Person:John Middleton (30)

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • JOHN MIDDLETON (1825-1894) ********************************* Policeman, was born in Foulsham, Norfolk England son of Michael Middleton (labourer)and his wife Mary-Ann, nee' Phillips. in 1841 (aged 16) he worked in a Foulsham bakery and in 1843 (aged 18) enlisted in the 5th Regiment . He served in Ireland and later in Mauritius, where in 1848 (aged 23) at Port Louis he married ellen, nee' Hartley of Lancashire. They sailed with two children inthe Alecto as steerage passengers and arrived in Melbourne VIC on the 13th October 1852 (aged 27). John middleton became a baker in Melbourne and later Diamond Swamp, NSW before he joined the Western road patrol in November 1854 (aged 29) as a trooper. Keen and ambitious, he daily recorded his movements and those of other officers. He served at Diamond swamp from 1855 (aged 30) where he was promoted sergeant, at blackheath from 1857 (aged 32) and hartley from 1860 (aged 35) In 1861 he was sent to Tuena, close to the hide-outs of highwaymen in the Abercrombie Rangers. In May - June 1861 (aged 36) with Constable Hosie he looked for bushranger John Peisley. On 15th July they rode to Bigga and next day went to Fogg's sly-grog shop where they surprisedFrank gardiner(q.v). Without mentioning gardiner, Middleton recorded in his diary : ' Middleton and Hosie {went} to Fogg's. Middleton shot in four places, returned to Bigga. Hosie slightly wounded returned after '. Although Middleton arrested Gardiner. Hosie allegedlly allowed him to escape. In December Middleton received a gold ring from Captian Edward battye, Superintendent of the Western Road Patrol, in admiration of the indomitable courage displayed by him in attacking and eventually capturing {after being severely wounded} the outlaw " Gardiner " with a single barrelled pistol, knowing him at the same time to be armed with a brace of Revolvers'. In 1864 ( aged 39) Middleton main witness for the Crown in the trials of Gardiner but contradicted himself in evidence. In 1875 (aged 47) he was awarded one of the silver medals issued by the government for gallant and faithful services in resisting or capturing bushrangers. Middleton served as inspector of slaughter-houses at Tuena, Stoney Creek, Orange and Bungendore before he retired in 1876 with a gratuity of 136 10s. In 1865 he had made his home in Orange and became an alderman and Mayor in 1891. For years he had suffered from paralysis and cancer of the lip, the result of injuries and exposure. Aged 68 he died on 6 November 1894 at Orange and was buried in the Anglican cemetery. He was survived by five sons and four daughters. Select Bibliography C. White, History of Australian Bushranging, vol 1 (Syd 1900); Orange Leader, 10 Nov 1894; Western Advocate (Orange), 10 Nov 1894; J. Middleton diary and family papers (State Library of New South Wales); private information. {1 hour from Crookwell townshipCrookwell lies north of Goulburn high atop the western slope of the Great Dividing Range.The discovery of this rich farming country followed on from the journeys of exploration by Throsby and Meehan (1828) in search of an inland route to the settlement at Bathurst to the north. By this time some of the great early landholding families (Macarthur, MacAlister, Howe) had already established themselves on large grants at nearby Taralga. The earliest settlement in the Crookwell area, however, seems to have been by squatters between 1828 and the 1850s. They cleared the land and grew wheat and potatoes and grazed stock on the native grasses. By the 1840s there was an inn and store near where the roads to Goulburn, Taralga, and northwards crossed the Crookwell River, but the major town and administrative centre of the district at that time was at Binda. During the first 30 years of settlement a number of villages were established throughout the Crookwell district ((Binda, Bigga, Laggan, Grabben Gullen etc.) to serve the adjacent farming areas. A village reserve for Crookwell was set aside in 1848 on the eastern side of the Crookwell River, but was moved further up the hill on the other side where the town centre is today. Development did not really come until after the Selection Act of 1861, when a large number of settlers took up land. The Royal Hotel was built in 1862, a school in 1864, followed by the Wesleyan (1865) and Anglican (1866) churches, and a post office (1867). The main street was laid out in 1869 and a plan was put in place to develop the town whose population grew from just 130 in 1864 to over a thousand eight years later. The 1870s were days of prosperity and growth for Crookwell. A passenger