James Alexander¹

James Alexander 1824-1889

James Alexander 1824-1889

Parents:

• Birth*: James Alexander was born in 1824 at Forteviot, Perthshire, Scotland, ; MA has born Rhynd.^2,3,4,5
• He was the son of George Alexander and Margaret Guthrie.
• Marriage*: James Alexander married Agnes Watt, daughter of Andrew Watt and Agnes Gibson, on Friday, 27 April 1860 at Sandhurst, Victoria, Australia, .^6,5,3
• Death*: James Alexander died on 31 January 1889 at Kangaroo Flat, Victoria, Australia, CFmsM has 1876.^1,4,5,3

• Emigration: James Alexander emigrated with James Alexander on an unknown person in 1857 at Scotland to Australia ('Red Jacket'); Immigrated to Victoria, Australia on the same ship ashisyoungerbrother Thomas.^7,3
• (Spouse) Death: His spouse Agnes Watt died on 17 July 1879 at Kangaroo Flat, Marongshire, Bendigo, Victoria, Australia, ; 1879 deaths in the district of Kangaroo Flat in the colony of Victoria, registered by George O'Donnell; died 17th July 1879 at Kangaroo Flats, Marongshire, County of Bendigo; Agnes Alexander wife of an ..; female aged 44 years; cause pulmonary consumption duration 5 months as seen by H... Penfold who saw deceased 3rd June 1879; parents Andrew Watt baker and Agnes Watt formerly Gibson; informant Charles Watt nephew Kangaroo Flat; signed George O'Donelly 6th July 1879 at Kangaroo Flat; buried 20th July 1879 at Kangaroo Flat undertaker David Rennie; burial witnessed by Sidney Cou... & Robert Hislop; deceased born Haddington Scotland, 22 years in Victoria; deceased married Sandhurst Victoria 23 years to James Alexander; issue Margaret 18 years, Agnes 16 years, Jane 13 years, Rebecca 10 years, James 6 years, Charles 4 years.^6,8,3
• (Other subject) Contact: On 5 June 2014 there was contact from Kathryn Anstice contact about Isabella Watt and James Alexander. Pat Carson
  From: kathryn
  Sent: 05 June 2014 13:38
  To: patcarsonp@hotmail.com
  Subject: Genes on the Web - Genes on the WebAndrew Watt
  Categories: patcarsonp@hotmail.com
  Hi
  I have j ust started to do some research in to my grandmothers family tree, her gran mother was Isabella Watt she was born in Haddington and came to Autralia with her mother and now it also seems her grandparents. I had started to write a small story on Isabella so that my mum who is in her 70s could understand who was who and also to let the future generations know there family story. I came across your link by chance and you have helped answer the question I was having, why was Agnes not have a birth certificate and why did every one else think she was a Watt- Miller – I am wondering how you go about getting the information from the Scotland registers I am registered with ancestory.com but even when I change the name I am finding its not coming up with the riht infor for the Isabella Watt (alexander) I am related to… her mum was Agnes Watt and her father it seems to be James alexander which I thought it might have been when Agnes gets married so quick to him after her arrival in Austrlia…. I am pretty certain I have the right agnes when I was researching her that she came to Australia on the ship ‘champion of the sea’s’ – there is a james miller listed as a passenger on this ship though I am pretty certain now he is not anything to do with Isabella…. If you could please help me with how I can copy or site the information that you have posted I would be most greatful. I am in Australia not far away from Kangaroo Flat (1 hour drive) where the family come to settle for parts of there lives… I am curious if they came to Australia to try and find a fortune in the gold rush or if they are ashamed that Agnes has had a baby and feel they need to leave …. Do you know if they belonged to any particular church… or if there homes they lived in over in Scotland still stand today…one dya I may be able to make the trip and see the landmarks of Scotland my self!!
  I look forward from hearing from you
  Kate
  
