WHO'D WANT TO BE A FAMILY HISTORIAN?
My great grandfather got a great write up in BROADMEADOWS A FORGOTTEN HISTORY but as I discovered while conducting rate research for my brother, a family historian, most pioneers rated nary a mention. That's why I have spent about half of my waking hours providing local history to family historians since 1988.

While doing a WHITE, MAIN RIDGE, DROMANA search on trove, I found some errors that could hide information sought by family historians. Charles Graves Jnr of Shoreham is on the list of burials at Flinders Cemetery as Charles CRAVES. Mrs Margaret Haddow's obituary calls her Mrs Margaret Haddon. She was buried at Flinders but is not on the burial list.

The former was the son of Charles Graves (died 1906) who was much involved with the McLear family. He and Brownlee leased 4000 acres of Jamieson's Special Survey in 1851 and obviously sub let a portion of it to Mary Ann McLear, who called her little farm (on the bank of Dunns Creek) The Willow. He and Mary Ann were partners in a hawking business and George McLear was with him at Little Scotland when one of the blonde Cairns youngsters complained ,"Ae cunnae crruck a whee whip yet." In the year before he left to establish a store at Shoreham, Charles Graves Snr. bought a property opposite the drive-in site, had it fenced by the Rymer brothers and sold it to Mary Ann.

Margaret Haddow's husband was the shepherd at Barragunda and obtained the grant for c/a 9 Fingal on the east side of Old Cape Schanck Rd north of the junction of that road with Patterson and Boneo Rds. The triangular block to the west, c/a 9A, was granted to Governor Latrobe's cousin, E.Latrobe Bateman who was involved in the design of the Barragunda homestead (probably internal.) This property was later occupied by Carrier Harry Cairns so it is no surprise that he married Margaret's daughter, Margaret.

Imagine how excited GRAVES and HADDOW family historians would be to discover the HISTORY OF DROMANA TO PORTSEA Facebook page. There they would discover that Charles Graves Jnr. and Margaret Haddow actually were buried at Flinders despite their names not appearing on the burial list, as well as details about where they lived etc.