coach ran regularly to Goulburn, and the district grew rich on the oats, wheat, cattle, potatoes and sheep of its farms, the first local agriculural show being held in 1879. Many of its public buildings date from this boom era: hotels, banks, the Court House and Police Station (1878), shops,, factories (tannery, cordial maker, smiths, flour mill, saddlery) and the school. Crookwell continued to grow steadily over the next 20 years, the arrival of large numbers of Irish immigrants reflected in the building of St. Mary's Church, as was the increase in smaller farm holdings devoted to dairying and vegetable growing. By the early 1900s Crookwell was the centre of the entire region and its major town - Crookwell Shire being established in 1906, and a district hospital opened in the same year. Crookwell was of sufficient importance for a branch railway line to be built from Goulburn in 1901 and had become a major rural centre. Crookwell is also significant in being the home of the Country Womens' Association - the first CWA being formed here in 1922. The first half of the 20th century saw Crookwell suffer the same vicissitudes as other rural centres - a rabbit plague in the 1910s devastated crops and pasture lands, hardly alleviated by a processing and freezing works in the town which shipped the carcasses to the 'starving masses' in England and the skins to hat makers - in an era that still wore hats. The Great Depression, two world wars, and the increasing centralisation and industrialisation of the nation all took its toll. By the middle of the century Crookwell was still catching up on the necessities of modern life - electricity (1947), sealed roads (1954), sewerage (1961), a High School (1963). The nature of its agriculture also changed and changed the town along with it. Small holdings, along with dairying and the butter factory it supported became unviable, to be replaced by potato growing on a large scale. The countryside was not suitable for large scale wheat growing, and the oats and barley which once fed a horse-drawn age became obsolete. Landholdings became larger - though not as large as the great runs of the original squatters - and specialised in fine wool production and stud cattle. The age of the railway and motor car closed the many small factories and industries as it was not only easier to get goods out to market, but also supplies in from the big manufacturies in the cities. This process was accelerated in the last 40 years, as the many abandoned or converted business premises in town attest (look for signs of past prosperity above the awnings of the main street today). The population of Crookwell is today only twice what it was over 120 years ago. Its position as regional centre to its rural hinterland has been usurped by Goulburn - now just a short drive away. As it enters the 21st century the nature of its industry has changed: still farming, a weaving mill and famous sock factory, local retail and service industries, and tourism} Tuena is halfway between Goulburn and Bathurst . Tuena lies high in the Abercrombie district of the Great Dividing Range half way between Goulburn and Bathurst. Here the countryside is rugged, as the aptly named nearby Cordillera attests (Spanish for knotted mountain chain). Through it runs Tuena Creek, a tributary of the Abercrombie River before it runs into Lake Wyangala. Here, along these waterways from the junction of the Abercrombie, 9kms south to Tuena. and on through Mt. Costigan to Peelwood, was the scene of a gold rush which was to last over 60 years. Traditional tribal land of the Burra Burra peoples, it was first traversed by Europeans in 1819. In that year the pioneering explorer Dr. Charles Throsby had been commissioned by the governor to find an overland route from the Goulburn district to the new settlement of Bathurst. Many of the lands discovered by Throsby were soon opened up for settlement, squatters moving in with herds of cattle, but the first landholder (Samuel Blackman) did not settle in Tuena until 1836. Gold! Soon after the discovery of gold at Ophir, near Bathurst, prospectors shipped the first gold out of the Abercrombie area to Goulburn (August 1851). A gold rush ensued, and by the time Edward Hargraves, Commissioner for Crown Lands arrived, some 100 people were prospecting on the Abercrombie. By October of the same year, gold had been discovered just over a kilometre from Tuena itself, legend has it, by Rev. John Douglass. Another rush followed, mostly from Goulburn, but fuelled by miners from Bathurst and even those returning from California. Within months between 300 and 500 people were prospecting on the Tuena Creek, and