  
  From: Pat Carson [mailto:patcarsonp@hotmail.com]
  Sent: Friday, 6 June 2014 9:21 AM
  To: 'kathryn'
  Subject: RE: Genes on the Web - Genes on the WebAndrew Watt
  Hello,
  Nice to ‘meet’ you!
  This is a fairly peripheral line for me, so only sparse details I’m afraid. And mainly gleaned from others’ trees on Ancestry (but I have credited/cited them, so you should be able to find them)!
  I do have the birth registration for Isabella Watt in 1856 so have attached that too. You will ONLY get Scottish Statutory Records from ScotlandsPeople the government website for all the records – Ancestry doesn’t have them and at this time unlikely to get them in the future! http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/
  It’s not too expensive – certainly hugely cheaper than English records – you register, then purchase a minimum of 30 credits that cost £7 ($12.61Aus).
  Beware, too, the Ancestry transcription for Scottish Census returns – in the main they are poor and can raise some extraordinary questions that are soon resolved when you buy the original from SP!
  Agnes wouldn’t have a birth certificate as this was before statutory registration began in 1855. But there would probably have been a record in the Parish Records for the church she was baptised in. And you ask about the church the family belonged to – I cannot be categorical, but the baptism records are showing on Family Search https://familysearch.org/ in the usual way, so I would guess they were Church of Scotland – the Established Church then and now.
  Google maps will give you a street view of many places as they are today. Some of the antiquarian postcard sites may have pictures of earlier years – you can search with Google for them too. Or ScotlandsPlaces may have something www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/
  I’m also in touch with one or two others researching the Alexander line. I can put them in touch with you if you are happy for me to pass on your name and email address?
  Hope this helps
  regards
  Pat
  
  
  Pat Carson
  From: kathryn
  Sent: 06 June 2014 00:38
  To: 'Pat Carson'
  Subject: RE: Genes on the Web - Genes on the WebAndrew Watt
  Categories: patcarsonp@hotmail.com
  Thank you so much Pat for you help I will subscribe to the site and see if I can find some other answers to some more questions I have… I have only just started to do this research so very new, I was using the ancestry site and I was kind of thinking this is not adding up right so went into writing a page and thinking that Isabella (my great great grandmother) might have been a child born out of wedlock – everyone I have seen has listed her as having a name of ‘miller watt’ i am not sure where they got that anem Miller from but that is ok now I know that she is the really an ‘alexander’. Would you know if Jane Gibson and Agnes Gibson where related??
  I am more than happy for you to hand on my information to others, -where abouts are they from??? I live an hour and half away from Melbourne in country Victoria, and just a bit over an hour from Bendigo.
  Thanks for all your help again….
  Lovely to know there is someone else in the world interested in our family history….
  Kathryn
  Ps where abouts are you from
  .⁸

Census & Directory Entries

Member of Household

30 March 1851

They was listed as a member of the household of Margaret Guthrie in the 1851 census at N Corsiehill, Kinnoull, Perthshire, Scotland, . James Alexander, son, 27, quarry lab, Rhynd, Perthshire; Margaret Alexander, head, 60, Errol, Perthshire.9

Notes

• (Witness) Note for Web: James Alexander and Isabel McLean, George Alexander, Margaret Guthrie, Alexander Alexander, George Alexander, George Alexander, Ann McQueen Alexander, Margaret Guthrie Alexander and William Kidd were mentioned with Thomas Fraser Alexander contractor and Margaret Duff. Thomas allegedly left home when young because he didn't want to be a farmer and his father was very strict and hard on him. The fifth of six children, he may well have discussed with his four brothers the idea of travelling to Australia's goldfields. In the end, three of the Alexander sons left Scotland, never to return. Thomas' older brothers Alexander and James were to die in Victoria.
  According to his death certificate, Thomas married three times but it doesn't quite match up. It's stated he married first at age 23, second at age 30, wives unknown. It does not mention his third marriage at age 33. Death certificates are the least reliable as the recipient is not there to verify the information. We do know that on 8 June 1855 in Condie, Forgandenny, Perthshire, Scotland, he married Margaret DUFF, daughter of William DUFF and Mary SCOBIE, and both were aged 25.
  On 5 April 1856, Thomas and Margaret had a son George born in Forgandenny. On the birth certificate, Thomas's occupation was 'contractor'.
  In June 1857, Thomas and Margaret sailed as unassisted immigrants into Victoria, Australia aboard the 'Red Jacket'. They both gave their ages as 27. Their son George would've been just over a year old but he doesn't show on the passenger list. Also on this ship was James Alexander aged 31, Thomas' brother.
  Sadly, Margaret was to die three years later in 1860. With his father probably toiling in the goldfields all day, we can only wonder who minded young George after his mother died. This was also the year Thomas' mother died back in Scotland.
  Two years later Thomas was struck by a further catastrophe with the death of five year-old George early in 1862, not long before his sixth birthday.
  Knowing that his second son, also named George, was born in Australia, we can only surmise that Thomas met Isabel Mclean in Victoria. A passenger list exists with an Isabella Mclean sailing into Victoria aboard the 'Monica' in March 1859. Her age is stated as 33, which is about right. Though born as Isabel, she was known as Isabella.
  Isabella might have known the Alexanders before Margaret died. After Margaret's death she might have looked after young George.
  In 1862 or 1863 Thomas and Isabella had their first child George in Sandhurst (now Bendigo*). Following the Scottish custom, they named their first son after Thomas' father. * The name 'Bendigo' was used to describe the diggings along the Bendigo Creek until 18 January 1853 when Governor La Trobe named the township Sandhurst. In 1891 after a voters' poll, the name Bendigo was reinstated (F Cusack, Bendigo: A history, Heinemann, Melbourne,pp. 67 &188).
  
