Bad luck, good luck

But for luck (and not just good luck), many, if not most of us, would not be here.

In 1949, a boy was born into my maternal Grandmother's family; on that auspicious occasion, the boy's grandfather, Howard Beck Cutting, typed a six-page letter, which included some tidbits of family history. We all know that lore almost always contains both bits of truth and bits of conjecture as we strive to fill in the blanks (in both personal and world history), but it does make for a good story.

And so it was with the improbable tale of how a young man from Massachusetts met a young woman from Tasmania. I'll let excerpts from Howard's letter tell the tale:

You know Tommy, you had a very narrow escape from not being here at all. Way back in 1869 a train had stopped at a little station in California to take on passengers, and having done so it had started up to continue on its way. A man running to catch that train failed to do so by a slight margin. Perhaps he was very much disgusted with himself for having missed it, however, I am sure that he was glad he had done so. If he had caught it there would have been no Tommy Cutting. 

[…]

Great-great grandfather and great grandfather had learned the painting trade and they went into business in San Francisco. They accumulated some property, however, for one reason or another such pieces were sold, presumably at a profit. It was during this period of their work in San Francisco that great grandfather [Eugene Augustus] Cutting took a day off in 1869 to go to Redwood City. A railroad had been constructed from San Francisco to San Jose 50 miles south of the city. He was the man who missed the train back to San Francisco and during the interval while awaiting the arrival of the next train he met Mary Beck.

Drawn by the rush for gold in California, the family of Eugene Augustus Cutting had come to San Francisco from Sudbury, Massachusetts; The promise of gold and riches also brought Mary Beck's family to California from Launceston, Tasmania. Eugene and Mary were married in 1869 in Redwood City, San Mateo, California, and had four children. 

As if that wasn't enough good fortune, they lived through the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. The fire was ultimately stopped only six blocks from their home in the Mission District.

Eugene Augustus Cutting and Mary Beck

+++

As a postscript, the baby boy to whom the letter was addressed passed away just a few months ago, after two-year battle with a disease that finally took him, all too soon. 

Not forgotten

I have previously written of my 3GGF William "George" Beck, who sailed the seas from England to Tasmania to California, all for family. As a young man, he accompanied his parents (Becks) and aunts and uncles (Knights and Webbs) to Van Dieman's Land; as a young father, he packed up his family to try their fortune in California in the Gold Rush.

But the family with three children that boarded the Barque Spartan in 1850 headed to California was not complete. Yes, they had already buried three children (including twin boys that did not survive), but George's 12 year old daughter Sarah from his first marriage--who had lost her mother while George was at sea--is not on the passenger manifest. 

And it does not appear to be an oversight by the purser: there is no record of Sarah in any records once they arrive. In the years after their arrival, the family expands by two more daughters. George makes a good living selling real estate and building houses for miners returning from the mother lode with pockets full of placer gold. He lives a prosperous life, dying at the age of 69, with a sizeable portfolio of real estate and a passel of grandchildren. He outlived his second wife by 25 years.

So whatever happened to Sarah? When I asked my mother, she said she had always heard that she died along with her mother, or perhaps she came to California at a later date. Great Aunt Marjorie assumed she had died, since it was inconceivable to her that a parent would abandon a child.

However, digging through the Tasmanian archives (a researcher's dream: clearly scanned, indexed, and online), Launceston reveals itself as a very small town: in the 1843 census, there is an unidentified young girl of Sarah's age living at Carr Villa, her great uncle John Knight's estate. In 1851, the census names her as living with her grandmother Beck. But we hit pay dirt in the 1856 Assessment Book for Launceston, where she is not only living with her grandmother, but her aunt and uncle Webb have also moved in. Also in the list of residents is Thomas Hughes, her new husband. She is 18 and pregnant with the first of 12 children. 

