Donald,

New year, new edition and new subscribers.

Enjoy!

New Subscribers

Odette Madriago from Sacramento, California (please see her notes at the end).

And from Di (Ray’s wife) side of the family:

Bruce Fairlie

Tony Heyes <=== This surname appears in the readings below.

They hale from Victoria Australia.

January 2015 Edition 118


Ray Jerrems, Our Genealogist, Historian, and Adventurer

A GRIM TALE (PART 2)


This article follows on from my previous article “A Grim Tale” published in the November 2014 Journal. “Grim” was Grimshaw Heyes, a great uncle of my wife.

The article continues to draw on an item “Not Grim at all” written by James Lerk and published in the Bendigo Weekly of 21-Feb-2014.

The photo at the top of the article shows a large poppet head (described in more detail later) in Bendigo, adapted for use as a lookout.

Grim’s birth and siblings.

Grim was born at McDougall Road, Golden Gully, which was one of the first gullies to be opened up on the Bendigo goldfield after gold had been discovered in 1851.

The newspaper article states that he remained loyal to the area where he grew up and fortunately for him was able to keep that connection through much of his working life.

Grim’s siblings (including my wife’s grandmother Ellen Ann Hayes) were:

  • James Parkinson HEYES 1853 – 1920 (born in Lancashire)
  • John HEYES 1854 – 1855 (born and died in Lancashire)
  • Alice Ann HEYES1856 -1948 (born in Lancashire)
  • George Henry HEYES 1861 – 1910 (born in Bendigo)
  • Mary Jane HEYES 1867 – 1868 (born in Bendigo)
  • Sarah Hannah HEYES 1870 – 1951 (born in Bendigo)
  • William Valentine HEYES 1873 – 1913 (born in Bendigo)
  • Ellen Ann HEYES 1875 – 1961 (born in Bendigo)

The family lived in McDougall Road, Bendigo.

Grim’s sisters (with the exception of Mary, who died very young) were notable for their longevity. In descending order Alice lived to 92, Ellen reached 86 and Sarah reached 81, all of which were very old for those days. Ellen passed this tradition down to her daughters Nancy (102), Jean (99), Grace (98) and Verna (80).

Grim’s early days.
According to the newspaper article Grim began working at the mines in Bendigo when he was reputedly 11 years of age, being employed at the Golden Gully Consolidated Mine battery as a shoveller. He was responsible, along with other boys, for shovelling the lumps of quartz into the back of the battery boxes.
As he grew older and his talent for organisation became evident he was given more responsibility. By the age of 26 (in 1890) shortly after he was married he was in charge of the battery where he had begun working, as well as being the underground manager of the Golden Gully Consolidated Mine.

Batteries, processing the quartz

Mining the quartz reefs involved the sinking of vertical shafts, with horizontal tunnels (or drives) radiating out at various levels. The quartz only contained small veins of gold, the result being that large quantities of quartz had to be mined and then crushed to a powder to obtain viable amounts of gold.

The quartz rock which had been dug out by the miners was transported by trolley along the horizontal tunnels to the vertical shafts, where it was lifted to the surface in skips and crushed using batteries of stampers.

In simplified terms the processing involved mixing the powdered rock with water and washing it to obtain the gold (known as “puddling”), or, in later years, processing the powder chemically.

The very graphic outdoor photo above shows a rather moth-eaten old timber-framed stamping machine without an engine, which would have been positioned on the right hand side and would have turned the axle which runs across to the large fly wheel on the left. Despite the decrepit nature of the machinery the photo illustrates the stampers themselves very well, and shows the cams on the axle which alternately lifted and dropped the stampers. Most of these machines were in fact metal-framed, rather than wooden framed.

Chemical extraction of gold

Later, more sophisticated batteries were housed in large buildings, with the gold collection facilities placed below the stampers. This indoor photo, taken in Bendigo as early as 1870, demonstrates the sophistication in processing that had already been achieved. The long bank of stampers are high up at the back.

The powdered ore was passed over mercury coated copper sheets in the sloping trays below the stampers, whereby fine gold particles, which were heavy, moved to the bottom of the powder and formed an almagam with the mercury. The amalgam was scraped off and the gold then separated from the amalgam by heating and evaporating the mercury which was then recovered by a condenser for reapplication to the plates.

It was on this type of battery (perhaps it was the same battery !) that Grim started work and later specialised in driving.

Steam engines

Stationary steam engines were used to drive the batteries, as well as pumps for taking water out of the mines and the powering of winding engines (see later).

These machines actually had two components, the steam boilers and the engine machinery. The boilers could be housed outside the machinery shed (as shown in the photo), with a drive shaft going into the shed, or inside the shed.

Winding engine

This photo shows a compact 1885 Winding Engine designed to suit the various kinds of mining and other operations where winding and hauling were required. I have included it to show the distinguishing feature of the winding drums around which the cables were wound.