  Maybe staying in Australia held too many sad memories for Thomas. Within eighteen months of his first son's death the family had immigrated to New Zealand.
  Thomas and Isabella were married in the house of the officiating minister/registrar Benjamin Drake on Don Street, Invercargill on 22 September 1863. Two more children were born in New Zealand: Ann at Stafford, Hokitika, and Margaret at Takaka.
  In the mid-1870s the Greymouth Coal Company had let a contract to sink a new main shaft to a mine; unfortunately the newspaper article doesn't name the mine. Striking trouble at 27 feet, the contractors threw in the contract and a new contract was let to Thomas at eight pound per foot. According to the 'Grey River Argus' of 20 June 1876, Thomas had sunk the shaft 216 feet and work was progressing well at about 10 feet per week.
  Thomas and Isabel lived in Cromwell at the time of the Otago gold rush, before moving to Stafford (where Ann was born) and later Drury. Nothing more is known of the family until they lived in Brunnerton where Thomas was manager of the Brunner Coalmine.
  The 'Grey River Argus' of 16 December 1881 reported on a meeting at the Volunteer Hall about the proposed East and West Coast Railway. It was resolved that the best information and data available should be prepared and presented to the Commissioners about to visit the West Coast, the Commissioners having been appointed by the Christchurch Chamber of Commerce. To this end a committee was to be elected to carry out the resolution and receive the Commissioners on their arrival in Greymouth. The duties of the committee were in the capacity of affording information and practical assistance in respect to the line, as well as greeting the Commissioners. Manager of the Coal Pit Heath mine at the time, Thomas was elected to the committee.
  In 1882 The Working Miners' Gold-mining Company was registered and Thomas bought 500 shares.
  In December 1883 Thomas wrote a letter defending a dentist who had operated on one of his daughters.
  Thomas was manager of the Coal Pit Heath Company mine in 1883 till at least 1886 and was jointly responsible for a luncheon for visiting dignitary Sir William Francis Drummond Jervois, 'Governor and Commander-in-Chief in and over Her Majesty's Colony of New Zealand and its Dependencies' on 5 February 1886 when Sir William visited the Brunner and Coal Pit Heath mines, the two leading mines in the district.
  On the Electoral Roll for Hokitika in 1885, Thomas was listed as living in Taylorville, Brunner.
  In 1886 Thomas bought three sections.
  Thomas got his name in the newspaper when he was clouted on the head by a piece of coal. While putting in a prop in the Brunner mine, a large piece of coal fell from the roof, hitting him on the head and severely wounding his scalp. According to the 'Evening Post' of 6 October 1887 he went to Greymouth to get the wound stitched.
  Along with an article in the 'West Coast Times', Hokitika's local newspaper the 'Grey River Argus' dated 25 November 1887 listed Thomas among the candidates standing for election to the first Brunner Council. The elections were held in November 1887. Thomas was unsuccessful, gaining 41 votes. There were ten men appointed to Council - the lowest polling of these had 65 votes. Thomas was next in line as he had the highest number of votes of the unsuccessful candidates.
  Early in 1895 Thomas moved with his wife and younger daughter Margaret to manage the Mangatini mine; he was the first state-appointed mine manager. Mangatini was a mining town up around the back of Millerton, north of Westport. At one time, the town was the home to about sixty miners and their families, and a colder, rougher place was hard to find. It was reached via the Millerton Track, and through a dank tunnel. The houses were little more than huts, surrounded by steep hills that often were covered in snow. There was a boarding house, run by a formidable lady named Sarah McCANN. She was reportedly a huge woman, who nobody dared to cross. A plain cook, with a heart of gold, Sarah kept her accounts by writing in chalk on the wall, and no doubt many a loan was simply erased. The population peaked at 100 in 1911, and had dropped to 51 in the 1916 census. By the 1931 census the settlement had ceased to exist. Also living in Millerton at that time were Thomas's daughter Ann and son-in-law William Kidd, with their six children. Thomas was now 70 years old.
  After he'd left Brunner, a disastrous mine explosion occurred there on 26 March 1896 and many men lost their lives. Thomas knew them all. It was the highest loss of life in a New Zealand mining disaster. This explosion is New Zealand's greatest workplace disaster. Sixty-five men, virtually everybody underground, died when inflammable gas ignited. The impact on West Coast families lasted for generations. A significant memorial commemorating the disaster greets the visitor to the Taylorville side of the complex. The area is important for its social history, in particular its long and vigorous history of trade unionism. The Brunner Mine had the greatest coal production in New Zealand. At its peak over three hundred men and boys were employed there, and a range of industries made up the wider complex. In 1891 the borough of Brunnerton had 2,231 people. Even though it had passed its heyday by 1900 it remained a centre of great industrial activity until the late 1930s - nearly eighty years of industry in this narrow valley. Alongside the extraordinary output of coal, coke and bricks were produced in large volumes. Brunner firebricks, in particular, were famous products in their own right and established the reputation of Brunnerton, as it was generally known in the nineteenth century.
  Around July 1897 Thomas became manager of the Wakamarina Gorge claim goldmine in Marlborough, which he was still managing at the time of Isabella's death.
  In the 1900 Postal Directory Thomas was also listed as being in Deep Creek. Listings have been found for him in Coal Creek, Seddonville and mine manager at the Mokihinui Coal Company in Mokihinui 1898-1899.
  He was also listed in the Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives as holding a First Class Mine Manager's Certificate issued under the Coal Mines Act 1886 and 1891(Alexander, T-Brunnerton); and a Certificate of Competency granted to holders of Provisional Warrants under Section 32 of the Mining Act Amendment Act 1896 (Alexander, Thomas, Deep Creek).
  Thomas's great-grandson Fred ('Snowy') Fox had a memory of Thomas looking for gold in the sand on the beach at Birchfield. Thomas carried the gold pan and Snowy carried a special bucket that Thomas had had made for him. It carried the water needed for panning the gold.
  Another of Thomas's great-grandchildren, Maud Gear, remembered sitting on his knee as a small child and being fascinated by his long white beard. She also told of a holiday she had at Thomas' daughter Margaret Broadfoot's house in Birchfield, which is twenty-one kilometres north-east of Westport. Thomas always read his bible on a Sunday and never worked on the Sabbath. On this particular weekend, Margaret (known to her nieces and nephews as Aunty Maggie Broadfoot) came to her father's bedroom to see if he was alright, as he usually rose early in the morning. Thomas was sitting up in bed reading his bible. When Margaret explained it was Saturday, Thomas jumped out of bed and appeared in his working clothes, axe in hand, and was off to the woodpile where he worked for the rest of the morning.
  Thomas visited Otira to see the tunnel work in progress. His son-in-law William Kidd was an electrician working on the tunnel project.
  Thomas Alexander lived the last twenty years of his life with the Broadfoot family in Birchfield. He died at their home on 7 August 1918, aged 88. His death certificate gives the cause of death as senility and cardiac arrest. He had lived in New Zealand for fifty-eight years.
  
