George Wall (1835 - 1922)

Born 27 Mar 1835 in Sackville Reach, New South Wales, Australia

Ancestors

Husband of Charlotte Emma (Gall) Wall — married 28 Jan 1862 in Moree, New South Wales, Australia

Descendants

Died 4 Jan 1922 at age 86 in Tarrawanna, New South Wales, Australia

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Baptism

Date: 21 JUL 1835

Place: Sackville Reach

Biography

According to the church Register, George Wall was born to Thomas Wall, Farmer, and Anne [Huxley] Wall on 27 March 1835 and baptised at St Thomas' Church of England, Sackville Reach, on 21 July 1835. Their abode was Upper Branch, Hawkesbury River. (Anne was a daughter of Ann Forbes, who arrived in Australia as a convict in the First Fleet; her father, Thomas Huxley, as a convict in the Third Fleet. Thomas Wall was a convict who was transported on "Baring" in 1815. )

['Upper Branch' refers to the region near the confluence of the Colo and Hawkesbury Rivers. It was in this area in 1804 that Thomas Huxley Snr was granted 70 acres of land, near Lower Portland and called 'Paradise Point'.]

It may be that George Wall left the Hawkesbury district to travel to the North-West Slopes region of NSW because an uncle, Thomas Huxley Jnr, had been living at Narrabri since the late 1840s. [In a story of his journey through the flooded North-West, published in the Sydney Mail, the reporter met "a Mr. Wall, who went to the Narrabri country in 1857".] Whatever drew George to the area, he was to find work on Tycannah Station near Moree and marry Charlotte Emma Gall, the eldest child of its manager (later its owner), Samuel Gall.

George & Charlotte Emma had ten children. All except two were registered at Warialda, near Moree, or at Narrabri. Those two were registered at Patricks Plain (Singleton) in 1866 and 1868. A cousin, Richard Huxley, was well-established as publican of the Queen Victoria Inn at nearby Jerry's Plains by then. The Bettington family, who still owned Tycannah Station at the time, also had runs at Jerry's Plains and it may be that George was transferred there during the absence overseas of Mr J. H. Bettington (who died overseas).

At some point George had become a land owner, as in 1878 he and his three eldest sons were granted a lease of Crown land adjoining his freehold. It seems likely this was at Deep Creek, a little to the south-east of Narrabri. The family remained there until the earlier 1900s. Nothing is known of their reason for leaving, but their land may have been badly affected in the "Federation Drought" of those times.

It is not known whether George & Charlotte Emma went direct from Narrabri to Wollongong, NSW (possibly pausing in the Sydney suburb of Paddington where there were extended family connections), but they were on the Wollongong Electoral Roll by 1908-9, and may have been living there somewhat earlier. [Eighth child Henry Ernest 'Bernard/Barney' Wall was already established in Wollongong as a tailor by 1901.]

George & Charlotte Emma lived at 11 Kenny Street in central Wollongong, until in older age moving to the home of their youngest daughter in nearby Tarrawanna. After George died in 1922, just short of his 87th birthday, Charlotte Emma returned to live with seventh child Ada Charlotte (Wall) Patmore at 38 Kenny Street where she died in 1928 aged 89. Both George and Charlotte Emma are buried in the Church of England cemetery at Wollongong.

Sources

• Birth & Baptism: Biographical Database of Australia (BDA)
• Location: "Transported to Paradise", Douglas R. Huxley, and "Land at Upper Half Moon Reach", Michelle Nichols, 1995
• Marriage notice, The Maitland Mercury, 1862

On the 28th of Jan., by special licence, at 'Tycannah' [Moree], by the Rev. E Price, Mr. George Wall, of Tycannah, to Miss Gall, eldest daughter of Mr. Gall, Superintendent of 'Tycannah'.

• Crown Land Lease (Warialda), Town & Country Journal, 1878
• Death: NSW Registry 3444/1922
• Death Notice, South Coast Times
• Government inquest (died of heart failure)