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Frederick Livingstone Styles (1892 - 1967)

Frederick Livingstone Styles
Born in Carvan, New South Wales, Australiamap
Ancestors ancestors
Husband of — married 26 Dec 1923 in Boorowa, New South Wales, Australiamap
Descendants descendants
Father of [private son (1920s - unknown)]
Died at age 75 in Gunderman, New South Wales, Australiamap
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Profile last modified | Created 2 Oct 2017
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Biography

Born 14 Apr 1892 Carvan, New South Wales.

Residence from about 1911 "Barrackville," Pudman, NSW, Australia.

Occupation helped on family dairy farm from about 1911. "Barrackville," Pudman, New South Wales, Australia.

Died 3 Sep 1967 Gunderman, New South Wales.

Research Notes

We had a dairy, milking 40 cows. We'd milk in the morning from 4 a.m. to 10 a.m. and then go back to the dairy at 4 p.m. to do the evening milking. Our [the children's] work in the dairy consisted of turning the separator, turning the butter churn, and cleaning up bails. We had to get three kerosene buckets of hot water from the house to the dairy to wash up with. After school we would change our clothes and then help with the dairy again. There was a lot of handle-turning those days. We kids turned the chaff-cutter handle, the handle of the butter churn, the handle of the mincer and the handle of the milk separator. …

We were a registered dairy and the home-made butter and cream were sent in to Yass to be sold in the stores. Butter was one shilling a pound [the then equivalent of 10c] and cream was sixpence [5c equivalent] a pint.

Milking was done by hand. We kids used to put the cows in the yard. We could bail up four at a time. Mother used to milk and we would strip the cows. The inspectors were active, so we had to lime wash all the slip rails daily. The cement floors had to be flushed with buckets.

We used to go out into the hills and gather or cut bundles of dry hop, and tie them in bundles with a handle to make very effective brooms for cleaning the dairy. …

We had 2,100 acres [850ha] and most of it was grazing land. A lot of the land was only suitable for grazing. We were lucky. Pudman Creek ran right through our place, and from this and springs we had abundant water. Crops were wheat, oats and barley. Also some corn, which we grew for the dairy cattle. The most lucrative crop was wheat: from it we got a lot of our own tucker, as well as most of the fodder for the animals. We did not grow enough wheat to market the grain, nobody did in our area. We were self-sufficient, and the grain was taken to the mill as needed. The grain was grown also to feed sheep in dry times. We also grew corn to crush for fodder for the dairy cattle. Then the stalks and husks were put through the chaff-cutter. We had no stripping machinery and the wheat was belted by hand in bags to thresh it. We used nulla nullas to do this: sturdy sticks with a knob on the end that the boys cut in the bush. After the bags were beaten and turned, and the grain was winnowed out, the beeswing shellsof grain and straw were carefully gathered and put through the chaff-cutter along with the corn cobs, and also straw from oats. We would take a mixture of so much bran and oilcake (made from linseed: we did not grow this) from the mill and add it to the chaff and feed the dairy cows with it. The oilcake was very much like dog biscuit, very hard. We would break it up into pieces and pour boiling water over it. This would make it swell up and go floury. Oilcake was not expensive and was great for milk production.

(Olive Styles, quoted in "A Blackboard in the Bush: Pudman Creek School & Public Education in NSW" by Philip Hobbs).

Later, Father bought `Barrackville' at Pudman, now owned by the Frost family. ...

`Barrackville' homestead and stables are wholly convict-built of blue metal quarried out of a hill in front of the property. The original jail is still there in the middle of the house and was, in fact, my bedroom. My brothers removed the bars from the window, and the huge barred door, which fitted over the iron door with a padlock. They also replaced the wooden shingles on the roof, which had become rotten, with corrugated iron. Mounted police were previously stationed there, hence the name `Barrackville'. The blue metal stables where they kept their horses are still there. In the early days, nobody went to church. The ministers of the different faiths in turn came to our houses and held services. …

Convict leg irons were found at `Barrackville', the ones that lock on to the prisoner's leg with a big padlock. My brother Joe ploughed them up. …

When we bought `Barrackville' there was a detached kitchen, but the boys pulled that down and built a skillion-type kitchen on the rest of the house. It still had the big open fireplace. …

In the kitchen we washed up with a wash-up dish and trays: no sinks. We would scrub the tables and benches (there were plenty of them) down with sandsoap and scrubbing bush and keep them white. The fireplaces were whitewashed. The furniture in the house was good. We had big four-poster beds with curtains all round them, three-quarter beds and double beds. The dining room had a chiffonier, sideboard, fireplace, rocking chairs, padded chairs, one of the original sofas covered with red floral material, a redwood dining table and chairs, all cedar. The bedrooms had washstands with jug and basin, and corner wardrobes with a curtain. We had kerosene light, and lanterns for rabbiting, and an Aladdin lamp for special occasions. There were tanks on the house for water. The ceilings were a special shape, still seen in the older houses, originally to catch the condensation from the bark roofs. Our walls were papered with newspaper, then over that with brown paper, which was considered very good. Then if we found a pretty picture, that would be stuck on as a decoration. The outbuildings were the big blue-metal stables, which would hold the wagonette, sulky and buggy, and also contained a big storeroom where we kept casks of meat. …

`Barrackville' at first had a wooden shingle roof. Wooden shingles were about 18 inches [23cm] by four inches [10cm] wide. They were placed on the rafters in rows, overlapping downward diagonally, to stop the water from getting in. They are made of a special kind of pine and are watertight until they rot.

Apart from pise, the chief materials used were sawn slabs and blue metal. And all through Rye Park and Pudman there was an abundance of stringy bark. So sawn-slab walls and bark roofs were common. When the bark was taken off the sawn tree trunk, it was laid flat with the sap side down and other timber placed on it to flatten it. Bark was sold in lengths as well as timber.

In my day the men cut their own timber with a cross-cut saw, axe and adze. A morticing axe was also used, e.g., if a dwelling or shed was being constructed, a large sleeper was laid on the ground to form the base of the wall, a string dipped in a tin of chalk was stretched along the dead centre of the sleeper lengthwise, and attached tightly to each end of the sleeper. The taut string was then plucked, and the morticing axe was employed then to cut a channel along the resultant chalk line. The tapered ends of the slabs were fitted into this groove. No nails were used. Another sleeper was similarly grooved for the top of the wall and the other ends of the slabs were fitted into this. My brother [which brother?] was very skilled at fitting the slabs exactlyso that there was no gap between the slabs. The sleepers were bolted to the round corner posts, which had been sunk into post holes.

The mixture used to treat the dirt floors was fresh cow manure and water. This was remarkably effective and looked like slate when dry.

(Olive Styles, quoted in "A Blackboard in the Bush: Pudman Creek School & Public Education in NSW" by Philip Hobbs).

Sources

  • Marriage: "Births, Deaths and Marriages search,” NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages (https://familyhistory.bdm.nsw.gov.au/ : accessed 3 November 2023), marriage entry for Frederick L Styles and Mabel M J Douglas, registration number 3932/1924, district Boorowa.




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DNA Connections
It may be possible to confirm family relationships with Frederick by comparing test results with other carriers of his Y-chromosome or his mother's mitochondrial DNA. However, there are no known yDNA or mtDNA test-takers in his direct paternal or maternal line. It is likely that these autosomal DNA test-takers will share some percentage of DNA with Frederick:

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