 The following information is a copy of JK Stokes data on Mount Barker as contained in her Rootsweb (Ancestory.com) Genealogy Website and has been included here with permission. No alterations or additions may be made to her information without further permission, although relevant comments and/or additions are welcome to be added at the bottom of each page. (copied July 2014) |
Hillman, John and his descendants
John Hillman was born in the Devonshire village of Bovey Tracey in March of 1802, the second son of William Hillman and Sarah Earle. He married Johannah Palmer, daughter of Joseph Palmer and Mary Elizabeth Wise, at the Cornish Parish Church in Plymouth in 1827. John and Johannah lived in Plymouth for a few years and then moved to Penzance in Cornwall. At some point in 1836 or early 1837, John must have heard about the new colony of South Australia, and the large amounts of land that would be opening up there. He would also have been attracted to the idea of having his passage paid out to the colony for him, as by this time he had 5 children, and life on the land in Cornwall at that time provided slim pickings indeed.
Encouraged by what he had heard, John and Johannah, and their five small children, John's brother Leonard and his sister Jane, joined the early throngs of assisted passengers to South Australia. They boarded the Katherine Stewart Forbes at Plymouth in mid-1837 and reached Holdfast Bay on the 17th October that year.
Just two days after they arrived, their 6th child, a son, was born at the emigration depot at Holdfast Bay. Their family would be completed by 1846, with the birth of two more sons. In total there were 8 children in this family - James, John George Lilga, Richard Thomas, Elizabeth Jane, John, Leonard, Walter and William. I am descended from two of these children - John and Leonard.
Not long after their arrival, John went looking for work or for land on which to raise his family. They moved to the city of Adelaide and set up a home there, with a carpenter's shop alongside it. A short time later, with the need for timber for his carpentry business, John set off for the Nairne area to look for land and timber. He settled on the Native Valley area and built a home there, which survived until it was destroyed by vandals in the 1970's. Later, as his business grew, he built a home called Uplands at Nairne, where most of his children grew up. When Johannah died in 1855, John re-married to Elizabeth Haggett, and had a further 12 children with her.
When John Dunn, the flour miller, arrived in the colony and walked to Nairne to visit his brother Charles, he passed a block of land on the corner of what is now the Princes Highway and Woodside Road, where John Hillman and John Disher were growing wheat, and recorded in his diary the existence of this crop as "... the best crop of wheat I have seen, east of the Tiers."
All of his children grew up, married and had children. The fifth and sixth children of the first marriage grew up and went about their own lives. John and Johannah Hillman were my great-great-great-grandparents.
John, the fifth son, married at the Primitive Methodist Chapel at Dawsley to Welsh born Sarah Prosser, the daughter of James Prosser and Mary Jones. He moved to Wirrabara in the far north of the state. They had 5 children - Richard Edward Jasper, Mary Elizabeth, Laura Alberta, William John Herbert and Reginald Hartley. Their daughter Laura, a single woman in 1909, gave birth to an illegitimate son at the Carrington Street Salvation Army Home for Unwed Mothers. This child was placed in the care of the Salvation Army, and Laura returned to her life at Wirrabara, but never married or had any other children. The child, named Albert Ernest Fuller Hillman, grew up at Eden Park, and was educated there as well. He left the "Park" and found work with some of the local farmers before leaving the area for a time. He returned to the Mt Barker district in the early 1930's, where he met his future wife, who by what seemed to be a coincidence to them, had the same surname as he - Kathleen Millicent Hillman. John & Sarah were my great-great-grandparents and Laura was my great-grandmother.
Leonard, the sixth son of John & Johannah, was born at Holdfast Bay on 19th October 1837, the first truly Australian Hillman in this family. As a young lad, he grew up around his father's timber cutting concern at Hay Valley, and worked for a while in the saw pits that John had constructed on his land there. In 1866 he married Susan Cock, daughter of William Cock and Mary George, at St James' Church, Blakiston. Leonard & Susan lived in the Native Valley area for a few more years before moving to Moonta in the mid-1870's, and then to Karkarilla in the mid-1880's before returning to the Kanmantoo/Callington area in 1888, where they set up home in the old Police Station house. Leonard died at Callington in 1910, but Susan lived on for another 24 years - she died at Callington in October 1934, and she was buried in the cemetery there on the 98th anniversary of her husband's family arriving in Australia. There were 7 children in their family - Charlotte Victoria, Elizabeth Jane, Selina, Alice Maude, William Leonard, Walter John and a still born son. Their son Walter John grew up at Callington, and spent his time working in the copper mines there, and on the railways for a time. Eventually, Walter married Hannah Elizabeth Morley, the daughter of Charles Henry Stevens and Mary Ann Morley, of Mt Barker, and moved to Littlehampton to live. Walter and Elizabeth had a daughter named Kathleen Millicent Hillman, who would grow up to marry a man with same surname as her own - Albert Ernest Fuller Hillman. Leonard & Susan Hillman were my great-great-grandparents, and Walter & Elizabeth were my great-grandparents.
Bert and Kath Hillman were married in Adelaide at the Registry office in February 1932. They made their home at Mt Barker and had four daughters and a stillborn son. Their daughters were Lorraine, Jennifer, Margaret and Pauline. Bert joined the army in WWII, and served in the middle east at Tobruk and El Alamein. On his return, he worked in a number of jobs including milkman, night cart driver, bottle collector and saw miller. Later, he became the town gardener at Mt Barker. Kath died at Mt Barker in 1971 and Bert in 1994. These were my grandparents.