The cables for the raising and lowering of the quartz loaded skips and miners’ elevators passed around the drums, then up and over the poppet heads which are such a typical feature of underground mines throughout the world. However the cables could also be used for pulling skips along elevated cableways or up steep tramways.

Duties and qualifications of Engine Driver

Engine driving was a popular occupation in the Heyes families. Grim, his father George, his brothers James, George and William, and his brother-in-law Walter Cook (who married Grim’s sister Ellen) were all engine drivers, although James and Walter later moved back to their original occupations of (respectively) blacksmith and saddler. The above photo shows Walter’s Engine Driver’s Certificate.

The duty of the engine driver was to oversee the operation of the various types of engines.

The Bendigo School of Mines (established in 1873) provided training in various facets of mining, from engine driving up to management of mines. There were basically two classes of engine driving certificates, one for driving Winding Engines (requiring two year’s practical experience) and the other for driving Pumping, Puddling, and Crushing Engines (requiring one year’s practical experience).

In each case examinable courses covered Feeding Boilers, Safety Valves and Working Engines. Initially these requirements were enforced locally but in 1897 they were enforced by statute.

Grim marries.
In 1887 Grim married Lavinia Shore (born in Bendigo in 1865, died there in 1940), and they had six children:

  • Grimshaw HEYES Jnr, 1888 – 1957
  • Alice Hart HEYES, 1890 – 1890
  • Harold Alwyn HEYES, 1893 – 1987
  • Clarise Lavinia HEYES, 1895 – 1965
  • Myrtle Lillian HEYES, 1898 – 1968 or later
  • Ruby May HEYES, 1902 – 1977

Grim goes to Tasmania.

It had become time for Grim to stretch his wings, not long after he married Lavinia he applied for the mine management of the Royal Standard Mine at Gladstone Tasmania, in the north east of that State. For some time he then became the battery manager of the Mercury Mine in mountainous country near Ringarooma, which is south of Gladstone.

Grim returns to Bendigo.
Now aged 30, in 1894 Grim returned to Bendigo and was the successful applicant to become the engine driver for the battery of the Great Southern Mine on the Golden Gully Reef. From the Great Southern he next worked at the new Red White and Blue Consolidated Mine, again as an engine driver.

His big break came when the Lansell Bendigo Battery of 105 heads was completed in 1894. J Northcott, George Lansell’s general manager selected Grim to become the head engine driver, and not long afterwards he became the manager of this immense crushing works.

Additionally Grim had the mine management of George Lansell’s North Red White and Blue Mine as well as the Sheepshead Mine. This must have kept him busy!

Who was George Lansell?

George Lansell (1823-1906) arrived in Bendigo in 1854 and set up business with his two brothers as butchers and soap and candle makers. George invested the proceeds into numerous gold mines which resulted in him becoming the ‘Quartz King of Bendigo’ and the richest man in Australia in the late 1800’s.

Although Lansell invested in many mines, he showed a preference for mines in the Sheepshead Reef, which included the Red White and Blue Consolidated Mine managed by Grim. This faith in the Sheepshead Reef was vindicated by the fact that this mine continued production until the late 1940s, being the last Bendigo mine to close.

Investment in goldmining.
Investment in gold mines was popular, enabling entrepreneurs to float companies to obtain capital to start their mines. Probably most of the companies did not go any further than the exploratory stage, making investment in them highly speculative.

One particular Jerrems descendant, Arthur Jabez Small, invested in a number of mining companies.

Grim the cricketer and Manager
A keen cricketer, Grim played for the Golden Gully Cricket Club, with which he remained an active member for the whole of his life.

Highly respected by his fellow mine managers, as early as 1903 he became the vice president of the Bendigo and District Mine Managers’ Association, a position he held for many years.

Conclusion.
In the next article about Grim I will tell you about the role he played in entertaining American sailors from the famous Great White Fleet in 1908.

Administrivia


Donald Jerrems, Editor from North Carolina USA


We received a nice note from Odette Madriago, who found my email address in an old edition of the Jerrems Journal.

[EDITORS NOTE] We exchanged a few emails and I sent her back editions of the 2012 JJ. Here are her comments:

Donald, I am thrilled to hear from you. … All the information about the family and Monymusk in the Feb 2012 newsletter was wonderful to read — much of it was new for me.

I live in Sacramento, California. (It was only in reading your newsletters this past week that I realized for the first time that there was a Nicoll the Tailor establishment here in Sacramento.)

In addition to the letter (along with some background information), I want to send you some vital records / public documents concerning various family members that I have gotten at the ancestry.com website. Based on these documents, I think a few of the lineage details in the Feb 2012 newsletters may need some adjustments — which I will explain in detail in my subsequent email along with the documents.

I actually have a high quality scanner myself that I can use to scan the letter. It will take me a few days to pull together all the information I want to send you, but you will here again from me shortly. I am so happy to have been able to connect with you.

When Ray and I get the new information from Odette, we will include it in a JJ edition. Stay tuned.

As always, we love old Jerrems stories and pictures. If you find something in the attic, do like Odette, scan it and send it in