Part 8 Dr Herbert Roby Harris (1832 – 1874)…bachelor and surgeon

cont......Part 8  The Harris family of Derbyshire – pioneers of the Swan Valley,  Western Australia  from 1833.

Herbert Roby Harris was baptized in Stoke Newington St Mary on 5^th Feb 1832. This makes him an infant when he departed England with his parents for the new colony.

He grew up in the new colony with all the challenges it brought. He was close in age to his nephew John Strelley Carsluke Yule.  As Herbert’s sister Lucy had died in childbirth John was cared for by his grandmother. John and Herbert would have been more like brothers.  Herbert  was later to follow in his father’s footsteps becoming a Surgeon- general practitioner and Member of Royal College of Surgeons. Harris studied medicine at Manchester Royal School of Medicine and MRI and qualified in 1859. It is not known whether he spent time as a doctor in Western Australia before his mother and sisters’ return in 1860.

By 1861 he was practicing medicine aged 29. The English census shows him as a Surgeon living in Bury, Lancashire.

By 1871 he was in fact living with his newly trained nephew, John Strelley Carslake Yule at 52 Bolton Street Bury.  His life was short lived dying at age 42 in January 1874 still a batchelor and surgeon. His effects considered to be less than £2000 were left to his sister, Mary Gregory.

 

1871 census  Herbert and John practicing medicine together

This is from his Obituary in the British Medical Journal 14/2/1874  

"Herbert R Harris MRCS Eng., Bury Lancashire
At age of 21 Harris passed an examination  before a medical board and was appointed colonial surgeon and acting Assistant  surgeon to the troops  stationed at Albany WA. Having resigned  these appointments he pursued his medical studies at the Manchester School of Medicine and Surgery. He took his Diploma at the Royal College of Surgeons in England in 1858 since which time he has practiced in Bury  and was well known and highly esteemed  for his ability, courtesy and gentlemanly conduct. The deceased gentlemen who was only 42 years of age was in enjoyment of his usual good health up to Monday January 12th. On the next day he complained of being unwell; medical assistance being called in . It was then found  he was suffering from an attack of typhus fever which he had in all probability contracted during his professional visits. Every possible medical and domestic attention was shown to him but he died at 2am on the morning of the 19th, little more than 5 days having elapsed since the first symptoms of the disease were manifested."

 

Herbert Roby Harris  Source: Richard Kuchnowski

 

 

Part 3 Joseph Strelley Harris (1811-1889)-He devoted his life to the Public Service and Administration of the colony….

cont .. Part 3 The Harris family of Derbyshire – pioneers of the Swan Valley,  Western Australia  from 1833.

Joseph Strelley Harris was baptized on 26th November 1812 at St Peters, Leeds. The oldest of Joseph and Lucy’s 6 children he made a real mark on the new colony.  He like others received a Government grant of Land Town allotment W37 August 1834.    Reportedly Mount Harris was named after the early pioneer settler as were Harris and Strelly Streets and the suburb of Strelley Grange in Busselton.

The colony got a very poor assessment when in 1836 Lieutenant Henry Bunbury explored the Williams River.  He declared that he “had passed through a wretched country with neither water nor feed: on the Williams the land is generally very bad and the water brackish.”

Advertisement in The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal, Saturday 27 February 1836

Potential settlers such as Joseph did not seem to be put off. Bunbury’s negative assessment seemed to make no impression on potential settlers.  Joseph Strelley Harris was the district’s first settler when he drove 300 sheep and some cattle from York to his father¹s property at Williams in 1836. In 1839 Harris was the first to drive sheep overland from King George III Sound to Williams. One problem, that of poisonous plants (at least three were identified) proved to be problematic to early pastoralists.

While driving sheep from Swan to Avon he suffered heavy stock losses from these poison plants and was instrumental in identifying the relationship between the sheep deaths and the poisonous plants which were present. He drove the sheep along old Nyoongar (Aboriginal people) track through the jarrah and marri forests making observations and friends along the way. 

As an early pioneer he devoted his life to the Public Service and Administration of the colony.  He also regularly carried the mail between King George Sound and Perth in the 1830s and probably spent much time in the company of Nyoongar people. Although there are no records that he ever married, Aboriginal “marriages” were encouraged in the new colony as a way of increasing birth rates and subsequently population and labour. One reference alludes to the fact that an Aboriginal elder named Norman Harris is amongst  Joseph’s descendants who form part of the present Nyoongar aboriginal community in Perth.

He was Acting Resident Magistrate at Williams in 1840 and Magistrate at Toodyay 1850-1860 and then in the second Resident Magistrate for Sussex and Vasse from 1861 to 1880. He retired on a well earned pension in 1880. The Western Australia Courts website describes him as “an energetic character”. Apparently he clashed with the Goaler and Chairman  and other Towns Trust members over the Queens Street construction. He left his mark with a spectacular avenue of peppermint trees after organizing a “busy bee” at the newly constructed street. His suggestion of surveying a main road with two bridges from The Vasse to Blechyndon Farm at Bridgetown served to greatly increase travel and therefore communication in the district.