When George died in California in 1882, his will appointed his youngest daughter Lizzie as administratix. His will splits the estate evenly between his four surviving children, identified by name. But the 1885 probate settlement tells another story: Lizzie and her siblings make sure that their half-sister Sarah Hughes finally gets her due: she receives 1/5 of the estate, with the remainder going to her unmarried half-sister Grace. 

The father and his four children circa 1859:
Mary, Tom, Lizzie (Elizabeth), William George, and Grace

Australian royalty

If you haven't already, you'll want to read the story of the Launceston Library.  

Picking up where I left off: I had three siblings with land grants in Launceston, Tasmania (then called Van Dieman's Land). All of them were free persons--no convicts. My great aunt Marjorie had been adamant that there were no convicts to sully our name or reputation. But I couldn't help but wonder why an entire family that had been in the same village for generations would uproot to an unknown and distant land--reachable only by a two to five-month sea voyage that was in itself an ordeal.

I learned that the English government was offering a bounty to young men with a trade, which William "George" Beck was. He was  a carpenter, and I can remember seeing the chest he made in my great aunt's house. But that didn't explain why his parents and four of his aunts and uncles made the same trip. 

Having established that we had three siblings and their spouses thanks to my distant cousin just across the Canadian border, I learned from this same gentlemen that their father, Samuel Knight, had been the subject of a trial at the old Bailey on April 25, 1814. 

The transcript from the Old Bailey trial

Samuel, a cloth salesman, had moved his family to London in hopes to improve their economic situation, but that apparently had not worked out, and on an April evening, he and his brother and a couple of cronies took a crow bar to a warehouse door and stole  some furs. Both Samuel and his brother James were sentenced to death. Both of them had their sentences commuted to transportation.

On August 7, 1815, James and Samuel were transported to Port Jackson, Sydney in Australia aboard the Baring, along with 300 other convicts. In 1830, Samuel completed his sentence, and his son John, who had moved to Launceston, applied for a land grant for his father and brothers-in-law. In 1822, two things happened: James died, and Samuel earned a ticket of leave. Samuel then requested a transfer to Van Dieman's Land. By 1829, he had a conditional pardon, though his commuted sentence meant that he could never return to England. 

So it appears that Samuel, a convict, is most certainly the reason that the three siblings came to Launceston: the timing permitted petitions for Samuel's transfer and land grants for the siblings, all taken care of by his son John. 

In an interesting footnote, George Beck's first Daughter, Sarah, was left behind with his parents and aunties when he left for California. She ended up marrying an Irish man who had also received a death sentence--for stealing a gentleman's handkerchief--commuted to transportation: during his sea journey to Launceston, the transportation system was dismantled, and he found himself a free man upon arrival (except for the option of returning to Dublin). Thomas Hughes was a watchmaker, and provided well for his wife and 12 children. There are still many Hughes in Tasmania who can trace their roots to this couple.

George's little diary

I wrote earlier about my 3GGF William "George" Beck, who emigrated to Tasmania as a ship's carpenter. His family had gravitated there when he was a young man of 18, his life spread out before him. Life was hardscrabble, as evidenced by advertisements in the local paper (owned by his uncle) that showed people serving many roles: the barkeep was also a baker, and his wife and sister sold fancy goods brought fresh from London--no doubt by young George. 

When he was 24, George married a woman named Elizabeth Ford, and within a year, they had a daughter, named Sarah. George, trying to provide for his little family, set off on yet another voyage back to England. Two things stand out: his wife died while he was at sea returning to Tasmania--just after he had crossed the equator on his easterly route, and we know this because there are excerpts copied from his "little diary" by his granddaughter sometime in the 1940s. 

