A predominance of families at Gillespie’s were of Irish extraction, and therefore Catholic. The Williams boys hadn’t been raised ‘in the faith’, but later converted after marriage to two of the Sullivan girls, with their offspring being raised Catholic.
Gillespie’s school had opened in 1880 and in the six previous years before Henry took over, had employed four teachers who, with the assistance of monitors, had taught the local children. Many of these pupils, armed with only a sixth standard education, could be classed as achieving highly in later life{{SIC}.}} Some completed their schooling to only the 4th Standard when they, too, began work assisting family members in bush clearance once the family started to acquire land.
Mary Sullivan, the first-born of Laurence and Margaret, was a school monitor in 1886 and also 1887, a monitor being an older pupil who assisted the teacher with the younger children. Henry Williams and Mary were married in 1888, Mary being either 16 or 17 years of age. The birth certificate has not been sighted but as her parents married in June of 1870, her likely birth was in 1871.
In these years, many marriages would result among those living or working locally. George Head, for example, who eventually wed Margaret Sullivan, also worked on a gold claim at Gillespie’s Beach. Social occasions were few and far between so it is understandable that opportunities to meet prospective partners from further afield were limited.
The Gillespie’s school closed in 1900, but during Henry’s 8-year sojourn provided him with a source of income used to acquire heavily covered bushland inland from Gillespie’s which his brother, Fred, who’d also come south from Kaniere, would work to clear and develop. In 1886 Henry earned approximately 163 Pounds per annum which had shrunk to 66 Pounds in 1894, the year he left, due to a shrinking school roll. A married man with a young family would have no choice but to move on to greener pastures.
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