Somers

Q for Queenstown

Miss W. Dawson, Smith, Somers , , , , , ,

Queenstown, like Lottah, is a mining town in Tasmania but it is on the west coast of the state.

Around 1862, alluvial gold was found nearby, and in 1881 the Mount Lyell Gold Mining Company was formed. About ten years later they started searching for copper.

In the mid 1890’s, the actual town began to develop – a post office and a general store. The population in 1900 was just over 5000 in the town of Queenstown but around 10,000 in the whole mining district. In the early part of the 20th century, the town had many hotels, theatres, churches and schools but many of these are beginning to disappear since the mining company went into care and maintenance in 2014.

Queenstown had a bad reputation because of the pollution occurring from the Mt Lyell smelting works. Visitors would say it was like a moonscape as the trees had been cut down to feed the smelters needed for melting the copper from the underground mine. The smelters also sent out sulphur dioxide fumes which fell to the ground when it rained and was eventually washed into the King and Queen River.

But the most fascinating fact I have read about is that the Queenstown football oval has been inducted into the Tasmanian Football Hall of Fame. Why you might ask? Well the oval is gravel as grass was hard to grow due to the pollution and heavy rain.

Now to Queenstown’s link to my family history.

Firstly I thought it was through the Smith line – Robert Edward Smith was a sawyer on the west coast around Queenstown and Strahan. His wife, Irene Somers, was my great grandmother who was born in St Helens or Lottah area. But when my father had a DNA test, we found he wasn’t related directly in the Smith line. All his cousins from there were only half-cousins. They all had  Samoan heritage but dad didn’t.

We found instead that my great grandmother had a child from another person Alexander Dawson who lived and worked as a miner in Queenstown. My dad’s mother was that child. She was brought up as a Smith and was known as the eldest child in the family.

We don’t think Alexander ever knew he had another child. But in 1912, Alexander and two of his brothers survived the North Mt Lyell mining disaster. I am presently researching the miners who died as well as those who survived and were rescued. This research is on WikiTree.

 

L for Lottah

Miss W. Somers, Wyatt , , , ,

Lottah is a town in north east Tasmania. Nowadays it is virtually just a couple of houses at a cross roads. In the 2016 census, the population was 13.

 

Lottah in 1981

Originally it was known as Blue Tier Junction in the late 1870’s. The town was developed around a tin mine which was discovered in 1875. At the peak of the Anchor tin mine operation, there were several hundred people living around Lottah. The town included a school, two hotels, two churches, a bakery and a football club. Many residents were part of a Chinese community. The Anchor Mine closed in 1950.

The ABC put together a fantastic report about the town including lots of images.

How does Lottah relate to my family?

My great grandmother Nellie Somers/Summers/Clark(e) was born at Georges Bay in 1889 – now called St Helens. Her father, Thomas Somers, was supposedly a miner in the Gould Country area which includes Lottah.

But as well as the ancestral link, my father often went to St Helens on holidays as a child. He then took my brother and I there as well. We would often go bush bashing through the scrub looking for stampers of mines and water races. This was usually up in the Gould Country/Blue Tier area.

Closer view of stampers
How the stamp battery works

 

B for Burnie

Miss W. General info, Somers , , ,

South Burnie (c1900)

Burnie is a deep water port on the north west coast of Tasmania. Nearly half of Tasmania’s containers are handled at Burnie and then freighted across Bass Strait as it is the closest port between Tasmania and the mainland of Australia.

When visiting Burnie in the 1970’s and 1980’s you would see a lot of pollution from the titanium dioxide production. The pollution saw the sea around that part of the coast turn red.

Burnie was originally called Emu Bay in the early records for births, deaths and marriages in Tasmania. But in 1843 it was renamed after one of the directors of the Van Diemen’s Land Company.

In the 1820’s the Van Diemen’s Land Company held a lot of land along the coast. The settlement at that time was a store, a small jetty, a sawpit, and a few huts. But in the late 1820’s trouble between the settlers and the local aborigines broke out with many aborigines being killed.

It was during the 1840’s when the VDL Company started to lease out blocks of land to tenants to farm for themselves. It is at this time that my ancestors started to arrive in Burnie.

The father of my great grandmother Nellie Smith nee Somers aka Clark was listed as Thomas Somers but I have not yet been able to prove which of about 7 Thomas Summers (Somers) born in the colony of Tasmania is the correct father. I do have DNA matches through the Summer surname on both my maternal and paternal lines.

But the original person with the Somers surname arrived in 1843 as a convict from near Wexford – Patrick. His wife Johanna nee Cullen (blind), sons John and Thomas came to Van Diemen’s Land in 1851 as free settlers on the ship Anne Thompson. All the women and children arriving on this boat were families of convicts already in Tasmania.