 During his frontier travels he was able to make observations about the Australian bush which was prone to behave differently to forests at home in England especially with regards fire fighting, the interaction of wildlife and regeneration of weeds. He held another responsible post as Inspector of Timber Forests for Western Australia.

 

 

Joseph Jnr also named his farm “Strelley”

 In July 1888 in the Western Mail it was reported that he was returning from Vasse  to live on the Swan.  The newspaper correspondent gave this opinion of him.  “Mr Harris has been residing amongst us for a considerable number of years and if his abilities were not exactly high order we ought to blame (more than himself), the Government which placed him in the position for which he never was and never would have been fitted”. Joseph existed in a colony where manpower and enterprise was thin on the ground.  He wore many hats as necessary in those early days of settlement.  However the correspondent went on to say “His genial hospitality will, however always be gratefully remembered by a very large number of our settlers.”

 

His death notice in his 78th year was published in The Western Australian on 11th December 1889 and records him dying in Perth. Despite his opportunities to make a fortune in the new colony he didn’t die a rich man. After probate, £300 was left by Joseph Harris Strelley- a Western Australian Gentleman- to his brother William.

 Joseph Strelley Harris   Photos compliments of Kevin Anderson

 

Part 2 Lucy Harris nee Strelley 1788-1886- the youngest daughter of Robert and Elizabeth Strelley

THE HARRIS FAMILY OF DERBYSHIRE – PIONEERS OF THE SWAN VALLEY,  WESTERN AUSTRALIA  FROM 1833.  cont from Part 1.....

Lucy  Strelley was born 1788 and was about 58 when her husband Joseph Harris MD died. She stayed in the colony of western Australia  for a further 13 and half years after her husband’s death.

 Living conditions in the Swan District and food shortages had improved through exploration and expansion of the colony into sheep. Some of this exploration and expansion was undertaken by her older boys William and Joseph Strelley Harris. It is likely she continued to live in the Swan Valley to assist in the bringing up of her only grandson John Strelley Carslake Yule whose birth on 26 June 1838 had resulted in her daughter Lucy who was 24 dying in childbirth. As schooling facilities were only developing some schooling may have fallen on the women in the homesteads. Her son, Herbert and grandson John must have been educated well as they both went on to study medicine.

Initially there were no churches in the new colony. Some services were conducted by lay people (one of whom swam across the river to conduct his service). Later the women would have supported the local missionary preachers and clergy who were drawn to the district to “convert” the indigenous people and minister to the colonists. The Harris and Yule families were active in the St Mary’s parish where the church was built as a memorial to daughter Lucy Yule nee Harris who was buried on the Mission Grant land at Middle Swan. 

For many years the district was sand and scrub with no road or railway to Perth. All transport was done by water travel. Imagine a life where people lived along beautiful banks of the Swan awash with wild flowers. When a ship arrived, cannons were fired to let people know that a vessel had arrived with supplies and letters from home. Imagine the excitement as settlers travelled or rowed down the Swan River to Fremantle to get their letters, fresh fruit and supplies. Imagine running a household without the luxury of a supermarket, Imagine a life where your children went without shoes played in the scrub and where you had to take a sheet off the bed to make a tablecloth when the Minister arrived.  Imagine being a mother of 6 in those early days and the excitement of every little achievement or improvement that came along. Even by 1849 after nearly twenty years of settlement, growth was very slow. The population of the area around Perth was still only about 1,400.

 

 

Perth in the early days

Lucy (Strelley) Harris now in her seventies returned to England with her two remaining daughters, Mary and Elizabeth on 26 January 1860 on the 'Lord Raglan'. The 1861 English census saw her living with her daughters and young John Yule at 12 Bridge Ave Hammersmith. Ten years later she was living with her son-in-law HC Gregory, daughter Mary Gregory and her second grandchild, Elizabeth. She was living comfortably off her own means at High St Buntingford. Later in 1881 she was living off income from land with Mary and her family at Keysham Cheltenham.

 

1861 census

Lucy Harris, the youngest daughter of Robert Strelley and Elizabeth Clayton died at Keynsham Bank Gloucestershire in her 98th year on 17 November 1886. Her death notice was circulated in the Daily News Perth 31/12/1886 and Inquirer and Commercial News Perth 5/1/1887 despite her return to England 27 years earlier. She left an estate of  £1554.

 

The Daily News (Perth, WA : 1882 - 1950), Friday 31 December 1886

 

Lucy Harris nee Strelley  Source: Richard Kuchnowski

 

Lucy living with Mary, Henry and Elizabeth -1881 census