apparently made and sold clothing and millinery |
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| By this time her brother (Jimbo) had been apprenticed to a blacksmith at the age of thirteen. He had to walk to and from the city each day before and after work. She and her mother decided to open a house in the city . Lizzy would run the house and as well assist in the running of the bazaar and Jimbo and later his brother Thomas would live there. I presume this situation remained until both boys finished their apprenticeships. | |||
| We are given no clues from her diary of suitors although she says that she never found any man that she wished to marry. She mentions several offers and explains that they were not good enough for her. Maybe her sense of family duty before all else prevented this. | |||
| She had a great preoccupation with singing and music generally. | |||
In her old age when WW2 started the family deemed it wise to move Agnes and Lizzy to my mothers' sister, Lillian's house, 2 doors from our home at West Ryde. By this time Lizzy was almost totally blind but being the strong minded person to the last she used to march up and down inside the front picket fence. Us younger ones used to read to her in great detail the newspapers of the day. |
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| It must be said that she was a very strong woman and stamped her values on all of us. | |||
| Jack Brown New South Wales Apr 2002 | |||
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