The notes are terse (the diary was small?) "Feby 5th 1840 Arrived at Van Dieman's Land" (after 5 months at sea) and "May 10th gave L1 S10 for a plaid dress"--presumably for his toddler daughter Sarah, though she is not mentioned by name. There is also no entry copied for his second marriage, to another Elizabeth (Gardiner) in 1842. They had six children in quick succession--and lost three of them. After the death of his father and the discovery of gold in California, George smelled gold: he built a small house, took it apart and put it in the hold of the Barque Spartan, then bundled his wife and children up for the 112-day voyage to California: "Left Launceston for California, arrive Sept 2, stopping 10 days at Tahiti." His daughter Sarah is not with them, apparently having been taken in by her grandmother. Six weeks after their arrival, the Beck family buries their young baby boy, George, in California, their new home. 

The diary's copyist notes that the original was passed down to her cousin, but that cousin died in 1973. I have not been successful in finding the diary, which might have answered some questions, such as why he left his first child behind--she was not mentioned in his will, but when his children probated the will, they made sure to send Sarah her share of the estate. I can only wonder what other tales the diary might reveal.

I can only hope that the little diary is safe and sound in the hands of a distant cousin somewhere, and that it is not lost to time. 

The Barque Spartan

Launceston Library

I remember asking my mother if our family had come west during the gold rush (we had probably just learned about it in school). Not exactly, she said, part of our family did come to California for the gold rush, but they had come east--from Australia. 

The ancestor in question was a gruff man by the name of William George Beck (he went by George). My mother told me that he emigrated to Launceston, Tasmania from England with his parents, but that she and her aunt could find nothing more—only they were sure he was not a convict. 

When my mother passed away, I inherited boxes of genealogical research, several in my great aunt Marjorie’s loopy but legible handwriting. Confirming her research, I learned that George’s father, Thomas and his wife did indeed arrive in Tasmania in 1831–quite early in the history of European settlement in the area. George was not on the passenger manifest, as he was a ship’s carpenter, though he remain based in Launceston for many years.

What struck me, as I worked my way through the handwritten notes, and then plunged into Trove—the aptly named Tasmanian online site with newspaper archives and civil records, was that they a) all worked multiple jobs and b) the lives of the Beck family was intertwined with folks by the name of Webb and Knight. Thomas, the Beck patriarch, ran a pub and a bakery (where he also sold patent medicine pedaled by busybody Mr. Knight, who also ran the local newspaper, and later a finishing school for young ladies); Mrs. Beck (Hannah) sold bonnets and ribbons "just arrived from England" with a Mrs. Webb (Sarah)—who also happened to arrive in Tasmania on the same boat--with her husband and child. When children were baptized or marriages solemnized, Webbs and Becks were both in attendance, and at least one marriage was celebrated at Mr. Knight’s Carr Villa, which apparently had been built by George Beck himself. 

Having grown up in a small town, I could see how paths would cross often, but these lives were more tightly woven than normal for friendships. There had to be more.

Now, my darling husband just happened to have relatives in New Zealand, which provided the perfect opportunity to visit down under—and as long as we were in the neighborhood, Tasmania was a relatively short jaunt.

Which was how I found myself in the Launceston library one December, poring over an immense hand drawn map of the town, with each parcel neatly labeled with the name of the grantee. And there, right next to each other were three parcels: J. Knight, J. Webb, and T. Beck. 

Land grants - more than neighbors!

What's more, from them I learned of a small tome in the Hobart library just down the road, self-published by a fellow with the Knight surname. Copies were made, emails flew, and I learned two things: firstly, the author himself lived just over the border from me in Canada, and secondly, Mrs. Beck, Mrs. Webb, and Mr. Knight were siblings. 

Of course, the reason they all went to Australia in the first place is a post for a later date.

 

Print block

 In a letter to a cousin, my mother relates a tidbit about a cousin for whom she had great affection: 

"I do remember […] Edna Beck Kiesler. She had been a Christian missionary in India, and retired to Berkeley; my mother and I went to her house for tea one time, and the furnishings were the carved tables and screens she had brought from India. […] Edna was a lovely woman."

It made sense that my mother would be attracted to a remarkable, independent woman with a graduate degree: in addition to being a missionary, she was a PhD, and a mother of three children. The Beck family was known for their adventuresome streak, having come to California not overland from the east coast, but rather by ship from Tasmania. 