  Not much is known about Isabel. We can only speculate that she may have immigrated to the goldfields of Australia in her early thirties in search of a husband. On the 1859 passenger list of the 'Monica', all the people on the same page as Isabella were young women aged from 17 to their mid-thirties, bar two who were travelling with a younger relative.
  Isabella died of stomach cancer on 21 January 1898; she'd had her 73^rd birthday two days earlier. Her death was registered in Waimangaroa.
  
  Details were obtained of Thomas and Isabel's death certificates from their death registrations at the courthouse in Westport.
  
  NEW ZEALAND ELECTORAL ROLLS -
  1 September 1881, Grey Valley electorate, ALEXANDER, Thomas, residential, Taylorville, miner.
  24 October 1881, Inangahua district, ALEXANDER, Thomas, residential, Taylorville, miner.
  24 October 1881, Greymouth electorate, ALEXANDER, Thomas, residential, Coaldale, coalmine manager.
  18 June 1885, Inangahua district, ALEXANDER, Thomas, residential, Taylorville, miner.
  1885-86, Greymouth electorate, ALEXANDER, Thomas, residential, Coaldale, coalmine manager.
  12 September 1890, Grey electorate, ALEXANDER, Thomas, residential, Coaldale, coalmine manager.
  1905, Buller electorate, ALEXANDER, Thomas, Birchfield, mine manager.
  1911, Buller electorate, ALEXANDER, Thomas, Birchfield, mine manager.
  1914, Buller electorate, ALEXANDER, Thomas, Birchfield, mine manager.
  
  NEW ZEALAND GAZETTES -
  1882, 'Working Miners' Goldmining Company', shareholder Thomas ALEXANDER, Brunnerton, miner, 500 shares (as at 21 December 1881)
  © LGB 2015.³
• Reference LGB: Reference: 4343.³
• Note for Web*: James Alexander James sailed to Australia on the ship "Red Jacket" with his brotherThomas.
  James amd Agnes had 6 Daughters and 2 Sons in Australia most of them died young.⁵