thousands passed through Tuena in subsequent years. The alluvial gold was easily won, and although the population fluctuated month by month as miners raced from one side of the country to the other following the latest strikes, gold worth over $3 million in today's currency was extracted from Tuena in 1852. Further south, in 1854 gold bearing quartz was discovered at Junction Point, making it the oldest reef mine in Australia. Subsequent waves of prospectors flocked to the area over the years: the 1860s and 70s (Junction Point), 1899 (Tuena Creek), 1903 (Long Hollow), 1904 (Nuggetty Gully) and 1933-4 (during the Depression). Today people still come to fossick for the specks of gold which can be panned from Tuena Creek. The first settlement at Tuena was a miner's shanty town, with hundreds of tents and huts. Hotels (1854) and stores soon followed and Tuena was formally declared a town in 1859. Most of the original buildings (of timber or slab construction) are no longer standing, but Tuena still has some notable heritage buildings from this time. The oldest is the "Bookkeeper's Cottage". Built in 1861 of wattle and daub construction (woven saplings covered in mud and plaster), it was both office and home to the official who tallied the gold before it was shipped out by coach and armed escort - usually to Goulburn. The Goldfields Inn was built in 1866; the third and only remaining hotel in Tuena it is notable in that part of the original wattle and daub construction is incorporated in the present building. The first post office was opened in Tuena in 1852 and moved to various properties around the village over the years, coming to rest at Parson's store in 1913. The Parson's family had owned a store in Tuena since 1860 and the current General Store (1954) is built next to the original, contains fixtures from the original store, and is still run by the fifth generation of the family. To keep the peace on the goldfields, a police station was opened in 1852 and a courthouse in the 1860s. Troopers had patrolled the notorious Abercrombie region for some time as it was a favourite hiding place for escaped convicts and bushrangers. In 1836 at Limerick Creek, just south of Tuena, troopers captured bushranger Cummins and shot Lowry. In 1861 they also captured Frank Gardiner and members of his gang in a vicious encounter but the bushrangers escaped. The Abercrombie Caves, north of Tuena, were a favourite hiding place for criminals on the run - Ben Hall, Gardiner, John Vane, Johnny Gilbert, John O'Meally. Some of these were known to visit the Goldfields Inn (two of its bars are named after them), and the locals were wont to gather at the caves for an annual picnic and dance for up to 100 years later in the cavern where the bushrangers held theirs. The courthouse (where the Fire Brigade now is) operated until 1958. and also served as a social centre but was demolished in 1978. The present police station was built in 1900. The first school in Tuena was opened in 1860, and then had a chequered history - being closed from time to time for lack of students. Finally the current school was built in 1889, and has operated since - although numbers are so critically low there have been attempts to close it and bus children to Crookwell 60 kms away ('plus la change...'). St. Mark's Anglican Church was built in 1886 after 50 years of travelling priests and is thought to be the oldest timber 'miner's church' still standing. The Presbyterian Church was erected in 1890, and St. Mary's Catholic Church in 1896 (which interestingly uses bricks from the old Cordillera mine). During the second half of the 19th century there were a number of other mines around Tuena - copper, silver, lead and gold at Peelwood from the 1870s to 1884, and in the mid to late 1880s at Mt. Costigan and Cordillera. All that remains of these settlements and activities are a few brick chimneys over the former smelters, and evidence of reef mining. From the beginning of the 20th century Tuena's main industry has been agriculture - sheep, cattle, potatoes. Today Tuena remains a small rural village, but a village surrounded by the ghosts of the past: fossickers and miners in their thousands; the Chinese prospectors of the late 1850s and those who stayed to run businesses in Tuena until the early 1900s; former artisans and storekeepers - blacksmiths, farriers, butchers, wheelwrights, assayers, stables; a short lived bank; the bullock teams which shipped produce in and out; bushrangers and other desperadoes. BIRTHS V18553336 42B/1855 MIDDLETON ALBERT J JOHN ELLEN 7091/1857 MIDDLETON MARIA L JOHN ELLEN HARTLEY 7910/1859 MIDDLETON SARAH A JOHN ELLEN HARTLEY 6626/1861 