Jack Barrett's Will: How the Thackerays got the Barrett money

John Barrett 1849-1923
reproduced with permission
©B Bywater

Growing up we knew a lot about our Nana’s side of the family. We knew her sisters and their families. There were photos. We heard lots of family stories. But when I came to think of it I hadn’t met any of my grandfather’s family. I hadn’t seen any photos, heard any names or any stories. I didn’t even know how many brothers or sisters he had.

Midgee property with cemetery now in the middle of a quarry

The one thing I did remember was Midgee. Whenever we were driving south out of Rockhampton past Midgee Dad would point out the property where his father had grown up. And he would point to the family grave where Grandad’s little sister was buried up on the hill. She had died in a fire.

When I started the family history 30 years ago I asked many questions of the family to try to unravel the story of Midgee and our Barretts.

I heard that Grandad’s father used to whip the boys if the cattle got out and that my grandfather ran away from home as a teenager. I also heard that Grandad’s mother left his father as soon as the children grew up. I heard that Grandad’s father married the housekeeper Nina Thackeray after his wife died. And I heard that the Thackerays ‘got all the money’.

Grandad’s father was John Barrett who had come to Australia from Manchester England as an 14 year old with his parents Benjamin and Mary Ann and his three sisters and two brothers on the ship Hannah More arriving at Keppel Bay in 12 October 1863.

John ‘Jack’ Barrett at 17 years of age married Ellen Scully in 1866 in Rockhampton. Ellen had arrived with her sisters Bridget and Honora on the ship Landsborough also at Keppel Bay in 23 January 1865.

Jack and Ellen had 10 children: Joseph, Mary Ann ‘Polly’, Catherine ‘Kate’, Elizabeth, Edith ‘Eda’, Nora, John ‘Jack’, Ellen or Helen ‘Nell’, Sarah and Margaret. Poor little Margaret was the toddler who was only 15 months old when she died in the fire and was buried in the family graveyard up on the hill at Midgee.

John and Nina Barrett South Rockhampton cemetery

As we all do when we start our family history I looked for the graves. I found the graves in the South Rockhampton cemetery. My great-grandfather was buried with Nina, his second wife, in the Anglican section and my great-grandmother was buried with two of her daughters Elizabeth and Edith who had predeceased her, in the Catholic section, almost as an afterthought it seemed with her inscription on the side of Edith’s headstone.

Ellen Barrett nee Scully
South Rockhampton cemetery

Death certificate of John Barrett 

When I received John Barrett's death certificate the first surprise I got was that my grandfather J. F. Barrett was the informant. Somehow I had formed the impression that he had fled his father never to return. But that clearly wasn’t so. He must have reconnected with his father and Nina at some stage.

So off to Queensland State Archives I went and found the will and probate details.

The will was three pages long, quite detailed and clearly not a simple matter of gifting everything to his second wife Nina.

 

The estate was divided up in the following manner:

·       Nina (wife)
o   “Midgee Cottage” in Kent Street
o   North Street property
o   store on the corner of Archer and West Streets
o   £300
o   War Peace bonds £850
o   life estate over “Fariview” including contents in Cambridge and Talford Street

·       John Stanley Burns (grandson)
o   “Fairview” on the death of Nina
o   “Roundbay” in Cambridge Street

·       Thomas Howard Burns (grandson)
o   Two properties in Oxford Road

·       James Patrick Burns (grandson)
o   £420 owing on West Street property
o   West Street house and land

·       John Fitzroy Barrett (son)
o   “Kensington” in George Street

·       Mary Portus (daughter) 
o   House and land Talford and Archer Streets

·       Sarah Barrett (daughter) £200

Probate application p1

·       John Edwin Fitzroy Barrett, Rowley David Winsall Barrett and Gordon Vivian Barrett (grandsons) £100 each

·       Ellen Pearson (sister) £100

·       Nora Burns (daughter) Approx. £1,100 rest and residue of the estate

The executors of the will were Henry Barrett, son of his brother Benjamin, and Benjamin John Adams, son of his sister Sarah Adams.

The will was signed 10 weeks before his death.

(To put the gifts into some perspective, in 1922 the minimum wage was £4.10.0)

Probate application p2

Jack Barrett's will summary showing all grandchildren alive at the time of the signing of the will

Some of Jack Barrett’s children and grandchildren would have become quite wealthy as a result of this will and some missed out completely.

What was his thinking in drawing up this will? Why was there no provision for two of his daughters? Did he think they were well catered for by their husbands? Had they sided with their mother and cut him out of their lives? Why did he cut out one of his two sons? Why was the provision for most of his grandchildren so disproportionate to what others received?

It would appear that some were in favour and others completely out of favour. On the face of it, it certainly paints a picture of a fractured family.

While it isn’t completely accurate to say that the Thackerays ‘got all the money’ it must have been galling for his children and grandchildren when some 20 years later Nina’s large portion of the Barrett estate passed to unrelated people, particularly when five of the nine children, or their offspring, were disinherited.