Edna herself writes a lovely letter to her aunt Jessie and Eugene Cutting, dated May 6, 1902:

"Thinking you would be more interested in hearing from me from my new home than from one of the numerous ports where we landed. I deferred writing until now, when I have had time enough to form a few notable impressions of this very foreign land.  You can imagine how one's former ideas are completely upset by meeting day after day conditions and circumstances so entirely opposite to one's training and environments.  To see camels travelling back and forth in front of one's home as often as one has heretofore seen horses; to drive along the street and find an elephant carelessly filling his spacious trunk with water, then transferring it quietly to the oesophagus, an elephant twelve feet high, then led away by a small boy not more than three and a half feet high; to find men dressed in attire resembling skirts and women wearing pantalons, all the things are a little bit startling! Do you wonder I needed some time to clear my wondering and amazed brain?

How thankful I was to reach the end of my journey-almost seven weeks long. My rest at Honolulu and visit with you was so delightful - it was like another taste of home. I was quite willing to prolong it.

[…a description of the trip, via Japan (Tokyo and Nagasaki), China (Shanghai and Hong Kong), and Singapore...]

We stayed in [Penang] port one day and then started for Calcutta - at the beginning of the new week we found ourselves landing at Calcutta, the city of palaces. Calcutta, a noisy, very dirty place - with few palaces, if any. My journey from Calcutta up through the country to Apere was made alone, lasting two days and two nights.

My new home is delightful - I am very fond of the work, the people, the country."

In my mother's art supplies was a hefty hand-carved wooden block used to print fabric. Given its typically Indian design and our family history, it is reasonable to believe that this block made the trip back with Edna when she returned to retire in her native California. 

Edna's print block and pattern rubbing

Once Upon a Time: Honolulu

by Marjory Cutting Hulting

     On December 13, 1899, on my seventh birthday, we sailed from San Francisco for Honolulu. It was a foggy, bleak day when we left Marmee’s house and went to the wharf, the last part of the trip over large noisy cobblestones. Our trunks and our cat Billie, a huge part Persian, in a crate, were taken to the ship, R.P. Rithet, by a neighbor, Esther Hayes the expressman.

     By the time we reached the dock, I was thoroughly frightened at the strangeness of it all and the confusion, smells, fussing relations and my mother’s determined good-natured impatience. Billie had escaped from his slatted box, made by my young uncle Howard; so with this excuse, I cried. Everyone asked what was the matter, and knowing grown-ups always must have a reason, Billie’s loss was the simplest. I can look back and realize that Billie was not the main reason, but merely my excuse. Loving relations were my grandfather and grandmother Cutting, my Aunt Evelyn, Papa’s Auntie Grace [Beck] and Howard, then about 18. We love them all dearly and, on their part we were going to a very faraway place.

     Papa had gone to Honolulu some months before as a salesman for Waterhouse & Lester, a carriage supply firm in San Francisco where he was a bookkeeper, and a firm in Honolulu called Honolulu Carriage Co. had offered him the position as manager. He came home, made the necessary arrangements and returned to Honolulu, leaving my mother to sell the furniture (except the piano), put the house up for rent and take four children by sailing vessel to make a new home.

Our captain was Capt. MacPhail, a young, slight Scotsman with a decided accent. The first mate was Dr. Mr. (afterward Capt.) George Weston Gove, and a close friend of the family for many years thereafter. The second mate was another Scott named Mr. Burns, the delight of us children because he sang sea shanty type songs for us and had ridiculous things to say about the passengers, especially one old man who used to go to a barrel of seawater every morning and put it on his eyes saying, “nothing is so good for the eyes is good saltwater.” The mate took him off perfectly. We had Christmas at sea, and a passenger, Capt. Frieze, dressed a Santa Claus, came down through the cabin skylight with presents for everyone.

The Cutting's 1902 voyage aboard the R.P. Rithet