MIDDLETON ALICE A JOHN ELLEN CARCOAR 14572/1863 MIDDLETON ALFRED E JOHN ELLEN WELLINGTON 12444/1866 MIDDLETON HENRY E JOHN ELLEN ORANGE 15694/1869 MIDDLETON (MALE) JOHN ELLEN ORANGE 15214/1871 MIDDLETON UNNAMED JOHN ELLEN ORANGE DEATHS 3694/1858 MIDDLETON MARY L JOHN ELLEN HARTLEY 7716/1912 MIDDLETON ALBERT J JOHN ELLEN ST LEONARDS 5704/1866 MIDDLETON SARAH A JOHN ELLEN ORANGE 3378/1896 MIDDLETON ALFRED E JOHN ELLEN ORANGE 9952/1926 MIDDLETON EMILY H JOHN ELLEN ORANGE. Found on 1841 UK census Name: John Middleton Age: 15 Estimated Birth Year: abt 1826 Household: View other family members *NONE * NOT SURE WHERE HE IS COULD BE BOARDING * Gender: Male Where born: Norfolk, England Civil parish: Foulsham Hundred: Eynsford County/Island: Norfolk Country: England Source information: HO107/763/8 Registration district: Aylsham Sub-registration district: Eynsford ED, institution, or vessel: 8 Folio: 30 Page: 28 (click to see others on page) Line number: 15 GSU Number: 438855 . Frank Gardiner was born in 1830 in Scotland. His real name is Francis Christie he came to Australia in 1834 at the age of 5. He grew up in the bush learning how to shoot with a rifle and ride a horse. Frank became a bushranger when he was thirty one after stealing horses and cattle. He joined a gang with Johnny Gilbert, Ben Hall and John Piesley. FRANCIS CHRISTIE {Frank GARDINER}, (1830-1903?), bushranger, was born in Scotland, son of Charles Christie and his wife Jane, ne Whittle. The family reached Sydney in the James in 1834 and settled at Boro near Goulburn. He went to Victoria and in October 1850 as Francis Christie was sentenced to five years' hard labour at Geelong for horse stealing. Next March he escaped from Pentridge gaol and returned to New South Wales. In March 1854 he was convicted as Francis Clarke at Goulburn on two charges of horse stealing and imprisoned on Cockatoo Island. In December 1859 he was given a ticket-of-leave for the Carcoar district, but broke parole and went south and by the end of 1860 as Frank Gardiner he had a butchery at Lambing Flat but skipped bail. Known as 'The Darkie', he began highway robbery on the Cowra Road. In July 1861 at a sly grog shop near Oberon he shot and wounded Sergeant John Middleton; Trooper Hosie was also wounded although allegedly bribed to let Gardiner escape. Gardiner joined up with Johnny Piesley; after ranging the old Lachlan Road they moved to the Weddin Mountains and were joined by John Gilbert, Ben Hall and others. The police under Sir Frederick Pottinger could not catch the gang for it moved too rapidly aided by 'bush telegraphs'. On 15 June 1862 at the Coonbong Rock near Eugowra Gardiner's gang held up the gold escort and got away with 14,000. Soon afterwards Gardiner, while visiting his mistress Kate, wife of John Brown of Wheogo, narrowly escaped from Pottinger. With her he went to Queensland where as Mr and Mrs Frank Christie they ran a store and shanty at Apis Creek near Rockhampton. In February 1864 he was traced by the New South Wales police and arrested. Tried for wounding Sergeant Middleton with intent to kill, he was acquitted by the jury but found guilty in July on two non-capital charges. Chief Justice Stephen, gave him a cumulative sentence of thirty-two years' hard labour. In 1872 W. B. Dalley, who had defended Gardiner, organized petitions to the governor to use his prerogative of mercy. Sir Hercules Robinson decided that Gardiner had been harshly sentenced and in 1874 released him subject to his exile. This decision provoked a public controversy with petitions, counter-petitions and violent debates in the Legislative Assembly, and led to the fall of Parkes's government. On 27 July Gardiner embarked for Hong Kong and by February 1875 was in San Francisco where he ran the Twilight Saloon. The press continued to note his activities, including his death in Colorado about 1903, but most reports were unsubstantiated. Select Bibliography H. Parkes et al, Debate on the Prerogative of Pardon as Involved in the Release of Gardiner & Other Prisoners (Syd, 1876?); H. Parkes, The Case of the Prisoner Gardiner: The Prerogative of Pardon (Syd, 1876); Votes and Proceedings (Legislative Assembly, New South Wales), 1863-64, 1, 1365, 1865, 1, 53, 62, 1865-66, 1, 339, 1873-75; Sydney Mail, 26 Mar, 23 Apr 1864; Australasian, 20 June 1874, 20 Feb 1875; Bulletin, 18 Mar, 11 Nov 1882; CO 201/577-581

John Middleton http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=image&guid=e38c417a-def5-49c5-9d8f-dc7cc7d0af16&tid=5229955&pid=-1484512005

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   John Middleton, 14 SEP 2009.

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